105.000 people can´t be wrong!

I am amazed! No more being stuck in traffic, no more trying to find a parking spot, no more running after busses, no more time spent on, by tourists and pickpockets crowded metro platforms, no more waiting for the tram or wasting money on expensive taxi fares!

After trying for just a little bit more than a week. I am totally convinced! I love “Bicing” and its great concept of bike sharing here in Barcelona. If I´m alone to see the clever in this? No! Almost 105.000 citizens are using this service and the popularity is growing. In Barcelona bikes are stolen all the time and you´re recommended to invest the same amount of money on your locks, as you did on your bike in the first place. …but, with Bicing, you´ll need no more worries my friend. You don´t need to carry your bike up and down the stairs anymore, and no matter where in the city you are, you can almost be sure to have a Bicing station within two or three blocks from you. Where I live, I have six stations within a distance of 300 meters, the closest one is just a block away.

Click on the pic below to see the map showing the locations of all Bicing stations.

Bicing Station by the beach in Barcelona

Whenever you want to go somewhere in the city, you just catch a bike from nearest Bicing station. Slip your magnetic card, grab the bike suggested on the display and off you go. You have 30 minutes per ride on your annual subscription included. If you´re holding on to the bike longer than that you need to pay an extra fee. About 45 euros is the yearly cost, that´s pretty much what I spent before only on Metro cards every month. You can return your bike at any of the 420 stations around, wherever it is convenient for you. Bicing has 6000 bikes available for its clients and every bike travels an average of more than 550 km per month. That´s pretty impressive.

The photo below is a link to a map of Barcelona with the main bike lanes displayed.

Bike lanes photographed from my balcony

Barcelona is an excellent city for this concept. The weather conditions are great most time of the year. Since the main part of the city is rather flat you don´t need to struggle going uphill all the time. There are also a lot of space, for example if you´re cruising on the beach walk or along the biggest streets and avenues like Diagonal or Gran Via. Usually you just need to go a couple of blocks to find a nice bike lane integrated in the street. It feels very good to cycle through the city, passing car queues and traffic jams smoothly, and it´s so nice to feel the breeze in your hair while moving around downtown in the sunshine instead of sitting or standing in a really warm bus.

Below you have screenshot of the Bicing smartphone app. It´s really useful, showing you where you can find an available bike or a space to park the one you´re already on. If you click on the pic you will see a listing of the largest bike sharing programs around the world. Is there bike sharing in your city? If you have experience or thoughts on the concept, please feel free to comment on the blog post! 🙂

Some of the more than 420 Bicing stations in Barcelona

Unfortunately Bicing is not available for tourists from outside of Catalonia. I now that in Gothenburg for example you can get a three days pass on the bike sharing there for about €1,20 and that´s a good price. Here the many bike rental shops were strictly against these kind of offers. As a tourist you can find so many alternatives to Bicing, but if you´re living here it´s truly recommended. Personally I think it´s the very best way of getting around here, no doubt.

Sustainaboost just registered on Instagram a week ago. If you like the new photos, feel free to follow us there. Just click on the picture for the link so you can like and comment on all future pictures. Come on now, click! …let´s see if you can click on my nose! 😉 Hehe!

Cruising on a mission 😉

Wonderful little movie of a cruise in Barcelona! Looks great don´t you think?!

Anyway folks, I´m so happy that I started to use Bicing. This city changed a lot in my point of view, and it´s all for the better. If you also want to subscribe on this wonderfully clever bike sharing, that saves you money, improves your health and reduce emissions and noise. Just click on the Bicing logo below for the official webpage! …and if your family and friends or anyone you know are tired of the traffic situation, just recommend them bike sharing or share this blog post with them, so they can read a little bit about it as well. You can find similar concepts in many cities.

Bike Sharing System of Barcelona

Thank you very much for reading! Have a great day… all boosters out there! Together we´ll make the world better, just keep on smiling! 😀

Tobias Jansson, Circular Economy Guru :)

Sustainaboost proudly introduce you to world friend and green warrior Tobias Jansson. He is dedicated to work and to inspire, to make Earth a better place, more sustainable through adapting a Circular Economy. For some of you, perhaps the concept of Circular Economy is new. Here is a little bit of explanation about the general ideas. Enjoy!

Circular Economy is a win-win situation for business and environment.

Why do people have problems with waste and environmentally harmful emissions, while ants do not, despite living in advanced societies? As a matter of fact, the total biomass of ants on earth exceed that of humans, but they still do not cause any harm, like people do. Why is this? People do have a design problem. Nature doesn’t.

If we re-think and re-design products and business models and get it right from the beginning, we’re able to create a solution that is sustainable over the long term and works exactly as good as natural systems. It’s about using materials which can flow as nutrients in technical and biological closed, cradle to cradle loops, and the development of innovative business models that supports these material flows. Then we can save a lot of money and resources for the economy and the society as a whole. We can create business benefits while using resources more wisely.

The concept, which is called Circular Economy, is a new, positive and solutions-oriented way of dealing with our resource challenges. The idea is that we need to turn today’s linear economy, which implies taking out resources, making products, consuming and finally disposing them, into an economy that works according to circular principles.

http://c2ccertified.org/

Here´s an example of a Cradle to Cradle-certified product. The park bench, NeoRomántico Liviano 100% aluminio, on Barceloneta Plaza from the Barcelona based company Santa & Cole. They produce urban furnitures and lampposts etc… Mainly for the markets of the Iberian peninsula, France and Latin America. Please check out the movie clip on the link below. In this case aluminum works as the “technical nutrient”.

http://www.santacole.com/en/catalogo/bancos/neoromantico-liviano-aluminio/

Right now there’s a lot of things going on in this field, i e thanks to The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, founded by sailing-around-the-world-recordist Ellen MacArthur in 2010. The foundation asked management firm McKinsey & Company to do research in what economic value a transition to a circular economy might bring about. The answer McKinsey came up with in the report “Towards The Circular Economy vol 1” (2012) was USD630 billion per annum, looking only at a subset of EU manufacturing sectors. The Ellen MacArthur foundation has also launched The Circular Economy 100, a business coaching initiative in which the foundation works with companies such as Coca-Cola, Ikea, Marks & Spencer and Ricoh to accelerate their transition to circular business models.

http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/

http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/business/reports

Tobias Jansson, a writer and lecturer who co-founded Scandinavia´s leading sustainable lifestyle magazine Camino in 2006 is now one of the front figures in Sweden trying to spread the word about the Circular Economy concept. On his blog CircularEconomy.se and in an upcoming book he writes about entrepreneurs and visionaries working to form a circular future. With departure in his interviews he gives lectures on Circular Economy and also holds workshops where participants are given the challenge to transform business cases with linear business models into circular ones. The lectures and workshops are available in Swedish and English, and right now Tobias Jansson is looking for opportunities to speak more internationally, not just in Europe, but anywhere an interested audience awaits him. Main target is business developers, science parks, educations in business, technology and design, as well as municipalities.

Tobias is always traveling by the best alternative of transports. If train is not an option to his destination, sometimes you can see him like this. Happy behind the steering wheel of an electric car. 😀

This is what a lecture could look like.

On the picture below Tobias explains the difference between traditional sustainability work, when you try to minimize damage, less emissions, less impact etc… and the circular point of view, that says: “Being less bad is no good”. Cradle to cradle is about starting from zero emission and then being 100% good, or more. If you´re going in the opposite direction instead of the way towards your goal, you need to turn around to get to your goal. You are not going to get there simply by breaking and slowing down you speed.

Here are some pictures from a workshop in Circular Business Models with Business Region Gothenburg.

If you want to book lectures or workshops with very inspiring green warrior Tobias Jansson, you can write him an e-mail in English, Swedish or Spanish. Would you like to have a 15% discount on his price? Your discount key is: Sustainaboost! Tell him that you read about him here! 😉

Contact and connect with Tobias Jansson on: tobias@circulareconomy.se

His blog and webpage: http://circulareconomy.se/

Follow Tobias on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tojler

Workshop: http://circulareconomy.se/cirkulara-affarsmodeller-hos-business-region-goteborg/

I want to say thank you Tobias for all inspiration and great things you are doing! I wish you best of luck with your future work, the book, the blog, lectures and workshops! Also the best of luck to all other green warriors of this beautiful planet. Together, we will make it better! Over and out… Thank you! 😀

Tesla

Innovation, engineering and great thinking!

Imagine yourself a brand new car in front of you, with the most beautiful designed lines, impressive, highlighted with reflections of the sunshine on a warm summer morning. You feel a slight wind breeze in your hair, you open the front door on the driver´s side and place yourself in the comfortable seat. You smell the scent of the brand new car, you look around you to see the most modern solutions of high tech in total harmony with top notch interior design. You tune in your favorite song or radio station on the large touch screen of the centre console. Then you grab the steering wheel… and off you go! Acceleration of a sports car, comfort of a luxury car, silence like if you were sitting in a first class compartment on a train. All this but without emitting exhaust fumes.

This is what Tesla Motors (Official) are offering their customers today!

The old Tesla, Nikola Tesla, was a great inventor, engineer and futurist, working on a large range of projects and succeeding to come up with many great solutions. He worked during a period of time for the famous Thomas Edison, but maybe he did not get the recognition that he actually deserved. His idea of developing electric cars for the public however, is still alive and kicking.

The new Tesla, Tesla Motors (Wiki), was founded in 2003. Tesla started off by manufacturing the first fully electric sports car in serial production, the model was called Tesla Roadster. It reminds a bit of the Lotus Elise on its exterior design but it´s powered by lithium-ion battery cells with a capacity to travel 320 km (200 miles) on one charge. I have always been really interested in cars, since I was a little boy. At that time I liked small toy cars and now when I am big, I like big “toy” cars. Very logical! Anyway, I have been following Tesla through the years and when I spotted a Roadster in a parking lot, for quite some time ago, I had to take this picture.

A beautiful GREEN car and I like the registration plate that says: “KÖRPÅEL”. That is Swedish and means “DRIVESONELECTRICITY”. Until September 2012 Tesla Motors sold 2.400 cars of the Roadster model, and these sales helped the funding of developing the Model S that is a luxury sedan with great comfort, but still having the performance of a sports car. Model S is now the top selling plug-in electric car in North America. Tesla says that their goal is to sell 21.000 cars in 2013 and expected global sales for 2014 of 30.000 units.

The Model S 17″ Touchscreen Display

Tesla Model S is not only beautiful with comfort and great high tech, it´s also very practical. Check out the space for example! Hehe! 😉

How Many Kindergarten Students Can Fit Into a Tesla Model S?

Also very economic! Here is a clip about their new supercharger.

Supercharger Announcement

…and here, amazing battery swap in 90 seconds. Faster than to fill up your car with gas!

What is electric car battery swap tech, and why is it important?

Future aim is in line with old Nikola´s idea. The third generation car will be in the size of Audi A4 and will offer everything such as range, performance and affordability targeting the mass market. Just what Nikola Tesla wanted, to make a good electric car available for the people.

My blog is only a few weeks old and there are so many interesting things I would like to write about. What made me decide on a blog post right now about Tesla, is all recent news about this interesting company. News that have increased the value of the Tesla stocks that much so that now actually the company exceeds the value of FIAT, and they manufacture millions of cars. For example we were reported profit of the first quarter this year, which was the first profitable quarter in the history of Tesla. Tesla also repaid a loan to the Department of Energy of more than 450 million dollars last week, that was 9 years earlier than they needed. The Tesla stock is now up more than 200% the last three months. Some voices have been heard criticizing Co-founder and CEO Elon Musk, about his frequent posts on twitter and social medias, meaning that this could have effects on the stock. I on the other hand believe that Elon Musk is a true genius when it comes to marketing strategy. The people Musk is reaching on blogs and social medias, know exactly what they look for, they´re trendy, they like technology, they care about the planet and in general I think their age, interests and hobbies are totally lined up to fit perfectly into the target group for Tesla Motors.

You can follow Elon Musk on twitter and also Tesla Motors.

I hope that Tesla Motors can continue selling their wonderful high tech engineered beautiful creations over the internet and that the State of North Carolina and others being against, rethink, and start to see the clever in the smart concept of cutting unnecessary intermediaries to make better car deals for more and happier customers. Everybody should work together to switch from fossil fuels to renewables and for win-win situations.

I want to be as good as possible to our planet, but I also always liked cars a lot. For the moment I don´t have a car, but thanks to more and more alternatives of electric vehicles and the fact that I have six charging stations within walking distance from my flat here in Barcelona, I now consider getting some kind of transport. I don´t need to compromise. I can now be sustainable, environmentalist and a good friend to Mother Earth but at the same time I can still dream about an awesome car without feeling guilty. So maybe in the future I drive my white Tesla Model S on a curvy road, along the sea, in the sunset… somewhere. 😉

So a big thanks to Elon Musk and Tesla Motors! …and all others in the electric vehicle industry, for letting me keep my passion, beautiful cars, but without feeling bad! Good luck to you all and have a nice day! 😀

Rent electric!

I´m so happy to see that more and more companies offer electric vehicles for rent in my city, (I´m especially happy if they charge the batteries with renewable energy). Wherever you go here in Barcelona, you see shops in all sizes, small, medium or big, renting out a large range of electric bicycles, motorbikes or cars. The trend of an increasing amount of offices within this niche, shows that there is a great demand among the millions of tourists that come here every year. You can cruise along the beach on the boardwalk in the sunshine, with wind in your hair, but without engine noise in your ears. If you´re cycling up the hills to enjoy the wonderful view overlooking the city, with the sea in the background, it can be really helpful with an electric boost helping you to get a move on those pedals.

Pictures below: The beach of Barceloneta from the cable car to Montjuïc and a beautiful view from Parc Güell overlooking the city.

I hope that renting electric can be an eye-opener and an inspiring thing, so that people who are trying these vehicles here on their vacation, will consider to go electric next time they turn their car in for a new one, or next time they buy a new motorbike. Another great thing in Barcelona is the “Bicing“, a mass transit system. With your bicing card, you´re free to catch a bike from one of the many bike stations and ride it to wherever you´re going in the city, and then you just park it in another station. I know that a lot of cities use the same clever concept, for example the city of Stockholm.

Pictures above: On the first photo you have an office with electric bikes for rent. It´s a new shop that opened just recently here in my neighborhood. I spotted it on my way to the beach the other day. A small business with a few bikes, but a brilliant idea with great potential. I´m sure they will do excellent. The second one, is a photo of me riding one of my bikes. There´s no engine on this one, except me, myself and I! Still young! 😉 …and still going strong! 😀 Hehe! No, but seriously! If you want to transport yourself in a more sustainable way, turning your back to fossil fuels, than going by bike, you need to walk… and if you want to go extremely sustainable, walk barefooted! Wow! Talking about global footprints! 😉