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As events take place around the world to remember those who died and were injured in the Rana Plaza building collapse a year ago, campaigners are demanding brands pay up.

According to the Clean Clothes Campaign, the voluntary Donor Trust Fund set up to take the donations, as part of a collaborative compensation programme between brands, unions, governments and NGOs, remains woefully underfunded. A year after the collapse, brands and retailers have contributed or committed only US$15m to the Trust Fund, just one third of the US$40m needed.

“Brands are failing workers a second time,” commented Ineke Zeldenrust from Clean Clothes Campaign. “First they failed to ensure the factories they bought from were safe, and now they are failing the survivors and the families of those who lost loved ones, by not contributing significantly to the Donor Trust Fund. Agreement on the total amount needed to provide compensation according to ILO standards was reached between all the parties involved in the Rana Plaza Coordination Committee, including the brands. But now, failing to adequately contribute, brands are making the workers suffer again.”

Marking the first anniversary of the collapse, organisations including the Asia Floor Wage Alliance, Clean Clothes Campaign, Human Rights Watch, IndustriALL Global Union, International Labor Rights Forum, Maquila Solidarity Network, and UNI Global Union will be holding vigils, rallies and events in over 20 cities worldwide; including demonstrations in front of stores in Toronto, New York, Antwerp and Istanbul, debates on the impact of the disaster on the fashion industry in Melbourne and The Hague; and in Bangladesh workers and union members will be holding memorial events and protests including a human chain at the site of the collapsed building in Dhaka.

Campaigners at all events will be demanding brands who continue to refuse to contribute to the Donor Trust Fund make immediate and significant payments.

Targeted brands include Adler Modermarkte, Ascena Retail, Auchan, Benetton, Carrefour, Cato Fashions, Grabalok, Gueldenpfennig, Iconix (Lee Cooper), J C Penney, Kids for Fashion, Manifattura Corona, Matalan, NKD, PWT (Texman) and Yes Zee.

For the full story see the May issue of Ethical Performance.

 

Picture credit: © Mohammed Anwarul Kabir Choudhury | Dreamstime.com
 
 

Marks & Spencer (M&S) has launched the Beach Clean Frisbee, a toy made from recycled plastic, including plastic collected by M&S customers and employees at last year’s Big Beach Clean-Up volunteer event.

It launches in time for this year’s Big Beach Clean-Up (which kicks off today and runs until the 30th April) and is on sale now at M&S.com and in six costal M&S stores – Belfast (Abbey Centre), Bexhill, Lytham St Annes, Silverlink Retail Park, Weston Super Mare and Edinburgh Kinnaird.

Costing £2.50, 50p from each sale goes directly to the Marine Conservation Society (MCS).

Mike Barry, Director of Plan A (M&S’ eco and ethical programme) at M&S, commented: “We’ve managed to transform waste, taking it off beaches where it threatens marine life, into a brand new product that is fun for our customers and raises money for MCS’ on-going work to protect our seas. That’s Plan A in action, a volunteer event that engages customers, saves precious raw materials and gives back to charity - all with a business case behind it.”

Last April thousands of M&S customers and employees helped clean over 300km of coastline. To trial whether or not M&S could collect and make a product from the beach litter, the plastic from six of the beaches was segregated, cleaned and reprocessed into production ready recycled plastic.

Two UK firms supported the project. Axion Polymers, a recycling specialist based in Salford, transformed the litter into product grade recycled plastic and Make a Material Difference, based in Leicester, created and manufactured the product.

 

Food Tank and The Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) are to partner to raise awareness and understanding of the challenges faced by smallholders as well as help identify ways to support family farmers.

The collaboration will see Food Tank and GFAR issue research, articles, infographics and videos on the subject as well as run social media campaigns.

Food Tank says the focus will be on ways in which organizations, businesses, governments, and other stakeholders around the world are empowering women and young people in agriculture.

According to GFAR, the average age of farmers globally is around 55 years. In Europe, one-third of farmers are under 35 and in the United States 50% of farmers are 55 years or older.

Food Tank and GFAR say that it is time to cultivate the next generation of food system leaders—young farmers, agricultural entrepreneurs, agronomists, extension agents and educators, researchers and scientists, and policy-makers who can create a more sustainable food system.

“Increased access to education means that young people can be a force for innovation on family farms, increasing incomes and well-being for not only farmers, but also local communities. Young people can develop the agricultural sector by applying new technologies to current work methods,” said Mark Holderness, executive secretary of GFAR.

In addition, women comprise 43% of the agricultural labour force in developing countries, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). However, they often face discrimination and lack access to resources, financial services, inputs, and education.

“This gender inequality comes at a huge cost, not just for women, but society as a whole. Discrimination against women can undermine economic development by limiting food security for families and preventing women and girls from achieving greater opportunities in education. In addition, many agricultural research and development programs ignore the needs and hopes of women farmers,” said Danielle Nierenberg, president of Food Tank.

 

Picture credit: © Ziprashantzi | Dreamstime.com
 

Submitted by Guest Contributor

By Joe Wolk, VP of Finance, Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices & Diagnostics, Global Supply Chain

What do roof shingles, intravenous tubing, floor cleaners and heart catheters have in common? They’re all necessary to run a hospital.

The wide array of products needed in the health care setting, coupled with pressure on health care systems to meet the demands of an aging population and increases in chronic disease, have driven hospital purchasing to more than $200 billion annually on medical and non-medical products.

Hospitals are expensive to operate – and just as taxing on the environment: Because they operate 24/7 and follow strict lighting, air circulation and heating codes, hospitals use more than twice the energy as commercial buildings the same size and emit more than twice as much CO₂ into the atmosphere.

Hospitals also generate a daily average of 26 pounds of waste per staffed bed, much of which can be difficult and costly to dispose of.

The numbers speak for themselves and sustainability-focused investments can help reduce these expenses, yet many health care professionals wonder: what is the true value of sustainability?

This past December, Johnson & Johnson partnered with The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, through its Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership (IGEL), to host a one-day conference on this very subject. As a follow up to the event, Knowledge@Wharton recently issued a report recapping the discussion, and exploring whether sustainability is a worthwhile investment when it comes to hospital purchasing, when so many other factors – patient safety, performance, price, etc. – are at play in the decision-making process.

Creating a Sustainability Valuation Model

In my role as Vice President of Finance for Johnson & Johnson’s Medical Devices & Diagnostics (MD&D) segment, I’m tasked with ensuring investments deliver appropriate returns. I know our customers want more sustainable products, but I also understand the business drivers behind their purchasing decisions and the costs we incur to improve a product’s impacts.

To make an informed decision, it was important to reasonably estimate the true value of sustainability for Johnson & Johnson, and more specifically, create a method to quantify the potential revenue opportunities and risks of developing more sustainable products.

To achieve this, we worked with Deloitte to develop a Sustainability Valuation model, which helped us determine how much sustainability can be worth and how Johnson & Johnson should prioritize it. The model looks at the following three factors:

• Customer segmentation: what percentage of our customers cares about sustainability, and what weight does sustainability carry in our customers’ decision- making process?
• Product differentiation: can sustainability be the differentiator for a product in the procurement process?
• Sustainability differentiation: who is the sustainability leader in our sector, and how big is the gap between that competitor and us? Do we have the opportunity to differentiate ourselves with a more sustainable product?

Developing and testing this Sustainability Valuation model confirmed for us that the value of sustainability couldn't be ignored. While we may not know exactly how much market share we can gain from sustainability in any given instance, with data, we could make educated assumptions. Similarly, we began to ask what might be at risk if we don’t make more sustainable products – for example, if a competitor’s sustainability offering were to take market share away from Johnson & Johnson.

An $8 Billion Win

Using the Valuation model, we have also been able to identify where to make investments in product sustainability. Our internal product stewardship process, Earthwards®, helps us assess the whole lifecycle of a product – from chemicals of concern and energy consumption to waste and lifecycle management. To date, 55 of our products have been Earthwards recognized, and, in 2013, the total revenue generation for the Earthwards portfolio was more than $8 billion.

You don’t need to be in finance to realize that $8 billion is no small amount. What is particularly exciting and consistent with the Johnson & Johnson Credo is that the value of our Earthwards portfolio is actually much higher to the health care system. The benefits of these products don’t begin and end with Johnson & Johnson; by improving the sustainable attributes of our products, we provide tangible, financial value to our customers.

A great example of this value can be seen through the Sterilmed® Trocar, a small instrument used in surgical procedures that is collected, reprocessed and sold as a reprocessed device. The Sterilmed Trocar received Earthwards recognition because it represents a 50 percent improvement in product waste versus an original single-use trocar device: Where an original trocar begins its life using raw materials and ends its life in a landfill, the Sterilmed Trocar is collected, reprocessed, reused and then ends its life at a facility that creates energy out of waste.

Through the reprocessing of single-use devices, like the Sterilmed Trocar, Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) was able to reduce its waste stream by 296 tons in 2010 and by 364 tons in 2011. HCA also saved $17.6 million in 2010 and $21.7 million in 2011 – clearly demonstrating how investments in sustainability can bring tremendous value to an organization’s bottom line.

Predictably, more and more hospitals and Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs) are making this connection and adopting Environmentally Preferable Purchasing (EPP) programs.

We're in a “new era” of hospital purchasing, as well as sustainable product development – one where every health care decision maker is counting on the value of sustainability. We look forward to helping create a more sustainable health care system and continuing this important conversation.

We’ll be hosting another one-day conference in partnership with Wharton IGEL this October 8th in San Francisco. For those looking to advance their organization’s commitment to and investment in sustainability, we hope you can join us.

About the Author:

Joe Wolk is currently the Vice President, Finance, Johnson & Johnson Supply Chain, Medical Devices & Diagnostics (MD&D), which produces a broad range of innovative products used primarily by health care professionals in the fields of orthopaedics, neurovascular, surgery, vision care, diabetes care, infection prevention, diagnostics, cardiovascular disease, sports medicine and aesthetics. In his role, Joe is responsible for setting strategic direction and leading finance processes for the supply chain organization across MD&D worldwide. Joe began his career at Johnson & Johnson in 1998 and progressed through various finance manager and director roles throughout the health care and pharmaceutical industries.

If there is one truism that sums up sustainable marketing today, it is that product sales don’t make a business successful, productive customer engagement strategies do. Levi Strauss and Co.’s popularity as a sustainable producer relies on its ability to continually tap into the values of its customers and reflect that vision in how it sells its products – as well as how it makes them.

It puts recycling and human rights, for example, at the core of its business model because it believes such ethics are part of its own vision, and because it knows that these are key concerns for many customers. Its success as a respected clothier is dependent not just on the quality of its product, but also on its ability to convey its understanding and loyalty of those customer values.

As one survey conducted last year by Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan Review and the Boston Consulting Group discovered, customer opinion is at the core of many of the green changes that businesses are making today.

“[Companies] are 80 percent more likely to increase collaboration with customers as a result of sustainability than are companies that did not change their business model,” say the authors. “They are also much more likely to collaborate with competitors, suppliers and across their own business units.”

But can customers’ green values and engagement in sustainability be enhanced by business strategies?

Several businesses we consulted recently gave a resounding “yes” to this question. Business strategies and ethics do help to shape a progressive sustainable culture. Yet interestingly, each source we consulted had a different take on what was most crucial to the success of that goal. Here are a few of those tips:

Be willing to walk the walk

Eric Fleet, co-founder of Threads 4 Thought Sustainable Apparel, said that how you portray the significance of your message through your own lifestyle and actions speaks loudly to your customer base. He went on to explain that examples and image resonate when customers see your own conviction to sustainable living -- and when they see how it can be integrated into the lifestyle they live.

“[We] encourage people to live in the most sustainable manner they can while obviously doing all the necessary things they need to do in life,” Fleet told TriplePundit.

MIT and BCG’s research surveyed this question in relation to the message and image put forth by senior management. According to the survey, 62 percent of companies said the CEO’s “strong support for sustainability” appealed to and motivated their customers.

Don’t be preachy

Mariano deGuzman, co-founder of Appalatch Outdoor Apparel Co., said his company emulates this concept of restraint by getting rid of the word “sustainability” in their dialogue and concentrating on how they project the concept through actions. Do more, suggest less.

“We believe that sustainability should be in everything we do and inherent in business as usual. We always talk about doing what is right and treating the people, suppliers, customers and stakeholders with the same respect as friends and family," he told us.

Fleet expressed it a different way: “At the very beginning we were doing all kinds of graphic [T-shirts] that really kind of wore the message or cause on your sleeve, in a sense.” He said he found the “overt” framing of that message didn’t work as well as subtlety. “Try to show them why you care about it and hope that the reasons that [you] feel so passionately about it is how everybody else feels as well.”

Communicate honestly and educate sincerely

MIT/BCG’s survey showed that second to having a strong, confident and “green” CEO at the front lines of sustainable marketing, communication was the next key component to success. Forty-two percent of respondents said clear communication about sustainability goals and measures were critical.

Fleet agreed, saying that it “helps people understand why they need to care about these issues. Being specific and being straightforward definitely helps both our brand but helps the whole sustainable movement as well.”

DeGuzman added that finding ways to educate consumers is also important: “We think that if people really knew how clothing is made, they would really care about responsibly made fashion.”

Be willing to learn and receive feedback

DeGuzman said listening to customer feedback is critical to creating a culture that supports progress in this arena.

“They constantly ask us how we are improving our responsibility to society and the environment when it comes to our manufacturing,” said deGuzman, who noted that customers have often asked about the sustainability of textile dyes. “Because of these questions, we have been accelerating the process of introducing natural dyes in our garments.”

Don’t be afraid of collaboration

MIT/BCG said that 40 percent of respondents confirmed that collaboration with customers increased as a result of the business’ focus on sustainability. They found that being willing to seek out feedback through customer advisory groups, or finding goals that resonate with customers is important.

According to Fleet, community relations projects underscore that message as well. Threads 4 Thought found that the organizations to which it donates help to mirror the goals of the company. This speaks to customers who want to see change in their community.

Businesses committed to sustainable fashion thrive when there is an engaged, committed customer culture that is in sync with their values. Finding that niche is a collaborative process that benefits stakeholders, as well as a vibrant ecology.

Image courtesy of Appalatch Outdoor Apparel Co.

By Cheryl Dahle

For years, fish have been the comparative Rodney Dangerfield of food systems work: They get no respect. While certified organic produce, grass-fed beef, farmers markets, and the slow food movement have become darlings of hipsters and impact investors alike, fish (farmed or wild) hasn’t enticed the same degree of attention or fervor.

To be fair, the topic is more complex and less accessible than many land-based food issues. Unsustainable fishing practices and their impact is mostly hidden underwater, save for a lone documentary or video clips of developing world fishers “harvesting” with dynamite.

Despite recent encouraging efforts to spur an impact investing revolution in fisheries (Future of Fish’s work in grooming disruptive seafood industry entrepreneurs, the Fish 2.0 business plan competition, and Bloomberg’s $53 million commitment, to name a few), we’re still a long way from a developed investment marketplace that would become a powerful engine for change.

We need investible companies, not funds

There’s plenty of money to be deployed in the form of investments or loans; but there are few bankable companies to receive it, particularly in the developing world, where fishery practices need much reform. Individual fishers are an investor’s no-man’s land: They have the skills profile of a micro-entrepreneur -- but the expenses of a small business. Boats and ice machines aren’t cheap. While cooperatives are sometimes a workable option, fishers compete with each other. They are less likely to form cooperatives than farmers and often still lack the business skills to become credible loan recipients.

The best place to start in the supply chain is at the local processor or distributor level. But lenders often make assumptions about shortening the supply chain based on their experience in coffee and believe processors are exploitative and need to be obviated. The truth is that they are a critical layer of value for a highly perishable product. And as small-to-medium-sized companies, processors can provide critical jobs in poor communities.

With the right mentoring and investment, processors in developing countries could easily either cultivate Western markets for their products, or, even better, develop local markets for fish. The funds to pay for that kind of technical assistance are hard to find, meaning companies have trouble qualifying for financing or attracting investment.

We need creative financial leadership

Even in situations where investible companies exist, capital is constrained by the state of the fishery: A depleted or un-assessed fishery (one in which no one knows the state of the biomass) introduces a level of risk that is untenable for traditional investors, in much the same way that contaminated soil on a farm site would preclude a loan or investment to that business.

But we’ve solved these problems in small bites in other contexts. Kiva has proven with its “gamification” of lending (playing the “game” of making a difference) that average citizens make excellent subsidizers of risk for otherwise un-bankable clients. Other commodities like coffee and vanilla have proven models of basing loans on forward contracts. We have “capital stack” deals in which philanthropists adopt the riskiest position in an investment through matching capital or guarantees.

What we need are creative financial professionals to apply their attention to learning fish and use these tools to solve these combined, but not unique, challenges.

We need investors with a systems mindset

For years, the impact investing space has generated more hype than deals. In part, this pent-up enthusiastic money with no place to go is a function of thinking in terms of deals and not systems. We are building markets for new products with new ethics and practices attached. Take land-based aquaculture. There are numerous test cases of urban farmed fish, which both supply small amounts of eco-responsible fish and jobs in cities. Why don’t we have a network of fish farms across the U.S.?

Well, to get there we need shifts in policy, the constraints of raw materials, distribution support, and labor markets. And we also need consumers to understand that not all farmed fish is bad. An investor interested in developing fish farms needs to think about all these constraints, not just one deal on the table.

At Future of Fish, we’re building pathways to act in a system-driven fashion for philanthropists and investors alike. Our recent study of innovative fish farming identifies barriers to scale for all fish farms, opportunities that could be tackled by teams of entrepreneurs, policy makers and NGOs. We’ll be convening a working group on these issues in Q4 of 2014.

Our hope is that these sorts of efforts make the investment in wild and farmed fish lucrative, as well as good for the environment. Who knows? In the meantime, I’m still wondering when respected events like this one for investors promoting local food will consider their table-setting for attendees incomplete without a few fish-related speakers and companies in the mix. Fish is food. We should muster the same respect, interest and investment for it that we do for its soil-based counterparts.

Image credit: Flickr/mattpaish

Cheryl Dahle is the founder and executive director of Future of Fish. If you’re interested in being part of FoF’s convening on farmed fish, email contact@futureoffish.org.

In today's highly connected world, never has the value of a good reputation been higher. Indeed, many companies have cited concerns about “reputation risk management” as a key driver behind their moves to incorporate sustainability into their business practices.

Then, there are those companies for which the primary raison d’être is to help usher in a more sustainable economy. The reputation -- and the implicit trust that the public has come to place in a such a company -- could be a valuable asset that can help expand that company’s business.

Take Recyclebank, for example. As part of its mission to “realize a world where nothing is wasted,” and to “inspire people to live more sustainably,” it has partnered with numerous companies to recommend and reward environmentally responsible behavior by their members -- with credits that can be used towards the purchase of carefully vetted products that enhance and encourage a sustainable lifestyle. As it approaches its 10-year anniversary, the program has grown to include more than 300 communities and 4.5 million members. Recyclebank members have taken more than 20 million actions, increased their recycling by an average of 157 pounds per household and received over $60 million in reward value.

This week, Recyclebank is taking another step towards the realization of its vision, with the launch of OneTwine, an online retail shop that allows customers to redeem their Recyclebank points, pay cash, or any combination of the two. OneTwine will feature products in the household, health and beauty, children, pets, gear and gadgets categories. The primary goal of OneTwine will be, in the words of Recyclebank CEO Javier Flaim, “taking the guesswork out of finding products that consider their total impact on our planet, and in the process giving people another way to incorporate sustainability into their lives.”

I spoke with Flaim by phone, a few days before the OneTwine launch announcement.

TriplePundit: So what led you to embark on this new journey, to get into retail?

Javier Flaim: We were really just responding to the market. Our customers have been asking for better ways to utilize their points. They’ve also asked for guidance. They get overwhelmed by all the different choices that are out there, and the labels that can be confusing. They have said, “We trust you to educate us. Take us all the way, Recyclebank. We trust you to tell us what to buy, what has the best impact that you can endorse.”

3p: So it’s a kind of “Green Housekeeping” seal of approval.

JF: I don’t mind that analogy at all. We do stand behind these products.

3p: I’m curious how you went about getting this feedback from your members.

JF: It’s [a] combination of formal and informal mechanisms. We have annual customer satisfaction surveys, we go into communities and have meetings, and we also have focus groups. Then there is also our call center, and, of course, our Facebook page.

Our communities have also been asking for ways that their local vendors could put up goods for sale. So we have listened. We made a commitment to open up an online store -- that was focused on a very carefully vetted and procured set of products that we think are gentle on the planet, are good and healthy for your family, and that can save you money, ‘cause you can utilize your points to purchase them. We went through a very rigorous exercise to get to the final set of over 400 products from 30 companies for launch, and we will continue to search for interesting and suitable products and brands that we can offer to our member base.

3p: I see you’ve developed what you call an “Impact Lens” to assess these various products. Could you talk a little bit about that?

JF: We led the effort ourselves and built the Impact Lens, though we did draw on the expertise of our Advisory Council. It’s a framework or a set of criteria that looks at the three basic stages of a product. How is it made? How is it used or consumed? And how is it disposed of? These criteria are shown below.

• Renewable: Made from recycled materials or renewable resources


• Gentle Impact: Ingredients and by-products are free of hard chemicals that are bad for health or the environment


• Fair: Makers of this product were treated fairly


• Sustainably Made: Manufactured with a minimal environmental impact


• Efficient: Product efficiently uses resources and/or helps reduce pollution


• Promotes Sustainability: This product makes it easier and more convenient to lead a more eco-friendly life


• Reclaimable: This product itself is recyclable, reusable and/or biodegradable


• Smart Packaging: Packaging materials are minimal and/or made from recyclable, reusable or biodegradable materials


• Merchant Buy Back: This product can be re-sold or given back to the manufacturer

Each item in a catalog will have one or more icons representing which of these criteria were responsible for its inclusion.

The members of our advisory council are listed here.

• Aron Cramer: President and CEO of Business for Social Responsibility


• John Elkington: Executive chairman of Volans and co-founder and non-executive chairman at SustainAbility


• Wendy Gordon: Founder of Mothers & Others for a Livable Planet, The Green Guide and PIPs.


• Andrew L. Shapiro: Founder and former CEO of Green Order, founder of Broadscale Group


• Kevin Wall: Co-founder of Live Earth and managing partner of Craton Equity Partners

We also have a banned list of products that [we] are recommending our customers avoid.

3p: Can you give me an example of the kind of product that you will be featuring?

JF: Preserve, makes a toothbrush from recycled yogurt cups. Another one is WeWood that makes wooden watches and plants a tree for every watch sold. It worth noting that this is more than just an e-commerce site. This is a true platform where people engage to learn, which we think will make it very attractive to brands.

3p: So how did you come up with the name OneTwine?

JF: We liked the nostalgic flavor of a neighborhood store that used to wrap up packages with twine, where you would interact with the store owner and they would recommend different products. We thought that captured what we were looking for: natural fibers, tied together, a nostalgic feel, trust—all bound together to try to make a difference. Once we hit upon it, we all loved it. “Bound for a better future,” is our slogan.

 3p: Sounds promising. I wish you the best.

Images Courtesy of Recyclebank/OneTwine

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 Tom Steyer

This past Friday, we received the welcome news from the State Department that the review period for the Keystone XL pipeline would be extended – a decision that offers both an opportunity and an acknowledgment.

First and foremost, it’s an opportunity for the State Department to address the inherent flaws in its environmental review by looking at Keystone XL through a simple prism: Is the pipeline truly in America’s national interest?

The answer is equally simple: No.

From extraction to refining, tar sands crude is more dangerous and dirtier than conventional oil. Most troublingly, it is a dangerous step toward unlocking the Alberta tar sands and allowing Big Oil to maximize it’s extraction of some of the world’s dirtiest oil – with serious consequences for our climate. Apart from the environmental risks, we still have no guarantee from TransCanada that the refined oil would remain in the United States – or contribute to American energy independence in any way.

Despite the fear mongering, misinformation and attack ads designed to scare Americans into believing Keystone XL is in this country’s best interest, the State Department’s decision to extend the review process acknowledges the truth of the matter: Americans deserve to know exactly how the Keystone XL pipeline will impact our lives and our communities.

We can have both a strong economy and a healthy environment, and the choice before us is not Keystone or nothing. Rather, we’re choosing between a pipeline that sends us further down a dirty road of fossil fuels and a cleaner, more sustainable energy future.

We can all agree: Job growth is critical to our economy. But now is the time to focus our attention on the jobs in wind, solar, energy efficiency and other alternative energy projects that will keep our economy running for centuries to come. Clean energy has already created more than 1 million construction and manufacturing jobs in the United States. In 2013 alone, the United States added 80,000 clean energy jobs and attracted nearly $37 billion in advanced energy investment. Rather than pursuing dirty energy sources like the Canadian tar sands oil, we should continue to invest in a clean energy economy that provides good paying, high quality jobs here at home.

There are leaders in Congress who get this and who, despite vicious attack ads and the threat of millions being spent to unseat them in November, are taking a courageous stand against Keystone XL. I’m proud to say that we’re standing by them. NextGen Climate has taken a Courage Pledge to support members of Congress who are under attack because they oppose the Keystone XL pipeline.

We know that Keystone XL is not a choice between a stronger economy or a healthier environment. In reality, Keystone is a choice between rich, powerful forces like TransCanada, Big Oil and climate change deniers in Congress who are seeking to advance their own economic self-interests at the expense of policies that will leave our country with a stronger, healthier economy and environment.

It takes courage for our representatives to stand up and fight against such powerful interests. But climate change is a fact — the science is clear — and the latest U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report affirms that we can no longer afford to wait to address this very real threat.

In the coming months, NextGen stands ready, willing and able to support these members of Congress. We hope you will join us.

Image credit: Flickr/perspective

Tom Steyer is an investor, philanthropist and advanced energy advocate. He is also the President of NextGen Climate, an organization that acts politically to avert climate disaster and preserve American prosperity. Before retiring from the private sector, Tom founded and was the Senior Managing Member of Farallon Capital Management. He also was a Managing Director and member of the Investment Committee at Hellman & Friedman.

Tom is actively engaged in climate politics and works to promote economic development and environmental protection in the state. In 2012, Tom served as co-chair with former Secretary of State George Shultz for Yes on Proposition 39, which closed a tax loophole for out-of-state corporations and created jobs in California. In 2010, Tom teamed again with George Shultz to defeat California’s Proposition 23, an effort by out-of-state oil companies to dismantle California’s groundbreaking clean energy law, AB 32. In 2013, Tom also supported the successful campaigns of Ed Markey for Senate in Massachusetts and Terry McAuliffe for Governor in Virginia. Read more about Tom Steyer. 

Editor’s Note: This is the third post in a series on electricity-backed currency. In case you missed it, you can read the intro post here and the second installment here. 

By Sam Bliss

Dozens of new digital currencies are jockeying for a spot on the swell of popularity that Bitcoin is riding -- and arguably created. Currency trading market AllCrypt.com lists well over 100 'altcoins,' with new types of online money popping up nearly every week.

But very few have caught on. Most of these currencies -- StoopidCoin, GamersCoin, DigiByte, GermanyCoin, and more -- are worth mere fractions of a U.S. cent.

You see, any currency has value -- but only if a large community uses and accepts it as payment. For SolarCoin, the new digital currency designed to promote solar electricity production, this need to scale-up is the primary barrier to gaining value as a form of money.

In other words, if SolarCoins are going to be able to buy goods and services, then the currency must become popular.

SolarCoin primer

Each SolarCoin enters the 'money supply' when the SolarCoin Foundation grants it to the resident of a property with solar panels or the owner of a large solar array. It is given as a reward for producing 1 megawatt-hour (MWh) of electricity. A solar power producer can claim SolarCoin in addition to -- not instead of -- the money paid by the electricity's buyer (usually an electric utility).

From there, it can be traded person-to-person over the Internet, securely and without a bank or credit card company charging middleman fees. My intro to SolarCoin has the details on how it works and how to join in.

SolarCoin is intrinsically valuable because it's based on a fixed amount of clean energy, something we can all agree has value. Last week's blog post illustrates how the electricity-backed digital currency benefits human society and the global ecosystem, but as far as useful value, a more practical question remains: What can we buy with it?

Need for scale

The short answer is not much, yet.

Sure, SolarCoins represent trust thanks to a public transaction record (the block chain) and stable unit of value (1 MWh). In addition, they encourage the goodness of carbon-free, renewable electricity. However, to reiterate my first point, a large community must start to trade SolarCoins like money for them to gain monetary value.

People, organizations and businesses need to accept them as payment, which will only happen if they have confidence that their SolarCoins will be useful elsewhere. A merchant won't let consumers pay with SolarCoins unless those SolarCoins can purchase goods from suppliers, pay employees, or be traded for dollars on a currency exchange.

Currency diffusion

Fortunately, SolarCoin can gain widespread acceptance rather easily. If many people value something, then by definition it is valuable. Simple as that.

A business or charity can begin accepting SolarCoins as payment by downloading a digital wallet here and then displaying their unique address or QR code prominently on their website or a physical sign. Treating SolarCoins like cash will be a way to show that an organization agrees with the premise that the benefits solar power provides to society and the climate are greater than the price of electricity in wholesale markets -- where every megawatt-hour of electricity is generally treated the same, whether it was produced from climate-friendly, renewable sources or a coal-fired power plant.

As more businesses accept SolarCoin as tender, more people will recognize the cryptocurrency as useful money. As demand for the currency increases, its value will rise and stabilize.

Mature money

Once one SolarCoin trades at a stable exchange rate relative to U.S. dollars for an extended period, we can declare it a mature form of money, since dollars are the most widely accepted currency in today's world (whether or not they deserve to be). At that point, any person or retailer would be silly not to accept SolarCoins, because they could be turned into any other currency almost immediately, at zero to very little cost.

Of course, holding SolarCoins will remain somewhat risky, in the same way that using any currency as a long-term store of value involves trusting that its value will not change dramatically overnight. For example, if the U.S. Federal Reserve prints billions of dollars today, then all of our savings will be worth a lot less as soon as prices adjust upward to reflect that money is less scarce.

Yet by holding our money in U.S. dollars, we show trust that the Fed won't devalue the dollar with rapid, inflation-causing increases in the money supply. With SolarCoins, we can trust that they will only be granted as fast as solar power producers generate power and claim their reward.

The currency becomes even more useful when it offers a more stable representation of value than other currencies. This happens when its inflation rate -- the rate at which one SolarCoin becomes less valuable over time, much like a dollar today is less valuable than a dollar three decades ago -- is relatively steady and very low, perhaps one percent per year.

Driving solar

As SolarCoin gains popularity, and thus exchange value, the extra reward for solar electricity producers becomes a bigger and bigger incentive. If SolarCoins can be spent nearly anywhere, or traded for a significant amount of an official (or alternative) currency, then they will effectively serve as an additional money payment to generators of solar power.

Cash incentives for any behavior encourage more of it. So we can expect SolarCoin to contribute to the ongoing solar boom, once it scales up.

The next post in the series will discuss SolarCoin's potential to drive solar power investment and speed the de-carbonization of electric power. Stay tuned!

Image courtesy of the SolarCoin Foundation

Figure created with Knoema

Sam is an aspiring economist and writer. You can read his work at theblisspoint.org. Sam’s digital wallet does not yet hold any SolarCoin thanks to his technological incompetence, but you can help change that -- simply send SolarCoins to his digital wallet: 8Rs7YHL4z5jeNenpMD3X4BnaMZstx7QwEk

By Anna Simpson

Unlike its neighbors, Singapore does not consider itself an agricultural nation. Rightly so – for now, at least. Whereas Malaysia is self-sufficient in poultry, pork and eggs, cultivates fruit such as mango and papaya for domestic consumption, and exports cocoa, cereals and flour – Singapore depends on imports for 90 percent of its food. Too many people and not enough land has long been the situation, but are perceptions of what’s possible within limited resources about to change?

Michael Doherty thinks so. He’s the founder of a U.S.-based company called Bitponics that aims to simplify local growing, using sensors to measure pH levels, nutrients, temperature and humidity. In 2013 he came to Singapore for a residency with the Art-Science Museum, exploring local responses to ‘aquaponics’ – a closed-loop system to grow edible plants in nutrient-rich water. (The detritus in the water is eaten by little fish, whose excrement in turn nourishes the plants.) Doherty focused on the aesthetics of the system, looking to improve its cultural fit by working with local artisans and materials.

Since then, he’s been working with the startup Homegrw to turn the concept into a local reality – and it’s taking root. By the time Chinese New Year came around, the startup had rice and red fruit at the ready, grown at the People’s Park Complex in Chinatown. “Didn’t we say these systems produced culturally relevant food?” – the team boasted to hundreds of fans on Facebook.

The challenge, for Doherty, is familiarity. “There is a huge disconnection between food and how it is produced. I’ve worked with many students here. When they plant a seed and see it grow, and then in a few weeks have a head of lettuce, it’s like magic to them…”

One customer is Bjorn Shen, a Singaporean who trained as a chef in Australia, then came back to found the restaurant Artichoke – the first in the country to have a kitchen garden. He’s also expressed an interest in sourcing ingredients from Comcrop, another aquaponic vegetable and fish farm, occupying 6,000 square feet of roof space in the middle of the shopping district on Orchard Road. It will be a more pricey source than the supermarkets, but Shen says he is willing to pay a premium for a fresh harvest. “We believe in quality first ... as long as customers are willing to pay a bit more for something of great quality.”

Comcrop claims it can produce eight to 10 times more than traditional farms over the same area. But urban farming at significant scale will require a more mainstream change of mindset. Signs of one are emerging. Speaking at a food industry convention in October 2013, the Minister for National Development, Mr Khaw Boon Wan, announced a further investment of SGD 10 million (c. $7.9 million) for research and development in local food farming technology, the production capability of local farms and food source diversification. He encouraged the industry to “leverage” this fund to “boost Singapore’s food supply resilience," particularly in chicken, pork, fish, eggs, leafy vegetables and rice.

Local production is a “core component of our food security roadmap," said Ms Tan Poh Hong, CEO of the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA), which runs the national Food Fund. “Local farms can provide a buffer in times of sudden import disruptions, and serve as a platform to test-bed agricultural innovations to increase food supply. Having an active local farming sector also ensures that commercial farming skills and expertise within the country are not lost.” She also spoke of the need “to imagine what the future of farming would be like," asserting that “farmscrapers” are already being tested around the world. Plantagon, a Swedish company, has signed a memorandum of understanding with Nanyang Technological University to develop the first tropical prototype of their planting system for Singapore, she noted.

In major cities cross the world, authorities are exploring the possibility of urban farming at scale. Vancouver has allocated funding to increase city and neighbourhood food assets by 50 percent over 2010 levels by 2020, raising the number of urban farms from 17 to 35 by 2020, and the number of community garden plots from 3,640 to 5,000. Its goal is simply to develop a just and sustainable food system – and become the greenest city in the world.

By contrast, in Rosario, Argentina, urban farming is seen as a means to redevelop the economy, provide employment, empower women, and discourage squatting on vacant land. Here, the drive comes from the U.N.’s Urban Agriculture Program, which is working with local businesses and organizations, funded by the local authorities.

Whether the goal is food security, jobs and skills, empowering women or winning global renown, leaders expect more from their investment in urban food production than simply home-grown pak choi on demand. With new research, published in Nature Climate Change, to show that global warming of only 2°C will reduce yields in temperate and tropical regions from the 2030s, I suspect they’re right to do so.

Growing underground

Disused for decades, the ex-air raid shelter tunnels underneath Clapham have got a new lease of life, producing herbs, shoots and microgreens for London restaurants. For Zero Carbon Foods start-up founders Richard Ballard and Steven Dring, the hydroponic, LED-lit, tunnel-based, central London sited solution they’ve branded as “Growing Underground” ticks a surprising number of sustainability boxes.

At 33m below ground, they start with a constant temperature of 16°C. Banks of LED lights, switched on 18 hours a day, give off enough heat to raise this to 20°C, ideal for plant growth. The plants grow in trays, with nutrient-rich water fed hydroponically to their roots, on a 3cm substrate of hemp and recycled carpet. Post-harvest, they’ll recycle this again, locally, as biomass fuel.

Hydroponics, says Ballard, is 70 percent more water-efficient than conventional growing. Electricity needs, mainly to run the lights and electric delivery vehicles, are currently sourced from renewables through Good Energy, but a community-based solar project could take over in time. Nutrients are all organic. Air traps keep out pests. The produce from their tests has passed taste and freshness tests with flying colors. Distribution? One mile down the road to market at New Covent Garden, from where it could be eaten anywhere in London within a day.

Testing the concept took two years, Ballard explains, but interest surged as soon as they went public. With their pitch on crowdfunding site Crowdcube going strongly, he’s confident they’ll meet their first year’s £1 million funding target. Yearround production down on the farm is set to begin this autumn on 1000m2 of three-tier growing benches.

Their first tunnel site, leased for 25 years from Transport for London (TfL), should allow them space for a further six-fold expansion. And after that? TfL has seven more spare tunnels, says Ballard, but Zero Carbon Food has other urban growing ambitions too, such as vertical farming in converted high-rise blocks. Their key asset, it seems, is the ability to think laterally about land.

Anna Simpson is Editor, Green Futures.