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Wealthy investors and asset managers wield a lot of power over the major companies whose stock they own or control. Every year, shareholder advocacy groups hope to exert that power for good by filing shareholder resolutions — 500-word proposals that might ask companies to voluntarily reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, or to disclose more information on their resource use. 

Shareholders typically vote on resolutions between April and June during a period known as “proxy season,” named after the proxy statements that companies distribute to investors ahead of their annual shareholder meetings. These votes aren’t binding, but they can influence companies’ decisions and generate press around a particular issue.

This year, activist investors are notching wins even before the beginning of proxy season. Shareholder advocacy groups have already extracted a handful of plastics-related concessions from major companies — including the entertainment behemoth Disney, the food processing giant Hormel, and Choice Hotels, one of the largest hotel chains in the world. The companies’ new commitments include reporting on and reducing the amount of plastics they use in their packaging, as well as more closely monitoring hazardous plastic additives.

Activist investment firms like Green Century Capital Management — which manages over $1 billion in assets — must make a business case for environmental action. Douglass Guernsey, a shareholder advocate at Green Century Capital Management who helped negotiate the agreements with Disney and Choice Hotels, said the new commitments show that companies are waking up to the threat that single-use plastics pose to their bottom line. Between the prospect of more stringent state regulations, new lawsuits against plastic producers, and a global plastics treaty being negotiated by the United Nations, plastics are facing some potentially severe regulatory and reputational prospects over the coming years.

“It’s unnerving investors,” Guernsey said, and the scale of the problem is “just starting to dawn on corporate managers.”

The companies’ pledges also shed light on the shareholder advocacy strategy, which is not necessarily to sway companies through voting on shareholder resolutions, but to use the prospect of a vote as a negotiating tool. According to Guernsey, shareholder advocates almost always prefer to reach an agreement with companies through dialogue — they only file a resolution if they feel that it’s needed to keep the conversation going. In some cases, after a resolution is filed, companies agree to make some kind of commitment in exchange for the resolution’s withdrawal.

That’s essentially what happened with Hormel. A nonprofit shareholder advocacy organization called As You Sow started talking to the company last fall, asking them to take more responsibility for plastic packaging after their products are sold to customers. As You Sow organizes investors and asset managers around a range of social and environmental issues, and it persuaded investors holding nearly $2 trillion in shares to vote for the 48 resolutions it introduced in 2023. Kelly McBee, As You Sow’s circular economy manager, said she had “productive conversations” with Hormel, but she still wanted to see more support for laws that make companies financially responsible for the trash they produce (known as “extended producer responsibility,” or EPR, laws), as well as more investment in plastic collection and recycling infrastructure.

“That’s when we moved into the shareholder resolution phase,” McBee said. After As You Sow’s filing, Hormel came back to the table offering some additional plastics commitments, including a pledge to reduce its cumulative packaging use by 10 million pounds by 2030. It also agreed to form an industry working group to advance policies that make packaging more recyclable or reusable, and to publish by the end of 2024 a report on ways for Hormel to become a more circular company, meaning one that minimizes waste. As You Sow withdrew its shareholder resolution in response to the new commitments.

“Hormel was pretty great to work with, they seemed genuinely motivated,” McBee said. Back in 2021, As You Sow had given the company an F grade on its plastic pollution scorecard, in part due to a lack of transparency around its plastics use and poor support for plastic waste collection and management.

The commitments secured by Green Century followed a similar arc. After talks with Disney and Choice Hotels, Green Century filed shareholder resolutions and then withdrew them in exchange for corporate pledges to measure, report, and set new targets for reducing their plastics use. 

Disney had already been “ahead of the curve,” Guernsey said, with commitments to eliminate single-use plastics on its cruise ships by 2025 and to achieve zero-waste in its theme parks by 2030. But more measurement and reporting will increase transparency around the company’s progress. Choice Hotels had already committed to phase out single-use polystyrene foam packaging by the end of 2023 and transition to bulk shampoo and other amenities by 2025. But an organization-wide plastics inventory will now allow the chain to set its first overall reduction goal by early next year. 

Other commitments recently secured by Green Century and other investors include one from the retail chain Costco, which agreed in October to report plastics use across its Kirkland-branded products, and another from the beverage conglomerate Keurig Dr. Pepper, which agreed in January to restrict its suppliers from using certain bisphenols — a family of plastic additives linked to hormone disruption. Green Century is planning to unveil more plastic commitments — largely related to increasing disclosure and reducing plastics use — from about a dozen more companies in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, As You Sow has filed plastic-related shareholder resolutions at at least 14 other companies.

Not all negotiations between companies and shareholder advocates result in a mutual agreement, and resolutions that go to a vote can’t force a company’s hand. A 2023 resolution asking Amazon to reduce its plastic packaging, for instance, was largely ignored by the company despite receiving support from nearly half of its shareholders. “All votes on shareholder proposals are nonbinding,” McBee explained. “So even if 100 percent of shareholders vote on something, the company doesn’t have to take that action.”

Votes can still have indirect influence, though. If a company ignores the will of its shareholders, McBee said, they can sell their shares, reducing its valuation and access to capital. Companies that disregard shareholder resolutions might also make potential investors think twice about sinking their money into the company, or perhaps inspire lawmakers to write legislation forcing companies to take steps they won’t take voluntarily.

Still, many advocates question the power of shareholders to effect systemic change. Even after their most recent pledges, companies like Disney and Hormel will likely continue to be large plastic polluters — not to mention their other environmental impacts, like the emissions associated with Disney’s fossil fuel-powered cruise ships and Hormel’s industrial meat products. Some environmental groups pressure major investors to sell their shares in polluting companies rather than to try to change them from within. Others favor advocating for more stringent government regulations.

“[R]elying on shareholders to make corporations more accountable and socially responsible is misguided,” wrote Warren Staples, a former lecturer in social procurement at the University of Melbourne, and Andrew Linden, an corporate governance researcher at RMIT University, in a 2019 essay. “There are far more direct and systemically effective measures available to do that.”

Choice Hotels, Costco, Disney, Hormel, and Keurig Dr. Pepper did not respond to Grist’s request for comment.

Even shareholder advocates acknowledge their strategy’s limitations, including on plastics. Globally, two garbage trucks’ worth of plastic enter the ocean every minute, and plastics and petrochemical companies are planning to make even more of the material over the coming decades. To rein in the plastics problem, Guernsey said, “overall regulation is going to be important” — especially standardized requirements for companies to disclose and report their plastics use, as well as more EPR legislation and bans on particular types of plastic.

Image credits: Brian Yurasits/Unsplash and Erik Mclean/Pexels

This article originally appeared in Grist. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

We’ve talked a lot about how living sustainably can save you money, but the hard-earned savings you’re holding in your bank account may be an indirect source of a ton of greenhouse gas emissions. 

When you leave money in your account, the bank uses it to make more money by lending it elsewhere. Banks primarily make money from the interest earned from lending and fees, but they also do so by making investments, and most banks lend to and invest in the fossil fuel industry.

The 60 biggest banks in the world funneled $5.5 trillion into the industry from 2016 to 2022, according to the 2023 Banking on Climate Chaos Fossil Fuel Finance Report. The 20 largest oil and gas companies are supplying over half of the resources used for fossil fuel expansion, and just 10 banks are responsible for 58 percent of their financing since the Paris Agreement, according to the report. Those banks include names like Citi, JPMorgan Chase, BNP Paribas and Bank of America. 

As a result, it’s estimated that every $1,000 in a savings account is linked to the same amount of greenhouse gases emitted by flying from New York to Seattle each year, according to the climate solutions nonprofit Project Drawdown. 

The situation may seem bleak, but there are banks committed to doing environmental and social good. And switching banks is a relatively easy action that can have a powerful impact. “Moving from a carbon-intensive bank to a climate-responsible bank could reduce the personal banking emissions of an average person in the U.S. by 76 percent,” according to Project Drawdown. 

So, what does it take to make the switch?

The first step is research. You can start by looking into your bank — maybe it’s already committed to not doing business with the fossil fuel industry. Check its website or contact the bank directly to see if it has a third-party certification or has made a public commitment against funding causes that lead to social or environmental harm. But be wary of vague statements like “environmentally friendly” or “sustainable” with no evidence to back them up. Terms like that aren’t regulated, so you may need to look further into your bank’s impact reports, lending criteria, or external rankings to confirm those claims. 

If you determine it’s time to switch banks, there are tools out there that can help you. Several third-party certifications exist for financial institutions committed to social and environmental responsibility. These can quickly narrow your search. 

For example, less than 20 banks and financial technology services are certified B Corporations, a certification that scores businesses based on factors tied to governance, workers, community, customers and the environment. Alongside that, fewer than 10 U.S. banks, credit unions and financial technology services are Fossil Free certified. Run by the nonprofit Bank Green, the only requirement is to never finance fossil fuel companies or projects. If you’re looking for other qualifications, several other memberships, certifications and designations can be found online. 

Certifications are not foolproof, and some require more effort than others. You should look carefully to assess which ones align with your values but, at the least, certifications ensure banks provide proof that they’re making good on their commitments. 

Online tools like Bank for Good can do some of this research for you. Bank for Good is a database of banks and credit cards that were vetted by a coalition of organizations to guarantee they are fossil-free. You can search for approved financial institutions that meet your needs by selecting criteria like your state, whether you want access to an in-person location, whether they offer business accounts, and if they are a certified B Corporation, among others. 

Despite having so many ways to filter your search, it can be difficult to find an option that meets multiple criteria. You may have to sacrifice some of your wants, particularly if you’re looking for an in-person location. When searching for a bank in Colorado with an in-person location, for example, no options appear. When that requirement is removed, multiple options become available — including more specific ones like those focused on clean energy financing and those that are Black- and Latino-owned or led. 

Another option to consider is local credit unions, which are member-owned, not-for-profit financial institutions focused on investing in their communities. Many of them provide free financial education, donate to local organizations and work with small businesses. They’re less likely to be linked to fossil fuels because of that community focus, but you’ll still need to do some research into their operations to confirm.

Once you’ve decided, you can prepare to open an account at your new financial institution by making a list of direct deposits, subscriptions, and automatic payments you’ll need to transfer and checking if they have a minimum balance requirement you’ll need to meet to open the account. This requirement typically ranges from $0 to $100, but it can be much more than that. After the account is open, it’s good practice to check that your banking information is updated across all services, subscriptions, employers, and anywhere else that may need it. The finance company NerdWallet recommends only emptying and closing your old account once you are certain any existing checks and automatic payments have cleared and getting written confirmation that it is closed. 

The capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) are proving to be beneficial to wildlife. Conservation teams and researchers are integrating AI into their environmental protection practices and using it to conserve natural resources, monitor ecosystems long-term, and measure the impact of natural disasters.

Conservation relies on biodiversity measurements that are timely and accurate, and AI can support monitoring and measurement systems. That type of integration is working for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), a conservation organization working with communities in almost 100 countries to protect wildlife and ecosystems. 

"We bring in data from all over the world, and the number of sensors that are pouring data in, the specificity of the data … and the speed is just accelerating," Dave Thau, the global data and technology lead scientist at WWF, told TriplePundit. "You need artificial intelligence to understand all of that information. Both on a global scale, which we work on, and also a local scale, which we work on, as well.” 

How to use AI for natural resource conservation

WWF has many uses for AI, including partnerships with academic, private-sector and non-governmental organizations, as well as people in house who are working with AI, Thau said. 

One of its many AI-integrated projects is Eyes on Recovery. Launched with a range of local, on-the-ground partners and supported by Google.org, the project was created to monitor the impacts of the Australian bushfires in 2020. 

During the bushfires, more than 12 million hectares of forest land were destroyed and an estimated 1.25 billion animals were killed. After the fires, the Eyes on Recovery team installed more than 600 camera traps in bushfire affected areas to monitor wildlife recovery. This allowed researchers to monitor important local and endangered species like the Kangaroo Island dunnart, a mouse-sized marsupial that is challenging to spot given its small size. 

The footage captured by the cameras is sent to an online tool called Wildlife Insights, which uses Google’s AI technology to sort and analyze the images. The team used initial photos from the project to train the AI to accurately identify different animals. Anyone with camera traps can add photos to the platform to contribute to the publicly-available data. 

“We can get a sense of which species are coming back, which are not, and what we can do to help those that are coming back,” Thau said.

Another example of an AI-enabled project is Forest Foresight. Last year, WWF-Netherlands and its partners collaborated with computer scientists and AI professionals to build an AI model that can predict illegal deforestation so action can be taken before it occurs. The model uses satellite images combined with data like population density, to study how forest loss happened in similar places in the past. That information helps it to predict areas that are at risk and alert local authorities and stakeholders. 

The tool predicts deforestation up to six months in advance with 80 percent accuracy, according to WWF. In Gabon, Forest Foresight also prevented illegal gold mining on 74 acres of forest land. 

"That system is being applied in several countries around the world, has been successful in finding places where deforestation is likely to increase, and has enabled organizations to intervene before it happens," Thau said.

Benefits and drawbacks of AI integration 

Still, AI integration can pose challenges and create social and environmental risks. Improper use of tools can skew data, create opportunities for greenwashing, dismiss data rights of local communities and spark language barriers.

WWF faced challenges figuring out where to use AI, how best to use it, and how to work with new applications, Thau said. 

But using AI comes with benefits and positive long-term impacts, too. Including understanding the effects of WWF projects and knowing what's actually working, Thau said. 

"We use artificial intelligence to understand where we can be impactful, what areas could benefit from conservation efforts, and understand risky events." Thau said. 

In addition to its technical capabilities, AI can enable engagement between organizations and local communities. Best practices and recommendations will ensure that all decision-makers are able to participate and understand the technology's insights. Leveraging the technology for environmental protection and conservation practices is making these collaborations possible.

Business leaders who support voting rights face a difficult challenge. Aside from overcoming new partisan laws that make voting more difficult, they need to overcome a chronic undercurrent of voter apathy in the U.S. However, now that communities in many parts of the country are feeling the impacts of climate change firsthand, voting rights supporters have a new opportunity to engage voters and encourage them to choose leadership on climate action.

On climate action, who's elected matters

“It makes no difference who is elected president,” is the reason cited by 53 percent of voting-age adults who decided not to cast a ballot in 2020.

In terms of the climate crisis, though, the differences are all too real. Former U.S. President Donald Trump changed the game with one stroke of the pen shortly after taking office when he summarily pulled the U.S. out of the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change.

U.S. business leaders quickly allied with labor unions to advocate for the Paris Agreement and reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Ongoing federal programs also continued to support progress on decarbonization, despite the efforts of Trump appointees to the contrary.

Still, without strong White House support for climate action, the U.S. lost a key opportunity to provide global leadership at a time of looming crisis.

“While the US now represents around 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, it remains the world's biggest and most powerful economy,” BBC environment correspondent Matt McGrath observed in November of 2020. “So, when it becomes the only country to withdraw from a global solution to a global problem, it raises questions of trust.”

The leadership pendulum swings both ways

That trust cannot be restored in a single election cycle, but the current administration took a giant step in the right direction. Newly elected President Joe Biden took office in 2021 with a focus on leveraging government resources and private-sector investment to accelerate decarbonization.

In a new analysis, Carbon Brief credits President Biden with implementing new policies that bring the U.S. closer to meeting its near-term goal to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, highlighted by climate provisions in the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. 

In the analysis dated March 6, Carbon Brief notes that the Joe Biden administration has brought the country “close to meeting its 2030 target range.” If Biden is reelected in 2024, "emissions would fall to around 43 percent below 2005 levels” by 2030, Carbon Brief projects, though existing policies fall short of where the country needs to be to reach net-zero two decades later. 

Conversely, the alternative — a second term in office for Trump — would once again turn back the clock: “In total, the analysis suggests that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions would fall to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 if Trump secures a second term and rolls back Biden’s policies — far short of the 50 to 52 percent target."

By way of visualizing the difference, Carbon Brief projects that Trump’s second term in office would wipe “all of the [emissions] savings from deploying wind, solar and other clean technologies around the world over the past five years” off the books, twice over.

Rolling back the Inflation Reduction Act would have catastrophic consequences 

Though advising that other variables may impact the actual results, Carbon Brief anticipates a negative outcome for a second Trump term based largely on his pledge to roll back the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

“The IRA accounts for the most significant part of the emissions reductions expected as a result of Biden’s climate policies to date,” Carbon Brief authors led by deputy and policy editor Simon Evans explained. “This has been called the largest package of domestic climate measures in U.S. history.”

“It offers incentives covering a broad swathe of the economy from low-carbon manufacturing to clean energy, electric vehicles, ‘climate-smart’ agriculture and low-carbon hydrogen,” they added. “Regardless of the precise impact, a second Trump term that successfully dismantles Biden’s climate legacy would likely end any global hopes of keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius."

The shield of apathy may be cracking

A newly published study from the University of Colorado at Boulder indicates that climate change already impacts voter behavior, providing some basis to believe that the Inflation Reduction Act — and President Biden — will prevail for another four years.

“We find that climate change opinion has had a significant and growing effect on voting that favors the Democrats and is large enough to be pivotal to the outcomes of close elections,” the researchers concluded. “We project that climate change opinion probably cost Republicans the 2020 presidential election, all else being equal."

Signs of growing voter engagement emerged in the 2022 midterm elections as well.  Business leaders who value both the environmental and the bottom-line benefits of the IRA can help make sure that it survives into 2025 and beyond by seizing the momentum, building on their voter registration programs, and keeping climate action front and center in the national conversation as Election Day comes closer.

“The way we farm and distribute food is a social justice issue, a public health issue, and an economic resiliency issue,” Nona Yehia said. 

Yehia is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Vertical Harvest, a company that aims to be an all-in-one solution to these overlapping issues. Not only does the Wyoming-based company provide local, fresh, nutrient-dense produce year-round, but it also provides meaningful work for people with developmental disabilities, who are often confined to low-wage, part-time roles.

During the 2008 recession, there was limited work available for Yehia. She is an architect by trade and decided to use her newfound time to focus on the needs of her community in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. With her co-founders Penny McBride and Caroline Croft Estay, the team identified two seemingly unrelated voids to fill: year-round fresh produce in a place with a four-month growing season, and a job market for people with developmental disabilities.

They set out to address the question: “How could we grow as much food, employ as many people as possible, and do both year round?”

The answer? Vertical Harvest. 

The team found a small piece of property — just a tenth of an acre — that they leased from the town to build a greenhouse and start a hydroponic, vertical farm. For this method, the crops are grown in a mix of water and nutrients instead of soil, and the rows are stacked on top of each other instead of spread out over a field. It uses much less land and 85 percent less water than traditional farming methods. And because the crops are grown in a greenhouse, the team can control environmental factors like temperature and moisture levels to cultivate high-quality produce all year. 

Today, that tenth of an acre produces up to 100,000 pounds of produce each year. 

Fifty percent of the U.S. land base is already used for agriculture, and most fresh produce in the U.S. travels over 1,500 miles before being consumed. With Vertical Harvest, consumers get food that was growing just 24 hours before it's on their plate.

For the last seven years, Vertical Harvest has provided Jackson Hole and surrounding communities with fresh microgreens, lettuces and tomatoes. It not only saves on carbon emissions from food transport, but also helps bolster the local economy. 

In 2023, the unemployment rate for people with disabilities in the U.S. was 7.2 percent — about double the general unemployment rate. Vertical Harvest employs 50 people, 40 percent of whom identify with some sort of disability. By employing a sector of the population that generally faces steep barriers to meaningful work, those with developmental disabilities, Vertical Harvest brings more jobs to a wider range of people in the community. 

“We have really tried to understand how we create a context where everybody learns together and everybody trains together,” Yehia said. 

Vertical Harvest uses what they call the “Grow Well” model, a customized employment method that tailors the individual to the job and the job to the individual. Because of the investment they put into training and retaining their employees, they have an extremely minimal employee attrition rate, Yehia said. That further bolsters the company culture and saves a lot of money that other companies tend to sacrifice to staff turnover. 

“That’s a mindset and an approach that builds our entire culture,” she said. “People with disabilities in our town are not only farming the most valuable commodity to any community — fresh, nutritious food — but they will be our leaders and teachers of tomorrow, as we build farms across the country.”

As of now, Vertical Harvest is set to expand to two locations: Westbrook, Maine, and Detroit, Michigan. But the team gets interest every day from municipalities across the nation looking to gain this sort of environmental, social and economic boost to their communities. 

“We see ourselves as a food and jobs movement,” Yehia said. “No one can argue with food and jobs. And municipalities are always finding ways to increase the sustainability of the communities in which they lead.”

When Dirk Van Velzen founded the Prison Scholar Fund while incarcerated in 2006, he dreamed of the chance to gain a college education during his sentence to prepare him for a new life upon his release. Now, the fund makes Van Velzen’s dream a reality for other people who are incarcerated by giving them opportunities to further their education and gain professional development skills that will help them find a job.

While it can be hard to find employers who hire people with criminal records, the ever-expanding tech industry is creating opportunities for formerly incarcerated job seekers, Van Velzen said. The fund collaborates with Colorado Technical University’s Coding Dojo to help prepare them for careers in tech.  

“Since a lot of the computer programming work can be done remotely, that kind of opens the door for ‘riskier’ candidates,” Van Velzen said. “On top of that, the computer industry is kind of the Wild West for employment. Small startups just need software engineers.”

Van Velzen identified mid-level technology companies and successful startups as a burgeoning potential job market for people who were formerly incarcerated.

The coding boot camp

Van Velzen first founded the Prison Scholar Fund to address funding gaps in educational programming for people who are incarcerated. He envisioned offering computer science and coding programs well before his release in 2015, but the lack of computer access in prisons made this idea a non-starter. Nonetheless, the fund served 110 people in 24 states by the time of Van Velzen’s release, demonstrating the need for such a program.

Van Velzen revisited the coding idea in 2021 and reached out to Seattle-based coding companies. Coding Dojo was supportive of the plan, but COVID-19 protocols prevented educators from conducting a coding boot camp inside prisons. So, the program was adapted to be offered to people scheduled to be released. 

The inaugural class

Since the requirements for completing the program were so rigorous — involving 10 to 12 hours of classwork per day for 14 weeks — the team was quite selective when choosing students. While the team could assess math and logic-based skills, there isn’t an equivalent method of testing for the stubborn determination required to complete the boot camp. 

“How do you find a person who is crazy enough to do this program?” Van Velzen asked.

The team eventually selected three students to serve as the coding boot camp’s inaugural class. All three students graduated from the program and are beginning to enjoy the fruits of their labor. One of the graduates, David Moore, performed so well on his examinations that he earned a black belt from the Coding Dojo. Moore was since hired as an instructor, whose responsibilities include identifying potential employment opportunities for future boot camp graduates. 

“We've hired him also to be an implemented navigator, so basically, his job is to find a job for him,” Van Velzen said of Moore, an employee he expects to lose to a higher-paying competitor soon. “I’ll lose him because he's just outstanding. But I’m also really happy to see him go to greener pastures.”

Obstacles to employment remain 

Programs like the coding boot camp can only work with a few individuals at a time because extensive resources are required to identify, provide resources for, and educate each person. Even after graduating from the program, coding graduates have to navigate several hiring challenges upon their release.

Employers are theoretically open to hiring people who were formerly incarcerated, but in practice, they are often biased against them in the hiring process. For example, the coding boot camp’s first graduate reached out to 380 potential employers, received 30 responses, and after 30 conversations secured two “maybes," Van Velzen said. 

“It’s funny, the times that we do have a potential ‘yes,' it's usually because the person we're talking to [at the hiring company] has had some interaction with the criminal justice system,” Van Velzen said. “If you understand how unfair the system is, and how easy it is to get caught up, then with that conversation you can get there. But it’s tough to have that conversation.”

Though the rate at which people return to prison after their release is dropping, it was still at 39 percent as of 2021, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. It's higher in some states, including over 50 percent in Pennsylvania and New Mexico. The reason for the dropping rate on a national level is unclear due to lack of research, but the Council on Criminal Justice think tank theorized that investments in reentry programs and private-sector initiatives to hire people who were formerly incarcerated played a role.  

This initiative from the Prison Scholar Fund and Coding Dojo is just one example that proves embracing the education and employment of people who are currently and were formerly incarcerated can help reduce that number further.

This story is part of Closing the Gap, a guest-contributed column that boldly explores what's needed to achieve gender equity in education, business and society. If you're interested in contributing your perspective to this column, please get in touch with us here. 

Women entrepreneurs often face an arduous journey in getting funding due to deep-rooted societal and cultural biases. In many markets, women entrepreneurs face significant challenges due to pervasive gender biases and stereotypes. These biases influence how they are perceived and treated by clients, investors and even their own families. Social norms also diminish women's networking opportunities, which are critical for business growth. Often, women are excluded from influential business circles, making it harder to get the essential mentorship and support they need.

Women are also expected to bear a disproportionate burden of family and household responsibilities. Striking a balance between these responsibilities and the demands of running a business can be an arduous task. This challenge is exacerbated in emerging markets, where women's access to education and business training is often limited, further constraining their entrepreneurial capabilities.

The hurdles don't end here. Women entrepreneurs frequently grapple with restrictive legal and regulatory frameworks that limit their ability to start businesses, own property or access credit. This is particularly pronounced in male-dominated industries, where women struggle to access new markets or compete effectively. When it comes to securing capital, the gender bias becomes even more pronounced. Women often face greater obstacles in obtaining funding from investors and banks due to gender biases, a lack of collateral, and the fact that property and other assets are often in the name of male relatives.

Exploring Village Capital’s holistic approach to empowering women entrepreneurs

At Village Capital, a global nonprofit organization at the forefront of early-stage impact investing and ecosystem building — which facilitates connections among entrepreneurs, investors, mentors, and other stakeholders to contribute to building a supportive and collaborative environment, enabling entrepreneurs to access resources for success — we’re actively working to distill and dismantle some of these challenges. Our strategy involves enhancing entrepreneurs' investment readiness through our acceleration programs while working to mitigate gender bias in investment decision-making. 

To address the latter, we employ a peer due diligence and peer-selection methodology to guide our investments. Additionally, we recently introduced “Smarter Systems,” a toolkit outlining how to ensure investors do not overlook women-led startups by strengthening their due diligence processes, developed in partnership with Amisha Miller from New York University, Saurabh Lall from University of Glasgow, IFC, and We-Fi, in addition to a consortium of supporters. 

The peer-selection methodology: transforming the entrepreneurial game 

The principle of peer due diligence and selection disrupts the traditional dynamics of funding, and it is at the heart of Village Capital's ethos. In our investment-readiness acceleration and investment programs, it’s the entrepreneurs — not the investors — who hold the key to a pivotal decision: determining the recipients of investment.

The participant entrepreneurs use a consistent set of Venture Investment Levels to rank themselves and each other. These levels are integrated into the Milestone Planner tool, which is part of Village Capital's free online web app: Abaca. In this model, we act as facilitators, supporting their journey through investment-readiness training, mentorship, coaching, and fostering an overall collaborative spirit.

The peer-selected investment model is more than a process. It's a transformative shift in the power dynamics between the entrepreneurs and the investors. Gone are the days when the decision-makers, often detached from the grassroots realities of the problems they aim to address, dictate the flow of capital. In this reimagined landscape, the entrepreneurs hold the reins, armed with insights and a deep understanding of their sectors. 

At Village Capital, using peer due diligence and selection began as a radical experiment that has since evolved into the foundation of our work. More importantly, it has proven to enable a more unbiased evaluation of investability and uncover the value of peer learning and due diligence.

The peer due diligence and selection methodology raises crucial questions: Can entrepreneurs accurately evaluate the future commercial success of their peers? Perhaps more significantly, does peer selection serve as a mitigating force against gender bias in evaluations?
 
The short answer is yes!

In a research study conducted in partnership with the Global Accelerator Learning Initiative, we found that the rankings startups received from their peers reflected, on average, their subsequent success in raising capital. Companies being ranked in line with their performance raising capital post-program suggests that evaluations are made based on the merits of a company, resulting in a less biased investment process. This also holds true regardless of the proportion of men and women in the cohort.  

To date, close to 50 percent of the 110 startups that have been peer-selected for an investment, typically ranging between $25,000 to $100,000, are women-led companies. This stands in stark contrast to the industry, where women-led startups represent only 15 percent of the average portfolio.

A separate research initiative also found that startups who participate in Village Capital’s peer selection programs raise, on average, six times more capital than those who participate in any accelerator program, and almost three times more capital than those in a control group. 

Smarter Systems: bridging the financing gap

While peer due diligence proposes a radical new way to allocate investments, our Smarter Systems toolkit seeks to provide practical, innovative ways to mitigate gender bias within traditional due diligence processes. 

The framework aims to address two crucial questions: What does the gender financing gap look like for startups before and after investment-readiness acceleration programs? And what can investors and accelerators do to bridge this gap? 

Male-led startups often secure significantly more capital post-acceleration than their female counterparts, according to a research study involving over 2,000 startups conducted in partnership with Village Capital.

Surprisingly, the gap could not be explained by any specific characteristics of the accelerator programs or by the distinct aspects of the startups, such as the founder's experience or education, a common misconception in the startup ecosystem. This suggested that the gender financing gap could partly be due to the discrepancies in startup evaluations stemming from investors' gender bias.

To address this, we collaborated with our academic research partners to test if and how making three tweaks to how investors evaluate startups could mitigate gender-based discrepancies: 

1. Balanced assessment of risks and opportunities: We started by prompting investors to ensure they had a comprehensive understanding of each startup's risks and growth opportunities. We did this by simply adding a question for the investor to pause and assess the information they had collected thus far, and any remaining questions they still had on either topic. This approach sought to prevent investors from overly focusing on the growth opportunities of male-led startups and the risks of female-led startups.

2. Data-driven evaluation of founding team's potential: The second tweak had investors assess the founding team’s potential by evaluating their demonstrated ability to identify and execute improvements to their company strategy. This data-driven approach replaces gut instincts with factual assessment, leveling the playing field for all.

3. Predefined evaluation criteria: Lastly, we asked investors to predefine and assign weights to their evaluation criteria, and review this before evaluating startups. This ensures consistency in evaluations and prevents investors from adjusting their criteria to justify overlooking a promising startup.

The results were unequivocal. Implementing these steps led to more equitable, consistent and comprehensive assessments. Scores for women-led startups were five times higher in the treatment group compared to the control group.

Evaluation processes also have an impact on those being evaluated beyond funding outcomes. In the experiment, women on gender-diverse founding teams in the treatment group presented their startups to investors more often (instead of being replaced by a male co-founder) after experiencing more equitable evaluation.

The opposite happened in the control group, where women co-founders were more likely to take a step back and allow male colleagues to lead future presentations. This finding suggests that equitable evaluations are also essential due to their impact on moving ventures further along in investor pipelines and their effect on how often women engage in the startup ecosystem. 

All together, these findings underscore a pressing need for systemic innovation in investment evaluation. Traditional methods often fail to recognize the potential in women-led startups, inadvertently favoring male-led ventures. Small adjustments like the above ensure fairer evaluations and open more opportunities for women entrepreneurs, ultimately benefiting the entire startup ecosystem. It's a testament to our belief that when women entrepreneurs thrive, the entire startup ecosystem flourishes.

Navigating complexity together: A call for collaboration 

The journey of women entrepreneurs in securing capital is a complex one. While Village Capital has taken measures to address these issues, it's clear that more work is needed. A collaborative approach involving the collective efforts of entrepreneurs, investors, and industry stakeholders is essential. The road to achieving true equity in entrepreneurial opportunities is long and requires continuous, concerted, and connected efforts.

Village Capital’s commitment to this journey is unwavering and we welcome others to contribute to and reinforce this shift in mindset. I encourage you to reach out to me with any additional insights. Together, let's inspire and empower others to join us in building an equitable, supportive, and comprehensive environment where women entrepreneurs can truly thrive.

Children’s greatest wishes are coming true in the Chicago suburbs. From family vacations to bedroom makeovers, Autobarn Subaru of Countryside and Make-A-Wish Illinois are helping to create irreplaceable experiences for critically ill children and their families.

“Over the past eight years that Autobarn has worked with Make-A-Wish, the retailer has granted more than 35 wishes for children in the community,” said Richard Fisher, managing partner of Autobarn, a long-time family business. “We’re very lucky to be involved with Subaru and Make-A-Wish. It makes us feel good, too. We’re a local business, and we care about the community and its businesses.”

“They truly understand that a wish is not just a fleeting moment in time, but a journey that provides hope, strength and joy to children when they need it most,” added Stephanie Eckert, corporate gift officer for Make-A-Wish Illinois. “This is the best promise that Subaru and Autobarn Subaru of Countryside can make to the children in our community – that they will be there to ensure their wish journey will be a magical experience of discovery and joy.”

Subaru of America has partnered with Make-A-Wish for the past 12 years as part of the Subaru Love Promise, the company’s commitment to be a positive force in the communities where employees live and work.  It’s the largest automotive donor to the Make-A-Wish Foundation and, together with its retailers, Subaru has donated over $32 million to help grant more than 3,300 wishes nationwide.

Autobarn Subaru of Countryside selected Make-A-Wish as its hometown charity through the annual Subaru Share the Love Event. During the annual charitable initiative, which is held between November and January, Subaru and its participating retailers donate at least $250 to a customer’s chosen national or hometown charity for every new vehicle purchase or lease.

“The Share the Love Event with Subaru is something special,” Fisher said. “Together with Subaru, we don’t just say, we do. Subaru really puts its money where its mouth is. And 12 years later, it’s still going strong. It’s not a one-time thing.”

About three dozen Autobarn Subaru of Countryside employees also participated in the Walk for Wishes fundraiser for Make-A-Wish Illinois, along with a host of movie characters that added to the excitement for younger participants. “Our team wanted to get involved personally,” Fisher said. “It’s a feel-good thing … It makes you realize life is special, and you appreciate it more.”

That involvement means something for the dealer, employer and customer, he added. “You feel a part of something that gives back, which is what employees want. It’s not just writing a check and moving on.”

Wish requests vary widely. “People are different about what they want and love,” 
Fisher said. No matter the wish, family reactions are among the most rewarding parts of the program. “Just seeing someone smile — when you see someone who doesn’t have it easy, when you see them able to smile and have a good time, that’s what it comes down to,” Fisher said. 

Recipients’ families are celebrated together when the wishes are granted, and after the wishes are fulfilled, families often return to the retailer for a reception.

A trip to her favorite California theme park was one kid’s wish, and they were able to get the support they needed to make it possible. Their daughter uses a wheelchair, has a seizure disorder and a genetic disorder, and is non-verbal. “The family doesn’t have it easy,” Fisher said. “But just to see the family be able to take a break and have a vacation, just seeing the dad and mom sharing such a loving interaction with their daughter [was gratifying].”

One boy wished for his whole bedroom to be remodeled with a new bed, TV monitors and a game console. “If you are 12, that’s your dream to have all the cool stuff,” he said.

“The Autobarn Subaru of Countryside, its owners, employees, and customers truly ‘share the love’ and embrace the power of wish, not just during the holiday season, but throughout the whole year,” the Make-A-Wish Illinois representative said. “We could not be more grateful for the support.”

The team at Autobarn Subaru of Countryside also supports other causes locally. They donate blankets, hats and gloves to local shelters, supports local public schools through volunteering and other projects, and work with the local humane society by sponsoring an adoption event to help dogs find forever homes, during which the retailer covers adoption fees.
 
“We try to help any way we can,” Fisher said. “We try and stay as involved as we can. We do it because it’s the right thing to do.”

Fisher encouraged people and corporations to pitch in where they live, too. “I always tell more people to get involved — it’s the most rewarding thing you can do. If you have the means to do so, you should. We’re very focused on what we can do, and whatever it takes to make people happy. If we hadn’t gotten involved, we might not have been able to share in their joy.”

This article series is sponsored by Subaru of America and produced by the TriplePundit editorial team. 

A new kind of solar film makes it possible for farmers to generate energy with their greenhouses while still allowing enough light to reach their plants for photosynthesis. 

The film, developed by the manufacturer 3M and the Swiss technology company Voltiris, can help greenhouse farmers reduce energy costs and carbon emissions while boosting crop yields, which could advance the development of more sustainable food systems. 

“It’s a way to produce energy in a space where it was not possible before,” Nicholas Weber, co-founder and CEO of Voltiris, told TriplePundit.

Generating solar energy this way is possible now thanks to a spectral filtering process. Light travels at different wavelengths, and the film uses spectral filtering to allow certain wavelengths of light to pass through to the plants while absorbing other wavelengths to use to produce energy.

Initially, the companies received a lot of questions about the economic impact of spectral filtering, Weber said. 

“That’s something that we had to clarify, and we had to work with growers and with research centers to validate the fact that we didn’t have any negative impact on crop yield,” Weber said. “But the other part of the equation that’s also what makes us special — and why the partnership with 3M is valuable — is that we managed to crack the equation of also producing energy efficiently.”

 

 

 

 

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Greenhouses can be used to extend the growing season of a wide variety of fruits, vegetables and herbs, or cultivate them year-round. But keeping the ideal plant-growing environment in the greenhouse requires controlling things like the lighting, temperature and moisture levels, which can be energy-intensive. Tomatoes, for example, grow best at a temperature of around 70 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit, leading to increased energy consumption when growing them in cooler months. 

If the energy used for the greenhouse comes from fossil fuels, increased consumption means producing more greenhouse gases and raising energy bills. Having a way to generate and use renewable energy instead, like solar film, can reduce those impacts. 

A 10-acre greenhouse, which is relatively small by commercial standards, can use up to $2 million in electricity a year for artificial lighting and HVAC, said John Morrow, insights lead of corporate research and development at 3M. 

“With the Voltiris [film], they can dramatically reduce their need for electricity coming in, and basically produce the majority of the electricity they need,” Morrow said. “I think our solution is the gateway toward the electrification of the greenhouses that will be a clean and stable supply of energy.”

Retrofitting greenhouses with solar film also has the potential to advance agrivoltaics, the practice of using the same plot of land for agriculture and solar energy generation. Agrivoltaics is often cited as a way to address concerns about land use in solar energy development, an important factor when up to 40 percent of the United States’ electricity could come from solar power by 2035. 

In the European Union, installing agrivoltaic systems on 1 percent of agricultural land would help surpass 2030 solar energy goals, according to a report by the European Commission’s Joint Research Center.

Voltiris and 3M demonstrated that their solar film works from both the economical and energy generation standpoints, Weber said. 

“Now, we’re in the last phase of our demonstration,” Weber said. “We’re scaling up the size of the projects that we’re doing. To some extent, we could already be doing some small-to medium-sized projects, but our ambition is to really leverage all the greenhouses that are available.”

This story is part of a solutions journalism series focused on reuse and refill systems, how they're used around the world, and what's holding them back from scaling further. Follow along with the series here. 

As the world chokes on plastic waste, the statistics are so dizzying that many of us have grown numb to them. At least 14 million tons of plastic are washed into the world's oceans every year. That's equivalent to more than 280 billion beverage bottles. These plastics break down into smaller and smaller pieces when exposed to the sun, and the resulting microplastics have been found from the top of Mount Everest to the ocean floor — not to mention in human blood, and more recently within clogged arteries. 

If that's not bad enough, it's projected to get worse, with global plastic consumption set to double by 2040 as convenient but wasteful single-use systems expand to the growing global middle class, according to a 2023 analysis from the U.N. Environment Program.  

Ready for some good news? We already know how to solve the problem — we just need to put it into action — and a newly announced prototype fund can help. 

Reuse and refill systems could cut plastic waste by nearly half

The U.N. Environment Program ran scenarios for halving global plastic waste while reducing plastic litter in oceans and the environment by 80 percent. Most of the plastic reduction needed to reach that target could be achieved by reuse, refill and new delivery models, according to the research.

Before the explosion of single-use plastic in the 1970s, most people purchased their household staples and met their daily needs without packaging. We already know how to send bottles back with the milkman or restock our pantry from the bulk bins at our local corner store. But as it became easier to purchase everything in neat, individual packages, the reuse and refill systems we once depended on fell by the wayside.

As the chickens of our single-use plastic habit come home to roost, the global community is challenged to rebuild those forgotten systems and rethink them for the modern age.

Dozens if not hundreds of startups around the world are taking up the task, with refill systems for groceries, beverages, restaurant takeout, personal care products and more. But it takes significant upfront investment to build the infrastructure necessary to process containers for refill, not to mention the cultural momentum needed to woo people away from single-use, so these ventures often struggle to get out of the starting gate. 

The plastic action group Repurpose Global is looking to help more early-stage reuse and refill ventures reach the next level. The Reuse Outcomes Fund, announced last month, will support promising startups in the U.S., Canada and India, leveraging lessons the nonprofit learned from scaling waste management infrastructure across the Global South. 

The Reuse Outcomes Fund channels lessons from waste management to help reuse and refill scale up

"Billions of people don't have access to basic municipal waste management and collection services," said Peter Wang Hjemdahl, chief innovation officer and co-founder of Repurpose Global. "If there's no waste collection, there's no recycling, and there is no circular economy at the end of the day."

Repurpose Global uses a model called outcomes-based financing to fund projects that expand waste management systems and capture plastic waste before it can reach the environment. Rather than seeking a financial return, these investments aim to achieve a specific, verifiable environmental or social outcome — in this case, waste that is collected and processed for recycling rather than becoming litter.

The model helped Repurpose Global bring waste management services to more than 600,000 people over the past six years, while recovering over 50 million pounds of plastic waste across the U.S., India, Indonesia, Kenya, Ghana, Colombia and the Dominican Republic. 

Like waste management services in underserved areas, fledgling reuse and refill systems face challenges with high upfront cost, limited financing options, and a dearth of best practices that can guide replication of these systems from one place to another. These similarities came to light as Repurpose Global's team connected with more startups as a co-convener of the Innovation Alliance for a Global Plastics Treaty, which pushes for refill companies and other plastic economy innovators to have a more prominent voice in global plastics policy.

"A lot of the issues we saw in waste management in the Global South are applicable in the very early, nascent stages of trying to scale reuse and refill solutions," Hjemdahl said. "We see the same challenges, and we are confident about our track record. We felt that now is the right time to make a concrete commitment." 

A three-year investment that could come with big payoff 

The Reuse Outcomes Fund will operate over the next three years — first securing partnerships with promising reuse and refill startups, then helping them build capacity and launch new pilot projects, and finally scaling those projects and creating a framework to replicate them elsewhere. 

Set to be announced at the end of this year, the first cohort of startups will collectively receive $1 million in funding from Repurpose Global, as well as technical training and capacity-building from the Repurpose team. As part of the outcomes-based financing model, the nonprofit will also build systems that allow for the verification of plastic waste avoided by implementing reuse and refill, as well as a knowledge repository that documents best practices to aid the replication of successful systems. 

"Ultimately, we have to define what a 'reuse outcome' is and what a 'refill outcome' is," Hjemdahl said. "It sort of makes logical sense, right? We can avoid a tonnage of plastic waste that would've otherwise not been avoided without the presence of the financing. But the devil is in the details, so we have to work with the sector — not just by ourselves, but work with nonprofits and other leaders in order to actually define these things." 

The fund will focus on startups working in three priority areas: refill stations for water bottles and other beverages, reverse logistics models for food and grocery delivery, and returnable packaging systems for e-commerce and physical retailers. These systems are the closest to consumers' daily lives and as such have the potential to eliminate high volumes of plastic waste. 

"It's really important that basic amenities like food, water and groceries can reach people in a way that does not require packaging," said Svetlana Dcosta, senior manager of strategic partnerships for Repurpose Global, who developed the Reuse Outcomes Fund alongside Hjemdahl. "For groceries, food deliveries, even your personal care products, oftentimes consumers feel guilty that they come in so much plastic packaging. Enabling and financing these systems allow them to go to a store and refill or call in for a refill when they run out of their staples." 

While a $1 million fund may sound like a drop in the bucket compared to the scale of the world's plastic waste problem, effectively expanding reuse and refill holds promise for outsized impact. For example, every 10 percent increase in refillable bottle use across coastal countries could yield a 22 percent reduction in plastic bottle pollution in the world's oceans, according to the nonprofit Oceana.

The fund's focus on documenting best practices for the purpose of replication could also help systems proven through the pilot phase to reach new markets faster and begin to eliminate waste. 

"Our thinking here is: Let's come in with an anchor commitment. Let's come in with our expertise, and let's hope to use this fund — which is meant to be a prototype fund — to garner more interest and more work around this," Hjemdahl said. "The initiative here is really a continuation of our mission from day one, which is to bring different folks across the entire ecosystem together to create change against plastic pollution."