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This is a weekly series of excerpts from the new book “The B Corp Handbook: How to Use Business as a Force for Good“ (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, October 2014). Click here to read the rest of the excerpts.

By Ryan Honeyman

Here is the final installment of the six-week Quick Start Guide to becoming a Certified B Corporation.

As a refresher, week one focused on getting a baseline assessment of your social and environmental performance; week two focused on motivating and engaging your team; week three was about creating an action plan for B Corp certification; week four discussed how you can raise your B Corp assessment score; and week five was designed to help you power though the B Corp finish line.

Week Six: Celebrate and next steps

OBJECTIVE: By week six, you will have made significant progress toward improving your social and environmental performance. If you have met the requirements to become a Certified B Corporation, congratulations on joining one of the most exciting and dynamic movements in business!

END RESULT: Celebrate, and congratulate your team for taking this journey.

1. Publicize your accomplishments

Use this opportunity to share your success widely. Write an article in your company newsletter about your journey, accomplishments, and long-term plan. Try convening a “lunch and learn” with your staff to share your progress and encourage other employees to get involved. You also can publicize your achievement on your website, to engage your external stakeholders.

2. Consider building a stronger foundation

In more than twenty-seven U.S. states, including Delaware, the community of Certified B Corporations has helped pass legislation in support of a new corporate form called the benefit corporation. The benefit corporation gives entrepreneurs the freedom to consider shareholders, workers, suppliers, community, and the environment when making decisions. This helps ensure that your social and environmental mission can better survive new management, new investors, or even new ownership. See the appendix for additional details on the difference between Certified B Corporations and benefit corporations.

3. Focus on continual improvement

Like many things in life, this is not a quick fix but a process of continual improvement. For example, does your team disband after this project is over? Will someone continue to be the internal champion? What other big picture goals do you want to strive for? Clarify how you and your team will continue to work toward achieving your social and environmental goals. Establish performance targets, and perhaps incentives, for achieving those ideal outcomes.

4. Check out the B Resources portal

A great next step for new B Corporations is to visit the B Corp Resources Portal. The resources portal has information on product and service discounts, tips on how to raise capital from mission-aligned investors, and a wide variety of tools to help you further improve your B Impact Assessment score.

By Tori Okner

One of the most compelling sessions of the James Beard Foundation Annual Food Conference was a dialogue between doctors and chefs, entitled “Allies for Health.” The session featured Seamus Mullen, the chef/owner of Tertulia, author of "Hero Food" and a 2014 JBF Award Chef Semi-Finalist.

As moderator Kim Kessler observed, “Health messages are regularly delivered from chefs, without saying so, in the form of a meal.” At the conference, chef Seamus Mullen frankly discussed the reason he “blames food for all the good stuff” in his life and how making health the framework for his diet has impacted his growing business.

Mullen spoke openly about his antagonistic relationship with food, prolonged illness and the diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis that precipitated his commitment to healthful eating. With a family history in food, and a childhood spent on a small farm in Vermont, Mullen was only introduced to institutional food when he went to boarding school (where he suffered from salmonella). Today he is the chef/owner of three restaurants in New York City and London, and he'll open a fourth later this year. He recently published a cookbook, "Hero Food," and regularly speaks on the healing power of food.

TriplePundit: How has the trajectory of your career evolved?

Seamus Mullen: I had a relationship with food for about 15 years that wasn’t all that positive, even though I became a professional cook and a chef. Chefs tend to be really good at taking care of people, but we're not that good at taking care of ourselves. For me, it got to a point that my health was so critical; I didn’t have a choice. Something had to give. I realized food could be a driving factor in my health. I’ve had some wonderful teachers and great guidance, and I’ve also taken this as a personal issue. I’ve taken a lot of my own time investigating and experimenting on myself essentially. The past three or four years, it’s become hugely important to me to dive deeply into the relationship between food and our health.

3p: What intentional changes have you made to align your business with your personal journey?

SM: I’ve made lots of changes. For instance, we only serve bread from ancient grains that are made with natural leaveners, and we only serve it when a customer asks for it. If someone wants bread, we will give him or her the best quality we can offer. We have almost entirely removed refined sugar from our menus. We don’t make statements about these changes and no one is complaining.

We’ve been able to tweak our recipes. We don’t use any more all-purpose flour. If we’re using flour, it's whole grain, stone-ground flour from non-GMO wheat. We source all of our proteins locally, within the eastern seaboard from Pennsylvania, New York state, Vermont [and] Massachusetts. We only use pastured poultry, pork, eggs, etc. Those are all the base decisions that are just accepted if you come into our restaurants. I also try to treat meat as an ingredient; the overwhelming component is vegetables. That is something we’ve shifted to in the restaurant.

3p: You mentioned that you’ve done this surreptitiously. Why?

SM: I don’t want to market myself as a healthy restaurateur. I think it’s dangerous. I think there is a stigma attached to so called 'healthy food.' What we’ve called healthy food, for a very long time, is often laden with soy and corn product, carbohydrates, oftentimes a lot of sugar. I know a lot of vegetarians who are fat and unhealthy, because they have a sugar addiction. Oftentimes vegetarianism is ethically motivated, it's not a health-based decision.

3p: What do you say to people working in the food industry who feel they can’t afford to be as intentional with their ingredients or their sourcing?

SM: It’s all about compromise and decisions. People who eat poorly say, “I don’t have time to cook." Well, you may not have time to cook because you’re making other choices with your time. It’s all about choices. The same thing is true from a financial standpoint at a restaurant.

As an entrepreneur you need to look at the whole picture. In a restaurant, if you can create a balance in your menu structure so that you have items that are high sellers and high margin, it allows you to ensure your ingredients are the highest quality and highest caliber. We get as many whole animals as possible, and one day it may be pork belly, the next pork loin, pork chop, pork cheeks … and we will go through the whole animal.

You can’t set it and forget it. It requires daily maintenance.

3p: Are you also thinking about environmental impacts in our business strategy?

SM: I think it's really telling that if you make good choices around food, you have a positive impact on the community at large and a positive impact on the internal community of your own body. To eat the food that is best for you, try to eat food that is produced closest to you, that is harvested in peak season, that is as unadulterated as possible. The further food is shipped, the more it needs to be preserved, which leads to degradation of nutrients. So, if you can eat something seasonal, that’s close to you, you’re eating something that not only is better for you – more nutrient dense -- but you’re also eating something that doesn’t require nearly as many fossil fuels to get to you and that food is much less stressful on our environment and ecosystem.

When you make the right environmental choices around food, 99 percent of the time you’re also making the best health decision.

3p: You mentioned the mentorship of important teachers and discussed your commitment to the health of your employees – beyond being active in the James Beard Foundation, how do you foster your commitment to health in the culinary and entrepreneurial community?

SM: I mentor lots of people, but the best things I can do is to lead by example. Wellness is a growing sector of the food industry -- and the lifestyle industry. There is a lot of money to be made. The conversation is happening, but not always for the right reason. For me, the choices I make are fundamental, and I am very strict about it. If you want results you have to do hard work.

3p: You’ve really educated yourself on nutrition and health impacts. Any resources you would recommend?

There are a couple of books I would recommend that have been very helpful to me:

1. "Why we Get Fat" by Gary Taubes


2. "The Big Fat Surprise" by Nina Teicholz

To learn more about Seamus Mullen and his wild journey to health and success, follow him on Twitter @Seamusmullen.

Image credit Seamus Mullen

Colorado is a hotspot for energy innovation: The city of Fort Collins is pushing the envelope with a net-zero energy central district. The Rocky Mountain Institute has been generating schemes for energy efficiency and clean energy for 30 years. And the city of Boulder has more solar panels than some states.

All of these were featured programs at the first-ever Colorado Climate Summit, held on the campus of the University of Colorado last weekend in the middle of – you guessed it – the unusual weather event of an early blizzard. But the mood wasn't self-congratulatory -- it was urgent. Hopeful, but urgent. Efficiency and solar panels on roofs aren't enough, warned one clean energy expert.

“We have to look at both sides of the meter,” said Leslie Glustrom, pointing at a chart of Boulder’s carbon emissions that, despite tremendous work and city effort to reduce carbon emissions, showed marginal gains. Glustrom pointed out that Boulder is still dependent on a coal plant. “If you took that offline it would be like taking 150,000 homes off the grid,” she said.

"Utilities are standing in the way of the clean energy transition," warned Glustrom, because the inertia is too strong -- they must be pressed via local government into transitioning to renewables. Boulder itself is taking matters into its own hands, and since voter approval in 2011 has been developing its own publicly-owned utility.

Colorado climate activists of all stripes came to the summit to talk about ‘both sides of the meter;’ it is unavoidable to think about supply in a state facing massive fracking development, as well as traditional oil and gas.  Writer and publisher Robert Castellino founded the sponsoring organization Climate Colorado earlier this year after going through the Climate Reality Project’s international leadership program (which has now trained leaders in Brazil, South Africa, Australia and elsewhere.) The summit also included discussions on youth, growing environmental literacy, the climate's impact on aging, diversifiying and internationalizing the climate movement and more.

You could feel an urgency about climate change in the room; Colorado is really the canary in the coal mine, already seeing more statistically unusual weather than the rest of the country. Massive wildfires consumed the forests of the Front Range around Fort Collins in 2012, and five-day floods killed eight people and destroyed 2,000 homes last September. Driving through these mountains, it is eerie: You see a landscape of orange-brown-black trees. Most of the presenters connected their passion directly to the destruction they had already seen -- the disappearance of a salmon species, or fracking wastewater ponds in a place of great beauty. Many talked about their homes and several teared up.

“In Colorado, climate change is happening. The effects are real," Castellino said.

Localizing the climate fight is working in Colorado, as several of the presenters told the assembled crowd at the Gettches Wilkinson Resource Center at the CU law school. Coloradans have been able to get municipalities to pressure utilities; grassroots advocates in Lafayette were able to use the city's franchise renewal process to fight for a transition to clean energy.

The anti-fracking movement in Colorado has also had success, mostly in the northern part of the state, passing local bans in Lafayette, Broomfield, Boulder, Boulder County and Fort Collins, according to Frack Free Colorado organizer Suzanne Spiegel. (Lafayette's unique initiative declared that the community right to clean air and water is equal to mineral rights held by individuals.) So far, oil and gas developers are still able to head off statewide change.

The summit will culminate in the Switch 2020 plan and several other collaborations put forward by Climate Colorado.

Image credits: Lee Buchsbaum 

The Leuser Ecosystem in Indonesia is one of the most biodiverse ecosystems. The 6.5 million acres of tropical lowland rainforests stores vast amounts of carbon in its peatlands and forests. It is under threat despite being protected by Indonesian law.

One of those threats is the palm oil industry, as a recent Rainforest Action Network (RAN) report details. Conflict palm oil in particular is a threat. Conflict palm oil refers to palm oil produced through destruction of rainforests and peatlands and the violation of human rights, which includes the use of forced labor and child labor. Conflict palm oil can’t be traced back to its origin, and is increasing inside the Leuser Ecosystem.

Three companies are cited in the report as the biggest buyers of palm oil in the Aceh region of Indonesia where the Leuser Ecosystem is located. They are Musim Mas Group, Wilmar International and Golden Agri-Resources. As the report states, they “have a crucial role to play in securing the protection of the Leuser Ecosystem.”

The report finds evidence connecting a refinery owned by the Musim Mas Group and the Indonesian government’s state-owned palm oil plantation company, PT Perkebunan Nusantara (PTPN) III, to a mill that processes palm oil fruit grown in the Leuser Ecosystem. Musim Mas Group is a large company that has plantations and factories and ships palm oil around the world.

“The Leuser Ecosystem is one of the world’s most richly biodiverse landscapes, and millions of people depend on it for their food, water and livelihoods. But the fate of this crown jewel of Indonesia’s natural legacy - home to tigers, orangutans, rhinos, elephants and sun bears - depends on urgent choices made right now,” said Gemma Tillack,  agribusiness campaign director with Rainforest Action Network.

There’s a growing demand globally for palm oil and that drives the destruction of the Leuser Ecosystem. Palm oil is in a myriad of products such as cookies, ice cream, shampoo, lipstick and pet food. Most of the world’s palm oil supply comes Indonesia and Malaysia. “The Leuser Ecosystem is now an epicenter of palm oil plantation expansion and combined with unchecked mining, logging, industrial pulp plantations and poaching in the region, this vital ecosystem is facing a perfect storm of destruction,” the report states.

Consumer good manufacturing companies that buy palm oil are at risk of purchasing conflict palm oil grown in the Leuser Ecosystem. The report lists what it terms Snack Food 20 companies which have combined sales of $432 annually. These are the companies who have not adopted and implemented responsible palm oil procurement policies. The list includes PepsiCo, Kraft Foods Group, The H.J. Heinz Company, The Campbell Soup Company, Hillshire Brands, Grupo Bimbo, Nissin Foods and Toyo Suisan Kaisha Ltd.

The report recommends that palm oil growers ensure that they palm oil they produce meets responsible production requirements. The report also recommends that companies that buy palm oil need to source it from third party suppliers verified as compliant with responsible palm oil requirements.

Image credit: Angela Sevin

Right on the heels of his historic climate agreement with China, President Barack Obama announced a pledge of $3 billion to the United Nations' thus far underfunded Green Climate Fund. The fund was formally established in 2010 at the U.N. Climate Change conference in Cancun. The purpose of the fund was to redistribute resources between the developed world and the developing world in order to assist developing countries in their effort to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change.

It’s clear that the president is doubling down on climate change, which shouldn’t be a surprise, since he has repeatedly highlighted his intention in his second term to take action by any means available. Recently, that has meant primarily by executive order, which, given the upcoming Republican control of Congress, will likely remain the only available avenue left to act on this crucial issue.

I don’t believe the timing of the announcement is random. I think Obama is taking aggressive action right now, in the wake of the election, to signal Republicans in Congress that:

1. They are becoming increasingly isolated on the issue as even the Chinese are making major commitments, and


2.  he has no intention of letting up on this issue, which he intends to make part of his legacy.

Republicans are already squawking. Intrepid denier Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) called it “part of a climate-change agenda that’s siphoned precious taxpayer dollars away from the real problems facing the American people.” Unsurprisingly, Inhofe, who despite his willful ignorance on the subject chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee, has vowed to fight the measure.

Some are already spinning the agreement the president made with Chinese President Xi Jinping, saying that while we have committed to doubling our rate of reduction the Chinese don’t have to do anything until 2030. While that makes for a very catchy sound bite, it is highly misleading. The Chinese have committed to add no additional fossil fuels after 2030. If you bother to think about it, that means transforming an economy that is still growing at 7 percent, is heavily powered by fossil fuels (as ours was) and is adding one new coal plant a week, to one that will presumably keep growing -- but will do so entirely powered by clean energy, bringing millions out of poverty.

You can’t just flip a switch to make that happen. That entails constructing twice the current world renewable total in 16 years. A good portion of that will be nuclear power. That process takes a minimum of nine years once a site has been selected. With additional time required for approvals, testing and construction delays, it could easily take 15 years. Hydropower projects could take even longer.

You can look at this any way you want to, but what I see are two superpowers, that combined currently produce 45 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, saying, “This is something we are very concerned about, and we are committing to doing everything we possibly can to reduce our impact.”

We can only achieve what we can imagine. That also means we are only limited by our imagination and our willingness to try to achieve the kind of world we would most like to live in. Look at Denmark, which just committed to 100 percent renewable power and transportation by 2050.

Of course, President Obama will have a tough time moving these actions through a Republican majority, many of which have already set their sights on rolling back the executive actions taken that put the EPA in charge of regulating carbon emissions. It’s not clear whether or not these Congressional Republicans will be able to block any of these actions, though it seems almost certain that they will try. This will cost them politically since, in fact, most Americans accept the science and want the government to do something about it. By so pointedly opposing any action on this front, these politicians continue to marginalize their position, both in the eyes of the American public and the rest of the world.

Image credit: Ben Francis: Flickr Creative Commons

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.

Follow RP Siegel on Twitter.

In 2007 I first posted my research forecasting a multi-trillion dollar green economic revolution. By 2014, this projection has been realized with a global economy delivering price-competitive sustainable solutions like rooftop solar, LED lighting and organic food. So, why are we not celebrating?

The sobering reality is that this economic success appears to be too little and too late in terms of the latest scientific findings. The scientific community projects that the pace of man-made greenhouse gas emissions, now defined as a carbon surge, is pushing the world into irreversible human and economic damage. If our world and economy now stand on the cusp of irreversible climate change damage, then the question of the 21st century is whether there still remains a path toward a sustainable solution.

Price competitiveness is driving the green economic revolution

The growing price competitiveness of the green economy is driving consumer adoption of more sustainable products. LED price competitiveness is driving consumers to shift from incandescent lighting technology. Rooftop solar is a growth industry in California because it can now deliver systems producing electricity for as low as 8 cents per kilowatt-hour (compared to a 12-cent national average price of grid-supplied residential electricity). Consumers have adopted concentrated cold-water laundry detergents because they deliver clean clothes at a lower cost with reduced environmental impacts.

Evidence is growing that consumers are intuitively inputting the costs of unsustainable goods and services. The rapid sales growth of healthy convenience food is one example. Today moms and the millennial generation intuitively incorporate externality costs like obesity and diabetes into their price comparisons between healthier and less healthy food choices.

Truly, the economics of going green have won market share and is on a growth trajectory.

But will the green economic revolution be too little, too late?

For all the success of the green economic revolution, the just-released 2014 IPCC forecast is a sobering reality check. Their findings are that human emissions "will lead to high to very high risk of severe, widespread and irreversible impacts globally" by the end of the 21st century. Examples of irreversible impacts can include the melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, raising sea levels by 10 to 13 feet, or the extinction of half of our planet’s species.

Traditional economics is not encouraging on whether the marketplace of suppliers and consumers will respond in time to prevent irreversible impacts. Traditional economics assumes that consumers are fully informed and they make rational decisions. A relatively new economic discipline called behavioral economics disputes these traditional economic assumptions. Behavioral economics recognizes that consumers are often not fully informed and that consumers hold personal and cultural biases that influence their decision-making. Behavioral economics recognizes that Facebook postings by friends, mass advertising, rule-of-thumb thinking and inertia influence consumer decision-making.

Traditional economics would suggest that the green economic revolution should rapidly accelerate in scale with the growing cost consequences of irreversible climate impacts. Behavioral economics would suggest otherwise. Behavioral economics recognizes the incentives that businesses heavily invested in the carbon economy have to maintain status quo. Behavioral economics accepts that heavy (and often negative) TV advertising and biased journalism, now called content marketing, will influence consumers to continue unsustainable behaviors.

Cultural norm and unsustainable consumption

Cultural norms are the behaviors, beliefs and values that align decision-making. Behavioral economics recognizes the need for the adoption of a cultural norm to significantly retard or stop consumer consumption of unsustainable products.

The issue of smoking provides an example of changes in cultural norms that reshaped the economics of an industry creating irreversible damage. In 1928, 13 years after the R.J. Reynolds Co. launched the first mass-marketed cigarette, the health community identified smoking as a health risk. Yet by 1965 almost half of all high school students smoked cigarettes. It was not until 1995 that California became the first state to ban smoking. Even today, with the well-known link to cancer and respiratory diseases, Americans consume almost 300 billion cigarettes annually.

This same type of delayed and incomplete response by consumers and political leaders was experienced in the adoption of seat belts and in the removal of lead from gasoline. The behavioral economics for products that create significant human health externality costs are unfortunately defined by a path of strong push-back from vested interests, consumer short-term decision-making and very slow government regulatory action with a significant minority of consumers still maintaining obviously unsustainable consumption behavior.

In pursuit of a green cultural norm

Sustainability is not a cultural norm with consumers. The human health and economic pain of potentially irreversible climate change is not as real to consumers as balancing a weekly budget or the pleasure of unsustainable consumption. The market reality is that if the price of a green product is 5 to 10 percent more than a non-green product, then the consumer is most likely to buy the non-green product.

Quarterly financial reporting is the cultural norm that drives U.S. CEO decision-making. The reality is that two-thirds of corporate CEOs recognize they are not doing enough to address climate change. But their performance metric is still the quarterly earnings result. In business, what is measured is what gets done.

The reality is that issues of climate change and sustainability are not impacting elections. Voters are voting their pocketbooks as they have always done.

There is evidence this is changing. The millennial generation is attempting to implement lifestyles that balance a sustainable future, consumption and saving. Moms concerned with the wellness of their loved ones are including the health impacts of foods or household chemicals into their cost analysis.

Achieving a cultural norm around sustainability will be an inflection point for the green economic revolution. As long as consumers view consumption of sustainable goods and services as a niche purchase -- driven by comparative cost -- then the green economic revolution will only represent 5 to 20 percent of the global economy. This is revolutionary growth compared to 2007. But it is not enough to stop irreversible climate impacts.

The history of economics on products like cigarettes and seat belts, and the use of lead in gasoline, is that sustainable behavior does, eventually, become a cultural norm. The green economy will continue to grow, and it will generate exciting business opportunities. What remains a question is whether the growth of the green economy will be too little and too late to prevent irreversible damage to human and environmental health.

Image credit: Flickr/Tax Credits

Bill Roth is an economist and the Founder of Earth 2017. He coaches business owners and leaders on proven best practices in pricing, marketing and operations that make money and create a positive difference. His book, The Secret Green Sauce, profiles business case studies of pioneering best practices that are proven to win customers and grow product revenues. Follow him on Twitter: @earth2017

Part of the problem or part of the solution?

"I think a lot of people blame the 'top 1 percent' for causing 'big evil corporations' to act in socially and environmentally unethical ways,” says Nathan MacKenzie Brown, a 34-year-old entrepreneur and impact investor -- and one not prone to mince his words.

Brown doesn't deny the consequences stemming from the concentration of wealth in the U.S. But the fact is that the spread of stock ownership has changed dramatically in the past 30 or 40 years. More Americans than ever before, 47 percent, own at least some stock.

"It certainly isn't fair to blame the horrible behavior of corporations on the top 1 percent alone,” Brown says. "I think it is time for every one of us who puts money into an investment account for retirement to realize we are either part of the solution, or we are part of the problem."

The task then, for those of us wishing to be part of the solution, is to reconcile our economic interests with our social values.

The invisible heart of the markets

TriplePundit readers are likely familiar with impact investing, a concept that embodies the triple bottom line philosophy driving this blog. In a recent 3p post, Andrew Burger gives an excellent account of its growing momentum, what the G8 Social Impact Taskforce calls “the invisible heart of the markets.”

According to a recent study by the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN),  $45 trillion is committed to socially responsible investment funds (SRIs) and similar investments that integrate "environmental, social and governance factors into their investment decision.” Impact investing takes the passive screening framework of SRIs one step further. If just a tiny fraction of those trillions were devoted to impact investments, it could ignite a “revolution," transforming the capital markets into an incentivizing force for positive, measurable change in the world -- “moving the needle” on the most challenging social, environmental and governance issues we all face.

Talk of revolutions for positive social change sounds exciting, but most of us don't have a lot of time or money; we just want to make the most of what we do have. How should a socially conscious investor who just wants to do right by their investment dollar make the right choices? For Brown, this question drives at the core of what ails business-as-usual capitalism.

"I certainly think that less sophisticated investors are likely to run into confusion when trying to align their economic and social values,” says Brown. "I think this is actually the heart of why our current economic system is so socially unjust and unsustainable, because most individual investors simply don't have the time, energy or understanding to prioritize making socially and environmentally responsible investment choices.”

While there is no 'easy button' for making investment decisions or solving complex social and environmental challenges, there are real opportunities for an impact investor to make a difference (and a buck), and many of them are found on Main Street, not Wall Street. But it takes patience and and a willingness to be more flexible about expectations of risk and reward. Impact investing brings philanthropy to an entrepreneurial mindset. Don't let that scare you away.

"I think impact investing is in the early days,” Brown says, "and it will become much bigger as a result of the boomers passing about $41trillion in assets to millennials who are less likely to invest in the stock market and are more likely to think that financial and social interests should overlap. I think this is a powerful combination that will have a heavy and positive influence on the future of investing in America and the world.”

Your own path to impact

Brown, a successful Internet marketing consultant, counts himself among the ranks of millennials looking to make a difference in the world. But he isn't a 'typical' millennial, business owner or socially conscious investor. I'm sure there’s no such thing in any case.

You aren't likely to bump into Nathan at the airport on his way to Vegas for the latest industry 'summit' or see him at the local Starbucks sipping a grande Mocha Machismo (or whatever they're calling a cup of coffee these days) -- and that’s the point.

Impact and social investing should reflect a person’s core beliefs, their lifestyle, what is important to them and how they view the world. Binding the common thread of helping build a better world is the myriad of ways to go about doing it. Nathan’s story is unique, as we shall soon see, but through his example we can imagine how any investor can forge their own “path to impact."

Lessons learned and a head start

Brown admits in a recent Forbes article  that he is “one of the lucky ones." With a free ride through college on behalf of his professor father and a $55,000 inheritance from his great-aunt, Brown knows he got the kind of head start that most others don’t.

Instead of engendering a sense of entitlement, his “unearned privilege,” combined with a pivotal experience of social injustice in his teens, became the genesis for Brown’s philosophy and worldview. He understood his good fortune as an opportunity to give back. Brown put an inflation-adjusted price on his free education and inheritance -- $306,000 -- and made it his life target for doing just that.

The good life: Simplicity in the 21st century

Sometimes called the 'guru's guru' of Internet business consulting, Brown could have easily followed the path of an upscale young urban professional in the digital age, with all the trappings of success that entails. He sought a different path, choosing instead to use his skill and knowledge to live a modern life of deliberate simplicity.

“Live simply so that others may simply live,” says Brown. “But I would take it a step further and say, 'Live simply and help others so that others may simply live.' I like all my impact investing to either help people to live more simply, or to help others to simply live."

For Brown, living simply led him to the Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, where he eventually became a resident in 2005. Started in 1997, Dancing Rabbit is an experimental community in Rutledge, Missouri devoted to cooperative and sustainable living.

His lifestyle allows him to live on less than $20,000 per year, and his online consulting business provides an annual income of between $40,000 and $60,000 (some years are better than others). Brown's goal is use most of those net profits to help others “simply live, or live simply." Brown’s typical workweek is rarely more than 12 or 13 hours, spending most of his time as a member of the Dancing Rabbit community. This community and what it represents is the foundation for much of his impact investing.

Think globally, act locally, invest in both

Brown’s advice for those getting started in impact investing is to go with what you know. Look for opportunities in your own area of expertise, your local community and your network of friends and colleagues.

Dancing Rabbit's mission of simplicity, sustainability and intentional living inspires much of Brown’s impact investment strategy and is also the source of some of his most successful impact investments, for example:

• A $9,750 loan to buy a fourth car for the Dancing Rabbit Vehicle Cooperative (DRVC) expanded the service for its 60 members, bringing a 5 percent return. Brown considers this his “most successful impact investment because of the strong ecological return of this investment, while still having financial return that beats inflation.”


• A $5,000 loan at 4 percent interest helped a friend buy a house.

Making loans can be one of the simplest ways to start an impact investment program. The opportunities aren't limited to your immediate community or circle of friends, making impact through investment must look to the global community as well. "If I only focus on investing in my local community, then I don't really provide any direct assistance to the people in the world who most need help."

"The fact that I've focused so much of my impact investing in my local community is more of a reflection on the importance I place on living simply than it is a reflection on the importance of investing locally. Because I live at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, when I invest in my community I help forward a model of a very simple and rewarding lifestyle that can help inspire others to live simply as well.

"As more people choose a simpler life, that helps to address the environmental problems in the world. So, I think it is important to invest in ways that help people to live more simply, which helps address the environmental problems in the world, and to also invest in ways to help the poor of the world who are hit hardest by the worlds current environmental problems."

There are loan funds such as the Northcounty Cooperative Development Fund or the Cooperative Fund of New England that invest in worker-owned co-ops and nonprofits. Land trusts that conserve land or protect communities from gentrification provide even more avenues for impact investors. Brown also suggests approaching a favorite nonprofit directly. “Sometimes nonprofits need financing, too,” he says in Forbes. "They don't always just look for donations.”

Participating in SRI funds, though not impact investing per se, is a good way to diversify a portfolio for both economic and social return. Brown invests in the Calvert Community Investment Note, the New Alternatives Fund and Portfolio 21, a high-performing fund using the Natural Step model to address ecological issues.

Brown also recently spoke with the CEO of CuttingEdgeX, an online platform connecting social enterprise with investors.

Opportunities at Dancing Rabbit

Impact investment has helped Dancing Rabbit thrive. Tony Sima, one of the founders of Dancing Rabbit, raised $150,000 through loans to start the Better Energy for Dancing Rabbit (BEDR) power co-op.

Several other investment and business opportunities are currently available, including houses (to either live in or rent out) and the Milkweed Mercantile Eco-Inn. Individual entrepreneurs at Dancing Rabbit are often looking for help getting their businesses started. "I think some great opportunities could be identified and developed over time.”

More information about the houses for sale and the Milkweed Eco-Inn is available here.

Invest in knowledge, learn from experience

I think one key bit of advice Brown told me, especially for younger people just getting started, is to invest in your own awareness, skills and expertise.

For a young entrepreneurial investor, or anyone seeking to have a positive influence in the world, "The most important investment you can make in a better world is investing in your own knowledge,” says Brown.

The more curious and aware you are of the world around you, the more disciplined your thinking and the better chance you'll have of making an impact. The challenges we face won't be solved by self-absorbed skimmers Twittering away their lives. Learn something -- don't just get through college -- and apply what you learn in the real world. Most importantly: Learn from your mistakes, because you'll make plenty of them; everybody does. That’s where the real education begins.

"The more skill and experience you gain in your youth, the more you can leverage your learning for future benefits. You should be aware that much of what you will learn at first will will come from mistakes that you make, which may feel very discouraging at first.”

A failed investment in a climate change website cost Brown $8,000, but what he learned in the process landed a consulting contract with Treehugger.com, helped a friend start a successful online parent-coaching business and landed another consulting gig worth $9,000. "So, even though the initial investment I made was a total loss, the knowledge and experience I gained from it [proved] to be well worth it in the long run.”

"Keeping this sort of long term perspective in mind is very important. If you get discouraged and stop trying after a few failures, then you won't get to leverage your learning for future success and positive impact."

Imagine

I can tell you that living in an ecovillage likely isn't my cup of tea (though I fancy myself a 'treehugger'). That’s probably true for most. But for Nathan Brown, it represents his core values and expression of who he is and how he intends to help build a better world. From there he has found a path to invest his time, talent and money toward that end. What I admire most about Brown is the intentionality of his process. He saw the world as it is and decided to become part of the solution instead of part of the problem. Nathan is all in.

You don't have to live in an ecovillage to make a difference (though you can invest in one). Nick Aster started TriplePundit as a school project and in a few years time grew it into the leading publication on sustainable business. Through the website, countess changemakers, visionaries and “entrepreneurial philanthropists” have had their story told -- inspiring more to do the same, but in their own way.

What about you? How do you want to change the world, make an impact? It’s easy to be cynical these days and say it’s impossible for one person to make a difference. But we all know that’s not really true. You don't need to be rich or well-connected.

You have to imagine another world -- a better world. Then go about making it happen.

"I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
- Henry David Thoreau

Brown’s tips

Nathan Brown’s tips for reducing your environmental impact:

• Never fly. It is one of the worst possible things an individual can do to the environment. (ouch)


• Eat low on the food chain.


• Avoid traveling in a car alone as much as possible. Carpool, bike, walk and take public transit.


• Make your home as energy efficient as possible (one of the best ways to do this is to have roommates since this drastically reduces the amount of energy you need to use to heat and cool your home on a per person basis).


• Encourage other people to make these changes as well.

Nathan Brown’s tips for greening your money:

• Move all of your cash into a socially responsible bank. I use and recommend Beneficial State Bank because I think they are one of the best banks out there in terms of their social and environmental priorities.


• Invest in mutual funds, and make sure you pick socially responsible mutual funds. This site is a great resource for deciding which socially responsible mutual fund(s) you want to invest in.


• If you have enough money that you can afford to buy stock individually I recommend getting a socially responsible investment advisor who can help you make good financial investment that better match your values. A friend of mine uses and really likes this company.

Get in touch with Nathan through the Dancing Rabbit Contact Page

Image credits: Nathan Brown; Brian (Ziggy) Liloia, courtesy flick

By Shilpi Chhotray

We all know the phrase "money makes the world go around." What many involved in grassroots sustainability and social responsibility may not know is how impact investors are moving the needle on several key global issues, such as corporate transparency, sustainable agriculture, women's empowerment and arguably our greatest challenge -- addressing a rapidly changing climate. Furthermore, these investors are focusing on pressing national issues like LGBT rights, affordable housing and millennial involvement in corporate decision-making.

For instance, investors from top wealth management firms like Timothy Smith, director of environmental, social and governance engagement at Walden Asset Management, are advocating for greater investment around climate policy at the state level.

As an active member of the environmental community, my perception of the financial industry has historically equated to visions of Wall Street: Ivy-league educated white men in dark suits with flashy Rolex watches, playing their obligatory role to generate profit, no matter what the global repercussions entail.  My recent attendance at the Conference on Sustainable, Responsible, Impact Investing (SRI) in Colorado Springs, however, made me rethink this stereotype and piqued my interest in solutions-based investing for positive community change.

Perhaps because I am a millennial who cares specifically about the nexus of women and the environment, the topic of women's empowerment and increasing the millennial voice in sustainable investing really hit home for me at the conference this year. And the data speak for themselves: Women and millennials place greater emphasis on transparency and investment that supports their values.

According to PAX World Investments, by 2030, two-thirds of the nation’s wealth will be owned by women. Several SRI panelists reiterated the most tactical move firms can make is hiring a woman at the executive level, and I couldn't agree more. Although women continue to face an uphill battle for equality in the workforce, recent reports indicate companies that bring women into leadership positions experience higher financial returns and better overall performance. Financial services executive and last year’s SRI service award recipient, Geeta Iyer, poignantly stated, "someday all of the women leaders will just be leaders," and this should be advocated for across all fields -- not only the private sector.

Furthermore, millennials are pioneering the way for major shifts in corporate social responsibility (CSR) --deemed 'millennials new religion.' To this end, 7 out of 10 millennials consider themselves social activists and are actively engaged in CSR issues. Divesting from fossil fuels is an impressive example: Currently; more than 400 campuses are engaged in the divestment movement. Students continue to pressure universities and other NGOs to expel their holdings of coal and oil investments. Corporate transparency and accountability, cooperative business solutions across sectors, and community reinvestment will be top priorities for millennials in the coming decade. It's no surprise that major corporations like Monsanto are seeking millennial advice on public engagement. To be clear, millennials are just as interested in making a profit as older generations, however -- a profit intrinsic to socially and environmentally conscious initiatives.

Financial advisors in the impact investing sector are noticing this marked shift and are taking it into account. Focusing on investing in companies with a social and environmental focus and engaging in investment aligned with societal values, all while turning a profit, is more and more the norm. B Corps are raising the bar of company performance. Sequentially, corporations reduce their environmental footprint and increase social responsibility while still enjoying competitive advantages in a newer, greener marketplace.

The Global Impact Investing Network states, "Impact investing has the potential to unlock significant sums of private investment capital to complement public resources and philanthropy in addressing pressing global challenges." Case in point, earlier this year, Green Century Funds backed Wilmar’s -- the world's biggest palm oil trader – commitment to zero deforestation measures in their supply chain. Impact investors represented more than $250 billion in assets for this game-changing forest conservation policy, demonstrating a major market shift towards the reduction of environmental and social risks.

As Jackie Haynes, senior director of supplier responsibility at Apple, indicated, "sustainability is a journey; we may never be done," though we must all play our part to live within the capacity of our planet. I firmly believe that advancing technology, sound policy and the growing field of impact investing, coupled with efforts of mission-driven nonprofits, will lead to greater global sustainability progress.

Image courtesy of Future500

Shilpi Chhotray is a Stakeholder Engagement Manager at Future 500, a global nonprofit specializing in stakeholder engagement and building bridges between parties at odds—often corporations and NGOs, the political right and left, and others—to advance systemic solutions to urgent sustainability challenges. 

Follow Shilpi on Twitter: @ShilpiChhotray

Just in time for last week’s America Recycles Day, the city of Philadelphia announced an impressive achievement in waste reduction: The City of Brotherly Love has increased the amount of materials it recycles by 155 percent over the past six years.

The city collected a record amount of recyclables – 128,000 tons – through its residential curbside recycling program, as well as from city buildings and public spaces during the latest fiscal year, according to the city’s recycling office and mayor’s office of sustainability. That means Philly kept 21 percent of its residential discards from ending up in the dump in the 2014 fiscal year – a 4.6 percent increase over last year’s diversion numbers.

Philadelphia’s recycling efforts had additional environmental benefits beyond the ones most commonly associated with recycling, such as keeping materials out of the landfill and saving resources by reprocessing goods already in the system. The city’s recycling program also cuts its carbon footprint by nearly 1.5 million tons of carbon dioxide each year, the city said in a statement.

The fifth largest U.S. city hasn’t always been a recycling rock star. Philadelphia was the first city in Pennsylvania to set up a curbside recycling collection program for its residents in 1989, but back in 2008 when the current mayor, Michael Nutter, took office, the city only diverted about 55,000 tons, or 8 percent, of its residential waste from the landfill.

To boost its recycling rates, Philly undertook an overhaul of its curbside recycling program that serves more than 525,000 households. The city’s streets department increased recycling pickup from every other week to weekly, distributed new recycling bins to residents at events and through community groups, and added more materials to the recycling program – cardboard, plastics, and food and drink cartons.

The city also switched to a single-stream collection system, in which all recyclables (paper, plastics, glass, etc.) are collected in one bin, rather than sorted out and placed in separate containers. Though not without its share of controversy, single-stream recycling is more convenient for residents and generally leads to higher participation levels and more materials collected.

In 2010, Philadelphia teamed up with Recyclebank to set up the Philly Recycling Rewards Program, which compensates residents that recycle with points that can redeemed for discounts at local retailers. Over 190,000 households have signed up for the program since its inception, according to the city’s website.

If the Recycling Rewards Program is the 'carrot' of Philadelphia’s recycling program, then the Streets and Walkways Education and Enforcement program, or SWEEP, is the 'stick.' Under this law, residents are required to separate garbage from recycling and can receive warnings or fines for putting recyclables into their trash bin, or vice-versa.

While Philly’s progress is remarkable, it’s tempting to compare the city’s 21 percent residential recycling rate with recycling statistics from cities like San Francisco, which boasted an 80 percent diversion rate last year. But putting recycling rates side-by-side is like comparing apples and oranges, says Phil Bresee, director of Philadelphia’s recycling office.

San Francisco’s rate of material it diverts from the landfill includes residential and commercial trash, as well as construction and demolition debris, he says. Philly’s number only takes into account the waste generated by households and public buildings and spaces.

The city’s 'all-in' diversion rate for calendar year 2012, including residential, commercial, and construction and demolition wastes, is around 50 percent, Bresee says. Last year’s figure is still being calculated.

It’s also important to note that states have different rules for what counts as recycling, Bresee goes on to say. In California, for example, cities can claim recycling credit for collecting yard and food waste that ends up as daily cover material for landfills – not so in Pennsylvania and many other states.

Breese also points out that other recycling programs with higher residential recycling rates typically collect organic materials, including yard and food waste. Philly’s curbside program, however, currently only collects metal, glass, plastics, paper, cardboard and cartons – and not yard or food waste – although the city council is considering organics collection.

But when Philadelphia compares the material it collects from the city’s single-stream program to statistics from other major cities, Bresee says, Philly ranks among the best, collecting more than 470 pounds of recyclables per household each year.

While Philadelphia has more work ahead of it if the city wants to further slash waste, it's clear that Philly is on the right path towards waste reduction. And if this city can turn around a failing recycling program and improve collection by 155 percent, then what can't it accomplish?

Image credit: Flickr/R’lyeh Imaging

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

By Seda Kojoyan

Sustainability matters. And if you happen to be in the coffee business, it matters especially. In 2012, this market saw 40 percent of global production coming from sources that were certified or verified for sustainability. The latest State of Sustainability Initiatives Review confirms that “the landscape of sustainable coffee has been one of rapid transformation from a niche market to a fully recognized strategic business management tool,” according to the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

Yet many challenges along the way make the road to achieving sustainability a difficult one for businesses. They include increased production costs, a perceived conflict between environmental needs and the bottom line, and weak governance and infrastructure in producer countries.

Sustainable production usually comes with increasing costs of production. Multinationals wishing to introduce more environmentally friendly production materials and techniques into their supply chains are aware that this often means increased labor input and costs per unit of production. To offset these costs, the farmers would in turn expect larger financial returns. These can come in the form of premiums paid to the farmers for using sustainable practices and for crops of exceptional quality, as has been the strategy used for Nespresso’s AAA Sustainable Quality Program. In fact, the company is capitalizing on these premiums, since they make up 80 percent of its investment for sustainability.

The premiums pay around 30 to 40 percent above standard market prices for raw materials and 10 to 15 percent above coffees of similar quality. Yet according to one agronomist participating in the program, these premiums are not quite enough. Other means of assistance include sustainability grants, often provided by coffee growers’ associations, although they rely on unstable donor funding.

Prices also play a vital role here. Following the 2001 coffee price crisis, the International Coffee Organization, an intergovernmental organization whose membership includes most of the producer and importer countries, is preoccupying itself with creating favorable market solutions. It holds that sustainability schemes are largely at the mercy of the markets, and that “many specific projects and initiatives can often only be successful if market balance maintains prices at levels at which the cost of such initiatives can be absorbed.”

“Convincing farmers is the biggest challenge,” says Vinicius Scarpa, an agronomist who assists the AAA Sustainable Quality Program in his home country of Brazil. Farmers can be resistant to changing conventional farming practices in favor of more environmentally friendly ones. According to Scarpa, this is because farmers are particularly concerned that refusing to use chemicals that boost yield would translate into decreased sales and, consequently, less profit. Scarpa and his colleagues suggest that to improve negative attitudes, it is not only necessary to improve farmers’ education on sustainable methods and promote with them with a more long-term business strategy. Building trust between the agronomist and the farmer is also an essential component, ensuring that these interactions are fruitful.

Naturally, a broader socioeconomic climate in the countries where the farmers, their employees and dependents live and work is shaped by the government, citizens and civil society. The country’s existing structures, such as adequate employment laws or proper infrastructure, can have a significant impact on integration of sustainable processes. International businesses have subscribed to this view (acting, for instance, through the International Organisation of Employers) and have called for national governments to do their part to achieve fairer societies. A good illustration of this has been businesses’ engagement on human rights. Employers have exhibited strong preferences for the 2008 U.N. Commission on Human Rights’ framework, proposed by Harvard professor John Ruggie, which says that states have a duty to protect, while enterprises have a responsibility to respect, human rights. This kind of clear-cut division leaves no doubt about where employers think the primary responsibility lies.

National governments, on the other hand, are acting as advocates internationally, not only through various U.N. bodies but also through the International Coffee Organization. Of particular concern is the potential for low-prices crises in the face of very high supply, a condition that the ICO calls a threat to sustainable development.

All things considered, it is likely that further efforts to achieve sustainable goals within the coffee industry will require more funds, educational outreach and collaboration, and partnerships among the many stakeholders: farmers, communities, civil society, multinationals and national governments. One thing is certain: Neither the goals nor the challenges are to be taken lightly. Engaging in sustainability primarily means recognizing, in the words of Nespresso CEO Jean-Marc Duvoisin, that “sustainability has to be embedded in your business model.” It is time to embed.

Image caption: Antonio Marcio, a farmer from Brazil. Photo credit: Nespresso. 

Seda Kojoyan is a reporter for Pro Journo and recent M.A. graduate from The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.

This story is part of Pro Journo's coverage on “From Field to Pod: The Latest in Sustainable Coffee Production." You can read more from the series on projourno.org.