Clean Agency

Last month, Clean co-facilitated a 2-day Life Cycle Assessment Workshop at Avery Dennison, one of the largest global producers of consumer products, pressure-sensitive adhesives, and materials. 

This impactful event held at the Avery Research Center in Pasadena, CA saw the few Industrial Ecologists in the nation coming together and included among cross functional teams at Avery Dennison. 

The prime objectives of the workshop were to instill life cycle thinking within relevant business functions at Avery Dennison - Research & Development, product development, product management, and process improvement. With insightful instruction by Clean Research Director, Dr. Bob Vos and Research Associates Candace Hodder, Avery's business units were engaged through live LCA examples and results on Avery products. The group maintained purpose and momentum throughout and achieved a sense of cultural alignment by the close of the 2nd day - an extremely promising gauge of success with the organization's LCA strategy moving forward. 

Clean Agency Research Director Dr. Robert Vos outlining the agenda at Avery Dennison. 

Clean sponsored and attended the first annual Women In Green Forum earlier this month at the Pasadena Convention Center. The conference was an incredible opportunity to rub elbows with women from all over the world who have made sustainability the focus of their careers. Politicians, activists, actresses and entrepreneurs joined forces for a powerful 2 days that covered topics ranging from renewable energy to organic foods and beverages. Women In Green Forum's multi-disciplinary approach made the event a huge success with bold, challenging perspectives from women who influence global developments in sustainability. We can't wait to attend next year!

To learn more about the forum check out womeningreenforum.com. 

Our view from the audience at Women In Green 2010. 

This Saturday, Clean Agency participated in the Eco Mud Run Tour at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena! 

Our team likes to think of ourselves as an active group, consistently participating in local runs and maintaining our own preferred methods of fitness, however, this event proved to challenge even the best of us. As if the 5K course around the perimeter of the bowl was not enough, the handful of obstacles - tunnel crawls, mud pits, tire obstacles, jump walls, surely kept us on our muddy toes. 

All in all, we had a great time and are proud to support a group placing an emphasis on the importance of environmental awareness. 

(Un)Clean Team Members Seri McClendon and Heidi Luko still smiling amidst the aftermath

This week, Clean Agency participated in the 2010 Sustainable Brands Conference in Monterey, California. This year's theme, "The Power of &" , sparked 4 days of insightful dialogue among Sustainability Executives, Brand Strategists, Designers, Innovators, Consultants and Marketers.

"& " served as the underlying theme as brand leaders from Target, Ford, EBay, Starbuck's, Williams-Sonoma, Nokia (to name a few) revealed tactics on achieving the tandem business benefits of sustainability through focus on: profitability & responsibility; business & NGO, behavior & design, smart & beautiful...

The traction these brands are achieving is evident and Clean looks forward to continuing to elevate the strategic conversation as we move towards progress with: cultural shifts & the evolving consumer, increased transparency in reporting, the importance of stakeholder identification/engagement, and the role of marketing/ communications...

Clean’s CEO, Seri McClendon received a nomination at the Los Angeles Business Journal’s “Women Making A Difference” event last week. The event honors L.A.’s most successful women business leaders. In its 19th year, the annual awards luncheon gave recognition to over 200 women making a difference in the Los Angeles community.

Seri pictured with Kalika Yap - CEO, Citrus Studios & NAWBO (National Association of Women Business Owners) member

"Everyday Earth Day " is closer than you think.

Clean's recommendation to both individuals and organizations looking to create positive change is to marry an environmental commitment to other priorities . For example, if the goal is to reduce your personal carbon footprint and you also want to support local businesses, a good way to start is through buying organic produce from a local farmers market. If the goal is to reduce ocean pollution and you have a previous commitment to exercise more, a good option would be volunteering with a clean up organization to remove litter from around coasts and waterways. The allure of this approach is three-fold:

1. Because many of these activities have other positive benefits, it's easy to strenghten the commitment.

2. Different approaches designed around the same goal can be combined for maximum effect.

3. These choices are easy to share (and enjoy) with family, friends and colleagues!

A good first step is to pick one action or behavior that you want to ripple throughout the rest of your year!

Last week, Clean participated in the Annual Los Angeles Business Council's Sustainabiliy Summit at The Getty. An array of engaging speakers representing a variety of discipines were present for the topic, including: The Honorable Jerry Brown , California Attorney General, Joseph Pettus , Senior Vice President of Fuel and Energy, Safeway, Inc., and Adam Werbach , Global Chief Executive Officer, Saatchi & Saatchi S.

Topics of discussion included: Best practices among sustainable industry pioneers, incentives for renewable energy and financing green businesses.

Our new space is finally functioning! We've effectively doubled our square footage by taking over the suite next to ours. Pictured below is Christian Del Maestro, Research Associate and the sliding door that bridges our two spaces.

In the expansion process, we reclaimed a few leftover materials from a television pilot (Edgar Floats) shot in our building. This included several large pieces of dark plexi which function perfectly as writeboards. These new writeboards have quickly become indispensible and have brought about the age of a new Clean favorite tool: the "liquid chalk" marker.

These markers are also perfect for writing on ANY smooth surface, including the glass surroundng our conference room.

In true "think tank" fashion, our team has turned almost every corner of the office into impromptu meeting and brainstorm hubs. Our expansion couldn't have come at a better time.

Recently attending the West Pack conference in Anaheim, Clean team members took a look at innovations in the packaging world. Though smaller than previous years, we were pleased to see that the Green Packaging Pavillion was centrally located, and that investments and interest in innovative secondary and tertiary packaging have grown. Some highlights include: reusable and recyclable pallets made from post-consumer recycled content, biodegradable cushioning materials for packing boxes, ultra-strong paper based recyclable honeycomb panels to substitute pallets and partitions in distribution, versatile paper made from stones without water or tree pulp that can be used for catalogues, tradeshow displays and labels, even bio-compostable tree-free food to-go boxes—all elements of packaging that would end up in a landfill if it weren’t for their environmentally preferable counterparts.

Knowing collaboration is a key to our success, the Clean team spent the day at Il Fornaio in Pasadena, brainstorming and strategizing for the new year.