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As part of the kickoff to our new series on sustainability in fashion, we've decided to try something new: a Tweet Jam. It's a one hour conversation with a panel of experts to which everyone is invited.

This time we'll be teaming up with Business Fights Poverty to lead the conversation about key sustainability topics facing the fashion industry. We’ll explore sustainability trends in fashion throughout the lifecycle: from the cotton fields all the way to the landfill.   In the expansive scope of sustainability, how do brands decide where to focus and how to prioritize?  How effective are their efforts for people and the planet?

We're On:
The Jam is on - please visit the twitter client of your choice and search for #3pChat, or follow along live below:

Tweets about "#3pChat"

Got ideas for good questions? Leave a comment below or tweet us at @triplepundit.   The jam will be an hour long and we'll have a series of conversation starting questions lined up. You're welcome to jump in any time and add your own thoughts or questions to the dialogue.

Never done this before? Read our primer on how a twitter chat works.

Our hashtag will be #3pChat

When:  March 11, 8am Pacific Time = 3pm GMT

RSVP by sending the following tweet:

Join me March 11 to talk sustainability in fashion w/@Triplepundit @fightpoverty & experts. http://bit.ly/SustFash3pChat #3pchat

About our partner:

 

Business Fights Poverty is the world's largest community of professionals passionate about harnessing business for social impact.   We connect practitioners to the latest knowledge and peer insights, and to a vibrant community of stakeholders in business, government and civil society - helping them deliver their innovations at scale.  You can follow them at @FightPoverty.

 About our panelists:

@EmsWaight - Emma Waight is a UK based academic and freelance writer with a passion for ethical fashion and sustainability. Currently completing a PhD on second-hand consumption practices within the School of Geography at University of Southampton, Emma actively promotes sustainable fashion through events and social media. She recently founded ethicalhighstreet.co.uk and has worked with Oxfam Fashion and social enterprises.

@PaulaGrayChic - Paula Gray is founder of the GRAY Ethical Fashion Advisory and has more than 13 years of experience in the Sustainable Fashion Industry. She was included in the list of the 100 Argentinean Woman Trendsetter in Fashion, and featured in the Eco Designers list by ELLE. Paula is one of the pioneers of the ‘Slow Fashion’ movement in Latin America.
@amytropolis - Amy DuFault is a sustainable fashion writer, consultant and activist. She currently works for The Brooklyn Fashion + Design Accelerator as their Sustainable Fashion Strategist, consults and runs social media for a handful of companies and freelance writes on sustainable fashion for The Guardian and Ecouterre.
@DLVermeer - Danielle L. Vermeer is a corporate social responsibility and philanthropy strategist with a background in human rights and supply chain transparency. Outside of her day job, she is the social justice editor at an online magazine and is a self-taught seamstress who upcycles vintage dresses into modern, one-of-a-kind creations. Connect with her on her blog at www.daniellelvermeer.com.
@K8Dillon - Kate Dillon is known in the fashion industry as a ground-breaker and a passionate advocate for environmental and humanitarian causes. For over 20 years, she has leveraged her career in fashion to campaign for positive body image in the media, eating disorders awareness, global poverty reduction, and environmental sustainability. Her work has been widely featured in the media, including on CNN, Good Morning America, and the PBS NOVA series as well as in Vogue, Glamour, and People magazines.

Our series sponsors have made this chat possible. Their twitter information is below and we've invited them to weigh in during the chat as well.

• Levi Straus & Co - @LeviStraussCo


• INDIGENOUS - @Indigenous 


• Amour Vert - @AmourVert 


• Fair Trade USA - @FairTradeUSA 


• Appalatch - @Appalatch 


• Dhana Ecokids - @DhanaEcoKids 


• Threads4Thought - @Threads4Thought 


• Mata Traders - @MataTraders 


• OSMIUM - @osmiumapparel 


• Redress Raleigh - @RedressRaleigh 


• Synergy Organic Clothing - @synergyclothing 

Image credit: Zeny Rosalina/Unsplash

By Meghna Tare
Eight of the 15 fastest-growing large U.S. cities and towns for the year ending July 1, 2012 were in Texas, according to population estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau. The Lone Star State also stood out in terms of the size of population growth, with five of the 10 cities and towns that added the most people over the year. Even within North Texas, the population of the 10-county Dallas-Fort Worth region is expected to grow from approximately 5.1 million in 2000 to 9.1 million in 2030, according to the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG).

Tremendous pressure is placed upon the North Texas region land and natural resources to support the massive overpopulation. To mitigate the strains that will develop as cities expand, and to maximize the potential economic opportunity that well-managed cities can offer, North Texas needs a proactive approach to addressing the challenges of urbanization.

Business as usual

"Business as usual" means additional infrastructure to support the economic growth, but with the current depletion of resources, government and private investments cannot keep pace with growing demand. For example:

• For supporting transportation infrastructure, the anticipated investment of almost $71 billion between 2007- 2030 only results in 66 percent more hours lost to travel delay in 2030 and a congestion cost of $6.6 billion (compared to $4.2 billion in 2007).


• In 2050, existing water supplies are not sufficient to meet the needs of this urban area and North Texans will need 21 percent more electricity production capacity than is currently available.


• The region is expected to lose 900,000 acres of agricultural land, as well as substantial areas of natural habitat. The amount of impervious surface in the region (buildings and pavement) will double, increasing runoff and affecting water quality in streams, increase in urban heat island effect. More than half of the new households will live in the watersheds of the region’s water supply lakes, affecting the water quality of these lakes and the drinking water they provide.

Vision for sustainable growth: Vision North Texas 2050

Vision North Texas is a private, public and academic partnership headed by the Urban Land Institute, the North Central Texas Council of Governments and the University of Texas at Arlington as charter sponsors. Created to serve as a forum for dialogue and action about the challenges of accommodating a significant amount of future growth in a way that is both sustainable and successful, it is supported by the generous contributions of numerous private and public-sector sponsors. The Vision North Texas partnership began its work by hosting a regional visioning workshop, held in April 2005 at the University of Texas at Arlington. This workshop brought together a diverse group of nearly 200 stakeholders from across the region to discuss alternatives to the pattern of urban growth currently projected for the area.

The forum operates under the guiding principles of: Development Diversity, Efficient Growth, Pedestrian Design, Housing Choice, Activity Centers, Environmental Stewardship, Quality Places, Efficient Mobility Options, Resource Efficiency, Educational Opportunity, Healthy Communities, and Implementation.

Achieving this North Texas 2050 Vision requires a shift in thinking from the business as usual. The 12 guiding principles give decision-makers additional insight into the future envisioned through this process, but they provide a very broad description of this direction. Policy recommendations that relate to particular parts of this development pattern and investment framework are presented to support the physical development plans. The North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) is leading an effort to involve cities, towns and counties in development and utilization of a watershed-based Regional Ecosystem Framework for the development of future infrastructure plans including Mobility Plans, water/wastewater plans, open space or trail system plans, the use of natural assets as "green infrastructure" and similar ecosystem-related initiatives.

Center for Metropolitan Density, University of Texas at Arlington

The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) is a comprehensive research, teaching and public service institution whose mission is the advancement of knowledge and the pursuit of excellence. UTA is a charter sponsor of Vision North Texas. For this agreement, UTA is represented by the School of Architecture through the Center for Metropolitan Density to address the challenges of sustainable development in the 21st century.

The Center for Metropolitan Density addresses the key issues in sustainability by engaging the community in research, education and consulting. The research center has the unique advantage to be a leader in North Texas or within any other university system. Established in the heart of the Dallas-Fort Worth region, at the only school of architecture in North Texas, implies that the entire metroplex can participate in and benefit from the Center’s work. Since the sprawl in this region is representative of forces acting across the globe, the knowledge gained locally can be exported across globally.

Everything is bigger in Texas. So is the challenge!

North Texas has grown successfully and dramatically over the past 40 years. But more of the same will not be successful or sustainable for the next 40 years. This conclusion – and the desire for a future that is better than this "business as usual" scenario – has been a critical in the sustainable development dialogue in North Texas. Achieving the North Texas 2050 Vision requires change from business as usual. To plan for the future, an understanding of the characteristics and demands of the people who live here and are migrating here is necessary. Thoughtful planning for the future based on these local demographic changes and preferences is one of the principles of Vision North Texas. The recommendations in the North Texas 2050 will help this region respond to these changes and better meet the needs of our communities, businesses and current and future residents for sustainable development and growth.

Image credit: Flickr/rcbodden Meghna Tare is the Director of Sustainability for University of Texas at Arlington where she has initiated and spearheaded many successful cross functional sustainability projects related to policy implementation, buildings and development, green procurement, transportation, employee engagement, waste management, GRI reporting, and carbon management. She is a TedxUTA speaker and also an MBA Candidate in Sustainable Management at the Presidio Graduate School. She has a sunny and positive attitude about life and all of its adventures. She enjoys traveling, hiking, reading, and building relationships with friends and co-workers. You can connect with her on LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/meghnatare/

By Katie Hanners

For the past year, impact measurement has been the buzzword in the social enterprise industry. No longer do we focus primarily on innovation, but instead we need an innovative solution to make a significant social impact. But for some reason, those of us in the social enterprise sector continue to get tripped up when talking about our impact. 

Intuitively, we know we do more than generate revenue, but when asked to share our success we focus on those easily measurable metrics – revenue, sales, volume, etc.  This past year, one of the social enterprises that I oversee at Catholic Charities Fort Worth – WORN -- realized we needed to change our story, to more effectively work toward our agency’s goal to end poverty in our community.

WORN provides refugee women living in the United States an opportunity to utilize the traditional skill of knitting to increase their families’ household income, thus empowering them to rise above poverty. Each product is hand-knit by refugee women out of their home, overcoming significant barriers such as language, transportation and child care. All of the profits from this project go directly back into the community through Catholic Charities Fort Worth to further equip the women with the necessary skills to become self-sufficient.

We wanted to articulate our impact to our stakeholders and start measuring the metrics that matter and what an amazing exercise this has been for WORN.

We found that by answering three simple questions, we were able to change our story. No longer do we lead with how many products were sold and how much revenue was earned, instead we emphasize our message of empowerment, self-sufficiency and the number of women whose lives were changed.

1. Why did we start this business? It is okay to list revenue, but there has to be more to it. For us, we wanted to help refugee women overcome barriers to employment, such as transportation, language, work experience and childcare. By offering a work-from-home opportunity that utilizes their life-long skill of knitting, we could provide these women with the resources needed to help their families rise above poverty.


2. What do we consider a success? Again, it is fair game to list net profit, but what is an indicator of social success? To be truly successful as a social business, we need to know that we are offering enough women meaningful employment and to understand what our knitters define as meaningful employment. In addition to offering employment, we needed to offer other life skills that helped our knitters gain self-sufficiency, such as financial education, tax preparation assistance and ongoing leadership training.


3. How do we measure our success? Once you identify your impact, you also need to measure it. Of course, this can be tricky. How do you measure someone’s ability to rise above poverty? How do you know you increased someone’s self-sufficiency? At WORN, we focused on how many women knit our products, how many hours the women knit, the average monthly earnings and the number of women who attended educational offerings. And, to make certain we were on track, we asked our knitters. On our annual survey, our knitters note that WORN changed their life, helped them pay their bills and gave them the confidence needed to contribute to their families' earnings.

I am sure our impact will continue to grow and our method for measuring will evolve; but, we will continue to focus on these three questions as we evaluate the message we share with our audience and the success of our organization in the future. I will be speaking on the topic of impact measurement at the Social Enterprise Alliance Summit in Nashville April 13 – 16. Join us!

Image Credit: Catholic Charities Fort Worth

Katie Hanners is Senior Director of Social Enterprise for Catholic Charities Fort Worth, and speaker at the upcoming Social Enterprise Alliance Summit 2014.

A law proposed by the European Commission on responsible sourcing of minerals is not strong enough to prevent European companies from effectively financing conflict or human rights abuses, campaigners maintain.

The Commission has recently announced voluntary measures that will only apply to companies importing processed and unprocessed minerals into the European market.

The proposal covers companies involved in the lucrative gold, tin, tantalum and tungsten sectors. Campaigners, including Christian Aid, Pax Global Witness and Amnesty International, are warning that the proposal – an opt-in self-certification scheme available to a limited number of companies – is likely to have minimal impact on the way that the majority of European companies source their natural resources.

Sophia Pickles from Global Witness commented: “The proposal is tantamount to the EU saying that it’s ok for companies to choose not to behave responsibly. This risks undermining the duty states have to protect human rights, which is well-established under international law.”

Legislation introduced in the US in 2010 that requires US-listed companies to do checks on minerals coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo and neighbouring countries, has already prompted changes in the way that companies do business.

Campaigners are warning that without a clear EU law that requires companies to do due diligence and report publicly on it, the European Commission will fail to bring EU companies up to the same responsible sourcing standards as their American competitors.
 

Picture credit: © Prasetyo Perdana | Dreamstime.com
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For commercial, industrial and municipal power consumers, intelligent energy storage, coupled with demand response, is emerging as an economically viable means of realizing gains in energy efficiency and paring down electric utility bills. That, in turn, may have much broader social and environmental ramifications and positive outcomes, spurring smart grid development and more widespread adoption of distributed solar, other forms of renewable energy generation and electric vehicles (EVs). And that could well lead to realizing big reductions in carbon and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as other pollutants that result from generating electricity by burning fossil fuels.

An initial group of intelligent energy storage-demand response startups is beginning to make some waves in the U.S. power industry. Nurtured by federal funds and private-sector venture capital, they are now being given a boost by state government initiatives such as California's AB 2514, “Procurement Targets for Viable and Cost-Effective Energy Storage Systems.”

Intelligent energy storage startups, such as Green Charge Networks (GCN), are also taking a page out of the residential solar playbook. Last week, independent equipment finance and asset management company TIP Capital and GCN announced the creation of the first fund of its kind: a $10 million TIE fund that will enable GCN to offer its commercial, industrial and municipal customers zero-money down financing to deploy its GreenStation smart energy storage-demand response and reduction platform.

Creative financing for power efficiency projects

Founded in 2009 with $12 million in grant funding from the Department of Energy (DOE) via the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA), Santa Clara, Calif.-based GCN has been moving quickly from bleeding to leading edge.

With more than three years of real-world data and field testing under its belt, the Santa Clara-based power, as opposed to energy, efficiency specialist is ready to scale up commercially, GCN founder and CEO Vic Shao recently told Triple Pundit in an interview. Having signed 1.5 megawatts (MW) worth of Power Efficiency Agreements (PEAs) with customers, Shao and his team have their sights set on raising that to 5 MW by year-end.

An energy efficiency financing pioneer, Bloomfield Hills, Mich.-based TIP Capital has been providing creative, cash flow-positive financing for a variety of energy efficiency projects – EV fleets, building lighting and others – across a growing range of commercial, industrial and municipal customers. Company management sees enough in GCN's early track record to commit $10 million to establish a fund dedicated to providing a zero-dollars-down smart energy storage financing option for new commercial, industrial and municipal GCN customers.

As TIP Capital's VP of National Accounts Ross Reida was quoted:

“With Green Charge Networks’ savings track record for their customers and pipeline of deals, TIP Capital is excited to be partnered with GCN. Our flexible programs will allow GCN’s customers to pay $0 down, provide energy savings above what they pay, and protect against rising demand charges.”

Added GCN CFO Brian Asparro:

“For buildings to be more power efficient and to optimize the potential for environment benefits, intelligent energy storage must be financially affordable and accessible for business owners. Commercial buildings account for 18% of US CO2 emissions. Through GCN’s GreenStation, building owners can save 15% or more on their electric bills.”

Distributed energy: Cleaner, greener and more affordable

GCN is one of a pioneering set of aspiring U.S. power industry players focused on intelligent energy storage and demand response as a means of forging a cleaner, greener U.S. energy infrastructure for this and generations to come.

GE Ventures and Spain's Iberdrola were among those investing $15 million in a Series B round of venture capital financing for a smart energy storage solutions provider, Millbrae, Calif.-based Stem, last December.

Enacting groundbreaking state mandates and incentives for renewable energy, smart grid and now energy efficiency, California and New York have been the focal points for GCN, Stem and other smart energy storage-demand response system startups up to this point. Intelligent Generation (IG), on the other hand, sees loads of promise (pardon the pun) in the U.S. heartland.

Applying its energy storage and demand management algorithms across a fleet of assets dispersed commercial customer sites making use of solar PV systems in the western end of the PJM Interconnection power market, IG is able to optimize savings and returns. With 10 MW of projects in its pipeline, management sees an abundance of opportunities just in the Chicago metropolitan area alone, much less PJM's entire service territory.

While its GreenStation platform can be an integral, value-added facet of a distributed energy platform that includes solar photovoltaic (PV) arrays and EVs, the economics of smart energy storage have improved rapidly enough to justify investing in such systems on a stand-alone basis, particularly in power markets where commercial, industrial and municipal customers are subject to high demand charges.

While TIP Capital and GCN generally project 15 percent returns on investment for customers installing the GCN GreenStation, they could be substantially higher. As GCN's Shao explained:

“The returns are absolutely incredible when you factor in all these rebates and tax credits and so forth. Some really super attractive situations have ROIs in the 1.5 to 2.5 year range, about 25 percent of our deal flow.

“The electricity bill savings realized by customers in Con Ed territory in New York can pay back their investment in GCN’s GreenStation in as little as 1.5 to 2.5 years. The story is similar in California.”

Images courtesy of Green Charge Networks

When the EPA releases a research report claiming that LEED-certified buildings don't perform as well as their non-certified counterparts, that's bound to turn heads in at least some sectors of the blogosphere so consider this mission accomplished. Last Friday, a group called the Environmental Policy Alliance (EPA, what else?) released a bombshell report claiming that LEED (Leadership in Environmental Engineering and Design) certified buildings "actually use more energy than uncertified buildings." The report has been making waves around the tubes all week long.

That's all well and good if you're only interested in culling information from their press release. However, if you are interested in whether the Environmental Policy Alliance is an organization with a solid track record in research or if it's just another one of those PR efforts masquerading as a think tank, you can follow the links to their website and your answers are right there.

The Environmental Policy Alliance LEED "report"

Here's one clue: The Environmental Policy Alliance home page includes no obvious links to their contact information, history, staff, board of directors, supporters in academic or trade organizations, or any other information about itself. Maybe we missed something (and if so, please send a link in the comment thread), but usually that information is pretty easy to find when you're dealing with a professional organization.

Another clue on the Environmental Policy Alliance home page is a line identifying the group as "a project of the Center for Organizational Research and Education," an organization for which no easily discoverable website exists. If you can find it, drop a link in the comment thread and let us know how you found it.

The big clue, though, is the group of three reports Environmental Policy Alliance touts on its home page. The new report, "LEED Exposed," is one of them. The other two are "Green Decoys" and "EPA Facts" (the latter referring to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency).

The "Green Decoys" report is the one we're most interested in. Under the headline, "Quacks like a duck: corporate shill Richard Berman Launches 'Green Decoys' attack report," our friends over at Minnesota's Bluestem Prairie reference some information dug up by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) about Mr. Berman's company, the aptly named Berman & Co.

The churning out of research reports with dubious qualifications has become something of an annual ritual for Berman & Co. Going by Bluestem's timeline, "LEED Exposed" follows shortly after the release of "Green Decoys," which launched at the end of January. Here's some background information from CREW's "Berman Exposed" website:

Through his public affairs firm, Berman & Co., Berman has fought unions, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, PETA and other watchdog groups in their efforts to raise awareness about obesity, the minimum wage, the dangers of smoking, mad cow disease, drunk driving, and other causes. Berman runs at least 23 industry-funded front groups and projects, such as the Center for Union Facts and holds 24 'positions' in those organizations.

It's well worth taking a look at the CREW list for Berman & Co.'s creative use of names for lobbying efforts that directly undercut the work of established organizations, including CSPI Scam, Sunlight Scam, Peta Kills Animals and Rotten Acorn.

"Green Decoys" is aimed squarely and unashamedly at undercutting the wildlife preservation group Trout Unlimited. That's also the general idea behind the attack on LEED standards, which have garnered broad support in the building trades as well as environmental organizations.

LEED standards have also gained a huge following among non-building corporations as part of their environmental marketing strategy, one prominent example being the Marriott hospitality company, so it looks like Berman & Co. is aiming at a wide target.

As for the LEED Exposed "report" itself, National Review Online is one of the sites that got suckered into covering it as a legitimate piece of research, under the snarky headline "Green Building Certification program LEEDs from behind."

However, reporter Jillian Kay Melchior did a creditable job of turning the spotlight around with a nice quote from U.S. Green Building Council Senior Vice President Scot Horst, who explained that the report was based on an energy metric that skews in favor of empty buildings.

What's next for Berman & Co.

Up to now Berman has been flying under the Triple Pundit radar, but with the release of three new environment-related "reports" it seems that we have some catching up to do on this company, so stay tuned.

Image courtesy of the U.S. Green Building Council

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The tubes have been buzzing over a new report announcing that 91 Illinois communities now get 100 percent of their electricity from renewable sources, but that's just the tip of a very large iceberg. According to the report, "Leading from the Middle," more than 500 other communities in the state have signed on to the same community choice program that the "clean 91" have used, and several have already begun using it to improve their electricity footprint.

Within that larger group is Chicago, which is highlighted in the report. Though it still relies heavily on natural gas, Chicago has already used community choice to get from 40 percent coal down to zero in practically the blink of an eye.

As for how that is possible, let's take a remark by Chicago's chief sustainability officer, Karen Weigert, who sums it all up in "Leading from the Middle" with this comment: "[Electricity] is a market, and when you ask a market for something, they can provide it."

Leading the Illinois clean energy revolution

The full title of the report is "Leading from the Middle: How Illinois Communities Unleashed Renewable Energy." It's a project of the Environmental Law & Policy Center, Sierra Club, World Wildlife Fund, LEAN Energy U.S., the Illinois Solar Energy Association, and George Washington University Solar Institute.

The report describes how Illinois communities are using renewable energy credits to get renewably-sourced electricity under a 2009 state law that established a Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) program in Illinois.

Basically, the new law enables local communities to combine their electricity consumers including residents, businesses, and institutions. With a unified bulk consumer, purchasing power skyrockets and communities that prioritize clean energy have enough leverage to get it.

That experience is amply illustrated by Chicago. As described in the report, Chicago officials came up with a plan to eliminate coal from the city's mix and include more wind power, specifically from Illinois wind farms.

The initial response from the energy supplier, Integrys Energy Services, basically came down to, "No," but Chicago's 900,000-strong aggregated customers provided the supplier with a strong motivation to find a way to work with the city.

The result was a 27-month contract for 5 million MWh (megawatt hours) for Chicago's residential and small business customers, with natural gas replacing coal, helped along by the inclusion of more in-state wind power.

For the record, many in the environmental community aren't fans of natural gas (fracking impacts and fugitive emissions being two key issues), but the contract does stipulate high efficiency, combined-cycle natural gas plants rather than conventional gas power plants, which are much less efficient. It's also helpful to keep in mind that getting off coal was a critical public health issue for Chicago.

Getting the most out of CCA

At only 55 pages, the "Lead from the Middle" report is well worth reading in full, but for those of you in a hurry the most interesting part is probably its recommendations for getting the greatest benefits out of a CCA program. These are:

1. Request a carve-out for local or regional clean energy projects that contribute to job creation. An alternative route is to use renewable energy credits to develop a renewable energy project and have the electricity supplier include that project in its plan.


2. Relatedly, use community bonding authority to develop local renewable energy projects. That can be accomplished by setting up a dedicated fund, bundling rooftop solar installations or combining a new project with brownfields reclamation.


3. Require "power content labeling" that enables local communities to identify what kind of power they are buying and where it is coming from.


4. Use renewable energy credits to offset "brown power," giving preference to in-state or border state projects in order to maximize regional public health and environmental benefits.

Clean energy is the new normal

"Lead from the Middle" was announced from Normal, Ill., which is one of the 100 percent clean energy towns. That led to a bit of unintentional wordplay from U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), who lent this comment to the announcement:

Normal is showing how communities can help move our country toward a more sustainable future from the local level. Along with other communities up and down Illinois, this city is cutting down both its utility bills and its environmental footprint by pursuing renewable electricity.  I hope other states take notice of the good work being done here in Normal and all across Illinois.

The new normal of clean energy can't come too soon for communities in North Carolina, West Virginia and other states continue to deal with the devastating fallout from fossil fuel dependency.

Image: Chicago at night by Mike Miley

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Researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a way to make those ubiquitous plastic shopping bags that litter both land and seascapes useful -- by converting them into diesel, natural gas and other petroleum products.

According to a ScienceDaily article, the conversion “produces significantly more energy than it requires and results in transportation fuels -- diesel, for example -- that can be blended with existing ultra-low-sulfur diesels and biodiesels.” Other products, such as natural gas, naphtha (a solvent), gasoline, waxes and lubricating oils such as engine oil and hydraulic oil also can be obtained from shopping bags, researchers said.

A report about the study was published last month in the academic journal Fuel Processing Technology. The process involves heating the bags in an oxygen-free chamber, a process called pyrolysis, said Brajendra Kumar Sharma, a senior research scientist at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center, who led the research and is quoted in the ScienceDaily article.

"You can get only 50 to 55 percent fuel from the distillation of petroleum crude oil," Sharma said. "But since this plastic is made from petroleum in the first place, we can recover almost 80 percent fuel from it through distillation."

Americans discard about 100 billion plastic shopping bags each year, according to the Worldwatch Institute, and only about 13 percent of them are recycled. The rest end up in landfills or escape to the wild, blowing across the landscape and entering waterways. Plastic bags also comprise a big chunk of the plastic debris in giant ocean garbage patches that kill wildlife and litter beaches.

Plastic bags "have been detected as far north and south as the poles," the researchers wrote. "Over a period of time, this material starts breaking into tiny pieces, and is ingested along with plankton by aquatic animals," Sharma noted. Fish, birds, ocean mammals and other creatures have been found with a lot of plastic particles in their guts. Whole shopping bags also threaten wildlife, Sharma said.

"Turtles, for example, think that the plastic grocery bags are jellyfish, and they try to eat them," he said. Other creatures become entangled in the bags.

Previous studies have used pyrolysis to convert plastic bags into crude oil. Sharma's team took the research further by “fractionating” the crude oil into different petroleum products and testing the diesel fractions to see if they complied with national standards for ultra-low-sulfur diesel and biodiesel fuels.

"A mixture of two distillate fractions, providing an equivalent of U.S. diesel #2, met all of the specifications" required of other diesel fuels in use today -- after the addition of an antioxidant, Sharma said. "This diesel mixture had an equivalent energy content, a higher cetane number [a measure of the combustion quality of diesel requiring compression ignition] and better lubricity than ultra-low-sulfur diesel."

The researchers were able to blend up to 30 percent of their plastic-derived diesel into regular diesel, "and found no compatibility problems with biodiesel," Sharma said. "It's perfect," he added. "We can just use it as a drop-in fuel in the ultra-low-sulfur diesel without the need for any changes."

It makes sense: Plastics bags are a petroleum-based product, and the bonus is that the conversion process produces significantly more energy than it requires. Thanks to science, it’s a win-win: Energy from trash is the way to go because we’re really good at producing a whole lot of trash.

Image: Plastic bags by plasticbags2 via Flickr cc

The food industry’s revenue growth is now being driven by a consumer mega-shift from fast foods to healthy convenience food. This trend has catapulted Chipotle’s stock to more than $500 per share. It is reshaping your local 7-Eleven convenience store that now offers healthier food featuring freshly made sandwiches and fruits. And this consumer mega-shift is why the sale of the Coca-Cola Co.’s iconic sugary drinks are falling. Positive evidence on the health implications of Americans adopting a better diet is now surfacing with an encouraging report that the rate of diabetes for our youth is falling.

Natural Food Expo attendance explosion

I have been attending the Natural Food Expo West for years. It used to be a niche event held in a modest facility. The 2014 Expo was one of the most heavily attended events I have ever attended across industries (rivaling the solar industry for its attendance growth over the last few years). Healthy food vendors now fill several floors of the huge Anaheim Convention Center. The line to secure an attendance badge involved hundreds of people, stretched the length of the center’s main hall and remained that way for much of the morning. Healthy food has leaped from a marketing niche to a revenue growth engine for the food service industry.

Price plus depressed income levels restrain sales growth

Market research points to 64 percent of consumers buying green products. One out of five consumers buy mostly green products. Another four out of 10 buy a mix of green and traditional products. Less than two out of every 10 consumers are “unconcerned” and buy products without regard to long-term health impacts or environmental consequences.

Price and income level are the economic headwinds confronting a massive shift toward healthier and more sustainable consumer procurement. In today’s economy, 90 percent of consumers have not seen real income growth for more than 15 years. The pressure to balance household budgets and the higher price often associated with buying healthier food is the lid that is keeping this boiling pot of consumer demand for healthier diets from rapidly disrupting the food industry.

Three keys to winning the healthy convenience customer

Consumers are very clear on the three criteria they use in deciding if a food, and food companies, align with their expectations on health and sustainability. These three criteria are a “must have” for winning customers:

1. Transparency. No secrets. No hype. Consumers want understandable and quick evidence that your company is acting in a responsible manner. Consumers are reading food product labels. They expect them to be easy to locate on a package and to be readable. They are scanning labels for any ingredient they do not understand, recognize or that sounds like it is an artificial chemical. They want to know if the food is fresh and local. They want evidence that the food was farmed or caught in a responsible manner. If your food service business fails to satisfy these consumer expectations then think “pink slime.” This could happen to you. Now envision Chipotle’s food sourcing and preparation. It is right out front for the customer to understand and align with. It is a major reason for Chipotle’s sales success.


2. Choice. Making healthy food choices are now the norm for moms and the millennial generation. Offering “moo” milk is no longer enough. Consumers seek choices that include soy, almond and rice milk. Even though a small fraction of consumers are intolerant to gluten, almost 30 percent buy gluten-free products. The millennial generation is the most diverse generation in U.S. history. They seek variety in what they eat. And they seek choice in when they eat. For example, limiting breakfast to morning hours and offering limited healthy choices is a recipe for losing sales with millennials that expect choices on what they buy and when they buy it.


3. Organic and Non-GMO. Organic food sales growth has again returned to an annual 10 percent growth rate. This sales growth rate is double that of any other food category. This trend will accelerate from the growing consumer uncertainty on the health implications tied to genetically modified organisms and as consumers come to understand that by definition an organic food is also non-GMO.

Authenticity drives food branding

The clearest marketing trend emerging from the consumer shift toward healthy convenience foods is the role authenticity now plays in defining a company’s brand alignment with customers. Customer questions on authenticity are at the core of McDonald’s stagnant revenues as it continues to price-promote food items like Big Macs while also trying to market healthier food choices. Similar mixed authenticity messaging explains why the Coca-Cola Co. is facing declining revenues even as it aggressively grows its healthier product offerings.

Stepping into this marketing opportunity are restaurants and caterers that have adopted a culture of authenticity built upon farm-to-fork menus, adoption of energy-efficient kitchens and lighting plus commitments to recycling and composting. Authenticity built upon sustainability is now the food industry’s marketing path for winning customers and growing product revenues while it also increases profit margins through green supply chain management best practices and energy efficiency.

Image credit: Bill Roth

Bill Roth is an economist and the Founder of Earth 2017. He coaches business owners and leaders on proven best practices in pricing, marketing and operations that make money and create a positive difference. His book, The Secret Green Sauce, profiles business case studies of pioneering best practices that are proven to win customers and grow product revenues. Follow him on Twitter: @earth2017

By Antony Brown

Design is a magical profession that creates our reality through a mysterious process of visualization and imagination called creativity. The design process gives shape to everything that surrounds us and, in turn, that reality shapes the way we perceive the world. Like all powerful magic, the practice of design carries with it a profound responsibility. Every object created by design, be it product, building or metropolis, has a powerful impact on us and the environment.

As soon as this latent power of design is understood, what becomes disturbing is the superficiality of most design education. Too often design professionals are educated in an environmental and spiritual vacuum. Learning is structured in an Descartian abstract reality full of style and empty of substance with little connection to the underlying reality of the world.

With the accelerating deterioration of the natural environment, it is essential to educate designers that are skilled in finding solutions that enhance our planetary ecology rather than consume it. We are fast becoming a beleaguered species whose survival is by no means secure. Environmental problems continue to burgeon and the real impact climate change is still yet to be fully felt.

Designers are not educated to solve the ecological challenges we face, yet design is a problem-solving skill that is ideally suited to proposing solutions to environmental, social and even economic challenges. But without a deeper design education that addresses these broader issues, design will continue to pursue style over substance.

How can designers be educated to design for the environment? How can they use the power of their design skills to create a world that brings balance back into our lives? Is it possible to balance the needs of the natural world with those of human populations?

Training the next generation of ecological designers

To train ecological designers, a skill far more advanced than sustainable or green design, we must develop in students a real sense of the natural environment. A professional who designs for the well-being of the environment must have a deep understanding of the systems they affect and a profound sensitivity to the natural world. How can a designer surrounded by an urban world, created for and by a single species, be expected to care or know about the environment? We may understand it in an abstract, scientific way, but we must give a foundation of knowledge about the environment that is expanded to include a spiritual awareness of what we do when we tear up land to create our houses, cities, solid waste dumps, sewage treatment plants and supermarkets.

Ecological designers need to understand the complexity and interconnectedness of the world’s systems and the utter dependence we humans have on the natural world and its services. Without them we are well on the road to extinction. We need to move to experience and engagement rather than theory and detachment. We tend to educate students from the neck up, ignoring data showing how our minds and bodies are a connected whole. We are a seamless part of the natural world, and research shows that for our health we need community, nature and a sense of purpose -- not just a way of “making a living." We need to move from abstraction to commitment and search for values deeper than a “lifestyle."

Nature has been testing systems for million of years. Complexity, diversity and co-evolving systems are the names of the game in the natural environment, yet designers are not trained to understand this model. Perhaps the first and most fundamental aspect of a design education must be to move to a holistic understanding of these design processes. This was one of the goals laid out in 1998 with the founding of the Ecosa Design Institute. The idea was that, with a different approach to education, designers can regenerate, restore and repair our environments and therefore heal the world. We must make nature and natural systems the model as we strive to make connections between what we imagine and the reality we create. We must strip away the shell that separates us physically and emotionally from the natural world. Our understanding of the environment must move from a theoretical to a visceral level that includes experience as well as data.

Design for the future

We need to develop a deep commitment to the health of the world. This may be the key measurement of a successful design -- a more empirical way of measuring the designer’s impact. Does the design encourage community, not in the abstract Facebook version, but in the everyday world? Does it reduce the health problems so prevalent in our urban societies? Does it encourage the blending of natural and human systems? Does the design increase the mental and physical health of the human and natural environment?

We need to educate designers who can not only create physical environments or products, but can also visualize a new, better kind of society. Since the failure of the modernist architectural movement, the concept of the designer or architect as social prophet is in disrepute, yet I believe it still has power. For the modernists, it was not understanding human psychology in the underlying philosophy that was wrong. We now build our own environments, and they affect us just as profoundly as the natural environment did when it evolved our ancestors. This makes designers shapers of our collective future.

Moving beyond "green"

"Green Design" has become a fashionable topic in the design arts. There is a growing sense that the designer has a key role in solving many of the acute and complex environmental problems facing our society. Design professionals have begun to address the issues through seminars and workshops purporting to give the secret to successful “green design." Plugging in solar panels and designing with recycled materials are just technological fixes, not ecological design. Designing for the environment exists as much in the heart as in the head, and here lies the problematical issue: How should these skills be taught? Will “green design” be yet another trendy exercise in planned obsolescence or a fundamental shift in our attitudes? Like all slogans based on its ability to fit on a bumper sticker, “green” or “sustainable” by their very broadness can mean whatever anyone wants them to mean.

One of the most important tasks is to regenerate a spiritual element to the design of the world. The designer must amplify our collective sensitivity to the overall design of the planet, the interaction of its systems and the delicacy of its balance. We all must examine the wisdom of those who lived in times when a true connection with the Earth existed. We, in our western scientific paradigm, have jettisoned the more subtle spiritual and philosophic systems in the mistaken belief that we can impose our will on the environment with no consequences.

Without a comprehensive approach to the design of human environments, development will continue to spread across the planet. From the design of the homes we live in to the design of the furniture and products that fill them, from the form our cities take to the packaging of products, design has a pervasive impact on all of our lives.

To accomplish change we cannot keep teaching the same traditional design curriculum. We need a new model. The Ecosa Design Institute was founded to become that model and emphasizes the role of design in solving environmental, social and economic problems created by the needs of a growing, increasingly urbanized, global population. Its curriculum develops from the underlying evolutionary processes of nature – complexity and adaptive systems. This concept allows design to evolve from the flows, pressures and impulses that constitute its surrounding environment. This new model for design education is essential if we are to achieve a new vision for our future. Otherwise we are condemning ourselves to the dystopian future of Blade Runner, or worse.

Image credit: Ecosa Institute

Antony Brown is Founder and Director of the Ecosa Design Institute, a Sponsored Program of Prescott College.