Search

The ocean plastic pollution crisis and the limits of plastic recycling ramped up to a new level in recent days, when a massive cargo ship burned and sank off the coast of Sri Lanka. It spilled tons of plastic pellets (as shown above) and toxic chemicals into the ocean, fouling local coastlines.

The disaster underscores the limits of recycling as a solution to the ocean plastic pollution problem. Whether plastic is recycled or not, transportation risks and hazards in the plastic industry will continue to increase alongside the growth of overseas shipping and the impacts of climate change.

Next-generation plastic recycling and the plastic crisis

To be clear, improving the global recycling rate is an essential element in a holistic solution to the ocean plastic crisis. Aside from derelict nets and other fishing gear, much of the plastic waste floating in the ocean consists of thrown-away bottles and other single-use plastic items that could be recycled.

Plastic recycling is supposed to rest on a value chain that motivates plastic users to manage their waste effectively. However, plastic has played a key role in the global economy for more than 50 years, and the recycling idea has yet to catch on. Only a small fraction is recycled.

Part of the difficulty lies in aggregating and cleaning used plastic items. In addition, recycling was not engineered into the chemistry of plastics at the onset, so recycling technology has to play catch-up. Typical recycling systems consist of melting or shredding, which yield a material that does not possess the superior qualities of virgin plastics. It still has some uses, but its application is mainly limited to downcycled materials.

Part of the solution involves reducing unnecessary plastic packaging, and progress is occurring in that area.

A more permanent solution involves developing new plastics that are tailor made to yield a high-quality result when recycled.

Here in the U.S., researchers at the Energy Department’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have been fine tuning a new, “infinitely recyclable plastic” called PDK for poly(diketoenamine). PDK can be recycled into high quality products that perform just as well as virgin plastic. In addition, the researchers have produced a study demonstrating that the PDK recycling process is less energy-intensive than conventional plastic recycling.

Another approach is to focus on bio-based materials that can be reclaimed as compost. They can also biodegrade harmlessly if lost or disposed improperly.

The conventional bio-based pathway could lead to conflicts over food and land use, so researchers are beginning to focus on agricultural waste and other non-food alternatives. In Canada, for example, researchers are deploying fish oil extracted from aquaculture waste to develop a bio-based form of polyurethane.

Kicking plastic recycling into high gear

Transitioning the global market to new, more sustainable plastics will take years. In the meantime, improving the technology for plastic recycling  could make a significant difference.

The emerging approach is to tackle recycling from the perspective of decomposition and reconstruction, rather than mechanical processes like shredding or melting.

That can be accomplished through biological means, as researchers have discovered that certain microbes and other creatures can digest plastic.

Chemical recycling is another area of interest. The process involves breaking waste plastic down into basic chemical building blocks, which can be reformed to yield new products. The newly reformed plastic can match, and potentially beat, virgin plastic on quality and performance.

The chemical recycling approach is rapidly catching on. Earlier this year, for example, Dow Chemicals formed a partnership with the company Mura Technology to scale up Mura’s HydroPRS chemistry-based plastic recycling system. As part of the venture, Dow will be the leading off taker for recycled plastics produced at Mura’s new U.K. plant.

Long distance shipping and plastic pollution

Another area of interest is the waste-to-energy field. While not ideal from a carbon emissions standpoint, a new generation of waste-to-energy technology is improving the process and shrinking emissions to a minimum.

Together, all of these pathways can help reduce the amount of mismanaged waste plastic that enters the sea from communities on land. However, as the Sri Lanka disaster demonstrates, waste mismanagement on shore is only one contributor to ocean pollution. The persistent growth of long distance shipping has already been linked to an increase in accidents resulting in lost cargo, and that will continue to offset gains achieved by improving the global recycling rate.

As measured by the number of containers lost at sea, shipping industry observers have reported a recent spike in cargo ship accidents that is concurrent with increases in traffic, speed and size, as well as an increase in severe and unpredictable weather related to climate change.

Cargo ship disasters that impact coastlines are all but certain to generate global news, but many take place far from the media spotlight. Despite the increase in accidents, the issue of lost cargo has received little ongoing media attention.

As one indicator of the lack of attention, the Sri Lanka disaster dominated the general news media for days when the ship lost its entire load of 1,486 containers, and yet it is hundreds of containers short of setting a record for losses of that kind. The worst cargo disaster in maritime history occurred just a few months earlier, last December, when the cargo ship ONE Apus lost at least 1,816 containers at sea in a heavy storm 1,600 northwest of Hawaii, far from coastal areas. The incident was covered in the trade press, but it barely flickered on general news channels, even though dozens of the lost containers carried items considered dangerous, including fireworks, batteries and liquid ethanol. 

The loss could have been worse. ONE Apus managed to limp to the Port of Los Angeles with approximately 1,000 more containers still on board, many of which were damaged.

Getting to the root of ocean plastic pollution

Whether or not plastic is shipped to or from a recycling facility, long distance shipping adds an element of risk and uncertainty to the fight against ocean plastic pollution.

The reusable trend could help reduce the volume of plastic feedstocks and plastic items shipped overseas if it also creates local systems that support reuse. The startup Loop, for example, has developed a model that relies on local pickup, processing and delivery of products in reusable containers.

The U.S. Department of Energy has also begun to focus more attention on lower-carbon technologies and systems that reduce the use of plastic. The effort also aims to make local waste systems more economical to operate domestically. That will also help contribute to a reduced need for overseas shipping while creating new local jobs.

Last month the agency unveiled a new $14 million round of funding for innovative solutions that focus on single-use plastics.

“Single-use plastics are the largest subset of plastics found in landfills and among the most challenging to recycle,” the agency explained. “Plastic production accounts for more than 3 percent of total U.S. energy consumption and uses roughly the same amount of oil around the world as the aviation industry. Yet, less than 10 percent of plastics are currently recycled, most of which are ‘downcycled,’ or repurposed into low-value products.”

The new round of funding builds on other recent initiatives such as the public-private REMADE (Reducing Embodied energy And Decreasing Emissions) Institute. The endeavor was launched in 2017 with the goal of reworking the entire plastics industry from the bottom up.

That is the kind of holistic, system-wide approach needed to achieve real progress in reducing ocean plastic pollution.

However, technology cannot be expected to do all the heavy lifting. The global economy slipped into a single-use, throwaway culture years ago. Getting billions of people to change their habits is a difficult undertaking, but a necessary one.

Image credits: Sören Funk/Unsplash

From fishermen to fish to reefs, the theme of this year’s United Nations World Oceans Day, “Life and Livelihoods,” connects to just about every aspect of ocean health and coastal economies. After all, ocean health affects industries and flood resilience our ability to sequester carbon. But how do we secure ocean health? A global community of scientists agree that the foolproof way to support ecosystems and their services is to conserve them.

The case for accelerating protection for oceans worldwide

Research backs them up. A study published earlier this year in the journal Nature outlines three main benefits to protecting ocean areas: preserving biodiversity, increasing the yield of fisheries and storing marine carbon. Global coordination, as opposed to independent national action, authors say, has the potential to double the effectiveness of conservation efforts. The body of research backing up the economic benefits of marine protected areas (MPAs) is broad. One meta-analysis found a 670 percent increase in the biomass of whole fish assemblages in no-take marine reserves compared to unprotected areas outside their boundaries.

Dramatic evidence like this spurred the UN Convention on Biological Diversity to recommend a global target of 2030 for global protection of 30 percent of the planet — also called 30x30 — last year. Today, just about 7 percent of the globe’s oceans are protected — with less than three percent highly protected. Still, more than 70 nations have shown support for 30x30.

Enric Sala, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and co-author of the Nature study, responded in a statement:

“If adopted, this target could achieve what our children have been calling on governments to do — listen to the science. If we are to stay below 1.5°C, prevent the extinction of one million species and the collapse of our life support system, we need to protect our intact wilderness, and ensure at least 30% of our land and oceans are protected by 2030. But this is the floor, not the ceiling. Now every government on earth must get behind this bold mission and drive through a global agreement for nature this year.”

Where does the United States fit into 30x30?

While a few states have made 30x30 commitments of their own, the U.S. as a whole has only recently come on board. Early into his term, President Joe Biden issued an executive order that mandates conserving at least 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030.

Early in May, agencies such as the Department of Interior and the Department of Agriculture published Conserving and Restoring America the Beautiful 2021, which outlines the nation’s approach to conservation — focusing, in part, on collaboration, inclusion and local efforts, and recognizing the need to establish a shared understanding of what counts as conserved. Agencies plan to create an American Conservation and Stewardship Atlas, establishing baseline information on the lands and waters currently being conserved and restored.

Currently, about 26 percent of U.S. waters are protected by the MPA designation, but that doesn’t mean the work is done. Last year, for example, the Trump administration opened the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument to commercial fishing — a move scientists like Sala emphasize hurts the fishing industry in the long-run. Biden has said he will review Trump’s decision.

Perhaps a more relevant figure to the establishment of resilient oceans is 3 percent — the proportion of highly protected U.S. waters that prohibit any extraction of resources. Most of these areas lie within two large Pacific Ocean MPAs — Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument and Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. Outside of those two sites, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) puts the amount of U.S. waters that are highly protected at 0.1 percent.

Designating MPAs isn’t the be-all and end-all

The road to 30 percent protected waters is more complicated than labeling additional marine areas as protected. NOAA’s MPA Center details a broader sense of ocean conservation that puts the focus on quality of conservation and management, as well as connectedness to context, protected or unprotected, with beneficial and harmful effects spilling over.

Given the complexity of managing MPAs, the United States could designate 30 percent of U.S. waters as protected and still miss the mark when it comes to the longevity of marine-related life and livelihoods.

Some of the opportunities NOAA identifies for improving management effectiveness are standardizing assessment tools; synthesizing data about accomplishments, gaps and challenges across MPAs; considering human uses and values of waters; accounting for climate resiliency and adaptation; and improving public communication about MPA management.

Yet again, coordination of efforts is the focus, a principle Sala’s recent results support. For the U.S., this must take place amongst states, as well as with other nations. Even after World Oceans Day 2021 passes us by, conservation leaders should find it hard to forget this need for unity. Our oceans are connected, as are our pollution and climate challenges.

Image credit: Matt Hardy/Unsplash

Women CEOs are taking over the Fortune 500. 

Okay, let's not get carried away. Only 8.1 percent of the companies on the latest Fortune 500 list are run by women, but that's still the highest percentage ever seen. A record 41 companies in the 2021 Fortune 500 are headed by women CEOs. Six are women of color, and for the first time ever, two Black women are running Fortune 500 companies this year. 

These milestones are modest, but they're significant. "The 67-year-old list has long been seen as a microcosm of U.S. business at large. For that reason, the number of female chief executives on the ranking is a closely watched statistic among those who track gender diversity in boardrooms and C-suites across the country," Fortune editor Emma Hinchliffe observed. 

In 2018, the number of women executives in the Fortune 500 had dropped by 25 percent from the year before, leaving only 25 women — and only two women of color — at the helm of the largest U.S. companies. By 2020, only three of the 37 women CEOs in the Fortune 500 were women of color, and none of the businesses in Fortune's Global 500 had women of color at the helm, a new low for the ranking over the past six years. 

Seeing things change, albeit slowly, is an encouraging sign for the future of racial and gender diversity in corporate America's top brass, but there's still plenty of work to do. "We need to tell the optimistic — but not exuberant — story around what's happening for women," Lorraine Hariton, CEO of the gender equality organization Catalyst, told Hinchliffe of Fortune. 

A huge year for women CEOs

For years, most women CEOs in the Fortune 500 were heading companies with lower revenues that appeared toward the bottom of the list, but they're breaking through in a big way. No. 4 CVS Health is now the highest-ranking business ever to be run by a woman after welcoming former Aetna president Karen Lynch as CEO in February. 

Even more significant: Until this year, only one Black female executive, former Xerox chief Ursula Burns, had ever served as the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. This year, she was joined by not one but two others: Roz Brewer, a former Starbucks and Sam's Club executive who became CEO of No. 16 Walgreens Boots Alliance in January, and Thasunda Brown Duckett, a former head of Chase Consumer Banking who took the helm of No. 79 TIAA a month later. 

Both women have spent their careers looking to extend the ladder behind them, as it were, and enable more women — particularly women of color — to advance. Duckett is a longtime advocate for greater inclusion of Black Americans and other people of color in the financial sector, sponsoring JPMorgan Chase's Advancing Black Pathways program, which aims to help close racial gaps in wealth creation. And Brewer never minces words about gender and racial diversity — she "demanded" diversity on her team as CEO of Sam's Club and plans to invest in programs to develop talent from marginalized communities in her new role at Walgreens. 

Still, gender and especially racial diversity in corporate America's upper echelon, which essentially becomes the talent pool for future CEOs, remains low — a challenge Fortune is looking to compel businesses to address with a big change to the ranking in 2021. 

Can this big change in the Fortune 500 ranking boost inclusion in corporate America?

The Fortune 500 ranking includes data on inclusion for the first time in 2021, "an effort to encourage more companies to publicly report their numbers," Fortune senior editor Ellen McGirt wrote last week in her raceAhead newsletter, which focuses on diversity, equity and inclusion in business. 

Fortune worked with Refinitiv on a program called MeasureUp to encourage companies to track and share their diversity numbers. Still, few companies do: A little over half (262 companies) in the 2021 Fortune 500 reported some level of race and ethnicity data, but a mere 18 companies report “the fullest breakdown of their U.S. workforce (across Black, Hispanic, Asian and Other minorities, and the proportions of these groups in the workforce, management and board, plus racial pay gap data)," David Craig, CEO of Refinitiv, wrote in an op/ed on Fortune.

Based on the data available, "the numbers remain daunting," McGirt wrote. Black Americans occupy only 5 percent of manger positions at the 80 Fortune 500 companies that disclose this metric, and Hispanics and Latinos held just 6 percent of such roles. 

“Publishing these kinds of numbers takes guts,” Craig wrote on Fortune. “But it is an important step toward making meaningful progress.” While the rise of women CEOs, particularly women CEOs of color, in the Fortune 500 is a positive sign of things to come, companies need to do more if they hope to fulfill the commitments to equity and justice they made following the murder of George Floyd. 

"It takes courage to disclose this data, but if companies are serious about ending racial injustice, I don’t see that they have a choice," Craig concluded. "We have a promise to keep."

Image credit: Flickr/Fortune Live Media

With the summer just around the corner, many ice cream aficionados will be ready to enjoy their favorite decadent treat again and again. But what if we told you that you could have all that you love about ice cream while minimizing any impacts on the planet?

Meet Eclipse, a California-based startup that uses plant-based "dairy" to make ice cream, which the company says is identical in every aspect to conventional dairy ice cream. After a significant sales growth in 2020, the company is launching six new flavors this summer.

Eclipse wants to help transform ice cream with this plant-based dairy replacement 

Eclipse was founded in 2019 by Aylon Steinhart and Thomas Bowman with a clear mission in mind: “We founded Eclipse Foods because we want to make it easy for consumers to make sustainable, healthy, and humane choices,” Steinhart, Eclipse’s co-founder and CEO and former senior advisor at The Good Food Institute, explained in a public statement .

“Factory farming is responsible for more greenhouse emissions than the transportation industry, with around one third coming from dairy alone” said Steinhart during a recent interview with TriplePundit. Eclipse says it gives people the alternative to be part of the solution.

Steinhart claims that the brand fills a gap in the industry by creating the first-ever dairy replacement that tastes, feels and functions like conventional dairy. “Dairy-free substitutes use plant-based milk options such as almond or soy,” he asserted. “Alternatively, Eclipse uses a unique mix of plants, mainly corn, cassava and potato, that is reverse-engineered to replicate milk in a molecular level.” In addition, the ice cream does not have any allergens or genetically modified ingredients .

Currently, Eclipse’s ice cream is available through selling directly to consumers, foodservice partners and grocery stores.

Through the brand’s direct-to-consumer website, ice cream pints can be purchased and shipped nationwide. Flavors include cookie butter, chocolate and vanilla.

The company has also created a plant-based liquid base that comes in chocolate, vanilla and plain and can be used to make everything from milkshakes to soft serve and ice cream pints. The base is sold to foodservice partners including ice cream shops, restaurants and food trucks.

Finally, Eclipse’s ice cream pints are available at more selected grocery stores and markets.

“The reception has been incredible across all channels, and when you look at the velocities of our pints per store per week, we’re moving a lot faster than the other plant-based brands,” stated Steinhart in a recent interview . The founder described the company’s key success factors: taste, technology and a top culinary experience.

Eclipse’s secret “base” to success and the dairy-free market

The taste of Eclipse’s products appears to be well received by ice cream lovers so far. For example, in a blind taste test done at UC Berkeley, 77 percent of those who participated said Eclipse was creamier than the best-selling dairy ice cream in the country. “It’s been incredible to watch people try our ice cream for the first time and see the total disbelief on their faces when we tell them it is made of plants,” Steinhart commented in a press release.

Behind the taste, Eclipse has a pending-patent technology that the company says makes it a viable alternative to dairy-based ice creams. “Ingredients don’t make the ice cream taste how it does. It is how they function; how we process and put them together, using the same temperature, pressure and other variables that are used in dairy processing,” explained in a statement Thomas Bowman, Eclipse’s co-founder and CTO.

Besides being one of Eclipse’s founders, Bowman is a chef and food scientist who worked as director of product development at the plant-based brand Just; cooked in sixteen Michelin star restaurants; and has also been named Zagat 30 under 30. His experience, added to the support from partnerships with world-renowned chefs, could help put Eclipse at an advantage in the market.

Eclipse is not the only brand betting on dairy-free alternatives. For example, Ben & Jerry has recently expanded its non-dairy portfolio with four sunflower butter-based ice cream flavors. Meanwhile, with more than $300 million in funding, Perfect Day is offering animal products-free dairy ice cream by using a molecularly identical dairy protein that is created by fermentation.

“The market for dairy is massive, so there is definitely room for other plant-based brands,” affirmed Steinhart.

Looking ahead to a dairy-free summer

After experiencing what the founders said was more than sales that tripled from the previous year during 2020, Eclipse is introducing six new flavors this summer including mango passion fruit, strawberry, mint chip, caramel butter pecan, dark chocolate, and cookies and cream.

Ultimately, the company’s goal is to create replacements for cheese, sour cream and cream cheese. “Plant-based dairy is a category with a lot of upsides, and the team at Eclipse is well-positioned to take advantage of this opportunity,” stated in a recent interview with the Good Food Institute.

With only two years since Eclipse started, it remains to be seen if the company can succeed with the challenges of scaling up while meeting its customers’ expectations. “It’s not the easiest thing in the world to feed people,” commented Steinhart. “We want people to fall in love with Eclipse,” he concluded.

Image credit: Eclipse

Honestly, the world’s wildlife is the best steward for preserving the land, but the reality of the 21st century is that we’ve long, long gone past that stage. Nevertheless, this year’s World Environment Day (June 5) is a reminder that we can reimagine and restore our natural spaces. Plus, across the globe, the restoration of such places — which of course includes the protection of wildlife — can help local communities build resilience and secure economies that are both equitable and sustainable.

There are countless tools at disposal to ensure these communities, and the natural habitats and wildlife on which they depend for day-to-day living, can not only survive, but thrive; technology is one of them.

One tech company that has seen its technology deployed for this purpose is California-based Semtech. The company’s technology, LoRa, is an Internet of Things (IoT) platform that can be used for many purposes: smart agriculture, smart homes and a smarter supply chain. According to Semtech, to date the technology is used in over 190 million devices that are connected to more than 150 networks.

Many of us are familiar with smart homes (Alexa!) and smart cities, yet Semtech’s technology adds another term to our lexicon: smart wildlife tracking. The company has been working with the NGO Smart Parks, which uses sensors in order to conserve endangered wildlife and help national and wildlife park managers keep watch over large areas of land. The organization has harnessed IoT technology in parks across Africa and Asia and has begun using this technology for humanitarian purposes, too.

"Given the vast locations and terrain of the National Parks, most lack basic cellular coverage, which poses a challenge for connecting these sensors over such a wide area," Semtech's Alistair Fulton told 3p. "The Smart Parks solution leverages a combination of satellite, LoRa and LoRaWAN [an open standard] technology to track wildlife no matter how far they travel, whether that’s down the road or many miles away."

Smart Parks currently uses Semtech’s IoT services at Mkomazi National Park, the 770-plus square miles of which are home to endangered and threatened animals such as African wild dogs, elands, elephants, zebras and the black rhinoceros. As with other wildlife reserves across Africa, poaching has long been a crisis. For what Semtech says is a small investment that offers seamless long-distance connectivity, the park’s managers are able to track these rare black rhinos. Park staffers have embedded small sensors into the horns of black rhinos, thereby allowing park rangers to monitor these animals’ movements — giving them the knowledge and data they need to help keep these rhinos safe. Sensors have also been installed at various park gates, which can help security efforts in gauging when people are entering and leaving the park.

According to Semtech, since this IoT system launched, incidents of poaching in monitored areas have plummeted to zero. In turn, being able to monitor the movements of these rhinos gives park rangers the ability to learn more about each individual animal’s behavior, also making it easier to protect these animals from poachers.

“Thanks to Smart Parks technology, we have learnt a lot more about the behavior of the individual rhinos," said Tony Fitzjohn, a conservationist who has long been dedicated to restoring Mkomazi National Park. "We now have much more advanced information in real-time on a screen which gives these beleaguered animals a much better chance of survival from outside interference. I have been working in the wildlife world in East Africa for 50 years now and this new technology, had it been available years ago, would have made life so much easier for everyone, including the rhinos."

As one local publication reported last year, in the late 1980s, the park was overrun by poachers and cattle, while its wildlife was almost nonexistent. Thirty years later, the same species that had been almost wiped out are starting to recover. Meanwhile, Semtech says two of its employees are focused on the company's relationship with Smart Parks.

As for other uses for IoT technologies, Semtech has pointed to opportunities in reducing food waste, improved water management, and the boosting of crop yields through smarter watering.

Image credit: David Clode/Unsplash

Last week, a little-known, upstart hedge fund set newswires abuzz with its success in landing two of its candidates on the board of ExxonMobil. That momentum continued as Engine No. 1 announced Wednesday evening that a third candidate it supported won a seat on the oil giant’s board of directors. The message, once again, is clear: more investors have been zeroing in on ESG (environmental, social and governance) performance for a while now, and there’s no going back.

This band of seven impact investors isn’t finished. Yet another new ESG fund is on the horizon. Earlier this week, Engine No. 1 announced it would launch its own exchange-traded fund (ETF), one that will make investing with social impact the priority its core focus.

The Engine No. 1 Transform 500 ETF will include shares in companies within sectors such as consumer goods, energy, financial services, healthcare, technology and utilities, but that list could grow. And while Engine No. 1 says it will base its investment decisions on companies’ disclosure and third-party ESG data providers, the managers behind the wheel of this new ESG fund will also track companies through the use of their own metrics.

Among the fund’s performance indicators at the start will be wages, workforce diversity, employee health and safety, capital expenditures, carbon emissions and land use – again, that list will grow.

In the wake of last week’s shocker surrounding ExxonMobil’s annual meeting, don’t be surprised if Engine No. 1 pulls a similar feat with another company.

“The Fund seeks to encourage transformational change at the public companies within its portfolio through the application of proxy voting guidelines,” Engine No. 1 said in a recent filing it submitted to the SEC, “through favoring actions that encourage companies to invest in their employees, communities, customers and the environment.”

Currently, the amount of assets planned for this very young ESG fund has not been disclosed; the SEC filing only announced a minimal amount of money on its ledgers for the time being. According to Reuters, Engine No. 1 started last year with about $250 million in total assets and $40 million invested in ExxonMobil shares. Although Engine No. 1 scored plenty of headlines with last week’s coup, it’s clear that was not the only strategy in the fund’s long-term plan: Prior SEC filings indicate this particular ETF has been in the works for at least a year.

At a time that at a minimum can be described as chaos, sustainable investing has held its own since early 2020. Considering the potential amount of money that is available for investing, watch for more funds, with various priorities, to appear in the next several years.  For example, last a week a new fund launched – just in time for Pride Month – that its managers have indexed to 100 corporations that has established a solid track record of supporting LGBTQ issues.

Image credit: Konstantin Evdokimov/Unsplash

Before the pandemic, aviation contributed approximately 2.5 percent of global CO2 emissions. That may not seem like a whole lot, but at that time, passenger air travel was claiming the fastest growth of individual emissions out of any sector. Of course, last year looked different — industry revenues dropped to less than half that of 2019.

Even during the pandemic, though, airlines have been under pressure to make progress on decarbonizing. After all, a 2050 aim for carbon neutrality from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) still looms large for the globe, including all nations and their corporations.

So, how can air travel decarbonize in an increasingly carbon-sensitive world? Two of the biggest potential tactics that can move us toward a more climate-friendly industry — sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and electrification of fleets — are still in their nascent stages of development. In an industry that was already focused on saving fuel before the Paris Agreement, innovation will prove essential to continued progress.

Making changes in air travel at an operations level

Flyways AI is a new technology that makes one little piece of flying more efficient. Out of Silicon Valley, it bills itself as the world’s first artificial intelligence-powered flight monitoring and routing platform — helping dispatchers navigate the skies and optimize routes — like the apps drivers use on the road. Developed by Airspace Intelligence and piloted by Alaska Airlines, the company is implementing the technology as the airline’s de facto system for all mainland travel in the United States.

More efficient routing saves fuel — 480,000 gallons during the six-month pilot period, to be exact, reducing CO2 emissions by 4,600 tons in the process. The potential savings are greater as we exit the pandemic, with more travelers taking flight.

The benefits for air travel extend past carbon reduction. When you improve punctuality in the airline industry, as Diana Birkett Rakow, vice president of public affairs and sustainability for Alaska Airlines, said, you find improvements on many fronts. Predictability improves safety, optimizes cost and sustainability, and even guest satisfaction. In addition to more predictable arrivals, Flyways AI saved an average of five minutes per flight. Even five minutes, Birkett Rakow notes, becomes noticeable. Think of the difference passengers could feel by saving time waiting on a tarmac to take off.

Grassroots innovation in airline decarbonization

Flyways did not begin with a top-down decision to partner with Airspace Intelligence, Birkett Rakow explained. Instead, the idea came from a flight operations leader and turned into a collaboration working closely with dispatchers to understand and meet their needs. Now, the novel platform could even prove useful to other elements of flight operations, she said, including optimizing gate allocation.

“Flyways lives in that foundational layer of operational efficiency,” where airlines can also begin implementing single engine taxiing and electric ground services equipment — small improvements that add up, even if each only accounts for 1 percent of emissions, Birkett Rakow said. “Any emissions avoided is a set of emissions that doesn't need to be offset,” she added.

Operations are only one piece of the puzzle, of course. "There's a lot of projects in motion at once.... Aviation is very difficult to decarbonize,” Birkett Rakow added. “It's one of the most difficult sectors to decarbonize, and so it's not going to be one thing that makes it work. It's going to be 10, 20, 50, 100 things, and there's complexity in having to work on all of that at once. At the same time, there is some fun grassroots ability in being able to work on all of that at once, because people across our operation are going to have ideas about where they can...avoid carbon emissions, and as those ideas get implemented, we'll continue to improve."

Image credit: John McArthur/Unsplash

“Give the customers what they want, when and where they want it.” That quote comes from 7-Eleven founder Joe C. Thompson, Jr., and for years, that frequently meant blue raspberry slurpees, a 50-ounce trough of soda for the road, and a wide range of fabricated burgers and burritos. But now such offerings extend to kombucha, organic coconut water, blueberry flavored coffee (it’s awesome, trust) and, at some locations, carnitas tacos. Fairly soon, the menu will also include electric vehicle (EV) charging stations.

According to the company, the upcoming installation of EV charging stations is part of its long-term plan to become a more sustainable operation. Some of the changes in this journey have been routine: a switch to LED bulbs, efficient energy management systems, better packaging, investments in renewables and “collaboration” with other organizations.

Nitpicking aside, these aren’t the same 7-Eleven corner stores of your parents' or grandparents' day. At more and more locations, the product selections are better, the presentation is better, the food is better and, as retailers love to say, the guest experience is better.

So, about those EV charging stations: As of press time, the scenario at 7-Eleven is to install 500 or so of these fast-charging stations at locations across the U.S. and Canada, with completion set for sometime in 2022. Currently the count is 22 of them spread across 14 stores, but this planned boost is quite the investment if all goes to plan.

7- Eleven hasn’t disclosed anything about the costs involved or the locations set to receive charging stations, but as 3p’s Tina Casey has long espoused, the business benefits of investing in EV charging stations are there, only they will morph depending on where they are located. In the case of 7-Eleven, the payoff if obvious: To start, even with fast charging, while one is waiting he or she has time to score that taquito, followed by chips for the road, a kombucha, and then wash it all down with some Colombian coffee and a piña colada slurpee.

And in the long run for 7-Eleven, it’s a smart move for the company, franchisees and, of course, its brand.

Image credits: 7-Eleven corporate site; Duy Nguyen/Unsplash

If money really does talk, it would be laughing out loud right now. Republican legislators, their allies, and even a few Democrats have begun whining about “woke” corporations in recent months, but the so-called corporate wokeness on challenges such as ensuring LGBTQ rights has already been institutionalized. The numbers show that investors benefit when business leaders take verifiable steps to support diversity, civil rights, and other issues associated with what their detractors often brand as “liberal” voices.

In the latest development, a new theme-centered exchange-traded fund (ETF) called LGBTQ + ESG100 is providing investors with a solid basis for backing corporate support of equal rights, civil rights and human rights.

Like it or not, “wokeness” is paying dividends

Advocates for ESG (environmental, social and governance) funds have been building the case for investing in companies that integrate such goals into their business models. Skeptics have scoffed, but the bottom-line evidence in support of the ESG-centered model has been growing.

The pace of ESG investing picked up considerably last year as the one-two punch of climate change and the COVID-19 crisis underscored the importance of resiliency. The global economy took a big hit when the pandemic took hold, but ESG funds in the U.S. held more of their value.

In an extraordinary February 2021 annual letter to investors, BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink took note of the “tectonic shift” toward ESG investing. He forecast that the ESG trend will continue to accelerate rapidly, and he emphasized the importance of focusing on non-traditional risks in an era of great change.

“It is clear that being connected to stakeholders – establishing trust with them and acting with purpose – enables a company to understand and respond to the changes happening in the world,” he wrote. “Companies ignore stakeholders at their peril – companies that do not earn this trust will find it harder and harder to attract customers and talent, especially as young people increasingly expect companies to reflect their values.”

Editor's note: Be sure to subscribe to our Brands Taking Stands newsletter, which comes out every Wednesday.

Earlier this year, S&P Global analyzed 29 ESG funds with more than $250 million in assets under management. They found strong support for Fink’s position in the performance of corporations with strategies focused on ESG.

“We found that from March 5, 2020 — the month that the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic — to March 5, 2021, 19 of those funds performed better than the S&P 500. Those outperformers rose between 27.3 percent and 55 percent over that period. In comparison, the S&P 500 increased 27.1 percent,” S&P Global reported, adding that “ESG fund managers have said their focus on nontraditional risks led to portfolios of companies that so far have been resilient during the COVID-19 downturn.”

The bottom-line benefits of focusing investor dollars on LGBTQ rights

The EFT (exchange traded funds) platform provides the structure for ESG-focused funds to attract investors, and that is where the new LGBTQ + ESG100 fund comes in.

The new fund launched last week through Loyalty Preference Index, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of the firm LGBTQ Loyalty Holdings, Inc. The fund will follow the LGBTQ100 ESG Index, which tracks 100 leading corporations that have established a solid track record of support on LGBTQ+ issues.

In an unusual twist, LGBTQ100 deploys survey results in addition to financial data.

“It is the first-ever index to incorporate LGBTQ community survey data into the methodology, generating a benchmark of the nation's highest-performing companies that are most committed to advancing equality,” Loyalty Holdings explains.

“For the 18-month period from November 2019 to April 2021, the Index generated a 43.84 percent return versus a 37.65 percent return for the S&P 500, while keeping volatility lower by 66 basis points of the benchmark,” the firm adds.

The index draws from a field of 500 publicly traded large-cap corporations that have a strong ESG profile, and that meet standards for supporting both gender equality and sexual orientation equality. In addition, these 500 companies must also demonstrate loyalty and brand awareness among the U.S. LGBTQ+ community.

New challenges for tailored ESG funds

In what amounts to a loud clap-back against the “woke corporations” slur, the LGBTQ100 index screens out companies in certain sectors including guns, tobacco, pornography and weapons of mass destruction. Companies that are over-dependent on gambling for revenue are also excluded.

These ethical judgements open the door to additional criteria for tailored funds. For example, a worker-focused index might exclude Tesla and Amazon due accusations of anti-union activity. Similarly, a privacy-focused index might exclude Facebook.

Nevertheless, all three of these corporations are listed in the top 10 of the LGTBQ index. To the extent that money talks, it is talking selectively.

New opportunities for tailored ESG funds

On the other hand, the intersection of LGBTQ rights with the Black Lives Matter movement could help raise the bar on the LGBTQ100 and other tailored ESG funds.

The murder of George Floyd last year sparked a fresh burst activity in the Black Lives Matter movement, and the impact rippled into the LGBTQ community with a renewed focus on issues that have an impact on people of color.

That intersection will intensify in the coming months. A wave of new state based voter suppression bills is sweeping across the country, in an apparent attempt to nullify the voice of Black citizens and other largely Democratic-leaning voters.

Many corporations have remained silent, but some have begun to push back on voter suppression in public. A recent report by CNBC reporter Brian Schwartz suggests that some corporate leaders have also been working behind the scenes to press for federal legislation on voting rights, including Nike and others in the LGBTQ100 index.

In addition, many corporations have been working within their organizations to make it easier for employees to vote. As indicated by Schwartz’s reporting, there is an overlap between the LGBTQ100 index and corporations that have signed on to the Time to Vote initiative of the Businesses for America organization.

Voter suppression and the trans rights battleground

So far, these efforts have met with little success. New voter suppression laws have already passed in more than a dozen states, and hundreds more are in the pipeline.

However, the concentration of power in the hands of conservative lawmakers may soon force business leaders to take stronger action. As an indication that human rights and voting rights are not two separate things, Republican lawmakers have added bills targeting transgender youth to their legislative to-do lists this year.

Money does talk, and business leaders who profess to support LGBTQ rights and the Black Lives Matter movement need to take action. Stopping financial support for anti-voting candidates for office is a good start, but that is weak tea when anti-voting legislators already control statehouses across the country. The next step, and a necessary one, is to start pumping funds into organizations like Democracy Docket, which are fighting to strike down laws that make it harder for Democratic-leaning voters to exercise their rights.

Larry Fink’s warning about stakeholder engagement rings true. In the coming months, business leaders who seek a position in the LGBTQ100 index should be taking a long, hard look at their policies on political donations and voting rights.

Image credit: Brielle French/Unsplash

Consumers have expressed that they believe brands should be at the forefront of the nationwide COVID-19 vaccine rollout, and it appears that Krispy Kreme is leading the charge.

As reported widely in the wee hours yesterday, the venerable donut chain has given away at least 1.5 million donuts to customers who proved that they were vaccinated. If there’s one company that should be changing its stores’ signage, it should be Krispy Kreme, riffing off the Golden Arches’ longtime boast that billions have been served. The company would have to update that sign fast, however: Krispy Kreme has said that the offer to trade in a jab for a donut is good for the rest of 2021, so that could number could rise a fair bit.

As anti-vaccine rhetoric still is in the works, hysteria over digital vaccination passports fester, and social media companies flail in stopping the spread of misinformation, Krispy Kreme is just sticking to its guns, or should we say, glaze. At a bare minimum, its efforts are raising awareness.

Editor's note: Be sure to subscribe to our Brands Taking Stands newsletter, which comes out every Wednesday.

The process is simple. Folks simply need to bring their vaccination cards. Period. The end. No, you can’t bring mom’s or dad’s cards, no one is taking pictures of those cards or taking your personal info, and for those who had their own personal reasons for not getting the vaccine, up until last month Krispy Kreme offered the same courtesy to those customers on Monday.

And on Friday, National Donut Day (June 4), the offer for vaccinated customers will double.

Some nutritionists may have winced at some of the brands offering a similar promotion: Along with your donut and coffee, you could have complemented your vaccination spread with a beer, hot dog and cheesecake. But in the grand public health scheme of things, any effort helping the vaccination campaign here in the U.S. is welcomed: As of press time, just over 41 percent of the total U.S. population is vaccinated, with about 295 total vaccines been given so far.

In the end, Krispy Kreme deployed a simple, tried and true tactic to perform as a solid, credible corporate citizen: Use your product or service for the greater good. It can work for technology, cardboard packaging, personal care products, and yes, certainly for donuts.

Image credit: xandreaswork/Unsplash