Yeah, I can't say I'm excited to try this. Japan Airlines has just launched a new year-long pilot allowing its passengers to reserve and rent clothes. The way it works is that you tell them what you're traveling for and then you get something like a "spring/fall x smart casual" variety pack delivered to your hotel or Airbnb.
The clothes, which look something like this, are a mix of excess stock and second-hand stuff, and so it is being positioned as a more sustainable choice. You're both using clothes that might otherwise go to waste and you're reducing the amount of weight that you're traveling with. (You still need to bring your own underwear.)
The site handling the clothing rental system claims that a 10kg reduction in a flight passenger’s luggage results in an estimated 7.5kg reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. A 7.5kg reduction in CO₂ emissions, it adds for reference, is the equivalent of forgoing using a hairdryer for 78 days (based on an average use of 10 mins per drying session).
I suppose this could also be positioned as a convenience: why lug a suitcase full of clothes around when you can just reserve what you want and have it waiting for you at your hotel? But I also suppose that you need to be okay wearing well-used clothes. Maybe this matters less, though, if the clothes are
really
nice and fashionable?
I don't know. It'll be interesting to see if there's a market for this.
I would also say that even though I may not be excited about rental clothes, I take great pride in packing efficiently for travel. Unless I'm going snowboarding, I basically do not check a bag. I can do 2 weeks just fine with a carry-on and, to be honest, there's something liberating about reducing your belongings to only what is necessary.
So who knows, maybe bringing only underwear and toiletries would be even more liberating.
This is going to be old news to many of you, but this past week I experienced Tesla's self-driving capabilities for the first time. And I must say that I was very impressed. It did everything from navigate stop-and-go city traffic to navigate lane changes on the highway. Overall, it makes my five-year old car feel pretty quaint. The software is that much more sophisticated and one has to assume that all of this autonomy stuff will only get significantly better as LIDAR becomes common place in production vehicles.
In other car news, North America appears to be narrowing in on an EV charging plug standard. It is Tesla's plug, but it is now appropriately called the North American Charging Standard (NACS) plug. And last week, Electrify America -- which is the largest non-Tesla, fast-charging network in the US -- announced that it would be adding the plug to its network. The company also happens to be owned by Volkswagen. So big and important companies seem to be coalescing around this plug type.
Lastly for today, here's a post by Fred Wilson talking about (1) bi-directional EV charging, (2) the apartment buildings he and his wife are developing, and (3) our ongoing transformation away from a centralized electrical grid to a decentralized one. What he talks about in his post is something that we are actually piloting in a few of Slate's office buildings right now. It's still early days, but I think it's really exciting. Tech seems to be enabling a broader shift toward decentralization. And in the case of our electrical grid, it's going to lead to a more resilient one.
Both are located in the Porto Nuova district of Milan.
And from what I could tell when I walked by them yesterday, they’re pretty comparable. They have similarly deep balconies. And they even appear to have the exact same exterior cladding.
Of course, the big difference is that the former — the celebrated Bosco Verticale — has about 800 trees, 4,500 shrubs, and 15,000 plants sitting on its 3.3m cantilevered balcony slabs. It also has an elaborate irrigation system that services said greenery.
Okay, so which is more “sustainable”?
First impressions would suggest that it’s the former. Trees and green things are good for the environment. So putting trees on a tall residential building must also be good, right? Maybe.
The main counterargument is that it requires a lot of additional work to get trees, shrubs, and plants onto a tall building. You need more concrete, more structural reinforcing, an irrigation system (maybe not always?), and a way to maintain everything going forward.
In this case, all of the greenery is a common element, and so it’s maintained by the building and not by any of the individual residents. Among other things, this preserves a uniform aesthetic.
But all of these additional materials increase the building’s embodied carbon. And so there’s an important question to consider: Do the benefits of putting trees up in the sky outweigh the impacts of actually doing it?
This is one of the great debates surrounding this project, and it’s a good reminder that being more sustainable isn’t so simple. There’s a lot to balance, and there are countless details to figure out.
However, innovation does require iteration. And already there are new iterations of the Bosco Verticale, such as this one in Paris, that plan to swap concrete for mass timber construction.
So even more trees in the sky. That’s probably a good thing.
