Posts in 'Behavior'

Medium-duty trucks are the workhorses of the American economy. They deliver food and beverages to restaurants and convenience stores, drop off packages at homes and offices, serve as mobile workshops for all types of technicians and perform thousands of other daily tasks. They are also responsible for producing over 80 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year.

To help fleets reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and harness cost savings, Environmental Defense Fund teamed up with past partner PHH Arval, a leading fleet management company, to identify and showcase a number of effective and replicable strategies to reduce emissions and costs from medium-duty trucks.

Highlights of this new whitepaper, available at http://edf.org/greenfleet, include:

• How Frito-Lay saved 10% on fuel by downsizing its urban grocery store delivery truck model from a 24-foot Class 6 straight truck to a 20-foot Class 5;
• How by reducing speeding and after hours use and deploying a telematics solution, LKQ decreased idling by 62% and saved 16 gallons of fuel per vehicle each month;
• How Staples modified the transmission control unit and installed speed governors to increased the fuel economy of its single-unit trucks by 12-16% and
• How PoolCorp improved fuel economy by 4% by making adjustments to the Engine Control Module (ECM) that limit speed and shorten engine idle intervals.

Recognizing that every fleet is different, the whitepaper showcases 14 strategies and includes options for every duty cycle to improve efficiency and cut emissions.

Look for opportunities to drive medium-duty trucks in your fleet onto the onramp of a lower-carbon future.

This content is cross-posted on Greenbiz.com

Sustainability movements worldwide have created major new institutions and exchanges, from high-level conferences and carbon taxes to national markets and associated currencies.

Anthony Williams, co-author of Wikinomics and its forthcoming sequel, Macrowikinomics, has a hunch these efforts are the wrong way to go about precipitating the broad, deep changes we need if we really are going to change how we all get around, get power, eat, shop, learn, share and make things. We need to rely less on centralized control and more on self-organizing efforts everywhere initiating small experiments and piloting social innovations. Some of these will mushroom into pervasive changes in societal behavior. Read more »

Have trucks in California? You’d better get to your dealer fast, because the California Hybrid Voucher Incentive Program is open for business.

On February 4, the landmark program officially opened, and boy, were fleets ready. In the first 12 hours, about 25 percent of the program’s $20 million in vouchers had been requested.

All fleets with trucks operating in California are eligible for up to 100 vouchers each, on a first-come, first-served basis. With nearly $15 million still up for grabs, so it’s not too late to claim your share. Read more »

If you happened to miss my previous post, I recently finished an externship in Environmental Defense Fund's Corporate Partnerships Program, working on the Green Returns team.  After graduating from Wharton last spring, I got the opportunity to work at EDF before beginning my full-time consulting job at Bain & Company.  When I started at EDF, I hoped that the experience would teach me about corporate environmental management and expose me to a new perspective.  After five months, I would say – mission accomplished. Read more »

Have you ever gone shopping for a particular item, and after scanning shelf after shelf of virtually indistinguishable options, you throw the box bearing the “Energy Star” logo in your cart, even though it may be the most expensive choice?

You’ve just been nudged.

Seeing that logo made you assume that by purchasing that particular product, you would be doing your part to help the environment.  And that feels good. This is precisely the idea behind Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s book, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness. They touch on the environment, as well as other hot topics like money and health, and how we can be nudged – and nudge others – into making better decisions to save the planet and ourselves.

For busy readers of this blog, I would suggest reading the first part of the book that highlights the main points and establishes some of the terminology Thaler and Sunstein uses throughout (such as “choice architecture”, which refers to how the design or context of an object or place can nudge people into making certain choices and “Libertarian Paternalism,” that is, preserving the liberty to choose) and then skip ahead to chapter 12, “Saving the Planet."

This may also enable you to skip over what I found to be the most annoying part of Nudge, which is the continuous use of Homer Simpson as the model of bad decision-making. Other than that, I would recommended this book to those interested in gaining a better understanding of why humans—whether they be our customers, employees or shareholders—make poor choices and ways that we can be nudged into making better decisions for ourselves and the planet.

Ever wonder why some people – who seem to know the right thing to do – don’t do the right thing when asked to take action?

Well, it could be that we’re asking them in the wrong way.

For example, it turns out that saving money is not much of an incentive to take action – but losing money is. In a study conducted by UC Santa Cruz, half of a group of homeowners were told how much per day they would save (50 cents per day) if they weatherized. The other half were told what they would lose (50 cents per day) if they did not weatherize. The result: 150% more people weatherized when told what they would lose.

The principle of scarcity – that people want more when there is less to go around, based on the belief that scarce things are more valuable – comes from Dr. Robert Cialdini, a professor at Arizona State University and expert in the fields of persuasion, compliance and negotiation who has written several books on the topics of influence and persuasion. As shown in the Santa Cruz study, focusing on loss is more effective than focusing on gain.

Some of Dr. Cialdini’s other principles that are useful in trying to effect behavior change: Read more »

Last week, I had the pleasure of meeting Kathrin Winkler, chief sustainability officer at EMC Corporation.  EMC had participated in EDF’s Climate Corps last summer and I wanted to get Kathrin’s candid take on how the 10-week internship program – designed to help companies find and implement energy savings – had worked for EMC. We quickly agreed that environmental innovation and leadership is all about organizational change.  Whether from the inside, like Kathrin at EMC, or the outside, like EDF’s partnerships, the key to success is building the environment into the core values of the company.  By that, I don’t mean the words that are on the corporate website but the everyday motivations that really make an organization – and the people in it – tick.

Is it all about the bottom line?  Read more »

More and more fleets are looking to their drivers to help reduce emissions. It is well known that how you drive impacts the fuel consumption of a vehicle.  The private sector has clearly taken note of the money that can be saved (and made) in this area. Several firms have launched products to improve the driving habitats of fleet drivers.

Environmental Defense Fund is doing our part to advance this market too. Today, I’m moderating a panel at the Green Fleet Conference in Chicago that is exploring what several leading fleets are doing to improve driving habits.

We are also releasing a suite of tools we have developed to help companies effectively engage with their drivers. These tools include: Read more »