'Growing Green' forum helps companies create earth-friendly products and initiatives
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Design manager Dino Mariano (left) and Randy Rossi, president of Bally Design, with some of their green products.
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Kopp Glass, a specialty glass producer in Swissvale, was seeking an opportunity to do something environmentally friendly with defective pieces that couldn't be used for railroad and traffic signals.
The industrial designers at Bally Design on the North Side came up with a creative and inexpensive option: Take a piece of the colorful, sturdy glass that's about the size of a serving plate, turn it over and you have an hors d'oeuvres tray. A saucer-size piece might work as a candy dish or an ashtray. A glass piece with depth could become a cookie jar.
Throw on a price tag and sell the pieces at a funky boutique on the city's South Side.
"We just repurposed them," said Randy Rossi, president of Bally. "They sold fairly well, and Kopp's defective inventory went down significantly."
If only green product design was always so simple.
As seemingly every type of business tries to position itself on the cutting edge of green, companies are finding some tough barriers to reaching that goal, including issues such as the cost of environmentally friendly materials, whether suppliers practice green philosophies and whether consumers are willing to pay more for green goods.
That's why Mr. Rossi and other board members of the Product Development and Management Association's Pittsburgh chapter decided to convene a forum this week called "Growing Green Products."
In keeping with the green theme, the event will be held at the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens and will feature a panel discussion on how to incorporate green products and initiatives into a company strategy.
Speakers include Christine Mondor, an architect and sustainability expert; Aurora Sharrard, a manager for the Green Building Alliance; Georgia Berner, president and CEO of New Castle-based Berner International, which makes air curtains and energy recovery systems; and William Deuschle, director of engineering for Traco, a window manufacturer in Cranberry.
Among the issues the panel is likely to address is how a business that attempts to achieve green outcomes can determine whether its suppliers are using green and ethical standards, said Mark Adkins, president of the local chapter of the Product Development and Management Association.
First Published May 31, 2011 12:00 am
