A couple cool projects over at Terracycle are ironically enough related to the wine industry. Go figure! To quote George Chavelier at Terracyle who recently contacted us regarding our writings: “Greg, I agree about vineyards and wineries becoming the poster children for the green movement – who’s more likely to go that way than people with such a passion for that which comes from the Earth?”

Terracycle is offering refurbished old Kendal Jackson wine barrels as The Rotary Composter and Rain Barrel water storage containers. They’re also getting wine enthusiasts, bars, restaurants, and wineries around the country to send in used corks, which they upcycle into cool new products like doormats. Both the upcycled cork products and wine barrel composter and water storage units are available in major retailers nationwide, including Sam’s Club and Home Depot.

Here’s a video on how to create your compost bin with Terracycle’s Rotary Composter:

Terracycle is doing something incredibly innovative that is going to help completely renovate capitalism. They are essentially taking trash off peoples’ hands and innovatively recycling it into sellable products. What a business model, and what a benefit to the environment. Check out their Eco-Capitalist guidebook for more info and check out the other products they’re selling. Seems to me that their creating a new type of marketplace… a renewable marketplace.

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Wow, what an excellent conference! A game changer. I have to thank my friends over at Village Green Energy for hooking me up with a free pass. I’ve been so passionate about this movement as long as I can remember… ever since 6th grade when I messed around with electromagenetic fields and plants. Early education for me was all about ecology and environment, and that followed with rigorous economics in college, which I didn’t quite understand about myself until now. Having not gone into banking with my degree and now seeing the state of the economy I was like shit… but David Suzuki put it so clearly… it’s (eco)nomics. I can’t believe I never recognized that. I automatically associated economics with the greedy, short-sighted mentality of Wall Street that focuses solely on the bottom line and exploiting the market for cash and egoic status. Yet you realize the bottom line is not the statement of cash flows or the balance sheet… it’s the fuckin planet. Ecology + Economics = Sustainability. This conference was absolutely buzzing! People were feeling alive and connecting and touching each other like I’ve never seen in my life. We all knew the green revolution is ready and about to change the world in a big way.

The keynotes were superb with Al Gore, Jerrry Brown, and David Suzuki really leaving a moving impact on me. Nobody was afraid to go deep. Sure there was plenty of talk about clean tech innovations or green building or policy changes.. but more so people were incredibly open about spiritual and conciousness based changes that are going to take place around the world to solve this crisis. Sarah Susanka even brought the crowd to tears with her moving presentation. It’s so much bigger than green or solar or oil… it’s about enlightening the human race that we are one and we share the same spirit with each other and with the world as a whole. I found it to be quite the religious experience to be at this conference. A few others being recently when I went into the wild of Alaska for a few weeks and when I saw the Dalai Lama speak in Bethlehem, Pa.

Aside from the heavy stuff, there were tons of innovative companies doing everything from cutting edge solar installs, to green acrhitecture consulting, to new age battery storage, smart grid stuff, efficiency software, New Resource Bank (which is exploding with business during this banking crisis… lol gotta love it!) and sooo much more. You had builders, utility reps, entrepreneurs, mad scientists, engineers, and everyone was so open and loving and connecting. I was blown away… it took me 3 full days to digest it all.

There were also brilliant seminars and panels, the best one for me being the State of Investing in Clean Tech, where partners from KPCB, Foundation, Sigma, and DFJ (all the big Menlo Park firms) talked about what companies they’re investing in and what technology is working… and yet something was different. These are VCs and of course money is there first concern, but with this clean green movement we are finally going to enter into a phase of social… or better yet eco-capitalism… where we benefit the environment and the social welfare of all while making a shitload of money and creating a shitload of jobs. This is an unprecendented opportunity in economic human history. Create a concentrically cyclical supply chain and pass the prosperity around the world. I was inspired by the VCs stories of how they’re going green in their own lives and their deep personal commitment.

A few themes from the conference to leave you with:

1) Nature to the grid baby – energy, health, architecture

2) Ecology + Economics = Sustainability (Eco-Capitalism)

3) Sky power will fuel the earth

4) The only thing special about humans is our foresight… our ability to see and shape the future. So lets use it.

5) A new connected conciousness is emerging that will limit the individual ego that has evolved and scorched our earth with fragmented, disjointed, greedy agendas. The only chance at eternal life is if we live together as one.

6) Be the change you want to see in the world!

In my humble opinion, these are unprecedented and magical times in the history of our race and our planet. There’s no better place to be then right here, and right now.

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The crux of the problem lies in what Robert Reich in his book Supercapitalism labels ‘socialised capitalism’: which is ultimately a form of capitalism that allows the rich to get rich with no obligation to share their wealth; and then when the rich go bust (ala Bear Stearns) then socialism kicks in and everyone shares in the losses. The essence of the open-source industry is akin to the blogosphere in that it is a platform upon which ideas are shared with no restriction. Ultimately, wine shares much in common with this ideology in that its wealth is often shared out along the supply chain more evenly than in say, the motor-industry where practically everyone from the production line workers to the environment gets a raw deal.

The Ford-style capitalism brought to the wine industry by Ernest and Julio Gallo will always be a factor – but ultimately the winosphere is clearing the way, and the likes of Mondavi are having to step aside for the multiple Capozzi’s, Tastevine’s and other niche wines and wine companies which are emerging as a result of the netroots. And of course, it certainly helps our case that Obama style wine democrats will soon be in power as opposed to the No-bama-chanting beer swilling McCain luddites.

I saw an advertisement which caught my eye the other day for Banrock Station – which is now pushing the phrase ‘saving the world one glass at a time’ and has a wine glass with a stem that has been photo-shopped to be the stem of a rose. Last year at the London International Wine and Spirits fair I got talking to the folks from Banrock Station and they all broke down to me how their vineyards support local water supplies, preserve the local wildlife, enrich the local community, cultivate a diverse eco-system on their sites and practice sustainable farming tactics. Essentially, farmers have the land and the earth at their best interests and are oftentimes at the forefront of organisations fighting to protect nature and the earth. It is comforting to know that if it is to be inevitable that if the world will run out of fossil fuels and everything comes to a grinding halt as big brands do destroy the world and we are sent into a pre-modern state of existence: at least seeds, water, soil and sunshine cost us nothing… and even though our computers may have powered down and our iPods may no longer work – we’ll still be able to sit down for a bottle of wine at the end of the day.”

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