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Procter & Gamble announced on Jan. 27 that it's removing phosphates from all of its laundry detergents worldwide over the next two years. This announcement will apply to all of its brands, including Tide, Ariel, Ace and Bonux. Phosphates are added to laundry detergents to soften water and keep dirt in the laundry water. However, when phosphates get into water sources, such as lakes or rivers, it "leads to algae growth and poor water quality," according to the U.K. government agency, Environment Agency. Phosphates are a "major source of pollution in lakes and streams," a Colorado State University webpage states.

An article in the Guardian points out a few things concerning this announcement, including the fact that P&G  already removed phosphates from laundry detergents sold in the U.S. due to a nationwide ban instated in 1993. A few years ago the company removed phosphates from detergents sold in Europe. However, many developing countries lack phosphate regulation and this is where the biggest impacts will occur.

Although smaller companies like Belgian Ecover or American Seventh Generation have already removed phosphates, P&G is much bigger. P&G has more than 25 percent of the global market share and is sold in approximately 70 countries, serving about 4.8 billion people with its many brands. P&G is the largest consumer packaged goods company in the world today. As the Guardian quotes Giovanni Ciserani, P&G’s group president of global fabric and home care, "It's a win-win when you offer consumers a better product which is also environmentally friendlier. Whenever you force them into a trade-off, you get a limited result."

Ciserani stated in a press release that P&G has been "gradually reducing the consumption of phosphates since 2005." He added that, "By the time the above laundry reformulations are fully implemented, P&G will have eliminated close to half a million metric tons per year compared to its peak consumption during calendar year 2005." The reasons for P&G’s decision to remove phosphates from all of its laundry detergents around the world is because of its "strong commitment to innovation, research and development," Ciserani said.

"Our size and scale provide us with a unique opportunity to make a difference when it comes to changing consumer behavior," said Len Sauers, P&G vice president for global sustainability. "With this very concrete action of our fabric care business as well as those to follow, we intend to improve the quality of people’s lives today and for generations to come."

P&G wants to be a leader in sustainability

P&G has what it terms "long-term visions," and they are lofty. They include powering its plants with 100 percent renewable energy and using 100 percent renewable or recycled materials for all of its products and packaging. They also include zero consumer waste going to landfills and zero manufacturing waste going to landfills.

The company’s goals for 2020 help it meet its long-term visions. They include replacing 25 percent of petroleum-based materials with sustainably sourced materials, and moving 70 percent of laundry loads globally to using cold water. Other goals for 2020 include reducing packaging-per-consumer use by 20 percent and having 30 percent of its plants’ energy needs come from renewable energy sources.

Image credit: Ryan Ebert

By Jules Kortenhortst & Jon Creyts

In 1999, Rocky Mountain Institute co-founder and chief scientist Amory Lovins co-authored a piece for the Harvard Business Review entitled "A Road Map for Natural Capitalism." It aimed to come up with a new economic model that took the needs of sustainability into account. This article laid out the business logic for solving environmental problems while also generating a profit for the companies involved – true win-wins, in other words.

"The real problem with our [current] economic compass is that it points in exactly the wrong direction," he wrote. "Most businesses are acting as though people are still scarce and nature abundant... But the pattern of scarcity is shifting; now, people aren't scarce, but nature is."

If we are to solve perhaps the greatest challenge that global capitalism has created – climate change – it is essential that we reconcile our prevailing economic model to place more emphasis on the importance of natural capitalism. Here's how:

The first step is to build pricing signals into the market that reflect shifts in scarcity such as the external factors burdening our natural world. We are already making progress here.

Assigning a price to carbon is perhaps the most obvious - and contentious - way to mobilize market forces to help tackle climate change. It's interesting that most citizens of developed countries happily pay for trash collection services and don't refute the need for waste companies to treat their refuse before releasing it into the environment, and yet applying a similar logic to carbon is still seen as controversial. Nevertheless, a number of states are taking a stand, and it's reassuring to see early experiments in carbon taxes and cap-and-trade schemes in Canada, China, the European Union, New Zealand and on both seaboards of the U.S.

Even without government, recent research from the Carbon Disclosure Project showed that an increasing number of U.S. companies are now placing an internal price on carbon when evaluating potential projects -- citing climate change risk. Businesses and investors are calculating their possible returns on certain assets with a notional carbon price in mind, acknowledging that formal pricing is likely to become a reality eventually.

Make no mistake: whether enforced by local government policy, encouraged by a long-promised global deal on climate change in Paris in 2015, the result of prescient corporate planning, or simply in response to an extreme weather event like the one that recently put portions of New York City under 10 feet of water, the march towards putting a hard financial value on carbon emissions is underway and gaining momentum, whatever the critics would like to think.

Increasing the transparency of risk

Pricing externalities like carbon is the surest long-term way to modify corporate and market behavior, but, in the meantime, better acknowledging the investment risks of both established and emerging energy assets can also be a powerful incentive to help repair Lovins' proverbial "broken compass."

At an individual project level, investing in energy efficiency projects can offer a bond-like consistency in financial returns, while also mitigating against the ongoing volatility in fuel prices. These assets therefore effectively create a natural hedge against market dynamics. Contrast this situation with a new coal-fired power station, for example, which is not only vulnerable to fluctuating fossil fuel prices but also to the very real possibility that, over the next 40 years of its life, regulatory changes or a punitive carbon price could significantly erode its economic viability -- dramatically impairing its current worth in the process.

These are all very rational approaches to risk and valuation, but, increasingly, carbon-intensive assets could also become stranded if investors lose faith in their economic potential. Consider, for example, the current push by college students to make their universities divest fossil fuel investments. If this increasing social push for institutions to shift their portfolios away from these assets gains momentum, fossil fuel businesses may suddenly find themselves facing much higher capital costs, and new investments in carbon-intensive assets could become unprofitable.

This situation becomes even more disconcerting if we consider the potential implications of a single, international carbon budget designed to restrict global warming to within the "acceptable" 2 degrees Celsius band. Such a cap on total CO2 emissions would effectively dictate that two-thirds of the planet's remaining known fossil fuel reserves should stay in the ground. This in turn would represent a massive balance sheet risk to some of the most powerful economies and corporations in the world. Acknowledging these risks entails not just a punitive discounting approach, but also a dramatic write-off in value.

Letting the market sort itself

As with any revolution, retooling our economy to address the opportunities and challenges presented by natural capitalism will create both winners and losers. New technologies will break through; new businesses will prosper; new skills will be in demand; new rules will emerge; and new fortunes will be made. At the same time, however, there will be losers: certain established technologies will be rendered obsolete; some established businesses will struggle; skills from a previous industrial age may become redundant; old rules will be revisited; and a certain proportion of economic value will inevitably be eroded, even as new sustainable economies emerge to fill the gap. Throughout the process, there will also be a natural tendency to defend the past.

Successfully honoring natural capital means we will need to challenge our instinctive defense mechanisms that defer to the known and the proven. Doing so means unwinding some of those supportive policies and presumptions that have made the current carbon extraction industries and businesses some of the most financially- productive in the world. We will also need to be prepared to write-off established assets that no longer produce true value because of their environmental impact. We will have to accept that formerly great icons of success, titans of an earlier age, may tumble. Ask those who ran mainframe computer companies or former telecoms monopolists about the cost of disruption and paradigm shift. A similar value shift is inevitable in the world of energy as well – indeed, it is already underway, as unpalatable as that thought might seem in certain quarters.

In 2009, Royal Dutch Shell executives Gert Jan Kramer and Martin Haigh argued that new forms of energy take a very long time to become material sources of global power supply. But there are signs that this reality is changing, too. The logic of the past, where growing energy supply generally required massive capital projects with correspondingly long lead times, is being overturned before our eyes.

Solar panels on the roof of a family home require a much simpler capital sign-off process – generally around the breakfast table – than coal-fired power stations or fracking wells; they come in handy, modular, "as needed" chunks; and they can be implemented in weeks, not years. More dramatically, returns on investment in energy-efficiency projects often filter through within months, rather than decades, and these projects are gaining traction everywhere from China's commercial sector to European and U.S. real estate markets. A single LED lamp is not a revolution – but large-scale roll-out of LED lamps is.

Fixing the broken compass

So, what are the implications of these various trends? The happy reality is that industrial upheaval may already be gathering pace, even without the stick of a high carbon tax or dramatic shift in the perceived risk of traditional, fossil-based investment assets. The largest utility firms in Europe, increasingly brought to their knees by the emergence of decentralized power, were recently forced to beg the European Commission for mercy.

Their balance sheets no longer represent a basis for investments in large-scale energy projects. And their customers are increasingly embracing a future of renewable distributed power, selling energy from one home to another. Electric cars, long the laughing stock of Detroit, Houston and Wall Street alike, achieved a 12 percent market share in Norway last year.

Could it be that a new energy economy, founded on a far more thoughtful and far-sighted approach to managing our planet's resources, is already emerging? It is certainly a predictable outcome and modern capitalism should take note. Those who design their business models and encourage their industries to embrace this shift should be positioned to prosper disproportionately in a brave new world where natural capitalism reigns.

Image credit: Flickr/Calsidyrose

Jules Kortenhorst is CEO of Rocky Mountain Institute and founding CEO of the European Climate Foundation; Jon Creyts is Managing Director of Rocky Mountain Institute and a former partner of McKinsey & Company

This article was originally published in the January 2014 edition of The Brewery Journal. For more information, please visit www.freuds.com/thebrewery

By Alex Mungo

It is no longer news that the "big six" have upped energy prices by another 10 percent, after previously promising no increases. With energy prices steadily rising by 7 percent every year, we are on course for much slimmer accounts in the next five years. The impact of our excess energy consumption can be readily seen in the environment. Freak storms, weeks of rain and extreme snowfall are all byproducts of burning fossil fuels.

In the midst of these, one reads about government cutting funding for local councils. It is also quite disheartening to learn that the U.K. government has once again reduced the budget for the National Health Service (NHS). For a government that claims to be committed to sustainability and championing renewable energy use, the government doesn’t seem to be putting their money where their mouth is.

The health care sector and climate action

The path that should be taken to achieve sustainability is obvious. It is, basically: Look for energy inefficiencies, curb them and enjoy a cleaner environment.

Simple, right? Apparently not. Even with the Climate Change Act of 2008, and programs that try to enforce it, hospitals still account for 3 percent of the country's carbon footprint. With the average hospital's energy expenses rising from £1 million to £1.5 million due to rising national energy costs, the financial black hole common in public services rears its ugly head again.

Between hospitals haemorrhaging taxpayers' funds away by paying above average energy  expenses and hospitals with shoddy energy monitoring practices, more than £30 million was squandered in 2013. The government's knee-jerk response was to roll out budget cuts across the NHS.

Drastic budget cuts are, in my opinion, the wrong approach. It is like bolting the stable door after the horse has escaped. The budget cuts have a knock-on effect of diminished patient care, where hospital management justifies reduced manpower by claiming their budgets have been reduced.

Another seemingly obvious question now becomes: Why doesn’t the government plug these holes in the NHS expenses by embarking on sustainability programs? One reason is that, as a nation, the United Kingdom is skilled at using red tape to hinder its own progress -- except when it is in favor of a select few (fracking, anyone?). Add this to the fact that the NHS itself is run by extremely conservative and risk-averse individuals. What you get is a health service that is firmly stuck in the last century.

Alternative power and energy efficiency

It's not all doom and gloom, as the start of 2014 has brought on another push towards achieving and maintaining a sustainable environment (let us hope this lasts longer than most New Year's resolutions).

From Ministers calling for the establishment of a solar estate to hospitals raising funds to install solar panels themselves, I predict there will be more and more green buildings and living in 2014.

Hospitals are notorious for energy waste. Their one legitimate excuse is the myriad of machines constantly in use. Add this to the fact that they are connected and turned on around the clock, you can begin to appreciate the amount of energy used up. That being said, they can usually get a grip on their energy inefficiency by assembling a team and carrying out an audit of all their activities. Activities ranging from shortening ambulance routes to reduce CO2 emissions, to temperature control, to validating the green credentials of suppliers should be examined thoroughly.

Addressing challenges with renewables

Alternate renewable power sources abound, but their use is hindered by bureaucratic red tape, and the sometimes ludicrous decisions of top-level management. An example of this is the installation of six noisy wind turbines on the roof of a hospital in Lanarkshire. With the noise from the turbines, people in the surrounding area could barely carry function. The patients fared even worse as it interfered with their getting better. After two years, they were removed. Total cost to the council?  £120,000.

Solar panels are a popular option that have been used all over the world. With over 500,000 solar panel installations taking place across the U.K., it is a technology that is viable and here to stay. Even with the dilly-dallying of the government around the feed-in traffic, more and more people are realizing the potential. The Hôpital Universitaire de Mirebalais in Haiti is renowned as the world's largest solar hospital. It has successfully offered primary care to over 180,000 people for the past nine months.

While it doesn’t always have to involve setting up mass arrays of panels or erecting 300-foot turbines, we can move towards being more energy efficient by doing the simple things, like switching off the office lights at the close of work. Every day.

Achieving and maintaining sustainability in the NHS will go a long way toward keeping expenses down and saving money. It will help free up much-needed funds for better patient care, and also be of huge benefit on the environment as a whole. And that’s what the triple bottom line is all about, right?

Image credit: U.K. National Health Service

EcoKinetics is a supplier of commercial solar panel solutions, tailored for your specific needs. Our expertise spans SPV builds on farms, office buildings, schools etc.

In Part 1 of this case history, we described how a small Nebraska landscape architecture firm controls its costs and in Part 2, we looked at how it keeps its staff motivated and productive through sustainable business practices.

Frequently overlooked in sustainability literature, amidst all the noise about renewable energy, energy efficiency, water conservation and other resource productivity improvement measures, is the fact that more and more large corporations have adopted business strategies to bring to market new products and services designed to address the world’s sustainability challenges and create new revenue streams. High visibility examples include GE’s Ecomagination and IBM’s Smarter Planet strategies.

Big Muddy Workshop, Inc. (BMW) is an unusual example of a small company that used changing local climate conditions and concerns about the adverse impact of stormwater runoff to expand its expertise and develop new, green infrastructure (GI) services for its clients.

Over the past 30 years the climate of eastern Nebraska, where the landscape architecture and green infrastructure design services firm does most of its business, has shifted into a warmer zone (as defined by the USDA). During this time, more frequent and severe periods of drought have occurred in the region. In recent years particularly, this shift has been accompanied by increasing constraints on local parks and recreation budgets.

Planning for climate volatility

This combination has opened an opportunity for leading landscape architects to develop designs that include not only plants that can accommodate reduced rainfall but that also reduce maintenance costs for local governments in terms of pruning, watering and spraying to reduce insect infestations. For example, BMW stopped recommending the Eastern White Pine in its designs for parks or other landscapes where large numbers of trees are required for screening or shade purposes. Several years of dry weather, culminating in the driest on record in 2012, have gradually destroyed large numbers of these trees. As an alternative, the firm is now selecting other species that it believes will do better in what it expects to be an ongoing reduced-rainfall environment.

Again, some would argue that this type of adaptation to market needs is simply good business. And it’s certainly true that operators of parks and recreation areas look to the companies that design the plantings for reparations if they die, which can quickly wipe out profits on a project. So there is a significant element of risk mitigation in BMW’s strategy of continuously updating its knowledge of plants and trees that will survive and prosper in changing climatic conditions. Either way, awareness of emerging sustainability challenges is becoming an important source of innovation and competitive advantage for large and small companies alike. Co-owners John Royster and Katie Blesener describe the company’s strategy as designing resilient landscapes that will be successful regardless of inconsistencies in rainfall and outdoor temperature.

Managing storm water runoff

As in many other areas of the country, storm water runoff has become a major concern in eastern Nebraska. In urban areas of Omaha during heavy rainstorms, excess runoff mingles with sewage flows and can overload treatment systems such that large volumes of polluted water flow into local streams and rivers. In the case of Omaha, this is a major issue because polluted water in the Missouri River creates problems for drinking water plants in downstream cities like St. Louis and Kansas City, Mo. Moreover, in a climate that is steadily experiencing reduced rainfall, it becomes important to treat heavy rains not as an expensive nuisance but as a money-saving resource.

BMW has increasingly integrated storm water management elements into its green infrastructure designs, in part through soil conditioning technologies. During the construction of a park or recreation area, much of the soil is compacted by heavy equipment -- which reduces its ability to absorb even small amounts of rainfall. For a cost to clients of 40 to 50 cents per square foot, compost and other organic materials are plowed into the soil to a depth of 18 to 24 inches. Studies have shown that soil treated in this fashion can absorb up to 4.5 inches of rain before runoff begins to occur, whereas in untreated soils as little as one-thenth of an inch of rainfall can result in runoff -- causing an overload of the sewer systems. Of course, the water retained in the soil acts as a reservoir that reduces the amount of irrigation required in subsequent dry periods.

The city of Omaha is spending $1.8 billion on a retrofit that will separate rainwater runoff from sewage flows. To the extent it can expand areas of the city in which landscapes have been designed to reduce stormwater runoff, the diameter of the pipes required to handle it will be reduced, thereby significantly reducing the cost of this retrofit. BMW has actively positioned itself to work with the city on the upstream end of this initiative. The company is currently working on plans for capturing rainwater from Basswood’s roof to provide a practical demonstration of ways in which it can be used to replenish groundwater rather than simply run off into a storm drain.

BMW has been around for 23 years, a small company that has achieved resilience in large part due to its owners’ relentless pursuit of the principles of sustainable business. To read the entire BMW case history please visit: www.sustainability4smes.com. 

Stay tuned for Part 4, in which we’ll discuss how BMW has addressed the People and Planet components of sustainability.

By Sarah Bodley

Giovanni Ciarlo is a musician, father, craftsman and educator. Born in Morcone, Italy, he grew up in Latin America. He and his wife Kathleen Sartor split their time between a home in Watertown, Conn., and Tepoztlan, Mexico.

In the mid-1970s, Ciarlo and Sartor were part of an international theater group called “The Illuminated Elephants.” The members of the troupe were young, in their 20s and 30s. They had met each other around the world, drawn together by a common desire to do theater and a shared consciousness of social issues, especially those faced by indigenous people around the world.

This group of upstart, non-conformist artists had a vision. Ciarlo says it began with a simple thought, "We can create a community that is totally integrated with nature; use the artistic impulse to create something totally ecological." They were motivated by a question: Can we create a village from scratch that can last for generations, and go on and thrive?

In 1982, acting on this vision, they created Huehuecoyotl -- an eco-village in Tepoztlan. Ciarlo goes on,  "When we created Huehue, we had to learn everything. What is natural building? How much can you use and not use? Where do you find it? Who knows how to put it together? All that sort of thing. We created Huehue with recycled water, recycled everything.”

In the late-1990s, Kathleen and Giovanni began offering introductory courses in permaculture, later offering permaculture design certificate courses. Early on, they partnered with Living Roots, a study-abroad program based in Massachusetts, to bring college students to Huehuecoyotl for hands-on education in sustainable living and design.

Giovanni never stopped learning, receiving a master’s degree in Sustainable Business and Communities (SBC) from Goddard College in 2008. He also taught there for six years. A founding member of Ecovillage Network of the Americas in 1996, in 2003 he joined the board of Global Ecovillage Network (GEN), serving as board chair from 2009-2012. GEN connects eco-village communities around the world.

An important part of their work is through Gaia Education, founded in 2005 to provide education for sustainable development. With a presence in 34 countries around the world (including Huehuecoyotl in Mexico), Gaia Education empowers students to “design a society which uses energy and materials with greater efficiency, distributes wealth fairly and strives to eliminate the concept of waste.”  Through both online and hands-on learning, students are given the tools to become powerful change agents in their own communities. For anywhere from a month to a year, participants are led through four focus areas:

• Social Design – courses dealing with community, diversity, communication, & leadership, such as “Local, Bioregional and Global Outreach.”


• Economic Design – a study of alternative approaches to economic systems, with courses including “Shifting the Global Economy to Sustainability” and “Social Enterprise.”


• Ecologic Design – an in-depth focus on appropriate technologies for water and energy, organic agriculture and local food, with courses such as “Whole Systems Approach to Ecological Design” and “Green Building & Retrofitting.“


• Worldview – courses focused on holistic living, such as “Listening to and Reconnecting with Nature” and “Personal Health, Planetary Health.”

Giovanni teaches online courses for Gaia through the University of Barcelona. He continues to develop curricula for ecovillage design.  Part of Giovanni’s course is to train others to go home, to teach, and organize their own courses. He recognizes that not everyone may go home and create their own ecovillage, but he encourages people to share the knowledge and understanding they gain through the program in their home countries.

Giovanni and Kathleen remain active in the arts, performing and touring with their band, Sirius Coyote, and offering Arts-In-Education programs at elementary schools in the northwest corner of Connecticut.  They incorporate the principles and values of the ecovillage lifestyle into all of their work.

When asked if it’s working, Giovanni says, “Every NGO is in the same position: the nonprofit world is getting competitive in terms of salaries, people are coming out with degrees, management skills. We can improve the bottom line as well as the environmental consciousness and social equity.”

We know this, and there are plenty of reports to prove it, but it doesn’t make it easier to get people on board. Giovanni says it’s a slow process, but you “sometimes feel that there is a wave. The fact is that you look at 7 billion people and see how small the wave is. But it’s growing. What gives me a lot of encouragement is that young people are into it! Everybody’s trying to figure out, ‘how do I pursue this and make a living?’ We have to create it—we have to invent it.”

Visit www.gaiaeducation.org to learn more about some of the ecovillages in the Gaia Education network, or www.huehuecoyotl.net for more on Huehuecoyotl.

A campaign to get more state educated young people into the banking sector has been launched. Education charity the Sutton Trust will work with four major banks to boost the number of young people they recruit from non-privileged backgrounds.

The move is backed by a report that found more than half of bosses in the sector were privately educated. The study, Pathways to Banking, by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) for the Trust, of 500 leaders and 1,800 new recruits in the financial services also found that 34% of recent intakes and 51% of leaders in the banking sector who were from the UK went to independent schools.

The report recommends a framework of activities, focusing on an early start and providing on-going support, which will ensure young people from low and middle income backgrounds are informed about the range of jobs available to them in the sector. BCG estimated that in Britain 30-40% of those earning over £120,000 per year are working in financial services.

By acting to increase access for non-privileged young people to the sector, the study concludes that banks will also benefit from a more diverse workforce, ensuring that there are a mix of perspectives within teams to improve decision-making and a broader understanding of customer needs.

The Sutton Trust is working with Barclays, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Lloyds in the initiative. The campaign follows the success of the Sutton Trust’s Pathways to Law programme, funded by the Legal Education Foundation. This has supported 2,000 students during the last seven years and now involves 12 major universities, including Oxford, and 30 top law firms, including Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, DLA Piper, Eversheds, Hogan Lovells, Linklaters and Mayer Brown.

 

Picture credit: © Galina Barskaya | Dreamstime Stock Photos
 

Nine in 10 UK households (88%) now buy energy saving CFL light bulbs, according to a European-wide survey of consumer light bulb purchasing habits.

Of these UK households purchasing CFL light bulbs, the majority (87%) said the main reason was due to their energy and cost saving benefits.

The survey findings of 5,000 consumers across 12 European nations put the UK in the top five in Europe for adopting energy saving CFL light bulbs - above the European average of 78%. Italy topped the European nations, with 96% always or often purchasing energy saving CFL light bulbs.

The survey also found the UK trails behind other European nations for LED light bulb purchases, with a third of households (33%) now buying LEDs. Spain knocked the UK off the top five, with the nation now sitting in the middle of the European league table for LED purchases. Around 70 per cent of UK households purchased LED light bulbs due to the cost and energy savings.

The latest survey findings and figures are helping to inform the PremiumLight project, a European-wide initiative that is testing the quality of energy saving light bulbs to help support consumers in their purchasing decisions.

Tom Lock, Certification Manager at the Energy Saving Trust, commented: "We are encouraged by these findings which show that the majority of the UK public are realising the energy and cost saving benefits of energy saving light bulbs and buying them for their home. There are clear benefits with each UK household having the potential to save up to £50 a year on their energy bills through upgrading all their home lighting to either LED or CFL energy saving light bulbs.”

Figures from the Energy Saving Trust show the UK could save as much as £1.4bn on electricity bills a year through households replacing all the remaining traditional incandescent and halogen bulbs in their homes with energy-saving light bulbs (CFLs and LED spots).
 

It’s not unusual to hear people, usually change-resistant defenders of the status quo, putting down renewables as being not economically viable, because they would not be able to compete in the marketplace without the aid of government subsidies. How are these people misinformed? If I may borrow the famous phrase from Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "Let me count the ways."

First of all, it is virtually impossible to break into today’s highly competitive global marketplace unassisted, unless one has developed an entirely new product or service for which there is little or no competition. Otherwise, the 900 pound gorillas (i.e. the existing rulers of that product niche) will simply trample you by virtue of the fact that they have had years to mature their products -- reducing costs and improving reliability along the way. The U.S. government sees it as a critical part of its strategic mission to nurture innovation, which is, or at least was, a major impetus behind the U.S. patent system -- long-hailed as the greatest in the world and one of the key drivers of American dominance in the business world. Producing energy can hardly be considered a totally new product or service, even if it is done in a  new, clean, non-polluting manner that does not require any fuel.

Secondly, there is a common perception that the existing energy delivery system does not receive any subsidies. This is simply not the case. Because governments recognize energy as strategic and essential for our economic survival, not to mention the survival of generous campaign contributors, they provide all kinds of generous subsidies to the energy industry.

According to Philipp Tagwerker at the Worldwatch Institute, citing IEA estimates based on 38 industrial and developing countries, coal, electricity, oil and natural gas consumption subsidies reached $523 billion in 2011. Depending on the method of calculation used, the estimate could range as high as $1.9 trillion. In the U.S., direct government subsidies to energy companies reached $37 billion in 2010, according to EIA, about 11 percent of which went to the wind industry under the stimulus plan.

Finally, there is the fact that the price of both solar- and wind-powered electricity has been dropping radically, to the point where in many localities, including Germany, China, India and Spain, solar is already on the verge of reaching grid parity -- meaning it will hit the market at the whatever the going rate is.

It’s time to debunk that longstanding myth, as we have little time to waste in our quest to convert all of our modern economies to clean, carbon-free sources of energy as soon as possible.

Image credit: BiLK_Thorn: Flickr Creative Commons

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.

It’s been a rough few months for America’s largest lingerie retailer. In November, after Victoria's Secret's jaw-dropping annual fashion show, the company was forced to apologize to Native American communities for its decision to send a model out onto the runway clad in bikini underwear and a Native American headdress. Thousands of people visited the VS Facebook page to complain.

Last week the retailer was forced to offer a mea culpa again after an employee in its store in the upscale Domain Shopping Center in Austin, Texas, told a nursing mother to breast-feed her child in the alley.

Ashley Clawson said that after she had finished paying for some purchases at the store on Jan. 13, she asked if she could use the store’s dressing room to feed her son, who was crying. She said she asked for permission in order to be polite to other patrons in the store and was told by one of the employees that she wasn’t allowed to breast feed her child in their store. The employee suggested she take her son to the back of the alley and feed him there.

“You want me to take my son outside, down an alley, and nurse him?” Clawson asked, dumfounded. She said the clerk answered, "Yes."

The young mother opted instead to take her son to a restroom stall in another location and feed him there.

This instance could easily be chalked up to a case of poor discretion on the part of the staff (and incidentally, an ignorance of federal and state law protections for nursing mothers), if it weren’t for what followed next. Clawson said when she got home she called VS’s customer service and reported the incident. By then she had educated herself on state and federal laws and knew that Texas was one of 45 states that has laws protecting the right of nursing mothers to breast-feed in public. She said she talked with the representative for a half hour, and hung up with the impression that the matter would be straightened out.

“He said he filed the complaint and they would be in touch. However, the next day, when I called them back, there was no record of my complaint,” said Clawson. Subsequent attempts to reach a manager and to file a complaint went unheeded as well.

Finally, Clawson said she called the store where the incident had occurred and spoke with the manager. The supervisor confirmed the story with the employees on staff and apologized, offering to send her “something” for her troubles. She also wrote VS CEO Sharon Jester Turney, but said that as of Jan. 20, had yet to hear back from either the supervisor or Turney.

What’s interesting is that although VS apparently spoke with local Fox television station KTBC-TV to clear up and apologize for the event (and that information was later copied and recopied by other news organizations), the company doesn’t appear to have posted any record of the apology or what it’s done about the confusion on its website. Perhaps some would say that’s not necessary, since VS did own up to the mistake to the news camera. But many business authorities point out that the first step in handling a PR problem is to apologize – fast! – and the second thing is to act on it publicly so that customers, (including the offended party) can see that the error was just a bad day in the office and shouldn’t be construed as a corporate image problem.

At this point, however, customers may be asking whether Victoria's Secret has really taken the pulse of its customer base lately and understands the sensitivities of today’s multicultural world. Unfortunately, pundits haven’t missed the opportunity to poke fun at the “irony” of VS’s support for buxom beauty and its seeming oversight that nurturing another life, whether in public or behind a curtain, is still just as awe-inspiring.

Image courtesy of Smarty9108

By Michael Gutman 

Offering commuter benefits is a great way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and differentiate a company's CSR program from its competitors.

However, companies in the San Francisco Bay Area will have to find new ways to rise above the competition and expand their CSR programs, because the commuter benefit playing field is about to be leveled.

Approved Senate bill SB 1339 will require all Bay Area companies that employ more than 50 people to offer commuter benefits.

What is so interesting about this law is that they are including telecommuting as one of the benefits employers can offer to comply with the legislation.

I interviewed David Burch, principal environmental planner at the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), and he stated that if employers want to take advantage of the telecommuting option, it “will likely include requirements that a certain percent of the employer’s workforce be eligible to telecommute.”

The social and environmental benefits of telecommuting are numerous, but for some reason, they often get left out of corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs and reports. As head of customer development for Sqwiggle, a cloud-based office application that enables people to work from anywhere, I am not sure why.

After interviewing our customers who telecommute, they report being happier and healthier.  They also spend less money on office supplies and spend much less time stuck in a car commuting and polluting. These are tangible benefits that can be documented and reported on in a CSR report, but often aren’t.

According to Burch, “Employees who telecommute on a regular basis can significantly reduce their commute trips to the worksite.  Studies have found that telecommuting can reduce commute trips by as much 40 percent at employers with comprehensive telecommuting programs.”

A 40 percent reduction in driving means a 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.  My hope is that this makes folks think twice about the benefits of telecommuting and how it relates to CSR.

Burch lays out some more of the benefits of SB 1339 here:

“The Air District and MTC anticipate a number of benefits to employers, employees and the Bay Area as a whole, as a result of the program.

“Air quality: Transportation is the largest source of air pollution in the Bay Area.  The goal of the Commuter Benefits Program is to reduce motor vehicle travel, which will help to reduce air pollution that adversely impacts public health.

“Climate protection: By reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, the program would help to protect the climate and achieve state and regional greenhouse gas reduction targets.

“Financial savings: Employers and employees may both experience financial savings as a result of the program.  The potential savings to employers depends in large part on which option the employer chooses to provide to its employees."

The core motive behind SB 1339 is to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  This means that all companies that did not consider the environment will be forced to, and whether they like it or not, they will have made the first step towards creating a CSR program.  Pretty cool.  Those who have existing CSR programs can just lump this new benefit into their mix of initiatives

Although I feel telecommuting is the most interesting piece of this puzzle, here is a rundown of all the options employers can choose from when complying with this law.  Telecommuting falls under the fourth option.

1. Pre-Tax Option: Allow employees to pay for their transit or vanpooling costs with pre-tax dollars;


2. Employer Provided Subsidy: A transit or vanpool subsidy to reduce or cover employees monthly transit or vanpool costs;


3. Employer Provided Transportation: A free or low-cost bus, shuttle or vanpool service for employees;


4. Alternative Commuter Benefit: An alternative method that would be as effective as the other options in reducing drive alone vehicle trips (and/or vehicle emissions).

Conclusion:  This law will validate the great CSR work that industry leaders are already practicing and force the laggards to catch up.  Sure, there will be some administrative hoops employers will need to jump through to comply.  However, the end result will be happier, healthier employees who pollute less…  And that is something to write home (or tweet) about.

Michael Gutman is the Founder and CEO of REACH The Future, a San Francisco-based social enterprise that supplements businesses' CSR efforts with community and environmental stewardship. 

Currently, Michael is Head of Customer Development at Sqwiggle.  Sqwiggle is a cloud based office application that helps remote and distributed teams connect to each other from anywhere in the world.  He is a telecommuting evangelist and aims to help others commute less, pollute less and have more freedom to live life to its fullest.

Image is thanks to Tom Moore at Sqwiggle who was telecommuting in NYC when he took the photo - Thanks Tom.