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A prison in Cardiff, Wales, offered an awkward challenge to the city's 900 or so restaurants recently when its prisoner-staffed diner was named the best restaurant in the city.

The Clink Cymru restaurant, located in Wales' capital and largest city, outpaced 3- and 4-star classic Cardiff venues like Jamie's Italian, the Potted Pig and the Mint and Mustard for the top score as locals' favorite eatery. Voters weighed in on TripAdvisor, and the results of the 395 votes were picked up by the South Wales Evening Post.

The Cymru restaurant is run by the aptly named The Clink Charity, which helps establish initiatives that will give low-risk offenders opportunities for retraining and a new future. The restaurant, run and staffed by 30 Category-D prisoners (who are considered to be low risk for escape), is located at the HMP Cardiff Prison.

And in case you're wondering: No, this isn't your normal prison fare. Nor, of course, is the ambiance. Cymru's al a carte menu features starters like "duo of goat cheese and pesto, panna cotta, and spring roll," while its main courses range from "fish and chips with hand-cut fries" for the traditionalist, to "loin of venison, celeriac parmentier, sprout tops, girolles and juniper sauce." There's also the normal complement of deserts to polish off the meal.

Pay is obviously not the incentive here, since the staff only receives a stipend for their work (about $20 per 40 hours); success is. And most customers who weighed in took note of that.  "Service is phenomenal [and makes you] feel like you are in a Michelin star restaurant," said one reviewer.

"The atmosphere is very good, taking a baby to a restaurant can be an ordeal but they catered for all her needs without worrying about the mess a [1-year-old] makes," wrote another.

The charity runs four restaurants throughout Britain, including one that is slated to open in spring of 2015 in HM Styal, located in Styal, England.  Unlike the Cardiff prison, it is a closed women's prison, meaning the security is a bit tighter, but it still affords programs like The Clink's  occupational programs. The money raised in the dining room helps pay for the operation of the restaurant, whose costs are offset by a long list of private and public British charities. The Clink restaurants have also garnered elevated status by several organizations, such as the Association of Catering Excellence, which recognized the initiative in 2011.

The Clink Charity explains the motivating factors to its success on its website: The "issue of re-offending has become one of the most pressing challenges facing society today. 49 percent of prisoners released in the U.K. re-offend within the first year," it says. The number shoots up to 61 percent for those who serve less than a year.

Its five-step model of "recruit, train, audit, employ and mentor" is managed by its own employees. "That way there are no gaps for the prisoners to fall through and reoffend," explains the charity.

Image of desert: Jenny Downing 

Image of Cardiff Prison: Matt Buck

Proving themselves to be the ultimate utilitarian consumer devices, smartphones are providing individuals untethered access to an increasingly wide range of personal devices. These range from computers and TVs to lights, heating and air conditioning and household appliances.

The installed base of “things” connected to the Internet will expand to number some 30 billion by 2020, according to a November 2014 IDC forecast. Among the ever-growing number of “connected” devices, smartphones are emerging as the preeminent choice for accessing the rapidly expanding “Internet of Things.”

Broadband network connectivity, which feeds enormous quantities of data into powerful software applications residing in data centers, is essential in the drive to make “things” smarter. This trend is clearly evident in the energy market space. Presenting its latest offerings at the upcoming DistribuTECH 2015 Conference and Exhibition, home energy analytics provider Bidgely is introducing "a suite of products that transform utilities' big data into powerful insights to drive long-term customer engagement and energy savings.”

The cloud and the smart, connected home

Aiming to build a mass market for energy efficiency and clean energy, startups and established energy market players are rolling out a range of connected demand-response and demand-management products and services. They range from smart thermostats and home energy management apps to lighting controls, solar energy and battery storage systems.

Coincidentally, social media platforms have benefited greatly from the drive to make broadband network connectivity ever-present. In short order they have come to be considered essential tools for public outreach, customer engagement and new business development.

Sunnyvale, California-based Bidgely is capitalizing on the near ubiquity of smartphones, mobile devices and social media in building its home energy analytics business. It's also leveraging its ability to tap into, parse and process the massive amounts of data on consumer energy use collected by power utilities.

Bidgely in recent months announced deals via which its cloud-based “customer engagement and utility intelligence” apps and analytics will be rolled out to some 1.5 million utility customers in Canada and the U.S. Customers include London Hydro, TXU Energy and the Energy Excelerator project with utilities in Hawaii.

Disaggregating utility customer data

The key to Bidgely’s cloud-based, real-time energy analytics platform is its ability to “disaggregate” data on electricity usage within buildings and homes -- down to the level of individual appliances, equipment and devices -- without the need to install sensors or other hardware. That data can then be used to lower energy consumption and improve energy efficiency. By making that information accessible to home and building owners, it can also enhance customer engagement, or so the reasoning goes.

Mobile and Web apps provide the essential end-user front-end to Bidgely's powerful back-end, software-as-a-service (SaaS) energy analytics. The company is gearing up for the launch of its HomeBeat Web and Mobile app, HomeBeat Energy Monitor and HomeBeat Agent at the DistribuTECH 2015 trade show to be held at the San Diego Convention Center Feb. 3-5.

By tapping into and analyzing customer data collected by utilities, making use of Bidgely's home energy analytics platform does away with the need for utility customers to take the time or spend the money to have expensive sensors installed in their homes. “Bidgely is enabling a new wave of energy analytics and insights that is transforming utilities into trusted energy advisors for their customers,” CEO Abhay Gupta was quoted as saying.

“With appliance-level disaggregation technology at its core, our new products will help make utilities more competitive, relevant and user-friendly in their customers’ eyes – similar to other modern service providers that dominate the tech space.”

Beset and still behind the curve when it comes to solar, wind and distributed renewable energy generation, U.S. utilities are also struggling to find ways to capitalize on their investments in smart grid, demand response and demand-side management technology. Bidgely's cloud-based energy analytics platform can give them a leg-up, at least with regard to the latter.

“Bidgely's new software and hardware offerings reflect the innovations that are increasingly helping utilities deepen customer relationships and improve the bottom line," Raymond James analyst Pavel Molchanov was quoted in the news release. "2015 is poised to be a notable year for technologies that allow utilities to further leverage their smart grid infrastructure and provide compelling new products and services to customers."

*Images credit: Bidgely

By Sandra Stewart

Sexy sustainability. You always put those two words together, right?

Stop laughing. Sustainability is a lot of things, but for most of us, sexy isn’t one of them. That needs to change.

Polls consistently find that people want products and services to have sustainable attributes, and they plan to buy them. Just as consistently, actual purchases don’t match up with stated intentions. There are plenty of reasons for this disconnect, ranging from how much people know to how much people care. But marketing is surely part of the problem, and it may be the easiest part to address.

Marketers typically present sustainability in do-the-right-thing terms, as an afterthought or not at all (figuring, it’s not a motivator, so let’s not talk about it). Those approaches aren’t doing the job: If decades of id-targeted advertising have taught us anything, it’s that virtue doesn’t sell. And if we don’t talk about sustainability, we can’t get people to buy into it — unconscious sustainable purchases are not going to accelerate the shift to a new economy.

We need to make sustainability sexy. Not underwear-model sexy, but magnetically attractive. At Thinkshift, we’ve been working on cracking the code for sexy sustainability marketing — the DNA of an “I want that” or “I want to do that” reaction. We’re calling it (provisionally) the HELIX code: Humor, Emotion (or Empathy), Looks, Intelligence and the X factor. Marketing that’s sexy has at least one of these elements, and usually more.

Humor: The most viral quality

Humor can make even the most mundane products and services desirable — and it’s the rocket fuel powering most viral successes. There’s a reason “sense of humor” appears in every personal-ad writer’s list of must-haves (acing out even long walks on the beach). Research on humor in advertising shows that funny ads are more memorable and likable (though — key point — it has to be related to the ad’s core message to drive behavior). Neuroscientists have found that humor activates the brain’s reward system.

So — humor is good. And we’re not just talking about jokes. Whimsy counts, too, along with wryness, silliness and general playfulness (think: “Solar Freakin’ Roadways” or Chipotle’s "Farmed and Dangerous”). Humor in marketing is tricky. But if you really know your audience, you can find a way to amuse them that will grab their attention and open them up to your message.

Emotion: The key to our hearts

In short, susty marketing needs to hit people in the id. Anything worth having solves problems or satisfies desires, and the best do both. But sustainability marketing often focuses on solving the world’s problems when it needs to focus on solving peoples’ problems in a way that hooks into emotion and shows empathy. (Can we make “save the planet” go away, please?) Science backs this: Brain imaging research shows that people rely most on emotions — feelings and experiences — when evaluating brands.

There are plenty of ways tap into emotions, including storytelling, demonstrating empathy for your audience’s problems, and appealing to people’s aspiration and self-image. Just do it.

Looks: They really do count

As the likes of Target, Ikea, Apple and others prove, good design sells — to a broad market and at any price range. Some sustainable brands clearly know this — Method and Warby Parker are top examples — but many brands seem stuck in a DIY aesthetic that that they think says “authentic” but really says “cheap, crunchy, not cool.”

Looks do matter, from beginning to end — not just in product design, but also in every graphic expression of the company’s identity. For growth companies, this is not a place to cut corners. It can’t be lipstick on a pig, either — susty products often have superior functionality, and they should show it off. A good example: Plum Organics baby food pouches are less resource-intensive than glass jars, but their light, bright, no-spill and self-feeding qualities are what make them irresistible to busy parents.

Intelligence: The hottest quality

Intelligence is the one absolutely essential quality of sexy susty-ness — for the simple reason that, without it, whatever you’re selling is not sustainable. Truly sustainable products, services and behaviors are just flat-out better, smarter and often more technically advanced than conventional options. It’s nuts not to highlight this in marketing, but many companies don’t do it effectively. They worry that the intelligence factor is too complicated to explain, or, conversely, they make it too complicated and people just don’t get it.

There’s always a way to get to the core of genius. Marketers should work at this for as long as it takes. You’ll know you’ve succeeded when people instantly see what’s smart about your offering — and feel smart for wanting it.

The X-Factor: That je ne sais quoi

The X factor is the functional opposite of intelligence — it’s not essential, but it can override every unsexy thing about what you’re pitching. Who hasn’t fallen in love with something and been unable to explain why? That’s the X factor — the utterly compelling thing you can’t pin down.

If we can’t define it, how can we pursue it? One way is to draw on symbols and schema that already have the X factor because of the cultural associations they carry. Another is to overturn expectations. Case in point: When the iPhone was introduced, we didn’t think we needed to carry a computer in our pocket — but we wanted it. This isn’t just about newness (plenty of new things fail), but about a mysterious sense of wonder.

Image credit: Pixabay

Sandra Stewart is a principal of San Francisco–based Thinkshift Communications, a Certified B Corp and California public benefit corporation that helps sustainable businesses and cleantech companies boost brand value through compelling brand stories and thought leadership positioning. Follow her @thinkshift and connect on LinkedIn.

For years, Amazon has received criticism of its environmental policies. In 2012, an article published in the Guardian pointed out that Amazon hadn’t published a sustainability report. Try looking for one on Amazon’s website, and you still can’t find it. However, last summer Amazon hired Kara Hartnett Hurst, CEO of the Sustainability Consortium, as its first sustainability executive. And this month, the company made a big announcement concerning renewable energy.

Amazon Web Services is planning to buy the energy generated by a 150 megawatt wind farm in Benton County, Indiana, the company announced last week. The wind farm, called the Amazon Web Services Wind Farm (Fowler Ridge), is expected to start generating power by January 2016. It will generate enough electricity, 500,000 megawatt hours, to power about 46,000 homes a year, and will be used to run both current and future AWS Cloud data centers.

Over a million customers use AWS services, including startups, large enterprises and government agencies in 190 countries. Back in November, AWS shared its target to use 100 percent renewable energy for the global AWS infrastructure footprint. The 13-year power purchase agreement (PPA) for the wind farm will help the company meet its goal.

The wind farm, with a planned site totaling 50,000 acres, will be built by Pattern Energy Group. Pattern Energy has 12 wind projects in its portfolio that total 1.6 gigawatts, but this is its first wind project in Indiana.

“Amazon Web Services Wind Farm (Fowler Ridge) will bring a new source of clean energy to the electric grid where we currently operate a large number of data centers and have ongoing expansion plans to support our growing customer base,” said Jerry Hunter, vice president of infrastructure at Amazon Web Services, in a statement.

“This PPA helps to increase the renewable energy used to power our infrastructure in the U.S. and is one of many sustainability activities and renewable energy projects for powering our data centers that we currently have in the works.”

From sustainable packaging to sustainable buildings

Amazon’s website details its environmental measures. One of those measures is Frustration-Free Packaging, which is 100 recyclable and allows products to be shipped in their own packages without extra shipping boxes. It eliminates hard plastic cases and plastic-coated wire ties, which are commonly used in toy packaging. Amazon also ships orders to customers in corrugated containers that contain 43 percent recovered fiber content on average. They are also 100 percent recyclable.

Amazon also incorporated sustainability into its corporate headquarters in Seattle. The buildings that make up the headquarters contain salvaged and locally-sourced woods, energy efficient lighting, and composting and recycling alternatives. Six of the buildings have achieved LEED Gold certification. Amazon.de’s corporate offices in Munich, Germany, have also achieved LEED Gold certification. Four of Amazon’s fulfillment centers in Indiana, Pennsylvania and Arizona have also achieved LEED certification.

Image credit: Vibha Bamba

By Mark Brownlie

Are you tired of re-conceptualizing the paradigm to optimize competencies? Sometimes the words we use at work do more to baffle than to communicate clearly.

In reality, we speak many languages in our companies — legalese, engineering 301, advanced human resources, fluent finance — all sorts of corporate-speak.

If we keep using language that doesn’t communicate well, or worse, that gives the wrong impression, we’ll continue to have problems in becoming better businesses and a better society. I’m not proposing that we adopt a new language, but we do need to infuse our current lingo with some words and concepts that encourage a better future.

Lets speak less about this…	And more about this...
Sustainability	Thriving
Manage risk	Capitalize on opportunity
Growth	Development
Shareholder value	Shared value
Reductions	Contributions
Stakeholder management	Stakeholder engagement

From "sustain" to "thrive"

Many leading companies are pursuing sustainability -- in a sense, respecting the needs of future generations. But taken at face value, what does that word communicate? When you sustain something, you’re just keeping it going. It speaks nothing to the quality of that thing. Instead of sustainability, companies should strive to thrive -- moving from hanging on to flourishing.

From "growth" to "development"

One of the primary stated objectives of most businesses and governments is growth. If someone really thinks that growth is sustainable in the long run, they haven’t heard the story about lynx and hare populations. Bigger isn’t always better. A company can grow so big that it limits its agility. Development connotes improvement, not necessarily size. If we were to replace economic or community growth with economic or community development, then we might see fewer objections from NGOs and more collaboration.

From "shareholder" to "shared" value

What drives that desire for growth are the handcuffs of needing to create shareholder value. Shareholders might provide the financial wherewithal to operate, but other stakeholders provide the human, social, built and natural capital to succeed. In recognition of the role that employees, communities, governments and others have in helping to create corporate value, we need to start transforming shareholder value into shared value.

From "risk" to "opportunity"

In response to the question of why a company is taking on a specific project, one of the typical answers is to manage or mitigate risk. The more we talk about capitalizing on opportunity instead, the more we look at achieving rather than avoiding. Risk committees and departments might better serve companies by adding opportunity to their names, and to their mandates.

From "reductions" to "contributions," from "management" to "engagement"

In sustainability reports we often read about how companies are minimizing their environmental impacts by reducing pollution or water use. What we don’t hear enough about are the positive long-term contributions they make. In those same sustainability reports we sometimes read about stakeholder management. Most stakeholders would rather be engaged than managed. Or we read about the employee turnover rate. Wouldn’t a retention rate more positively communicate the same data?

--

A new vocabulary for responsible business is not just about semantics or trying to put a spin on things. Words can encourage or discourage. Words matter.

What phrases or jargon would you like to see replaced with words that encourage? 

Image credit: Gavin Llewellyn

Mark Brownlie is Chief Executive of Responsibility Matters Inc., a Calgary-based advisory firm helping companies and non-profits with sustainability strategies and communications.

Some developing nations are making real progress in the battle against toxic pollution which kills nearly 9m people every year.

A new report from the Blacksmith Institute For A Pure Earth, Global Alliance on Health and Pollution and Green Cross Switzerland, entitled Top Ten Countries Turning the Corner on Toxic Pollution , details 10 successful cleanup projects that are saving lives, improving community health and restoring the environment.

“Regardless of the obstacles and lack of resources, something can always be done to begin to turn the corner and improve the most polluted environments,” says Richard Fuller, president of Blacksmith Institute for a Pure Earth. “Each one of these projects provides on-the-ground proof of how truly solvable toxic pollution problems are, and these Top Ten Countries are leading the way.”

The countries highlighted are: Ghana, Senegal, Peru, Uruguay, Mexico, Indonesia, Philippines,Vietnam, Russia and Kyrgyzstan.

You can access the full report here.  

 

Picture credit: Blacksmith Institute for a Pure Earth
 

Members of the Food and Drink Federation (FDF) in the UK have reduced their carbon dioxide emissions by 35% - way ahead of the original target date of 2020.

A report published today shows that the target was reached against the 1990 baseline, with emissions falling by 664,000 tonnes of CO2.

The FDF Five-fold Environmental Ambition progress report details major improvements in sustainability performance in food and drink manufacturing operations since 2007.

In addition to achieving the CO2 target, the industry has reduced water use by 15.6% and delivered a 4.5% reduction in the carbon impact of packaging against the 2015 zero increase target of the WRAP Courtauld Commitment.

On waste, FDF members have reduced food and packaging waste sent to landfill to just 3% and are now focusing on further reducing mixed waste to reach the zero waste to landfill target by the end of 2015.

Check out the full report here.

 

Picture credit: &copy  Muharrem Kartal&nbsp | Dreamstime Stock Photos
 

Scientists from IBM Research and Mars are to work together to establish a food safety platform that will leverage advances in genomics to further understanding of what makes food safe.

In the US alone, one in six people are affected by food-borne diseases each year, resulting in 128,000 hospitalizations, 3,000 deaths, and $9 billion in medical costs. Another $75 billion worth of contaminated food is recalled and discarded annually.

“The Consortium for Sequencing the Food Supply Chain has the potential to revolutionize food safety, providing a powerful tool to identify and address new threats on an unprecedented scale, enabling critical breakthroughs in global food safety,” said Dave Crean, vp, corporate research and development, Mars, Inc.

The consortium will conduct the largest-ever metagenomics study to categorize and understand micro-organisms and the factors that influence their activity in a normal, safe factory environment. This work, they say, could be extended into the larger context of the food supply chain -- from farm to fork -- and lead to new insights into how microorganisms interact within a factory ecology and be better controlled by new data and science-driven practices.

As a first step, the consortium’s scientists will investigate the genetic fingerprints of living organisms such as bacteria, fungi, or viruses and how they grow in different environments, including countertops, factories, and raw materials. This data will be used to further investigate how bacteria interact, which could result in new ways to view supply chain food safety management.

 

Picture credit: © RoyaltyStockPhoto | Dreamstime.com - Gram-negative Rod-shaped Bacteria Photo




 

Levi Strauss is hoping that, by incentivizing its worldwide web of suppliers to operate more responsibly, it can create what it is calling a sustainability "race to the top" in its supply chain.  The program, which the world's most-recognized jeans maker and the World Bank jointly unveiled last November, is startling simple.  In exchange for improving their performance across a number of sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) metrics, Levi Strauss's suppliers will be able to access a sliding-scale of lower-cost financing arranged by the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC).

If the program succeeds, the IFC could eventually expand it sector-wide, fundamentally changing the way the garment industry operates.  Yet, even if the program significantly improves the behavior of Levi Strauss’s suppliers, the program’s real success may be measured by the impact it has on the company itself.

An overview of the incentive program

The Levi Strauss-IFC program is being rolled out country by country, beginning in South Asia -- a particularly problematic region and where many of Levi Strauss's suppliers are based. The IFC recently held an explanatory meeting in Pakistan for all of the Levi Strauss vendors in Pakistan, for instance, at which the IFC explained the incentive program and answered questions from suppliers.  Once the program is introduced in a country, any vendor is eligible to participate, and thus far participation levels have been encouraging.

According to Levi Strauss VP of sustainability, Michael Kobori, all of Levi Strauss's suppliers based in Bangladesh and Pakistan have expressed interest in the program.

Conveniently for Levi Strauss and its suppliers, performance in the incentive program will be measured against Levi's existing sustainability and CSR standards (its so-called “Terms of Engagement”), and determined by Levi Strauss's own -- and already operational -- audit process.

Part of Levi Strauss's “Sustainability Guidebook,” the Terms of Engagement (TOE) were developed in 1991 using international labor and human rights standards, including the the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Labor Organization’s Core Conventions, and input from human rights organizations.

The TOE is a comprehensive set of compliance guidelines, and covers the following labor and environmental, health and safety (EH&S) standards (among others):  (i) child labor; (ii) forced labor; (iii) disciplinary practices; (iv) corruption; (v) working hours; (vi) wages and benefits; (vii) freedom of association; (viii) discrimination; (ix) housing; (x) building safety; (xi) hazardous material control; (xii) emissions; (xiii) wastewater; and (xiv) waste management.

The company already assesses the performance of its suppliers against the TOE, indicating areas of noncompliance and giving each supplier a composite score for performance.  The categories are not weighted -- in other words, a fair wage is no more important to a vendor’s score than whether or not it lets its employees unionize; however, within each category there is an indication of the severity of potential noncompliance.

Levi Strauss and the IFC plan to simply use this existing audit process to determine which suppliers will be offered lower-cost financing under the incentive program.

Why it might succeed

It could be a "win-win."  Time will tell, but the Levi-IFC incentive program could turn out to be a "win-win" for Levi Strauss and its suppliers.

Small- and medium-sized suppliers in developing countries often struggle to finance their operations in what are highly-competitive markets.  As GT Nexus, Levi Strauss's cloud-based supply chain manager, framed the problem, “Capital costs ... can run high,” and “[w]ithout access to low-cost financing, many smaller suppliers can’t compete with larger operations.”  As a result of the high cost of financial capital, struggling suppliers often exploit the “natural” capital of the environment or their workers in order to stay afloat.

The hope, of course, is that the offer of cheaper capital will be a sufficient carrot to convince suppliers to change their behavior, which is where the “race to the top” metaphor comes into play.

According to the IFC, the degree of cost savings will be directly proportional to the vendors’ TOE scores: “The higher the vendor’s TOE score, the more they will save.”  In addition, those suppliers that score highest on their labor and EH&S standards would earn a further discount of up to 50 basis points on the interest charged.  Thus, vendors will be competing against each other to improve their scores, each vying for lower interest rates and potential bonus savings.

When I asked Mr. Kobori why he thought the levels of potential savings would be sufficient to change vendor behavior, he pointed to the IFC’s experience -- its Global Trade Supplier Finance (GTSF) program, a $500 million multi-currency investment program that targets emerging-market suppliers, launched in 2010 -- and that Levi Strauss and the IFC have worked together for years, including on the Better Work Program.

Mr. Kobori also mentioned that Levi Strauss engaged in some informal consultations with vendors about the incentive program, and he believed that the high levels of initial interest were indications that the incentives were sufficiently appealing.

The program could be a “win” for Levi Strauss because, in addition to generating positive PR and creating concrete benefits for the people and communities with which the company does business, it believes that a more sustainable supply chain will be good for its bottom line.  Well-treated manufacturers, for example, tend to operate more efficiently, which means fewer missed deliveries from suppliers and revenue saved for Levi Strauss.

The program leverages existing resources.  Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the program is that it will require almost no additional effort from any of the major players.

For vendors, there are minimal administrative costs.  Levi Strauss's vendors are already asked to comply with and are measured against the TOE standards.  All vendors need to do is sign up and the rest will take care of itself, Mr. Kobori said.

For Levi Strauss, the evaluation infrastructure and expertise are already in place. Nobody needs to be trained, and no new measures need to be enacted.  The system is already functioning; it is simply being applied to a new end.

Finally, though financing for the incentive program will come from a special facility, the IFC has been working with this type of credit for years, and it knows the landscape.

How success will be measured

Mr. Kobori said that the program’s success would be measured by three criteria:

• How many vendors are signing up for the program?


• For the vendors that have signed up, is their performance improving and, if so, how significantly?


• What are the vendors saying about the program?  Do they like it, and is it helping them?

According to GoodGuide, Levi's is one of the most sustainable players in its industry, ranking second among jeans makers (behind Patagonia) on overall sustainability, and among the top 5 percent of all companies for environmental performance and community engagement.

In an interview with the Financial Times when the incentive program launched in November, OxFam’s ethical trade manager, Rachel Wilshaw, said that whether the program would be deemed a success would depend on the strength of Levi Strauss’s supplier audits and monitoring. That is definitely true, but Levi Strauss currently scores off-the-charts in the main auditing categories measured by GoodGuide -- “off-site interviews” (9.9 out of 10) and “unannounced visits” (8.9) -- perhaps softening concerns about the degree to which the company will hold its vendors accountable.

A more significant area of uncertainty, to me, is whether the incentive program can get Levi Strauss  to improve its own behavior.  While the company (and its flagship brand, Levi's) is a model corporate citizen when it comes to environmental sustainability and scores a respectable 7 out of 10 overall on societal impact due to many strengths in this area, it still has areas in need of improvement  like “living wage or social policy” (4.8); indigenous rights (4.0); and forced labor and child labor policies (5.0, respectively), according to GoodGuide.

The company’s behavior in Cambodia, one of the fastest growing and most tumultuous apparel manufacturing markets in the world, troubled many.  In 2013, Levi Strauss cut ties with one of its Cambodian factories where workers were engaged in an ongoing strike for higher wages.  The company claimed that the vendor was failing to live up to the TOE; yet, the timing raised questions about Levi Strauss's commitment to working with suppliers to improve working conditions in its supply chain.

Similarly, when continued protests were greeted by the arrival of the Cambodian military in September 2014 (without incident this time), H&M, Zara and other apparel leaders signed a letter committing to living wages for their suppliers.  Levi Strauss was absent from the commitment, following a further reduction of its orders from Cambodian factories in May 2014.  The protests eventually led to a modest wage increase for workers in the Cambodian apparel manufacturing industry, which Levi Strauss subsequently supported.

*****

When I spoke to Mr. Kobori last week, he seemed genuinely hopeful that the incentive program would create positive change in the Levi Strauss supply chain and, perhaps, serve as a model for an industry-wide program in the future.  He also made a point to use our conversation to hint at future sustainability and worker well-being efforts in the pipeline. We look forward to seeing those come to fruition.

Image credit: Flickr/memn

In many ways, the sustainability journey is one of growing our capacity to provide critical production outputs like energy, food and water in a manner that does not deplete the natural resources upon which they depend. This needs to be done in a way that also does not produce unwanted byproducts that challenge the carrying capacity of the environment.

Exciting new innovations are being developed and introduced every day. One area that really seems to be heating up is aquaculture. Fish are becoming more and more popular due to their lower fat than other meats, but as their popularity and our population continue to grow, overfishing is becoming a problem. We have written about sustainable fisheries, and the growing community supported fishery (CSF) movement, but there seems to be little doubt that farming fish in a controlled environment can be far more productive than catching it in the wild.

For example, Lake Erie, which encompasses some 4,000 square miles, produces around 11 million pounds of yellow perch per year (down from about 38 million pounds 50 years ago).  According to Norman McCowan of Bell Aquaculture, a sustainable operation in Indiana we wrote extensively about last summer, 11 million pounds of perch could be raised indoors on about 7 acres.

This week brought an announcement out of Holland of a new investment fund called Aqua-Spark that is focused exclusively on sustainable aquaculture. The fund was launched in 2013 and has since raised $10 million. This week, Aqua-Spark announced its first two investments.

The first is a U.S.-based company called Calysta, which makes fish food out of a methane-eating micro-organism. Alan Shaw, Ph.D., Calysta’s president and CEO, calls Calysta’s Microbial Protein Feed “a proven, scalable high quality protein that meets the aquaculture industry’s critical need for innovation.”

Considering the fact that much of the fish meal used in fish farming today comes from either wild-caught fish or soybeans, this approach reduces stress on ocean fisheries and the agricultural supply chain. At the same time, it removes methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from the waste stream. This appears to meet Will McDonough’s criteria of “waste equals food” as a recipe for sustainability.

The second investment announced by Aqua-Spark was in Chicoa Fish Farm (CFF), a company in Mozambique whose sustainability practices Aqua-Spark considers exemplary. The choice of an African investee is strategic considering that in Africa only 1 percent of fish consumed comes from aquaculture, compared to the rest of the world where that number is nearly half.

“With decades of experience in aquaculture in Africa, we understand that to truly lead and change our industry, we must develop every link – from fish to consumer,” said Chicoa Fish Farm co-founders, Damien Legros, Gerry McCollum and Erik Rotsaert, in a statement. “Working with Aqua-Spark, we can have a significant impact on lives in Sub-Saharan African by providing sustainable, affordable nutrition and employing people to grow this industry across the continent. This is only the beginning of our journey, and we’re thrilled to see how we can change the face of aquaculture while making an impact on local economies.”

CFF is working to provide a sustainable blueprint for an aquaculture industry ready to take off across Africa.

These announcements come on the heels of news out of Abu Dhabi, where a research consortium will begin evaluating the use of fish farming done synergistically with biofuel production, using seawater and salt-tolerant halophyte plants. In this project, wastewater from the fish farm will be used to water and fertilize the plants. If successful, this approach could have implications for many areas in Africa as well. Sponsors include Boeing, GE and Etihad Airlines.

Image credit: Calysta

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.

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