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By Scot Case

Tastes great. Less filling. Tastes great. Less filling. Like the beer advertising campaign that ran for more than 30 years, manufacturers of greener products are debating whether customers want them to “label the greener products” or “share the eco-data.”

Label the greener products

Some manufacturers believe that their customers want a respected third-party label to identify the greener products. The label identifies the product as “greener” than others because it has specific environmental features or because it meets an environmental leadership standard.

Manufacturers are working with independent third-parties to validate specific environmental claims such as minimum recycled-content percentages, energy efficiency or water efficiency claims, indoor air quality emissions or bio-based content claims.

They are also using labels to make broader environmental or human health leadership claims by certifying products to environmental leadership standards like UL’s GREENGUARD and ECOLOGO, Green Seal, IEEE1680, or others.

The advantage of the “label the greener products” approach is that it is a simple, effective way to communicate a customer-facing environmental message. It does not require customers to spend time determining for themselves what defines a greener product. All a customer needs to do is look for products with a respected “green” label.

Share the eco data

Other manufacturers believe their customers want more information than a product label can convey. They believe customers want to decide for themselves what defines a greener product rather than relying on someone else’s definition. They prefer to share actual eco-data rather than relying on a label.

These manufacturers view sharing the eco-data as a more dynamic approach because eco-data can be updated faster than environmental labelling standards can be revised. Rather than relying on standards or labels, they think customers prefer to see the raw data.

Manufacturers who prefer to share the eco-data rely on outside third-parties to develop environmental product declarations (EPDs), which are similar to the nutrition label on a box of cereal. An EPD summarizes the full environmental footprint of a product based on a published lifecycle assessment (LCA). The LCA is, in turn, based on internationally agreed upon product category rules (PCRs) that define what aspects of an environmental footprint must be evaluated.

Unlike most environmental labels, EPDs do not make any value judgment about the relative “green-ness” of a product. An EPD instead provides relevant environmental data based on a more extensive examination of the complete environmental footprint of a product. It is up to individual customers to determine whether the product, based on the EPD data, is green enough for their needs.

Leverage the strength of both

Interestingly, the “label the greener products” and the “share the eco-data” approaches are not mutually exclusive. Some companies, like Owens Corning, are recognizing that the two approaches are complementary and even symbiotic. Owens Corning is adopting a “both-and” approach that includes certifying products to environmental leadership standards like UL’s GREENGUARD and ECOLOGO while also publishing Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs).

Part of the rationale for adopting both approaches is that each approach is appealing to different types of customers.

Environmental labels, including both validated claims and certifications to leadership standards, are appealing to customers who seek quick information about the relative environmental benefits of a product. They might be concerned about a specific environmental issue – recycled content, energy efficiency, water efficiency – or they might just be looking for independent, third-party validation that the product they are buying has met a respected authority’s definition of a greener product.

Other types of customers, including professional purchasers, retail buyers, architects and engineers, might want more specific information. They don’t want to know that a product meets someone else’s definition of green. They want to review the data and decide for themselves.

The yin and the yang

Manufactures supplying the greener products market are recognizing that both approaches are important. Others are too. They are recognizing that “label the greener products” and “share the eco-data” are two sides of the same coin, the yin and yang of environmental communications.

One of the most significant changes to Version 4 of the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED standard for greener buildings, for example, is the additional credits available for products that provide EPDs. Older versions of the LEED standard relied almost exclusively on environmental labels. The newer version also encourages EPDs.

The most recent revisions to the IEEE1680 series of standards for greener electronic products also encourage the use of EPDs. It appears EPDs will become more and more important in some industry verticals.

EPDs remain too complex for the average consumer who typically lacks the expertise to use an EPD appropriately, but can be very useful for institutional purchasers and retail buyers. Similarly, traditional environmental labels do not provide enough information for professional purchasers who want to make their own independent assessments about the environmental benefits of a product, but can be very useful for the average consumer.

The information contained within an EPD can be further summarized in an environmental label to make it easier to explain environmental benefits to consumers. And an environmental label can enhance the value of the information if it is connected to a more comprehensive EPD.

Both approaches are stronger together than they are on their own.

Just as the same beer can be both “less filling” and “taste great,” manufacturers can choose to both “label the greener products” and “share the eco-data.”

Images courtesy of UL Environment

About the Author: Scot Case has been researching and promoting effective green marketing and responsible purchasing since 1993 and was co-author of the original “Sins of Greenwashing” study and advisor to subsequent editions. He is the Market Development Director for UL Environment. Contact him via Twitter: @scotcase, email: scot.case@ul.com or in Reading, PA, at 610-781-1684. This article represents the views of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of UL Environment or its affiliates or subsidiaries. This article is for general information purposes only and is not meant to convey legal or other professional advice.

More than 1.3 billion people worldwide – most in developing countries – depend largely on coastal marine zones them for food and livelihoods. These zones face declining health and productivity from pollution, overfishing and a myriad of other issues.

New regional-scale, science-driven approaches to governance of coastal marine zones need to be implemented in order to address the declining health and productivity of tropical coastal waters, according to a group of leading environmental and marine scientists.

Writing in the Marine Pollution Bulletin, 24 scientists from Canada, the U.S., the U.K., China, Australia, New Caledonia, Sweden and Kenya on July 2 called on governments and societies “to introduce and enforce use zoning efforts of Earth's coastal ocean waters, mirroring approaches commonly used to manage and protect land resources.”

“[O]ne fifth of humanity -- mostly in developing countries -- lives within 100 km (62.5 miles) of a tropical coastline. Growing populations and worsening climate change impacts ensure that pressures on tropical coastal waters will only grow,” they warn.

Managing the tropical coastal zone commons

A global commons, the ecological health and integrity of tropical coastal ocean waters often take a backseat to the demands societies place on them – from fisheries, aquaculture, shipping and tourism to oil, gas, mineral and energy exploration and production. Connected to the seas by streams and rivers, urban life, agriculture and industrial activities that take place far from the coasts are having a greater impact on the health and vitality of tropical coastal waters.

The tropical ocean ecosystem doesn't recognize national boundaries, yet human use of these waters has largely been governed by a hodgepodge of local and national institutional frameworks and agencies lacking the resources, capacity and wherewithal to carry out their missions.

According to the authors, attempts at sustainable management of coastal zone waters frequently fail today because they:

• are mounted at too small a geographic scale and/or over too short a period of time;


• focus on single issues (conservation, fisheries enhancement, land-based pollution) without regard to other problems that act together to degrade coastal environments;


• are imposed from "outside," often in a one-size-fits-all or cookie-cutter approach, without the consultation and consensus-building needed to gain real traction with the local community, management agencies or governments.

“While there are a few exceptional places," they write, "all too often, current management of development, habitat destruction, pollution, and overfishing is seriously inadequate.

The need for holistic, regional, ecosystems-based approaches

The authors warn that failure to implement holistic, regional-scale, science-driven approaches to coastal zone management will likely result in the following:

• Most coastal fisheries will be chronically overfished or collapsed;


• Loss of reef habitat will further reduce fisheries production and strain food security;


• Land-based pollution will increase to the extent that hypoxia and harmful algal blooms are routinely present;


• Pressures of coastal development will combine with sea level rise and more intense storms to further intrude on and erode natural coastlines, severely reducing mangrove, salt marsh and sea grass habitats;


• The cost of dealing with these impacts will further strain coastal economies, and the future for people on tropical coasts in 2050 will be substantially more bleak than at present.

Coastal zoning and marine spatial planning

In their paper, the 24 scientists call on governments and societies to implement “holistic, regional-scale management approaches to balance the growth in competing demands” that mirror those being taken to manage land resources. Lead author Peter Sales of the UN University's Canadian-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health, elaborated,

"We zone land for development, for farms, for parks, for industry and other human needs. Required today is a comparable degree of care and planning for coastal ocean waters.

"We have tended to think of the seas as our last great wilderness, yet we subject them, particularly along tropical shores, to levels of human activity as intense as those on land. The result is widespread overfishing, pollution and habitat degradation.

“Coastal marine management efforts today are just woefully inadequate to avoid irreparable degradation of the bounty and services on which so many people depend for food and well-being."

Recognizing the political difficulties, the scientists advocate much wider use of Marine Spatial Planning (MSP): “an objective procedure for partitioning portions of the coastal ocean among competing uses.” Using MSP, they add, “forces the regional-scale, holistic approaches to coastal management that nations desperately need.”

MSP is an integral part of coastal marine governance policy and planning for NOAA and the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), which has been using MSP tools and methods to design and implement plans to build America's first offshore wind power farms.

Sales and co-authors want to see such holistic approaches adopted much more widely, particularly among less developed tropical coast countries that are most vulnerable from the overexploitation and degradation of coastal waters, as well as rising sea levels and other effects associated with climate change.

"We propose making expanded use of marine spatial planning and zoning as a framework that will apportion coastal waters for differing activities, while forcing a multi-target and multi-scale approach, and achieving agreed ecological, economic and social objectives," Sales stated.

Image credits: 1) Ethan Daniels/Shutterstock; 2) Nature Climate Change 2, 239–242 (2012); 3) NOAA

Racing is a longstanding and hugely popular spring and summer tradition in the U.S. And when it comes to car racing events, they don't get any bigger than the Indianapolis 500. The world's largest single-day spectator sporting event, the Indy 500 covers 500 miles – 200 laps on the world famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway's 2.5-mile oval.

Built for speed and getting a whopping 3 miles per gallon, Indy racing cars conjure up what the American Chemical Society referred to as “images of gas-guzzling, pollution-belching environmental menaces” – not exactly “in tune” with a nationwide clean energy and energy efficiency drive.

As it turns out, the ethanol blends now being used in Indy race cars actually make their emissions cleaner than those of the cars Americans drive every day, however. That's not all the organizers of the Indy 500 are doing to clean up their energy act.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony on July 1 marked the opening of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) Solar Farm. Consisting of 39,312 solar photovoltaic (PV) panels ground-mounted along an under-utilized portion of the 1,000-acre campus, the 9-megawatt (MW) PV installation is the largest solar farm at any sporting facility in the world, according to an IMS press release.

The 9-MW Indianapolis Motor Speedway Solar Farm

Co-developed by San Jose, California's SunWize Technologies and Phoenix-based Blue Renewable Energy, the IMS Solar Farm will offset the equivalent of 10,288 tons of carbon per year.

Blue Renewable Energy entered into a land-lease agreement with IMS to build the PV system on the property. SunWize was responsible for its design, engineering and installation, while Clenera and Swinerton Builders completed the engineering and construction for Centaurus Renewable Energy.

The electricity produced by the solar farm is to be purchased by Indianapolis Power & Light (IP&L) through a power purchase agreement (PPA), terms of which were not disclosed. IP&L will own the solar renewable energy credits (SRECs) the system earns.

Commenting on the commissioning of the 9-MW solar farm, IMS President J. Douglas Boles said:

“In 1909, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was constructed in part to help advance the automotive industry, which at that time was the new technology of the day. Today, IMS is honored to be part of a partnership with IPL, SunWize and Blue Renewable Energy where innovation and technology are coming together to bring diversification of generation resources to this community.

"The unused land at the IMS property just east of the race track has been transformed into a solar energy production facility that will provide an alternative source of energy to IPL customers.”

The president of AES' U.S. Strategic Business Unit, which owns IP&L, added:

“Solar generation is an important component of IPL’s commitment to developing renewable generation resources. The new IMS solar farm will be a constant reminder to those who visit the largest spectator sporting facility in the world of the creative solutions taking place here in Indianapolis to increase sustainability.”

IMS provided the following infographic, which lists facts and figures related to the new solar farm:

Image credits: Indianapolis Motor Speedway

We don't often associate airplanes with low-hanging fruit. I mean, it might just be the worst metaphor one could imagine. After all, planes spend a lot of time entirely out of reach. But when it comes to finding ways to save fuel and reduce carbon emissions, there's lots of low hanging fruit.

The automobile industry has invested billions reducing the weight of their cars to reduce fuel consumption and they don't even have to lift them off the ground. So it's no surprise to hear that airlines are saving millions by reducing weight. What's surprising is that they haven't done more of that sooner.

The opportunity is enormous. Researchers at MIT estimate that that cost of each passenger carrying a cellphone costs Southwest Airlines $1.2 million annually in weight-related fuel expenses. That number jumps to $21.6 million if the cellphone is replaced by a laptop. Other pundits have pointed out that if every passenger used the bathroom before boarding the plane, it could save the airline millions. This caused budget airline Ryanair to consider charging passengers to use the bathrooms in flight (to encourage them to plan ahead).

Virgin Atlantic estimates that shaving even a single pound off all the planes in their fleet would save them 14,000 gallons of fuel per year. The airline has redesigned its meal trays, an exercise that was originally intended to improve the customer dining experience. Turns out they could fit more of the smaller, lighter trays on each meal cart, which means fewer meal carts per plane. The net result is close to a 300-pound weight loss. It's a great example of the kind of rewards that creative thinking, and a willingness to think outside the box, can bring. American Airlines launched their FuelSmart program in 2005, which has utilized a number of employee suggestions on ways to save fuel. Since its inception the program has  saved a billion gallons or more. Some suggestions include cutting back on usage of auxiliary power, when on the ground, single engine taxiing, engine cleaning, high speed towing and adding winglets.

Specific weight-reduction measures include:

• Removing unnecessary cabin equipment.


• Replacing cargo liners and containers with lighter-weight materials


• Replacing American's catering carts with newer models made with lighter materials


• Reducing potable water amounts, replacing flight bag documentation with iPads.

All told these improvements save a combined 10 million gallons of fuel per year.

Longer term, there are, of course, entirely new designs utilizing materials like the carbon fiber substitutions in the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Boeing estimates weight savings of 20 percent compared to aluminum, which is represents tremendous savings over the life of an airplane.

Image credit: happyrelm: Flickr Creative Commons

RP Siegel, PE, is an author, inventor and consultant. He has written for numerous publications ranging from Huffington Post to Mechanical Engineering. He and Roger Saillant co-wrote the eco-thriller Vapor Trails. RP sees it as his mission to help articulate and clarify the problems and challenges confronting our planet at this time, as well as the steadily emerging  list of proposed solutions. His uniquely combined engineering and humanities background help to bring both global perspective and analytical detail to bear on the questions at hand.

Follow RP Siegel on Twitter.

By switching the plastic used in its IV bags, Dignity Health care system kept 700,000 pounds of high-concern chemicals - the equivalent in weight of a Boeing 747 airplane -- out of the environment, according to a new analysis that measures the "chemical footprint" of plastics.

The Plastics Scorecard v.1.0 offers the first comprehensive method for assessing and reducing chemicals of high concern in plastics and was designed to help companies choose safter plastics.

"From baby bottles made with BPA to medical devices made with phthalates, plastics are a surprising source of exposure to chemicals of high concern for our health and the environment," said Ann Blake, PhD, co-author of the report and Principal at Environmental & Public Health Consulting. "Forward looking businesses are looking closely at plastics for chemicals that may be subject to future regulations or consumer scrutiny."

"Plastics are possibly the largest contributor of any material to the toxic chemical economy. For example, plastics consume 96% of global Bisphenol A (BPA) production," added Mark Rossi, PhD, co-director of Clean Production Action and co-author of the report. "If we are ever to attain a green chemistry economy, we need to shift plastics manufacturing to chemicals of low concern to human health and the environment."

Check out the Plastics Scorecard here.

 

Picture credit: © Jason Smith | Dreamstime Stock Photos
 

Co-operative Energy is this year’s lead sponsor of Community Energy Fortnight, the world’s biggest community energy campaign.

Organised by the Community Energy Coalition (CEC) - a group of 36 civil society organisations led by sustainability non-profit Forum for the Future, the Community Energy Fortnight runs from 13-28 September 2014.

The Fortnight gives the British public the chance to visit established community projects in their local area, all of which are actively engaged in generating and/or saving energy for the benefit of local people. From visits to wind farms and solar parks to energy efficiency workshops, the events are designed to bring community energy to life and cultivate consumer engagement.

Ramsay Dunning, group general manager, Co-operative Energy said: “We are at the forefront of sourcing our power from community energy providers. We believe that the community ownership of clean energy projects empowers them to decide upon and manage their initiatives in locally appropriate ways and keeps the profits generated within the community.

“We’ll be encouraging our hundreds of thousands of customers and members to get involved as well. We know they are strong supporters of Co-operative Energy’s low carbon sourcing policies, and would like to see a more vibrant co-operative and social economy in the UK.”

Giles Bristow, director of programmes, Forum for the Future, commented: “The Fortnight is inspiring people across the UK to do something really positive to build a more sustainable energy system from the grassroots up, and the CEC is working hard to create the right conditions for it to flourish so we can help bring our members’ vision of more resilient communities to life.”

 

Picture credit: Andy Cantlon
 

When news of the OpenSSL Heartbleed vulnerability was announced to the public, its risk dominated the press. This infamous security vulnerability allows hackers to intercept communications and obtain information from vulnerable servers. OpenSSL is used for countless services, including Web servers, mobile applications, operating systems, routers and email clients. Articles quickly spread across the Internet with recommendations -- some of which were counterproductive -- yet many users took no action at all to protect sensitive information.

"This is a serious vulnerability," wrote Forbes cybersecurity columnist Joseph Steinberg about Heartbleed. "Some might argue that it is the worst vulnerability found (at least in terms of its potential impact) since commercial traffic began to flow on the Internet."

Consumers trust banks, retail stores and communications companies with personal information, including phone, credit card and social security numbers. Despite a couple of months passing since Heartbleed was announced, the bug continues to haunt consumer, technology firms and corporations alike. Consumer trust was severely violated during this security debacle, as judged by the overwhelmingly negative sentiment shared online Heartbleed immediately after the breech was announced. Companies need to rebuild trust and educate consumers to protect their data -- but some are responding with ambivalence and inaction, the opposite of what is needed.

A study by Errata Security found 309,197 servers were still vulnerable (down from 600,000 in April), some of them critical. "This indicates people have stopped even trying to patch," says Robert Graham, Errata's owner. "We should see a slow decrease over the next decade as older systems are slowly replaced. Even a decade from now, though, I still expect to find thousands of systems, including critical ones, still vulnerable."

According to analysis by Venafi Labs, some industries have been faster than others to respond to the Heartbleed vulnerability. The top 10 list of remediated sites in the sample set includes discount stores, semiconductors and major banks. Leading the pack on the top 10 most vulnerable from the sample set: telecommunication services, electronics and railroads.

The companies with vulnerable servers are likely to be targeted by hackers, enabling Heartbleed problems to continue nearly three months after the vulnerability was announced. "Hackers are looking for those who haven't yet changed their passwords and for services who did not install a patch quick enough," said Christopher Hadnagy, chief human hacker at the security consulting company Social Engineer.

In the digital age, companies that don't prioritize data security are more susceptible to publicity nightmares that encourage users to close accounts and go elsewhere. Companies must act proactively to earn and maintain credibility and a strong brand.

Sheila Jordan, chief information officer for Symantec, recommends businesses determine which information is really sensitive and which isn't. They can then segment data security strategies and prioritize the highly sensitive data.

"It is really important that businesses understand their data," says Jordan in an interview with Triple Pundit. "It really is all about the data and how it is now flowing between mobile devices, cloud, and structured and unstructured data coming in."

Jordan urges widespread employee engagement for data security. "In reality, it is the job of the CIO and CSO to educate the employees on policy, process, and how to secure our devices. I think everyone within the organization has to take a role in really securing that information."

Unfortunately, a study by Software Advice, an online evaluation firm for IT security software, found that more than 75 percent of respondents say they've received no advice about Heartbleed in the workplace, and two-thirds of respondents haven't changed any passwords to protect their accounts. Despite Google and Yahoo being affected, only 19 percent of all respondents changed email passwords. Many Internet users still perceive the Internet as safe, but future privacy debacles will reduce confidence.

Consumers also need to take responsibility for protecting themselves. There are plenty of users out there that haven't taken action to protect their personal information in response to Heartbleed. According to a Pew study from late April, a mere 39 percent of Internet users have changed passwords or closed accounts. This number was greater in households with higher incomes and levels of education.

"As consumers, we've done such a great job of securing our homes and buying insurance policies," says Jordan. "We need to heighten our awareness of securing our data and our identities. As consumers, it’s our responsibility when we’re interacting with companies to check out their security policies and procedures."

One unlikely outcome of the OpenSSL Heartbleed security disaster is the creation of the Core Infrastructure Initiative (CCI) through a collaboration between the Linux Foundation and early contributors: Adobe, Amazon Web Services, Bloomberg, Cisco, Dell, Facebook, Fujitsu, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NetApp, RackSpace and VMware, which aims to fund critical elements of global technology. This initiative is spurred by the fact that OpenSSL, vital to Internet security, ran on a donated operating budget of $9,000 in 2013. In addition to preventing similar vulnerabilities and security breaches, supporting organizations may gain credibility in the eyes of consumers, seeing them as part of the solutions.

To boost trust and protect privacy, companies need to secure data, but they also must educate both users and employees on safe Internet practices. Workplace policies and educational programs are important and vital to responding to the changes in the business environment brought on by internet security threats. Companies that lead the way with transparency and proactive initiatives will thrive in the digital age.

Image Credit: Mashable Composite, iSock, Saul Herrera

Sarah Lozanova is a regular contributor to environmental and energy publications and websites, including Mother Earth Living, Green Building & Design, Triple Pundit, Urban Farm, and Solar Today. Her experience includes work with small-scale solar energy installations and utility-scale wind farms. She earned an MBA in sustainable management from the Presidio Graduate School and she resides in Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage in Midcoast Maine with her husband and two children.

By Maya Spaull

All too often the news reports about marine species are grim: We read about declining fish stocks, illegal and unregulated fishing and the increasing degradation of coral reefs. Why is this happening? What factors motivate fishing practices that create such harmful outcomes to our precious marine resources?

Fishermen are often on the losing end of global trade, facing low market prices and lack of tools to improve resource management. Fair Trade USA believes there is a missing piece to this complex, yet critically important and ever-evolving puzzle – that we cannot have truly sustainable seafood unless we make sustainable livelihoods for fishing communities a top priority. We believe that Fair Trade can be part of a larger effort to make wild-caught seafood better for people and planet.

The challenge

In 2011, global exports of wild capture fish from developing countries reached USD $34.5 billion. An estimated 120 million people are working in primary and secondary fish livelihoods, and more than 90 percent of the world’s capture fishermen are employed in small-scale fisheries. Like their developing country counterparts in agriculture, many fishing communities struggle against fluctuating market prices, limited direct market access and unregulated working conditions. Furthermore, with many fisheries under inefficient or limited management, fish stocks and marine species are dwindling at an ever-increasing rate. Fishermen are, quite simply, struggling to make ends meet, and they rarely have enough resources and incentives to engage in sustainable fishing practices.

How can Fair Trade help?

The pioneering work of groups such as the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program and Fishery Improvement Project providers has been instrumental in building the sustainable seafood movement and raising consumer demand for responsibly-harvested seafood. Fair Trade USA is excited to offer a complimentary approach to the current sustainable seafood programs, with a focus on social and labor rights, working conditions and economic incentives that inspire better resource management over time.

Perhaps best known for certification in coffee, Fair Trade is a market-based approach to improving the lives of farmers and workers, protecting the environment, and delivering quality and safety. At its core, Fair Trade puts people at the center of sustainability. We believe the key to sustaining healthy communities and stewarding the globe’s fish species is to create tools and improved market access in partnership with hardworking fishers, seafood buyers and mindful consumers.

How will fishing communities benefit from Fair Trade?

Fair Trade certification will provide a framework for fishermen to organize into self-empowered associations, improve their business skills, access premium markets and steward their marine resources. In addition, fishermen will receive extra financial premiums to devote to community development projects in areas like education, healthcare and infrastructure. Since 1998, Fair Trade producers for products around the developing world have earned more than $153 million in community development premiums.

Ultimately, our vision is that Fair Trade’s contribution to sustainable marine fisheries will:

1. Improve working and living conditions in fishing communities;


2. Improve ecosystem resiliency by generating stepwise educational tools to activate progressive improvements in marine resource management; and


3. Harness the purchasing power of consumers to increase financial returns for those employed in the fishing sector.

When will Fair Trade seafood be available?

Fair Trade USA has been working with fishing communities, marine conservation experts and market partners throughout the supply chain. The Fair Trade Fisheries Advisory Council has been elected to consult on conservation, economic and applied aspects of Fair Trade Fisheries program. Recent updates include:

• The world’s first Fair Trade Capture Fisheries Standard is nearing completion, having just finished a public consultation period.


• With our partner, Anova Food, LLC, we are field testing the program with a handline caught yellowfin tuna fishing community in Indonesia.


• We are working with retailers and consumers in North America to cultivate the market for Fair Trade Certified seafood.

It is our hope that the results of this work will benefit small-scale fishing communities and the natural environment upon which they depend. Fair Trade USA welcomes the input, participation and support of a variety of stakeholders in the marine sector. For more information on how you can get involved, please contact fisheries@fairtradeusa.org.

Image credit: Mega Caesaria/Unsplash

Maya Spaull is Director of New Category Innovation for Fair Trade USA.

Is access to clean water a fundamental human right? According to the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights, not exactly. But if you ask George McGraw, the founder and executive director of the DIGDEEP Right to Water Project, the answer is a resounding ‘yes.’

The goal of McGraw, who is also an international human rights lawyer, and DIGDEEP is not just to increase access to clean water or educate people about water issues, but also to fundamentally change the way we think about water -- starting at home.

“When it comes to water it is really easy to silo people into groups, to treat other people as beneficiaries and see ourselves as donors,” McGraw told Triple Pundit after speaking at the Ford Trends conference in Detroit last week. “As a human rights organization, we really try to break down those barriers and get people to think about these issues differently.”

Our conversation was especially timely -- as we talked next to an indoor fountain at a pricey hotel, thousands of homes in the city outside were without running water. Starting in March, the Detroit Water and Sewage Department (DWSD) sent out shut-off notices to 46,000 homes for overdue bills, arguing that people can afford to pay, but refuse.

At $75, the average monthly water bill in Detroit is close to double the national average.

To date DWSD says it has cancelled service for 4,500 accounts, but this number could rise. On June 24, the U.N. called Detroit’s cutoffs to people that cannot afford to pay "an affront to human rights." It also warned that over the next few months as may as 30,000 households could be disconnected from water services.

In 2010, the U.N. adopted a non-binding resolution to recognize access to clean water and sanitation as a basic human right. Citing concerns on the effect of the resolution on other U.N. efforts, as well as the legal implications of the resolution, the United States was one of 41 countries to abstain from voting on that resolution.

Detroit may be the first city in the U.S. to encounter mass shut-offs, but McGraw warns that this may not be such a rare scenario in the future. DIGDEEP, which has built water access projects in Africa and Asia, is refocusing its efforts on domestic issues, making it the only water rights NGO working on a national basis in America. It uses a two-pronged approach: building water infrastructure projects for Americans that lack access, and spreading water-rights and conservation awareness more broadly.

For their first well project stateside, DIGDEEP is focusing on the American Indian population, the group hardest hit by water poverty in the U.S., with a pilot project on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico. While only 0.6 percent of the general population in America lacks access to water and/or wastewater disposal, that rate rises to 13 percent among the American Indian population. The pilot, which includes a central well, a truck distribution system and in-home water storage, will reach about 250 homes to start.

Prior to the DIGDEEP project, community members collected water from snowfall in the winter and in the summer from contaminated windmills used to fill livestock troughs. Mining activities in the area have left behind uranium pollution as far as 2,000 feet underground. While boiling water will get rid of any bacteria, it makes uranium levels more concentrated. The pilot will cost about $500,000, almost half of which will go toward drilling a well deep enough to get past the uranium contamination.

Between the pollution, high altitude and a hesitance among the community to trust outsiders, McGraw says the New Mexico project is, in some ways, more difficult than the work they did in South Sudan or Cameroon.

“But it’s a lot more rewarding too,” he said. “In the end, we are Americans working for Americans.”

McGraw and his team are seeking to reach other Americans through their 4-Liter Challenge, an annual call for people to spend four days limiting their daily water use -- for everything from cleaning to drinking to cooking -- to just four liters, the same amount nearly 1 billion people around the world live on every day. Every October, DIGDEEP invites people to take the challenge, raise money and gain a little empathy for the water-poor.

This year, the organization will expand the challenge with a grade 6-12 school curriculum and a new Web tool. The introduction for the curriculum is written by the Catarina de Albuquerque, the U.N. special rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation.

Nationwide, domestic use makes up just 10 percent of overall water use. At 70 percent, agriculture is the biggest water hog, followed by industrial use at 20 percent.

But McGraw sees the home as the most powerful nexus for change.

“The people that run farms and the people that run factories are most affected at home. If we can get them to change the way they think about water in their homes, and change the way their consumers or their investors think about water, then it becomes a lot easier to change the behavior of agriculture and industry,” he said.

For thousands of Detroiters, water is certain to be a big topic at home throughout the summer.

“We need to learn the lesson that we didn't learn when we didn’t put water in the Declaration of Human Rights,” said McGraw. But its an issue that goes beyond international doctrines. What we need, he says, is “to establish a clear legal and ethical principle -- not just in our laws and in our countries, but in our minds and our attitudes.” Image credit: Flickr, Steve Johnson

A few years before Tony Hayward resigned as head of BP after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the previous BP CEO, John Browne, was forced to bow out from the company over a much different scandal: He was outed as gay by a British tabloid. Now the former executive has written a book about his experience, “The Glass Closet: Why Coming Out Is Good Business,” and is advocating for the rights of gays and lesbians in the workplace.

Released in May, “The Glass Closet” details Browne’s double life as a CEO and a closeted gay man and tells the stories of other gay and lesbian professionals coming out at work. The book concludes with an open letter to CEOs about why promoting an inclusive environment for LGBT employees isn’t solely a civil rights issue or moral imperative for companies – it’s a smart business decision.

“Inclusion creates a level playing field, which allows the best talent to rise to the top,” Browne writes, in a book excerpt published in Fast Company.

In order for employees to do great work, they can’t devote a quarter of their brain power to hiding their sexual orientation, Browne writes; employees perform best when they are applying their whole brain to their job. Browne points to studies that show an LGBT-friendly work environment can increase productivity up to 30 percent, in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek.

LGBT inclusion cannot only help companies nurture and retain their top workers, but it can also assist them in recruiting talent. In one survey, around 80 percent of gay and lesbian Americans said that when they were applying for a job, it was “very important” or “fairly important” for the potential employer to have an LGBT equality and diversity policy in place, Browne writes. When the same survey was carried out in the United Kingdom, 72 percent of respondents agreed.

Wall Street has taken notice, Browne says: After Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein appeared in a Human Rights Campaign video supporting same-sex marriage in 2012, he admitted that his political stance caused his firm to lose at least one major client. But Blankfein defended his video appearance to the media, explaining that an accepting work environment attracts top-notch employees and implying that this recruitment strategy is more important than driving off a customer.

But can a pro-LGBT workplace result in higher profits? Starbucks announced its support for marriage equality in 2012, Browne writes, leading to a strong boycott and social media campaign from an anti-same-sex-marriage group. A year after the backlash, an angry shareholder addressed the company’s annual shareholder meeting, blaming the coffee giant’s political position for its less-than-stellar earnings in the quarter after the campaign. In response, Starbucks Chairman and Chief Executive Howard Schultz said that, “Not every decision is an economic decision …We employ over 200,000 people in this company, and we want to embrace diversity. Of all kinds.”

Browne is careful to differentiate between diversity and inclusion: “Having a certain number of employees from diverse backgrounds will do little to help a business unless those employees are made to feel welcome and valued,” he writes. Policies that formalize a company’s pro-LGBT stance are a good place to start, according to Browne: Guidelines can be tracked and measured against existing laws and other companies’ commitments to workplace inclusion.

The working world is changing, slowly becoming more welcoming to gay and lesbian individuals, Browne says. He notes that in 2002, 61 percent of Fortune 500 companies prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation, and only 3 percent banned gender-identity discrimination. By 2014, these numbers jumped dramatically, with 91 percent of Fortune 500 companies including sexual orientation in their corporate anti-discrimination policies and 61 percent including gender identity.

But Browne says we still have a long way to go before the workplace is truly equal for LGBT workers. Many of the individuals he interviewed for his book wished to remain anonymous, he told Bloomberg Businessweek, and there are currently no publicly gay chief executives at any Fortune 500 company, the New York Times reported.

Browne hopes “The Glass Closet” will open up a discussion about LGBT inclusion in the workplace and has launched GlassCloset.org to continue the conversation, encouraging gay and lesbian professionals to submit their own personal stories about coming out at work.

“As an executive in business, I did not have an openly gay role model to whom I could aspire,” Browne writes on the website. “That is why I launched GlassCloset.org, as a place for people to share their stories and to become role models for those struggling with a hidden life.”

Browne has continued to achieve professional and personal success after his resignation from BP, according to the New York Times -- he is a partner at a private equity firm, serves as a member of the House of Lords and found love with a man who wrote him a letter after his resignation – but he wishes he hadn’t lived so much of his life in the closet.

“I wish I had been brave enough to come out earlier during my tenure as chief executive of BP,” he writes on GlassDoor.org. “I regret it to this day.”

Image credit: Flickr/Kevin Goebel

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