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Agriculture may consume 80 percent of the water in California, and almond growers are alleged to use as much water as the Los Angeles and San Diego regions combined, but the state is still pressuring residents to cut back on their water usage. Meanwhile, more residents are questioning why beverage companies, especially Nestlé Waters, are allowed to pump water out of aquifers for pennies on the dollar during the ongoing drought and then sell it back to consumers as bottled water at a huge profit. Now the pressure is on in Sacramento, where activists say the companies are draining local aquifers of as much as 80 million gallons annually. They even formed a human barricade late last month, shutting down Nestlé’s local plant for the day.

The coalition, the “crunchnestle alliance,” complains that Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson and the city of Sacramento have allowed Nestlé to “drain” the city of precious groundwater with no oversight, no accountability and limits on what the company can sell back to consumers. Nestlé has responded with data suggesting the bottling plant only uses less than two-thousandths of one percent (0.0016%) of the city’s total water demand. Even if that figure were doubled, and then if the company included the amount of water used for the company’s local operations, Nestlé has a point when it states its water consumption is a relative drop compared to the total amount of water needed in Sacramento.

Like much of the ongoing debate over water in California, the arguments are over optics, not data.

Part of the reason why Nestlé has been criticized repeatedly is because of the company’s overall global reputation. Opponents of the company are quick to point out flaws in the company’s social and environmental record, and Nestlé’s responses on the public relations front are hardly helpful. Bland reminders that the company has partnered with Oxfam and is on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, along with Nestlé’s reminders that it is a leader in “healthy hydration,” frequently come across as condescending. Such platitudes also do not answer the question whether the company is genuinely transparent about its operations in Sacramento, the High Desert, or other regions where it churns tap water into a “healthy alternative to other beverages.”

But at the same time, allegations about paramilitary death squads in Colombia murdering Nestlé trade unionists do not build or destroy the case whether Nestlé is running a responsible water bottling plant in California’s state capital.

True, anyone who knows how to use a calculator and is conscious about waste can make the statement buying bottled water is little better than throwing your money in the trash can—and the vast majority of those plastic bottles thrown away end up in landfills, not recycled or upcycled into cool sports gear. And yes, Nestlé, we know bottled water is a safe means of hydration during a natural disaster or humanitarian crisis, but we are discussing California, not Haiti.

So where should the angst over California’s water crisis be focused?

Despite all that water used to keep crops growing on California’s farms, agriculture comprises only two percent of the state’s economic output. While some local water districts have seen their water allotments slashed, the stubborn fact remains that water is still currently priced far too low considering its value. Furthermore, Governor Jerry Brown’s executive order—some analysts say in part his actions are because of the mess his father made when governor a half-century ago—relies too much on even more residential water restrictions. Telling Californians they need to conserve water even more to solve this crisis is akin to sending someone into an Uzi fight armed with a sling shot.

The Uzi fight, in this case, involve the large agribusiness interests that have said “NO” repeatedly to any more water price increases or a reduction in water allotments. Indeed, farmers in the San Joaquin Valley have made their case when they post signs saying “Food Grows Where Water Flows.” But the question that Californians need to ask is: what if a disproportionate of water flows to cultivate crops such as almonds—70 to 80 percent of which are exported and feeding people abroad? There are larger battles than Nestlé in what is becoming an increasingly bitter water war.

Image credit: Leon Kaye

By Amy Orr

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been on the receiving end of public scrutiny for its controversial holdings in America’s two largest private prison companies – the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group (GEO). Why the controversy? Because CCA and GEO are notorious for their aggressive drive toward profit maximization at all costs – even in ways that exacerbate the social inequities that the Gates Foundation is supposedly organized to fix.

Before jumping on the bandwagon of criticizing Gates’ Foundation investments, we at the FB Heron Foundation decided to take a look at our own portfolio. We learned that Heron is also passively invested in GEO and CCA. In fact, anyone with broad passive exposure to the U.S. equity market through his or her pension or 401(k) plan is likely to have ownership of both companies. Surprise! Gates isn’t the only one.

Like many private foundations, Gates invests its Asset Trust with one objective: to maximize financial return on investments in order to grow capital to support the foundation’s philanthropic efforts. As a result, investment goals are considered separately from grant-making objectives. Considering this frame, private prisons are indeed an attractive investment that have the potential to yield stable financial return to an investor.

The demand for prison space is higher today than it has ever been and private detention facilities have grown to meet this demand. The federal private inmate population has increased by nearly 80 percent in the past decade, more than four times the growth rate of the total prison population (18 percent). Private prison companies have capital to invest in building and real estate, and in turn, benefit from stable revenues through subsidies and multi-year government contracts. They also have the ability to cut costs in ways that public prison systems cannot – via slashing healthcare and workforce reintegration costs. The business case has paid off to investors, as GEO and CCA stock prices have yielded annualized 10-year returns of 20.43 percent and 15.57 percent, respectively.

The reality is that very few of us — foundations or individuals — understand how externalized costs are fueling such strong investment returns, because most of the investment vehicles available to us are lacking in transparency. Those that do make the effort to look under the hood quickly find that data sources are deceiving.  For example, private prisons are classified as Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), making it difficult for investors to know where to look for such investments. Private prisons could also mistakenly be flagged through data screens as “job creators” but it is unclear in annual reports how much of the workforce is comprised of inmates required by law to work and paid between 23 cents and $1.15 per hour for their labor.

Investors don’t have the tools they need to see how externalized costs are shouldered by inmates, their families, communities and ultimately taxpayers due to higher rates of assault and rape that occur in private prisons; cuts in health care spending and lack of resources to address PTSD and other mental illnesses commonly diagnosed in inmates; and the general lack of programming aimed at helping re-integrate inmates into society, find gainful employment and avoid re-arrest.

The FB Heron Foundation has embarked on the path of understanding the externalities (positive and negative) of our investments, and looking beyond the financial return to an investor to understand how such externalities are contributing to or detracting from our mission. Although we still have small investments in CCA and GEO today, we plan to divest from these and other enterprises that we consider to be net extractors. We consider ourselves legally obliged to make this change given our fiduciary duties as a tax-privileged organization (see Investment Policy Statement).

We encourage others to invest with the same premise but understand that the system itself is as much to blame as any individual investor. Ultimately, as investors and members of society we must demand a level of transparency in our investment portfolios that allows us to invest in enterprises that support a thriving society.

Image credits: 1) Courtesy of Bloomberg 2) The Prison Index

Amy Orr is the Director of Capital Deployment for the FB Heron Foundation.

Maryland crab cakes are as important to Baltimore’s heritage as Hairspray, the Star Spangled Banner and Orioles baseball. In fact, many would say a visit to Maryland would be lacking without sampling them, whether you are vacationing on the Eastern Shore or in the DC area for a business meeting. Restaurants such as Phillips Seafood, Obryckis and Faidley’s have built an enduring business thanks to this local specialty.

The blue crab, which enjoys the reputation for making the tastiest crab cakes, is one of the most treasured resources to come out of the Chesapeake Bay. The past 30 years however, the blue crab, along with other local species, has been threatened due to pollution and over-harvesting. Local conservation efforts have helped stall the blue crab’s demise, but in the meantime, many food processors and restaurants have tried to compensate in creative ways.

And as a recently released Oceana study has revealed, we are not talking about the culinary no-no of using too much breading. Almost 40 percent of crab cakes tested in the survey revealed DNA evidence of fraud in the crab industry.

During the 2014 Maryland crab season, Oceana representatives collected and tested 90 crab cakes from 86 various restaurants in Baltimore, Annapolis, Washington DC and throughout the Eastern Shore. The non-profit found that 38 percent of the crab cakes were mislabeled. Instead of the main ingredient being the famous local blue crab, DNA analysis revealed that many of the crab cakes were made with imported crab, several species of which have a reputation for hardly qualifying as sustainable seafood.

Because not all of the restaurants actually make their own crab cakes, Oceana did not call out any of the restaurants publicly. A representative from Oceana explained to me that seafood fraud can happen any time in what has become an increasingly complex seafood supply chain. The depressing statistic should not be that surprising. Phillips, for example, uses its brand to market canned crab that can sometimes be found on the west coast. Buyer beware, however, since usually that crab has been sourced from Indonesia. But in Phillips’ defense, they are not marketing that product as “Maryland blue crab.”

But Oceana found that the mislabeled crab cakes carried the moniker “Maryland” or “blue crab.” Most of the falsely labeled crab was from the Indo-Pacific region, while a small portion was found to have come from the Mexican Pacific coast. In addition, improvements in the Chesapeake Bay’s environmental stewardship has earned the Maryland blue crab a “best choice” or “good alternative” on most seafood guides, while half of the other species detected in Oceana’s testing are marked as “avoid” on those same lists. Furthermore, consumers are overpaying for a dinner that cost them top dollar: $15 to $30 per crab cake is the price of what these delicacies go for at most restaurants.

“When you’re paying a premium for a particular product, that’s exactly what you should receive,” says Duston Cranor, Communications Director of U.S. Campaigns at Oceana. “Whether you’re purchasing local blue crab for the taste or simply to support the local community, consumers need to know that they’re getting what they’re paying for. Tracking crabs and other seafood from the boat to your dinner plate is the only way to ensure that it’s safe, legally caught and honestly labeled.”

Oceana has completed similar studies revealing fraud in the general seafood industry as well as with shrimp. As a result of all of these studies, Oceana has implored the seafood industry to increase traceability standards so that all fish and shellfish in the United States is sourced legally and responsibly.

Image credit: Kathleen Conklin

Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on the ASU Global Institute of Sustainability blog. By Prasad Boradkar

A short five-minute walk takes me from my suburban home in south Phoenix to the Sonoran Desert, from the highly standardized and manufactured human-made world into the somewhat wild and undomesticated natural world.

Satellite views show stark differences between the two landscapes: rectilinear, hard lines divide the land inhabited by people, while meandering, unrestrained territories mark the land inhabited by all other creatures. We have, by design, created in contrast to the natural world an artificial world of products, buildings and cities.

Philosopher Richard Buchanan describes design as “conception and planning of the artificial.” Using these processes of planning, we have created everything from tiny paperclips to enormous jet aircraft, from the smallest dwellings to the largest metropolises. And though these things are made of such materials of human creation as chrome-plated steel, aluminum and reinforced concrete, they are all ultimately extracted from the natural world. From the natural emerges the artificial.

But what if we were to extract from the natural world, not ore and minerals, but innovative ideas and creative solutions? Enter biomimicry. Described as “the conscious emulation of nature’s genius” by Janine Benyus, author of the seminal book on the topic, biomimicry does exactly that. It is an emerging discipline dedicated to mimicking strategies and principles of the natural world to develop sustainable solutions to human problems.

Evolution as a design process

One of the most cited examples of biomimicry is Velcro. Invented by Swiss scientist Georges de Mestral, this system of attachment was inspired by the burdock seed that uses its hooks to attach itself to the coats of roaming animals as a means of travel. This natural Velcro is the burdock plant’s design strategy and mechanism of seed dispersal.

Plants and animals adapt to the conditions in which they live through unique and local strategies that have been perfected over millions if not billions of years. Processes of evolution can be seen as processes of design — iterative, based on trial and error, and often ingenious.

As I walk into the Sonoran Desert, I am surrounded by organisms that have adapted to the arid conditions of the ecosystem in which they live. The saguaro cactus, for example, has numerous strategies that it deploys, not to combat the extreme heat, relentless sunshine and limited water supply, but to work with these conditions. Its pleated body expands to absorb moisture, and contracts as it uses up this precious resource.

For added benefit, these pleats also offer shade. And because it is impossible to have too much shade in the desert, the spines perform a similar function by creating a lattice of shadows on its surface while also protecting the cactus from predators. Its sap-green body uses every square inch of that surface for photosynthesis. Lying hidden just under the ground is its network of roots, eager and ready to start absorbing moisture when it rains.

The cycle of life

According to the National Park Service, the average life of a saguaro cactus is 150 to 175 years, and at times some might live 200 years. However, the artificial things that design creates often live extremely short lives. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates the average life of a mobile phone in the U.S. to be approximately 18 months.

In 2005, writes Giles Slade, more than 100 million mobile phones were disposed in the U.S. In addition, a report from Nokia revealed that only 3 percent of users recycle their phones. What happens to the ones that end up in the landfill? Lead, cadmium, mercury, lithium and a host of other substances that are toxic to the soil, ground water and human health are likely to leak out of the devices.

What happens to a saguaro cactus when it has lived its life? Under the forces of photo- and biodegradation it slowly starts to disintegrate. All the water stored in its tissues oozes out, as an offering to other desert creatures. In its death, it supports other life. Over time, the saguaro disappears from the landscape, leaving little trace of its existence. The components from a cell phone – circuit boards, screens, plastics – may take multiple human lifetimes before they start degrading. What if our products are made from materials and technologies that, like the saguaro, vanish when their useful lives are over?

Learning from nature

Maybe we can learn about waste management from nature, where one organism’s refuse serves as another organism’s raw material. An ecosystem does not need landfills for animal droppings, decaying fruit or dead creatures. It has dung beetles, microbes and vultures that will gladly take care of it all.

Biomimicry can help us in carefully observing and learning from organisms and ecosystems so that we may create more sustainable solutions to address our most complex problems. Biomimicry can serve as the bridge that links our natural and artificial worlds.

Let us mine nature for ideas, not materials.

Senior Sustainability Scientist Prasad Boradkar is co-director of the Biomimicry Center and director of InnovationSpace, teaching students how to develop products that create market value while serving real societal needs and minimizing impacts on the environment. Boradkar is a professor in The Design School, Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, at ASU.

By Wendy Gordon

Millennials, according to Goldman Sachs, are driving the "sharing economy." If they're into driving cars, they share rather than own. The must-haves for previous generations aren't as important for millennials. They're putting off major purchases, or avoiding them entirely.

So, what about other must-haves: Will they purchase used phones with the same verve as they share cars?

Cars cost a lot -- to buy, to maintain, even to house -- which may explain the growing popularity of car sharing. It's certainly not the environmental benefits, I'm afraid, significant as they may be. According to transportation research, car sharing has taken between 90,000 and 130,000 vehicles off the road -- and avoided as much as 750,000 metric tons of carbon emissions.

If we get into certified pre-owned gadgets like we're getting into car sharing, what could the impact be?

An estimated 140 million cell phones end up in landfills each year. With those cell phones go 4.7 tons of gold (worth $56 million) and 49 tons of silver (worth $8.4 million). And don't forget the 80,000 pounds of lead, a known neurotoxin, that leach from landfilled electronics into drinking water each year. What's the price of brain damage?

But electronics recyclers are reclaiming some of those tossed electronics for reuse. Gazelle has recycled over a million devices so far, saving enough energy to power almost 2,000 homes for a year. If we recycled all 140 million cell phones going to landfills each year, we'd save enough energy to power almost three-quarters of a million homes.

I just bought a certified pre-owned iPad from Gazelle through PIPsRewards. It's as good as new, and a whole lot better, at least in my eyes. It cost much less than a new one, and I earned a bunch of Positive Impact Points for choosing the pre-owned model.

What's more, I earned more PIPs and got paid $75 for turning in my old iPad to Gazelle. I didn't get as much for it as I might have, because the glass had broken. But all told, I got the "new to me" certified pre-owned for almost half the price of a new one.

Cell phones and other gadgets cost a lot less than cars. And shiny new features make upgrading nearly irresistible. We trade in phones on average about once every 18 months, faster than it might take to finish a jar of peanut butter.

My certified pre-owned iPad is shiny and works like new. It cost less and I got it within a few days rather than the week it can take to order a souped up new one. And I got reward points with it. Funny, the points make me feel just a little righteous about my choice -- that my pre-owned is not just good as new, it's better. There is something to that, right? I guess it's what they call loyalty. So thanks Gazelle, I'll be back. And I'm telling my friends.

Image credit: Flickr/Sebastien Wiertz

Experienced entrepreneur and pioneer in the conscious consumer movement, Wendy is founder and CEO of ‘Positive Impact Points’ or PIPs Rewards. An award-winning platform created by 3P Partners, a Certified B Corporation, PIPs leverages the power of points, smart tools and games to record and reward daily life choices that deliver personal and planetary benefit. Wendy also co-founded Mothers & Others with Meryl Streep in 1989 and originated the Green Guide, which was acquired by National Geographic in 2007. She serves on multiple boards including Rainforest Alliance, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Green Sports Alliance and the New School/Lang College Board of Governors.

This year California has seen the lowest snowpack ever recorded, which was a disaster for the winter ski tourism industry and poses dangers of wildfires this summer and fall. But the dry winter has also exacerbated the state’s ongoing drought crisis. To that end, Gov. Jerry Brown issued an executive order that he said is necessary in order to make California drought resistant.

The governor made the announcement while visiting a California Department of Water Resources snow survey in the Sierra Nevada Mountains at Phillips Station, located in El Dorado County near the Nevada border. "Today we are standing on dry grass where there should be five feet of snow. This historic drought demands unprecedented action," Gov. Brown said.

The executive order calls for increased water conservation, increased enforcement, a streamlined state government response and investment in new water technologies.

Many of the water conservation measures make logical sense. Gov. Brown ordered that 50 million square feet of grass lawns be replaced with drought-tolerant landscaping. Consumers could benefit from a temporary rebate program that would allow them to replace older, water-hogging appliances with more water-efficient models. School campuses, cemeteries and golf courses would have to make cuts in their water consumption. New homes and developments will also be banned from using potable water for irrigation landscaping unless water-efficient drip systems are installed.

“Every Californian should take steps to conserve water,” Gov. Brown said in a press release, an obvious statement that will irritate many Californians. After all, many have already cut their water usage, as leaders and residents of Los Angeles would say, and for good reason: The city uses less water than it did 30 years ago — with 1 million more people added to its population.

The order also requires local water management boards to change their fee structures in order to promote more water conservation. Water agencies will be penalized if they do not share data on their groundwater supplies with Sacramento, and these local boards will also have to report their water usage, conservation measures and enforcement actions on a monthly basis.

With some analysts suggesting the state has only one year of water reserves left, the governor’s executive order also urges state agencies to make decisions at a faster pace (with the drought two years in the running, it is head-scratching to think these agencies could not have made faster decisions in the first place). Streamlined permitting, simplified review and approval processes for voluntary water transfers, and relocation assistance to families in communities where wells have run dry are among the directives the governor outlined in the executive order. Finally, the California Energy Commission is tasked with developing incentive programs that will bring water technology initiatives faster to market.

Californians, who overall are among the most energy- and water-efficient citizens in the United States, need to prepare themselves for this new normal. What is most worrisome is the drought’s impact on the state’s economy, which only recently has emerged into recovery from the 2007-2009 housing and fiscal crises. TriplePundit readers have sent emails to me saying they may consider moving out of the state within a year if they are not convinced the state is serious about developing a solid long-term water plan. Republicans, of course, while generally supportive of bolstering California’s water system, are quick to point fingers at Democrats; in fairness, however, no leader has really taken on an ambitious, long-term approach to California’s infrastructure since Gov. Brown’s father, Pat Brown, was the state's governor from 1959 to 1967.

And while the threats to the state’s water supply should worry all residents, many will question why this executive order largely singles out residents when agriculture consumes 80 percent of the state’s water.

Image credit: Leon Kaye

There’s an old joke about two campers who are awakened by the sound of a bear rampaging through their campsite. The first camper gets out of his sleeping bag and immediately begins lacing up his running shoes. The other camper sits up and asks, “What are you doing? You can’t outrun a bear.” The first camper, without missing a beat, replies, “I don’t have to. I only have to outrun you.”

I thought of that joke when I heard the news about BP dropping their affiliation with the American Legislative Exchange Council, commonly known as ALEC. I suppose the bear in this case would be the opinion of the public as to who is the least environmentally responsible organization in the world.

The oil giant announced on March 23, that it would not be renewing its membership in the bill mill, a group that writes legislative scripts in the form of model legislation for state and federal legislators who might be wondering what new legal advantages those with the deepest pockets might be seeking. The group primarily ghost-writes bills that favor the interests of fossil fuel companies and other major polluters. BP had been, as recently as 2011, among the “Presidential level” donors, having provided $100,000 to the 2010 annual conference.

Among those remaining on the board of the group are Koch Industries, Exxon-Mobil and Peabody Energy. A number of board level-members including Walmart, SAP, Coca-Cola, GlaxoSmithKline, Kraft Foods, Johnson & Johnson and Reed-Elsevier have recently withdrawn their support for the group.

SourceWatch lists a total of over 100 companies and nonprofits that have now withdrawn from the organization.

A spokesperson for BP told the National Review that, "We continually assess our engagements with policy and advocacy organizations and based on our most recent assessment, we have determined that we can effectively pursue policy matters of current interest to BP without renewing our membership in ALEC.”

BP is the third oil company, after Conoco-Phillips and Occidental Petroleum, to cut their ties to the group. Tim Smith of Walden Asset Management told Common Cause, “Obviously BP’s decision adds pressure on companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron and Pfizer that are longstanding and ongoing members of ALEC.”

Arn Pearson, vice president of litigation at Common Cause, said that ALEC “misleads taxpayers and the IRS about its extensive lobbying activities.”

When it comes to climate change, “They are just literally lying,” Google Chairman Eric Schmidt told Diane Rehm.

Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse also recently blasted ALEC in a speech in the Senate chamber.

With each passing week, month and year, denialists’ credibility is literally melting out from under them, like an ice flow beneath a polar bear. As more and more record temperatures, floods, droughts and extreme weather events (including snowfall), are recorded, more and more companies recognize the inherent indefensibility and irresponsibility of this position. BP has a long road ahead, given the continued wrangling over their responsibility for the Deepwater Horizon disaster as the five-year anniversary draws near, but this move at least shows that they are not completely asleep at the wheel.

Image credit: Andy Silver: Flickr Creative Commons

Palm oil is finding its way into more food and personal care products, with 85 percent of the global supply coming from Malaysia and Indonesia. The result has been a massive conversion of rain forests into monocrop palm oil plantations, with a devastating impact on the environment and local communities. Among the many organizations urging businesses to take rapid action on incorporating responsibly sourced palm oil within their supply chains, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has been involved in the fight against the links this raw material has with human rights violations and environmental degradation.

To that end, UCS has released its second annual palm oil report, which tracks 30 large and important companies that source a significant amount of palm oil within its supply chains. Following up on its 2014 report, the 50 year old organization evaluated these leading brands to gauge their ongoing commitment (or lack thereof) to sourcing what many call “deforestation-free” palm oil. UCS’ methodology, which graded companies on several factors such as transparency and supply chain traceability, provided results that may jar many consumers.

Consumers with a late night fast food craving may want to reconsider their purchase decisions after reading UCS’s surveys. Companies including Yum! Brands (which owns KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco), Wendy’s, Domino’s and Carl’s Jr. scored a big zero out of 100 for offering neither policies on palm oil sourcing or data about its supply chain. Starbucks, McDonald’s and Burger King barely registered any score. The only company within this sector to show any action towards responsible palm oil procurement was Dunkin’ Brands, which developed a detailed commitment to revamping its supply chain last fall.

Retailers only performed marginally better than fast food companies in UCS’ analysis. In evaluating 10 companies’ private label food products, Safeway was the only retail store chain to perform well in the survey. Whole Foods, which UCS criticized for having a palm oil policy full of vague statements, only barely edged out Walmart. Target and Costco, which overall have solid corporate responsibility reputations, were among the retail companies that UCS scored with a big zilch.

Packaged food companies overall were rated much higher than the retailers that sell their products. Nestle scored highest amongst the 40 companies included in this survey, followed closely by Danone, Kellogg’s and Unilever. PepsiCo scored relatively high, a surprise since the company has been savaged in the past because of accusations its palm oil policy was far less than robust. Lovers of Velveeta, Jell-O and other brightly colored foods including Macaroni and Cheese might want to take note that Kraft had the weakest palm oil policy amongst its competitors.

Colgate-Palmolive was the rated as most transparent and proactive within the personal care industry, mostly because UCS judged the company to have a watertight procurement and disclosure policy. The close difference in points between its competitors including Henkel, L’Oreal and P&G were based on the percentage of responsible palm oil used relative to the entire amount used within their entire supply chains.

Consumers who are confused about palm oil, how companies use it and the effects it has on people and the planet should also read bulletins issued by other NGOs, including Rainforest Action Network and WWF. The debate over how some companies are performing better than others is still ongoing, but these organizations will agree on one fact: palm oil can be sourced without the devastating impacts such as deforestation. And companies have got to clean up their supply chains and ensure their palm oil is responsibly sourced and conflict-free, or their long term business prospects are at risk.

Image credit: Energie-experten.org

By Andrea Learned on behalf of Scope 5

As in any other business addressing sustainability concerns, so goes the food business. Water scarcity, carbon emissions and keeping records all play into the big picture and matter, a lot, for smart management decisions.

But compared with other industries, the broader context around those concerns in the global food supply chain holds even greater significance. That particular industry must see far past any single four-walled operational boundaries and instead make decisions in a complex “ecosystem” of facts, figures and conversations. That’s why the smartest food supply chain conversations today begin with data.

Harvesting information

I recently talked with Good Company sustainability consultants Justin Overdevest and Kelly Hoell about how their small- and medium-sized food industry clients manage for operational efficiencies. As they see it, one key in the evolution of these businesses over recent years has been the ability to select customized data points that matter to their specific business model in order to more nimbly gather, manage and report sustainability performance.

“When companies develop their sustainability programs, it is important that they take the time to identify the environmental, social and economic indicators that actually matter for their specific context,” Hoell advised. There are plenty of sustainability frameworks to use, like the Global Reporting Initiative, that have identified hundreds of measurable indicators. Yet, many of those indicators may end up being of little use for small- and medium-sized businesses. With regard to SMEs in the food industry, Hoell and Overdevest have found: “Prioritizing the most relevant indicators from the start, and then adding new indicators as resources allow, is the key to effective management.” Less, done well, is much more powerful than more, done poorly.

One example of dialing into sustainability business specifics would be Good Company’s medium-sized client, Fresherized Foods, makers of Wholly Guacamole. As a company that works with many long-haul distribution companies to send their product to retail markets around the country, Fresherized uses data management tool Scope 5 to examine the efficiency of its various carriers. [Full disclosure, Scope 5 is a client of mine.] After inputting the freight and logistics data into that tool, the company's sustainability manager analyzed the information to find opportunities for efficiency and cost reduction. The opportunities that emerged were so important that it led the company to create a position just for transportation logistics. That manager now coordinates all distribution and LTL (less than truck load) vendors and logistics leading to fuel, cost and greenhouse gas reductions. Talk about well-selected data indicators…

Packaging complexity

As exemplified by that one example, there can be so many moving parts in farming and the food industry that it might be easier to focus just on the direct indicators and decisions in your own business. But the wisest choice in the vast ecosystem of the food industry is actually to “look up” and notice what else is going on around you. Only then can a business see when there are ways to collaborate with others in the food industry to provide mutual benefit.

On the collaborative front, there are many things one food business experiences that can also affect others in the industry. Those might include subtle changes in weather, longer-term climate change or shifts in workforce over time (the same workers, with the same level of experience, may not be back every year/season). Concerns like greenhouse gas emissions, similarly, have incredibly complex influences to account for and which likely affect most other farms – like the context of location, management regime, and whether fields are rain-fed or irrigated. The point is: These issues come up for everyone, so discovering and sharing information to find better ways of doing things can make a lot of sense.

Once a food business does leverage their data to find their own operational efficiencies, it is then that much easier to understand the power in combining with like-focused companies to better organize or scale. The Sustainable Food Trade Association and the Organicology conference are two Pacific Northwest-based organizations that align and combine efforts of food business owners and operators around data-driven emerging opportunities.

Shipping sustenance sustainably

For all of that to take place, sharing a spreadsheet will simply not do. Not surprisingly, the developing food industry shift from spreadsheet to a tool like Scope 5 is not simply a preference for the few “techie” types who upload the data. Accessible and transparent data, for even the least tech-minded participant, has instead become the name of the game.

As the Good Company team shared, Fresherized Foods presents a helpful example of this, again: One or two people previously had the responsibility to collect and upload the data via the usual spreadsheet, and then email that around. Today, that data is entered on location (three farms in Latin America and one in the United States), right where it is gathered, and then made much more accessible to all those involved, every step of the way.

By using the Scope 5 cloud, in this instance, stakeholders can note the historical patterns and spot anomalies. They can also pull up charts on each emission source to identify and make changes. Data in a cloud makes it easier for anyone to load crucial information, for more team members (farmers to managers) to access it, for more people to see and make decisions more rapidly, to build longer-term wisdom and adjust for real-time issues (like, for instance, droughts). And, those are just a few of the possibilities.

Data-driven conversations

For farmers and the food industry, truly accessible, real-time data can start incredibly productive conversations and uncover operational efficiencies that make a huge difference. The democratization of data -- or making this everyone’s responsibility, and not just a “data team’s” -- leads to more engagement with employees, supply chain stakeholders and beyond. This means that what matters most to your particular business’s unique operations and goals will more likely be identified and addressed in a timely manner. With the help of data in this fluid form, small- and medium-sized businesses in the food industry can start and continue conversations, and compete more productively with the big guys in a mission most critical.

Image credit: Anoldent via Flickr

Andrea Learned is an author and sustainability-focused thought leadership strategist with a particular expertise in gender and leadership. Named one of Triple Pundit’s 30 CSR Pros to follow, she regularly shares her unique perspective and curates business leadership topics via her Twitter feed and blog, Learned On.

Last month, during the height of nationally-recognized Women’s History month, retail giant Walmart unveiled a campaign to celebrate women makers and businesses. Now, customers can shop products made by women-owned businesses donning Walmart’s newly designed “Women-Owned” logo on product packaging or in the category online.

The logo was produced in collaboration with Rouge24, a women-owned graphic design agency. The impetus behind the new labeling connects to Walmart’s initiative to provide economic opportunities for women around the world and to help women entrepreneurs succeed and grow.

In 2011, as part of its Global Women’s Economic Empowerment initiative, Walmart committed to sourcing $20 billion from women nationally and doubling what they source from women internationally by 2016.

“As the world’s largest retailer, we have the opportunity to use our scale, purchasing power and local presence to help others," said Kathleen McLaughlin, president of the Walmart Foundation and senior vice president of Walmart Sustainability, in a statement.

As an extension of this goal, the “Women-Owned” initiative will provide access to over 3,000 products in an online marketplace and within Walmart retail stores across the country.

To be eligible to participate in the new initiative and wear the new identifying logo, current and future Walmart businesses must be at least 51 percent woman owned. The vetting process includes verification from Walmart’s nonprofit partners the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) and WEConnect International.

During the March launch, six products were featured with the new logo, and were prominently displayed on the Walmart website. These brands included: Milo’s Tea, Jelmar CLR Remover, HMS Manufacturing Co. Hefty Wastebaskets, Goldbug Inc. Carter’s Newborn Shoes, Ariela and Associates Smart & Sexy Bra, and Ziegenfelder’s Budget Saver Pops.

According to WBENC, women-owned businesses contribute over $1.4 trillion to the U.S. economy, and women are responsible for more than 80 percent of consumer decisions made globally. The uptick in women-owned businesses is not surprising as this trend has been on the rise for the past two decades.

The National Women’s Business Council reports that women have been launching businesses at twice the rate of men and continue to produce major gains in employment and revenue.

In their white paper on this topic, NWBC highlights the following evidence to support the growth projections of women-owned businesses in the U.S. economy:

“The Guardian Small Business Research Institute projects that women-owned businesses will create 5 to 5.5 million new jobs by 2018 – more than half the 9.7 million new small business jobs expected to be created and about one-third of the 15.3 million total new jobs anticipated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics by 2018.”

By capitalizing on the trajectory of this segmented group of businesses owners, Walmart gains not only its bragging rights for goodwill practices among rising and established entrepreneurs, but also maximizes consumer recognition, loyalty and spending by highlighting these particular business’s products on the shelf.

From our understanding, the retailer’s Women-Owned marketplace is here to stay, with the badge growing in visibility across thousands of its products both in store and online.

“Through our sales, we can see trends showing that products from women-owned businesses outpace overall Walmart sales and are ahead of inventory,” Jenny Grieser, senior director of Walmart’s Global Women’s Economic Empowerment campaign, told BlackEnterprise.com. “This shows that our customers are eager to buy these products and that this initiative has helped in showcasing women-owned businesses.”