13 Hot Sustainable Products To Follow in 2013

DBL Part­ners’ port­fo­lio com­pa­ny Eco­log­ic Brands is exe­cut­ing on a bril­liant­ly inno­v­a­tive idea: reduce the amount of plas­tic head­ed for our land­fills by using strong, mold­ed fiber bot­tles made from old news­pa­pers and card­board boxes.

The com­pa­ny was just hon­ored by Sus­tain­able Brands, one of the most influ­en­tial trade mag­a­zines for large con­sumer pack­aged goods com­pa­nies and their brand man­agers, as one of the “Top 13 in 2013” brands to fol­low.  See the full arti­cle here.  Con­grats Julie Cor­bett and the Eco­log­ic Brands team!

Eco­log­ic Brands Founder and CEO, Julie Corbett

Here’s the full text of the article:

“Hottest” lists have been mak­ing a come­back late­ly, and here we are with a few of our own! Inspired by our com­mu­ni­ty’s inten­si­fy­ing surge of new busi­ness val­ue, cre­ativ­i­ty and the result­ing solu­tions tak­ing us toward a more sus­tain­able econ­o­my, we would like to turn your atten­tion to some key devel­op­ments worth fol­low­ing — and act­ing on — in the cor­po­rate sus­tain­abil­i­ty space this year. We are group­ing them in four lists, and will be pub­lish­ing them one at a time over the course of sev­er­al days. Today we start with a look at 13 hot prod­ucts that not only achieve dras­tic reduc­tions in envi­ron­men­tal and social impacts in their cat­e­gories, but also have the poten­tial to ulti­mate­ly trans­form their entire indus­tries. Here we go:

1. PUMA’s InCy­cle col­lec­tion, which includes footwear, appar­el and acces­sories that need not be tossed in the trash at the end of their use­ful life, but can rather eas­i­ly be turned into bio­log­i­cal nutri­ents or tak­en apart for met­als, tex­tiles and plas­tic to be reused in mak­ing oth­er prod­ucts (or more InCy­cle prod­ucts). Par­tic­u­lar­ly note-wor­thy in the InCy­cle col­lec­tion are this T‑Shirt and these Bas­ket Sneak­ers, both of which are ful­ly compostable.
2. 3M’s high­ly intrigu­ing Scotch-Brite Green­er Clean Sponge, which boasts a com­po­si­tion of 100% plant-based fiber. Not just any old plant mate­r­i­al, but agave plants — which typ­i­cal­ly take up to 10 years to grow, con­sum­ing lots of ener­gy and water in the process — most of which, once the use­ful juice is used to make tequi­la, used to go to waste until 3M’s sci­en­tists stepped in.
3. Lucid’s Build­ing Dash­board Net­work, a pow­er­ful toolset bring­ing the Inter­net of Things to build­ings and enabling behav­ior change through rad­i­cal trans­paren­cy of ener­gy and water use data. With clients rang­ing from Yahoo! to Star­bucks and the one-of-a-kind Cam­pus Con­ser­va­tion Nation­als com­pe­ti­tion, Lucid’s dash­boards have become a rec­og­nized leader in this excit­ing niche.
4. The BMW i series of elec­tric cars, fea­tur­ing the com­pact urban i3 and the dynam­ic i8 sports­car. These two mod­els are being built from the ground up as entire­ly new con­cepts with the goal of being ‘uncom­pro­mis­ing­ly sus­tain­able’ for the next age of mobil­i­ty. To help fine-tune the i series, BMW has been col­lect­ing cus­tomer feed­back through an impres­sive 16-mil­lion-kilo­me­ter e‑mobility field tri­al for its ActiveE vehi­cle released last year.
5. Solazyme’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary algae-based renew­able oils, which have a wide range of appli­ca­tions, serv­ing as trans­porta­tion fuels, food ingre­di­ents, skin and per­son­al care prod­ucts, as well as inputs in the pro­duc­tion of laun­dry deter­gent, soap and shampoo.
6. ‘Amer­i­ca’s first mold­ed fiber bot­tle’ by Eco­log­ic Brands — a sim­ple-look­ing yet ele­gant­ly inno­v­a­tive and smart­ly designed line of con­tain­ers, with a ful­ly com­postable out­er shell made from 100% recy­cled card­board and news­pa­per and an inner pouch using 70% less plas­tic than plas­tic jugs.
7. The water cen­ter Coca-Cola is start­ing to build across Africa, Latin Amer­i­ca and South­east Asia in part­ner­ship with DEKA Research and Devel­op­ment Corp. Each unit is designed to be an entire­ly off-grid lit­tle cab­in the size of a small café, pow­ered entire­ly by solar ener­gy or bio­mass and fea­tur­ing extra perks such as cell phone charg­ing, some shade and a pub­lic flat-screen TV. DEKA’s water purifi­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy takes ‘any­thing that looks wet’ (lit­er­al­ly!) as an input and pro­duces 1,000 liters of fresh drink­ing water per water cen­ter per day.
8. The upcy­cling Filabot, a one-of-a-kind plas­tic extru­sion sys­tem capa­ble of con­vert­ing most types of recy­clable plas­tic, such as milk jugs, deter­gent bot­tles, soda bot­tles, sham­poo bot­tles, prod­uct pack­ag­ing and many more, into usable 3D-print­ing fil­a­ment. Talk about the num­ber of pos­si­bil­i­ties this opens up.
9. The afford­able, bio-based and biodegrad­able plas­tics Man­go Mate­ri­als derives from methane at a price that is com­pet­i­tive with that of con­ven­tion­al oil-based plas­tics. Using a patent-pro­tect­ed bio­log­i­cal process, this bril­liant start-up has found a way to both reduce the release of methane, a potent green­house gas, and con­tribute to the rapid growth of the bio­plas­tics industry.
10. The solar-pow­ered light­ing cen­ters Philips is build­ing across Africa with an inten­tion to bring evening sport, edu­ca­tion, health­care and com­merce to rur­al com­mu­ni­ties which cur­rent­ly live with­out elec­tric­i­ty. Philips is tak­ing advan­tage of a new gen­er­a­tion of high­ly effi­cient solar LED light­ing to cre­ate areas of night-time light the size of a small soc­cer pitch each.
11. Proof Eye­ware’s col­lec­tion of orig­i­nal prod­ucts, espe­cial­ly the sig­na­ture sus­tain­able wood sun­glass­es that have quick­ly grown into an inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized brand, hand­craft­ed in Ida­ho from sus­tain­able mate­ri­als by three broth­ers ‘with saw­dust in their veins’ and their awe­some team. Snoop Lion and Bey­on­cé are already on board.
12. Amer­i­can Stan­dard­’s pre­fab­ri­cat­ed toi­let sys­tem that is more hygien­ic, eas­i­er to install, and eas­i­er to main­tain and clean than tra­di­tion­al toi­lets — with­out the need for any sew­er infra­struc­ture — and can be eco­nom­i­cal­ly mass-pro­duced for just $1.50 a pop. The project was done in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Gates Foun­da­tion’s Water, San­i­ta­tion and Hygiene Strat­e­gy, and Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment Enter­pris­es (iDE).
13. SAP’s HANA ‘Real, Real-Time Com­put­ing’ solu­tions allow­ing a dra­mat­ic accel­er­a­tion of ana­lyt­ics, busi­ness process­es, pre­dic­tive analy­sis and sen­ti­ment data pro­cess­ing for a tru­ly real-time con­trol over the des­tiny of sales and oth­er key busi­ness activ­i­ties. Watch this video on this page for a quick guide.

See Julie and oth­er vision­ar­ies behind these prod­ucts as speak­ers for Sus­tain­able Brands ’13, June 3–6 in San Diego.