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This post is part of Triple Pundit's ongoing coverage of the SXSW Eco conference. For the rest, please visit our SXSW Eco page here.

If you're anything like me, it was tough to step away from the computer during Climate Week NYC. Like so many others, I scrolled tirelessly through Twitter during the People's Climate March, which drew more than 400,000 supporters from all over the world in a hopeful foreshadowing of things to come. Then it was quickly on to live feeds of the United Nations Climate Summit, a historic gathering that promised to pave the way to a more sustainable future.

But last week as I strolled through the Austin Convention Center at the 2014 SXSW Eco conference, I overheard murmurings that the march and summit had disappeared from news feeds as quickly as they arrived -- that the media had all but forgotten the momentum supporters worked so hard to build.

Of course, just because a subject vanishes from the 24-hour news cycle doesn't mean it loses its footing at the forefront of the public agenda. For activists, supporters and, yes, even world leaders, the U.N. Climate Summit is still very much a hot topic. As a group of sustainability professionals, nonprofit leaders and reporters filed into a U.N. panel discussion at SXSW Eco, it was clear the summit still mattered a great deal to us. We all had one question on our minds: What happens next?

The summit did not disappoint in terms of its significance. More than 100 world leaders gathered and pledged commitments to help slow the pace of climate change. Twenty-eight governments, along with 35 top companies and nearly 100 other groups, signed the New York Declaration on Forests -- pledging to cut deforestation in half by 2020 and end it completely the following decade. Several European countries announced that they would target 40 percent greenhouse gas reductions over 1990 levels. China came in with a plan to cut carbon intensity by up to 45 percent by 2020 over 2005 levels. Closing the summit, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, “I asked for bold announcements from governments, business, finance and civil society in five key areas. The summit delivered.”

Planners and delegates now look forward to the climate change conference in Lima in December and, ultimately, the 2015 gathering in Paris when it is hoped a global climate agreement will be reached. And while we knew all of this, the question on our minds was more philosophical. Rather than pondering what would happen next for U.N. climate delegates, perhaps more to the point we wondered: Is it for real this time?

The room was a diverse mix, with reporters who attended the first COP meeting in 1994 sitting side-by-side with those who had been too busy roller blading and writing letters to Santa Claus. But the quiet, cautionary skepticism was resounding. Is this latest climate summit just another Montreal? Another Copenhagen? Would interest briefly pique only to fizzle and die? Kalee Kreider, special advisor on climate science for the U.N. Foundation, touched on this sentiment almost immediately, saying:

"[The Climate March] was the first real moment I felt an end to the certain 'climate silence' that folks had experienced -- and sort of the frustration when the legislation in the U.S. collapsed and the Copenhagen Treaty talks didn't go so well. I really felt like folks had not only recuperated, but that there was something new and something different."

Andrew Freedman, senior climate reporter for Mashable who has been reporting on climate issues for nearly two decades, agreed: "As a jaded reporter who's been to Copenhagen and covered this stuff almost as long as [Kreider has], I came away from the New York summit with some sense of hope of where things are going."

One key distinction that separated this latest climate talk from those before it, Freedman pointed out, is that "it was a momentum summit; it wasn't a negotiating summit." With recent memories of marchers flooding the streets of New York as a backdrop, delegates and business leaders were free to discuss the subject openly -- and enter into voluntary commitments that hint at how far they're willing to go as talks move forward.

"What it was," Freedman said "was countries and companies signaling where they're thinking about going and how ambitious they're thinking in the near future." The sense of urgency presented by the march, he added, created a perfect storm that just may build momentum heading into Paris talks.

"The Climate March definitely gave Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon a lot of inspiration," he said. "I think he really felt it in his gut having marched with people that day to really ask leaders to be ambitious and courageous at that summit and heading into Paris. Because there's a sense that this is pretty much the last chance we have before we lock in enough infrastructure to take us well over the 2 degrees Celsius target that countries agreed to in Copenhagen. "It's clear where countries are going, and I think we're getting to a system where countries are coming to ambitious action on their own."

If the commitments made at the summit are any indication of what's to come, the cautiously optimistic among us can look forward to some big things coming out of Paris next year. Nevertheless, when it comes to this subject, optimism can be difficult. As the discussion drew to a close, a veteran climate action supporter with kind eyes and a soft smile stepped up to the microphone. She went on to say that she'd been in the climate action space since 1988 and at many times had despaired deeply about the global climate future. In closing, she asked a short but weighty question: "Can we actually turn this around?" Kreider's response shocked the room in a beautiful and unexpected way.

"The reason that I don't despair is that I want to keep us below 2 degrees Celsius. I don't know that we will; we may inflect higher than that. But I'll say this: I'm at the point where I got to see the Berlin Wall come down. I actually thought it was going to be there forever, but the wall came down and a lot of things changed. I won't go into the geopolitics of that only to say this: It can appear intractable.

"When the wall came down, retrospectively people said, 'Well there were all these indicators that change was coming.' I will say this to you: I actually think that there are a lot of indicators that change is happening. You see it in the solar and the wind industry. You see it actually at some companies. You see it on the streets of New York.

"I can't tell you when the wall is going to come down. I can't tell you at what temperature the wall is going to come down. I can't tell you what we might lose between now and when the wall is going to come down. But the wall will come down, and when the wall comes down we are going to be there. And the only way the wall is going to come down is if each and every one of us and everyone that we know helps to make that happen."

After a collective blink of disbelief, the room erupted into applause. And even as panelists answered the remaining questions, the sunny cloud of optimism left behind by Kreider's statement never faded. As we filed out of the room that day, we were left with a sense of hope and excitement of what's to come. Only time will reveal the results of the 2015 Paris summit. In the meantime all we can do is chant, "Tear down that wall!"

Image credit: Rebecca Hedges Lyon, courtesy of SXSW Eco

Based in Philadelphia, Mary Mazzoni is a senior editor at TriplePundit. She is also a freelance journalist who frequently writes about sustainability, corporate social responsibility and clean tech. Her work has appeared in the Philadelphia Daily News, the Huffington Post, Sustainable Brands, Earth911 and the Daily Meal. You can follow her on Twitter @mary_mazzoni.

Recent water-related catastrophes in places like Toledo, Ohio, Los Angeles and West Virginia highlight an increasingly pressing need for the U.S. to make significant new investments in water resource infrastructure and management. They also cast light on outdated market structures and pricing mechanisms that result in counterproductive, even perverse, use and management of precious water resources.

In a recent article published by online environmental magazine Ensia, long-time water resource specialist, author and journalist Cynthia Barnett delves into the at-times murky world of the political economy of water in the U.S. “We're subsidizing our most wasteful water use – while neglecting essentials like keeping our water plants and pipes in good repair,” she writes.

How best to restructure water markets so as to make genuinely sustainable use of water resources is a controversial and hotly debated topic among economists, government leaders and agencies, as well as end users. More broadly, it raises the economic issue of how public goods – water, air, knowledge and national security, for example – are priced by markets and allocated among end users. In her article for Ensia, Barnett quotes Amsterdam-based water economist David Zetland, “You can get to sustainability, but you can't get there without putting a price on water.”

The political economy of U.S. water resource usage and management

Facing the possibility of a fourth year of drought, NASA recently published a satellite map showing the alarming extent to which California's groundwater resources – the crucial buffer for water supplies when rainfall falls short – are being depleted.

Per capita water usage in the U.S. has declining even as the U.S. economy and population have grown. Less water is used today in the U.S. than was the case 40 years ago as public awareness and widespread measures to increase efficiency – irrigation, water recycling on the part of commercial and industrial companies, and low-volume toilets, for example – have been adopted, Barnett points out.

Nonetheless, Americans continue to use more water, and pay considerably less for it, than most societies on the planet. Although it's the most precious of natural resources provided by U.S. utilities, it is also the least valued, Barnett notes. Poorly designed water policies and pricing are compounding the problem, leading to excessively wasteful use of water and disincentives for water utilities to invest in infrastructure, she continues. Further intensifying the issue is climate change, which causes changes in precipitation levels and seasonal patterns, according to scientists.

“Squeezed by drought, U.S. consumers and western farmers have begun to pay more for water. But the increases do not come close to addressing the fundamental price paradox in a nation that uses more water than any other in the world while generally paying less for it. And some of the largest water users in the East, including agricultural, energy and mining companies, often pay nothing for water at all,” Barnett writes.

Water policies and pricing mechanisms lead to wasteful use

The Gulf of Mexico "dead zone," the Duke Energy coal ash spill in West Virginia, the toxic algal bloom that shut down water supplies in Toledo, Ohio, and the burst water main that wasted 90 million gallons of water in Los Angeles are only a litany of developments that have brought the political economy of water resource management in the U.S. to the forefront of the public agenda. As Barnett puts it:

“The problems are also laying bare the flawed way we pay for water — one that practically guarantees pipes will burst, farmers will use as much as they can and automatic sprinklers will whir over desiccated aquifers...

“Pennies-per-gallon water makes it rational for homeowners to irrigate lawns to shades of Oz even during catastrophic droughts like the one gripping California. On the industrial side, water laws that evolved to protect historic uses rather than the health of rivers and aquifers can give farmers financial incentive to use the most strained water sources for the least sustainable crops."

As one example, Barnett cites water usage and pricing near Yuma, Ariz. — the driest spot in the United States, with an average rainfall of 3 inches per year — where farmers use Colorado River water to grow alfalfa, a water-intensive crop. “Under the law of the river,” Barnett notes, “if they don’t use their allotment, they’ll lose their rights to it.”

Playing catch-up, municipalities around the U.S. have been raising water rates. Increases in cities' water rates have risen faster than the cost of living since 2007, but not fast enough to fund the estimated $1 trillion in projected new investments and repair costs for water resource infrastructure, Barnett continues.

The human right to clean water

Climate change is intensifying the need to restructure the political economy of water in the U.S. “Going forward, water infrastructure, supply and quality challenges intensified by the droughts, floods, temperature extremes and other influences of a changing climate will require new approaches to not only price, but also ethics: using less and polluting less, recycling more, and sharing costs among all users,” Barnett elaborates.

A public good essential to life, used and shared by all Americans, water markets are often opposed by human rights advocates, who argue that environmental goods and services that serve essential human needs should not be priced like commodities. While acknowledging this, Barnett believes water markets can be restructured in ways that meet the needs of all stakeholders, but do a much better job of allocation and producing the funds needed to make water infrastructure supplies sustainable and resilient.

“U.S. water use and price have been so skewed for so long that market solutions may be the only politically feasible way to right them. If we are to subsidize anyone, perhaps it should be the poor: A sustenance level of water for those who need it — free or dirt cheap — and higher prices for those who want more and choose to pay,” she writes. Barnett echoes University of Arizona law professor Robert Glennon, author of “Water Follies” and “Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What To Do About It,” when she writes, “I argue for a human right to water. If we can’t guarantee that in the richest country in the world, we are a sorry lot.”

*Image credits: 1)  Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC, January 2003; 2) NASA; 3) Global Water Intelligence Tariff Survey 2014.

If plant-based protein becomes the norm -- and meat production becomes only a minor, not major, contributor to the world’s problems coming from carbon emissions and pollution -- then much of the credit should go to Stanford University researcher Patrick Brown. The professor of biochemistry, who has spent much of his career on genetic research, has taken on a new quest: finding alternatives to animal farming. And one of his ideas is a plant-based hamburger that oozes out blood like the real thing.

His brainchild is Impossible Foods, a Redwood City, California startup that has scored $75 million in venture capital funding, according to the Wall Street Journal. The company is developing fake cheeses and meats, including his beef substitute that uses plant-based molecules to recreate a more environmentally friendly, and humane, alternative to steak and hamburger. In his quest to change how we eat, and put a dent in the global meat industry, he is focusing on the environmental argument while trying to develop a product that has the taste and texture of the real thing — eschewing the emotional and ethical arguments typical of the anti-meat crowd.

Other companies are on a similar mission, such as Beyond Meat, the Southern California-based firm that has been supplying Whole Foods and other retailers with chicken strips that taste practically — I would argue better — than the real thing. Beyond Meat uses a mixture of carrot fiber, amaranth and pea flour for a product that can be mixed with pasta or grilled like fajitas. Like Impossible Foods, these companies are on a mission to develop products that are cost-competitive, and eventually cheaper, than meat from cows or chickens. If they and other companies succeed, they can help fight the global obesity epidemic, help stall global emissions, put a salve on what many see as a cruel industry, and free up land otherwise used for pasture and other livestock farming.

And these companies have got to succeed if we are going to come close to making a dent in our addiction to meat. Let's address a few of the social and economic realities. Many of the meat alternatives out there are of poor quality, and made from a base of gritty soy or manky fungus — not to mention that they are often hyper-processed. While diets can and will change, they do slowly — so shaming people to switch meats for seitan, lentils or mung beans will not work. Many people have grown up accustomed to the taste and texture of meat, or are developing a liking for it abroad as the global middle class expands. So we can talk until we are blue in the face (or blue like some meat in China) about animal cruelty, the fact the meat industry is a larger carbon emitter than the transport industry worldwide, that more land is used to raise food for animals than humans, and the health risks of consuming too much animal fat and protein. A good quality product, at a fair price, however, will get some attention.

It will be interesting to see if Impossible Foods can succeed. The quest to find new environmentally-friendly protein is analogous to developments in safe, renewable energy — many ideas work in the laboratory, but cannot scale. Another question is whether consumers will salivate, and not be creeped out, by a fake hamburger gooey with fake blood. But Dr. Brown and his Redwood City crew are not developing new products for vegans, but for the mass market. And if they become Facebook-IPO rich while we scale back global meat production, power to them.

Image credit: Impossible Foods

After a year in the Middle East and Latin America, Leon Kaye is based in California again. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter. Other thoughts of his are on his site, greengopost.com.

Want to learn more about integrating LEED into a sustainability report? We're bringing our GRI certified sustainability reporting course to Las Vegas and including a special section on LEED. This course is hosted by ARIA- MGM Resorts International and will be complemented with information on LEED requirements, Energy Efficiency, and a tour of the Aria's efficiency measures! For more info or to sign up, click here.

Leadership in Energy and Efficient Design (LEED), the certification standard set by the U.S. Green Building Council, is transforming how many buildings are constructed, remodeled, maintained and operated. The program utilizes numerous categories: sustainable site, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, indoor environmental quality, and materials and resources. Is the building close to public transportation? Does it use locally-sourced building materials? These are all important questions when seeking LEED certification.

Achieving LEED certification is a powerful tool for for companies undertaking Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) sustainability reporting, which measures an organization's economic, social and environmental impacts and communicates them to a diverse group of stakeholders. GRI reports identify ways to improve in these three areas, and the built environment significantly impacts all three. So, pursuing LEED certification can be an avenue for achieving goals established from GRI reporting.

Indoor environmental quality, for example, impacts employee well being by providing high indoor air quality and ample natural daylighting.  This can boost the bottom line by improving productivity, reducing absenteeism and lowering operating costs. If higher indoor air quality is achieved through the use of nontoxic finishes and less electricity is used to light the facility, then this also reduces the environmental impact of the facility.

With these things in mind, use these seven strategies if you want to achieve LEED certification and meet your GRI goals. 

1. Set LEED-certification targets that correlate with GRI goals

There are four levels of LEED certification: certified (40-49 points), silver (50 to 59 points), gold (60 to 79 points) and platinum (80+ points). The desired certification level and associated credits  may correlate with goals resulting from GRI reporting.

For example, if your organization wishes to boost energy efficiency, then you may want to maximize passive solar gains, use zoned HVAC controls for different areas of the building, and install daylight-responsive controls. This is an opportunity to optimize your organization's built environment as it relates to social, environmental and financial performance.

2. Use lifecycle value engineering

When designing the project, determine expenses over the lifecycle of the building and how they impact building performance. Lifecycle value engineering, instead of initial-cost value engineering, takes a longer view on features that may have a higher upfront cost -- but will rapidly pay for themselves. Some money-saving features may reduce energy or water use enough to pay for themselves in reduced operating costs within a matter of months, despite a greater upfront cost. This perspective also better enables the team to align with GRI tracking and the triple bottom line.

3. Ensure the project team is on board with goals

If all members of your team aren't working collectively toward common goals, it will be much more difficult to achieve the desired result. Share LEED and GRI goals and outcomes with everyone on the team, including architects, engineers, developers, subcontractors, project managers, landscape designers, etc., and be open to their ideas and feedback.

4. Set high goals to spur creativity

Some organizations set a higher stretch goal for the level of LEED certification in the planning phase to stimulate creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. This is especially helpful during early brainstorming sessions. If it turns out that some ideas are cost prohibitive or don't pass a cost/benefit analysis, plans can be tapered back.

5. Take a collaborative approach

"The earlier you think about building green, the less it costs," says Rob Smith, president of e2 Homes. "To pursue LEED certification, the first thing we did was have a design charrette.  It all starts with a brainstorming session to find better ways of doing things that will save money and improve efficiency. Let’s build better and let’s build smarter."

A design charrette is a great opportunity to bring various stakeholders together, including colleagues working on GRI goals and tracking, to ensure a seamless integration of this project with larger organizational goals impacting the triple bottom line.

6. Set an adequate budget

Higher levels of LEED certification typically involve higher expenditures, although some of these green features will pay off over time with lower operating expenses. Establish a realistic budget that can cover your project, along with some unexpected expenses. This ensures that you won't have to cut corners at the end in undesirable ways.

7. Hire LEED-accredited professionals

The USGBC has a process to determine a level of knowledge and familiarity with the LEED-certification process and demonstrated knowledge in green building principles and practices. Having LEED-accredited professionals (LEED APs) on your team will help streamline the design and LEED certification process, particularly if there is significant past experience.

Image credit: Flickr/U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Europe District

Buying cleaning products has long been a murky process. Few laws requiring companies to disclose the chemicals are on the books — so of course, most companies do not list what they put into those bottles. But for some public health advocates, required ingredients disclosure has been their rallying cry. Now more companies are responding in kind. For example, Clorox recently announced an expansion of its “Ingredients Inside” program and an updated release of its smartphone app that aims to educate customers about the company’s portfolio of cleaning products, from bleach to room fresheners. Fragrances, those pesky additives where it is almost impossible to sort out how they are formulated, are the latest addition.

And indeed, that is quite a laundry list of fragrances Clorox uses in all of its products. But that list is it — no other additional information about these ingredients was released. Consumers who want more information are directed to a Wikipedia page, or the International Fragrance Association. One can also download a list in PDF format if they want to learn the industry names of the fragrances. So, are these updated apps and disclosures actually helpful to consumers, or is this just marketing in the guise of transparency?

It is true that Clorox is doing more to reveal its ingredients than other cleaning products companies. And fair enough, as far as we know, there has been no massive class-action lawsuit resulting from the nefarious use of fragrances. Most companies test their products rigorously (we would hope) to avoid any costly litigation or branding image headaches. But for the average consumer like me (who barely remembers high school- or college-level chemistry), a list of ingredients on an app does not really tell me much. For example, I am told that the sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) in one of Clorox’s “green” products is “commonly used in household cleaners, detergents and soaps because of its soil removing and foaming abilities.” Okay, so a Wikipedia CliffsNotes description. So, is this ingredient really safe? Are there any health or environmental impacts? And where does SLS come from? How is it manufactured?

It is up to the consumer to do more research if he or she wants more information on ingredients. For example, to learn more about the potential health or environmental risks of sodium lauryl sulfate, I pulled up an article on Mercola.com. The article seemed balanced enough: It dismissed some rumors and untruths about SLS, talked about studies discussing potential health and environmental issues, and gave a decent overview about this ingredient that is in countless consumer packaged goods.

So, while Clorox is ahead of the game when it comes to ingredients disclosure, overall the industry still has a lot of work to do when it comes to ingredients transparency. Here’s a challenge I would like to see these companies take on: Allow customers to link to articles about these ingredients — one from a credible industry association, and one from a credible health or consumer safety NGO. Let the consumer read both sides and make an educated choice if that ingredient is one he or she trusts. And of course, there is a place to disclose these mysterious ingredients: on the product label.

Of course, if all this is too much of a headache, there is one simple solution that is also safe and saves money: Fill a spray bottle with a 5 percent white vinegar solution and a few drops of extract or essential oils, then spray and scrub away.

Image credit: Ingredients Inside App

After a year in the Middle East and Latin America, Leon Kaye is based in California again. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter. Other thoughts of his are on his site, greengopost.com.

By Robin Kim

While Thomas Duncan was dying from Ebola in Dallas, Texas, two brothers, Ali, 6, and Satique, 9, were recovering. They are leaving their treatment center in Sierra Leone to return home to their dad.

Tales of survival are rare moments of triumph in an epidemic whose power to terrify is having deadly consequences on economies and societies. Yet these bright spots also deserve to be known because they can lead to more bright spots, greater impact -- and hope transformed into truth.

Other bright spots include UNICEF, which is using its global presence, knowledge, relationships and infrastructure to identify, develop and propagate the best ways to contain and treat Ebola. Its door-to-door prevention campaign will reach every household with life-saving information and protection kits.

These bright moments include that of Dr. Paul Farmer: His organization, Partners in Health, provides community-based care for millions in the developing world, and his efforts to curb Ebola in Liberia are yielding success. “There is no need for the majority of people with Ebola to die if they're diagnosed quickly and receive effective and prompt supportive care,” he told an audience in San Francisco last week. “The best way to stop Ebola is to wipe it out at the source, where the epidemic is currently out of control.”

They include Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s opinion editorial in Wednesday’s Financial Times, showing how decisive leadership, with the right resources and a highly coordinated response, are resulting in a halt of the disease in the country since its first incident on July 20, with 12 survivors from Nigeria’s 20 victims.

They include Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's foundation, which has partnered with UNICEF and UPS to deliver more protection aid via a $3.6 million matching gift fund, enabling more successes to be possible.

And within the Bay Area, one year ago the U.S. Fund for UNICEF opened its eighth regional office in San Francisco – another bright moment. The timing could not have been better. I joined their Board along with seven others.

It is absolutely possible to stop the spread of Ebola -- if we act quickly. And it is also fully in our power to create more bright spots. My donation to UNICEF to stop Ebola, for example, will be matched dollar-for-dollar by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Yours will too. It doesn’t have to be a big donation. It can be $1, or $10. It doesn’t matter how much. It simply matters that we do something. Give something.

Here’s the link to donate. Let’s do it.

Image credit: UNICEF/NYHQ2014-1522/La Rose

Robin Kim is a member of the Northwest Board for the U.S. Fund for UNICEF

This post is part of Triple Pundit's ongoing coverage of the SXSW Eco conference. For the rest, please visit our SXSW Eco page here.

On the first day of SXSW Eco, design experts discussed examples of how creative design makes sustainability easy, cost-effective and beautiful. Moderated by Vince Digneo, sustainability strategist for Adobe Systems, panelists from Frog Design, Building Robotics and Levi Strauss & Co. showcased their innovative approaches to solving problems while making their products, services and consumer experiences better.

Denise Gershbein explained Frog Design’s position: They help their customers with global production design that is long-term and systems focused. She explains that cradle-to-cradle and visionary thinking is at the root of their design consultations, and these are the most important attributes that lead the non-linear design process towards solving complex sustainability problems.

In my view, the most interesting component of the panel was Paul Dillinger’s deep dive into the sustainability-driven design tactics he leads at Levi Strauss. He began with the recognition that the fashion industry has a notoriously bad reputation for being highly wasteful and unsustainable, from the mostly unrecyclable materials through the environment-intense chemicals. This is a result of an industry that is primarily concerned with trend relevancy and valuing consumer needs over the bigger picture of eco-consciousness. There is a trend in 'eco-fashion' labels, but he notes that the design and marketing approaches they utilize often only address one issue of a very large and complex system, like focusing solely on the use of organic cotton.

He attributed this shortcoming in the fashion industry to the consideration of environmental constraints as barriers to creativity and freedom of design. But in fact, Dillinger, the company's head of global production innovation, said he uses these as springboards for innovation and sustainability. He feels that the process of unlocking environmental and social qualities that can be built into pieces of clothing is actually more creatively rewarding, and he has seen firsthand how these attributes can create more business and consumer benefits.

Traditionally, a pair of jeans uses 4,000+ liters of water throughout its lifecycle. In the production phase, a large portion of this water usage comes from the dying process, which is comprised of about 18 dye-dipping cycles. To cut back, Dillinger shared that  his company has developed a nearly waterless method for dying denim that instead utilizes pressure, which has resulted in 50 to 75 percent water savings. Outside of production, 45 percent of the water usage for a pair of jeans happens after they leave the store and are in the consumer’s hands. Most companies are not necessarily invested in what happens outside the realm of their factories. However, Levi’s has addressed this issue as well, by instructing consumers to wash with cold water and to line-dry their jeans and shirts.

He then posed a question to the room: Have any of you tried to dry a shirt on a hanger with satisfaction? The reality is: Wire hangers leave those undesirable stretch marks on the shoulders. To make their customers’ experience better, Levi's reinforces that area on their shirts so they can better withstand air-drying. This clever design trick not only saves energy and water, but is also a great example of how creative design can be more sustainable and consumer-friendly. The two do not need to be mutually exclusive.

In addition to water use, Dillinger gave yet another example of how inserting sustainability values at every step of the creative design and production process can have outstanding benefits: He explained that most clothes are unrecyclable because of the use of polyester thread and tags. Polyester is more durable and can withstand the use of additional dying and finishing chemicals, like the ones used to give jeans vintage looks. He knew the company wanted to shift to cotton, but that would then require a new method of finishing. Through creative experimentation, the company was able to start using a finishing method that utilizes light and lasers. This example stresses the need to think in a systematic and holistic way to solve problems relating to the sustainability of their brand and products.

By purposively inserting environmental and sustainability values into their product design, Levis Strauss & Co. is able to make clothes that are identical to what they have produced in the past -- but now with more inherent values that give them a competitive edge. By factoring in additional social considerations, like adopting fair labor policies and reinvesting in the communities where its factories are located, the company is now better apt than ever to control the unintended consequences and externalities of its business.

Image credit: Rebecca Hedges Lyon (courtesy of SXSW Eco)

With a busy week behind you and the weekend within reach, there’s no shame in taking things a bit easy on Friday afternoon. With this in mind, every Friday TriplePundit will give you a fun, easy read on a topic you care about. So, take a break from those endless email threads, and spend five minutes catching up on the latest trends in sustainability and business.

Thursday, Oct. 16, is World Food Day -- an annual day of action against hunger. Commemorating the creation of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations on Oct. 16, 1945 in Quebec, Canada, WFD asks people to come together in their commitment to eradicate hunger in their lifetimes.

An estimated 805 million people, one in nine worldwide, live with chronic hunger -- a startling statistic that underscores the importance of action on the issue. While spreading awareness on World Food Day is great, it takes year-round action to secure real change. With that in mind, this week we're tipping our hats to eight companies that are working to eliminate hunger worldwide.

1. Panera Bread

Popular bakery-cafe chain Panera Bread has put a focus on hunger relief from the start. At the end of each day, all Panera Bread locations donate unsold bread and baked goods to local hunger relief agencies. You've likely noticed its Panera Cares Community Breadbox at your neighborhood branch, where the company collects donations from patrons and distributes the funds to local nonprofits in partnership with Feeding America.

The chain is also famous for its Panera Cares Community Cafes, nonprofit locations that provide hot meals to anyone -- whether they can afford to pay or not. The cafes – operated by the Panera Bread Foundation, a separate nonprofit entity – are "meant to raise the level of awareness about food insecurity in this country, while also being a catalyst for change in our communities," the company said.

2. Darden Restaurants

Darden Restaurants, the Fortune 500 restaurant giant known for brands like Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse and Bahama Breeze, began its Darden Harvest program in 2003 to rescue food from landfills and get it to those in need. With full participation from all Darden restaurants, the program has donated more than 77 million pounds of surplus food – totaling more than 100 million meals – to hungry families since its inception.

The program also allows the company to divert 11 million pounds of food -- which may have passed internal sell-by dates but is still wholesome and perfectly fit for human consumption -- from landfills each year, a key component to achieving the company's goal to one day send zero waste to landfills.

3. Kellogg

Kellogg has been working to fight hunger for more than 30 years. As part of its Breakfasts for Better Days initiative, the company will donate 1 billion servings of cereal and snacks in support of global hunger relief by the end of 2016. The company donates, on average, more than $20 million worth of food products for hunger and disaster relief each year, in partnership with food bank networks across the globe.

In the U.S., Kellogg partners with hunger relief agencies, primarily Feeding America, to donate its products to those who need it most. Through the Feeding America partnership, Kellogg has donated more than 200 million pounds of food in the past decade alone -- and has helped provide more than 221 million meals through food and fund donation since 1983.

4. Yum! Brands

Yum! Brands, the world’s largest restaurant company famous for chains like Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC, created its World Hunger Relief program eight years ago. A personal passion for CEO David Novak, the program aims to feed hungry people while raising awareness, volunteerism and funds for the United Nations World Food Program, which receives 100 percent of donations.

The program has raised more than $185 million in cash and food donations and provided nearly 750 million nutritious meals for hungry families. The effort spans 130 countries and leverages 40,000 KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell restaurants and 1.5 million employees around the world, the company said.

5. General Mills

General Mills has partnered with Feeding America for more than 30 years. Through the partnership, the company not only funds critical hunger relief programs, but also provides significant food donations and engages employee and retiree volunteers. In partnership with Feeding America, the company has also created campaigns like Outnumber Hunger to support local food banks and generate action across the network.

6. Morgan Stanley

This year, Morgan Stanley launched Healthy Cities, a program designed to coordinate the wellness, nutrition and play resources that give children a healthy start in life. Collaborating with national and local nonprofits, Healthy Cities "helps connect otherwise separate programs and creates a linked package of wellness education and screenings, nutritious foods, and safe play spaces for children in neighborhoods in need," Feeding America said.

Together with Feeding America, Morgan Stanley’s efforts will provide more than 10 million meals and 50 million servings of fresh produce for children. Morgan Stanley employees play a critical role in the partnership, Feeding America says, by delivering strategic planning advice, research assistance, executive counseling and hands-on volunteer engagement nationwide.

7. Cisco

For 11 years, Cisco has matched its employees' volunteer time and donations to address hunger and food insecurity around the world. Its annual Global Hunger Relief Campaign supports more than 160 nonprofits and NGOs to deliver millions of meals.

Last year, Cisco employees worked 44,000 volunteer hours at hunger relief and nutrition nonprofits. With the company tripling all donations made by employees and other donors, the campaign raised $5.7 million for charitable organizations last year -- enough to provide 23 million meals to hungry people around the world.

8. Walmart

In 2010, Walmart and the Walmart Foundation launched Fighting Hunger Together – a $2 billion cash and in-kind commitment through 2015 to fight hunger in America. The company has already reached $260 million in cash and $2.6 billion in in-kind donations, delivering on its commitment one year early.

Through the program, Walmart donated more than 571 million pounds of food – the equivalent of 369 million meals – in 2013 alone. Hunger relief efforts have also been one of the company's most popular employee volunteering platforms, with 4,100 employees volunteering more than 13,000 hours toward hunger relief efforts in 2013.

Of course, there are many more companies that are hard at work on this critical issue. If you know of a company or organization that deserves recognition but isn't included on this list, please tell us about it in the comments section!

Image credit: Panera Bread

Based in Philadelphia, Mary Mazzoni is a senior editor at TriplePundit. She is also a freelance journalist who frequently writes about sustainability, corporate social responsibility and clean tech. Her work has appeared in the Philadelphia Daily News, the Huffington Post, Sustainable Brands, Earth911 and the Daily Meal. You can follow her on Twitter @mary_mazzoni.

 

"Sometimes they just need to bang on something really hard," principal Claire Fisher explains to me when discussing middle schoolers at Urban Promise Academy and the need to maintain the drums in their music program. The middle school keeps energetic students banging away through a variety of grants, fundraisers, and general elbow grease from a pack of community members who are committed to improving Oakland's Fruitvale district.

Fruitvale's BART station gained national notoriety as the location of the fatal police shooting of unarmed passenger Oscar Grant. Urban Promise Academy (UPA, pronounced oo-pah) is a small middle school with a student body that is 87 percent latino or hispanic. Fifty-six percent of the students are English Language Learners, and 90 percent of students qualify for free and reduced lunch. In short, it's a group of students who didn't start out with a lot of advantages. But UPA is not interested in focusing on the past, it is interested in getting these students to "college, career and beyond."

Part of that preparation means making sure that they have an opportunity to engage with the technology that they'll need in the future. There are many sections of Oakland where upwards of 50 percent of the residents don't have computers or internet access at home, so the pressure is on schools to introduce the students to the technology that will help them be successful in life.

UPA has partnered with Dell to put Chromebooks in the classroom. In fact, there are over 10,000 Chromebooks in use throughout the Oakland Unified School District. OUSD selected Chromebooks in part because of their affordability, but also because of the learning flexibility afforded by the Google Drive platform. Each school has their own opportunity to decide how to use the Chromebooks, and UPA's approach utilizes creativity to get every student's needs met and bring the student body as a whole into the digital age.

At an event yesterday keynoted by Van Jones (in support of his #yeswecode initiative), we got to see some of the more innovative projects these teachers and students are turning out with basic Chromebooks and access to the internet.

Ms. Sears, the teacher of the school's STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) program for high-performing students, has an engineering background, but she uses Chromebooks in her classroom to get the students learning how to code. As she puts it "I want my students to have the skills and knowledge to get jobs at the local tech companies when they leave school." Math teacher Mr. Ramirez uses Chromebooks to offer individualized education to each of the 20-30 students in his classes. Some work independently using IXL to meet their foundational math needs if they are behind, some  take Khan Academy courses, some work in small groups (with tape recorders) to do common-core problem solving, and Mr. Ramirez works with a small group on performance tasks. These groups rotate so each student gets a chance in every setting.

6th and 7th grade science teachers Ms. Lehman and Ms. Ball teamed up to offer a program whereby the students designed an experiment to be conducted on the International Space Station. Over the course of half a year, the students worked in small teams to research a problem, create a hypothesis and develop an experiment to test it in microgravity, using the Chromebooks. The computers allowed the students to work on the same document in real time and allowed the teachers to offer questions and comments in the body of the text as the sections of the problem statement came together. Scientists from U.C. Berkeley and NASA volunteered to review and critique the experiments, creating a truly scientifically rigorous assignment. One of the student groups' projects -- on the efficacy of worms at composting in microgravity -- actually won the competition to have their experiment carried out on the International Space Station -- the first time an Oakland public school has been accepted.

With the funding constraints facing public schools these days, it's great to see one example of a school doing a lot with a little, and engaging, inspiring and preparing students along the way.

This week, Collectively.org launched. Described in a press release as a “super brand coalition” platform to “raise awareness and inspire millennials to adopt a more sustainable way of living,” I first thought it was a joke. I rolled my eyes as the email also included a pallid quote from Barack Obama and forwarded it onto the editors here at Triple Pundit with a snicker (which is why, PR people, get to the point right away).

Yes, the “super brand coalition” threw me off, as I envisioned a posse of luxury brands going into the Middle Eastern desert to root out terrorism. But when I scrolled down that same email yesterday, it turns out this is partnership between Forum of the Future and some of the world’s biggest and iconic companies: Marks & Spencer, Unilever, Google, Nike, BT and others are sponsoring this new site while VIRTUE, a division of edgy VICE Media, is curating the site.

And according to sustainability writers out there, that background poses a huge problem for Collectively, and the knives are out. “A slew of major corporations,” and “backed by corporate sponsors,” are among the complaints being lobbed at this new site—as if somehow corporate involvement is a bad thing. The “feel good” stories on Collectively are mocked, and the site is even chided for not covering other stories such as the Aral Sea’s disappearance (shame on us at Triple Pundit, as admittedly we barely covered the disappearance of the world’s fourth largest freshwater lake).

But is the criticism fair, with Collectively not even up and running for a week?

To Collectively’s credit, the 25 or so sponsors are disclosed clearly, with all those atrocious logos that make many a sustainability writer apoplectic. This is no Koch Brothers initiative with a title such as “Responsible Citizens for Sustainability” that is anything but friendly to this movement in which many of us passionately believe. Sure, on a personal note, I am hardly a fan of McDonald’s and Nestlé, but I also recognize the ground-breaking work companies such as M&S, Diageo, Unilever and Kingfisher have done. And yes, Facebook is part of this coalition, too—you know, the trillion-dollar social media behemoth we all love to hate, but flock to it because it allows us to broadcast our favorite news from the likes of Grist, Mashable, Inhabitat and yes, from us here at Triple Pundit. Gather 25 of anyone or any organization in a room and it is doubtful you find the crowd completely palatable.

As for attacking Collectively for its feel-good stories, the reality is that if the dystopian view of climate change resonated with the general public across the world, we as a society would have banded together by now to reverse the trend. Fair or not, the way climate change and its dangers are portrayed have not worked. We can blame and attack traditional media all we want, but in the end they are a business. If climate change resonated, it would be a regular topic on conventional media channels. Instead, the mainstream media outlets prefer to focus more Whitney Houston drowning in a bathtub and that royal baby—because that is what most people want to watch. Those of us who wish to keep tabs on topics more important to us scour the internet to find the news we want. And before we become wistful for the pre-Fox and –MSNBC days when we had fair-minded journalism with the likes of Walter Cronkite, remember that his news show was delivered thanks to advertising dollars from the same companies who helped contribute to get us into this mess we are currently in.

The stubborn fact is that more companies are cleaning up their act, which in turn nudges their competitors to do the same, which in turn will make a difference. Sure, after a few months if Collectively reveals itself to be online greenwashing rag, it will fail and its readers will move on. But before slamming this new publication, and knocking the involvement of Jonathon Porritt—who has done far more to advance the cause of sustainability than all the mason jar-nursing hipster bloggers hiding behind their laptops—let’s welcome Collectively to the conversation. We need more participants in this ongoing discussion, not less.

Image credit: Collectively

After a year in the Middle East and Latin America, Leon Kaye is based in California again. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter. Other thoughts of his are on his site, greengopost.com.