Mean and Green I

Every now and then, I plan on sharing with you some examples of some pretty cool innovations in the "green" space. In this first segment, I'll tell you about two: Daruma-otoshi building demolition and Primo Water. [Disclosure- Primo Water is a client of Porter Novelli but amazing nonetheless.]

• Daruma-otoshi style of building demolition involves inserting mechanical support pillars on the first floor and then removing the structural pillars from that floor. The floor is then lowered down so that the second floor is now the first floor, and so on, until the building is entirely flattened. This is done with minimal environmental impact, unlike traditional building demolition or implosions. It's based on the Japanese game of the same name. Watch the video. It's quite ingenious.

• Primo Water is a new bottled water company that is answering the cry of the APLS, the LOHAS, and the Greenfluencers, who have been trying to get people to use fewer plastic water bottles. That is admirable, because traditional water bottles are made from petroleum. That's right -- plastic bottles are made from OIL! Well, Primo Water has come along with a bottled water whose bottles are made from plants -- a renewable resource. You can check out how they do it in this video I helped make for them. Note- you'll notice I do not hawk my clients' products willy-nilly, so when I do praise one, it's the real deal, friends.

Finally, if someone can come up with a better name for this segment other than "Mean and Green", please comment. I'll probably change it to your better suggestion.

Comments

[Dave]

"Disclosure - Primo Water is a client of Porter Novelli but amazing nonetheless."

This makes it sound like being a client of PN precludes a company from being amazing. :)

That demolition video is crazy, dude! Putting a whole building on jacks ... ingenious indeed.

I'll have to keep an eye out for Primo water. Anything that helps keep little plastic bottles out of landfills is a good thing.

On a similar note, Macy's has begun using biodegradable packing peanuts in all its shipments (http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS144437+17-Apr-2008+BW20080417). Their made from potato and corn starch apparently. I can tell you from first hand knowledge that you can in fact melt an entire box of this packing material in your bathtub and wash it down the drain. Beats styrofoam in a landfill any day (smells a little potato-ey though).