Archive for November, 2009
Review: Timberland 6 Inch Zip Earthkeepers Boot
Friday, November 20th, 2009
UPDATE! I just saw these boots at the end of a Timberland earthkeepers commercial in which nature is getting some guy back for not wearing sustainable footwear.
I wrote about these boots about a month ago and ended up going ahead and purchasing them. I’ve had this pair for a little over three weeks, and have worn them quite a bit. Right out of the box they are comfortable, and look great. They initially have no creases, however the first time you bend your foot, they will appear. They have an English look, with contrast stitching that is nice. The zippers themselves work well and are of high quality. The zipper function, for getting your foot in is a bit harder than I thought it would be, but I had initially tied the laces too tight. Once loosened up a bit they were much easier to slip into/out of, which is great since the act of lacing up boots is usually a boots worst feature.
I haven’t seen any pictures of these boots, besides what Timberland had to offer, so I’ve taken these in my backyard, to show that they look like when slightly worn. I also inspected them carefully and the workmanship is top notch.
Sharing Sustainable Designs – Open Source Innovation
Monday, November 2nd, 2009
Mary Tripsas, an associate professor in the entrepreneurial management unit at the Harvard Business School, recently wrote an article featured in The New York Times titled Everybody in the Pool of Green Innovation. The piece is about large companies working together on green innovations. It sounds like a great idea, and a way for companies to work together on common goals, when patents are taken on idea’s that aren’t particularly profitable, but help conserve energy or reduce pollution. The big names involved in the Eco-Patent Commons are Bosch, Dow, DuPont, Fuji-Xerox, IBM, Nokia, Pitney Bowes, Ricoh, Sony, Taisei and Xerox.
Creative Commons’s Green Xchange is another group, whose goal is to add transparency to the sustainability to the supply chain. This is being supported by Best Buy and Nike.
This idea works great for large companies, however, there still appears to be a need to focus students on designing for a sustainable future. Innovate For Tomorrow is my proposed solution, however, without financing I’m having a bit of trouble getting it off the ground (the php development to enable the core features is the main issue).