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By John Paluszek

“So, we’re not talking about ‘philanthropy’?" -- Interviewer.

“Absolutely no. I am not talking about ‘philanthropy’ at all.” -- Sir Mark Moody-Stuart.

Moody-Stuart was talking -- authoritatively and convincingly – about the business case for the fast-growing number of private sector commitments in international development. And especially about those commitments now being implemented by many companies active in the United Nations Global Compact’s new Business for Peace (B4P) platform.

During the interview, recorded for the "Business In Society" television program produced in keeping with the May 15 Oslo Business For Peace Summit & Award Ceremony, Moody-Stuart shared the insights of his long and distinguished career at the highest levels of international business and society. He now serves as Vice Chair of the U.N. Global Compact Board as well as Chair of the Business for Peace Steering Committee. Many more of those insights are presented in his newly-published book, “Responsible Leadership: Lessons from the Front Line of Sustainability and Ethics.”

The news inherent in the eight-month-old Global Compact Business For Peace program is that it brings substantial “heft” and a new degree of coordination to private sector initiatives in international development. The program will bring new resources to such development’s fundamental objective: addressing the basic needs and desires of people for a higher standard of living and a better quality of life -- leading to more stable, secure societies wherein conflict is less likely.

As described during the program by Ms. Melissa Powell, U.N. Global Compact head of Business For Peace, the Global Compact is fast energizing its 100 multi-sector networks around the world in applying partnering principles to the Business For Peace development mission. Some 17 Global Compact Local Networks and 100 companies spanning 29 countries are already engaging in robust programs to address many root causes of conflict.

From Asia to South America

Recent reports from these networks are indicative of the ambitious but grounded-in-reality work in which companies are often coordinating with civil society organizations and governments. Here are excerpts from two of many reports:

In Indonesia, the Business for Peace network’s mission is “to facilitate interfaith dialogues, to conduct training and best practice sharing and to encourage the multi-stakeholders collaborative actions.” In addition to reporting on its wide-ranging water management initiative, the network has described its seminal effort in building interfaith understanding and cooperation: “The interfaith dialogue is very important in a pluralistic society like Indonesia… [It] is needed to create inclusive community and reduce social prejudice on both sides… It should be followed by concrete actions. A business can play important roles to address these challenges.”

The Indonesia network manifests a related sentiment offered by Ali Nasr, Dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies: “…There is a vital unseen rising force in the Islamic world – a new business-minded middle class that is building a vibrant new Muslim economy … their distinct blending of Islam and capitalism is the key to bringing lasting reform and to defeating fundamentalism. They are people the West can and must do business with.”

In Colombia, according to Ms. Powell: “One of the exciting things that has happened recently has been in our Colombia network where they have identified the reintegration of ex-combatants as a critical issue. The stigma of ex-combatants in society has been a real problem, so they have engaged the business community in helping to re-integrate them into the workforce to make it less likely that they’re incentivized to go back to fighting … And so they’ve realized that some of the skills and techniques that the private sector uses in its workforce, just the things they do as part of being a good business, are the skills that can translate into building better relations between communities.”

The three “must haves”

Business for Peace represents a potential “societal win-win on steroids." However, its success is based on three common-sense pre-requisites:

• Readiness to partner: Moody-Stuart: “…The key to the U.N. Global Compact [and “B4P”] is the founding principles that it wasn’t just business; it would be civil society and labor unions and so on, to bring them to sit down with…sometimes severe critics. And get them in the same room, talking and realizing that its back to the common objective…You may have one way, I may have one way and then we sit down to discuss whose way is better.”


• Transparency: Companies know of the current public expectations for increased transparency. In international development, special demands are now being placed on extractive industries in developing countries with authoritarian regimes. Again, Moody-Stuart: “Those of us who have operated in global businesses know that many countries we work in don’t have perfect governance structures. Sometimes there are high levels of corruption… The bigger challenge is what happens to payments whether properly spent or in the worst case stolen… The payments should be monitored on both sides and audited independently. Those countries have to agree to establish an independent body with civil society and business … with guaranteed ability to criticize the government.”


• Patience and perseverance: B4P participants -- and all international development leaders -- are, of course, not naïve. They understand that accomplishing fundamental societal change can be daunting. The decades, and in some cases the centuries, of causes of conflicts based on ethnic, racial and ideological confrontations; territorial disputes; and other human vagaries do not bend easily to, as Harvard professor Steven Pinker has put it, “The Better Angels of Our Nature.” Nevertheless, the formidable development resources of the international private sector are now being increasingly marshalled to the task -- with a powerful business case integrated with a renewed awareness of corporate social responsibility.

Inevitably, there will be skeptics proclaiming: “The sheer complexity, frequency and history of human conflict”; and “the traditional primacy of corporate shareholder financial interests." To these we offer profound voices of hope:

Steven Pinker: “Believe it or not … violence has declined over long stretches of time and today we may be living in the most peaceable era in our species’ existence.”

The late socialist Michael Harrington: “Capitalism’s most daunting characteristic is its ability to co-opt the reforms, even the radical changes, of the opponents of the system.”

John Paluszek is executive producer of Business in Society @BiZ_In_Society, BusinessInSociety.net and senior counsel at Ketchum in New York City. He is the author of seminal books on corporate social responsibility/sustainable development: “Organizing For Corporate Social Responsibility” and “Will The Corporation Survive?”.

Ed Note: This post was originally published on the Erb Perspective blog, a publication of the Frederick A. and Barbara M. Erb Institute at the University of Michigan. 

By Ethan Schoolman

For many people who like to buy local food, and for the farmers who prefer to sell their product directly to consumers or institutions, a big part of the attraction is the opportunity for human interaction. But as local food continues to grow in popularity, the very thing that’s driving its rise may also be what’s holding it back.

And some of the biggest business opportunities in local food, and food entrepreneurship in general, may involve finding ways to keep a sense of “smallness” even as local food “scales up.” Most grocery stores give little sense of where food comes from, or who grows it; it’s just there on the shelves, or, as in the case of leafy greens, getting spritzed from on high. And farmers who don’t sell directly to consumers have little sense of where what they grow and produce is going, or who is going to buy or eat it; an Iowa potato or California tomato could end up in New York or New Mexico—there’s just no way for the farmer to know.

The “local food movement”—the drive to shorten the distance between where food is grown or produced and where it gets eaten, through all kinds of state-based policy solutions and efforts by nonprofits, business organizations and entrepreneurs—has been changing all that.

Visit a farmers market, and you meet someone who may have planted your lettuce or picked it that morning. Join a CSA, and you become part of a club of people who keep a small farm in business, and who become intimately familiar with its workings on a week-to-week basis. Ask a waiter where where a hamburger advertised as “local” comes from and—as memorably lampooned in the most famous “Portlandia” skit—you might get a story about where those green fields are located (if not what the name of the cow actually was).

But how many people can make visiting a farmers market part of their daily routine? How many people are ready to deal with the unpredictability of a CSA? And how many of our meals do we eat at restaurants?

If local food systems are going to continue to grow in size, strength, and reach, it may be that food produced at nearby farms will have to become more accessible in places where most people do most of their shopping, most of the time: full-service grocery stores and even big-box stores with grocery and produce sections. Not just a farmers market, but also Kroger. Not just a CSA, but also Meijer. It may seem impossible, but a lot of people believe that it’s the necessary next step, and are working to make it happen.

That’s the idea behind food hubs and some of the newest regional farmers cooperatives. Food hubs are brick-and-mortar centers for the centralized collection and distribution of fresh food produced by local farmers. If a Kroger, Meijer or Busch’s store wants to buy food from local farmers, any disruption in supply can be a big problem. Food hubs aggregate local food from all over, so supply stays steady, even if individual farms are having problems. Farmers cooperatives operate on much the same idea.

But if a carrot or beet is produced ten miles from a Meijer store, or a thousand, there’s still no farmer waiting to drop your produce in your bag and say thank you when you visit his or her stall. Local food at Meijer looks like non-local food (well, maybe it’s a little less wilted!), except for the sign that says “made someplace near you.”

So in the eyes of consumers, of the people who have to decide that there’s something about local food that makes it special (and worth paying more for)—what’s special about it? What’s personal about it? Where’s the one-on-one connection, the personal interaction, of the farmers market? And if that’s getting lost, can it be re-found, while retaining the advantages of “scaling-up” institutions like food hubs, which may really be where efforts to strengthen local food systems are heading?

It’s those questions that need to be answered. It’s the “killer app” for local food”—who’s going to get there first?
For many people who like to buy local food, and for the farmers who prefer to sell their product directly to consumers or institutions, a big part of the attraction is the opportunity for human interaction. But as local food continues to grow in popularity, the very thing that’s driving its rise may also be what’s holding it back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5z9SF0N06QY

Learn more about the environmental and social impacts of buying locally grown food in this interview with Ethan Schoolman.

Image credit: Flickr/Patrick Feller

Ethan Schoolman is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise and the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan. As a researcher and teacher, he work at the intersection of environmental, political, and cultural sociology. Current projects focus on the environmental and social implications of local food systems, inequalities in access to fresh and healthy food, localization as a social movement, and challenges to developing a culture of sustainability at institutions of higher education. Follow Ethan on Twitter @ethanschoolman.

Fast-food workers in more than 140 U.S. cities joined ranks with international labor organizations last week to send a message to global leaders: raise and enforce pay standards for the world’s lowest paid workers.

In an unprecedented effort to put pressure on companies that pay their employees less than what is considered a living wage, workers from 33 different countries staged walkouts for better pay and working conditions. Legislation concerning the right to strike is being considered in several countries including Iceland and the U.K. Nevertheless, workers stepped out in force on six continents to lobby for better pay and working conditions.

In Australia, workers staged a teach-in at McDonald’s headquarters in Auckland, while in the Philippines, a flash mob strike turned into a dance to attract attention to workers’ rights. Workers in Italy opted to hold their strike action on Friday, May 16, possibly to coincide with government efforts to prevent the loss of 1,200 jobs at Electrolux facilities.

Here in the U.S., the strikes focused primarily on fast food chains that have historically based their wage structure on the minimum wage. McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC and other restaurants saw protests outside their doors. None of the corporations reported any closures as a result, although workers in St. Louis said that a McDonald’s store was briefly forced to shut down. Attendance ranged from a few dozen to a couple of hundred in most of the 150 cities.

The International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers Associations (IUF) acknowledged in a statement on Thursday that the global strike action is part of an effort to highlight the need for a change in the pay structure for fast-food workers.

“These unprecedented international protests are just the start of a worldwide campaign to change the highly-profitable, global fast-food industry,” said IUF General Secretary Ron Oswald in a press release. “We’re putting the companies on notice: Make changes now, or this fight is only going to spread further and grow stronger.”

IUF representative Massimo Frattini said that the global strikes were planned in concert with strike actions organized by the Swiss union UNIA.

“At global level common demands are: Raising wages, better working conditions, full time employment; stable employment, [and] freedom of forming or joining a union without retaliation,” said Frattini in an email to me last Thursday. “So far we are receiving good reports from all over the world in terms of participants.”

Other events included:

• Some states and local municipalities have considered implementing their own increases to the minimum wage. The city of Seattle is considering upping the minimum wage to $15, a proposal that has galvanized worker groups like 15 Now, and led to a petition drive. City Councilmember Kshama Sawant stepped up to sign the organization’s petition, citing her support for immediate changes to minimum pay laws. “These workers can’t wait till 2025. The Mayor’s proposal is a step forward but it falls short of what workers need by adding unnecessary delays of three, five or even 10 years before getting up to an inflation adjusted $15,” said Sawant. If the council should oppose the raise, she said it would be up to the voters to decide in November.


• Lutheran Minister Martin Rafanan in St. Louis has also called for changes to the minimum wage. Rafanan is part of a greater coalition of local community groups that are supporting workers with actions like walk-backs to job sites. Workers who participated in the strike were accompanied back to the workplace by a group of community members so they would not have to return to work alone. “We go into a restaurant with the workers, we return them from their strike, we tell management they cannot in any way retaliate against the worker … We’ve done that numerous times in restaurants across the city, where we have had workers terminated and had gone back and gotten workers re-hired,” Rafanan told Forbes in an interview yesterday.


• Workers in Italy celebrated on Friday after the government signed an agreement with Electrolux Italia to keep one of its factories from being moved to Poland. The nine-month-long negotiations resulted in Electrolux agreeing to invest $250 million in its plants and cancel layoffs in exchange for tax breaks for four plants in Italy. The news came on the heel of workers strikes on Friday.


• Strike actions have been growing in several areas of the world where cutbacks have been a concern. The editor of LivingInGreece.gr notes that protests are a common occurrence in Greece, not just Athens. He offers a help page of 10 insightful tips for visitors, noting that in Greece, "We know how to navigate around strikes."


• Not all workers' rights actions were a success in Geneva this week: The Swiss voted overwhelmingly to reject a minimum wage increase to $25 an hour. Had it passed, it would have been the world's highest minimum wage.

According to Frattini, the IUF’s executive committee met last week to assess the outcome of the strikes and decide on future strategies. “Starting from today [Thursday, May 15] members and the IUF will discuss how to continue the fight,” said Frattini. No actions have been planned as of yet, but with minimum wage increases stalled in Congress, and similar concerns in other countries, it's a fair bet that fast-food corporations will see more picketers outside their doors as summer business and temps heat up.

Image of Richmond, Va. strike courtesy of Bernard Pollack/AFL CIO

Images of Geneva and Karachi strikes courtesy of IUF

Ed Note:  This is a sponsored post on behalf of the National Forest Foundation.

Can the principles of the free market solve some of the most pressing challenges facing our national forests? The National Forest Foundation (NFF) hopes so, announcing it has just extended the deadline for its Barrett Foundation Business Concept Challenge which offers $100,000 in prize money for market-based solutions to the forests’ current issues.

The purpose of the competition is threefold, according to Bill Possiel, president of the NFF, an independent nonprofit created by Congress that works with the U.S. Forest Service.

“First, we’re looking to find creative solutions to the challenges [facing national forests]. Second, we want to engage intellectual capital in thinking about this significant natural resource challenge. And third, we want to think about how we can responsibly manage public resources to both achieve our ecological objectives, as well as our economic and social objectives,” Possiel said.

The idea to seek strategies from the business community came from Craig Barrett, former chairman and CEO of Intel and current vice chairman of the NFF’s Board of Directors.

“In four decades as a business leader, I’ve seen a lot of innovative ideas, but not enough of them have been directed at the challenges facing our national forests,” Barrett said in a statement. “As a board member of NFF, I saw an opportunity to channel this intellectual energy towards solving our nation’s critical natural resource challenges.”

The foundation unveiled the Business Concept Challenge in January, but after finding that the applications didn’t adequately meet the competition’s goals, decided to push back the deadline for proposals to June 16 and expand the challenge’s eligibility pool. Originally accepting applications from business students only, the competition is now open to nonprofits and businesses, as well as faculty and staff from colleges and universities. Local, state and federal governments cannot apply, nor can employees of government agencies acting in an official capacity.

“We want to generate as many creative solutions as we can,” Possiel said. “What we were trying to do was involve the next generation of conservation and business leaders, but our challenges are so severe right now that wherever the best ideas come from, we ought to be exploring those. That’s the thinking behind the evaluation committee in opening up the prize to entrepreneurs, universities or anyone who has a really creative idea that deals with a natural resource challenge at scale but also has an economic benefit.”

The NFF will award a $75,000 cash prize to the winning proposal, as well as $25,000 to the first runner-up in the final stage of the competition.

Just what are the natural resource challenges the NFF hopes this competition will address?

The U.S. Forest Service estimates between 60 million and 80 million acres of the 193-acre national forest system are in need of some restorative action, including post-fire treatment, pre-fire treatment to reduce the severity of future fires, watershed restoration or road reclamation. In addition, fire seasons are stretching longer and longer, and fires in the national forests are more severe – due to climate change, drought and historical forest management practices.

“We’ve seen an increase in mega-fires since 2000, as well as drought conditions in the last few years,” Possiel said. “Natural systems at high risk – not just for fires, but for pests and diseases like the pine bark beetle in the West and the hemlock woolly adelgid in the East. These natural systems are at risk because of some climatic changes, and even the Forest Service would admit some mistakes have been made in managing natural resources in the past.”

Past Business Concept Challenge winners

The competition is not simply an intellectual exercise; the NFF aims to implement the top proposals -- working with the teams that submitted them.

The winning project from the first Barrett Foundation Business Concept Challenge, held in 2012, was to develop a collaborative conservation fund for the Deschutes National Forest in Oregon. Proposed by a team of graduate students from Yale University, the fund would levy fees on resources and services from the forest: charging cities that draw water from the national forest and creating a property tax for private construction on forest lands, for example. Because the students went their separate ways after graduation, this project was not implemented. And while the proposal explored funding mechanisms to finance restoration programs, it didn’t directly solve any of the forests’ natural resource challenges – an objective the competition’s selection committee is really looking for, Possiel said.

“We want to choose projects that really have an economic benefit because we want to attract private capital in the marketplace [to invest in the projects],” Possiel said.

On the other hand, the NFF is currently exploring the implementation of the runner-up from 2012’s competition: a carbon sequestration methodology that calculates how much carbon could be kept from going into the atmosphere from a severe fire in the ponderosa pine forests of Northern Arizona. Instead of waiting until the forests burn, the Forest Service would give them pre-fire treatment – cutting undergrowth and trimming the forest – to reduce the severity of future fires and, thus, preventing a larger amount of carbon from being released.

While the U.S. Forest Service currently offers credits for the carbon absorbed by trees planted in a forest after a fire, this is the first time the organization would provide carbon offsets for the prevention of carbon emissions. The NFF, consultants and the team who came up with idea for the project are working to develop the calculation methodology, which will need to be third-party reviewed and verified before these carbon credits can be sold in the offset marketplace.

How to apply

Think you have a creative idea that can both tackle one of the national forests’ problems and reap a profit? Check out the Barrett Foundation Business Concept Challenge’s list of frequently asked questions here. You’ll need to submit an electronic pre-screening questionnaire and submission form, providing a basic summary of your proposal and the natural resource problem it seeks to address, by 8 a.m. MDT on June 16.

Image credit: National Forest Foundation

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

By Raheen Khan

The value of apparel in its current context has been simply reduced to personal cost and appearance. Although, the cost-- that is the price that the consumers pay--and the appearance, which is a representation of personal style is crucial, the industry is much more complex.

It has recently come under immense scrutiny due to its unethical working conditions, lack of waste management, increase in pollution due to mass production and exhaustion of resources. The absence of workers safety and low environmental regulations has enabled the corporations to externalize the cost of fast fashion. Amidst this chaos, a new movement has sprung-a sustainable approach towards fashion.

In fashion terms, is green the new black?

For my Master’s degree capstone project, I decided to study the story of our clothes. The research focuses on identifying the key components of sustainable apparel. The emphasis is on “slow fashion” or “sustainable fashion," a portal which is distinct in practice and performance from the existing fast fashion business models. The methodology consisted of multi-method research design. The participants were selectively chosen from the industry under the categories of designers, retailers and industry experts. As a parallel component to the research, randomly selected students were sent an online survey.

The combination of the survey data and the informational interviews resulted in a comprehensive understanding of the missing pieces in the rising eco-conscious fashion movement. For instance, only 27 percent of the respondents were aware of the term 'sustainable fashion.' In the survey, respondents were asked about the most concerning aspect of the industry, and the two groups (aware and unaware of sustainable apparel) were widest on the topics of: use of water, textiles in landfills and waste reduction. This is the junction where the industry needs to up its efforts in educating the consumers and create transparency in its supply chain and production.

A key finding of the study indicated a need for producers to encourage consumers to establish a connection with their purchase by providing the origins of the product and education about disposal of post-consumer textile waste, in other terms completing the lifecycle loop.

Production of cotton

Cotton is the most basic raw material in apparel production. Cotton production has devastating effects on the ecosystem--from irrigation to causing serious health problems to workers in the field due to toxic pesticides. If change in the apparel industry is necessary, then the root of it lies in the transformation of cotton production. Overall, the transparency of apparel production is a vital component in educating the consumers.

Awareness amongst consumers to associate organic cotton with sustainability was tested based on the survey data. The use of organic materials was rated higher at 71.4 percent by the respondents who were aware of sustainable apparel. It is assumed that the awareness of sustainability issues in the apparel sector is extended to knowledge of raw materials sourcing. The correlation between local manufacturing and the understanding the term 'sustainable apparel' is also explored. Half of the respondents who were aware of sustainable apparel consider local manufacturing as an integral definition, whereas, only 32.1 percent of unaware respondents feel that way.

The revival of local manufacturing in conjunction with the principle of recycling is at the root of sustainable apparel. Recycling in this context is not limited to the end of life: 89.3 percent of respondents who were aware of sustainable apparel considered that recycled content is the closest definition, and 80.8 percent of respondents who were not aware selected the same. (See Fig 1).

In both groups, the principle of recycling gained most priority. Testing the importance of recycled content in a garment displayed a different facet. Respondents who were aware showed a higher stand on recycled content at 57.1 percent, whereas only 32.1 percent of the unaware respondents felt it was important to have recycled content in their garments (See Fig 2).

The dynamics of consumer behavior is often hard to predict. On one hand the industry needs to cooperate with the social and environmental indicators, and on the other hand it needs to please its consumer base. In the survey, the influencing factors stated by the consumers show a sense of ethical and social standing. The aware and unaware groups stand close on the concept of “support for local business” as one of the influencing factors to buy local sustainable apparel (See Fig 3). In addition, price and selection are tied as the second most concerning factor from the consumer’s perspective. (See Fig 4).

During independent interviews with designers and fashion retailers, the inspiration to adopt a sustainable apparel business model emerged from a profound passion to eliminate the hidden costs of the industry--the social and the environmental equity.

Word from the industry

Tara St James is the owner and head designer for the New York-based clothing label Study, an ethical contemporary brand entirely produced in New York City using sustainable materials. “There is a bit of disconnect between sourcing sustainable materials and then producing garments in a large factory in China," she said.

Modavanti is an online sustainable fashion retailer, launched in 2011 by founder and CEO David Dietz. According to Modavanti, “The main challenge is educating consumers that there is something wrong with the industry." Consumers did not associate apparel with social inequality or environmental pollution until recently. “We believe that if a customer is confronted with a choice between a similar product at a similar price, but one is sustainable and the other is not, then they will choose sustainable every time," the company wrote on its website.

An interview with another fashion designer from NYC, Daniel Silverstein, revealed some very optimistic and inspiring viewpoints. At FIT, he was introduced to the concept of zero fabric waste design. Daniel chose to challenge the industry by designing and manufacturing clothing that produces zero waste by masterful techniques of pattern-making and cutting.

Traditionally, the buyer and the seller for any product seek profits and price advantages respectively. Principles of sustainability are beginning to revolutionize the old school idea where the two parties solely look to gain from a transaction. The concept of mindful consumption is not exclusively limited to consumers, but it also extends to producers who need to be accountable of the waste created by fast fashion. “Mindful production” which is applicable to usage of resources, ethical practices and ecological liability can reorganize the industry from ground up.

Overall, the impact of one decision by one person, for one garment, for one occasion has a story behind it. A story that is hidden behind style, color and design. The fast-moving apparel industry has been spinning off its course, but the fraternity is working rigorously--combining resources and joining hands in reestablishing itself as a social and ethical enterprise. The conscious movement has begun to sprout in style and the fashion world is proclaiming: Green is the new black.

Image credit: Flickr/emilysnuffer

All interview excerpts are from the author's capstone research project.

Raheen Khan is a recent graduate with Masters in Sustainability Studies from Ramapo College of New Jersey.

By Katie Kross

You’ve heard it before: Job searching is about relationship-building. It’s good advice, no matter how many times you hear it—but it’s especially true of the sustainability job search. The fact is, if you’re spending your time looking for sustainability job postings online, you’re going about the job search the wrong way.

Sustainability disciplines—and by that I mean not just corporate sustainability roles, but also corporate social responsibility (CSR), clean tech, impact investing, sustainability consulting, green marketing and a host of other disciplines that make the world a more sustainable place—are evolving at lightning pace. Many of the jobs that will exist a year from now do not even exist today.  Others are largely going to be filled with relationship-based searches—the right person with the right introduction at the right time.  You want to be on the short list for a sustainability job before a job is even posted. (You might even be the one writing the job description!) And no amount of time spent trolling job boards will help you with that.

Here are five tips for a more effective job search.

1. Target organizations, not jobs

The best way to tackle the job search is to start with a list of 30 organizations that interest you most (regardless of whether they currently have an opening or not).  Focus on building relationships within those organizations, meeting key hiring decision-makers, and learning as much as you can about their direction. How and where are they expanding?  What makes someone an ideal fit, culturally, with the organization (or the sustainability department itself)?  What are the challenges they are facing?  The more you learn, the better prepared you’ll be to propose yourself as someone to help tackle those challenges.  Of course, your list will evolve as you research.  Prioritize the organizations that interest you most and drop those that don’t off your list.

2. Network systematically

Looking at your list of 30, start at the top and begin systematically networking your way through the list.  Set a goal of reaching out to six contacts at those organizations a week.  Use LinkedIn and your university’s alumni directory to find contacts, and then email asking for a phone call. Ask your professional colleagues, friends and family members if they can make an introduction to any of the firms. Look for conferences or events where executives from those organizations are speaking, and show up to network.  When you have a conversation with one executive at the organization, ask: “Is there anyone else it would be beneficial for me to speak with?”

3. Nurture the relationships

After you have an interesting conversation with a new contact, don’t drop the ball.  Follow up every three to four weeks.  This follow-up might be as simple as an email thanking them again for a specific piece of advice and letting them know it was useful in your job search.  You might send them an article or recent news story that was particularly relevant to your past conversation.  Or, you can be explicit: “As I continue to network, I feel more committed than ever to work in the impact investing space.  If you hear of any firms that are thinking of expanding their team, I’d appreciate your keeping me in mind.”

4. Narrow your focus

It sounds counterintuitive, but your sustainability job search will actually be more effective if you narrow your search.  When you’re networking and you tell someone, “I’m open to any role that’s related to sustainability,” it is hard for them to imagine what would be a good fit—and consequently, hard for them to recommend other contacts or companies that you should know about.  It also makes you less memorable.  Do you have an industry focus?  A geographic focus?  Do you have expertise in a particular issue (water, energy) or skillset (marketing, finance, lifecycle analysis)? Do you want to work in the private sector or for an NGO?  The more specific you can be, the more useful your networking will be.

5. Remember: You only need one job

Too many job seekers worry, “There just aren’t a lot of sustainability openings.”  The job search is about quality, not quantity.  There could be hundreds of openings and you wouldn’t necessarily have a better chance at landing them.  What’s important is to position yourself as the best candidate for each opening you pursue, not throw your resume in the hat for dozens of openings.  At the end of the day, you only need one job.  That really only requires one job opening—one that you have spent weeks or months cultivating and positioning yourself for, so that when it opens, you are an irresistible candidate.

--

If you’re looking online for job openings, chances are, you’re already too late.  By the time there is an opening, you should already know about it.  You should have relationships with decision-makers—often, several—within the company.  And you should know enough about the organization and department that you can clearly hone in on exactly what the job requires and why you can add value.

So, close down your browser, and start cultivating those relationships.

Katie Kross is managing director of the Center for Energy, Development, and the Global Environment (EDGE) at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and author of Profession and Purpose: A Resource Guide for MBA Careers in Sustainability, which will be released in 2nd edition in July 2014 by Greenleaf Publishing.

UTZ Certified, the sustainable farming programme and label, has published a new code of conduct, which it says is stronger in content and simpler in structure.

The company maintains that the simpler language of the new structure - consisting of one core code and commodity specific modules – will allow more farmers to join the program.

The code focuses on management practices and elaborates more on climate change adaptation. There is also greater emphasis on measures for preventing, monitoring and remediating child labour, increasing women’s participation, and reaching more smallholders.

By focusing more on management practices in the farm, the new code is expected to lead farmers to take informed decisions while increasing farm profitability over the long term. Farmers will also be guided in adaptation measures to prepare them for unpredictable weather events in tropical areas due to climate change.

The code is further designed to increase farmers’ social and economic resilience. For example, it promotes diversification strategies such as intercropping and home gardens in which highly nutritional plants are established. Other highlights include the treatment of coffee waste water and its post-quality analysis, as well as the explicit promotion of ecological diversity and the protection of ecosystems.

“We seek an approach of continuous improvement in which farm productivity is strengthened by an efficient use of inputs, while also addressing social and environmental challenges more in depth,” said Britta Wyss Bisang, standards director at UTZ Certified. “We want this code of conduct to become an every-day and easy-to-use tool for farmers. A tool that will help them improve agricultural techniques, impact positively on farmers’ lives and enhance environmental protection.” 

The UTZ code of conduct is reviewed every five years by all stakeholders – producers, academics, industry members and NGOs - in order to further enhance the benefits of the UTZ programmw. The review process for this new code began in August 2012 and involved two public online consultations and ten workshops in origin countries.  

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.

From the ongoing debate over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to ingredients lists so complicated they should come with a scientific dictionary, consumers are becoming increasingly active about the ingredients in their favorite food and personal care products. While many companies turn a deaf hear to customers' requests for transparency, some are heeding the call and taking steps toward sustainable ingredients sourcing.

Here are 10 of our favorite success stories (and one cautionary tale that shows what not to do).

1. Mars Inc. raises the bar for sustainable palm oil

Mars Inc. is upping the ante regarding the sustainable palm oil market. In March, the manufacturer of the popular chocolate candy bars Mars Bar, 3 Musketeers and Twix announced its commitment to transition to 100 percent certified sustainable palm oil in its products by the end of 2014.

Unilever, Kellogg's, Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts have also made bold palm oil commitments in the past year.

2. Coca-Cola and Pepsi ditch brominated vegetable oil

Brominated vegetable oil (BVO), a controversial ingredient used in flame retardants, can be found in roughly 10 percent of all soft drinks. That was until recently when Coca-Cola removed the ingredient from its Powerade sports drink after a Change.org petition started by 15-year-old Sarah Kavanaugh received more than 200,000 signatures.

Another petition started by Kavanaugh inspired PepsiCo to remove BVO from its Gatorade drinks last year. Following Coca-Cola's announcement, Pepsi confirmed it will remove the ingredient from its entire product line, including Mountain Dew and Amp -- two beverages that still contained the ingredient.

3. Subway removes so-called 'yoga mat chemical' from its bread

Earlier this year, Subway decided to remove a chemical called Azodicarbonamide from its bread after a public outcry on social media led by an influential blogger. In March, Vani Hari, who runs the blog FoodBabe.com, launched a petition for the removal of the chemical.

Azodicarbonamide, Hari explained, is used in yoga mats, shoe rubber and synthetic leather, the World Health Organization has linked it to respiratory issues, allergies and asthma, and it is banned as a food additive in Europe and Australia. Subway responded to the petition saying it would phase out the ingredient and announced last month that it has completely eliminated it from its bread.

4. Chipotle becomes the first fast food chain to tag GMOs

In the ongoing debate about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in our food, last year Denver, Colo.-based Chipotle Mexican Grill made what may turn out to be an important food history “first” in the United States.

The chain, which operates more than 1,450 restaurants across the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom and France, revealed that since March 2013, it has labeled all the ingredients in its menu items, including GMOs. This makes Chipotle the first American fast food chain to voluntarily display the presence of GMOs in its products.

5. Johnson & Johnson pledges to cleanse its products of harmful chemicals

In 2012, Johnson & Johnson made the landmark announcement that it would ban harmful chemicals from its products. The company has already made the pledge to remove toxic chemicals from its baby products by 2013.

Its new effort extends to its adult brands like Neutrogena, Aveeno, and Clean & Clear. By the end of 2015, the company will be the first major company to remove harmful chemicals from its line of consumer products.

6. Seventh Generation calls for chemical reform

Late last year, leading sustainably-minded companies including Seventh Generation announced the launch of a coalition that urges Congress to update chemical safety laws. Called Companies for Safer Chemicals, Seventh Generation and the American Sustainable Business Council (ASBC) are leading the coalition, which also includes brands like Patagonia, Stonyfield Farm, Aubrey Organics and Method.

Coalition members signed a declaration which asks “Congress to pass comprehensive and effective chemical safety reform legislation now.” The declaration also states that reform “must respect the rights of states to protect their residents when the federal government fails to do so, and require the Environmental Protection Agency to take fast action on the most harmful chemicals.”

7. General Mills introduces GMO-free Cheerios

Environmentalists called it a victory. General Mills, however, said it was just a recipe change.

In a blog post earlier this year, GMO Inside.org took credit for General Mills’ statement that it was making its regular Cheerios out of non-genetically modified sources (GMOs) – a change from its other Cheerios products, which do contain GMOs.

Although General Mills seemed to downplay the shift away from genetically modified sugar and cornstarch in its Cheerios cereal, the move is significant nonetheless and may signal the future of ingredient sourcing.

8. Boulder Brands removes GMO ingredients from Smart Balance spread

Say what you will about butter-like spreads, but at least now there's one on the market that doesn't contain GMOs. Earlier this year, Boulder Brands announced it would change the ingredients in its Smart Balance spread to eliminate GMOs.

“I’ve been in the food industry for 35 years. I have never seen a consumer issue come on this fast,” Stephen Hughes, chairman and chief executive of Boulder Brands, told the Los Angeles Times. “Forty-three percent of our consumers want to see a non-GMO Smart Balance.”

9. Colgate-Polmolive, Avon and others remove triclosan from cosmetics

Late last year, the FDA issued a proposal requiring companies that use the antimicrobial triclosan to prove the ingredient is safe. Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive have been reformulating to rid their products of triclosan – a suspected endocrine disruptor – for two years now, the Guardian reports.

Avon joined that list in April, announcing that it will begin phasing the chemical out of "the few" products in its line that include it. Although it remains to be seen how quickly these companies will remove the ingredient from their product lines, it's certainly a step in the right direction.

10. Kraft re-imagines (some of) its mac and cheese

Kraft announced late last year that it would revamp its character-shaped line of mac and cheese for 2014. The new versions will have six additional grams of whole grains, be lower in sodium and saturated fat, and will use spices instead of artificial food dyes to recreate the pasta's famous yellow-orange color, company spokeswoman Lynne Galia told CNN in November.

What not to do: Sigg called out on BPA BS

Back in 2007, water bottle manufacturer Sigg proudly proclaimed that its colorful reusable bottles were free of Bisphenol A (BPA), an endocrine disruptor that has been linked to reproductive health issues. There's only one problem: It wasn't true.

In a 2009 press release, CEO Steve Wasik, the very same man who told publications like Treehugger that Sigg's bottles did not contain BPA, explained that bottles manufactured prior to August 2008 have a water-based epoxy liner which contains trace amounts of BPA. He continued to explain that NOW all Sigg bottles are BPA free, which wasn't much consolation for consumers who had been drinking from their supposedly BPA-free bottles for years already.

So, let this be a lesson to brands big and small: If you're going to do transparency, it's probably a good idea to start by telling the truth.

Image credit: Flickr/carbonnyc

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

Submitted by Guest Contributor

By Andrew Mack, Principal and Founder, AMGlobal Consulting

Let’s say your company has just entered a new market: oil production in an African country. As the head of community relations in that country, what approach should you take?

Most likely, you would choose to follow a path similar to others before you: conduct some research, talk to the community, develop partnerships and spend a good deal of time and money implementing a well-meaning social program.

Sounds reasonable, right?

Sure—but there’s significant room for improvement.

That’s where a new approach is now gaining traction, one we like to call “franchising” CSR.

Entering New Markets

Let’s stay with the example of your oil company in Africa. Taking the traditional approach, you might help fund a local clinic, donate school supplies or promote biodiversity research. You could also pursue large-scale partnerships with carefully vetted NGOs, universities or other groups, funding priority areas they’ve already identified.

In most cases, you would be helping the local community. But you might also be taking the more difficult approach.

First, these efforts would cost you a lot of time. Researching different options, talking to potential partners and determining frameworks for implementation can take hundreds of hours—including a lot of time from managers and executives, a particularly valuable resource during the period of initial market entry. Time (and complexity), more than money, is often the biggest cause of inaction.

Second, this approach can be really expensive. Research and development costs aside, many companies either need to staff up to participate actively in projects (which are generally outside their areas of expertise anyway), or write big checks to support social programs run by partner institutions. Real impact often comes at a correspondingly high price.

Lastly, many of these efforts aren’t particularly cohesive: a donation here in one sector, a partnership there in another. It’s good to maintain flexibility in response to local community needs—but a localized approach can be hard to align with a company’s overall business strategy, and very hard to scale.

Despite growing recognition that companies should do community outreach work that points back to them—something that fits both their skills and the brands that brought them to a new country—it’s hard to move away from reactive, more charity-focused work.

But if companies like Coca-Cola and Unilever sell the same product in vastly different environments, why can’t we borrow from this approach when creating CSR strategies?

Franchising CSR: The Network Effect

Let’s look at what this means in practice.

“Franchising” CSR starts with identifying common needs across the geographies where your company works: health care or employment, for instance. Then you would choose interventions that best fit your business and capacities, leveraging existing expertise wherever possible. You’d employ a modular approach that is smaller-scale and lower-risk, building projects that are easy to replicate.

The goal: to create a kind of “network effect,” making it easier for projects to get funded internally and be understood by the community, while enabling the company to build muscle memory around these modular activities.

This way you're not just investing in individual CSR programs—you're investing in a CSR system that's replicable and efficient.

Some companies have already adopted elements of “franchising” as part of their global CSR strategies. For instance, General Electric's “Developing Health Globally” program, although large in scale, looks basically the same in the 14 countries where it’s been implemented. GE works with health ministries to identify the most needy local hospitals and clinics and then provides tools and training to improve capacity—similar procedures, goals and partners worldwide.

IBM's Corporate Service Corps—which sends out groups of employees worldwide to address key problems in developing countries—is also highly replicable, and can be adapted to a variety of local needs. Many other firms have adopted similar kinds of secondment programs, even if the interventions themselves still seem a bit all over the map.

The key here isn't to replace current strategies, but to view CSR as a product, working to make interventions simpler to deliver and to communicate, especially in difficult operating environments.

So let’s revisit your situation in Africa.

In Practice: Choosing the Right Program

Your company has found oil and you need buy-in from local community members. Expectations are high, and you know your company, due to the nature of oil extraction, cannot hire a lot of local labor.

Fortunately your company has developed some “franchise” programs as part of your global CSR strategy. You get community input and choose the right one—in this case, say, an entrepreneur-training program that incorporates soccer. (Entrepreneurship addresses unemployment, a problem in most developing countries, and soccer is highly popular in many of the same regions.)

You implement the program according to a set framework, making necessary adaptations but keeping the game plan more or less the same. The community, your employees, and even the press know what to expect, and the time from intent to value is shortened for the benefit of all.

By using the same template as you have in other countries, suddenly you have a viable network of projects and a simple social brand that can bring different parts of your network together. You can benchmark data across the system, allowing you to fix problems and perfect program strategy much more easily. Partners and co-financers are more eager to sign on to a known entity: a reliable, cost-effective model that brings demonstrated success.

And, of course, just imagine the buzz you’d generate with a regional soccer tournament linking all the communities—and company offices—that shared the entrepreneurship program.

Without question, elements of this movement are already in the works—the current state of CSR in many emerging markets is already improving. But with more companies adopting a “franchise” approach, the future state of CSR could be even better, with benefits extending to communities, governments and companies alike.

About the Author:

Andrew Mack is the founder and principal of AMGlobal Consulting, a firm that specializes in building business and social value in emerging markets through CSR, partnerships and market entry strategies. A former World Bank Task Team Leader and finance professional, Andrew has worked in over 70 countries and has nearly 30 years of experience in international business and development.

As our society goes through numerous transitions, many companies find themselves challenged to re-examine their core values and their core business. It takes a certain amount of imagination for a corporation to recognize what it is really all about, some more so than others. Oil companies, for example, don’t have to stretch too far, to re-imagine themselves as energy companies, or carmakers fancying themselves as purveyors of mobility.

Airlines, are about mobility too, of course, but one airline that has always distinguished itself by its imaginative approach to its work, Southwest, saw something else when it looked in the tea leaves. It recognized that it was very much in the business of places. After all, airlines make far-away places accessible that would not otherwise be.

In recognition of this aspect of their mission, Southwest has undertaken to partner with Project for Public Spaces in a new ”placemaking” program called Heart of the Community. The program works with city planners and community members to create places that are special in a way that will invite people to linger and commune, which will, in turn, raise the value of the community and the quality of life for those who live in it. It could also make that location more attractive to visitors.

Linda Rutherford, Southwest’s  VP of communication and outreach, wrote in a recent blog post: “While planners can give a place structure and access, it is the community that gives it heart and vibrancy. Ultimately, Placemaking creates public places for the community with the community.”

I spoke with Rutherford about the launch of this new program.

Triple Pundit: I get the impression that this new initiative is something that you folks at Southwest are really excited about. Why placemaking?

Linda Rutherford: This opportunity that has emerged around placemaking has just been a really fulfilling move for us to think about how we can get involved, at the micro level, not only in the 90+ communities that we serve across the globe, but also through programming and sustainability efforts and volunteerism that our employees could continue to  get involved in. It wouldn’t be just one day of picking up shovels and creating a space, but it would be coming back day after day and participating. That was something that was just super-exciting to us. The journey of learning about placemaking has really been eye-opening too. We think that as this placemaking phenomenon goes mainstream, it really has the opportunity to become the new environmentalism.

3p: Tell us about the journey. How did you get there?

LR: We’ve been looking for a worthy cause with merit that would help us to articulate what we stand for as an organization. We recognized that we needed to get focused on this in terms of how we are going to spend our time, our talent and our treasure. We still support a number of causes like the Ronald McDonald House that helps families with very sick children and our medical transportation grant program that helps people get where they need to go for special treatment. We are also active in disaster response and have partnered with the American Red Cross providing both financial support and airlift services. We’ve had a number of all-animal flights in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, flying these pets out to San Diego where new homes had been found. We also have an adopt-a-pilot program where pilots go into inner city classrooms and teach kids geography, science and math.

3p: So how did you get from there to placemaking?

LR: We worked with Edelman to help envision this new project. We reached out, polled our employees, looked within. We did research. We asked people, “When you think of SW Airlines, what do you think of?” How can we martial our resources in an authentic and meaningful way? What came through is that people think of us as their hometown airline.

So we saw this as an opportunity to develop a platform to allow us to get involved in the many communities where we operate. So that was the path. It started with something called Community Revitalization. From there we did more research and found Project for Public Spaces and their brilliant leader Fred Kent, and that’s when we really glommed onto this idea of placemaking and thought, wow. We’ve been saying all along that our purpose as an airline is to connect people to what’s important in their lives through friendly, reliable and low-cost air travel. From there we thought, if we create places that people in the community want to connect to, these could turn into places that people might want to come visit. So that’s how placemaking became an area of focus for us.

3p: What’s nice is that, unlike some of the previous initiatives that were largely reactive, this one is proactive and very positive. You spoke earlier about employees getting involved.

LR: PPS has something they call “power of 10.” It means you don’t just set up picnic tables and umbrellas and call it done. There has to be a number of different things that are happening in that place in any given time. It could be a zumba class. It could be archery. It could be a reading room. Food is important. All of these different things that can come alive in that space also provide volunteer opportunities for our employees: scheduling, maintaining, cleaning, managing. These are all ways that we can get our own folks involved on an ongoing basis.

3p: How do you select the cities?

LR: PPS has been around for 30+ years, and they are experts at bringing these disparate stakeholders together when there is an opportunity to create a place.  I call it, “urban planning meets crowdsourcing,” but the main thing is that there has to be a motivated grassroots constituency within the community. Government entities, community leaders are on the same page; funding is available; there is momentum, goodwill; all those elements are there. PPS has a project plan and they know when a project is ready to pop. Ideally, it’s when all that is in place, and all they need is just a little more funding to put them over the top.

3p: Is there an application process?

LR: Those relationships are managed by PPS. So any city that is interested in this should get in touch with PPS directly and let them know where they stand. PPS will come onboard and help walk them through that process. Then they would get us involved at the point I described earlier.

3p: So you’re really looking for a city that’s already in the ninth inning and just needs someone to get those last three outs. What kind of resources are we talking about?

LR: I can’t tell you the exact amount, but I can tell you it’s significant.

3p: How many cities are you targeting?

LR: We don’t necessarily have control of who is ready and when, but ideally we’d like to do three or four projects a year.

3p: Can you talk about some of the projects you’ve already done?

LR: The project in Travis Park (San Antonio) is a city block. It has some historic significance related to the Alamo. It also has some green space and a giant Confederate statue. It did not have a great deal of foot traffic. A lot of people would cut through the park, but few ever spent any time there. Part of the problem was that there was really no place to sit and nothing to do there. So we went in and added experiences. Now there is a dog park, regular programming around yoga, zumba, and even P90x classes. There is also a reading room with a bistro, a giant lawn chess set, and food trucks have started coming. The place is really bustling now.

3p: So how do you measure success? Are you tracking results?

LR: Well, for one thing, we consider it a success when things start to wear out, because that tells us they’re getting used. In Providence, [R.I.], the Park Conservancy there, is taking a look at what their visitorship is like. We have an Imagination Center for children set up there inside of the city’s Burnside Park.

3p: You mentioned one other project.

LR: The third project was in Detroit. They wanted a place where people would congregate, asked residents what they wanted, and they said they wanted a beach.  They trucked in sand, Adirondack chairs and picnic tables, and people love it, even if there is no water. Put their toes in the sand and build sand castles. We really enjoyed watching the transformation from a place where no one spent any time, to a place that was so crowded you couldn’t move.

--

Southwest funded an MIT white paper called Places in the Making which found that: “The canon of placemaking’s past taught us valuable lessons about how to design great public places while planting the seeds for a robust understanding of how everyday places foster civic connections and build social capital. The placemakers of tomorrow will build on this legacy by teaching us valuable lessons about how the making process builds and nurtures community."

Another notable quote in that paper is by urban sociologist William Whyte who said, “It is difficult to design a space that will not attract people. What is remarkable is how often this has been accomplished.”

Image courtesy of Southwest Airlines

RP Siegel, PE, is an inventor, consultant and author. He writes for numerous publications including Justmeans, ThomasNet, Huffington Post, and Energy Viewpoints. He wrote the eco-thriller Vapor Trails, the first in a series covering the human side of various sustainability issues including energy, food, and water in an exciting and entertaining romp that is currently being adapted for the big screen. Now available on Kindle.

Follow RP Siegel on Twitter.