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The latest entrant in the one-for-one model popularized by TOMS shoes is SWAP Socks, makers of fashionably-mismatched socks. SWAP Socks will give 50 percent of its profits to the SEVA Foundation, an organization dedicated to providing sight to visually-impaired people around the world (coincidentally, the same partner TOMS chose for its eyeglass partnership).

Why focus on the visually impaired?

Well, for starters, blindness can be debilitating not only for an individual but also for a whole family because it pulls a potential-earner out of the workforce, and worse, often requires another family member to stay home in a caretaking capacity. These impacts are most stark in the developing world. The statistics are dramatic: 246 million people struggle with low-vision and 39 million live completely blind worldwide. Ninety percent of these  live in the developing world, and 80 percent of these cases can be prevented or cured with routine or simple eye care -- from antibiotics to outpatient cataract surgery.

I got to learn about how debilitating total blindness can be at the kickoff event for SWAP Socks' Indiegogo campaign, held at Opaque restaurant in San Francisco. 

At Opaque, the meal is served in total darkness (even cellphone use is strictly prohibited), and the waitstaff are themselves blind. While I found the experience of dining in the dark quite liberating -- no one could see me chow down on the piece of bread I mistakenly covered with half the butter in the dish -- my seatmate Julie Nestingen from SEVA reminded me that part of what made our experience fun was that we were all together in our darkness. Individuals suffering from visual impairment must navigate the sighted world in darkness all the time. Imagine how self conscious I would feel if I knew the whole table saw my butter gaffes.

SWAP Socks is turning to Indiegogo to raise funds for their initial run of stylish socks. If their goal of $35,000 is met (and it looks like it will be -- four days in and they are 65 percent of the way there), the company will pay for 40 cataract surgeries -- 20 for children and 20 for adults -- in the developing world.

If you have some room in your sock drawer check out their video below or their campaign here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0vMlNOkxaQ

Image courtesy of SWAP Socks

The following is part of a series by our friends at CSRHub (a 3p sponsor) – offering free sustainability and corporate social responsibility ratings on over 8,900 of the world’s largest publicly traded and private companies. 3p readers get 15 percent off CSRHub’s professional subscriptions with promo code “TP15.″

By Bahar Gidwani

Over the past few years, thousands of companies both in the U.S. and abroad have raised funds through crowdfunding.  Wikipedia defines the term as:

 “the collection of finance from backers — the "crowd" — to fund an initiative and usually occurs on Internet platforms. The initiative could be a nonprofit (e.g. to raise funds for a school or social service organization), political (to support a candidate or political party), charitable (e.g. emergency funds for an ill person or to fund a critical operation), commercial (e.g. to create and sell a new product) or financing campaign for a startup company.”

We could expect crowdfunding to be especially attractive for younger entrepreneurs.  These millennials tend to embrace newer, online methods of raising money — especially since they may not have previous experience raising funding through traditional means. Companies managed by millennials might also have more socially-positive styles of management than traditional companies and may target markets that care about sustainability and social issues.  As a result, we were hopeful that we could combine the 59 million data points in our CSRHub sustainability metrics database with data from Crowdnetic, and reveal a connection between crowdfunding and positive corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance.

Last fall, Crowdnetic, a New York-based company, launched CrowdWatch, a centralized hub that tracks offerings conducted under SEC Rule 506(c).  This rule allows private issuers to offer securities through general solicitation, as long as all purchasers are accredited investors and other conditions are met.  (Click here for more details.)  Since CrowdWatch’s launch, Crowdnetic has gathered data on thousands of companies (most of them commercial enterprises) that are seeking to raise funds under 506(c).

Crowdnetic aggregates and normalizes companies in its database, in accordance with its proprietary taxonomy.  A quick analysis of data gathered through the first half of this year found that 72 of a set of 3,540 companies were in industries such as 'green building materials,' 'solar and wind power,' or 'organic food and beverages.'  Given our preliminary analysis, this indicates that crowdfunded companies do not appear to have an especially strong concentration in sustainability-oriented products.  The companies that did offer sustainable products were fairly evenly spread over a range of different industries.

We next looked in the CSRHub database for other types of sustainability performance data on the Crowdnetic-tracked companies.  Besides product information, CSRHub tracks characteristics such as leadership ethics, employee diversity, transparency and reporting, as well as supply chain practices.  We encountered a number of issues with this matching process:

1. Companies use many name variants, and a number of companies may share a similar name.  The CSRHub database captures thousands of these name variants from its more than 300 sources.  Our staff conducted a company-by-company review of each potential match to ensure that we had accurate matches.


2. All of the Crowdnetic data set companies were based in the U.S.  Only 3,871, or 43 percent, of the roughly 9,000 companies CSRHub rates are in the U.S.  This limited our opportunities for matching.


3. The companies Crowdnetic tracks are small, privately-held companies (typically under $100 million in revenue). Most of the companies CSRHub rates are large (greater than $100 million in revenue) and publicly traded (we rate about 1,000 private companies, NGOs and government entities).

At the end of the matching process, we found only two companies who had both received crowdfunding and had received enough attention for their sustainability performance to be rated by CSRHub.

CSRHub measures how a company is perceived to perform on a wide range of corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues.  The average rating for the roughly 9,000 rated companies (across more than 100 countries) stands at around 54.  So, one of the rated companies has an overall score below this average, and one has a score above.  (Ratings range from a low of around 20 to a high of around 70, but have a strong 'central tendency'; there are more details about the CSRHub ratings system on our website.)

CSRHub has gathered data on more than 100,000 companies that it does not yet rate.  CSRHub follows a well-defined set of rules that determine when we can rate any part of a company’s performance and also when we can offer an overall rating.  Most of these unrated companies are smaller private enterprises — similar to those that Crowdnetic tracks.  We found 17 instances where CSRHub had partial data on a crowdfunded company.

Most of CSRHub’s smaller company information is coming from data gathered via several types of expert sources (supply chain tracking, government regulators and non-governmental organizations) and crowd sources (consumer ratings, employee ratings and sentiment tracking systems).  We have data on crowdfunded companies from a number of sources in each of these categories.

Both the number and size of crowdfunded companies are growing.  At the same time, the number of companies with publicly-available social performance data and information is also growing.  CSRHub’s efforts to collect information on smaller companies should soon allow us to rate 90,000 or even 900,000 companies instead of 9,000.  Over the next few years, the overlap between our data sets should grow rapidly.

Crowdnetic’s statistics indicate that a small percentage of crowdfunded companies currently offer products or services in areas that are viewed as sustainable, such as organic food, energy-saving devices, social services or community impact programs.  CSRHub statistics do not include enough crowdfunded companies yet to tell if they have measurably better internal social behavior than non-crowdfunded companies.  We continue to believe that a connection is likely and will reexamine this question as soon as we have a broader overlap between the CrowdWatch and CSRHub data sets.

Image credit: Flickr/analogica; Charts courtesy of CSRHub

Bahar Gidwani is CEO and Co-founder of CSRHub. He has built and run large technology-based businesses for many years. Bahar holds a CFA, worked on Wall Street with Kidder, Peabody, and with McKinsey & Co. Bahar has consulted to a number of major companies and currently serves on the board of several software and Web companies. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School and an undergraduate degree in physics and astronomy. Bahar is a member of the SASB Advisory Board. He plays bridge, races sailboats, and is based in New York City.

About CSRHub: CSRHub provides access to corporate social responsibility and sustainability ratings and information on 9,100+ companies from 135 industries in 104 countries. Managers, researchers and activists use CSRHub to benchmark company performance, learn how stakeholders evaluate company CSR practices and seek ways to change the world.

CSRHub rates 12 indicators of employee, environment, community and governance performance and flags many special issues. We offer subscribers immediate access to millions of detailed data points from our 339 data sources. Our data comes from nine ESG (environment, social, governance) analysts, well-known indexes, publications, “best of” or “worst of” lists, NGOs, crowd sources and government agencies. By aggregating and normalizing the information from these sources with its patent-pending system, CSRHub has created a broad, consistent rating system and a searchable database that links each rating point back to its source.

CSRHub is a B Corporation, an Organizational Stakeholder (OS) with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), a silver partner with Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), a founding member of The Alliance of Trustworthy Business Experts (ATBE), an advisory board member of Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) and supports both the Global Initiative for Sustainability Ratings (GISR) and the International Integrated Reporting Committee (IIRC).

About Crowdnetic: Crowdnetic is a leading provider of technology and market data solutions to the global crowdfinance marketplace. They operate the industry’s premier centralized hub for real-time market data aggregated from platforms across the globe.

Founded in 2011 by experienced financial technology and data industry experts, Crowdnetic is committed to creating a productive and sustainable marketplace for the global crowdfinance industry. Bringing over 15 years of experience in building complex, data-intensive customized solutions, the leadership team has been instrumental in revolutionizing the industry through developing market data and analytics solutions.

Crowdnetic owns and operates CrowdneticWire.com, Lendvious.com, CrowdWatch.co and is a co-producer of the premier peer-lending conference, LendIt, the largest and most recognized conference in the P2P and online lending industry.

By Cris Burnam

There’s a lot of strength behind big brands. They can set up shop (or stock the shelves) in almost any market, and consumers know exactly what they’re getting when doing business with that brand.

Take Apple, for example. When consumers see the monochromatic logo, they know what to expect: a product that’s made well and easy to use. Coca-Cola has a somewhat similar advantage in the marketplace. As do Ford, Budweiser, Subway and General Electric.

But that’s not to say there isn’t value in being a local business. By and large, consumers want to support their local economy. They see small businesses as customer-focused, reliable, consistent, committed and just plain easier to do business with.

Obviously, you can’t do much to convince a community that you’re local when you’re not. It would be foolish to even try. But you can involve yourself in the community and in the activities that support that community. In fact, 82 percent of consumers consider the corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts of a company when making purchase decisions.

Chipotle understood this when it aligned itself with the local food movement. As part of its “Food With Integrity” campaign, the fast-food chain committed to using 10 million pounds of local produce throughout its restaurants in 2012. It also supported family farms that raise animals naturally without antibiotics or added hormones.

Get involved

You don’t have to roll out a large-scale campaign like Chipotle to forge connections with the local community. Here are five key techniques you can utilize:

1. Treat every new city like it’s your own. Your main store may be in a different city or state, but don’t let that prevent you from building valuable connections in your new “home.” You want to be seen as part of the community, not separate from it.


2. Involve yourself in the conversation. Take the time to get to know your new community and its needs. If the area is lacking a park, needs help getting a festival off the ground, or is lacking proper supplies in its public schools, for example, offer assistance in those arenas. Pinpoint what people want, and find a way to help them get it.


3. Align your involvement with your interests. It’s hard to be passionate about CSR efforts when they don’t align with your interests. Trust me, your indifference will be quickly recognized by the community. So make sure your involvement aligns with what you personally value. For example, if you’re passionate about helping children, integrate it into your core business model and find a way to help children in need in every community you operate in.


4. Relate your efforts to your business. Along with your personal interests, your efforts should relate to your industry, as well. However, you can usually find something you’re passionate about that naturally fits into your business model. If you’re a paper company, for instance, consider making recycling part of your banner. You want it to make sense.


5. Make your involvement part of your story. It may sound self-serving to tell consumers about all the good you’re doing for the community. But if you don’t, who will? Let the community know your values and how they shape your efforts to improve your surroundings, and find a way to let your customers (and potential customers) know how their patronage at your business comes full circle.

Bottom line: When you involve yourself and your business with the community, you set yourself apart from the competition. But you also increase trust and loyalty in your customer base — two things that can significantly boost your bottom line.

Image credit: Flickr/themastershakesignal

Cris Burnam has been working in the self-storage industry since 1987. He has served as president of StorageMart since founding the company with his brother Mike Burnam in 1999. Cris grew StorageMart from a single self-storage facility into the world’s largest privately owned self-storage company with 149 locations across the U.S. and Canada. Cris was named a 2014 EY Entrepreneur of the Year in the Services and Real Estate category — one of the highest honors an American entrepreneur can receive. Connect with StorageMart on Twitter.

The entire state of California is in a drought. A big part of the state, including the fertile Central Valley, is experiencing the worst category of drought, exceptional. California supplies much of the fruits, vegetables and nuts the nation eats. In inland areas such as the Central Valley, as well as the combined Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys, agriculture truly rules.

While people in Southern California and the Bay Area are largely insulated from the effects of the drought, people in the Central Valley are being hit hard. Some wells in the town of Easton, the small farming community in Fresno County where I was raised, are going dry; and two businesses have closed as a result. Meanwhile, farmers are resorting to over-pumping groundwater. They have no choice. They want to survive. America wants to eat.

Agriculture takes up 80 percent of the state’s water supply. Some crops need more water than others. Tree crops, for example, need more water than vineyards. Almonds are one tree crop that is experiencing great growth, fueled in part by studies that show the health benefits of eating almonds and past drops in the price of raisins. As a result, almonds are California’s largest export; state farmers grow 80 percent of the world’s supply, and 99 percent of all almonds grown in the U.S. hail from California. However, the drought is certain to affect the almond industry. As an opinion piece by Market Watch points out, “This unprecedented drought threatens to slam the brakes on one of the state’s fastest-growing crops and biggest moneymakers.” When the 2014-2015 crop goes to market next year, consumers will certainly be hit with higher almond prices.

Drought, water efficiency and California agriculture

The California drought highlights the need for more efficient uses of water by the agricultural sector, including the almond industry. No one knows when this drought will end, but even when it does, Californians, and farmers in particular, must remember that California is prone to droughts. Another drought will come along. The key for the survival of California agriculture is for farmers to adapt. Developing ways to more efficiently use water will enable farmers to effectively cope with water shortages.

Water efficiency in the Central Valley is particularly needed for the very survival of the industry that put the place on the map. Without agriculture, the two-thirds of the state that make up the Central Valley would be the desert backwater it was when my great-grandfather came here from Armenia. According to the family story, when the train stopped in Fresno, my grandfather and the other Armenians on the train didn’t want to get off. They were quite shocked by the barrenness of the land. Irrigation water has turned this desert into fertile farmland.

During the past couple of decades, California farmers have already made strides toward becoming more water efficient. In 1990, more than two-thirds of the crops in California were flood irrigated, according to the Pacific Institute, a notoriously water-inefficient practice. But by 2010, only 43 percent were flood irrigated. From 1990 to 2010, the amount of California land irrigated with micro-sprinklers and drip irrigation increased from 15 to 38 percent. Gone are the days of my childhood when a kid could float on an inner-tube down a vine-row flooded with irrigation water. And that is good news. It proves that farmers have the ability to adapt.

Image: Author's own

By Ira Baseman

Recently, there has been a lot of invigorating discussion from sustainable business leaders in the apparel industry about implementing take-back programs to recycle clothing and accessories. After all, it is estimated that more than 70 pounds per consumer, or nearly 22 billion pounds of clothing, shoes and accessories annually, end up in our solid waste stream -- representing 5 percent of landfills. To be sure, retailers and manufacturers are playing a strong role by raising awareness about this problem of overburdened landfills and encouraging consumers to become part of the solution. I want to elevate the discussion and challenge business leaders to consider a new model for recycling that is focused on reuse, unprecedented convenience and personal engagement that is meaningful and impactful. In my work, I see a new wave of conscious consumerism taking hold, and I like to refer to this as the 'reuse movement.'

The reuse movement is about making recycling personal. It is about creating and delivering an experience for consumers and a new (corporate social responsibility CSR) journey for retailers and other stakeholders. Each single, personal act of recycling creates local community benefits, such as reusing materials or turning them into new products, and it creates a global impact such as generating new jobs, connecting people through recycling and ultimately reducing waste.

For the retail industry, a new program within the reuse movement allows consumers to recycle clothing shoes, and accessories without leaving their homes – for free. Through a customized portal designed for the retailer, consumers are invited to simply box up their items, print out a free shipping label and place the box on their doorstep for pick-up by their mail carrier. Once recyclers ship their items for reuse, they are invited to their own environmental dashboard where they receive a personalized sustainability report, track the path of their recyclables across the world and share their success through social media channels to showcase their personal impact. For the recycler, this experience is personal, measurable and impactful. For the retailer/manufacturer, this is frictionless, traceable and builds a sustainability record that is easily deliverable to all stakeholders.

One such leader embracing this program in the reuse movement is Original Penguin. The company offers this opportunity to its consumers online and in-store (receipt promotions) with little to no labor impact, which showcases how the company is reducing its environmental footprint. Thus far, Original Penguin, has engaged its consumers in more than 20 states, which are all traceable back to each patron.

The reuse movement champions the concept that sustainability and economic development go hand-in-hand, by putting clothing and related items back into communities for reuse and resale. As a country, we generate 26 billion pounds of apparel, textiles and footwear annually, or roughly 82 pounds per U.S. resident. Yet only 15 percent is recycled; the remaining 85 percent ends up in landfills. I see this as a huge opportunity for consumers and companies to work together to reduce waste, while humanizing recycling and generating economic opportunity. The reuse movement is seizing this moment.

Reuse does not end with clothing being re-worn by others – it sparks economic opportunities across the globe for people who rely on textiles to fuel their entrepreneurial aspirations. I see this happening across the U.S. and around the globe. From artisans to new industries, reuse is having a profound impact and sparks new life into our material world and how we engage with it.

Overall, our company’s contribution to the reuse movement prevents more than 50 tons of materials from ending up in landfills every day. More than 5,000 partner organizations in the U.S. and more than 50 countries – artisans and businesses reuse materials. All of these gently-used items are reused in thrift stores and marketplaces around the globe, where more than 70 percent of the population depends on affordable, secondhand goods.

Despite the growing environmental movement by companies and consumers, most people in the U.S. are unaware their clothes, shoes and other items can be reused, resold and recycled, creating local economies and jobs both here and around the world. Yet, every day, I am experiencing this new wave of conscious consumerism – people are embracing the human connection of recycling through reuse. I am hopeful that there will come a day when we see consumers actively recycling clothes, shoes and accessories with the same frequency they do with curbside programs for recycled bottles, paper and aluminum. I think we are seeing the beginning of real change and we invite everyone to join the reuse movement.

Inspired by the mission of doing well and doing good in business, Ira Baseman is president of Community Recycling, a social-conscious, for-profit recycling company, which has championed the Reuse Movement. Community Recycling scales clothing recycling and reuse for people, while helping retail organizations build brand reputation and connectivity among their customers. As a result, Community Recycling engages more than 5,000 partner organizations in the U.S. and more than 50 countries in the Reuse Movement by reusing materials or turning them into new products, helping to grow local economies and provide jobs for people in the U.S. and abroad.

Protesters took action last week to mark the opening of London Fashion Week with the message “Don’t mention the garment workers”.

Activists highlighted the event because, they say, while it promotes the creativity of the UK’s fashion industry, it remains silent over the millions of workers who produce clothes for high street chains, often working long hours on poverty pay in unsafe conditions.

The demonstration, organised by the anti-poverty charity War on Want, took place in view of London Fashion Week’s opening nearby at Somerset House.

War on Want senior campaigner Owen Espley said: “London Fashion Week is a glittering showcase for the fashion industry. But fashion’s dark side is kept in the shadows.

“The British Fashion Council would rather we all forget about those who often work long hours, on poverty pay, in unsafe conditions to produce the clothes we love.

“We can love fashion, but hate sweatshops and want a fashion week that lives up to its responsibility to all the workers who make the fashion we buy. The time has come for London Fashion Week to mention the garment workers.”

The charity points out that while many major UK brands are members of the Ethical Trading Initiative and have signed a pledge to pay workers a living wage, none currently does so.
 

Climate change skeptics and deniers habitually assert that cutting carbon emissions and putting a price on carbon would jeopardize economic growth and job creation. Hence, by their reasoning, we're better off living with the rising costs and profound threats resulting from rising greenhouse gas emissions and a warming climate.

Research carried out by Imperial College London in partnership with the International Carbon Reduction and Offsetting Alliance (ICROA) indicates otherwise. In Unlocking the Hidden Value of Carbon Offsetting, the researchers conclude that investing in carbon offset credit programs yields significant social, environmental and economic returns beyond greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

According to the research results, investing in voluntary carbon emissions offset credit programs creates economic development opportunities, enhances environmental conservation, and improves people's lives by realizing a host of social benefits that range from household savings and health benefits to healthier water resources. Overall, they determined that the additional value – beyond emissions reductions – of each metric ton of carbon emissions avoided by purchasing offset credits totals $664. Ipso facto, they add, carbon offset credits are systemically undervalued.

Value beyond carbon emissions reductions

The amount of carbon emissions reductions resulting from investing in carbon offset credit programs “has been rigorously measured and independently verified for many years,” Imperial College and ICROA note in a press release. However, no research has been conducted to measure and value the impact investing in carbon emissions offset programs has beyond emissions reductions – until now, that is.

As the research team states:

“This research finds that each tonne [metric ton] of carbon reduced has additional benefits – such as poverty alleviation, infrastructure development and nature conservation – worth $664, meaning that businesses which are voluntarily offsetting their emissions are having a bigger impact than perceived.”

Businesses also benefit beyond the value of carbon emissions reductions by investing in carbon offset programs, the researchers conclude. They do so via enhanced brand image, improved employee morale, more engaged employees and market differentiation, according to the report.

“The voluntary carbon market is a smart opportunity for businesses to consider as part of their sustainability strategies,” ICROA Program Director Sody Greenhalgh was quoted as saying.

“This research demonstrates offset programs deliver numerous business objectives, such as employee engagement and resource efficiency savings, and make a positive contribution to local communities in addition to reducing emissions.”

Natural capital accounting methods

The researchers made use of the latest natural capital accounting methods “to demonstrate the impact offset projects are delivering on the ground,” Imperial College environmental economist Yiannis Kountouris explained.

Researchers first gathered data from 59 offset projects around the world and quantified their social and economic benefits. They then monetized the social and environmental benefits using environmental accounting methods. The aggregated total value was used to determine their value per metric ton of carbon dioxide.

The approach holds out the promise of valuing social and environmental benefits of carbon offset investments in a more holistic manner in the future, according to the research team.

In a second phase involved, the researchers investigated 72 of the larger companies participating in voluntary carbon offset programs. Making use of surveys, they gathered information regarding the “tangible business benefits that come about by implementing an offset program.” They also gathered information regarding the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for additional social and environmental benefits.

According to the Imperial College-ICROA research team:

“Better identification and measurement of the extra social benefits of buying carbon credits could encourage more governments, companies and individuals to invest in projects that make a real difference to communities around the world, whilst reducing dangerous carbon emissions.”

The ICROA is a global nonprofit group operating within the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA). IETA members provide carbon reduction and offset services to “thousands of organizations, including household brands and multinationals supporting the reduction of global emissions towards the goal of avoiding dangerous climate change impacts.” A research university based in London, Imperial College is home to the Centre for Environmental Policy.

A full copy of the report is available free to download on the IETA website.

Image credits: Imperial College London, ICROA

McDonald’s store sales just took another nose-dive. Global same store sales tanked more than three percent. One investment analyst entitled his analysis of McDonald’s prospective sales growth as “That’s not ketchup…it’s blood.”

The three stated reasons for McDonald’s sales declines were: competition; the company’s own missteps, including a TV story in China showing work associates mishandling chicken; and “shifting consumer tastes.” The harsh sales reality for McDonald's and other fast food retailers is that consumers increasingly associate eating their food with being fat and unhealthy. For the millennial generation focused on being “cool with a purpose,” the eating of fast food is definitely not cool or purposeful.

Fast food schizophrenia damages brand equity

The marketing of fast food is schizophrenic. Fast food used to be well understood by consumers as being cheap, tasty and convenient. Now the same fast food restaurant chain will run simultaneous schizophrenic ads where it promotes a healthy chicken wrap in one ad and its supersized hamburger loaded with bacon and cheese in another. This marketing schizophrenia only serves to undermine the customer’s understanding of the chain’s core values. In comparison, Chipotle’s stock continues to soar to record levels based on its singular marketing focus of selling sustainably-sourced, good food.

Fast food loses its price advantage

Fast food chains are also eroding their brand equity with ever-higher prices. Fast food prices, except for a rapidly-shrinking dollar menu, appear to be rising faster than wages. One study found that a healthy food diet was half the cost of a convenient food diet! If true, what is the future of the Big Mac if it is both unhealthy and not price competitive?

Fast food wages damage their brands

Wages are another economic issue damaging fast food brand equity. Who can live on the $8.69-an-hour core wages earned by front-line fast food workers? The answer is no one. The cost of public assistance to families of workers in the fast-food industry is nearly $7 billion per year. There is growing awareness among taxpayers that they are subsidizing, through taxes, the medical and welfare benefits paid to fast food workers -- where 52 percent of fast food family members are enrolled in tax-funded public programs, compared to the national workforce average of 25 percent.

Yet the fast food industry is fighting wage increases like it is a catastrophic economic event. Higher wages will undercut the dollar menu. Ironically, this may enhance fast food profits as most items on a dollar menu have thin -- if any -- profit margin. Paying a living wage of $15 per hour is only sustainable if a restaurant can win customers based on an alignment of values with value. How many fast food chains are succeeding in marketing themselves as selling healthy, tasty food at affordable prices? That question is the revenue growth challenge facing the fast food industry that is increasingly being shaped by informed customers using their smart phone apps to find healthy food served in a social environment. Maybe that is the core reason one fast food industry analysis is seeing blood and not ketchup.

Image credit: National Restaurant Association 

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

By Ibrahim Maiga

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently sounded the alarm about global air quality. In the 1,600 cities it monitors, only 12 percent of people breathe air that falls within its quality guidelines. In February of this year, the concentration of pollutants in the air in Beijing and Shanghai was more than 20 times WHO limits. But Delhi was the city found to have the world’s highest annual average concentration of PM2.5 – fine particulate matter measuring less than 2.5 microns, and considered the most harmful form of air pollution to human health, the WHO reported in May.

These are just the statistics we know about: The WHO recently told the Guardian some of the worst cities for air pollution “are not collecting data regularly."

The good news is that the policies and technologies that are needed to address the two main causes of all this air pollution – heavy industry and vehicles – have been tried and tested for decades now. “Effective policies restrict the amount [of pollutants] that various polluters can emit, and then companies have options about how they choose to do it," says Deborah Seligsohn, an environmental policy analyst specializing in China and India, based at the University of California, San Diego.

Vehicle emissions standards, for example, can be used to limit the emissions coming out of tailpipes. “You can do that by putting catalytic converters and particulate filters on vehicles," Seligsohn continues. “Or you can do it by running electric vehicles that eliminate all of the pollution directly from the tailpipe.” Similarly, scrubbers on power plants and switching to clean sources of electricity generation also reduce air pollutants.

Applying effective policy to effective solutions gains another layer of complexity due to the correlated but non-linear relationship between climate change mitigation and air quality improvement: Diesel, for example, emits less CO2 than petrol but is more of an air pollutant. In addition, the political motivation to deal with air pollution tends to relate to visible pollution, which is often very localized. Political impetus can fade along with the smog, though invisible pollutants may still remain in the air.

In South and East Asia, crossborder pollution also presents a challenge that can’t be dealt with on a purely national level. A small city-state like Singapore is in the midst of a region where only a handful of poorly-enforced air quality treaties exist. As such, it has proposed a tough new Transboundary Haze Bill, which would allow it to penalize companies beyond its borders – criminally, civilly, to the tune of $450,000 – for activities that generate haze over its territory. The main target of the bill is the slash-and-burn palm oil producers in neighboring Indonesia.

Part of the challenge facing Singapore is that, if pollution only flows one way, it is hard to incentivize the polluter to stop. Indonesia is also the only Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member country that is not a signatory to the legally-binding ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution established in 2002. Nevertheless, the bill has found early support from the provincial government of Riau on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, where many of the offending forest fires occur despite its ‘zero burn’ policy. Riau itself, as well as Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, are also badly affected.

Monitoring technology continues to be central to establishing an evidence basis for reducing air pollution – particularly the invisible kind. Perhaps the most iconic example is the electron capture detector (ECD) invented by James Lovelock, the father of Gaia Theory, in the 1960s. He used the ECD to prove that invisible chlorofluorocarbon pollutants were blowing in seemingly clean air from the Atlantic to the west coast of Ireland.

Millions of cosmetic tubes, jars, caps, wands and other hard-to-recycle packaging materials are sent to landfills each year. Not only do our personal care packaging disposal habits wreak havoc on our waste streams, they also ask us to consider: To what extent of environmental costs are we willing to pay in order to maintain our beauty routines?

The onus doesn’t simply fall on the consumer to re-think the way we toss our toiletries. Mass-market brands like LUSH Cosmetics, Cargo Cosmetics and Aveda that have concentrated their efforts on producing smarter and easy-to-recycle lines have demonstratively served both people and planet with their business models.

“Sustainability in the beauty sector is not new given the efforts of brands such as Aveda CPR, Unilever compressed deodorant can, and Cargo now discontinued PlantLove lipstick eco-friendly formula with biodegradable packaging,” explains Tina-Gaye Bernard, cosmetics industry marketing consultant, founder of Cocoa Chic Beauty and former director of marketing for brands such as L’Oreal, Sue Devitt Beauty and Clinque. “Cosmetic industry manufacturers will continue to pursue cost and earth efficient improvements.”

In 2011, Garnier partnered with free waste collection programs TerraCyle to divert a significant portion of its packaging waste from landfills. Through the partnership, Garnier works with Terracycle to allow salons and individuals to recycle their packaging through the Personal Care and Beauty Brigade program — a free recycling program for hair care, skin care, and cosmetic product packaging, as well as a fundraising opportunity for participants. To date, the program has collected over 4 billion units of packaging waste and has raised over $82,000 dollars for charities.

But what if there was another way that cosmetics companies could marry both quality packaging with earth-friendly principles?

When entrepreneur Anita Redd, who faced a challenge when the packaging for her natural skin care products--Anita’s Balm, was discontinued by her supplier, she found cohesive solace between her all-natural lip balm line and a biodegradable jar she crafted with a 3-D printer. The bump in her proverbial road turned out to be just the challenge she needed to re-think her mission of marketing high-quality, natural products with guilt-free packaging.

Her custom designed and printed jars are now patent pending.

Predictions in innovation

If a small business owner has the power to merge technological innovation with sustainable business practices, what is the call then to cosmetics giants like L’Oreal and Estee Lauder with deep budgets and talent capacity to pursue packaging innovation on a large scale?

According to Bernard, 3-D printing as a primary packaging option is viable: “More progressive adoption is contingent upon considerations such as formula stability, shelf life, and branding. It's not just the bottom line, product integrity and consumer experience are also critical measures that can't be compromised, particularly for mature brands with iconic favorites.”

Despite having been around since the 1980s, 3-D printed packaging, an industry expected to reach $3.1 billion worldwide by 2016, is just now hitting the masses -- showing up in a variety of retail locations including Amazon.com for as little as $300 for a personal home printer.

Widespread availability (and affordability for that matter) of printers has supercharged experimentation -- re-shaping and redefining design and prototyping in the process. Designers have since fashioned shoe collections; BMW now prints augmented thumbs to ease plant worker discomfort; and even the medical industry is experimenting with bioprinting of human organs.

Though experts predict that there will be no need to replace an entire industry with 3-D printers, the device alone presents several opportunities that could dramatically shift the way the cosmetics industry designs and manufactures products.

“Where the real development lies is in the development process for cosmetics containers. We can design and then produce models quickly and easily, stretching the design possibilities to new limits,” said Antoinette van den Berg, founder and head of Amsterdam-based design studio Future-Touch, in CosmeticsDesign.com. She goes on to submit that ecologically sounds practices in 3-D printing can also become inherent brand components. “Not only does this process cut down on the logistical elements involved in manufacturing several separate packaging components, it also allows us to work freely with eco-friendly materials such as bio plastics.”

Potential advantages could also include increased local sourcing of products and early entry for entrepreneurs with limited budgets.

Dramatically pivoting the cosmetics industry from traditional manufacturing practices to 3-D printing might still be too premature for the market. In this case, considering the possibilities is the first step towards technological exploration, adoption and waste reduction.

Sherrell Dorsey is a social impact branding and communications strategist, social entrepreneur and advocate for environmental, social and economic equity in underserved communities. Visit Sherrell at www.sherrelldosey.com and follow her on Twitter and Instagram @sherrell_dorsey.