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Computing is one of the fastest growing career fields in the United States. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment in computer and information technology fields is projected to grow 13 percent from 2020 to 2030, faster than the average for all occupations. What’s more, computer science majors can earn 40 percent more than the average college graduate, providing a path to financial stability.

Unfortunately, the number of open computing-related jobs nationwide far outstrips the number of graduates with computer science degrees. Currently, there are approximately 500,000 job openings in computing across every industry and state, and these jobs are projected to outpace other jobs at twice the rate. 

Research shows that providing children access to computer science at an early age builds a path to socioeconomic mobility for those who have not had access to these opportunities. In particular, Black and Hispanic students who take computer science classes before college are seven to eight times more likely to major in computer science, demonstrating the importance of — and impetus behind — expanding access.

Reaching students, especially in historically underserved student populations, is what inspired Capital One to create the Capital One Coders program in 2014. In addition to teaching coding skills to over 22,000 students (90 percent low-to-moderate income and 78 percent underrepresented minorities) at over 150 partners including schools and nonprofits in 13 communities across the U.S., U.K. and Canada, the program’s impact stretches far beyond a computer. 

“At the core of Capital One Coders we are driven by the desire to close the equity gap in technology through creative and fun programming,” said Emmanuel Offiong, VP, CTO of Small Business Bank at Capital One. “We’re eager to continue scaling our work so all students, regardless of geography or background, can succeed in a digital economy.” 

Democratizing access to opportunity in Delaware

One of the many schools impacted by the program is Thurgood Marshall Elementary School, a diverse community institution in Newark, Delaware, a small city in the Wilmington metro. 

The school — named after the civil rights activist and first Black Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court — has run two cohorts of Capital One Coders for its students, over 75% of whom identify as Black, Asian American, Hispanic or Latino. 

“The Capital One Coders Program gives our students critical skills and insight to be creative using technology,” said Alvin Pope, assistant principal of Thurgood Marshall Elementary. “It is a springboard to prepare them to pursue career paths in the field and raise the level of representation among women and minorities in the tech market.”

At Thurgood Marshall Elementary School, Capital One Coders is offered as an after-school enrichment opportunity for students to learn coding and other in-demand skills. 

“This partnership has enriched our students' tech skills, strengthened our community and sparked interest in tech careers,” said Liles Puleo, a teacher at Thurgood Marshall. “Capital One has been so easy to work with, flexible with our needs and generous with their time and talents. The biggest difference in this program compared to others is that there is no cost for our students to participate.”

The Coders program is part of the broader Capital One Impact Initiative, an initial $200 million, multi-year commitment that strives to advance socioeconomic mobility. The Capital One Impact Initiative seeks to create a world where everyone has an equal opportunity to prosper through advocating for an inclusive society, building thriving communities and creating financial tools that enrich lives.  

“All of our students benefited from the program, but the students I am most impressed with are the students who have gained emotional benefits,” Puleo explained. “The improved confidence of some students has enabled them to improve their overall academic performance. The camaraderie that formed through this program built a sense of community for a few students who were struggling to fit in other places, [and] it provided a social time that students were really missing during the remote learning environment. It was great for me to see so many students have the opportunity to indulge their passions.”

The Coders program connects Capital One technologists with students, and together they explore mobile app development, web design, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and other emerging technologies through engaging, hands-on mentorship. Capital One employees volunteered over 140,000 hours for this program to date.

For its part, the team at Thurgood Marshall Elementary School say they’ve already begun talks with administrators to bring Coders to secondary schools in the Christina School District, which serves more than 14,000 students in Newark and its surrounding suburbs. 

“The structure of Capital One’s teams and how they work with our students is a big reason why the program is so successful,” Pope said. “It goes well beyond the teaching of skills and results in relationship building. Students respond very well to the mentor-like approach used by the instructors.”

This article series is sponsored by Capital One and produced by the TriplePundit editorial team. 

The concepts of financial literacy sound intuitive enough if you’ve been immersed in them since childhood: the importance of budgeting, the power of saving, the power of letting your money work for you through compounding, the importance of saving for that first home, and tucking away a rainy day fund to cover those sudden emergencies that can cost $500 and up.

But about half of Americans can’t afford a $1,000 emergency for a bevy of reasons, with stubborn poverty being amongst them. Growing up in a paycheck-to-paycheck existence, or finding oneself in that situation upon adulthood, often means scrambling day after day just to get by. In many communities denied the opportunities offered by the transfer of intergenerational wealth, the long-term outlook for families is often dire, made even more complicated by the fact that they often struggle with the basic fundamentals of financial literacy.

Such is the reality for many Indigenous Americans, as research over the years has demonstrated that this community has confronted a long struggle with financial literacy. To that end, one community development financial institution (CDFI) based in northern Colorado has taken the lead in developing the financial tools needed to ensure that Native populations can not only survive but build wealth now and far into the future.

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Oweesta Corporation bills itself as much more than a community bank. The CDFI, which has been operating for more than 20 years, also provides financial education, matched savings programs and public policy advocacy for Native communities across the U.S.

Through an ongoing cobranded series with Forbes, Oweesta has showcased how its community-based approach is doing its part to help build wealth for Indigenous families. To date, by working with groups such as Partners for Rural Transformation, Oweesta has certified more than 2,000 trainers in various principles of personal finance; they in turn have held trainings for more than 40,000 people. The results are paying off, with a boost in average savings, a reduction in debt and an increase in credit scores. New financial literacy skills also help families escape the cycle of poverty often exacerbated by the likes of check-cashing services and other companies that end up punishing the working poor with high fees and interest rates.

“Further inequality in access to financial support has rendered individuals in persistent poverty counties unable to weather economic shocks and access opportunities to accumulate both short- and long-term wealth reserves,” wrote Essence Smith, a project manager for Partners for Rural Transformation, and Stephanie Cote, a senior programs officer with Oweesta, who together described many of their clients’ previous experiences with the darker players within the U.S. financial sector. “Members primarily operate outside the financial mainstream in the second tier of financial services: a market saturated by predatory, aggressively-advertised, high-cost credit products."

Oweesta’s track record over the years has helped it secure partnerships and funding from financial institutions including Wells Fargo and Bank of America.

The work of Oweesta and its partners is contributing to another outcome: Making the U.S. Indigenous population more visible. In a recent  Nonprofit Quarterly  article, the CDFI’s CEO and COO, Chrystel Cornelius and Krystal Langholz, noted how this community has long been overlooked. One such example is CNN’s categorizing of Native communities as “Something Else” during its 2020 election reporting; even worse, there’s also the tragedy of thousands of missing and murdered Indigenous women whose fates have been unreported or not investigated. “Our lives, economies and land are afterthoughts — if we’re lucky — to mainstream U.S. society and philanthropy,” Cornelius and Langholz wrote.

Image credits: Oweesta Corporation via Facebook; Paul Marshall via Unsplash

The unfortunate reality for many employees is that corporate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs exist along a spectrum, from award-winning to somewhat effective to a total waste of time. It isn’t that failure is a particular vulnerability for DEI programs — by any other name, employee engagement programs have always been a tough prospect. And so, it was helpful to hear two DEI program specialists discuss the reasons why some programs fail and how to avoid the pitfalls. 

Alberto Jaen, the CEO and executive creative director for Plus305, and Nadja Scherrer, a partner, vice president and sustainability communications strategist within the firm, are in the business of helping organizations with purpose branding and creativity for sustainability in which value-based communication replaces, or at least complements, product-based communication.

The difference would be the emphasis one would place on the value of the written word, for example, as opposed to just the pens you manufacture. 

Plus305 bills itself as a social impact boutique, and one that won three awards from the American Marketing Association South Florida during the pre-COVID era: Best CSR Agency of the Year 2019, Gold for their World Aids Day MTV campaign, and Silver for their Voices for Children Foundation campaign with Peyton Witch.

Scherrer indicated several areas of vulnerability that cause DEI programs to fail, one being the discomfort that often accompanies frank discussions relative to race or gender equity, or even the discovery of our own unconscious biases. 

“DEI stirs up questions of identity,” Scherrer said. “And identity is almost entirely based on unconscious brain processes. Questions of identity are fundamental to how we communicate with each other. And there are layers of identity (intersectionality) which can make certain topics even more complex. Businesses have to create a culture where failure — getting it wrong sometimes — is welcome and accepted.” 

Also, some corporations assume that due to size or budget they just cannot afford to implement new programs. The financial deterrent might include the prohibitive cost of an employee to manage a program or giving employees time away from production to participate. The question ultimately becomes, how much is the company willing to spend to accommodate needed cultural change?

In the broadest sense, there must be a willingness to adopt a change in culture for a DEI program to be successful. Jaen and Scherrer emphasized that, starting with the CEO, there must be a willingness to dispense with old ways of doing business.

For example, for decades American business has been based on the siloed structure of individual departments with their own sets of goals. The sales department might be singularly focused on the bottom line to the exclusion of concerns from employees regarding long hours on the job that interfere with family life and even health. Or, a company may be satisfied with favorable minority representation based on department numbers and fail to recognize that there has been no advancement among certain marginalized groups above a certain job function level. 

“I believe in a more holistic approach to sustainability that trickles down into all areas to become part of the DNA and integrated into the overall mission and brand. We follow the triple bottom line (people, planet and prosperity) with a strong focus on people,” Scherrer said.

Based on their extensive experience in the field, Jaen and Scherrer have a positive outlook on the future being ripe for compromise. 

“Studies show that 80 percent of consumers want to purchase a brand that reflects their values, and points to a corporate shift of emphasis from the appreciation and value of tangible assets to intangible assets,” Jaen said. Intangible assets can be divided into two categories: intellectual property and goodwill. Tangible assets would be land, inventory, property and cash. 

According to the July 2020 Intangible Asset Market Value Study, in 1975 only 17 percent of all assets in the S&P 500 were considered intangible. As of 2020, 90 percent of all assets within the oft cited stock market index are intangible. In other words, relationships matter more than ever. 

With regard to those cultural differences, said Jaen and Scherrer: “Culture is shaped by many different layers. Wherever you find values you will likely find overlap between people who may on the surface appear ‘different.’ At the end of the day, there is commonality to be found in human rights. It isn’t about trying to make everyone agree. It is about finding a place of empathy where dialogue can take place. We find each other in consensus.”

Image credit: Keenan Beasley via Unsplash

The beverage firm AB InBev has crafted a good reputation for decarbonizing its own operations. Now the company’s Budweiser brand is demonstrating how corporate leaders can build sustainability outwards in order to affect the carbon footprint operations along their value chains.

Budweiser and its global energy collective

Last week, Budweiser announced the global launch of an initiative it calls The Energy Collective. The aim is to encourage local pubs to take advantage of renewable energy resources in their area for their electricity needs. 

Budweiser has been conducting the program on a large-scale pilot basis involving 2,000 pubs in Brazil and Ireland. Evidently, the trial was a success. The new announcement expands the field of locations to music venues and stadiums as well as bars. The goal is to have 250,000 locations in Brazil alone using renewable-sourced electricity by 2025.

Next steps include another pilot program in Colombia to be launched this year. Chile, Uruguay and the U.K. are among the countries next on Budweiser’s renewable energy to-do list. 

The idea seems simple enough. Through The Energy Collective, Budweiser will help connect locations that serve its beer with renewable energy assets. In Brazil, for example, the supplier is the startup Lemon Energia, which includes small-to-medium shops and restaurants in its portfolio as well as bars and other establishments. 

Because the cost of renewable energy is continuing to fall, many business owners can expect a lower electricity rate when they register for Lemon Energia’s app-based service, which connects them to a nearby solar power installation.

In cases where the rates for emission-free electricity are higher, Budweiser suggests that The Energy Collective can help with affordability issues, though the company did not spell out that part of the plan in detail last week.

Doing good on renewable energy, and doing better

The Energy Collective initiative is especially significant because the public relations benefit could ripple out to influence other beverage companies, which are free to tout the clean power profile of venues that serve their products. 

For Budweiser, it doesn’t matter if the venue serves other products from other companies. The point is to help decarbonize the value chain, not pick and choose among parts of that chain. 

That propels The Global Energy Collective a step up from other corporate sustainability initiatives, which tend to be brand-centric. 

In that regard, The Energy Collective is similar to the steps GM CEO Mary Barra has taken to ensure that electric vehicles have access to charging stations and renewable energy, too. GM’s initiatives in those areas are aimed at availability across the driving public. They are not exclusive to those who drive GM vehicles.

The agrivoltaics angle

Another interesting angle has to do with regenerative farming, a set of agricultural practices that prioritize soil health and water conservation. Researchers are finding that arrays of solar panels can assist with both of those goals, by creating cool microclimates with partial shade under the solar panels. 

As a result, the field of agrivoltaics has begun to gather steam. Instead of conventional solar arrays that replace farmland, agrivoltaic solar panels are raised to permit grazing, pollinator habitats and other agricultural uses to continue in and around the array.

To the extent that The Energy Collective helps stimulate the demand for new local solar arrays in rural areas, the regenerative farming trend could benefit local farmers.

AB InBev’s subsidiary, Anheuser-Busch, has already established a foothold in regenerative farming through a partnership with the company Indigo Ag, so it’s possible that solar energy could become intersect with The Energy Collective portfolio at some point.

Showcasing decarbonization for non-drinkers

Budweiser also notes that The Energy Collective has become a conversation starter that helps to stimulate barroom conversations about sustainability.

Anhueser-Busch is also bringing non-drinkers into the conversation by promoting its use of zero emission trucks. The company has been building on its partnership with the electric bus and truck company BYD, and it has just started showcasing fuel cell electric trucks through the startup Nikola 

Anheuser-Busch issued a pledge for 800 fuel cell trucks shortly after Nikola launched in 2018. After a rocky start, Nikola seems to have found its footing. The company delivered two of its zero emission trucks to Budweiser earlier this year for a three-month pilot run in California.

It’s easy for Tractor Supply Co. to make it onto anyone’s weekly or monthly errands list. Just ask many of the retailer’s customers, as the $12.7 billion company has continued to grow spectacularly in recent years (almost 20 percent from 2020 to 2021) at a time when other retailers have struggled. What started as a mail-order tractor parts business 84 years ago is now a chain with more than 2,000 stores across 49 U.S. states. The company bills itself as a “rural lifestyle retailer,” and that’s no stretch: A quick glance across one of its locations, often on the outskirts of towns and cities, shows its appeal to small farmers.

Another way to describe Tractor Supply is as a kinder and gentler Home Depot or Lowe’s, only with an apparel and footwear department along with pet and animal supplies — and without the massive space and endless aisles for building materials and home decor found at the larger home improvement retailers. For shoppers, perusing around one of these stores is also quite manageable; the average size of a Tractor Supply Store is about 15,500 square feet versus a Home Depot location, which typically has well over 100,000 square feet.

Tractor Supply and its increased focus on ESG

Any organization with the level of reach of Tractor Supply certainly has its environmental and social impacts — ones that the company’s leadership says it isn’t shying away from. Under the leadership of the company’s CEO, Hal Lawton, Tractor Supply has embarked on a plan to reduce its carbon footprint by 50 percent by the end of this decade, while slashing its water footprint by 25 percent by 2025.

“We believe we have a responsibility to live up to and maintain sustainability in all areas–from the way we treat our 46,000 team members to the way we tread lightly on the land,” Lawton wrote in Tractor Supply’s most recent sustainability report.

The company is also undertaking efforts to show that it’s a responsible employer. This year, Tractor Supply kicked off a five-year plan to boost the ranks of people of color at the manager level above by 50 percent; pledged a 35 percent increase in spend on diverse suppliers; and promised to ramp up its current spending on various programs, including those focused on education, by 30 percent.

Given that Tractor Supply has long had a focus on smaller, rural communities, it only makes sense that the company would launch a foundation with a mission to assist such communities in need. Hence the founding of the Tractor Supply Company Foundation in 2020. “There was an immediate need to support family farms. For instance, as local truck farmers sales to restaurants evaporated at the beginning of the pandemic, small family operations were significantly impacted,” said Mary Winn Pilkington, the president of the Tractor Supply Foundation and the company’s senior vice president of investor relations and public relations. “We wanted to get involved and provide some stability for these family farmers, because they bring so much to our community and are great neighbors to us.”

Stepping up for overlooked small farmers

Part of the foundation’s mission is its work with the American Farmland Trust (AFT), a nonprofit that strives to improve the viability of small farms, protect endangered farmland and supports farmers who seek a transition for their land to regenerative agriculture. “We loved that American Farmland Trust’s mission speaks for the land — and for the people who grow our food,” Pilkington added, “so we knew this was the perfect kind of investment partner for the Tractor Supply Company Foundation.”

To that end, the Tractor Supply Foundation has given $1.8 million during the past two years to AFT and other organizations it supports.

One of the AFT’s programs in which the company’s foundation has shown much interest in advancing is the Brighter Future Fund. This AFT program, which originally started with seed money from Tillamook, offers direct support in the form of grants to small farmers. As with the AFT’s wider mission, the Fund’s grants seek to improve farms’ viability, protect farmland and encourage the adoption of more regenerative agricultural practices. But for the most recent phase of grant applications, AFT sought out women farmers, as well as those tilling the land who identify as Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) and LGBTQ.

Earlier this month, AFT announced that more than 200 of these farmers received individual grants of up to $5,000. Among the recipients were Dani Fegan, an Ojibwe-Anishinaabe woman and the owner-operator of Three Dogs Seed Farm in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. Fegan’s award provided her the funds she needed to install a groundwater well, along with a solar-powered pump to aid in her farm’s irrigation. “This is incredible and will provide our farm with security that we currently don’t have, increased resilience in the face of climate change and opportunities that just were not reasonably available to us before,” Fegan said in an emailed statement to 3p.

Sharon Autry, a vegetable farmer who runs Herdsman House Farm in Kansas, said she would use her grant money for projects including irrigation, wash stations, raised beds and a greenhouse. “It really will go a long way in pushing my farm forward and increasing my ability to grow and distribute more local food,” Autry said.

The challenges ahead for farmers across the U.S.

Partnerships such as those linking Tractor Supply and AFT are crucial as small farmers across the board struggle to keep working on their land. From a peak of 6.8 million farms in 1935, the number of farms in the U.S. plunged sharply through the early 1970s, and today is on a slower yet steady decline. In 2007, the number of U.S. farms totaled 2.2 million; as of 2020 the number was just over above 2 million. Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) suggest that although 89 percent of U.S. farms are considered “small,” their gross cash farm income averages only about $350,000. That may sound like a lofty number, but again, that’s revenue, not profit. A 2015 USDA study found the average profit margin for a farm was only 4.7 percent, and the smaller the farm, the lower the profit margin. Most small farmers in the U.S., in fact, rely on other sources for their household income.

For Black farmers, many of whom witness the outright robbing of their land over the past 100 years while the USDA often looked the other direction — or even participated in such unfair practices — the situation is even more dire when compared to all farmers, whether you look at the numbers that crunch the average size of their farms, net income or amount of government payments. “Taken together, the inability of Black Americans to fully participate in the land market has resulted in a lost opportunity for generational wealth creation,” concluded the consultancy McKinsey in a November 2021 report.

Women farmers also face their own set of challenges. The number of women farmers in the U.S. has surged in recent years, to the point that female-led farms outnumbered those run by men by 2017. The USDA also found that at least 56 percent of the farms across the country has at least one woman who is a decision-maker. But the macro numbers don’t tell the whole story, as women in general operate smaller farms that make less money. “In a highly consolidated industry — in which large corporate firms dominate more than half of the country's production — women tend to own smaller farms, thus yielding smaller profits,” wrote Emily Moon for Pacific Standard in 2019. Moon cited USDA data that found that a third of women-run farms made less that $1,000 a year, with the majority making less than $10,000; only 16 percent of such farms generated more than $50,000 in profits. The passion more women hold to work on land is undeniable, but whether they can continue to farm in the long run is an open question for many female farmers.

It’s farmers like these mentioned above make up an important part of Tractor Supply’s consumer base, so it’s only natural that the company and its foundation are determined to see that such small farmers survive, especially given the bevy of challenges they faced since COVID-19 started to wreak havoc two years ago.

“While they’re not known as the kind of people to complain, one could say small farmers and ranchers were among some of the hardest hit by the challenges brought on by the pandemic given that the nature of their business is very volatile, even in the best of times,” Pilkington explained. “It’s hard work, and that’s something our customers take pride in. They are resilient with very inspiring stories.”

This commitment from Tractor Supply will be ongoing, inferred Pilkington. “Most farms are small family farms, and they operate almost half of U.S. farmland, while generating just over 20 percent of production. We all need to do what we can to protect this critical part of our agricultural landscape,” she said.

Image credits via Leon Kaye

In the U.S., April commemorates Fair Housing Month, the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination and the now-global Earth Day. This year, those events find a fitting relationship in a sobering new study published in the journal Nature that identifies a strong correlation between structural racism and the siting of active and inactive oil and gas wells. The raw numbers on redlined neighborhoods date back nearly a century, but the human, societal and financial costs continue to this day.

David J.X. Gonzalez and other researchers from three major universities drilled down through data from the Great Depression era. They discovered that redlined neighborhoods in the U.S. comprising racially and economically marginalized populations had twice the density of oil and gas wells in and near them as those with predominantly white, more affluent residents.

The study does not assume causation in its findings. However, the connection between the increased environmental hazards and minority-majority communities is clearer than the air.

The study examined 33 cities in 13 states that had neighborhoods graded by a federal agency for lending risk (A for “best” to D for “hazardous”), and at least 10 wells drilled or operated within 100 meters of those graded areas. It then focused on 17 of those cities for which 1940 U.S. Census information was available.

Here’s where that historic data tells a disturbing tale.

Yes, redlining is systemic racism

The term “redlining” comes from the historic maps used by the study, which were developed by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), a three-year New Deal program enacted in 1933 to provide mortgage refinancing to prevent non-farm home foreclosures. The maps arose from HOLC’s City Survey project, conducted from 1935 through 1940. Color-coding the neighborhoods, HOLC shaded and outlined the D-graded areas in red.

Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Indigenous peoples, Asians and other ethnicities — sometimes  described in the HOLC records as “subversive racial elements” — populated many of those redlined areas then and often do so to this day. HOLC didn’t develop the maps until after it issued the bulk of its lending, so historians and other experts differ in their assessments of whether HOLC applied racial factors in making loans.

Discriminatory practices in the private sector — real estate, insurance and lending — took place long before the redlining moniker surfaced and before the federal government’s involvement in housing. Those industries supplied much of the data captured in the City Survey project. Therefore, it’s possible HOLC’s maps acted more as a reflection of prevailing racist practices than as a catalyst for them. The maps likely became a tool for subsequent steps in lending package management, including foreclosure resale valuations.

Regardless of HOLC’s guilt or innocence along these lines, its maps bear witness to the adverse race-based attitudes and practices of that time period. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA), on the other hand, created in 1934 to insure new mortgage financing, wrote racially overt guidelines. Its 1939 underwriting manual stated that “if a neighborhood is to retain stability, it is necessary that properties shall continue to be occupied by the same social and racial classes.” Also, the FHA destroyed its own maps in response to a 1969 civil right lawsuit.

The legacy of redlined neighborhoods: persistent damage to wealth and health

The 1968 Fair Housing Act did improve opportunities for homeownership — the single biggest generational wealth builder in the U.S. — with rates for Black home ownership increasing over the next decade. But over time, the rate of Black homeownership has fallen back to its 1970 level as redlining continued, racially restrictive real estate covenant effects persisted, gentrification grew and recessions hit. Appraisal bias still is apparent, too.

A home further loses value by its “location, location, location” in a redlined neighborhood near an environmental hazard. Individuals and families lose out, and so do public schools when property values drop or remain low. In circular fashion, poorly performing schools negatively impact property values. Tax bases suffer, so rates increase for residential and commercial taxpayers.

Studies link chemicals and pollution to air, water and soil from oil and gas well proximity to various diseases and outcomes, including respiratory illnesses, cancer, cardiovascular diseases and premature births. Increased healthcare costs then spill over into other areas of the economy: Sick employees can’t work, and families have less disposable income for many consumer goods.

Structural racism and environmental injustice is a toxic combination for everyone.

The Gonzalez et al study focuses on the numbers, the correlation of the oil and gas well sites to redlined neighborhoods. However, through its choice of data source — the HOLC maps and descriptions — it triggers an examination of just how tightly racism is woven into the social and economic fabric of the U.S.

It makes one wonder how much more prosperous the country could have been without these “correlations.”

Image credit: Mapping Inequality via National Archives

ESG (environmental, social and governance) investing has gained momentum over the past decade, often with an extended focus on the environmental component. Investors’ rising expectations that companies uphold ESG criteria, along with new disclosure requirements, are together encouraging business leaders to make decisions and consider both people and the planet within their overall strategy. During this process, there is a growing agreement on the need for developing the social and governance components of ESG investing, according to the CEO of Lebec Consulting, Alix Lebec.

Social and governance issues still largely overlooked in ESG investing

“Investment decisions should be driven by proactive value creation, innovation and intentionality to support both people and planet. These principles, alongside durable profitability, are what we call impact investing,” Lebec told TriplePundit in an email.

Social and governance issues play a critical role in helping investors and business leaders generate long-term profits and manage risk, yet these areas are not invested in substantially. For example, funds with elements of low-carbon technologies, fossil fuel-free energy and an emphasis on environment stewardship have a higher inflow than funds that have more of a focus on issues such as community development, gender equality, and racial and ethnic diversity.

When identifying metrics and measuring impact, environmental funds and products are easily more quantifiable than social- and governance- related financial products. Measuring the principles of labor relations, diversity and inclusion, and corporate culture is complex due to their definitions and criterion. However, ESG issues are intertwined. For example, climate change-induced events disproportionately affect impoverished communities and exacerbate existing educational, gender and health inequalities. And as ESG is linked to higher ROI and reduction in risk, all three components create equal value which investors mustn’t ignore.

ESG issues are resolved concurrently

Regarding social and governance issues, Lebec explained to 3p the connection between equity and inclusion and ESG investing in relation to the United Nationals Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

"While some of these factors — for example, SDG 5 [Gender Equality] and SDG 10 [Reduced Inequalities] — are perfectly clear, the reality is that equity and inclusion policies have trickle-down effects which touch every single one of these factors. And these are all very much a part of ESG,” Lebec said.

More specifically, Lebec explained that such SDGs goals that are centered around alleviating poverty or achieving gender equality cannot be achieved without achieving Clean Water and Sanitation (SDG 6). And this is because in emerging global markets, women and girls are often reminded about how they are marginalized, such as when they travel on foot to collect water from distant areas. According to Lebec, since millions of people do not have access to this necessary resource, a gender equality gap is created instantaneously that hinders girls from the educational system and workforce.

When taking into account this connection, investors need an all-encompassing view of how the companies they support are serving society. And then, conscious decisions can be made.

How to invest consciously

Growing evidence suggests that a majority of corporate executive leadership is on board to focus on ESG. According to a recent survey of chief executives, coming after increased political intervention in markets, the second largest risk to future growth strategies is the acceleration of climate change paired with the mounting pressure to enact a sustainability plan.

Lebec explained to 3p a few strategies for how brands and companies can invest authentically to create impact. The first is being investing in solutions that are both reducing climate change impact and granting access to essentials to new consumers and impoverished communities.

Secondly, Lebec explained that companies should become familiar with the financial tools and models used by practitioners to solve current issues. This would pan out as partnerships with investment managers and nonprofit organizations. In addition to this, companies must redefine corporate sustainability successes through methods which amalgamate philanthropy, impact investing, ESG and financial tools. Lastly, Lebec advocated for applying and building a "portfolio approach," as this will help brands and companies diversify risk and invest abundantly.

Integrating ethical and social values in investment portfolios is a win-win for investors and all stakeholders. And maximizing positive impact and profitability will come from further defining ESG investing as a decision that also values diversity, equity, and inclusion factors.

Image credit: Kaique Rocha via Pexels

A new food delivery service launched on Earth Day with a mission to satisfy not just consumers’ bellies, but their consciences as well. The GreenChoice marketplace seeks to engage and empower those shoppers looking for more nutritious and environmentally responsible products, but who may not necessarily have the time or knowledge to decipher labels and research production methods, while also keeping an eye out for allergens.

Founder Galen Karlan-Mason described his motivation for creating GreenChoice, which originally started as an app that rated products on nutrition and climate for in-store shopping, as a desire to carry the values he was raised with into adulthood. He recalls grocery shopping in graduate school and struggling to find food that was healthy, environmentally sustainable and also met his dietary needs when it came to food allergens. Like many shoppers, he found himself overwhelmed with options while at the same time wondering what he could actually eat.

The market appears to be ripe for such an endeavor. Thirty percent of allergen avoidant shoppers are regularly on the hunt for new products. And according to the International Food Information Council, more than 50 percent of buyers are interested in food and drink that has been produced by environmentally responsible means—but most don’t know where to start when it comes to all of the different claims.

GreenChoice aims to fill that void. Karlan-Mason told TriplePundit that he wants to focus on supporting the shopper who is flirting with a more environmentally friendly diet but who may need a little extra prodding to become more conscious. “Food is at the center of so many of the biggest challenges we face as a society,” he explained, citing agriculture as the number one cause of deforestation and poor food choices as the top contributor to death from disease.

Since what we eat is the single determining factor when it comes to our health and the health of our planet, the GreenChoice marketplace was developed to simplify the process of selecting healthy and sustainable foods. There are roughly 10,000 natural and organic products available. When they begin, each shopper is able to identify the allergens that they need to avoid from the start so that they are never shown items that they cannot consume. From there, products can be filtered and sorted by categories and special diets like Paleo, organic, no-added-sugar or other ingredient preferences.

Each product is assigned a GreenScore to further aid the consumer in their decision-making. The score is weighted on nutrition, amount of processing, food safety and environmental impact so that the buyer can decide what matters most to them and determine whether it meets their values or not. Alternative products are also shown to help nudge the buyer towards the best choice for them.

For now, all of the products listed on GreenChoice are shelf-stable, but Karlan-Mason aims to expand into frozen goods next. It’s all about where there is the most benefit to be had. Some things, like meats and produce, have relatively simple labeling that the consumer can easily decide from. Either it is organic, or it is not. Either it is local, or it is not. When it comes to shelf-stable and frozen foods, things are much more complicated.  Of course, purchasing isn’t the only way to benefit from the website; there is also a database where consumers can learn about products before they buy them at the grocery store.

For the consumer specifically concerned about their carbon footprint, there is an added benefit to ordering from the website. Carbon offsets are purchased based on the estimated carbon footprint of each order. The estimated carbon footprint can be tracked in the cart and the offsets can be tracked in the order history.

GreenChoice is available in all of the 48 contiguous United States, and with its warehouses in Indiana and Illinois, orders are delivered between two and four days. All orders are sent UPS ground to keep the carbon footprint as low as possible. At present, shipping materials consist of curbside recyclable cardboard and air pillows made from recycled plastic.

Food allergies are on the increase—each year since 1997 has seen a four percent increase in the number of children with one or more. It’s no wonder Americans spend roughly $19 billion per year avoiding allergens. As more and more shoppers turn to grocery delivery services for convenience, GreenChoice offers an alternative that can help them include their environmental values in their shopping list.

Image credit: Atoms via Unsplash

Airplanes, livestock, monster trucks — we know these carry a significant carbon footprint. Digital activities, on the other hand, sometimes go under the radar. Consider, for example, the carbon contribution of searching the web. All the data held by websites is stored on servers, and that takes energy. Data centers, rooms filled to the ceiling — sometimes the size of many football fields — with row upon row of servers, account for about one percent of global electricity use, according to the International Energy Agency's (IEA) 2021 tracking report.

Energy use by data centers has remained steady since at least 2010, according to the IEA's report, even though internet traffic has taken an exponential climb. The organization attributes the consistency partly to the continual improvements in energy efficiency that data center technologies have experienced. But the IEA also warns that global internet traffic continues to grow. Between 2017 and 2020, traffic more than doubled, and it could double again by 2023, the report states. At a certain point, it makes sense to temper the web’s demand for energy. So, what’s needed in the quest for a more sustainable web?

The sustainable web is just starting out…

The field of sustainable web design is still nascent, but there have been groups creating energy-efficient sites and processes. Recently, a new coalition of American and European businesses and non-governmental organizations has come together with a focus on the internet’s environmental impact. The group includes organizations such as The Green Web Foundation, which has a vision for a fossil-free internet by 2030, and businesses like EcoPing, which boasts an array of tools to diminish website carbon emissions.

The collaboration has resulted in a platform, SustainableWebDesign.org, where the creators of web technology can find methods, recommendations and tools to help them create sustainable products and services. The basis of all the coalition offers is the Sustainable Web Manifesto, which comprises six principles that touch on environment impact, but also extend to social impact — as in truly embracing the triple bottom line. These principles include the use of clean energy, efficiency in resource use, as well as accessibility to all users and non-exploitative design.

…and it needs your help

As far as why an organization or company would align itself with the Sustainable Web Manifesto, the contributors put forth a convincing argument about the urgency of climate change. They write: “The planet is experiencing unprecedented climate change and the Internet is both part of the problem and the solution. From websites to cryptocurrencies, the Internet consumes large amounts of electricity in data centers, telecoms networks, and end user devices. If the Internet was a country, it would be the 7th largest polluter in the world and is expected to grow considerably by 2030.”

Climate impacts are a very practical consideration, as Tim Frick, president and founder of Mightybytes — one of the lead organizations of the new coalition — told TriplePundit in an email interview: “…the climate crisis is here now. It is the existential crisis of our time. It impacts every business, nonprofit, government agency, and, most importantly, every individual in the world, especially our most vulnerable communities.”

Frick adds that limiting greenhouse gas emissions to the extent needed to achieve the Paris Agreement goals is a challenge. “While that may seem daunting, progress starts with everyone taking one small step. This is ours,” he said.

Some small steps to take on the road to a cleaner web

Where can someone like a web developer start? Well, according to Frick, who has been working toward this progressive vision for the web since 2011, those involved in creating websites should consider it a learning journey. The coalition’s online hub lists strategies for every step of the web development process, from design and development to “client and project ethos.” Along the way, those serious about decarbonizing websites will learn how to estimate carbon emissions, make needed adjustments for efficiency and performance, use green web hosts and stay up-to-date via newsletters and other publications. The resources are all compiled on the new website — ready to be used.

One of the coalition’s biggest projects has been developing a method for calculating digital emissions and incorporating it into existing tools. Standardization has been key. “Our collective goal is to create resources that provide consistent emissions estimates,” Tom Greenwood, managing director of Wholegrain Digital, a London-based Certified B Corp, said in a press statement. “When you get different results from digital carbon calculation tools essentially meant to do the same thing, it sends a confusing message. This could result in people underestimating emissions, or worse, doing nothing at all."

The group has recently met with the standards-creating World Wide Web Consortium to create guidelines similar to those established for the Web Accessibility Initiative, which has found successful buy-in. Last year, for example, Colorado passed a law requiring websites from state and local public entities to meet accessibility standards. As it builds digital sustainability standards, the coalition is actively looking for additional collaborators. Interested parties can reach out on the contact form of the Sustainable Web Design site.

Image credit: Israel Palacio via Unsplash