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Climate Week NYC was packed with high profile pledges and policy announcements calling for hard core actions that treat carbon emissions as an extremely hazardous form of air pollution. Acting efficiently on those promises is a different matter, one that requires precise new tools for collecting data, identifying problem areas and measuring progress. And, while the main focus is on carbon emissions, other forms of air pollution require attention, too.

That's where today's sensor announcement by Google and and the recently unveiled "stealth" startup Aclima comes in.

New tools for air pollution

Before we get to the announcement, let's pause for a look at the bigger picture. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) collects data from a network of air pollution monitors stationed all over the country, and that's where the problem is. The key word is stationed, as in stationary. Conventional air quality monitors sit in one place. They may be transportable, but they are not mobile.

Partly because of their immobility, conventional air quality monitors are especially limited in their ability to pinpoint problem source in complex urban environments, where airborne particulate matter leads to asthma and other serious health issues.  Conventional monitors are also expensive and they fall far short in today's world of connectivity, open source data sharing and user-friendly interfaces that the general public can understand.

Air pollution and the Aclima consortium

EPA identified these shortcomings in urban air pollution monitoring several years ago, and in 2013 the agency launched a public-private effort to develop a highly mobile system of air pollution sensors. EPA spells out the consortium's a five-year mission:

...to advance next generation air quality sensing technology and provide more mobile and less expensive air sensing capabilities for citizens, communities, air quality managers, businesses, and others interested in air quality issues.

Aclima was tapped to lead the consortium, partnering with Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, UC Berkeley, University of Illinois at Chicago, and EPA to develop a new ultra-small sensor for detecting particulate matter.

Aclima has also been working under the radar with Google for several years, providing that company with a stationary network of 6,000 indoor air quality sensors for 21 of its offices globally.

Last June, Aclima snuck out from under stealth mode, announcing a mobile air pollution monitoring partnership with Google as well as members of the aforementioned consortium, helped along by a highly credentialed advisory board. The company describes its mission in somewhat more poetic terms than EPA's remit:

What if we could see the air around us? How many messages lie hidden in a passing breeze? Live Aware with Aclima. Our environmental sensor networks turn billions of data points into powerful insights -- making the invisible, visible.

In the words of Aclima CEO and co-founder Davida Herzl, the partnership with Google brings to life a "complete  system to map environmental quality in an entirely new way, enabling us to see how our buildings, communities and cities live and breathe.”

"It's hard to manage what is difficult to measure, especially when it comes to our environment, Herzl explained by email to TriplePundit. "We see a future where sensors help us understand what we're putting into the environment and what we're putting into our bodies. This new class of tools can provide a level playing field for making decisions. Now more than ever, we need to work as a global community to cap and reduce pollution that directly affects human health and long-term resilience."

With full Internet connectivity, the system provides for real time mapping and monitoring, scaling from the interior of individual buildings up to an entire city.

Mobile air pollution monitoring for California

TriplePundit caught up with Aclima last August, after Aclima pilot-tested its mobile air pollution sensors in Denver in a collaboration that drew NASA into the fold as well as EPA. Strapped to three Google cars for one month, the Aclima sensors collected approximately 150 million data points including carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, nitric oxide, ozone, methane, particulate matter including "black carbon" and volatile organic compounds. The data was also correlated with information from conventional, stationary EPA monitors.

In today's announcement at the 11th annual Clinton Global Initiative, Aclima has committed to an expanded mobile air quality monitoring effort, bringing the company closer to a future in which "hyper-local air quality will be as accessible as the weather."

The new initiative pairs Aclima sensors with Google Maps in at least three major urban centers in California, starting with Los Angeles, San Francisco, and the Central Valley regions. It's an ambitious rollout, and if it succeeds the payoff will be equally significant. According to Aclima, the aim is to put the system through its paces in a "robust testing ground" where the economic impacts of air pollution will come into foucs, especially regarding the public health costs of ozone and particulate matter leading to asthma.

Google Earth's manager for outreach, Karin Tuxen-Bettman, emphasized that the end goal is to make environmental data accessible to the general public as well as to planners and regulators:

...We hope this program not only empowers people to make more informed everyday decisions, but also incites dialog about how to make long-term improvements to air quality.

The California initiative will provide aggregated data on two platforms. One is Google Earth Engine, the geo-spatial analysis platform for Google Maps. The target users for this platform will be EPA scientists as well as experts with the Environmental Defense Fund.

The other platform consists of air quality maps overlaid on Google Earth and Google Maps, a format easily accessed and understood by the general public.

Air pollution: The Volkswagen connection

EPA has recognized that conventional air monitoring systems are inadequate for managing urban air pollution, and one immediate result of the Aclima - Google initiative will be improved management of air pollution from buildings and other facilities. The initiative will also help identify air pollution issues related to non-point sources, namely, vehicles.

A long term resolution for non-point sources depends on emissions regulation, and as the Volkswagen scandal demonstrates, the existing technology for auditing vehicle emissions can be -- and is -- easily circumvented by auto manufacturers.

As with stationary air quality monitoring, EPA has recognized that a leap in technology and process is required to ensure that vehicles perform as promised, and in a press conference last Friday the agency outlined its plans for taking its procedures to the next level.

TriplePundit will take a closer look at EPA's plans for Volkswagen and other vehicle manufacturers later this week, so stay tuned.

Image credit: Denys Nevozhai/Unsplash

Most of us want to know why. What would cause a leading car manufacturer, with an accomplished track record in green technology, to deceive consumers on its emissions standards?

But recent analysis published in the Huffington Post highlights another probing question: Why didn't we see the problem?

Business Editor Alexander Kaufman suggested in his column on Friday that the declining amount of coverage by the automaker concerning its emissions records in its yearly sustainability reports should have tipped off investors. It should have flagged the attention of the Environmental Protection Agency as well.

"Since 2010, the automaker's sustainability reports have devoted less and less room to discussing non-carbon gas emissions and their effect on the atmosphere," noted Kaufman. He pointed to a report published by data firm eRevalue which analyzed VW's sustainability reports and determined that its state-of-the art emissions technology has received less and less reporting over the last five years.

This may not sound like a very scientific way to analyze whether a company is being transparent, but as Huffington's Executive Editor, Emily Peck noted, sustainability reports are meant to do more than make the company sound good. To the discerning and caring consumer, corporate social responsibility reports are a window into a company's soul, so to speak. To the investor, they show in practical terms, how that investment is furthering environmental goals it promised to attain with his or her money. For a company like Volkswagen, which has won awards for its environmental advances at its Chattanooga TN plant and other facilities, those details are the underpinnings of its credibility.

So why didn't investors notice that the data was no longer being highlighted in its CSR reports?

And why did it take a university conducting routine performance tests to alert the EPA that the emissions are as much as 40 times higher than they should be?

As Peck noted, the fact that the automaker's sustainability reports have been less than forthcoming when it comes to its technological challenges don't just cast a pall over the corporation. It runs the risk of tarnishing the CSR movement, which succeeds because consumers believe companies can and will be honest about their sustainable business goals and progress.  But it also gives all of us plenty to reflect about how we all -- investors, consumers and federal agencies alike -- missed the signs that would have prompted more questions and more emissions testing. Validating data doesn't call companies into question. It helps to underscore the accomplishments when they are made, and ensure mistakes aren't missed when they truly matter.

Image: Gerry Lauzon

By Eban Goodstein

The Pope’s visit to the U.S. last week focused the nation on a moral challenge of biblical scale. Like Noah, we are called now to build an ark. But our ark will be the entire earth itself—a world rewired soon with clean energy.

Global political leaders will propose half an ark when they convene in Paris in December. If their anticipated commitments to cut global warming pollution are met, the planet will still heat up well beyond the 3.6 F degree threshold set by the international community.

Beyond 3.6 F, the risks of triggering runaway, catastrophic global warming impacts rise dramatically. Collapsing Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will drive dozens of feet of sea-level rise. The burning of the earth’s great forests will release billions of additional tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. Melting northern tundra will emit vast quantities of frozen methane and CO2. Devastating ocean acidification, mass extinctions, and a planet of environmental refugees become inevitable.

The Paris agreement will not be enough, but half an ark is an important first step. These initial commitments are critical to bend the emissions curve towards the deeper reductions we need to stabilize the climate by mid-century. Whether those future reductions will in fact come to pass depends on whether a new kind of power coalesces beyond Paris.

Recently, Ta-Nehisi Coates said that the moral arc of the universe bends—not towards justice—but towards chaos. Our broken politics make it seem as if chaos is our likely destiny. Yet between chaos and justice lies human agency—our work together that either builds or destroys.

Politics as usual, in the U.S. and globally, cannot overcome the power of the fossil fuel industry to delay and weaken the vital work of rewiring the world. In America at least, we can and need to do what our forebears have done again and again: reclaim the power of the people. From abolition to women’s suffrage, from labor rights to civil rights to gay rights, when Washington is gridlocked, Americans build a morally-based social movement that sweeps the country, changes hearts and minds, and drives far-reaching change.

Pope Francis is calling his billion-plus community, and us all, to rise to the extraordinary moment in which we are living, to build an ark of the earth in order to bend the arc of the universe towards justice. Here are three ways to start reclaiming the power to do so.

The Road Through Paris. The team at 350.org including Bill McKibben is organizing a series of movement-building actions, leading to a call for widespread direct action next April. Things kicked off this weekend with Power Through Paris Workshops: find one near you.

The People’s Climate March is the coalition of organizations behind last year’s march that brought over 400,000 climate hawks to the streets of NYC. Click here to find climate actions close to your community on 10.14.

The Power Dialog is organizing 10,000 college and university students in every state, in their state capitols, to meet in face-to-face dialog with officials charged with cutting global warming pollution. Sponsored by the Bard Center for Environmental Policy, which I direct, the Power Dialog is set for 4.4.16, and already has teams of faculty, students and staff forming in a dozen states.

The arc that appeared at the end of Noah’s journey was the rainbow: the symbol that binds humans with every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. This connection, from the deep beginning of our collective story, is threatened once again by floods and droughts of unprecedented scope and scale. The future can only be changed through our collective power, the work of each of us together, to envision and to build an ark of the earth.

Eban Goodstein is an economist and is Director of the MBA in Sustainability and the Center for Environmental Policy at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY.

Image credit: Jules & Jenny, Flickr

We want companies to improve their environmental and social performance because emotionally and intellectually, we know such moves are better for the planet and for people, too.

But pragmatically, whether a company is publicly owned or privately held, most companies will not take on such an agenda unless they are threatened with regulation--or, if they can be convinced of the business case and resulting financial benefits.

So PepsiCo’s recent claim that since 2010, it has reaped $375 million in savings due to its sustainability initiatives, is encouraging news. This announcement, outlined in PepsiCo’s most recent annual sustainability report, should pique the interest of companies that are being pushed to become more responsible, efficient and ecologically sound within their operations and supply chains.

Improved water efficiency is one reason PepsiCo has been able to reduce its expenses the past several years. Smarter water consumption, in part, helped the company decrease its operational water use by 23 percent in 2014. That 264 million gallons (about one billion liters)saved helped PepsiCo shave $17 million in related expenses last year. The company has also been a consistent supporter of Water.org, an NGO co-founded by Matt Damon that has delivered market-driven clean water projects affecting 1.6 million people around the world.

Waste diversion has also allowed PepsiCo to reduce some its costs. Zero-waste has become the common goal of many consumer product and food companies as they have become sensitive to criticism that the goods they sell are creating copious amounts of garbage with which municipalities struggle to manage. Zero waste only covers what a company is able to do within its own factories and offices, but it is still an important first step. PepsiCo has disclosed that currently only seven percent of all its waste is sent to landfill. Shipping less waste, whether it is plastic, paper or food byproducts, helped the company reduce those expenses by $3.5 million last year.

In a press release announcing the company’s latest sustainability report, PepsiCo points out that reductions in energy consumption and packing efficiencies contributed to the company’s cost savings. Indeed, smarter logistics and a cleaner fleet of vehicles would contribute to the company’s overall fuel savings, but unfortunately PepsiCo doesn't offer specifics beyond that it reduced its overall greenhouse gas emissions in 2014 by 16 percent. Reduced packaging was part of that equation--after all, less packaging means less weight, and smarter design on that front reduced PepsiCo’s need for such materials by 89 million pounds during 2014.

The $375 million figure that PepsiCo offers, even if divided over five years, is certainly impressive. The reality is that water and municipal waste are priced too low compared to the actual value they offer both businesses and consumers, so to run up cost savings in the millions of dollars is not a small feat. If PepsiCo were more amenable to disclosing how it achieved that total, these recent achievements would be even more laudable.

Image credit: PepsiCo

This weekend world leaders met at the United Nations in New York City to define a sustainable development agenda through 2030, a process built on the successes, failures and lessons learned from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) launched in 2000 and expiring at the end of this year. The new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) serve as a global framework of 17 goals designed to address humanity's most pressing problems, from poverty and hunger to health, education, gender equality, energy, climate change and environmental sustainability.

Earlier this month, TriplePundit spoke with Amina J Mohammed, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Advisor on Post-2015 Development Planning, about the process of defining these goals and turning words into action.

The premise is simple: what kind of world do we want?  Considering the seven billion people other people in the world and this simple premise turns into a thorny nest of complexity. But we can agree on what kind of world leads to basic human dignity and a healthy environment. Without a set of goals mutually agreed upon that describe a world where we can all live and thrive, we hobble our efforts in ever achieving it.

The aspirations of a new century

At the Rio+20 UN summit on sustainable development in 2010 member states drafted the Future We Want Outcome Document setting in motion the process for post-2015 sustainable development, building on the MDGs and extending back to the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment.

“Quite clearly we never would have embarked on this process if we hadn’t had some success from the first goal-setting that we did in 2000,” says Ms. Mohammed. “I think what we’ve learned from that is 193 countries could come together and agree in principle on a set of goals that would move forward on things that really were important to people.”

At the turn of the century efforts on issues like poverty, education, water and sanitation, gender equality, building partnerships were scattered, lacking focus and a clear means of implementation, explains Ms. Mohammed. “We didn’t see much over the past decades of the different UN platforms"

The Millennium Development Goals were a "brave attempt to try to be much more hopeful and fulfill people's aspirations," says Ms. Mohammed. "A review and  prescription of what we ought to do in the next 15 years to bring everyone together and get some movement."

"Some things that happened on the MDGs we take stock of. Things that didn't happen, the unfinished business of the MDGs  you see in the first six SDGs," Ms. Mohammed says. "So we don't leave anyone or anything behind. We take it forward and we face the more complex and difficult challenges that are emerging today."

Beyond a band-aid, the big picture of sustainable development

Sustenance is the foundation of sustainability. As long as people are hopelessly bound to hunger and poverty, global sustainable development remains out of reach. As with the MDGs, goal number one for post-2015 development is "ending poverty in all its forms everywhere." Easier said than done, but by meeting the goal of cutting extreme poverty in half, the MDGs proved the concept. Poverty can be significantly reduced.

"We set out a goal that would reduce poverty by half," Ms. Mohammed says, "and we got that as a global goal. That's a lot of people taken out of poverty." But, as critics are quick to point out, it leaves much work left to do. "I'd say the glass is half full in terms of what we achieved in the reduction of poverty. That did happen, largely because of China,"

The demographics and definition of poverty have much to do with getting the glass half full. The lesson is that poverty relief is not spread evenly and must start from the bottom up by defining extreme poverty as surviving on the equivalent of no more than $1 per day.

"We do know that the underlying causes of many more remaining remaining in poverty is the inequalities," says Ms. Mohammed. "...within countries, across countries, it really is a big issue. You have a whole goal to represent that in the SDG."

So it is with other MDG goals like education. "We got kids into classrooms but we question the quality," says Ms. Mohammed. By accepting responsibility for both the success and shortfall of the goal, the new goal encompasses and expands the original development goals of of the MDGs.

As Peter Hazlewood writes in the World Resources Institute blog, "...despite some impressive areas of progress along the way, nearly a quarter of humanity continues to live on less than $2 per day, inequalities have worsened dramatically, and unsustainable resource use, environmental degradation and climate change march steadily on."

Reviewing progress at the Rio+20 summit in 2012 was critical to the process of building on the MDGs and forging an iterative path forward. "Member states agree that we need to change the paradigm because we need to do development beyond just a band-aid," Ms. Mohammed says. "We want to look at new courses, we want to integrate a social economic and environmental perspective so that we will get sustainability."

"One of the first things we sat down to do was to be very clear on what was the state of the world," says Ms. Mohammed. "What is the fabric that we want to stitch on the remedies in the shape of goals. I think having an agreement of what existing challenges there are and what are the emerging ones. Conceptually, the sustainable development discourse came of its time in 2012 and that's because we've been discussing it for over two decades. This is where it comes to fruition.

The two main takeaways for member states from Rio+20 are the need for an integration and ownership of efforts and goals, built on a common, shared belief that partnership and trust will lead to a better world.

Universal, transparent

The new SDG framework is built on transparency and universality. All sectors of society must be involved in the process of sustainable development, including institutions, government, the private sector and civil society. Beyond this integrated approach is transparency. "It's something that really hasn't happened before," Ms. Mohammed says.

Adoption of the SDGs marks the culmination of two years of negotiations involving 193 member states and, perhaps more importantly, an exceptional degree of public participation from civil society, the private sector and all stakeholders.

"Two-and-a-half years is a long time to address a single issues and keep the momentum going," says Ms. Mohammed, but the result is widespread ownership from all sectors in laying the shared groundwork for the success of the SDGs.

Achieving sustainable development is simply not possible without inclusion, transparency and partnership.

The role of business

"Business has a role to play in every one of the goals we set," Ms. Mohammed says. "Any agenda that looks to have transformation in their economy that needs to be inclusive, business will be an integral part in the way their core business model is taken to task. That they are much more aware of how their business must not be detrimental to people and certainly not the environment."

"There's no cookie cutter for this," she says, but one essential element Ms. Mohammed mentions for inclusive business is through the financial sector allowing more avenues for women and young people to access credit for entrepreneurship. All have a role to play in this regard,  from community and national banks to multinational and development banks.

"I think we're going to take a two year transition where we reflect on how best to partner with business. The issues that business needs to address as they become fit for purpose on the sustainable development agenda.

No peace without development, no development without peace

The new development agenda succeeds, says Ms. Mohammed, to the degree that development, human rights and peace are understood as three pillars of human progress.

"I think it's a difficult discussion to have because the mandates are so clearly delineated," says Ms. Mohammed. Over the years we've managed to speak to them in silos. The fact that we're talking about an integration of issues brings us to how the three pillars themselves are inextricably linked."

"We're cognizant of the fact that the UN itself is held up by two other pillars. The human rights pillar and the peace and security pillar," she explains.

The human and financial resources are available to move toward a shared vision of peace, equality, human rights and sustainable development, Ms. Mohammed says. She does not imply the task will be easy, nor that there are flaws, suspicion and doubt remaining in the process. We're only human.

But the process of the past two years, the past two decades and indeed back half a century and more of building the world we want takes a big step forward with the Sustainable Development Goals. We each have a part to play in seeing these ambitious goals come to fruition.

By Teresa Fogelberg Global Reporting Initiative

The new UN Sustainable Development Goals are here and I’ve got a message for all the people who say they can’t be achieved. It’s time to renew your faith in humanity and help us get on with the tasks at hand.

You see, I still believe that we are capable of doing great things.

What are the SDGs?
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), agreed upon by all 193 UN member states, set the global development agenda from now until 2030. The 17 goals and 169 specific targets cover the most pressing challenges facing all people, the private sector and the planet, including poverty, gender inequality, clean energy, sustainable production and climate change. The goals are lofty and laudable. There can be no doubt that if we achieve them, the world will be a much better place for everyone to live.

“The Stupid Development Goals”
Long before they had even been agreed upon, the skeptics and the critics were already arguing that the SDGs would be dead on arrival. Earlier this year, a popular economics magazine called them the Stupid Development Goals. And just last week, a post here on Triple Pundit posits the question “Are the UN Sustainable Development Goals Doomed?” and then proceeds to lay out a number of cynical arguments for why the question is answerable only in the affirmative.

Some of the critiques lobbed against the SDGs are legitimate and we shouldn’t assume that now that the goals have been agreed upon the work ends there. The success of the SDGs relies heavily on action and collaboration by all actors: business, governments, civil society organizations and citizens. But this fact doesn’t mean that every objection to the SDGs is valid. Nor does it mean that we should throw our hands up and say that nothing can be done to improve the lives of millions of people across our planet.

Here are two of the most common indictments against the SDGs and why I think they miss the mark.

The goals are wildly unrealistic
Perhaps the most prevalent charge hurled by detractors is the claim that the SDGs are grandiose and wildly unrealistic. Already at goal one, which calls for an end to poverty in all forms everywhere, the skeptics roll their eyes and declare that the goals are far too ambitious and are therefore unobtainable. These same people gripe that gender inequality is an intractable problem and that switching to cleaner sources of energy will leave the global economy hamstrung. And some of these same nay-sayers complain that nothing can be done to address climate change.

How do I respond to these challenges? I ask the critics questions like the following:

• Do we believe that a person born in poverty should have to live that way for the rest of his life?


• Do we accept that women can be denied equal access to education and economic opportunity?


• Are we really incapable of developing cleaner sources of energy or teaching ourselves to produce goods without destroying the environment?


• Have we abandoned the ingenuity and creativity that’s always been the hallmark of mankind?


• Is there a point to having global development goals if they aren’t ambitious?

I submit to you that the answer to these questions must be a resounding no. The alternative is accepting the notion that the world we currently live in is as good as it gets. That’s not something I’m willing to do.

Business will never buy into the SDGs
There’s another group of critics out there who say the SDGs can never be achieved because business can’t or won’t work towards the goals in good faith. Some say doing so would be too costly. Others claim that the private sector cannot translate this type of soaring, aspirational rhetoric into practical action. Still others have erroneously claimed that the SDGs do not take corporations into account and therefore nothing will change.

Now this last accusation is false. The private sector has been involved in the creation of the SDGs from the beginning and the goals recognize the important role that businesses must play in order to achieve them. Additionally, SDG target 12.6 asks all UN member states to develop policy to encourage companies to make sustainability reporting part of their reporting cycles, an explicit acknowledgement that corporations must play a role. In this respect the SDGs leap forward from the Millennium Development Goals, which they now replace.

That having been said, I can’t deny the truth of the claim that businesses can find it challenging to convert international principles into practical action. Enabling business action on the SDGs is exactly what we plan to do at GRI.

To help, we’ve co-created the SDG Compass with the UN Global Compact and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. The SDG Compass is a guide that businesses can use to align their strategies with the relevant SDGs and measure and manage their impacts.

Also, working in collaboration with Tata Consultancy Services, we just upgraded our Sustainability Disclosure Database, which now houses the UN Sustainable Development Goal Target 12.6 – Live Tracker. In order for governments to develop initiatives to increase sustainability reporting, they first need to understand the current state of play within their respective jurisdictions. The SDG Target 12.6 - Live Tracker will provide an overview of sustainability policies and reporting practices by companies around the world. This will enable smart policy and drive the innovation needed to achieve the SDGs.

Sitting here now, I can’t say for sure whether, 15 years from now, the new UN Sustainable Development Goals will be achieved or not. But I do know that we ignore these urgent issues at our own peril and I am hopeful that mankind is industrious enough find solutions.

Teresa Fogelberg is GRI’s Deputy Chief Executive and heads the Government Relations, International Organizations, Development and Advocacy Team, which works to enable smart policy on sustainability around the world.

Image credit: United Nations screenshot 

While it can seem difficult to have sympathy for a drug dealer, it's important to remember that, for young people in many parts of the U.S., dealing drugs is almost a survival crime. With underfunded, overburdened school systems and few opportunities in sight, it can be difficult for young men and women in inner-city America to resist the lure of the corner dealer's flashy wealth and his promises for a life beyond abject poverty.

Coss Marte, founder of New York City startup ConBody, knows this situation all too well. Growing up as a first-generation American on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, he was exposed to drug use at a young age. He and five others shared a small apartment, barely scraping by, but he dreamt of breaking out of poverty. When people asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, he replied that he wanted to be rich, and he idolized the only wealthy folks he knew -- the neighborhood dealers with the "freshest clothes and the biggest chains."

He began selling marijuana at 13 and eventually became the leader of a cocaine-distribution ring in New York. Before the age of 20, he was earning $2 million a year. But that all changed when he turned 23. After being in and out of prison from adolescence into young adulthood, Marte was busted for the last time and sentenced to a total of five years.

When he entered prison, he described himself as being "incredibly overweight" and "plagued with high blood pressure and high cholesterol." A doctor told him he could die in prison because of his health issues.

"That sparked something in me; I started working out in my cell, using exercises I learned from ex-Marines, correctional officers and fellow inmates," Marte wrote on the startup's Kickstarter page. "From then on I knew that my purpose was to give back instead of destroying individuals around me."

After losing 70 pounds in six months, he shared his workout routines with other inmates and helped 20 to collectively lose over 1,000 pounds.

The ConBody way

"The day I came home [from prison], I started doing bootcamps in the park, even though I was the only one doing them," Marte told me last week.

We met on a sunny Thursday afternoon in the Lower East Side, a few blocks from his childhood home and down the street from the corners where he used to sling drugs. "I was always looking for the next sale," Marte said of his past. "I wouldn't sleep for three days because I was afraid I'd miss something on the street." But now his old neighborhood is home to a new business venture, and a new lease on life for himself and others in similar situations.

Marte's vision was simple: lead prison-themed workouts to help people get in shape, while changing their perceptions of formerly incarcerated people. As he kept up with his solo bootcamps in the park, he started spreading the word around the neighborhood about ConBody.

"At first it was a little embarrassing," he said. "I was known as a person with a lot of money. Now, I was going up to people and pitching them my idea. A lot of them told me it would never work ... but I took the risk.

"When those first five people showed up for a workout, I had goosebumps," he continued, "because it was really happening."

Marte has since expanded ConBody and hired five full-time trainers, all of them formerly incarcerated, who he pays better than other gyms in the city. The company serves 25 monthly members, along with nearly 4,000 customers who attend drop-in classes. When he's not teaching classes at ConBody's studio, Marte leads private workouts at corporate headquarters for companies like Google and Selfie Stick.

As Marte -- now enviably in-shape, with kind eyes and a friendly smile -- stood in front of the company's office space, I asked him how it felt to own a business in his old neighborhood.

"It feels good," he answered unassumingly. "It's inspiring to see the support that people have given me, even people who are still on the corners. They'll say, 'You're doing it. I don't know how, but you're doing it.'"

Despite his success, Marte says he's far from finished: "I feel like I haven't accomplished enough yet," he told me, an excited twinkle in his eye. "There's still more to come. I feel like I was given this opportunity for a reason, to do something bigger than myself."

Why ConBody?

Prison reform is something the United States desperately needs. With only 5 percent of the world's population, the U.S. houses over 25 percent of the world's prisoners. As of Dec. 31, 2014, more than 1.5 million men and women sat behind bars in federal, state and county prisons, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. To put that in perspective: 1 in 99 American adults are now living behind bars. One in 31 adults are under some form of correctional control, including prison, jail, parole and probation populations, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

The U.S. prison population has ballooned by 700 percent since 1970, thanks mostly to the advent of the so-called "War on Drugs." Despite the fact that data increasingly shows the War on Drugs isn't working -- the U.S. spent $1.5 trillion on drug control between 1970 and 2010, while drug addiction rates remained more or less unchanged -- men and women continue to be arrested, prosecuted and thrown in jail for nonviolent, drug-related crimes. Those who find themselves in this situation are disproportionately people of color hailing from low-income neighborhoods.

Here is where many in the U.S. will revert to a simple edict: Don't want the time, don't do the crime. And while it's certainly true that the best way to stay out of prison is to avoid breaking the law (although if anyone can say they've never done so, I'd like to hear from you), this age-old mantra neglects a crucial factor: Even after someone has served his or her time for the crime committed, their 'sentence' often continues long after they leave their cells.

For starters, it can be next to impossible to obtain employment upon release. With the sluggish recovery of the American economy and millions of non-offenders out there looking for work, it's getting even tougher for former inmates to make ends meet on the outside. In their personal lives, these men and women are often ostracized -- viewed as dangerous nuisances, lying in wait to hurt or steal from the 'innocent civilians' around them.

As Marte puts it: When ex-cons leave prison, "that's when the sentence really begins."

These factors combine to result in staggering recidivism rates and countless lives that are forever changed by teenage drug busts, petty theft and other nonviolent crimes.

Taking it to the next level

It's a constant effort to change how people view formerly incarcerated people, Marte says, and at times he still faces discrimination and ridicule from people who signed up for his classes without knowing about the prison connection.

Recently, he reached out to give a woman a high-five after a long workout, and she snapped back that she didn't want him to touch her. "I made a joke about it, but it hurt," he told me.

Along with the day-to-day fulfillment of giving people jobs, the broader vision of changing public perception around former inmates is what makes Marte strive to keep going. After almost two years of operating ConBody out of rented studio spaces, the team is looking forward to bigger and better things -- namely a new space in the Lower East Side with plenty of room for both workouts and community gatherings.

Marte also hopes to hire a new female trainer and expand ConBody's services to include tech education for his trainers. "When I went into prison, I was still using a flip phone," he remembered. "When I got out, it was all touchscreens. It can be discouraging. People start to think, 'I can't catch up. I'm just a statistic, and I'm going to stay a statistic.' And I want to change that."

To make the expansion happen, ConBody launched a Kickstarter campaign earlier this month. Our editor-in-chief, Jen Boynton, spotted the campaign online and made a contribution. She shared it with me, and I did the same.

I rarely ever back anything on Kickstarter. The infamous potato salad campaign pushed me over the edge when it came to my opinion about how ridiculous the platform has become. But the ConBody message really resonated with me. If you feel the same way, you can contribute to the campaign here.

"This is a place to smash stereotypes," Marte said of ConBody, "and make young professionals see formerly incarcerated people in a different way -- like we're human."

You can score a ton of rad perks by contributing to ConBody's Kickstarter. But I opted for what seemed like the most fun: to have ConBody trainer Sultan Malik bench press me on my visit to New York City. Despite my lack of side-plank skills, I like to think the whole thing was a smashing success. Check it out below:

https://youtu.be/OcMF_EeHZHo

As childhood obesity rates soar in the United States, the issue has been under considerable scrutiny. There are several forces at play, especially in low-income neighborhoods. Fresh fruits and vegetables are often more expensive than their frozen, canned or dried counterparts. In addition, many minority and low-income neighborhoods are food deserts, lacking grocery stores and farmers' markets. As a result, residents shop primarily in convenience stores, where shelves are stocked largely with processed foods.

This creates a food culture that is inherited by children, favoring highly processed foods, loaded with fat, sugars, and synthetic additives. Due to these factors, children living in food deserts typically have little access to fresh fruits and vegetables, and are more likely to be obese.

Some schools in impoverished neighborhoods have been shifting this trend, thanks to the federal Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program. Now, 7,500 of the lowest-income schools across the country are serving small cups of fresh blueberries, kiwi, and beets. The goal is to create a healthy life-long habit for children to eat a variety of fresh produce. Many of these children wouldn't otherwise have access to these fresh foods.

What is not to love about this program? Sadly, the preserved-food industry lobbyists with a financial interest in kids eating their foods is pouring money into campaigns to feed children other less fresh foods.

“We’re losing an opportunity to educate youngsters about fruit and vegetable consumption in all forms,” said Joe Clayton, a spokesman for the American Frozen Food Institute, an organization that promotes its own interests.

A war is now raging in Washington involving the federal snack program, and its $177 million budget. The program requires serving fresh fruits and vegetables, as written by Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, a big fresh foods defender. Now that Harkin is retiring, the preserved-food lobby is likely to win out. The fate of the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program may be similar, also due to pressure from food lobbyists.

The preserved-food lobbyists don't want to lose out on revenue from these future grocery shoppers with food programs that can help shape the eating habits of these children into adulthood. Clayton fails mention the fact school lunches programs already serve frozen and canned vegetables, getting a slice of the $16 billion the government spends on school lunches. Meanwhile, fresh foods are largely underrepresented in school lunch programs.

A bill was recently introduced to expand the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program to include canned, frozen, dried and pureed fruits and vegetables. If successful, the program's original intent would be lost.

Corporate interests have a history of undermining programs created to promote child nutrition and health. Do you remember the ketchup is a vegetable controversy during the Reagan administration? Proposals sought to loosen the standards of what foods or condiments were counted by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) as vegetables after subsidy cuts. As a result, the program became  more "flexible" in planning meals for school lunches, with a  modest amount of relish counting as a vegetable.

Meanwhile, Michelle Obama has been working to shift the American food culture and has even managed to have a video clip of her speaking about turnips to go viral. Although there is a healthy food movement underway, a powerful process-food lobby has been working against school programs serving up a helping of fresh fruits and vegetables.

Image credit: Flickr/U.S. Department of Agriculture

 

It has been a rough few years for traditional fast food companies, especially McDonald’s. Customers, especially the millennial crowd, now increasingly prefer fast-casual eateries where they can customize their orders and trust the ingredients (Chipotle) . . . or frequent a business where a commitment to the community and values makes people feel as if their money is well spent (Panera Bread). McDonald’s recent struggles have not helped the company’s cause, either. Tainted meat in China and contaminated food in Japan are just a couple of the triggers that led to the company’s declining sales overseas, where the world’s largest fast food chain had long depended on steady growth.

As a result, McDonald’s is closing as many as 700 outlets this year and has been scrambling, literally and figuratively, to find its way. From rolling out all-day breakfast menus at its locations in the U.S. to hiring a new corporate strategist and a former Obama administration press secretary, the fast food outlet is trying to shake up a company culture that cannot keep up with changing consumer habits. Even within the hamburger space, McDonald’s is losing ground with upstarts such as Five Guys and Shake Shack now serving up burgers that diners see as way more imaginative and have a far higher quality than that of the Golden Arches.

So does McDonald’s dig in its heels and continue to serve uniformly tasting cholesterol-laden fare or try to keep up with the Panera Breads and Chipotles of the world? After mocking kale earlier this year, the company is now testing it--as in the kale and quinoa salad I had at the Bahrain airport a couple weeks ago. But never mind salads or apple wedges in Happy Meals. McDonald’s is upping the ante by taking a second look at the sandwich that launched the company’s business 75 years ago.

The “McB,” McDonald’s first 100% organic beef burger, is coming to a store near you--if you happen to be in Germany and Austria this fall.

This new menu item is hardly the hamburger for which McDonald’s has become famous, or to its critics, infamous. Instead of looking more like a doorstop or paperweight, the burger looks reasonably authentic. The irregular-shaped meat patty will be served on dark bread, along with curly pale green lollo bionda lettuce, red onions, tomatoes, Edam cheese and a choice of sauces. After October 26, another version of the McB will be served on a sunflower seed bun with arugula. This is quite a change from the day when customization at McDonald’s involved “hold the pickles.”

McDonald’s is taking the McB seriously. The company claims this burger has been vetted by several boards tasked with organic certification, and that suppliers and franchisees have been trained about organics. Furthermore, the company appears to actually want feedback about this burger as it launched an online platform allowing customers to share their opinions on Twitter; provided, of course, they use the hashtag #McB. Even Munich’s landmark Allianz Arena was illuminated in the colors of the McB last week as part of McDonald’s public relations campaign for this reinvented hamburger.

The big question is whether this new menu item will resonate in central Europe or beyond. In fairness to McDonald’s, the company is in a pickle. A huge portion of its client base dismisses the likes of Whole Foods for what they see as more healthful, or “rabbit food,” while McD’s purpose is to serve that occasional greasy indulgence. Plus one complaint McDonald’s customers have had is its overwhelming and confusing menu--witness In-N-Out’s continued success out on the west coast, where the short list of burgers, fries and shakes, along with the “secret menu,” have together become a favorite. That simplicity is in contrast to McDonald’s, which seems passe, dull and static, yet is adding a new menu item once again. McDonald’s image, one that symbolizes corporate greed and Americanization (and for latter, never in a good way), also boxes in the company. Few of us can imagine McDonald’s doing anything other than serving McNuggets and Big Macs. It may take years for the Golden Arches to transform itself and rise again, but by then, it could be too late.

Image credit: McDonald’s Germany

The Closed Loop Fund launched last year and has added a bevy of marquee companies as partners, including Unilever, P&G, Walmart, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. Described by its backers as a “social impact fund” that will invest at least $100 million in municipal recycling projects, Closed Loop Fund touts several ambitious goals for the upcoming decade: the elimination of 50 million tons of greenhouse gasses, the diversion of 20 million tons of garbage from landfills and the creation of 20,000 jobs across the United States.

To that end, in a press release widely disseminated to news sites and blogs, the Fund announced the first three investments that it claims will increase recycling rates and reduce the annual $5 billion that cash-strapped cities and counties currently spend on trash collection and landfills.

One project in Baltimore, according to Closed Loop Fund, will offer a “game-changing” system for plastic recycling by ramping up the collection of those pesky #3 and #7 plastics that most municipalities are not able to gather and recycle. Funded by Company QRS and Canuna-Hershman, the new facility could process up to 4,500 tons of these plastics monthly. As far as scalability goes, the Baltimore recycling plant certainly sounds impressive, as it will recycle plastic waste from an area stretching from Maine down to South Carolina.

The two additional projects are in the Midwest. Projects in Quad Cities, Iowa, and Portage County, Ohio, will allow both municipalities to change their recycling collection systems from dual stream to a more seamless single stream (or in industry speak, “co-mingling”) process.

“This new idea could change recycling forever,” says Fortune, which was enthusiastic over both the aforementioned plants’ recycling capabilities and the methods by which these facilities are financed. After all, recycling is akin to a hamster running in a wheel: retailers and consumer packaged goods manufacturers want more recycled material to boost their sustainability credentials while reducing the cost of procuring virgin raw materials, but many municipalities do not have the funding or infrastructure to increase their recycling rates. As a result, despite a generation of increasing consumer awareness, recycling overall moves in the same direction as that hamster: no where.

So the fact that these huge consumer goods companies--along with the world’s largest retailer that is also the biggest seller of their products--are willing to fund such projects reveals a bright future for recycling and waste reduction, right?

Not so fast, say several organizations skeptical of Closed Loop Fund’s intentions.

“The Closed Loop Fund continues the cynical tradition founded by the major soft drink companies that gave seed money to the Ontario Blue Box curbside recycling program in the 1980s: pay a few million dollars here and there to keep local governments distracted from the fact that they’re saving industry billions in waste recycling and disposal costs” - Guy Crittenden in Solid Waste Magazine

Written a year ago, Crittenden’s sentiment is shared by several environmental groups, such as UPSTREAM, an NGO that advocates for less plastic pollution, in addition to improved product design incorporating more sustainable and reused materials. The real solution, say these groups, is to expand extended producer responsibility (EPR) in the United States. EPR would put the onus of paying for recycling on manufacturers and retailers—but such an approach, commonplace in Europe, is a non-starter for these companies.

That $100 million also pales in comparison to what New York City alone annually spends on the collection on processing of packaging waste, which analysts say runs approximately $600 million annually. And before you add Walmart’s $485 billion in annual sales for FY2014, the combined revenues of Colgate-Palmolive, P&G, Unilever, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola (Company and Enterprises) tally at about $273 billion annually. That nine figures, while at first glance appear to be a hefty number, pales when one considers the size of these companies and the impact they have on waste streams nationwide. So while these manufacturers and Walmart are making a move considered unthinkable only a few years ago, many argue that more can be done. And considering the state of landfills in the U.S. overall, critics of the Closed Loop Fund and its backers have a point.

Image credit: Z22