A database provides a web-based interface for farmers, retailers, and customers to learn more about each other, and combines social networking with education. Clients' user accounts that go into further detail about food miles, carbon emissions, and opportunities to coordinate pickups and deliveries with other participants in a way that further optimizes the system. In addition, retailers are provided with printable point-of-purchase graphics that educate the customer about the farmers, their farms, and emissions data specific to that shipment.

By analyzing the multiple pick-up and deliveries scheduled at any time, Beeline is able to design the most optimal route for trucking. This is the key to Beeline's overall energy efficiency, and we maintain a detailed database of the day-to-day performance of this system. The system conserves energy and passes those savings on to its clients.

Beeline not only informs the system but changes it as well. Knitting information into product technology, it's built as a service business and system design. Merely localizing food systems is insufficient; local distribution has to be done with maximized efficiency. As the UK's DEFRA report points out, food tonnage can increase when moving towards localized food systems if food items are transported inefficiently. Beeline's system allows us to eliminate waste: wasted miles and wasted labour, as well as wasted space in warehouses and inventory. Ultimately, it enables us to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions associated with food transport and support long-term food security and economic vitality.

About the authors

Dawn Danby is an interdisciplinary designer based in Toronto, whose work interfaces with sustainable urban transformation, product development, public art and business systems. She writes for WorldChanging and is co-author of WorldChanging: A User's Guide to the 21st Century.
http://www.barkingcrickets.org/
http://www.worldchanging.com/

Jyoti Stephens is the Sustainability and Stewardship Manager for Nature's Path Foods, her family's Vancouver-based organic breakfast foods company. Her work is focused around driving the company's environmental goals of zero waste and carbon neutrality.
http://www.naturespath.com/

Mary Rick is the Program Manager for the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, an international network of locally owned businesses. Her work integrates community-based economic development with environmental sustainability.
http://www.livingeconomies.org/

All three are candidates for an MBA in Sustainable Business from the Bainbridge Graduate Institute, Bainbridge Island, Washington USA.
The Beeline team was brought together for the RSA's Dott07 Design Directions Competition.
http://www.bgiedu.org/