The Wall Street Journal reported today that Xerox has developed a new copy paper which, they say, uses half as many trees, fewer chemicals and energy to manufacture, and weighs 10% less (reduced shipping energy and cost). See Xerox press release. Apparently it uses a process closer to the one that creates newsprint, using more of the tree. On the down side, the paper isn’t quite as white and apparently yellows “badly” (says the Journal) over time.

Is this another example of a green product that doesn’t live up to its regular counterparts? The yellowing sounds iffy. But a savvy analyst quoted in the article says the paper will likely be used “for transactions such as invoices and phone bills where people don’t care about long-term archiving.”

Just think about how much paper is not needed for very long – most, I would wager, ends up in the trash the same day. Much like the rising awareness of the craziness of using potable water to flush toilets, businesses and consumers are starting to ask questions about when virgin, high-end materials are really needed. Xerox’s innovation should help companies match the product to the need.

I’ve long thought the mantra of reduce, reuse, recycle was missing a couple of levels – redesign and re-imagine (see drawing below from Green to Gold that lays this out).

Xerox, it seems to me, has done its part by redesigning paper. The customers need to reduce (how about not printing that presentation to flip through in the meeting, or printing 2-sided?), reuse, and recycle. And Xerox, other document handling companies, and creative start-ups can work on re-imaging how we use information so we don’t need the paper at all. But for throw-away uses, which are a big part of the market, this innovation seems like a great incremental step. Bravo.

I’m incredibly excited about cleaning floors at the moment. Ok, stay with me. I spoke at a large convention last week, the International Sanitary Supplies Association. It may not sound like there would be much green action, but there is definitely cutting-edge innovation happening back in the supply chain hidden from view. I saw what appears to be a remarkable green innovation at this conference.

First, full disclosure: This story is about Tennant, a quiet public company that makes cleaning equipment, and they hired me to speak. But I can say that the industry gave Tennant the Innovation Award at this conference– so it wasn’t just me. I also checked this out with some of their test customers, so I’m really just reporting what I heard and saw.

So, here’s the big innovation: water. Tennant just launched a floor cleaning machine called Echo that uses no chemicals at all. The machine oxygenates tap water to split it into an acid and base (alkaline) that are safe to touch, then it sprays the two streams on the floor. In 45 seconds, the two polarized water streams mix and become plain water again. But in the process, the mixture grabs all the dirt off the ground. Sounds too good to be true, but it seems to work. Test customers included the Minneapolis Target Center (where the Minnesota Timberwolves play) and Unicco, a building contractor that services many malls in the Northeast.

I talked to Jay Souza from Unicco, which manages the janitorial services for the malls, and he said Echo actually cleans better than a chemical-driven machine. The floor also dries faster. Most importantly, there is absolutely no safety issue. The thing takes tap water so there’s no handling of toxic chemicals and no safety concerns.

The catch? It costs about $1,000 more (they’re $5,000 machines and believe it or not, there’s a $5B market for these things). The payback period from not having to buy chemicals is in the range of 1-2 years. When I talked to the purchasing guy from Unicco, Greg Zifcak, he said he couldn’t be happier to pay more to avoid all the safety concerns – the short-ish payback was not even that vital. The other small catch: it doesn’t clean every kind of surface or all kinds of dirt (oil-based things like brake fluid are created to resist water). But I got the impression that it cleans the same floors as regular machines. So, there will still be a need for chemicals for many uses…for now. But this innovation covers an awful lot of surfaces out there.

How did this all happen? The CEO, Chris Killingstad, arrived on the scene of this quiet 138-year-old company a few years back. He told everyone that they would no longer be a “non-residential service something, something” (I can’t even remember what their mantra was it was so nondescript). Now, he said, we’ll be an “environmental cleaning solutions company.” Ta-da. That created the mindset for R&D to run free. Borrowing the idea for the technology from other industries and countries (Japan apparently uses these ionized streams for things like cleaning wounds), came up with the idea to use the recombination step as a cleaning process, and went from idea in January 2006 to launch in less than two years.

This kind of innovation is sort of head-slapping in its obviousness – in retrospect. And enormously valuable to the company that can hit on it first.

World, meet the Prius of floor cleaning.

[To my blog readers, I've started writing for Huffington Post, so i'll be re-posting some of those here -- these entries will be a bit longer than my usual]

On Sunday, Virgin Airlines flew a jumbo jet from London to Amsterdam powered in part by coconuts (“a biofuel mixture of coconut and babassu oil” to be more precise). Some would say the applicable part of that sentence is “nuts.” Is this another wacky Richard Branson moment, or something legitimate and important? Or, as is all things Branson, maybe it’s both?

It’s easy to throw stones at Virgin’s attempt and call it a publicity stunt. But it’s pretty hard to chalk it up entirely to PR when Branson has pledged $3 billion, or all expected profits from his travel divisions, to battle climate change. But remember, this is Branson – PR stunts are his bread and butter, and they’re a legitimate form of marketing if you have something to say. In the environmental realm, it’s pretty important that what you say is real and credible though. So let me throw an important pebble before moving on to some positive thoughts on what Branson is up to.

The main problem is biofuels as a whole. I have no energy crystal ball – I have no idea which energy technologies will win. Nobody else really does either. But studies are showing that there are some real problems with biofuels when they’re created in most of the ways we currently have. Science magazine just reported on a very important study of the greenhouse gas impact of biofuels (see abstract here). In short, corn ethanol is just nutty (I’m paraphrasing the scientists a bit). It creates double the greenhouse gases of fuel since we have to clear land for the additional crops, and thus release carbon stored in the trees. I’d also add that burning our food when we’re heading toward 9 billion hungry mouths doesn’t seem that smart. Even fast-growing switchgrass, which President Bush has praised, apparently increases emissions 20%. So a shift to new kinds of fuels isn’t going to be easy. And it’s very unlikely that as Branson says, "This breakthrough will help Virgin Atlantic to fly its planes using clean fuel sooner than expected.”

But now for the praise and the good stuff. First, from an environmental strategy standpoint what Branson is doing makes sense. As every company should, Virgin is looking at its own (substantial) direct environmental “footprint.” Planes burn a lot of fuel. Going green in that business will be hard – since you can’t put a solar panel on a plane, there aren’t that many options.

So, second, we need experimentation. While money is being poured into working on all kinds of biofuels, we need parallel experimentation on what to do with that fuel. Demonstrating potential demand for new fuels will help speed the investment and development of new technologies. Now, we may discover that all biofuels don’t work from a life-cycle perspective, but until we know that for sure, trying out different combinations of fuels and vehicles is not a bad idea. As Branson put it, the flight would provide "crucial knowledge that we can use to dramatically reduce our carbon footprint.” Again, he’s probably ahead of himself a bit, but generating knowledge is a pretty good goal at this point.

Third, Branson is pushing the boundaries in other ways. Of course his biofuels pursuit may be a blind alley. So it’s good that he’s taken some other ground-breaking steps (in addition to that very unusual pledge of profits). Look at the fairly fun announcement he made about a $25 million award (my previous blog here) for anyone who can take carbon out of the atmosphere (harking back to the prize set in the 1700s for finding a way to measure longitude — a great book on that story here).

When you look at the contest Branson started, at first it’s crazy, but then has some strong logic to it (much like many of his seemingly wild ideas that create giant new businesses). Since directly reducing the emissions will be hard, and a company called Virgin Air can’t go around promoting alternatives for having meetings – although don’t bet against a Virgin Teleconference business to do just that – then why not do something about the impact of the planes. Planting trees is nice, but a technology that pulls carbon out of the air could be a big business. I can’t say whether it’s feasible, but why not look into it?

Of course the greenest answer is not to fly at all, but that isn’t going to happen anytime soon (I’ll look at this in a follow-up post). But back to Branson. Given (a) how much innovation there may be to avoid flying, (b) the rising cost of energy that will drive some slow down in growth of flying, and (c) the responsibility Branson clearly feels for keeping his business and the planet healthy, isn’t a good thing that he’s trying to find ways to reduce the impact from flying?

Shouldn’t somebody?