Whilst in the TRAILER OF MYSTERY at the Global Research Lab, we saw demos of GE’s VeriWise software/hardware products. More or less it is a mesh network that uses existing radio technology in a decentralized way to make truck fleets more efficient.
This brought up a half-idea I’d had ages ago while working on the tap project , which is to create a brand and mechanism to give some sort of authority to the distance a product traveled to get to you. Whether its a cucumber or a radio, people are starting to be concerned about the carbon footprint of what they buy, but there’s no standardization, no trustworthy gauge of local-ness that you can compare products to.
Seeing this system from GE that is designed to gather tremendous amounts of data, and then intelligently filter out only what you need (or ask for) leaves a lot of other useful data. So what if you could use the system that is already tracking distance traveled and checking in / out packages from warehouses and trucks to be some sort of data trail that authenticates how far a product traveled to get to you.
Interestingly, its such a huge goal of any company to increase effiency. Not only GE, but all the clients that could be in the market for this sort of system are insanely interested in shaving off minutes here, pennies there, because on a grand scale it makes a huge difference in profits. But its strangely not ever important to the end user to know how efficiently a product was made.
There’s all sorts of ways to go with this, but a simple first idea is to have a consistent iconic stamp of local-ness, or maybe in the same way that you have nutritional information on a package you have distance traveled. Something that will get people excited about companies that are more efficient than others.
“But its strangely not ever important to the end user to know how efficiently a product was made.”
? many end users definitely find this important. it’s the impetus behind the [large and ever-growing] movement to label foods according to sustainability-oriented critera, from organic to dolphin-safe to post-consumer recycled and other degrees of recyclability.
“There’s all sorts of ways to go with this, but a simple first idea is to have a consistent iconic stamp of local-ness, or maybe in the same way that you have nutritional information on a package you have distance traveled.”
attempts at food-prints (food-print, get it?) are definitely being made, but local-ness is not as straightforward as might be initially imagined. oftentimes there are many components that go into a product (different parts/ingredients, packaging, etc.) that may come from different places. should local-ness equal cumulative miles traveled of all the components of a product? there are also different trips components make – from farm to processor, processor to packager, packager to distributor, etc. should all of those trips be included? also, should fossil fuel miles count the same as hybrid/biodiesel/more renewably fueled miles? I’m not suggesting that a label for local-ness isn’t doable – it’s definitely doable and of course valuable – just that the ball is indeed rolling, and as with any attempt at standardization, there are wrinkles to be ironed out….
You know, I thought it was initially a poor choice of words, but I will stand by it: I don’t think end users care about EFFICIENCY. Yes people care about carbon footprint, or dolphin-safe, or a wide variety of things that are new societal concerns, but those things are causes or concerns that are in many cases a tangent to what most companies are attempting to do (they are in the business of selling you tuna, not in the business of not selling you dolphins, ha).
What every business does care about is efficiency though, right? Penny pinching. And some of the things you outline are individual components of efficiency in terms of producing a product, and you’re totally right, I was minimizing the passion of the audience, but I think with the idea that most business are in fact striving to make things more efficient, and are probably doing all sorts of stuff that people don’t know about, that is a greener decision made not with the environment in mind but with a faster truck route in mind.
Ok so what are big general categories though? your examples are good, and food-prints is nice. something simple
what about a calorie measure – like how many calories is in a food, vs. how many calories it took to get it to you ?