RallyDev.com
Thu 19 Feb 2009
True Sustainability Thriving Today Through EcoSphere
The various sizes of and shapes of Ecospheres
As you may know, I am very passionate about the concepts of sustainability. For my birthday this year, my thoughtful wife and son gave me a living example of sustainability that sits on my desk and reminds me to work on this topic everyday. It is called an EcoSphere and I got it from EcoProducts Home Store here in Boulder (they are folks who also provide all of our compostables that help us approach zero waste here at Rally – they are a great Boulder success story).
The Ecosphere is a completely closed world and is self-sustainable. It was developed by two NASA scientists (the late Dr. Joe Hanson and the late Dr. Clair Folsome) trying to create models for long-term space flight. In it you will find algae, shrimp and bacteria living in a closed cycle with sun light as energy. (Learn more about EcoSphere’s sustainable model on their site.)
At $125 for a small sphere they are a bit pricey, but they are fun to watch, people always notice the shrimp moving around on my desk. After attending Thomas Friedman’s talk on “Hot, Flat and Crowded,” I realize they are just another part of my “work in progress” to living sustainably in the U.S. These do not feed me like my chickens and goats, but they also do not eat like my dogs and cats.
Here is mine on my desk - cool eh?
Definitely the most common question is: “Are those sea monkeys?“ According to the web site, they live 2 to 7 years with really no maintenance and NO they are not sea monkey branded brine shrimp.
This EcoSphere keeps me focused on the long road of continuous improvement needed to make our industry a zero carbon footprint or sustainable industry. We are currently on the road to be a larger emitter of CO2 than the airline industry by 2020.
We have to find the innovations in infrastructure, the methods and tools to reverse this. My of view of how to reverse this behavior is through the emerging software value cycle that is made possible by SaaS/Clouds, Agile development and Web 2.0 customer communities. You can read my thoughts on these topics or hear a MassTech webinar.
I have about 15 of these guys in my Eco-sphere.
I believe that with the change to Lean thinking – from products to services and with virtual connections to customers – we can learn to quickly adapt and adopt to new sustainable products and behaviors.
We need a value chain in the IT industry that is closed loop and sustainable, not open loop like the Story of Stuff.
I encourage you to take a moment and consider getting one of these model worlds for yourself or your best friends. It will keep you on the road to smarter, leaner and greener.
About the Author: Ryan Martens is an avid outdoorsman, founding board member of the EFCO, and Founder and CTO at Rally Software Development. Subscribe today to get free updates by email or RSS.
Further Reading:
- Let’s stop splitting hairs – We need to get to zero carbon output to really make a difference
- Leadership in Sustainability – Blog Talk Radio Interview
“We are currently on the road to be a larger emitter of CO2 than the airline industry by 2020.”
That’s a stunning bit of information. Does it refer to the IT industry as a whole? And can you share the source for that stat?
Hilary,
This information was complied in a McKinsey Report last year and reported in InfoWorld.
There is much to learn in the McKinsey report. I am working on sharing much of our work on Rally’s sustainability page.
Please email me, I would like to talk to Ryan Martens and the Rally team about articles.
Thanks.
Sadly, it may not be a sustainable item at all… elsewhere on the web I’ve read that these shrimp are being harvested and their habitats destroyed, as food for other fish and for these ecosphere products. Also, they live a long time under minimal conditions and may just be slowly starving to death in these spheres. I don’t know…
http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=171391
http://www.arizonainverts.com/speciesinfo/Hrubra.html
DJ,
Thank you for the links. It seems like some of these folks are raising these animals, not just grabbing them from Hawaiian tidal pools. I have not had my ecosphere long enough to notice them getting “smaller” with molts. There seems to be a good quantity of algae in my tank.
I am very strong environmentalist and a high-tech entrepreneur. I think experiments with shrimp that you raise like this are really important if they can help us change our mental models of the world. We have to stop viewing ourselves as “separate.” We have to start seeing ourselves as all connected. I believe the highly innovative world does that very effectively. It gives me hope we can understand these simple closed loop models and start living on the world in a connected fashion. It seems raising these little guys could be a good sustainable business? Hopefully, we can get the software and HT business there soon too.
Thanks again,
Ryan
I agree with DJ Ryan though your arguments are read!