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Japanese automobile manufacturer Nissan tops a new league ranking car brands on their emissions reductions.

The research has been compiled by climate change organisation CDP to rank auto manufacturers in a league table based on a number of different emissions-related metrics. CDP believes that taken in aggregate, the metrics could have a material impact on a company’s earnings in a global auto market where emissions regulation is tightening. Fleet emissions regulation now covers more than 80% of global auto sales, it maintains.

Toyota ranked in second place and Mazda in fourth. French company Renault gained third place. CDP say the brands ranked highly due to leadership in fleet emissions reduction and advanced vehicles which include battery electric vehicles (BEVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and fuel cell vehicles.

CDP emphasises that the rankings are not intended to identify definitive winners and losers for investment purposes, but rather to indicate strategic advantage in an industry where there is a significant regulatory impact on all major auto markets.

Appearing the near the bottom of the table,  Hyundai scored D-grades for its fleet emissions in the EU, US and China, and also for its advanced vehicle range. General Motors and FCA (Fiat Chrysler Automobiles) were noted as the worst performers for CDP's fleet emissions grade and Tata Motors is the bottom-ranked company of those disclosing to CDP. This was partly due to an incomplete response to CDP’s questionnaire, together with the fact it has not released an advanced vehicle.

Access the report, ‘No room for passengers: are auto manufacturers reducing emissions quickly enough?' here.

Despite their enduring popularity and sketchy health claims, dietary supplements are not regulated to the degree food and drugs are by the U.S. federal government.

That is largely thanks to Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, who wrote the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA). Past efforts to amend the law so that supplements could be subjected to some degree of scientific testing have been blasted as attempts to “overregulate” the multi-billion dollar industry. But critics of the industry will be calling for more regulations after what has been discovered at large retail chains including Walmart, Target, GNC and Walgreens.

According to cease-and-desist letters sent by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, at least five dietary supplements sold at these stores have been mislabeled. Instead of St. John’s Wort, ginseng, garlic, Echinacea and saw palmetto, DNA testing revealed consumers were instead swallowing a bevy of placebos, and even allergens, including rice, wheat or dracaena — a species of tropical houseplant.

The investigation was sparked by a 2013 investigative report in the New York Times that alleged many supplements on the market were no more than powdered rice and weeds. The article quoted a Canadian university study that used DNA barcoding to reveal that many of the supplements researchers tested were of poor quality, highly diluted or even contaminated. A Department of Health and Human Services (DHH) study completed around the same time found that misleading medical claims were also frequently made by supplement manufacturers.

In the meantime, the New York Attorney General’s office has contacted the four companies’ CEOs, asking for documentation related to the sourcing of the supplements in question. Each letter reflects a disturbing trend: Only a small minority of supplement samples taken from different New York store locations revealed plant DNA matching the product label. The vast majority either revealed different plant material or no plant DNA at all, suggesting many of these products are so over-processed that any health benefits were lost during their manufacture.

The fight over the regulation of supplements has dragged on for a generation, and considering the current makeup of Congress, it is doubtful any progress on what has turned a promising industry into a nationwide scam will be made anytime soon.

So, what are consumers to do? They can start with educating themselves by reading up on websites such as those run by NSF or ConsumerLab.com. One startup, LabDoor, has made progress on testing vitamins and supplements on the market and has thousands more products in the pipeline. But do not expect an industry that has profited from dubious scientific claims and a complete lack of transparency for years to give in anytime soon.

Image credit: FDA

Based in California, Leon Kaye has also been featured in The Guardian, Clean Technica, Sustainable Brands, Earth911, Inhabitat, Architect Magazine and Wired.com. He shares his thoughts on his own site, GreenGoPost.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.

Leftover pizza dough into ethanol fuel and old uniforms into pet bed stuffing – where some peek into a business’ dumpster and see only trash, Rubicon Global finds opportunity.

The Atlanta-based waste management company wants to help corporations cut their waste streams, find innovative recycling options for their unconventional waste materials and slash their garbage bills by as much as 20 to 30 percent, Rubicon told the New York Times.

Founded in 2008, the company has nabbed contracts with 7-Eleven, grocery chains like Wegman’s, big box retail stores, hospitals and even several Fortune 500 companies, the New York Times reported. Rubicon acts like a waste consultant – studying a business’ waste stream and cataloging the data into its proprietary software platform, called Caesar.

Using this technology, Rubicon’s clients can monitor their own discards, and Rubicon can investigate ways to reduce the company’s waste stream and bills, Wired reported. One of the simplest cost-saving measures is to have Caesar determine if a client can have its garbage picked up less frequently.

Rubicon also utilizes Caesar to host an online auction where trash collection companies can bid on its client’s waste management contracts, the New York Times reported. This virtual marketplace promotes competition among waste haulers, driving down rates for Rubicon’s clients.

Rubicon’s innovative software also analyzes a client’s waste stream and displays a list of local recyclers that will accept or pay for waste materials the client generates, Wired reported – from restaurant distributer Martin-Brower's typical recyclables like organic waste, cardboard and shrink wrap, to the less conventional: the aforementioned pizza dough from a national pizza chain and 400,000 company uniforms from a regional supermarket chain, according to the New York Times report. A Rubicon client was even able to sell the insulated containers it used to carry seafood to a company that repurposed them to transport bull semen.

And when the client benefits from reducing its waste stream, so does Rubicon. As Rubicon saves clients money on their garbage bills or makes them a profit from selling recyclable materials, it takes a cut of the earnings, Wired reported.

This is a very different revenue model than the ones used by waste collection companies like Waste Management and Republic Services, Rubicon CEO and co-founder Nate Morris told the New York Times. These corporations not only haul trash, but also own the landfills where the trash is buried. And because they’re paid by the ton for the garbage entering the landfill (a fee structure originally designed to discourage waste), they don’t have a financial incentive to encourage businesses to reduce their waste stream and recycle more.

Rubicon is certainly not the only company out there aiming to reduce garbage bills for clients; a Waste Management spokesperson told the New York Times that the waste industry has hundreds of such brokers. But Rubicon, in its market niche as high-tech waste broker to large corporate clients, has no “head-to-head competitor,” Morris told the newspaper.

And investors are clearly taking notice: Rubicon announced in January that it raised $30 million to expand its operations nationwide and invest in new recycling technology research, Wired reported. One of the new technologies that Rubicon is currently testing is a dumpster-mounted camera and sensors that send an alert when the bin is full or has been emptied.

Rubicon may be catching attention for introducing technology to a traditionally low-tech industry, but its founder’s political philosophies are also unique. Morris is a staunch Republican, and these days, the terms “Republican” and “environmentalist” are anything but complementary. But Morris, a friend of and fundraiser for Rand Paul and a former intern for Mitch McConnell, thinks the GOP should embrace a concern for the environment.

“I felt [environmentalism] was an issue that a lot of people within my own political persuasion have lost, which I feel should be our issue,” he told the New York Times.  “The main driver of environmental change should not be government or NGOs — it should be the market.”

While I would personally advocate for the public, nonprofit AND private sectors all working to effect environmental change, Morris is right that more companies need to use the market to advance sustainability – and Republicans are missing out when they completely ignore or shut down environmental debate.

Image credit: Flickr/Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources

Passionate about both writing and sustainability, Alexis Petru is freelance journalist and communications consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area whose work has appeared on Earth911, Huffington Post and Patch.com. Prior to working as a writer, she coordinated environmental programs for Bay Area cities and counties. Connect with Alexis on Twitter at @alexispetru

Another fossil fuel company is realizing the need to report on the risks associated with climate change.

Royal Dutch Shell, the multinational oil and gas company known by most as Shell, is supporting a shareholder resolution that requires the company to recognize climate change risks.

A group of shareholders called the  “Aiming for A” coalition, coordinated by ClientEarth and ShareAction, filed the resolution last year. It was co-filed by a total of 52 institutions with a combined 52 million shares of Shell.

Shell will recommend that its shareholders vote for the resolution at its annual general meeting in May, the company announced last week.

The “Aiming for A” investor coalition filed a similar resolution with BP on Jan. 21. Another resolution, filed with ExxonMobil last year, was withdrawn after the company agreed to publish a report on carbon asset risk.

Shell stated in a letter that its board “has given consideration to the resolution and has decided to recommend that shareholders support the resolution at the [annual general meeting].” The letter also stated that the company maintains its “commitment to engage with our shareholders in this area and look forward to implementing the resolution should it be passed at the [meeting]."

“It is actually quite uncommon for a company to support a shareholder proposal – in the past 15 years for example, only Newmont Mining and Tyco have supported CBIS resolutions,” said Dan Nielsen, director of Catholic Responsible Investing at Christian Brothers Investment Services (CBIS), a member of the investment coalition.

The shareholder resolution asks Shell to do the following:

“That in order to address our interest in the longer term success of the Company, given the recognized risks and opportunities associated with climate change, we as shareholders of the Company direct that routine annual reporting from 2016 includes further information about: ongoing operational emissions management; asset portfolio resilience to the International Energy Agency’s scenarios; low-carbon energy research and development and investment strategies; relevant strategic key performance indicators and executive incentives; and public policy positions relating to climate change.”

Energy demand could increase by up to 80 percent by 2050 while carbon emissions need to “urgently fall to limit the impact of serious climate change,” Shell stated on its website. Although the company states that fossil fuels will be “meeting the bulk of demand,” Shell also stated that carbon emissions “must be reduced to avoid serious climate change.”

Clearly, Shell realizes that climate change is real and serious. The company even has a Chief Climate Adviser. His name is David Hone, and he started writing a weekly blog post about climate change issues in 2008. From 2008 to 2014, he wrote 250 blog posts about climate change.

Image credit: GS André

Join Social Venture Network for the 2015 SVN Spring Conference, April 16-19, in San Diego. The event is open to active members, affiliates, family members and first-time prospective members. Click here to register.

As a lead-up to the conference, SVN is sharing best business practices from its members in a series of short video clips. Follow the series here.

By Social Venture Network

SVN members have launched some of the most innovative organizations in the mission-driven business community. They've experienced success, failure, setbacks and breakthroughs ... and are very candid about the lessons they learned the hard way.

In this video, SVN member and local economy pioneer Judy Wicks, founder of White Dog Cafe and author of "Good Morning, Beautiful Business," shares how staying local helped her business flourish, and allowed her to build lasting relationships with employees, suppliers, customers and community.

For more business advice from SVN members, check out "The Best Advice I Never Got" here.

Image and video courtesy of Social Venture Network.

Last year was rough for the at-home beverage carbonation systems maker, SodaStream. Its stock plunged 60 percent from a year ago, and after several years of impressive growth, sales have declined the past couple of years.

Sales were never strong in the U.S., but then they also slowed down in Europe, where the company’s performance had always been steady. The only region where the company saw growth was in Australia. Add the spit-spat involving its celebrity spokeswoman, Scarlett Johansson -- over her relationship then clash with Oxfam due to the company’s controversial factory in the West Bank -- and 2014 was a year SodaStream would like to forget.

Now SodaStream, which has had its share of confrontation with beverage companies and will face increased competition from the likes of Coca-Cola, is betting that a change in its message can help the company rebound. Rather than tout its products’ environmental benefits, the company is emphasizing the health and wellness benefits of drinking water.

For years, SodaStream has touted a “reduce, reuse and recycle” approach in the U.S. The company insisted its home carbonation systems were an “Active Green” product, a claim with a degree of truth but one that came across as silly with its “the more you use, the more you save” mantra. True, making one’s own fizzy drinks has less of a carbon impact than driving to the store, especially considering the fact that bottled drinks have already consumed fuel as they are shipped from bottling plant to retailer. That reasoning, however, got lost with American consumers. SodaStream also made the case that drinking bottled water was a wasteful habit, and while the company was on point, the overall messaging, including boasts about its reduced carbon footprint, fell flat with consumers like a defective canister of CO2.

One wonders if SodaStream even believed its own campaigns. Clearly no one was reading SodaStream’s environmental blog — the articles spouted the same information, and nothing has been posted since last summer. The same goes for positive news about the company: There hasn’t been much said about SodaStream in a good light, so that section has been pretty sparse, too. Instead of agreeing to “Set the Bubbles Free,” consumers ignored SodaStream’s old slogan and instead left the bubbles sitting on retailers’ shelves.

So, what is the answer? Water must be more exciting! In what turns out to be a conveniently timed survey, SodaStream has revealed that American SodaStream users drink 43 percent more water than “average Americans.” Those of us who have a SodaStream machine on our kitchen counter or wet bar, says the survey, apparently drink more than twice the amount of water daily. Hence the company introduced its new tagline, “Water Made Exciting,” and has made a subtle logo change: Now “Stream” is highlighted instead of “Soda.” Meanwhile the company is introducing a new line of “natural” flavors, while Fast Company has noted more exotic concoctions such as Yuzu Mandarin and Lime Basil are in the works.

Whether SodaStream can recover and then thrive with this new strategy remains to be seen. A small pilot project with PepsiCo, if it turns into a bigger deal, could reverse the company’s fortunes -- or irritate its consumer base since many of them want to avoid the big beverage giants in the first place.

The company also has to improve its distribution system, which worked in some markets but flopped in others — and left stores with too many carbonators over past holiday seasons.

Like any company, SodaStream needs to focus on its marketing and products’ performance: Excessive attention put on “green” consumers is a losing proposition because companies limit themselves when focusing on such a small, niche market. Creating passion, emphasizing cutting-edge performance and product design — similar to what the home cleaning brand, Method, has done over the years — is what could turn SodaStream’s fortunes around as its messaging becomes more inclusive.

Image credit: SodaStream

Based in California, Leon Kaye has also been featured in The Guardian, Clean Technica, Sustainable Brands, Earth911, Inhabitat, Architect Magazine and Wired.com. He shares his thoughts on his own site, GreenGoPost.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has published new legal guidance on freedom of expression. 

Following the recent Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, there has been considerable debate both nationally and internationally about free speech. The new guidance aims to help address ‘muddle and misunderstanding’ around specific areas of Britain’s laws on freedom of expression, says the EHRC.

The guidance explains there are legitimate ways the state restrains what people can say but the test for curtailing freedom of expression in law is a stringent one, and much that is offensive is still legal.

Freedom of expression can however be restricted in certain circumstances, the gu For example, where it incites violence against others or promotes hatred based on the colour of someone’s skin or their sexual orientation or their religion.

Chief Executive Mark Hammond said: “The recent tragic events in Paris have again highlighted the importance of freedom of expression in our society. We have a long history of debating free speech in this country and the law recognises its value and importance.

“Today’s guidance aims to address any muddle and misunderstanding about the law. What goes beyond causing offence and promotes hatred is sometimes a fine line and the source of intense debate. As an expert body and National Human Rights Institution, we hope we can play an important role in helping public bodies to understand and navigate this complex area.”

Download the guidance in full here. 

 

Picture credit: © Iqoncept | Dreamstime.com - Censored - Man Edits Text Censoring Freedom Of Speech Photo

 

 

Robeco Indian Equities D EUR Acc, a £22.78m fund, continued its good run and again top ranked amongst UK Registered funds over the past year to 31 December 2014 with a cumulative return of +41.10% versus +60.64%/16th rank over the past three years.

In second place out of 242 funds over the past year was the £474.26m AXA Framlington Health R Inc fund, which posted +29.57%, but scored a double first over the past three- and five-years with performances of +93.92% and +137.39%, respectively.

The £31.71m Sparinvest SICAV Eth HY Val Bnd EUR R fund took the wooden spoon in this sector over a past one-year view with -21.61% versus +10.25%/204th rank over the last three years. The bottom five funds here were all in negative territory for the past year to date.

Amongst 1,134 European Funds examined, the €775.93m Robeco Institutional Liability Driven EurCor Government bond 40 fund achieved a performance of +74.35% over the past year against +67.03%/82nd rank over past three.
MCO2 New Energy FEIF bottom ranked here on the past one-year horizon with a worsening -55.70% over a month earlier versus -67.17%/1,038th and -84.02%/915th over the past three and five years, respectively. LSF Asian Solar & Wind A1 fund, which was ranked in the bottom five funds in this sector with -14.37% over the last year, has by contrast performed well for the past three-year period with +81.38%/21st.

The US Mutual funds sector produced the best peer group average out of all five sectors analysed by Morningstar at +46.30% over the past three years and +64.80% over the last five. The $768.29m Parnassus Endeavor Fund again scooped top spoils in this sector comprising 193 funds for the past 12 months with +18.50%, after top ranking to 30 November 2014. This compared with fund’s +89.64%/5th and +110.71%/16th over the last three and five years. That said, the $986.62m Eventide Gilead N fund was a close second for the past year on +17.86%, but produced even more scintillating performances of +112.95%/1st and +152.87%/1st over the past three and five-years, respectively.

The $4.70m Epiphany FFV Latin America A fund took the wooden spoon here on -15.17% over the past year just from Guinness Atkinson Alternative Energy, a $15.22m fund, on -14.29% (versus +17.42%/152nd over past three years).
The UK Individual pensions sector exhibited the best peer group average return over the past year versus all other sectors with +27.37%.  

 

Picture credit: © Primus1 | Dreamstime.com - Stocks Photo

The Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) has welcomed Philip Chamberlain as its new chair.

Chamberlain brings a wealth of retail experience to the role, gained working with prominent European clothing brand C&A. He also has a strong background in linking business to social responsibility; he is a corporate representative on the Bangladesh Accord Steering Committee, which was established to improve health and safety conditions within Bangladesh’s garment sector. He notably established the Mondial Initiative for Social Development (a pre-cursor to the C&A Foundation), which financed a significant number of social projects in C&A’s sourcing countries. Most recently, Philip was part of a delegation of brands and trade unions that met with the Cambodian government, voicing support for raised wage levels in the garment sector.

ETI director Peter McAllister said: “It’s a pleasure to welcome someone of Philip’s calibre as our new Chair. He brings an in-depth knowledge about the complexity of global supply chains, and experience of working in partnership with diverse groups of stakeholders to improve working conditions. This is an exciting phase in ETI’s development as we finalise our strategy to 2020, and we know we’ll benefit tremendously from Philip’s stewardship.”

Chamberlain commented: “It’s a privilege to take up the role of Chair at ETI. In this world of rapidly changing consumer preferences and retail models, we must all work harder than ever to uphold the rights of those producing the goods and services we consume. As an alliance of companies, trade unions and NGOs, ETI brings together the knowledge, networks and commercial leverage needed to catalyse change for workers in global supply chains. I look forward to playing a leading role, as ETI charts a course for the future.”
 

The fashion industry as a whole doesn't have a great reputation. Consider the culture of overconsumption and the growing tidal wave of low-quality, rock-bottom-priced products. How can it ever become truly sustainable?

Many companies have made strides in water conservation, eco-labels and have even engaged with consumers to talk about consumption. However, there is another avenue that can effect more widespread change: making better choices in the design phase.

To get more information, I spoke with Holly McQuillan, senior lecturer at Ngā Pae Māhutonga - the School of Design, and Debera Johnson and Tara St. James of the Brooklyn Fashion + Design Accelerator (BF+DA, part of the Pratt Institute), to discuss challenges in fashion and how change at the design level could impact the industry.

According to St. James, fashion has huge challenges at every level of the supply chain, from designers to manufacturers and consumers.

Material waste

McQuillan says that, in 2015, the fashion industry will produce 400 billion meters of fabric -- just for apparel. This is roughly the amount of fabric it would take to cover the entire state of California. Fifteen percent, or 60 billion meters, will be wasted during the production phase (extra fabric, itself a finished product, that ends up on the cutting room floor), before the garments even reach a consumer. The number of garments created each year is the equivalent of everyone in the world having 20 new items annually.

This excessive oversupply is driven by pressure on consumers to buy large numbers of garments and frequently replace them in order to keep up with changing fashions.

"The idea of fast fashion is like the packaging industry, where it’s used and thrown away very quickly, rather than the product that’s inside that’s of lasting value. So, when you start to imagine that kind of waste that’s produced from that kind of manufacturing, really it’s not fashion anymore, it’s packaging. It’s packaging for people," Johnson says.

McQuillan believes one solution is for items to be designed out of natural fibers (and could be compostable, like Freitag’s recent line), unlike the blended fabrics in common use today. A garment that is all cotton, or all polyester, can be recycled. But blend the two, and the fabric becomes a recycling liability. A design change could remedy this. Thoughtful use of zippers and buttons that are durable but can be removed later would also aid in end-of-life disposal.

As a designer, how do you encourage consumers to keep a garment? 

McQuillan thinks outside the box. “What if there were jeans that could be changed from boot-cut to thin-leg? Or a top that could go from a high neck to a low one? If there was a place you take them or send them to be altered and returned to you?” McQuillan asked. “Wouldn’t that make a great business model?”

Water conservation and traceability

Perhaps more than any other issue, many consumers are aware of the problem of water waste in fashion – both during production and consumer wear. Series sponsor, Levi’s, has made great strides in this area, developing a production process that uses less water for its Water<Less Jeans. This product came to fruition when the company took a step back and tackled the problem in the design phase. The company also encourages customers not to wash their jeans, engaging shoppers and saving valuable resources.

As for traceability, "You can grow cotton in North Carolina, ship it to Colombia to have it turned into T-shirts (or Mexico or Bangladesh), and it's very hard to track where it started and where it ended up," Johnson says.

Johnson and St. James believe that all these concepts are hard to convey to consumers in a manageable way, and many designers don't understand them, either, which exacerbates the problem. A few brands have tried to capture this information. Customers can track the journey of their clothes with Patagonia’s Footprint Chronicles program, and Timberland has launched an eco-label to make its products more transparent.

Design and changing fashion from the ground up

Many consumers don’t realize that garments are still made almost entirely by hand. While some industries have become automated, fashion is still created by people sitting down at machines and sewing. Despite recent mainstream news stories about horrible working conditions in sweatshops, factory fires and worker deaths, the concept still seems too remote for consumers to comprehend. Most customers don’t know how many hours of effort it takes to produce one piece of clothing. This ignorance has contributed to our current unsustainable state of fashion, McQuillan explains.

“Historically, wardrobes were treated better because garments cost more and were of higher quality. Now we don’t care [about our clothes] because clothes are so cheap. Fashion has never been cheaper than it is now." McQuillan says. Although she doesn't think we will see a huge change in the fashion industry in our lifetime, she remains optimistic. "[But] cultures change, so therefore the culture we have now can change.”

Right now, consumers can, and do, go out and buy a $5 shirt, and when it wears out in a few months, spend five more dollars to replace it.

How can consumers believe that a shirt only costs $5 to make? In the face of getting a good deal, many consumers don't want to look beyond that, but it is inherently an unsustainable business model. Somewhere that inequity has to be absorbed, and most often, Johnson says, it is another country’s economy that shoulders that burden.

McQuillan, Johnson and St. James, who all contribute to the education of emerging generations of designers, tell a similar story. Even when students love design, surprisingly they often don’t know about all the design choices they can make at the beginning of the process to improve the product and improve the industry.

St. James explains that when they work for a big brand, often designers only see part of the production process, and because the fashion supply chain is so complex, they are making design decisions based on limited understanding. However, sustainability is being built into many more fashion programs. Johnson puts the number at 35 and counting, and the increased awareness is making a difference.

A small manufacturing facility itself, BF+DA guides designers and small labels to develop their own lines by teaching them to look at the whole picture and make informed, sustainable decisions. Not only does it open designers' eyes when they are able to see the process from beginning to end in-house (people making the pattern, people cutting the fabric, people sewing the garments), but it is also eye-opening for the public, who are welcome to tour the facility.

"A lot of the corrections [to the industry] that are being made, are being made after [a product's design] -- not during the design process where they could really have the most impact," St. James says.

The only part of the process BF+DA cannot do (yet) is make their own fabric, but the school helps designers find the most sustainable options by helping them ask the manufacturers the right questions and feel empowered enough to ask.

"The goal for the BF+DA," Johnson says, "is to share [its knowledge] with as many people as possible. Sometimes people really want to do it [design sustainably], but they just don't have a clue as to how to start."

To that end, BF+DA is about two months from launching a website to describe the process and invite a virtual walk through.  The site will walk them through the process and also help them learn to approach design consciously by understanding sustainability from multiple perspectives like water, toxicity, energy usage and work force conditions.

If new generations of designers bring conscious and ethical thought to the design phase of the process, progress may begin to permeate the fabric of the industry from the ground up. With these programs and others, more designers will be able to see the big picture and learn the right questions to ask in order to make sustainability start at the beginning.

Image credit: Peter Tannenbaum, used with the permission of Brooklyn Fashion + Design Accelerator and the Pratt Institute.