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Remember when people boycotted movie theatre popcorn because of the high saturated fat content of the coconut oil used to pop the kernels? Time marches on, and coconut oil becomes the latest health fad.

Trends come and go in the world of eco-cleanliness, too. Now that I'm out on maternity leave, my inbox and mailbox have become full of articles and resources on keeping my home and baby clean without caustic chemical agents. Or maybe they were always full of this sort of info, but now that I have a little one at home, I'm paying closer attention. But I digress. Water. I was surprised to learn in our baby care class that even organic, sensitive skin wipes are passe. All the cool kids are using a simple washcloth (disposable or reusable) and warm water to clean their baby's booty. It makes sense, really. The alcohol in wipes can dry delicate skin, and let's be honest, adults don't soap up after every BM, so why should the babies?

The world of home cleanliness has it's own player in the "water-clean" movement too: Steam cleaning is all the rage. Haan sent me their HAAN Multiforce Pro SS25 to test, and since I'm playing SAHM for the next couple of months, I figured I'd give it a whirl. This standup steam cleaner looks like a lean vacuum, but has attachments and settings to clean tile, hardwood, laminate, vinyl, and even steam your carpets. The concept of cleanliness here is that the steam sterilizes all your surfaces, and their "CR-Motion technology" scrubs away dirt and grease. I tried it in my bathroom where our laminate floor was covered with baby-related effluent. The steam cleaner worked like a champ to lift the stains while the baby was napping, and it was great to be off my hands and knees. Word to the wise: The unit needs to rest on a special mat when it's on but not in motion, lest you burn a hole in your floor. When I rested it as directed, the unit started smoking. After 30 seconds, I realized I had the mat upside down, but it wasn't obvious which way was up at first, at least for this sleep deprived lady.

Will this steam cleaner find a place in our cleaning arsenal?

Probably! It seems useful for major floor cleanings, although for quick pick-me-ups a spray bottle and a rag are surely easier.

However, I'm not a huge gadget person; I probably wouldn't buy a steam cleaner of my own volition. The unit sells for $239 a pop, which can buy a lot of eco all-purpose cleaner (and even more vinegar). I appear to be in the minority -- people love this thing.

Readers, what do you think? Is steam cleaned the wave of the future? 

Image credit: Aaron Hockley, Flickr

By Adam Carrel

A minimum threshold of rights for all human beings is one of the great unrealized ambitions of the post-War era. Despite the enormous efforts of multilateral and grassroots institutions to make the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights a basic unifier across all nations, huge disparities still remain between populations, ethnicities and genders around the world.

It is a little surprising, then, that for many companies, there has been no shortage of certifiers willing to confirm that their developing country-based assets and contractors meet a minimum standard of human rights almost regardless of where they’re situated. This is not to suggest that certifying agencies have been willingly misrepresenting the effectiveness of corporate human rights programs but rather that the criteria on which human rights (or ‘social compliance’) is based has been overly simplistic.

In no instance has this been more apparent than that of the tragic collapse of the Rana Plaza Garment Factory last year, which cost more than 1,000 lives with many more injured. One striking aspect of the Rana Plaza collapse was that despite the factory and its management being demonstrably unaligned to even the most unambitious social compliance program, the factory had somehow survived the scrutiny of some of the leading social compliance policies in the apparel sector.

The global supply chain is vast, and one factory collapse, however tragic, does not itself confirm a systemic flaw in the mainstream approach to social compliance. However, Rana Plaza was only the worst in an escalating frequency of factory-based tragedies that has prompted widespread introspection within industry regarding the meaningfulness of prevailing approaches to social compliance. The effect of Rana Plaza was to push into the public domain the question of whether social compliance programs are achieving their stated objectives and, maybe more importantly, driving substantive improvements.

The effectiveness of social compliance programs will become an important consideration for corporate legal counsels and other officers managing the liabilities of corporations in the years ahead. We are quickly reaching a point where the production of a factory certification will no longer be indicative of an adequate effort to protect workers in company supply chains or to manage brand risk on behalf of shareholders.

Evaluating this risk is particularly important for those companies whose approach to social compliance draws on the standard supplier-funded, out-sourced model of social compliance as opposed to those (and there are several) who have looked to develop more innovative, hands-on relationships with producing factories. Many leading brands went back to the drawing board years ago to begin to remedy what, within industry, have been broadly shared concerns regarding the effectiveness of the mainstream approach. These concerns may be summarized as:

• A checklist approach to social compliance auditing that is skewed towards the detection of clerical errors and health and safety questions with ‘yes/no’ answers. Such approaches often fail to assess the actual health and safety culture within an operation or the root causes that underpin non-compliances.


• Too many criteria to allow companies the opportunity to meet a minimum standard of compliance.


• A limited appetite of auditors to look beyond their audit protocols to pursue suspicions of fraudulent or inaccurate representations on the part of factories and factory agents. These commonly include doctored books, undisclosed out-sourcing and coaching employees in their responses to auditor questions.


• Limited stakeholder engagement beyond factory walls to obtain an independent picture of factory conditions.


• Tolerance of agents and intermediaries providing incomplete factory listings to downstream companies.


• Social compliance standards that have not been updated to reflect the changing demographics of labor forces, i.e. Bangladesh vs. China.


• Procurements processes that may make it possible for company personnel to circumvent the social compliance standard and raise purchase orders for factories that have not had their human rights status assessed.

In terms of building off these acknowledged flaws, the following attributes are likely to be increasingly common within leading companies and those looking to reduce their exposure to future legal and reputational controversy:

1. Companies need to use third party certifiers and auditors more strategically.

One of the reasons why the social compliance industry has become so commoditized is that the cost of assessing every factory for some companies can be enormous. If the average code of conduct audit provided surety of compliance then this might still be worth it, however the fact that the present approach to certification has been shown to hide a multitude of sins means companies need to re-consider if this is money well spent.

While it is still important that every factory is assessed against uniform criteria, if the value currently added by outsourcing this to a verification agency is limited, companies could consider training their own quality assurance personnel to perform these assessments themselves. Quality assurance personnel are typically required to visit many producing factory locations anyway and typically also have a strong sense of what poor performance looks like.

Naturally the credibility of any company’s social compliance program is still predicated on third party validation, and with the money saved in internalizing the ‘check box’ component of social compliance, third parties can be engaged to perform more meaningful risk-based assessments. Such assessments should cover a large and representative sample of a company’s factory base, be executed by more experienced practitioners and their scope should be expanded to cover the root causes behind the physical indicators of non-compliance.

2. Procurement systems need to be tightened to escalate the approval process to management before orders can be placed with factories that have not had their social compliance status assessed.

Many companies already possess systems that disallow the generation of a purchase order without someone signing-off on the social compliance status of factories and this practice, if implemented broadly, could become a new minimum standard across industry.

3.   Agents and intermediaries need to be brought in line with the social compliance expectations of retailers.

The rise of major -- primarily South China-based -- agents and intermediaries has removed much of the knowledge retailers had of the factories producing their goods. The representations of these intermediaries regarding social compliance should not be taken at face value given the growing evidence of undisclosed suppliers and subcontracting within intermediaries supply bases.

4.   Corrective Action Plans (‘CAPs’) need to pursue cultural as well as visual change.

Improving health and safety outcomes is as much about driving behavioral change on the part of management and employees as it is improving the quality of physical apparatus. All too often CAPS are cleared on the basis of photographic evidence of a physical improvement (i.e. an unblocked exit or an illuminated exit sign) without any evidence of the development or enhancement of the management systems that should be pursuing continuous improvement in health and safety outcomes. Accordingly such physical improvements often lapse into non-compliance once manufacturing has actually commenced at that facility.

In all the soul searching that has followed Rana Plaza, two more obvious truths are finally receiving the appropriate acknowledgement:

1. Corporate commitments to human rights and vast and opaque supply-chains are mutually exclusive.

Once the tide of public and regulatory opinion mandates tangible improvements in the conditions of developing country supply chains one thing this will have to entail is consolidated factory bases with which retailers maintain more direct relationships. Only in this context will factories possess a sufficient incentive to invest in more than just cosmetic improvements and will retailers be in a position to see corrective action plans through to a sustainable conclusion.

2.   Retailers are going to have to start a conversation with consumers regarding the price of human rights.

The economic models, particularly in the realm of ‘fast fashion’, are predicated on consumers buying higher volumes of lower priced  items, and the relative low price  of the goods themselves are predicated, often in large part, on the cheapest labor from the poorest of countries. As such, financing sustained improvements in human rights and working conditions may ultimately have to be financed by consumers paying a higher price for a higher standard of ethics. Articulating the merits of this premium to a presently under-informed consumer base will be a major challenge for industry as it tries to improve human rights issues in the global supply chain.

Image credit: Flickr/ setca_bbtk

Adam Carrel is a Senior Manager with EY’s Climate Change and Sustainability Services practice specializing in environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns, in particular as they relate to multinational corporations. Carrel has a breadth of experience consulting on ESG matters in his native Australia and internationally with a recent focus on South East Asia and the Americas. His work commonly involves working with major international corporations in optimizing their approach to environmental management, community and government relations and corporate communications. Additionally Carrel has extensive experience supporting the sustainability reporting of Ernst & Young’s clients, either through assisting with the development of sustainability reports or by auditing their disclosures.

The shift from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy sources is well under way, offering societies worldwide a means of resolving longstanding and growing economic, social and environmental problems. A key, pivotal driver: The U.S. government has stepped up its efforts to promote and foster development and deployment of alternative, clean energy resources and technology during President Barack Obama's two terms in office.

Forging strong public-private partnerships has, in turn, been central to the Obama administration's clean energy strategy, and public recognition has been one aspect of this. On April 23, the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Green Power Partnership (GPP) updated its list of the top 100 organizations voluntarily using electricity generated from clean, renewable sources, such as wind and solar power. High-tech companies, including Intel, Microsoft, Google and Apple, feature prominently.

The EPA's Green Power Top 100

For the seventh consecutive year, Intel Corp. topped the ranks of the top 100 U.S. organizations using renewable energy to power their operations. Demonstrating that it is possible to power an energy-intensive, multinational enterprise solely on renewable energy sources, Intel voluntarily met 100 percent of its electricity load with renewable resources, GPP highlights in a news release.

Among the U.S.'s other largest high-tech businesses, Apple, Google and Microsoft each ranked in the GPP's top 10. Apple jumped three spots higher up the rankings, from No. 11 to No. 8, as its use of electricity from renewable resources rose nearly 100 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) over the past year.

Collectively, the green power usage of the GPP's top 100 totaled almost 24 billion kWh annually, nearly 83 percent of the overall green power commitments made by EPA Green Power Partners.

Following is the latest, quarterly list of the top 10, which includes a diverse range of organizations, private and public:

1. Intel Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.)


2. Kohl’s Department Stores (Menomonee Falls, Wis.)


3. Microsoft Corp. (Redmond, Wash.)


4. Whole Foods Market (Austin, Texas)


5. Google Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.)


6. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (Bentonville, Ark.)


7. Staples (Framingham, Mass.)


8. Apple Inc. (Cupertino, Calif.)


9. City of Houston, Texas


10. U.S. Department of Energy (Washington, D.C.)

EPA defines green power as “electricity produced from solar, wind, geothermal, biogas, eligible biomass, and low-impact, small hydroelectric sources. More than 1,200 organizations are partners in the EPA GPP, “purchasing more than 28 billion kilowatt-hours of green power annually, avoiding carbon pollution equal to that created by the electricity use of more than 2.4 million American homes.”

Commenting on the latest GPP top 100 update, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy stated:

“By using green power, these companies and organizations are showing that business can flourish while taking meaningful steps to reduce carbon pollution. Making cleaner choices to power our communities, institutions and businesses reduces the pollution that contributes to climate change, protects America's health and environment, and supports continued growth in the green power sector."

Top "Green Power" colleges and universities

Promoting and fostering renewable energy use among U.S. colleges and universities has been a focal point for EPA GPP for eight years running.

The Big 10 topped the ranks of 33 conferences taking part in this year's EPA “College and University Green Power Challenge,” avoiding carbon emissions equivalent to the electricity use of 30,000 homes by collectively using over 309 kWh of green power. Purchasing more than 200 million kWh of clean, renewable electricity, the University of Pennsylvania ranked No. 1 for the seventh year running.

With the historic announcement of the U.S. “Climate Action Plan,” President Obama pledged to take actions to double the use of renewable energy nationwide by 2020. Aiming to achieve this goal, the EPA GPP also announced it is launching the “On-site Renewables Challenge,” the goal being to double renewable energy usage among participants by the end of the decade.

Image credits: 1) U.S. EPA, 2) Intel Corp.

In May of last year, SAP announced the launch of Autism at Work -- a unique global initiative to employ people with autism.  The ultimate goal of the program is to have 1 percent of the company's total work force, or about 650 people in today's numbers, represent people on the autism spectrum by 2020. Beyond these hard figures, the software solutions giant hopes to achieve what it calls "on-boarding equivalency," meaning that the company has reached a point that it takes the same amount of effort to hire and train a candidate with autism as someone who is not on the spectrum, Jose Velasco, who heads up the program for SAP in the U.S., told Triple Pundit.

"Our idea is that we want to reach that level of maturity within the organization by 2020 -- hopefully before that," Velasco explained.

To achieve its goal, the company embarked on several pilot programs around the globe and has already hired seven candidates on the spectrum in Germany, as well as three candidates in Ireland. This year, the pilot will extend to two of the company's facilities in Canada, as well as two locations here in the U.S. -- comprising seven to nine candidates who are starting work at the company's Palo Alto, Calif. and Newtown Square, Pa. facilities. All totaled, the company will hire 14 candidates on the autism spectrum by the end of April, with plans to extend the pilot to Brazil later this year.

"We very strongly believe that in order for us to get better at employing people in the spectrum we have to start by walking first," Velasco said. "Throughout the year of 2014, we'll continue to learn. We'll design our processes, fortify our processes …. And towards the beginning of next year, we'll start hiring more people on a larger scale."

This is all fantastic news, but you may be wondering: Why is SAP doing this in the first place? Surely the company's status allows it to take its pick from top candidates in the IT field, so why rock the boat? Velasco boils it down to one central corporate philosophy: "An insatiable appetite for improvement".

"We have a tremendous appetite for talent at SAP, and we really need to procure the talent in the communities where we operate," he explained. "If you look at the situation that we have … In the Bay Area, there are approximately 50,000 science, technology, engineering and math job openings that are on full-field.

"On the other side, we have people who have the qualifications, people who are on the spectrum," he continued. "It's kind of sad to be quite honest to have people who have the qualifications and that number of job openings. So, what we're trying to do is look past the disability -- if you call it this from a social perspective, the challenges they have or they may encounter because of autism -- and look to the skills that they bring to the table."

How it works

Although people on the autism spectrum have the skills and knowledge to get the job done, SAP recognizes that it must employ different tactics when it comes to hiring and training these candidates. For this, it turns to a wide network of experienced partners that set the groundwork for its pilot projects around the globe.

For example, SAP partners with the Department of Rehabilitation Services in California to select appropriate candidates from a pool of thousands of individuals on the spectrum. After choosing people with the right credentials, the department conducted first-round interviews in a comfortable and familiar environment and came up with 18 candidates for SAP's four-week training program in Palo Alto.

This four-week training session has been a constant in SAPs pilots around the globe and takes place before candidates become a part of the company. In partnership with organizations like Specialisterne, a group that helps people with autism get training and support for technical jobs, the company takes the candidates through training sessions that not only focus on software development, but also teach crucial skills like teamwork and finding a personal comfort zone in the workplace.

At the end of the training, rather than conducting standard interviews, candidates meet with their potential managers in an informal setting -- a change that can be vital in helping candidates on the spectrum shine.

"People in the spectrum do not interview very well typically," explained Velasco, whose son and daughter are both on the spectrum. Velasco went on to tell a story of a friend of his who is on the spectrum (not affiliated with SAP's program), who told him the single biggest barrier to obtaining employment is the interview process.

"He says, 'If I can get past the interview, I know that I have a chance.' This guy has an MBA from Purdue, and he cannot get past that first level of interviews because he interviews differently -- he might express himself differently than other people."

By breaking down the barriers that standard interviews often present to people on the spectrum, Velasco said SAP is able to get a glimpse of a candidate's true potential. With 14 people already brought on board and another round in the works, the program is already starting to pay off for the company.

Paying dividends

"We believe that in order for us to innovate, in order for us to move our products forward, we need to look at the perspectives of people who look at things differently than the majority of us -- and of course that includes now the perspective of people in the autism spectrum," Velasco told us.

In only the first year of the program, he said that company executives have seen candidates on the spectrum ask questions and present positions no one else in the room had even considered -- to the significant benefit of the company.

"At the end of the day, what we believe is that by having these new colleagues it will enrich not only the workplace for us, because it will make us more cohesive and more comprehensive as an organization, but also from a product perspective we believe that this is going to have a very dramatic, positive impact on the solutions that we offer our customers."

What's next?

Last month, SAP announced a new internship program with the University of Cambridge in the U.K. to support Autism at Work. The internship represents a five-year agreement between the university and SAP to identify talented students for the initiative. As part of the internship, the students will join the program in one of five SAP locations -- India, U.S., Canada, Ireland or Germany -- with the goal of being selected to become SAP employees at the end of their internships.

The company will select about 10 students that accelerate in STEM (sciences, technology, engineering and math) courses. The first round of Cambridge interns will begin the program later this year, and the company expects to have approximately 80 people on the spectrum from around the world brought on board by the end of 2014, Velasco said.

Did you miss our Twitter chat with SAP on corporate sustainability and economic growth? Catch a recap here.

Image courtesy of SAP

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.

By Jennifer Graham

Salts Organic Clothing has been plugging away at the organic ethical fashion game since 2005, before the term "eco fashion" even existed.  Through the company's nine-year journey, lessons both soft and hard have been learned about selling people on the value of thinking sustainable in fashion.  Salts has been a lone producer manufacturer (me and my sewing machine), a local manufacturer (local small factories) and is now looking to find an ethical business model that is environmentally AND financially sustainable.  Salts has had two retail outlets on their home of Vancouver Island, the last one closed in November 2012. This spring Salts Organic Clothing came back with a crowdfunding project on Kickstarter and a new attitude about how to reach the masses with the viability and wearability of eco-friendly clothing.

There is a terrible catch-22 in the business of selling organic fashion.  The people who believe in what you are selling are not, by and large, "consumers." That is, they aren't the shoppers who are wreaking havoc on the planet and in sweatshops with their fast fashion consumption choices to begin with.  In fact, this group is the opposite and tries to make a point to not buy new at all.  Great for the planet, but doesn't work well for the business of growing eco-friendly clothing as a mass appeal concept.

The next catch is that the consumers of mass fashion aren't yet sold on the need for change.  They are hard to reach, and unless you have major name brand appeal, they rarely notice a small, ethical company's existence.  The next battle of the organic clothing war is price.  It's a barrier for most in choosing to try a new product of any kind, especially a clothing product.  Lastly, there is the battle of the waste of making extra clothing pieces that you are not sure you are going to sell.  Most small designers are not also fortune tellers, so it's hard to know if that chili red color you picked for your next collection is going to take before you roll it out to the public.

Can crowdfunding alleviate some of the risks in the ethical fashion business?  Absolutely.  It solves all of these issues and more.  Crowdfunding allows the designer to reach a larger audience and helps get the word out about their good work.  The early adopters of organic clothing can share the project with their networks. This allows the company to reach those who might still be shopping fast fashion or unethical retailers with their message.  You might be a big fan of ethically made clothing, but your Aunty Sherry might have no clue ... until she sees you share a great organic clothing project on Facebook.

The battle of price is won by the designer's ability to fund the collection before production and also to know exactly what the shoppers want produced before manufacturing.  This allows small clothing companies to lower their prices for supporters when they pledge for the clothing they want before production begins. The designer now knows what colors their clients want before production and what the top sellers in the line will be.  Most designers of sustainable fashion have struggled to meet factory minimums for production.  Often when you have highly specialized fabrics, like GOTS certified organic cotton blends, there are huge minimums just to get the fabric made (think 500 meters or more).  This is a hard pill to swallow for small producers, and crowdfunding solves this problem by backing the designer and giving them the ability to invest in larger amounts of fabric upfront.

With eco-friendly clothing, designers need to think about making the clothing wearable and beautiful first; clothes can't be sold on their eco-friendly merits alone.  I believe that it has to be an amazing product that the public wants, first and foremost; adding in the fact that the clothing is sweatshop-free and made with certified organic cotton is the icing on the beautiful cake.  Eco and ethical fashion needs to reach and convert those people who love shopping and clothing with the message of sustainability and less is more. I believe that is where the bigger impact will happen.  With the Rana factory tragedy, sweatshop labor and working conditions have taken center stage, but in this loss, there is a great opportunity to get the message out about ethical choices available to consumers.

Eco fashion needs to reach the women who love to shop to really take hold.  One by one, we can convert these women with a renewed hope that fashion can be done better.  Fashion can have a positive message of fair labor, organic ingredients and nontoxic dyes -- and at the same time be some of your favorite garments to wear. As more people try this new way of dressing, the word will spread about the beauty and viability of ethical organic fashion, and crowdfunding is a great way to reach a bigger market for independent eco fashion designers.

Jennifer Graham is the founder and Eco Fashion designer of Salts Organic Clothing, an eco friendly clothing company that connects and champions eco-conscious living through education and promotion of all aspects of living green.  Salts Clothing's Kickstarter campaign is now Live until May 1, 2014, 8:10pm.  Support the collection with your pledge and share today to encourage a more ethical future in fashion.

In the wake of increasingly grim news on the climate front, and a deadlocked Congress unable to overcome resistance and take action, there is some good news coming out of Washington after all. Not from the federal government, but from Georgetown University,

This week the university announced the launch of the Georgetown University Energy Prize, a $5 million competition that challenges communities to come together, develop and implement a plan to dramatically reduce energy consumption. Fifty communities in 25 states, from Fairbanks, Alaska to Knoxville, Tenn., have already signed letters indicating that they intend to compete.

The formal opening ceremony took place on April 23, featuring Daniel Poneman, deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy; John J. DeGioia, president of Georgetown University; and Ellen S. Alberding, president of the Joyce Foundation.

Why Georgetown? Somebody had to do it.

I asked Dr. Francis Slakey, executive director of the Prize, how it came to be the university that took action on energy efficiency. He said, “In 2012, we held a brainstorming session at Georgetown University with mayors, city planners and environmental managers from around the country. Everyone had the same problem: They wanted to create a more energy efficient community, but they struggled to win the buy-in of their residents. Adoption rates of energy efficiency technologies were stuck at 5 percent or even 2 percent—and it had been that way for decades.

"We needed a catalyst that would inspire action and create breakthrough solutions. Historically, there’s been an effective model to solve stuck problems: Hold a competition and offer a prize. Thus, the Georgetown University Energy Prize was born.”

What’s great about this contest is the emphasis on community. According to the press release:

“Communities will work in partnership with their local governments, residents and utilities to reduce energy consumption over a two-year period. A judging committee, to be announced in late 2014, will evaluate competitors on a specific set of weighted objectives, including their ability to:

• Spur innovative, replicable, scalable and continual approaches for communities to decrease their energy consumption;

• Highlight best practices for working with utilities, businesses and local governments to create and implement inventive plans for increased energy efficiency;

• Educate the public and engage residents on energy efficiency issues, including methods, benefits and the environmental costs of the full fuel cycle; and

• Collaborate with schools to educate and inspire the next generation of energy efficiency leaders in the United States."

Any U.S. community with a population between 5,000 and 250,000 is eligible to compete. (See map for current entrants.)

Here’s how it’s going to work.

Communities need to send in a non-binding letter of intent indicating their desire to participate by the end of this month. Then they need to submit a basic application using a template provided by the program by end of June. Most entrants will be accepted as quarter-finalists. At that point a more detailed plan must be submitted by November. From these submissions, semi-finalists will be selected. Semi-finalists will then compete over a two-year period beginning January 2015 to see what actual savings are achieved. The $5 million winner will be selected at the end of that time period.

More information is available on the competition website.

I’d like to commend the folks at Georgetown for a really well thought-out program and encourage readers to seriously consider reaching out to other folks in your community and getting involved in this. But you need to hurry. Time is running out. Program sponsors include the U.S. Department of Energy, The Joyce Foundation and the American Gas Association.

As U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel B. Poneman said: “The cheapest way to reduce emissions is energy efficiency, and by partnering with communities, businesses and state and local governments we can drive greater energy efficiency further and faster. We applaud these communities as they save homes and businesses money by saving energy and protect[ing] our air and water.”

Images courtesy of Georgetown University Energy Prize

RP Siegel, PE, is an inventor, consultant and author. He writes for numerous publications including Justmeans, ThomasNet, Huffington Post, and Energy Viewpoints. He co-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.

By Julie Fox Gorte

An externality is something that costs nothing on the part of the person or enterprise that creates it, but imposes a cost or conveys a benefit to others. The world is full of them. My children create them by Skyping with their friends at elevated decibel levels all night. Externalities come in all sizes too. Fortunately for my neighbors, the Skype externality stays within the walls of my house. Companies that emit tons of greenhouse gases (GHG) create externalities that are bounded only by the size of the planet. They get so big, in fact, they aren’t externalities anymore.

A company that emits carbon dioxide is affecting the entire planet for at least a century. And countries—like the United States—that do not have national regimes regulating and curtailing GHG emissions are affecting all other countries. If Holland disappears beneath rising seas, it won’t be primarily because of Dutch emissions; the Netherlands emits less than 1 percent of the world’s GHG emissions. Countries like Kiribasi, the Maldives, and the Seychelles, all of which are likely to disappear beneath the ocean due to climate-induced sea level rise, have GHG emissions that round to zero. Climate change, something they didn’t create, is probably going to destroy them; that’s about as bad as negative as an externality gets.

But the big emitters don’t get to really externalize these costs forever either. Nearly every enterprise is likely to be affected somehow by the increasingly torrential rains, prolonged droughts, severe storms, and sea level rise that come with a warming globe. That particular chicken can come home to roost in many ways. A recent report from Nature Magazine illustrated this vividly by tracing the effects of Typhoon Heiyan, which pummeled the Philippines in 2013. The loss of production in the Philippines has (to date) had a very minor direct impact on U.S. production, 6 percent of which relies on supplies from the Philippines. But the indirect effect is more attention-getting: 21 percent of U.S. production could suffer from supply-chain problems related to this typhoon. Thailand’s 2011 flooding caused a global shortage of hard disk drives by shuttering production facilities of Japanese tech companies located in Thailand.

Another bit of evidence cited by the Nature paper was the fact that extraordinarily large rainfall and Cyclone Yasi in 2010-2011 paralyzed Queensland, Australia, which is also a major coal production region. Coking coal prices increased by 25 percent the following year. Perhaps that is poetic justice; coal combustion is, after all, a major contributor to GHG emissions and climate change. Through the increasingly complex and global supply chains of many companies, GHG emissions are no longer external freebies -- a way to get rid of waste products without costing anything.

Investors have known this for a while. Many of the large pension funds are considered universal owners, with assets so large that they own thousands of stocks and other securities across dozens of portfolios. For universal owners, the pollution externality of one company is an impediment to others in the same portfolio, making the very concept of externality increasingly meaningless. It is essential that companies begin to take responsibility for the costs they impose on others. A recent report from CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) illustrated one way to do that, describing how several companies in the S&P 500 index are using an internal carbon price as a core element of their strategies, often in managing capital expenditures. Having a positive price for carbon will help those companies to reduce their own GHG emissions, and that’s a good thing.

Taking responsibility and being accountable for impacts on the environment and society is one of the fundamental concepts of the American Sustainable Business Council (ASBC), and that’s another good thing. Moreover, ASBC members also help to illustrate that small businesses, which are often portrayed as resistant to things like environmental regulation, don’t always fit the stereotype. It is the ambition of many small businesses to become big ones, and taking responsibility for externalities is far easier to do when the company is small and the impacts limited. That is also good preparation for the day when the companies are large. Inventing a system to tally and manage environmental impacts is never easy, but it’s far harder for a huge company than it is for a little one. Mohandas Gandhi had it right: “Your habits become your values, your values become your destiny.”

Image credit: Flickr/quinnanya

Julie Fox Gorte is Senior Vice President, Sustainable Investing, at Pax World Investments.

By Tate Cantrell

The Greeks of old described the development of man -- starting with a painful decline from the Golden Age down through the ages of Silver and Bronze to the age of Iron, where we slave away without the enlightenment of legends. We are in the midst of a new Golden Age, and as with many societal advancements today, at the core of this is the power to compute.

In fact, access to computing resources has never been easier, and new forms of collaboration have given us opportunities to innovate like never before. Previous old and stale business models, like taxis and hotels, are no longer out-of-date, but are now revived with new services and collaboration. Social collaboration gives us nearly instant feedback on the satisfaction of our constituents, paving the way for the tenets of a Golden Age: peace, harmony, stability and prosperity.

So, how did we arrive at this technological enlightenment? At some point, technology crossed over and began to influence sociology, but how? Well in a single word: silicon. From the concept defined in the early Turing machines of World War II fame, to the first transistors of silicon, to today’s massively powerful super chips, the history of technology and its influence on our social ethos has been all about a more efficient approach to using silicon atoms. As we harnessed these atoms into smaller transistors, we have produced faster computers and, over the decades, developers have created an abundance of platforms on which to build the next new product.

But our need for computing is now outstripping the viability of Moore’s Law; 14nm chips are already delivering, and 5nm chips are on the horizon as soon as 2020. Single atom transistors are already a scientific reality. Where else can we go except for sub-atomic units and quantum physics as a source for further innovation at the computational level? As we search for methods to keep manifest destiny moving forward, we see that the economics will eventually put the brakes on Moore’s Law, just as Gordon Moore himself predicted so many years ago. Because as with anything that has a price and a value, the price will begin to limit production once the value per unit of price fails to impress.

So where do we go from here? Thankfully the innovators of today are less wed to their chips. In fact, the young developers care more about how quickly infrastructure scales to meet the needs of the application than of the size of the traces in the chips that are running their processes. They want a streamlined building block of computing and the ability to be able to rapidly deploy these building blocks as quickly as the demand for their products allow. With compute being a commodity, the true innovators are going for mass production.

The data center is now a factory in the purest sense. Raw material comprised of data and a defined work output ­ information. The tool converting raw material into useful information is energy. In fact, as the compute resources become commoditized in form and function, the providers of this commodity will become wholly concerned with the variable costs that make up the production of these computational building blocks. And in an ever-increasing amount, energy is becoming a larger share of the variable costs required to convert data into new ideas.

In fact, the true limits of compute and our Golden Age of innovation are not in the science of silicon, but in our ability as a society to procure dependable, sustainable sources of energy. Streamlined computing, coupled with renewable energy sources, is­ the recipe for the ultimate goal of any Golden Age: ­ peace, harmony, stability and prosperity.

Image credit: Flickr/symic

Tate Cantrell is Chief Technology Officer at Verne Global where he is responsible for the technical direction for the company and oversees the design and construction of all aspects of the facilities at Verne's 100% renewably powered data center campus.  A well-known and respected speaker in the industry, Tate will be presenting at the Bloomberg Enterprise Technology Summit in New York City on April 24.

Welcome to our series of interviews with leading female CSR practitioners where we are learning about what inspires these women and how they found their way to careers in sustainability. Read the rest of the series here.

TriplePundit: Briefly describe your role and responsibilities, and how many years you have been in the business.

KoAnn Vikoren Skrzyniarz: I am Founder and CEO of Sustainable Life Media, the company, and Sustainable Brands, our service brand. SLM was originally launched in 2004 and I spent a good two years prior to that, while running my own management consultancy, absorbing everything I could get my hands on related to sustainability and business.

As far as my role at SLM, like every entrepreneur, I wear many hats and, at the beginning, I wore all the hats. I wrote our business plan, raised our funding, set up our first website, sold our first sponsorship, organized our first conference and hired our team. Of course building a business with scaleable meaningful impact requires its leader to shift from building a product or service to building an organization, so putting a great team in place is number one, and I feel incredibly grateful every day for ours. At this point, as much as I love being hands-on, I'm working hard to make myself irrelevant to the day-to-day things so I can focus on expanding our offering and impact.

3p: How has the sustainability program evolved at your company?

KS: We see ourselves as a living lab of what it means to be a sustainable brand. What that means is that we wrestle with the same things our community does in terms of how to prioritize our commitments and activities.  For example, our greatest footprint is associated with the conferences we run. Therefore we work closely with our event venues, as well as with the cities in which we host the events, to help them understand our zero waste goal, and then to develop the necessary processes and execute accordingly. We're delighted by the fact that we're catalyzing a permanent positive change locally in the cities where we convene, as well as impacting more broadly across our hotel partners.

We've also been working to deepen our commitments on the social sustainability side through support for our internal team, as well as in our community, by improving employee benefits and instilling volunteer and mentorship programs. We also launched a new wellness program – it’s a FitBit team challenge, which has been fun!

3p: Tell us about someone (mentor, sponsor, friend, hero) who affected your sustainability journey, and how.

KS: Thomas Friedman's books, The Lexus and the Olive Tree and Hot, Flat and Crowded, were real eye openers for me. Having worked in the paper, timber and mining industries early in my career, I had a vague realization that our resources were limited. And having later worked in the tech sector, I was aware of the trend toward globalization of our economies. Friedman's books drove home for me how small the world is becoming, and how connected we all are. In 2003, I met Mathis Wackernackle at the Global Footprint network. He put numbers around the implications of population increase on our resource use, pointing out that we were already in what he calls "Ecological Overshoot," using more resources annually to support our global economy than the earth can regenerate. Right around the same time, I read Cradle to Cradle and later met Bill McDonough. At that point it all clicked together for me - I realized that we have real work to do to redesign our global economy for sustainability, and that I needed to help.

3p: What is the best advice you have ever received?

KS: Just do it (thanks, Nike!). Realizing that the whole global economy needs to be redesigned is a pretty gobsmacking notion and can cause any manner of reactions: fear, depression, helplessness, hopelessness. Or it can be energizing. Either way it's hard to know where to begin to tackle something as daunting as what we have to contend with this century. The key, though, is just to begin -- put one foot forward in whatever way you know how to do. Don't let perfection be the enemy of the good. Find like-minded friends and get moving. We have come a long way over the last decade and we have a lot more to do. Awareness of the need and action around it is picking up steam everywhere I travel - that's something we need to hang on to and encourage.

3p: Can you share a recent accomplishment you are especially proud of?

KS: I don't really experience so much pride as gratitude and humility around our work. I guess you could say am proud of the impact I know we're having on individual people's lives. I have had many people tell me their lives have changed as a function of discovering and becoming part of our community.

I certainly feel excited by the reach we have generated around the world. Sustainable Brands will be convening our community at conferences in seven cities on four continents this year, which is testament to the individuals and organizations who have come upon our work from afar and reached out to us to partner. What this means to me is that our message is resonating with people around the world, and again, that's not so much something to be proud of  - shouldn't we all be doing that as a matter of course? -  but something to be grateful for. It will take all of us working together to get to a sustainably flourishing future. I am thankful every day that there continues to be a growing worldwide community of people stepping up to help us get there.

3p: If you had the power to make one major change at your company or in your industry, what would it be?

KS: Oh, my.  Only one?  So many ways to answer that!  I wish I could wave a magic wand and have all the administrative aspects of running a small business disappear. On a macro level, I'd love to eliminate short term trading, which encourages people to play games with money rather than put it to work creating real value. Sadly, investing has become about value extraction rather than value creation and that just has to stop.

3p: Describe your perfect day.

KS: Well, a lovely day in the Bay Area, spent with my husband and sons, either out in nature or experiencing music or art.  Good food is a must. And time at the beginning and end of the day to read, plus the blessing of eight hours of sleep – these are the simple things that mean the most to me.

By Jessica Oaks

While most of us grew up in a generation where textbooks, notepads and No.2 pencils were classroom necessities, the digital age is quickly changing the landscape of schools across the country. What students used to get in half a dozen textbooks is now available in the palm of their hand, in the form of a tablet.

Though some worry that the introduction of tablets into the classroom will only increase a student’s digital dependence and cripple them for “real world” experiences, the truth is that the use of tablets introduces a whole new set of tools to the classroom, and can benefit students in many ways. Tablets are bringing both an environmental and an educational impact to the classroom.

1. A new way to communicate

For years, students and parents have complained about the use of standardized testing, arguing that it leads to standardized teaching and leaves many students in the dust, particularly those with learning disabilities. Tablets change all that by arming teachers with an array of teaching tools, including interactive games, video presentations and more. Now, teachers have a new way to reach students who have had difficulty engaging with plain text on a page.

And people are rallying around this cause, creating and sharing applications that appeal specifically to students with learning disabilities or those on the autism spectrum. For example, Bridging Apps is a community of parents, teachers, therapists and doctors who share information on how they are using touch-based devices and apps with people who have special needs. The Leo’s Pad app, for example, uses games and story-telling to help children learn and has proven particularly helpful among children with developmental disabilities.

2. Accessibility

Tablets are capable of holding upwards of 1,000 books, depending on their individual storage space. Items such as the newest Google tablet come in a 16GB and 32GB option for schools to choose from. Housing all of this information in one piece of technology is groundbreaking for students. Not only are all of their notes, handouts and readings available to them immediately, but the tablet also holds other tools, such as tutorials, learning games and more to help them better comprehend what they’re actually learning.

3. Introducing new tools

Tablets are versatile and allow students and teachers to explore concepts in ways that were never previously possible in the classroom. For example, apps like Edmodo provide a learning social network where students can share ideas, ask questions and encourage each other -- bringing more collaboration to the classroom. Teachers can also use tablets to screencast lessons, bringing the information directly to students, rather than using a chalkboard. In addition, programs like YouTube for Schools offer exciting videos to explain complex concepts.

4. No more pencils, no more books

Back-to-school shopping used to involve purchasing dozens of spiral notebooks, most of which were later used for doodling rather than note-taking. Tablets take the place of all of that by allowing students to record and type their notes digitally. This means less wasted paper and fewer downed trees. This is a big win on the environmental front.

5. The end of the textbook

Tablets can also replace textbooks. According to Conservatree, it takes 12 trees to make one ton of paper, meaning that one tree produces 34 average-size textbooks – not enough for one student in their lifetime, let alone all students. Converting to the digital route can help save millions of trees each year.

6. No reprints needed

Tablets don’t just save paper the first time around, they have a resounding effect on the number of textbooks printed each year. The problem with textbooks is that the information can quickly become outdated. Publishing houses then have to push out thousands of new, updated versions, which means millions of printed pages. With tablets, these updates are delivered through a software or program update, all in the click of a button. Allowing updates to be made quickly and consistently ensures that students have the most accurate and detailed information, so they can be prepared for what lies ahead.

Image credit: Flickr/Intel Free Press

Jessica Oaks is a freelance journalist who loves to cover technology news and the ways that technology makes life easier. She also blogs at FreshlyTechy.com. Check her out on Twitter @TechyJessy.