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Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on Unreasonable.is.

By Jed Emerson

Since at least the early ‘90s, those involved in the generation of 'more than money' have been on a quest to capture the right balance between documentation of impact and claims to fame. For me personally, I have been a reluctant crusader in this quest for coming on 30 years. As a social worker in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District, operating a multi-service center for homeless youth, justification of our funding was often tied to service counts. And yet, while our program served large numbers of youth, we often found financial support for those youth tied to annualized government contracts and lump-sum foundation grants directed to other programs. These funds did not follow performance, but were allocated on the basis of what I called a dance of deceit set to the music of politics, perception and persuasion.

Some years later, as founding director of the nation’s second venture philanthropy fund, I led the team that in 2000[1] introduced what I believe was the first formalized methodology to track SROI — Social Return on Investment. Prior to that, I remember hearing foundation and social investors alike state, “We invest for Social Returns!” Yet when queried as to how, exactly, they tracked such returns they would laugh, saying, “Oh, no! It’s a metaphor—we don’t actually track social returns!”

I never did understand this.

A traditional investor would never place funds in a venture that did not have capacity to track financial performance and, ultimately, financial return. How then was it okay to place funds in social enterprises (whether for-profit or nonprofit) in the absence of reporting systems tracking the extra-financial value creation of that investment? Why bother calling ourselves social entrepreneurs and impact investors if we could not in some way document, differentiate and assess this added level of value creation?

Over past years, as I’ve both participated in and observed the evolution of metrics and impact reporting discussions and practice, I’ve come to realize the “metrics challenge” is something of a myth. It is a myth in both senses of the term in that on the one hand it is the Big Foot of impact investing—widely known yet seldom seen—and, on the other hand, pursuit of the next level of “metrics” is the Holy Grail of our professional quest, a story that has critical meaning, value and importance in our lives.

Big Foot counts

At its core, the metrics discussion is a myth because while everyone talks about it, professes to have seen it and debates its importance, impact metrics remain ephemeral, a force living in some deep wood, visions of which are obscured by branches, brush and bullshit. At a national metrics conference several years ago, I recall a breakout session presentation by one of the world’s best known impact investment organizations—one that appears on everyone’s list of favorite impact funds—listening to a nuanced and well-considered presentation by their head of impact performance. Following the formal PowerPoint show that included impressive definitions, charts and data, the presenter was asked, “How do these impact metrics inform your work?” to which the presenter responded, “Oh—we don’t actually use these metrics in our work. We just need them to give our funders!” After everyone had a good laugh, he said, “No, no—I’m serious—we don’t use them at all!” Peals of continued laughter echoed.

While I was taken aback by how forthright this practitioner was in his assessment of the relevance of metrics to practice (or lack thereof!), I also experienced something of a flashback to my time as a social worker wherein metrics mattered not as a means to more effective program or service delivery, but rather simply as a way to justify continued funding to those removed from the action. Why, I thought, would someone possibly spend their entire professional life involved in work the value of which could only be assessed on the basis of people served rather than lives changed? Couldn’t we create a metrics framework truly capable of capturing not only outputs in order to justify funding, but also assess the deeper outcomes of our efforts as well?

More recently, as various new impact funds have been conceived and launched, it has become clear, despite the old adage “You can’t manage what you don’t measure,” many impact fund managers do just that. While we all talk about the difference between traditional and impact investing as a function of our tracking the extra-financial performance of social and environmental value creation, too many social entrepreneurs and impact fund managers view metrics and performance tracking as “something we do for funders” rather than something we need do for ourselves to ensure our work is actually creating the impact we seek rather than the outcomes we claim.

And I believe it is getting worse.

In recent weeks, I’ve heard of two leading fund managers—overseeing hundreds of millions of dollars of supposed “impact” capital—who have said that since they are investing in sectors that have intrinsic impact, their funds (investing in sustainable agriculture or renewable energy or affordable housing or small business development or what have you…), by extension, do not need to document or be managed explicitly for impact. Now, perhaps I’ve been in these discussions for too many years and have grown both cynical and short-tempered, but how is this any different from nonprofit managers who are working to affect change in communities or in people’s lives asking us to trust them since, after all, “We’re all here for the children?”

As our greatly revered 40th president of the United States used to say, “Trust—but verify!” and I think impact investors should do the same. Social entrepreneurs or impact fund managers who claim to have impact in the absence of documentation tied to their execution should be challenged. If they have the continued arrogance to state that their special fund has impact simply by virtue of their strategic intent, they should be tarred and feathered and shunned, for we should not confuse intent with impact. As one of my good colleagues once observed, “You could be creating the best and greatest ‘next generation’ battery for the electric car, but if your rare earth metals are being strip mined, you are not advancing a more sustainable planet.”

Period.

All too often, I fear, we do indeed confuse our noble intent with actual, realized and demonstrated impact. They are not the same.

Metrics matter.

The challenge, of course, is that actually creating meaningful, relevant social management information systems to track the total performance of our impact investments takes more time and money than many social entrepreneurs and investors care to spend. In some perverse variation of the “We don’t fund overhead, only program” comment one sometimes hears from foundation executives and donors, too many of those in the impact investing community view an effective metrics reporting system as “nice to have” as opposed to “critical to our practice in advancing impact.”

And therefore, while the topic of metrics continues to carry much weight in our conversations—a “must have” topic at any impact investing conference and justification for any number of stand alone meetings, events and professional junkets—the reality is for far too many of us involved in impact investing actually attaining sustained metrics practice is, in truth, frequently seen as the dreamlike, mythical Loch Ness Monster, with flashing skin and scales so close you can almost touch them as it twists and turns and slowly descends out of sight, into the muddy murk of our investing waters.

In quest of the Holy Grail

And yet, the myth persists that we can attain our goal of effective and relevant metrics assessment and reporting. One must ask, after all the frustration and challenges, why do we bother? I submit we persist in our pursuit because we know at a deeply visceral level our goal of integrating meaningful metrics into the core of our efforts to create a changed world has value and is central to who we are.

When asked, “Do you believe in a god?”

C.G. Jung replied, “I do not believe there is a god—I know there is a God.”

And so here, my good and patient friend, is the fundamental point:

Our commitment to attaining the Holy Grail of credible, sound impact reporting is less a function of faith than of stripping our current intellectual and practical shrouds away to reveal the deeper essence of what we know to be true.

Simply because our present, dominant approaches to assessing metrics fall short of our task—How can one measure the full value of a life saved or possible future changed? What, ultimately, is the real impact and value created through the allocation of our capital?—we persist because we know two things:

First, we know we are on a Hero’s Journey of inquiry and innovation. Too often we forget the present system of tracking financial performance (the basis upon which trillions of dollars flow through global capital markets and the foundation upon which too many of us build our lives) is the outcome of over sixty years of development, refinement and debate. In the U.S., GAAP and FASB (the fundamental building blocks of mainstream business and finance) were not created until after World War II; and it was not until the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 that business and many nonprofits began tracking and assessing environmental metrics on a consistent basis. And while social metrics have always been a part of the parlance of government and philanthropic funding, many foundations and social investors have not sought to weave performance assessment into their process of allocating funds until recent decades.

It is for these reasons I am quite comfortable with the reality that those creating the metrics and evaluation frameworks of tomorrow will need another twenty years to build what is not yet ours, for I know it will come in good time.

Second, we are creating Total Portfolio Reporting frameworks to track the returns of unified investing strategies (capable of reflecting the aggregate performance of philanthropic, social and environmental value creation) because we know it can be done—and indeed, we see the metrics mist clearing by the year.

As initiatives such as: the Principles for Responsible Investing’s Integrated Reporting work; the recently re-organized SROI Network; the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board; B-Lab’s B-Analytics framework; CapRock’s iPar system; the ANDE Metrics Working Group; and a variety of grassroots initiatives coming together around various sets of common reporting for assessing community impact, we find one can create a balance between our aspirations for a better world and the challenges of demarcating our progress toward that goal.

In the end, I hate the whole metrics debate.

It is repetitive, mind numbing and distracting from the critical task of fighting the forces presently destroying our societies and planet. Each time some ignorant (not stupid, mind you, and yet, not fully aware of what they do not know; they are quite rightly, ignorant) newcomer enters the discussion, we’re all expected to re-group and re-define concepts and issues well documented and explored in the past. The continual, mindless reminders that not everything that counts can be counted leave me frustrated and even angry at some who for reasons beyond me don’t seem to understand that such now trite insights were the very starting place of this journey well more than 25 years ago and that, indeed, as newcomers they are as far behind the current exploration as we are from our goal.

Yet, we make progress despite our doubts and complications.

We advance the practice of both impact investing and performance measurement one step forward and two steps back as the current “knowledge” of the crowd actually pulls us backward to previous thinking and practice. And we know the appropriate application of metrics bring meaning and insight just as they demonstrate the limitations of such efforts. This journey is critical to us not simply because it holds the promise we may, in time, create effective tools to better represent the quantitative performance of qualitative value, but rather because in more deeply being a part of this journey toward documenting the impact of our strategies, we see new and more nuanced aspects of the value we seek to create through the course of our lives…

We learn more about who we are as individuals and as a community.

And so I say,

Onward, compatriots, onward!

There is another windmill over yonder hill—

and we will make our own path by walking toward it!

[1] Our original framework was presented in 1996 in the Roberts Foundation report, New Social Entrepreneurs: The Success, Challenge and Lessons of Nonprofit Enterprise Creation, but we did not present the full complement of a framework and related tools until our Box Set publication in 2000.

Image credit: Flickr/Kevin Lallier

Jed is the Chief Impact Strategist at ImpactAssets and the founder of Blended Value Group. He is also a founder of REDF and Larkin Street Youth Services and is a pioneer in the field of impact investing and entrepreneurship.

By Josh Caplan

With President Barack Obama entering the second half of his final term, the road to the White House is well underway. Despite no official announcement from any candidate, seasoned politicos and fresh-faced newcomers, from Hillary Clinton to Rand Paul, are gearing up for the race. But until 2016, what can members of civil society at large do to bring about positive and sustainable change?

With each and every purchase made, we can vote every day for social entrepreneurs like actress Jessica Alba of The Honest Company, the wildly successful nontoxic consumer goods company. Alba was inspired by the 2008 birth of her first child, Honor, and her own history of childhood illnesses to create a company that offered a more healthy approach to conventional baby products. There are serious claims such products possess toxins like petrochemicals and synthetic fragrances. Alba became serious about starting the Honest Company with co-founder and business partner, Christopher Gavigan, a former nonprofit CEO and author of a best-selling book, after a product recommendation ended up causing one of her children to break out in welts.

Instead of purchasing goods that can be harmful, we can advocate for cleaner products by purchasing goods from brands like the Honest Company. The concept of voting with your dollars, or dollar voting theory, is nothing new, nor is it perfect. But it has been successful in bringing tangible change to not only the consumer household goods industry, but to other industries as well. Tech journalist Jason Del Rey posed the question in a new piece on the socially conscious company, musing if The Honest Company will be the next Johnson & Johnson. Those paying close attention to The Honest Company believe the food and beverage industry is the next frontier for the socially conscious company to push, and here’s why.

In the past decade, the demand for organic food has exploded: Pegged at a little over $6 billion at the beginning of the 2000s, the industry ballooned to $31 billion by 2011. Another shift in the food industry impacted by dollar voting theory is the decline in meat consumption.

“Even though both economies are experiencing a recovery and per capita disposable income is going up, there is a decline in per capita meat consumption due to the negative perceptions of red meat in diet, associated with high cholesterol and heart disease. As a result, consumers are looking at alternative diets … vegan and vegetarian options and fish as well," says IBISWorld analyst Jeffrey Cohen.

Why does this matter? Because the clean eating revolution is a tribute to the power of voting with our dollars. The paradigm is clear: If the demand for healthier products increases, so will the attention of companies to provide them.

Yet, dollar voting is criticized because a handful of multinational conglomerates hold ownership over a variety of socially conscious companies and therefore, no mater who we support, the big guys always win. The nay-sayers of dollar voting point to the now infamous graph, illustrating a majority of most well-known food companies that are owned and operated by corporations such as PepsiCo, General Mills, Associated British Foods and Nestle.

For the most part, this viewpoint is largely untrue and short sighted. It proves multinational corporations are seeking out companies producing healthier products because they reflect the future of consumer wants and needs. In the last decade, Coca-Cola has acquired more than 10 companies, ranging from tea to coconut water beverage companies. How can one honestly question whether dollar voting is effective when soda sales have declined steadily in the past five years?

Dollar voting for healthier beverages is spilling (no pun intended) into the political arena itself. According BusinessWeek Magazine, "New York’s then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who’s the majority owner of Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s parent company, Bloomberg LP, tried to cap most fountain drink sizes at 16 ounces within the city."

For those who want seismic change, staying the course is key. Remember, Coca-Cola had revenues of over $45 billions in 2013 with an operational reach in over 200 countries. For consumers pushing for radical shift in product offerings, we must remember, “Rome was not built in a day."

Shifting from theory to practice, our own social enterprise, Tea of the People, makes innovative teas that run for elections in grocery stores everyday. Like a political debate, each tea box is a candidate stating its case to obtain votes, or in this case be purchased by constituents, who come in the form of grocery shoppers. The other tea companies use non-identifiable green tea and frequently use harsh extracts to achieve a desired flavor, where we use Dragon Well, the most antioxidant green tea on earth and blend super real fruits into our innovative teas.

However you chose to support social enterprises, like The Honest Company or Tea of the People, remember this: We have the power to shift markets, drive product innovation and bring organizational change to companies regardless of size and sector.

Josh Caplan is Founder and Chief Activist Officer of Tea of the People. 

If you’re a car company and you want to do something to help reduce carbon emissions, what do you do? You start by making your cars more efficient by bringing on new technology, like hybrid powertrains. Then you incorporate electric cars, and possibly fuel cells and, of course, clean up your own internal operations. Happily, most car companies today are doing all of those things, to one degree or another.

All of these are on the critical path, with many more improvements in the pipeline. Are there any other stones left unturned in the search for improvement? Ford thinks so.

The company recently announced that it's teaming up with Georgia Tech to develop a Parking Spotter app. As the name suggests, this app will help users locate a parking spot more quickly and directly. Sounds helpful, but will it have an impact?

A study performed by the UCLA Department of Urban Planning, which carefully monitored a 15-block urban area, found that drivers “drove more than 950,000 miles, emitted 730 metric tons of carbon dioxide and burned 47,000 gallons of gas, looking for parking.”

According to Mike Tinskey, director of vehicle electrification at Ford, only 12 percent of drivers “find a parking spot immediately, without some kind of hunting.”

Ford is not the first to enter the smart parking fray. Others have attacked the problem under the Smart Cities umbrella called Intelligent Transportation Systems. Most of these make use of sensors installed in the street which can determine whether a given spot has a car in it or not. LA Express Park, for example, uses an app called Parker that connects with sensors in 6,000 parking spots in LA. It looks like a GPS screen, except it has open parking spots flagged. It’s not hard to imagine that, someday, GPS systems will have a feature like this built in.

Imagine you’re driving in New York City, cruising for a parking spot, hoping it won’t take the entire evening to find one. Suddenly you get a call from a friend who happens to mention that he just saw an open parking spot a few blocks from your current location, which you head to directly.

Ford’s new Parking Spotter app recreates that scenario, but it reduces the element of chance (or the need to have a friend nearby). It uses existing driver-assist sensors that many vehicles already have, including sonar (ultrasound), and some prototype software, to, in essence, “use the vehicle as a probe.”

These sensors are able to search out empty parking spots as drivers are cruising around the city. The information is fed to a cloud database and made available to other connected drivers who might be looking for a spot. It is, in essence, a crowdsourced parking app.

According to Tinskey, the idea came about in response to the question, “How can we go about finding parking spaces so that when a person maps their route, to get from point A to Point B on their navigation, whether it’s their phone or in their vehicle, can we give them more information to get to their final destination?”

Various sources describe the information as being collected as drivers enter and exit a parking facility, or from sensor scans taken as the car drives through the city streets. In either case, the data is transmitted to a cloud-resident database where other drivers can access it as a way to find an available spot.

Dave McCreadie, Ford's manager of electric vehicle infrastructure and smart grid technology, emphasized the fact that the new application utilized components already on the vehicle. The ultrasound sensors are used for obstacle detection and as part of the hands-free parking feature. Examination of existing parking apps, such as Streetline or ParkMe, found that the data behind these apps is scarce. "Our vehicles enrich the data, providing more information to the cloud," McCreadie said.

This app will certainly give drivers a leg up in the hunt for a parking space. In the process, it will likely reduce fuel consumption, emissions, commute times and stress levels. For those without the app, I’m afraid the job of finding a spot just got a little harder.

One other point: Hopefully the parking app will be smart enough to tell you which spots are legal at that particular moment and how long they will remain legal. Most cities know how to inflict pain on those unfortunate souls who cannot successfully decipher the often-cryptic parking signs.

Image courtesy of Ford Motor Co.

RP Siegel, PE, is an author, inventor and consultant. He has written for numerous publications ranging from Huffington Post to Mechanical Engineering. He and Roger Saillant co-wrote the successful eco-thriller Vapor Trails. RP, who is a regular contributor to Triple Pundit and Justmeans, sees it as his mission to help articulate and clarify the problems and challenges confronting our planet at this time, as well as the steadily emerging list of proposed solutions. His uniquely combined engineering and humanities background help to bring both global perspective and analytical detail to bear on the questions at hand. RP recently returned from Abu Dhabi where he attended the World Future Energy Summit as the winner of the Abu Dhabi blogging competition.

Follow RP Siegel on Twitter.

On Monday, the Colorado state legislature voted down a challenge to the state’s successful and popular Renewable Energy Standard, originally passed as the first of its kind in the country in 2004 by statewide ballot initiative.

Originally mandating that utilities and rural co-ops generate 15 percent of their power from renewables, the standard has since been expanded by state legislators twice. The most recent expansion raised the bar to 30 percent for city utilities and 20 percent for rural electric cooperatives, which serve a sizable chunk of the state -- more than 600,000 customers.

A recent poll showed that 76 percent of Coloradans support pro-renewable candidates, so it’s unclear which Coloradans bill sponsor Rep. Dan Thurlow (R-Grand Junction) has been talking to when he says he thinks “we’ve done enough.”

Senate Bill 44 died after some testimony before a House committee, as well as an earlier rally in the Denver state capitol sponsored by Conservation Colorado, Colorado Moms Know Best and others. It’s still amazing to watch environmentalists get up there and – in a strange mirror image of years of coal company messaging – watch the Sierra Club rep tell lawmakers that killing the RES would put more than 22,000 Coloradans out of work.

Xcel Energy has said it is on target to meet the Renewable Energy Standard mandate by 2020, so compliance really isn’t the problem. Xcel and Black Hills (the two biggest utilities in the state) both keep raising rates. This was brought up by Republican supporters of the rollback bill – a valid point for many low-income Coloradans. But clean-energy advocates argue that these higher rates aren’t because of the RES and that renewables actually save consumers money. ($25 million for Xcel customers alone, according to Doug Holland of the Sierra Club Rocky Mountain Chapter.)

The Center for the New Energy Economy (CNEE) does a state-by-state analysis that includes the status of renewable portfolio standards. Such standards have been passed in 29 states and the District of Columbia. And if any single law has had a more direct impact on transitioning from fossil fuels, it’s hard to pick one. CNEE (a research project of Colorado State University) has found that, once put into place, these standards are rarely rolled back (coal stronghold West Virginia being the exception) because they result in actual economic growth, physical turbines and panels, and native renewable industries, including R&D.

One surprising group giving testimony at the committee hearing on Monday was from the Colorado Technology Association, which, despite tech’s assumedly green patina, argued in favor of rolling back the RES so that they can lure data centers and other companies to Colorado with more choice in power supplies.

After the House committee voted 6-5 on a party-line vote to kill SB-44, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) argued that it was time again for Colorado to up the ante:

“By signing long-term fixed price contracts for wind and solar, Xcel also sees these resources as providing a valuable long-term hedge against rising and volatile natural gas prices .... In fact, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission estimates that one of Xcel’s recent wind projects will actually save ratepayers $100 million over 25 years,” wrote Steve Clemmer, director of energy research for UCS, in a blog post.

Image credit: Governors' Wind Energy Coalition

By Paul Klein

“They live thinking the future is this afternoon,” said Juan Pablo Duque in describing the lives of artisanal and small-scale miners in Colombia.

Duque, senior vice president of Equilibria and formerly the CEO of Four Points Mining, has seen how artisanal and small-scale miners live and work first-hand. According to Duque, there are virtually no safety procedures, working conditions are extremely dangerous and serious accidents are frequent. “It’s very often that you hear about a mine that crashed down and killed many miners, and it was an informal mine," he says. “It also happens in South Africa. It happens in Nicaragua and in many other parts of the world.”

Globally, approximately 100 million people – including miners and their families – depend on illegal and informal mining, compared with about 7 million in large-scale industrial mining, according to the 2002 Global Report on Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining produced by the International Institute for Environment and Development

Tragedies such as the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh have put a spotlight on unacceptable working conditions for garment workers in developing countries. In response, initiatives such as the Bangladesh Accord for Fire and Building Safety have the potential to improve the lives of workers and their families. However, the dangerous conditions in which artisanal and small-scale miners work remains largely invisible outside of the mining industry.

"Many stakeholders, but no winners"

In Colombia, it is estimated that illegal or informal miners are responsible for mining more than 80 percent of the gold produced in the country. Local sources believe that about 300,000 miners and their families are at high risk because of the dangerous conditions in which they work. For example, artisanal and small-scale miners can only purchase explosives from the military. “So they have to buy on the black market, or they build an explosive that is called ‘polvo loco.’ (That means crazy dust in English),” said Duque. The miners use mercury to capture the gold from the ore with their hands. Needless to say, mercury is highly toxic. Whole families are often involved, and child labor is not uncommon in many operations. Workers who are injured and unable to work lose their income entirely, leaving their families without money to buy food and other basic necessities.

During the time Duque was CEO of Four Points Mining, a company that operates in the municipality of Zaragoza in the Colombian department of Antioquia, he learned how complex the situation is and realized that there are many stakeholders but no winners.

First, he found that miners and their families who had no rights to the mining concession were illegally exploiting most of the mines and working in dangerous conditions. He also learned that these miners were very comfortable operating illegally on land held by concession-owners that is actually the property of a third party. Further, even though the concession-owners were not exploiting their own property, they were responsible to the state for environmental damage caused by the illegal miners. Finally, governments in Colombia are attempting to reduce illegal and informal mining by preventing foundries from purchasing from miners who don’t have official permits, and the police are confiscating gold from illegal and informal miners. As a result, foundries in Antioquia are going out of business because their access to gold from miners without permits is being significantly reduced.

A sustainable solution

Duque and his colleagues at Equilibria have envisioned a new approach that is informed by his in-depth understanding of the ways in which all the stakeholders are affected. He believes that an inclusive, cooperative model would leverage what each stakeholder brings to the table and deliver more efficient and sustainable operations. The increased profits could, in part, fund new social programs for miners and their families.

He believes the first step is to identify miners who want safer working conditions for themselves and their families and would prefer to operate legally. Next, the mothers and wives of miners need to be engaged. “Look, the legal system has better safety conditions, so you cannot be afraid anymore that your husband is at a high risk because now we can control it,” said Duque. “If he has an accident or is sick, you won’t have to worry about receiving money, because everyone will contribute to a cooperative system of social security.”

The new model brings together informal/illegal miners, the private sector, concession holders, foundries and the government to find sustainable solutions that harness the best technology, skills and capacities from all stakeholders. This approach would provide informal and illegal miners and mine developers with legal rights, social security and improved safety. The results would also include more jobs and viable employment alternatives for women, skills training for miners through partnerships with local colleges and educational scholarships for children of the miners. Concession holders would benefit from more cash flow, control over their property and reduced environmental damage. Foundries would have access to more legally mined gold and corruption would be reduced because bribes to officials would no longer be necessary.

By making it a priority to understand the needs of miners and their families, local communities, businesses and the government, Duque has build a high degree of trust among stakeholders that have not shared much common ground. His ideas have the potential to transform mining in Colombia and perhaps in other countries as well.

“It started as a strategy for security,” said Duque of his journey to find a better approach to mining in Colombia. “Then, it turned into a passion.”

Image credits: Flickr/Alejandro Arango (1 & 2)

Paul Klein is the President of Impakt, a B Corp based in Toronto and Bogotá that creates opportunities for corporations to benefit from being socially responsible.

Pizza is definitely more American than apple pie, judging by all the restaurants and take-out joints you pass by during your commute. From your favorite corner eatery to the behemoths like Domino’s and Little Ceasar’s, pizza is part of the United States’ food, landscape and culture. Every day at least 40 million Americans eat pizza; one in four boys and teenagers consume at least a slice daily. All that fat and carbs on average provide at least one quarter of that American’s caloric intake, and one-third of the recommended amount of sodium. But pizza also provides one-third of a daily supply of calcium and half a day’s intake of lycopene.

Therein you have the foundation of a food fight with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on one side, against what first sounds like a benign organization, the American Pizza Community (APC). But the latter has become a formidable lobbying group that is fighting school lunch and calorie disclosure regulations tooth and nail.

Like many trade associations and lobbying groups, the APC likes to paint a picture of its membership as a beacon for small businesses, owned by guys who wear a Chef Boyardee hat as they spin yet another pizza crust with their index fingers.

But the reality is that the APC is a coalition of companies including Domino’s, Papa John’s, Little Ceasar’s, Pizza Hut and California Pizza Kitchen amongst its membership, along with suppliers including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, the National Pork Producers Council and Tyson. And together these companies are thrusting a collective middle finger at what they say are onerous regulations pushed by clueless bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.

And to be fair, some of the APC’s arguments have a point. As the outcries against the increasing obesity rate in America led to more calls for calorie counts on menus, fast food companies and restaurant chains from McDonald’s to Darden (the Olive Garden outfit) scrambled to do so. Even the National Restaurant Association, long feared in D.C., collaborated on a menu labeling law. But when it comes to pizza, it’s complicated. First, there is not much of a point of disclosing calorie counts on a menu next to the cash register when most pizza cravers call for delivery or use their smartphone during yet another House of Cards mini-marathon—all on the same phone, of course. Just about every pizza outlet delivers—McDonald’s and Chipotle don’t. Should calorie counts be discussed during that phone call, or should they be on the smartphone app?

Therefore, as a recent Bloomberg article points out, the pizza industry felt that the aforementioned NRA threw it under the bus. As calorie disclosure rules got intertwined into the Affordable Care Act, the FDA proposed regulations mandating calorie counts for an entire pizza pie—which would freak out consumers since anyone over the age of 17 and not a defensive lineman has zero business eating an entire pizza. Why not disclose calories per slice? And what if you have extra pepperoni, anchovies, barbecued chicken, etc., etc., and a few hundred more etcetera’s? How long would that calorie count list be?

But the pizza lobby’s fight against regulators is not about protecting the corner pizzeria in your neighborhood from federal regulators, nor is it over discerning how many calories are really in a ham-pineapple-and-fried-egg pizza. This fight is about preserving its business, much of it thanks to these companies’ clutches on the federal, state and local treasuries. Before Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move Campaign,” the federal government was long a friend of the pizza industry, thanks in part to agribusiness interests pushing the USDA to sell more cheese. A division of the agency worked with pizza companies like Domino’s load more cheese on their pizza, and sales surged. But in addition to subsidized marketing campaigns, at least one pizza manufacturer has a huge stake in the school lunch business.

Schwan’s Food Service, based in Minnesota, claims it has a 70 percent market share within the pizza segment of the multi-billion school food service sector. One graphic in the New York Times shows that at one point, within the $US20 billion school lunch industry, almost half a billion was spent on pizza (depending on your stance on this kerfuffle, you will be amused or appalled to learn the Times did not bother estimating national spend on baby carrots). Regulations that could affect whether tomato paste is a vegetable or not, including whole grains in the crust or cramming in more vegetables on that reheated slice of pie cuts into these business’s profits: and any business used to having government as a customer, when threatened, will not go down quietly. All you have to do is play the kid and consumer choice cards: kids love pizza (they aren’t fools), and tempeh-and-miso wraps are not cheap enough to tuck into school menus. Plus kids will just toss those wraps anyway.

Given the political climate in Congress and most state legislatures, the pizza industry will be safe and continue to grow. It is easy to demonize a hamburger; maligning a slice of (fake) Italian goodness is a tougher battle. And since America is generally a regulation-adverse nation in general, those who advocate for children’s health will need to find other tactics to win hearts and minds. Because as American as apple pie may be, pizza has a much better funded public relations campaign behind it.

Based in Fresno, California, Leon Kaye is a business writer and strategic communications specialist. He has also been featured in The Guardian, Clean Technica, Sustainable Brands, Earth911, Inhabitat, Architect Magazine and Wired.com. When he has time, he shares his thoughts on his own site, GreenGoPost.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.

Image credit: Leon Kaye

Having grown rapidly to become “Latin America’s leading e-commerce site,” Dafiti is touting five of the region's major cities as hubs for launching new Internet-driven businesses.

Buenos Aires (Argentina), Medellín (Colombia), Monterrey (Mexico), São Paulo (Brazil) and Santiago (Chile) are becoming viable alternatives to the likes of Silicon Valley and counterparts in Europe, the company said.

Expanding from its initial base in São Paulo, Dafiti has launched e-commerce brands and businesses in all four of the other Latin American cities on the list. “The entrepreneurial scene has improved significantly in Latin America in the past decade and is emerging as as a strong competitor to its American and European counterparts,” Dafiti stated in a recent press release. “Entrepreneurs from all over the world are flocking to the continent to benefit from a number of brilliant funding programs and networking opportunities.”

Dafiti is one of a rapidly expanding aggregation of online e-commerce startups founded by Berlin's Rocket Internet Group, whose goal is to become “the largest Internet platform in the world outside of the U.S. and China.” In recent years, Rocket has “cloned” and acquired e-commerce brands outside retail fashion, including online food delivery.

Latin America's emerging startup hubs

Headquartered in Brazil, Dafiti employs some 1,500 people in South America's largest and most populous nation. It has employed over 2,000 more as it expanded and established a physical commercial presence in Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Mexico.

In a press release, Dafiti elaborated the reasons it believes Buenos Aires, Medellín, Monterrey, Santiago and São Paulo qualify as emerging hubs for entrepreneurial, Internet-driven startup businesses:

1. Buenos Aires, Argentina

As well as being the political, financial and commercial center of Argentina, Buenos Aires is one of the most cosmopolitan cities in South America and subsequently the region’s most dynamic startup hotspot.

• Funding and support: The locally well known seed fund accelerator NXTP Labs provides upcoming startups with a seed investment of US$25,000. Local government has also noted the benefits of successful commerce in the city and recently announced an initiative to invest US$3.5 million to support local startup accelerators.


• Trump card: The workforce here is both highly skilled and cost efficient: 35.2 percent of the working population hold a certificate in tertiary education, while the minimum wage stands at a reasonable US $548 per month (2015).


• Success story: Mercadolibre is the Argentinian eBay and the most successful startup in the country. Its service is now available in 13 countries, and eBay is a listed shareholder.

2. Medellín, Colombia

The startup flow in Colombia is growing exceptionally fast. The most recent Colombia Startups meeting, an annual event for entrepreneurs and investors, hosted 1,500 attendees -- 164 of whom were investors – which represented a 25 percent increase in attendees.

• Funding and support: Programs like Ruta N, an innovation and business center created by local government, aim to boost new businesses which promote and strengthen the scientific, technological and innovative development in Colombia. Ruta N offers support for new businesses to grow in departments including finance, recruitment and PR.


• Trump card: Medellín runs on a similar time zone to the West Coast of the United States, which has its own benefits in terms of ease of communication. In 2013 Medellín was named the most innovative city of the year by the Urban Land Institute due to its progress and potential.


• Success story: PagosOnline started with just US$5,000 in 2002. Thirteen years, a rebrand and an investment of US$10 million later, PagosOnline by PayU is now is the biggest platform for online payments in Latin America.

3. São Paulo, Brazil

The Brazilian economy is expanding rapidly and is subsequently a good landscape for both foreign and local businesses.

• Funding and support: The national startup initiative, Startup Brazil, supports companies less than four years old. This program provides support for startups in the form of investment, physical infrastructure, legal advice and training. The Brazilian government is also promoting initiatives for startups through its Tech Sampa program, which aims to create and attract innovative ventures in the field of technology.


• Trump card: As the largest economy in the southern hemisphere, São Paulo is a great environment for building contacts and expanding operations.


• Success story: Worth more than US$250 million, Dafiti, Brazil's largest online fashion retailer, is one of the most interesting startups in Latin America. Available in six countries, Dafiti is helping reshape the future of e-commerce in Latin America through its use of iBeacon technology.

4. Monterrey, Mexico

As México’s richest city, Monterrey is considered to be one of the best places to do business in the country and stands as a symbol of progress in Latin America.

• Funding and support: Startup Studio Monterrey, a Mexican startup incubator, recently launched a program to provide entrepreneurs with projects in the IT sector with specialized mentoring and workplaces. Entrepreneurs don't have to pay to be part of the program, but the incubator takes 6 percent of each project’s profits.


• Trump card: The tech industry in Monterrey has grown three times faster than the global average in the last 15 years. This rapid growth is generally attributed to the support and funding available in the city.


• Success story: Huichol Vertical Gardens has grown from a hobby to a thriving startup. Since growing the niche market in Monterrey, they have extended their operations all over Mexico and plan to expand from residential to corporate projects this year.

5. Santiago, Chile

Santiago is the economic, cultural and now the financial center of the country. Its increasing appeal to international entrepreneurs is one reason why the startup scene here is quickly becoming known as the “Chilecon Valley."

• Funding and support: The Chilean government’s program Startup Chile aims to attract world-class entrepreneurs to the country. If accepted onto the program, participants receive an initial US$40,000 grant, a year-long resident visa and support from entrepreneurs in the relevant sector.


• Trump card: Due to Chile’s reduced regulatory complexity, businesses are fully registered within an average of 5.5 days -- a drastic difference to the continent’s average of 30.1 days (World Bank Group).


• Success story: Motion Displays is an app which optimizes client-sales team contact for businesses. The startup currently has a partnership with Falabella, the largest department store in South America, and plans to expand into larger foreign markets in the coming year.

"Cloning" e-commerce brands and sustainable development

E-commerce sites alone do not a sustainable business make, however. Having raised billions of dollars in capital from a diverse mix of investment groups, including the World Bank Group's International Finance Corp. (IFC), Rocket Internet has also convinced the likes of J.P. Morgan Asset Management and the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan of its commercial merits and prospects.

Others question those merits. In particular, critics question the justification of the investments in Dafiti made by the IFC. (The World Bank Group member's primary mission is to provide equity capital for business ventures and projects that “end extreme poverty by 2030 and boost shared prosperity” in developing countries worldwide.)

Yet the billions it has raised from private- and public-sector investment groups has given Rocket the capital required to expand rapidly across world regions. Along the way, it has bought up small, local companies in each of the business sectors it targeted, including online food delivery.

To date, Rocket's Internet-based, “on-demand” food delivery businesses “cover over 140,000 restaurants across 64 global markets,” TechCrunch's Jon Russell reported. As Russell points out:

“Rocket Internet gained notoriety for a perceived policy of ‘cloning’ successful start-ups in a bid to make a quick buck by selling them later ... An IPO in Germany last year left many divided on its future plans, particularly with regard to exiting many of its global ventures — some of which have taken in hundreds of millions of dollars from investors.”

In advance of its IPO on the German stock market, Rocket and one of its biggest co-investors, Kinnevik, announced they would “consolidate five of the fashion brands that [Rocket] has established in emerging markets into a single entity that will have a combined valuation of €2.7 billion (US$3.5 billion),” Tech Crunch reported.

“The companies getting consolidated have florid, fantasitcal names — they include Dafiti (Latin America), Jabong (India), Lamoda (Russia and CIS), Namshi (Middle East) and Zalora (South East Asia and Australia). In contrast, the new umbrella group has a distinctly more prosaic moniker: It will be called Global Fashion Group (GFG).”

Along with the facts and arguments presented by Rocket Internet management in the business group's defense, the IFC has defended its investment in Rocket. It stated that Rocket's strategy of launching regionally-focused e-commerce brands and acquiring local businesses is helping to build a foundation for sustainable economic development, growth and job creation.

*Image credits: 1) Dafiti; 2) World Cities Culture Forum; 3) Rocket Internet

By Kim Tjoa

Our society is changing. ‘Us’ is becoming the new ‘me.' Access to items is becoming more important than actually possessing them. We are in the midst of a transition to a circular, sharing economy in which we make more efficient use of everything we already have. We are now looking to share, lend/borrow and exchange anything and everything.

The development to a sharing economy presents a huge chance for procurement and facility professionals. Why should we stay focused on buying while everybody else is sharing? Why not explore the possibility of sharing underutilized company assets (equipment, services, real estate and personnel) to save money or generate additional income?

Asset Sharing: Business-to-business collaboration

The sharing economy has gained immense popularity in 2014 but is projected to be an even bigger trend in 2015. This year will be epitomized by more efficiently utilizing what we already have through sharing (renting or trading) with others. At organizations and businesses all around the world, expensive equipment is standing idle, rooms are empty and important knowledge is not being used the way it could be. It would be a shame not to do anything with these assets. After all, anything that stands idle does not bring in any revenue, costs money and is definitely not sustainable.

Through the use of online sharing platforms such as FLOOW2, every business or organization is able to make supply and demand transparent. On a sharing marketplace, assets like trucks, cars, printing equipment, furniture, dining facilities, meeting rooms -- and also knowledge, skill and time of personnel -- become commercially visible for fellow businesses and organizations.

The business model of the future

The advantages of sharing idle assets are twofold. Businesses are able to save costs when they rent from each other instead of investing in the purchase of equipment or the hiring of personnel. Additionally, they are able to generate additional income by (temporarily) renting out assets.

Asset sharing wouldn’t be part of the business model of the future if, besides financial, it wouldn’t bring sustainable and social advantages. When businesses collaborate and utilize the assets that other organizations have already invested in, fewer new products will have to be produced, which will result in a more healthy use of resources and energy.

The new task and opportunity for procurement and facility management?

It sounds simple, and it is. However, business-to business sharing requires professional attention. That's a task that a facility professional would be well suited for, don’t you think?

For the past 15 years, procurement and facility mangers have successfully focused the ways in which facilities management (FM) businesses are able to run in a more (cost) effective way.

As of 2015, we notice that the opportunities for FM to continue the optimization process are few and far between. In many cases it will not be possible to save costs without letting the quality of the services and organizations deteriorate.

Current developments such as the sharing economy will change this trend, as it allows procurement and facility professionals to actually generate additional income while also helping the business become more sustainable and social. Asset sharing gives these professionals a tool to solidify their value within an organization. They will not have to ‘settle’ for the fact that there are empty office, storage and meeting spaces, that there are cafeterias that are only in use one hour per day, or company cars that don’t make the miles they could, employees not working to fullest potential and that knowledge stays hidden.

Putting it into practice

The switch to asset sharing will not be easy of course. The management team has to be on board, and an organization has to be ready and know how to embrace this new addition to their business.

It will be the task of facility managers to think along with the executives, advise them, and make an inventory of supply and demand. They should ask themselves, “What do we have temporarily available and what do we need?” They should actively implement the model in the daily business of their organizations and make sure that every employee knows that if an item is not available or if they are in need of something, that it’s better look to their neighbors before anything else. But, most importantly, they will need to be proactive about the management of matching supply and demand, closing deals, arranging transport and taking care of billing. Then, asset sharing will become anyone’s new business.

Image credit: Flickr/Flazingo Photos

Kim Tjoa is co-founder of FLOOW2 World’s Reset Button, the first B2B sharing marketplace for companies and organizations.

Used widely in nature, lamination – the deposition of fine layers of materials on top of one another – has long been known as a means of manufacturing stronger, more durable and longer lasting metals. Founded in 2006, Seattle's Modumetal is applying the process of lamination at nano-scale, enabling engineers to design and fabricate metals with superior performance characteristics and at lower cost than conventional methods.

The ability to cost-effectively fabricate nanolaminate metals that are more resistant to rust and corrosion alone would be a boon. Such materials could be used by engineering and construction companies for everything from civil engineering of public infrastructure to offshore energy (wind, as well as oil and gas), mining, home and building construction, tools, and consumer products. In a 2002 study, international corrosion authority NACE estimated corrosion in the U.S. results in direct costs of $276 billion a year across the economy.

At present, Modumetal's products fall into one of four lines: structural parts, coatings and claddings, thermal barriers, and armor. Its zinc-based alloy NanoGalv outperforms conventional galvanization processes by over seven times, Modumetal co-founder and CEO Christina Lomasney said during an October 2014 interview for Rigzone. That significantly reduces the need for replacement parts over the life of metal components, as well as the risks and costs of fatigue and failure.

Nano-scale manufacturing of metal laminates

Development, and subsequent acquisition, of a new process to cost-effectively manufacture nanolaminate metal alloys at scale was the pivotal breakthrough achieved by Modumetal's founders.

Rather than employing conventional vapor deposition – expensive and limited in terms of scale – Modumetal essentially “grows” custom-designed metals using an electrochemical process. This results in uniform deposition of nano-scale layers that conform to the exterior and interior contours of any object, no matter how complex its shape or form.

In an October, 2014 interview for Rigzone, Lomasney likened the process to the way Mother Nature builds structural components of living things, such as trees.

“If you look at a tree, you see the theme of a configured material,” Lomasney was quoted as saying. “In Mother Nature’s case, the structure is built so the seasons determine the density of the wood. In our case, electric field modulation is the equivalent of seasons, which is the core technology. We’re basically growing the laminated structure.”

The resulting nanolaminate metals and alloys can be designed to be lighter, stronger, more durable and more flexible than conventional metal products of whatever kind – steel, aluminum, etc. And they can be produced in high volume cost effectively, Modumetal touts.

Nanolaminate metal alloys: Lifecycle costs and commercial prospects

Major offshore oil and gas industry players have shown strong interest in Modumetal's manufacturing process and products. Chevron and ConocoPhillips have invested in the privately-held company.

Modumetal has also announced it's working with Hess on issues including corrosion, wear protection and structural reinforcement.

Building on its commercial prospects in the oil and gas industry, Modumetal in May 2014 announced it commissioned a new production facility in Washington state's Snohomish County. The new facility “is supporting production lines for coatings and claddings of oil and gas production and casing tubulars, and is already expanding to accommodate growing product interest,” management stated in a press release.

Added Lomasney: “By using our patented coating and cladding technology in demanding, highly corrosive and punishing environments, we are demonstrating significant improvements in the performance, durability and longevity of oil-producing assets, all while maintaining cost competitiveness with commodity metal products.”

All other things held constant, effectively extending the life of metal alloys used across economic sectors would mean less demand for these materials and less need to mine more metal ores. Such reductions would also result in less air, water and land pollution by way of mining and metals production, thereby enhancing environmental and socioeconomic sustainability and quality of life.

*Image credits: 1), 2) Modumetal; 2) BillLawrenceOnline

Europe’s coal plants will be allowed to emit more deadly pollutants than their Chinese counterparts under EU proposals for new air quality rules, according to Greenpeace.

A Greenpeace investigation has found new pollution limits for coal-fired power plants currently being discussed by the European Union are significantly weaker than those in place in China, as well as several times weaker than what’s already been achieved by the least polluting plants in other developed economies, including the US and Japan.

The findings come in the wake of a report by Europe’s environmental watchdog warning that hundreds of thousands of people could die prematurely in the EU over the next two decades if member states fail to tackle air pollution. 

Commenting on the findings, Greenpeace UK energy campaigner Lawrence Carter said: "This is a classic case of the fox guarding the henhouse. By leaving the big polluters to write new air pollution rules, EU and UK ministers are guilty of a collective dereliction of duty. Toxic emissions are killing thousands of people across Europe every year, but rather than clamp down on polluters, politicians are allowing them to prioritise profit over public health. People in the UK could now end up paying with their health for our government's sell-out to the coal lobby on a vital issue like air quality."

Access the full report here.