The Mesh - Lisa Gansky [30]
In fact, what two friends, the physicists Eric Wilhelm and Saul Griffith, called the hardware problem of climate change first inspired my thoughts about the Mesh. If we keep making carbon-intensive and disposable stuff on one end of the planet, moving it to the other end, and throwing it away, then the climate change problem becomes truly insoluble. One solution is to manufacture things closer to home. But the primary solution, the happier path, is simply to produce fewer, more thoughtfully designed products and to use them more effectively. Then, less will be made—and wasted.
The density of consumer information they receive enables Mesh businesses to manage resources (and waste) efficiently and well. Better yet, by sharing information about product and service usage by customers, families, and communities, a group of businesses can best identify ways to use products and byproducts efficiently. Profitable services that reuse, recycle, and upcycle products will more easily emerge.
value unused =waste
In natural systems, waste is never wasted. In nature, “waste” from one system is food for another. The challenge in business is how to retrieve value from waste of all types, such as idle cars or equipment. It’s finding value products that can be repaired rather than earmarked for the dump. The Mesh invites and enables the recovery of that “waste” as value.
CASE STUDY:
Basin Electric Power Cooperative
During the Great Depression, rural electric development varied dramatically by country: France, Germany, and New Zealand delivered electricity to more than 60 percent of their countryside, but the rural United States was barely 10 percent developed. Investor-owned utility companies were convinced that building transmission lines to sparsely populated areas was too costly.
Then in 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) and allotted $100 million to electrify the countryside. As expected, an overwhelming majority of investor-owned utility companies snubbed the idea. Instead, farmers formed electric cooperatives and worked directly with the REA to bring electricity to the countryside.
Originally, hydropower from dams provided the bulk of the electricity. But a disastrous flood on the Missouri River in 1943 convinced farmers they needed other sources of power. By 1961, they had formed a nonprofit, consumer-owned cooperative called Basin Electric Power to purchase, build, and manage power plants. Today, Basin Electric provides power to nearly 3 million customers in 135 rural member systems spread throughout Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. It is one of one hundred rural electric cooperatives that serve 30 million Americans in forty-six states. Together they own and maintain nearly half of all distribution lines in the country, which cover 75 percent of the United States. Similar cooperative structures have also been thriving for decades throughout Canada and Western Europe. Many of them, such as Windunie, in the Netherlands, have expanded their services to include wind and solar power generation.
Government can help by creating incentives for improving energy efficiency and reducing waste. Denmark is encouraging the adoption of electric vehicles with heavy tax credits. In Canada, Ontario will give EVs special license plates to use HOV lanes and gain access to recharging stations. Since the 1970s, California has given residents credits for energy-saving moves such as installing solar panels. The state requires low-flow toilets and energy-efficient appliances