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By Nancy Rosenzweig and Michael Whelchel, Conscious Company Media

Rice is the most vital crop in the world. It is a staple food for more than 50 percent of people worldwide, for whom it comprises more than 50 percent of their caloric intake. The rice industry employs more people than any other industry on earth. In many regions, rice has been cultivated for thousands of years and is an essential part of history, culture, religion, and tradition.

We spoke with Caryl Levine and Ken Lee, co-founders and co-CEOs of Lotus Foods, to learn more about how their purpose-driven company is reimagining the role rice cultivation can play in the world.

Conscious Company: Let’s start at the beginning — how did the two of you meet?

Caryl Levine: I was invited to join the team at the University of Hartford in 1990 as development associate. A short time after I’d moved to Hartford, I was at a bar talking to a girlfriend about my need to find a financial planner. Ken, a young financial planner by day and bartender by night, overheard the conversation and told me that he thought he could help. He whipped out his business card, asked for an appointment and the rest is history! [The pair is now married.]

CC: What gave you the idea to start Lotus Foods?

Ken Lee: In 1993, we took a two-month market research trip through China looking for a business opportunity and came back with 90 ideas. We discovered a black rice early on in our trip, and as lovers of all things food, we knew we had something special with this exceptional, exotic rice.

We came home not only with a company name, but an authentic story about the rice’s origin, as well as a creative product name (Forbidden Rice) and tagline (Rice is Life) that we trademarked in 1995 when the company was launched. Also, while we were traveling through China, we learned about the plight of rice farmers and the need to preserve rice biodiversity. We began to envision ways we could share this delicious, healthy heirloom rice with U.S. consumers, while also providing a long-lasting sustainable impact and economy for rice farmers in China.

CC: How and when did you transition from importers of heirloom rice to change agents for the way rice is grown in the world?

CL: It’s been an ongoing process the last 15 years. Raising awareness about rice biodiversity was the first hurdle when we introduced our Bhutanese Red Rice and Forbidden Rice® (black rice) to the US market. For most Americans rice was a white, starchy side dish. We also pressed early for organic and fair trade certifications to garner better prices for our farmers.

But the most significant milestone for the company was learning about the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) farming method in 2005 through folks at Cornell University. When you’re in the rice business and someone tells you about an innovative way for small-scale farmers to double and triple yields of traditional rice with less water, seed, and agrochemicals, that’s very exciting.

Since then as we expanded, worked in more countries, and talked to many experts, we’ve come to understand just how pivotal rice is to the most urgent challenges we’re facing this century. Global food security, water availability, global warming, degraded soils, biodiversity loss, social equity and women’s empowerment — solving these problems will depend on how rice is produced. SRI is an innovation that can address these issues, which is why we are so passionate about it.

To many, SRI means “socially responsible investing.” But it means something different and important to the rice industry — please explain.

KL: In a way, socially responsible investing (SRI) could be synonymous with the System of Rice Intensification, because of the many social and environmental benefits and high rates of return on investment that the farming method offers. For instance, the Indian state of Tamil Nadu estimated that an investment of only $8 per hectare in SRI farming would generate more than $200 per hectare just in the first year, which is a benefit-cost ratio of more than 25:1. Other published studies from the Philippines and elsewhere report rates of return from 78 percent to 400 percent. The returns come from higher yields and lower production costs.

CC: Tell us about the environmental benefits of SRI.

CL: Perhaps the two most important relate to water and global warming. Conventionally grown rice fields require continuous irrigation with water — more than 30 percent of fresh water worldwide is used to irrigate rice fields. Irrigating rice is one of the largest drains on the planet’s freshwater resources, leading to depletion of both ground and surface water. Huge swaths of Asia are suffering from dried up wells, water scarcity and poor crops. It’s absolutely critical that we cut back on water use in rice production. The farmers using SRI methods can cut their water consumption in half, which is imperative because global food security depends on rice.

Flooded paddies are also a major contributor to man-made methane gas, which has 25 times more warming power in the short-term than carbon dioxide. Researchers at Oxford University and the India’s National Institute for Rural Development conducted a Life Cycle Assessment to compare greenhouse gas emissions and groundwater use from SRI and conventional rice production. The results showed that SRI methods substantially raised farmers’ yields, from 4.8 tons to 7.6 ton per hectare, while reducing water applications.

At the same SRI resulted in significant greenhouse gas reductions, both per hectare and per kilogram of rice, from both reduced methane emissions and embodied emissions in the electricity used to pump water for irrigation. According to published research studies, with SRI total global warming potential is reduced 20 to 30 percent and even as much as 70 percent.

CC: How does SRI improve the lives of the farmers?

KL: You can imagine the impact on a family’s life if in just one or two cropping seasons they can double or even triple the rice they have to eat. You know, many of the farmers we now buy rice from used to be food deficit. With SRI practices they have been able to go from not having enough rice to having a surplus that they can sell and receive organic and fair trade premiums, which truly transform their lives. Further, with SRI the seed rate is drastically reduced. Farmers use 80 to 90 percent less seed, so all the rice not needed as seed can be eaten or sold. So that’s another huge bonus.

The reason farmers use less seed is because rather than broadcasting or transplanting clumps of older seedlings, they transplant much younger seedlings at wide spacing. This reduces transplant shock and competition among plants, both of which contribute to a healthier more productive plant. Something any gardener will understand. Less seed also means that women have fewer plants to manage. So they can get through their work faster.

One of the challenges of SRI is that if you don’t keep paddies flooded weeds are more prolific. The solution to this problem has become an unexpected boon to women. Normally, women have the backbreaking task of weeding fields. With SRI simple push-weeders have been invented to accelerate weeding and aerate the soil. In many parts of Africa and Asia a mechanical device is something men use, so whereas before women did all the weeding, now men help, thereby relieving women of this chore. And when women use the weeder they can do the weeding in an upright position rather than constantly stooped over. This is a very important health benefit.

In Odisha, India, for example, it takes women around 130 to 160 hours to weed an acre of rice, which they do in bent-over posture. Weeding with a mechanical weeder takes only 16 to 25 hours per acre. Another very important benefit for women is that with SRI management they do not have to work in flooded fields. You can imagine what it must be like year in year out to be slogging through muddy water inhabited by parasites and disease vectors, like leeches and snails that carry schistosomiasis. This is one of the reasons we recently launched an outreach campaign to draw attention to the benefits of SRI for women.

International development agencies are talking a lot about the feminization of agriculture. What this means is that as farming becomes less profitable men increasingly seek employment off-farm leaving the women to handle the agricultural tasks. With women already overburdened with household and farm chores, this has significant implications both for women’s welfare and global food security. So it’s essential to promote innovations that can lighten women’s loads.

CC: Draw us a picture of what the world could look like when you take Lotus and SRI to their full-scale potential.

KL: No one has ever asked us this question, so it’s exciting to share our vision. It’s important to understand that most rice is grown and eaten by small-scale farmers, some 250 million is the number we’ve seen. If the average household has around 5 members, that’s around 1 billion men, women, and children. So there is huge scope for social and environmental change. We think SRI could drive a rural renaissance that would be characterized by more equitably distributed wealth and improved food security.

With higher rice yields many farmers take some of their land out of rice and grow fruits and vegetables that bring in more cash and diversify their diets and incomes. So people’s health will improve. Less use of agrochemicals will also lead to less illness, medical costs and lost days of work as well as better soil and water quality.

With SRI requiring less water, farmers will be able to continue to plant rice where water is becoming scarcer but also more water will be available for other crops, domestic uses, and to recharge water bodies. With rice-based farms becoming more profitable and productive and rural economies growing, migration to cities can be stemmed. Families will have more money to educate their children, and with more wealth concentrated in rural areas, there will be more services, jobs and opportunities to keep young people employed and engaged.

One of the aspects to Lotus Foods that we find most inspiring is that you knew you had an important idea and you plugged away for years to make it happen despite relatively modest growth. Just recently you have had an important inflection point in the growth of your business. I’m sure many now see you as an overnight success. Tell us about this journey and what eventually put the company on its current growth trajectory.

KL: We like to say that we are an overnight success that just took 20 years! We have one of the most challenging business models: a supply chain that never exported before Lotus Foods and thus needed a lot of hand holding and external resources; a product offering that was ahead of its time and completely new to the market thus needed constant education; and a mission beyond organic and sustainability.

Essentially, the market had to grow up to meet us and vice versa. We are now expanding our offerings and entering new categories with value-added products like Rice Ramen, Rice Crackers and ready-to-eat Rice Bowls.

CC: What advice would you give a young idealistic entrepreneur with an idea for a social enterprise to change the world?

CL: Most importantly, you must love what you do and believe in it. Your belief in the value you are creating for society is essential to get you through the years of very hard work with little reward. It’s not always easy to get people to change how they view or do things, but it is possible and when that change happens, it is the most rewarding feeling in the world.

Images courtesy of Lotus Foods 

Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from the new book "Doughnut Economics" by economist Kate Raworth. You can buy the book here.

By Kate Raworth

Whether you consider yourself an economic veteran or novice, now is the time to uncover the economic graffiti that lingers in all of our minds and, if you don’t like what you find, scrub it out; or, better still, paint it over with new images that far better serve our needs and times.

The rest of this book proposes seven ways to think like a 21st-century economist, revealing for each of those seven ways the spurious image that has occupied our minds, how it came to be so powerful and the damaging influence it has had.

But the time for mere critique is past, which is why the focus here is on creating new images that capture the essential principles to guide us now. The diagrams in this book aim to summarize that leap from old to new economic thinking. Taken together, they set out—quite literally—a new big picture for the 21st-century economist. So here is a whirlwind tour of the ideas and images at the heart of "Doughnut Economics."

1. Change the goal. For over 70 years, economics has been fixated on GDP, or national output, as its primary measure of progress. That fixation has been used to justify extreme inequalities of income and wealth coupled with unprecedented destruction of the living world. For the 21st century, a far bigger goal is needed: meeting the human rights of every person within the means of our life-giving planet. And that goal is encapsulated in the concept of the Doughnut. The challenge now is to create economies—local to global—that help to bring all of humanity into the Doughnut’s safe and just space. Instead of pursuing ever-increasing GDP, it is time to discover how to thrive in balance.

2. See the big picture. Mainstream economics depicts the whole economy with just one, extremely limited image, the Circular Flow diagram. Its limitations have, furthermore, been used to reinforce a neoliberal narrative about the efficiency of the market, the incompetence of the state, the domesticity of the household and the tragedy of the commons. It is time to draw the economy anew, embedding it within society and within nature, and powered by the sun. This new depiction invites new narratives—about the power of the market, the partnership of the state, the core role of the household and the creativity of the commons.

3. Nurture human nature. At the heart of 20th-century economics stands the portrait of rational economic man: he has told us that we are self-interested, isolated, calculating, fixed in taste and dominant over nature—and his portrait has shaped who we have become. But human nature is far richer than this, as early sketches of our new self-portrait reveal: we are social, interdependent, approximating, fluid in values and dependent upon the living world. What’s more, it is indeed possible to nurture human nature in ways that give us a far greater chance of getting into the Doughnut’s safe and just space.

4. Get savvy with systems. The iconic criss-cross of the market’s supply and demand curves is the first diagram that every economics student encounters, but it is rooted in misplaced nineteenth-century metaphors of mechanical equilibrium. A far smarter starting point for understanding the economy’s dynamism is systems thinking, summed up by a simple pair of feedback loops.

Putting such dynamics at the heart of economics opens up many new insights, from the boom and bust of financial markets to the self-reinforcing nature of economic inequality and the tipping points of climate change. It’s time to stop searching for the economy’s elusive control levers and start stewarding it as an ever-evolving complex system.

5. Design to distribute. In the 20th century, one simple curve—the Kuznets Curve—whispered a powerful message on inequality: It has to get worse before it can get better, and growth will (eventually) even it up. But inequality, it turns out, is not an economic necessity: It is a design failure. 21st-century economists will recognize that there are many ways to design economies to be far more distributive of the value that they generate—an idea best represented as a network of flows. It means going beyond redistributing income to exploring ways of redistributing wealth, particularly the wealth that lies in controlling land, enterprise, technology, knowledge and the power to create money.

6. Create to regenerate. Economic theory has long portrayed a ‘clean’ environment as a luxury good, affordable only for the well-off. This view was reinforced by the Environmental Kuznets Curve, which once again whispered that pollution has to get worse before it can get better and growth will (eventually) clean it up. But there is no such law: ecological degradation is simply the result of degenerative industrial design. This century needs economic thinking that unleashes regenerative design in order to create a circular—not linear—economy and to restore humans as full participants in Earth’s cyclical processes of life.

7. Be agnostic about growth. One diagram in economic theory is so dangerous that it is never actually drawn: the long-term path of GDP growth. Mainstream economics views endless economic growth as a must, but nothing in nature grows forever, and the attempt to buck that trend is raising tough questions in high-income but low-growth countries. It may not be hard to give up having GDP growth as an economic goal, but it is going to be far harder to overcome our addiction to it.

Today we have economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive; what we need are economies that make us thrive, whether or not they grow. That radical flip in perspective invites us to become agnostic about growth and to explore how economies that are currently financially, politically and socially addicted to growth could learn to live with or without it.

These seven ways of thinking like a 21st-century economist don’t lay out specific policy prescriptions or institutional fixes. They promise no immediate answers for what to do next, and they are not the whole answer. But I am convinced that they are fundamental to the radically different way of thinking about economics that this century demands. Their principles and patterns will equip new economic thinkers—and the inner economist in us all—to start creating an economy that enables everyone in the house to prosper.

Given the speed, scale and uncertainty of change that we face in coming years, it would be foolhardy to attempt to prescribe now all the policies and institutions that will be fit for the future: The coming generation of thinkers and doers will be far better placed to experiment and discover what works as the context continually changes. What we can do now—and must do well—is bring together the best of the emerging ideas, and so create a new economic mindset that is never set but always evolving.

The task for economic thinkers in the decades ahead will be to bring these seven ways of thinking together in practice and to add to them many more. We have barely set out on this adventure in rethinking economics. Join the crew.

By Melissa Schweyer

About a month and a half ago, the founders of B Lab — Andrew Kassoy, Bart Houlahan and Jay Coen Gilbert — published an open letter calling on all businesses to act as a force for good.

Founded in 2006, B Lab is a nonprofit organization, committed to a vision where businesses not only compete to be the best in the world, but also the best for the world. Most commonly, B Lab is known for driving systemic change with the certification of B Corporations.

In one of the first few paragraphs of the letter, the three co-founders declared their claims as nonpartisan, stating: “We speak now not to one political party, or one niche group.” They explained the urgency of their call to action based on the “current environment of rising insecurity, fear, hate speech and violence, and the absence of trust in our economic system.” Their open letter came just weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Regardless of how nonpartisan this open letter was intended, the response from one B Corporation has been loud and clear:

“[We’ll] never, ever stop doing the right thing and being a force for good. Never,” said Emily Lonigro Boylan, president of LimeRed Studio.

I had the opportunity to catch up with Emily Lonigro Boylan, president of LimeRed Studio, a creative services company that works with organizations that inspire positive change. Not only is the company B Corp certified, but it's also Certified woman-owned and it's the only UX agency in the United States with both certifications.

LimeRed also happens to be located in Chicago, a city that receives a lot of attention from the new president. The city is no stranger to Mr. Donald Trump’s tweets and the folks over at LimeRed are unwavering in their commitment to their local community, their colleagues and their clients, many of whom live and work in Chicago.

In many ways, Mr. Donald Trump’s entry into the White House has made this B Corp more politicized than ever.

Like hundreds of thousands of folks around the world, many of LimeRed’s employees participated in the Women’s March in the city of Chicago on Jan. 21, held just one day after the president’s inauguration. Beyond showcasing solidarity with the women’s movement, LimeRed puts its words and ideals into action. And the company does so by engaging in grassroots initiatives that work to strengthen its city.

The company works in partnership with a local nonprofit called I Grow Chicago, an organization that runs a Peace House, on the southwest side of town, in the Englewood neighborhood. I Grow Chicago aims to provide a safe, intergenerational haven to children and at-risk community members through sustainable farming as well as educational programs in nutrition, movement yoga and the arts. Each month, LimeRed collects and donates various supplies in support of the cause.

Authentic and meaningful employee engagement is also very important to LimeRed, which is why the company also offers many employee benefits and opportunities to its staff members. Some of these benefits include a child-friendly workplace, paid family leave, health care and a culture that values listening and learning. Beyond these benefits, Boylan said LimeRed also provides “a creative and fun environment, [with] a million days off…”

LimeRed isn’t the only company with benefits that exude a political stance.

Starbucks recently shared a message from its CEO, Howard Schultz, who not only committed to hiring refugees during these “uncertain times,” but also promised to ensure that staff with benefits always have access to health care while employees at Starbucks. The possibility of losing health benefits offered through Obamacare is an ongoing concern for many Americans, including Starbucks employees, though tensions eased last week when Mr. Donald Trump failed to repeal the healthcare law.

With a work culture invested in business with purpose, similar to that of Starbucks, combined with a new administration that’s making a lot of drastic changes, LimeRed’s Boylan admits she and her colleagues "can't help but talk about politics all day.” And their conversations go well beyond water cooler chitchat. LimeRed Studio’s prioritizes making time during business hours to call representatives and actively engage on social media with its reps and Alderman.

Looking a bit more front-facing, LimeRed also participates in a myriad of activities in partnership with its clients, many of whom seek to create positive change, regardless of who’s leading the country. Working alongside clients, LimeRed is designing a program to break down barriers for women in leadership, it's rebuilding a feminist publishing platform, it's communicating the benefits of arts in local communities and it's promoting a campaign to help neighborhood schools.

Similar to LimeRed’s politicized client-facing work, Eco Promotional Products is also providing benefit to its customers in the wake of a new administration. With a full-line of environmental and socially responsible promotional products, Eco Promotional Products has created a new line of branded items tailored specifically for this year’s March for Science, taking place on Earth Day. According to the March for Science website, the march is in direct response to “recent policy changes [that] have caused heightened worry among scientists.”

Though companies like Starbucks, Eco Promotional Products and LimeRed have been engaged in purposeful business for a long time, their impact has taken on an ever-growing politicized stance. And many of the initiatives these companies have been implementing for years would have historically been labelled as “corporate social responsibility,” but increasingly, such actions carry a political connotation.

Whether companies like it or not, they may have to adapt to a new way of doing business, skirting the line between a politicized mandate and one that also aims to ensure a nonpartisan position. Time will tell how purpose-driven companies will adapt to this newly evolving landscape.

Image credit: Kayle Kaupanger, Unsplash

Melissa Schweyer is a writer, people-person and change-maker with six years of progressive work experience in the not-for-profit sector. Most recently, she’s teamed up with Habitat for Humanity Hamilton, utilizing many of her past experiences to help break the cycle of poverty in Hamilton, Canada. A CSR enthusiast at heart, Melissa also manages a blog, www.csrtist.com, where she shares her thoughts, ideas and new ways of thinking about corporations and how they can make a positive impact on our world. In her spare time, you’ll most likely find her enjoying cheese and wine, planning her next travel adventure or writing.

By Charles MacGregor

Prior to the 1970s, it was rare to see a new home built without some sort of asbestos. The once prized mineral, heralded for its durability and resistance to heat, was an easy choice to include in dozens of products. Whether it was the roofing felt and tar paper used on the exterior of a home or the duct and pipe insulation in the basement, chances were good you had some asbestos material in your home. But it didn’t end there. Vehicles often generate high levels of heat while braking, and asbestos eventually found its way into brake linings and pads, too, along with clutch plates and several other parts.

Today, federal laws dictated by the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) ban asbestos from being included in certain types of products, while other newly-manufactured products are only allowed to contain less than 1 percent asbestos. A full ban under the TSCA was put in place in 1989 by the Environmental Protection Agency but was vacated by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1991.

The reason for the sudden change of view is due to several types of lung diseases directly connected to the inhalation of asbestos, including asbestosis and mesothelioma, a rare and aggressive cancer with a poor prognosis. Once asbestos was linked to the diseases, companies began replacing asbestos with safer alternatives in the housing and automotive industries.

Although new home and building construction projects no longer contain asbestos, older homes, buildings, schools and hospitals still might. To help employers and employees mitigate risks pertaining to asbestos, the EPA issued an Operations and Maintenance program for all workers coming into contact with asbestos. Employers are expected to either provide training on their own with an Asbestos Program Manager who has sufficient training or hire an outside consultant to come and conduct proper training. By ensuring employees are properly educated, the chances of asbestos entering the air and possibly being inhaled are drastically reduced.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires employers to ensure workers who could be exposed to asbestos are participating in initial training programs, along with refresher courses held annually. Those working in schools and in areas where they may come into contact with asbestos, per EPA guidelines, are required to attend 16 hours of training, including 14 hours of Special O&M training. Beyond training, OSHA also requires employers to provide workers with regulated areas, proper personal protective equipment (PPE) for abatement and even medical monitoring for employees when legal limits or exposure times are exceeded in the workplace.

The need for periodic health screenings and monitoring are incredibly important for employees working in areas where exposure to asbestos is possible. One of the most frightening facts related to asbestos exposure and the threat of mesothelioma or asbestosis are the diseases’ long latency periods. Symptoms related to mesothelioma can take anywhere from 10 to 40 years to present, and by the time it’s caught the disease is more difficult to treat. Employers are held by OSHA standards to keep track of asbestos exposure and to maintain detailed records regarding employee health, while also covering the costs of tests and monitoring for workers exposed to asbestos above the permissible limits.

Proper employee training isn’t just a safeguard for employers whose employees may come into contact with the toxic material. By providing the right training at the right intervals, the risk of potential problems decreases. In schools, office buildings and other public locations, highly successful training prevents the possible spread of asbestos fibers through the air where it poses a significant risk to people.

From a moral standpoint, providing asbestos education to workers seems like a good fit. But it also makes economic sense. The cost of the training is far outweighed by the possibility of large fines for poor removal methods and lax health considerations. There is absolutely no “safe” level of asbestos exposure, and even short-term exposure to the material has resulted in mesothelioma. For most people, they might not even know they’ve been exposed to asbestos until decades later when mesothelioma symptoms begin to present.

Though the burden of training is on employers to make sure workers are equipped with the right knowledge and equipment to contain and remove asbestos, the worker also needs to effectively use the information they have to make the right decisions.

Asbestos isn’t the wonder material it once was, and the risks of poor abatement run far too high for businesses to not provide the right training, equipment and protections for employees. However, those workers must fully understand what they’re handling and be fully cognizant of the situation every time they enter the work area. With those thoughts in mind, mistakes can be kept at a minimum and any removal or encapsulation process can move along smoothly and safely.

Image credit: Flickr/The U.S. National Archives

Charles MacGregor is a health advocate specializing in mesothelioma, a rare and aggressive disease affecting 3,000 people annually in the U.S. He works to spread awareness about the disease and advocating for the ban of asbestos in the United States.

Zero-waste-to-landfill (ZWTL) is a popular goal for businesses that wish to lead on sustainability. It sounds like a noble goal, and it is. But what does it mean?

Northstar Recycling, a Massachusetts-based company, acknowledges that the term ZWTL does not have a single definition. Some companies and certification programs mean it seriously: No solid waste at all, not a single paper clip, can be landfilled. Every bit of waste produced at a company's facilities must be reused, recycled, composted or, in the final step, burned for power in a waste-to-energy system.

Other companies regard ZWTL “as a guiding ideal rather than a benchmark,” according to Northstar Recycling. Those companies will allow a small percentage of waste to be sent to landfill, but will still call their program ZWTL.

Start with concrete goals

That's why it's important to establish and communicate definitions and goals up front, explained Thomas Stanczyk, sustainable waste solutions strategist for Covanta Environmental Solutions. “ZWTL goals should be pursued as a process for achieving continuous improvement,” he told 3p.

For example, goals give employees a benchmark, meaning facilities can communicate documented accomplishments and success on the road to achieving ZWTL.

Goals can also be used to “guide and motivate employees, as well as to clearly relate intentions in terms of waste activities,” Stanczyk told us. And reaching these targets almost always requires an all-in strategy that utilizes every tool in the proverbial toolbox.

Conduct a waste audit

One such mechanism is a waste audit: "an information tool [for] identifying origins of wastes, factors influencing waste generation, variances in waste stream characteristics, and current methods of managing waste,” Stanczyk explained.

The findings from an audit form the “the basis for gap analyses addressing a facility’s status and requirements as well as opportunities in relation to pre-defined zero-waste-to-landfill goals."

In short: Waste audits show where an organization has room to improve. They serve as validation of a company's waste-generation data and the documented methods of management that conform to ZWTL standards.

“The audit finding will take into account deviations that can potentially impact zero-waste-to-landfill claims,” Stanczyk said. That includes “changes in production processes, materials usage and changes in the operating procedures governing waste activities.”

Find the best reuse or recycle strategy for each waste material

Once an audit is completed, the first few steps toward ZWTL are often challenging for a company. Management knows where materials are being discarded as waste and has to make changes that may impact current supplier services, operations, waste handling practices as well as costs. The biggest challenge, Stanczyk said, is aligning ZWTL strategies with cost savings while diverting waste for recycling and beneficial reuse, including waste to energy.

But with a closer look, companies often find that the last bit of waste may contain "material that can be repurposed and beneficially reused,” Stanczyk went on. Many materials beyond the traditional glass, plastic, paper and aluminum can be recycled. It just takes a little bit of special effort to find the appropriate outlet meeting ZWTL standards.

ZWTL programs “should account for the recycling and/or reuse of universal wastes, including all types of batteries, fluorescent lamps/lighting fixtures, mercury containing equipment and electronic scrap,” he advised.

Landfill diversion strategies should account for: manufacturing byproducts, off-spec/unused inventory, utility wastes, maintenance wastes, recyclables, and general refuse. With the right approach, there's a home for every kind of waste outside a landfill. Products may need to be returned to a manufacturer or shipped to another location for commercial reuse.

At the end of the process, a waste audit can confirm that every material is being directed to the best place. These may need to be conducted more than once, and of course new waste streams may require new innovations. ZWTL is a process of continuous improvement.

Covanta Environmental Solutions makes this process easier for clients through its “turnkey” zero-waste-to-landfill (ZWTL) strategy. A team of experts work with companies to help them identify 'reduce,' 'reuse,' and 'recycle' options for traditional and unusual products. They've seen it all. Any waste that is left over can be sent to one of Covanta’s more than 40 owned and/or operated energy-from-waste (EfW) facilities in North America. These facilities burn the waste as fuel to create energy. This process is highly regulated to ensure harmful particulates do not negatively impact local air quality.

Covanta Environmental Solutions client J&J Flooring is an excellent example of going all-in on zero waste. The flooring manufacturer created a green team in the early 1990s to focus on sustainable processes. For the next 24 years, it focused on reusing, recycling and repurposing waste and, as a result, significantly decreased the amount of waste sent to local landfills. However, despite its best efforts, the company still found some of its waste ended up in landfills, so its management made a decision to go ZWTL.

One unexpected challenge came from city officials. The city of Dalton, Georgia, prohibited businesses from sending waste out of the county. J&J wanted to partner with Covanta Environmental Solutions to achieve zero-waste-to-landfill, but that meant transporting waste  across state lines to a waste-to-energy plant. So, the company worked with local officials to receive a variance from the county requirements.

Now, any waste that J&J can't recycle, reuse or compost -- about 2 percent of its total waste -- is sent to a waste-to-energy plant in Huntsville, Alabama where it is sorted, processed and burned to make steam. The steam travels through a six-mile pipe to the Red Stone Arsenal, a U.S. army garrison in Huntsville, where it powers the buildings' heat and air-conditioning system.  

When J&J Flooring decided to become ZWTL certified, it chose GreenCircle which provides certification for environmental and sustainability claims on operations and products. The Dalton site was subject to a thorough review of the downstream material management organizations receiving its recyclable waste to ensure every material was handled properly and responsibly.  

All the hard work paid off as J&J Flooring received certification from GreenCircle in May 2015, five years ahead of schedule. 

J&J Flooring is a success story when it comes to ZWTL, but its efforts and the outcome are not unusual. By partnering with organizations that specialize in the nuts and bolts of refuse management, ZWTL is achievable for any organization large or small.

Image credit: Pixabay

When White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney announced the proposed budget for the 2018 fiscal year on March 16, he said "spending on climate change is a waste of your money, and we're not going to do it anymore."

The implications of that pronouncement and the related Presidential Executive Order Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth released on March 28 are far reaching. And, according to some experts, climate change funding is far from a waste of money.

In a press briefing organized by Oxfam on March 30, speakers related how reductions in climate change spending could impact everything from support for community resiliency in the U.S. to loss of foreign aid to developing countries. Oxfam is an international confederation of NGOs working in more than 90 countries to end the injustices that cause poverty.

Mayor Belinda Constant of Gretna, Louisiana, is the co-chair of the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative (MRCTI), an association of 75 Mississippi River mayors representing all 10 states bordering the Mississippi River. Mayor Constant says the impacts of climate change are happening now and have financial implications.

"Since 2000, natural disasters have become more severe and more common in the U.S., increasing from an average of 46 events to 61 events per year, with a high of 97 in 2011," she told reporters last week. “Since 2005, the Mississippi River Valley has had successive 100-, 200- and 500-year flood events, a 50-year drought, and Hurricanes Katrina and Isaac.”

She says natural disasters along the Mississippi River have become persistent and systemic and cost more than $50 billion since 2011, cutting into the economy of  Mississippi River states by 8.7 percent.

Mayor Constant argued that eliminating federal support for community resiliency will make it harder for cities and states to protect the lives, health and well-being of their residents.

MRCTI presented a $100 million plan to the White House and Congress on March 2 to protect the infrastructure of the Mississippi River corridor by fully funding the Pre-Disaster Mitigation Grant Program, which helps 39 states plan for disasters. The proposed budget cuts the program's funding in half.

Mayor Constant told Memphis Magazine that the budget cuts “leave the region’s residents and economy at risk at a time when climate change is causing damaging extreme weather to occur with greater frequency and severity.”

“If you don’t want to call it climate change, you can call it whatever you want,” she said at the press briefing last week. “But the point is we are dealing with this grim reality. And we have to address it head on. We can’t pretend it is not happening.”

Jessica Grannis, adaptation program manager for the Georgetown Climate Center, agreed with Mayor Constant that climate impacts are happening now, offering these examples:

• Places like Miami and Norfolk, Virginia, are seeing city streets filled with flood water during sunny-day conditions at high tide.


• In New York and New Jersey storm surges from Hurricane Sandy added to sea levels that have already risen by one foot, causing $63 billion in damage across the region.


• Cities across the country are dealing with record temperatures – the 10 hottest years on record since 1998.


• In February, Oklahoma experienced temperatures approaching 100 degrees.


• In North Carolina, Highway 12 has been repeatedly damaged and rebuilt three times in less than a decade.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors also weighed in on domestic impacts of the recent executive order, saying their organization acknowledges “the detrimental impact that climate change already has, and will continue to have on our communities and our planet."

"And while Mayors will continue to lead the way, we cannot do it alone. We need both the public and private sector to work together to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions if we are to remain economically competitive and energy independent.”

The international perspective is similar to that in the U.S., said Saleemul Huq, senior fellow at the International Institute for Climate and Development in Bangladesh.

He sees commonality between the Louisiana experience and that of his country. Bangladesh, a low-lying nation with 160 million people living in 160,000 square kilometers, is one of the most vulnerable in the world. He said the delta region faces cyclones and regular floods that are becoming more frequent, much as they are in Louisiana.

Sherri Goodman, former undersecretary of defense for environmental security and a Wilson Center senior fellow, said it is already clear to military leaders that climate change is undermining stability in areas of the world where U.S. troops are operating today.

“Climate change is a threat multiplier to instability,” Goodman told reporters. She pointed out that the “sunny-day flooding” in Norfolk already affects Hampton Roads military operations: Periodically it is already difficult for defense employees to get to work.

In a July 2016 paper, the Union of Concerned Scientists concluded: “Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia and 17 other U.S. military installations sitting on waterfront property are looking at hundreds of floods a year and in some cases could be mostly submerged by 2100,” the Navy Times reported.

A recent documentary, “The Age of Consequences,” addressed the implications of climate change on national security. In the film Sharon Burke, a former assistant secretary of defense for operational energy, said: “When you talk about climate change as national security challenge, you have to ask  ... How does it affect what they have to be ready for in the future?”

The documentary reports that in 2003 the Department of Defense first identified the national security implications of abrupt climate change. By 2014, a DoD Climate Roadmap report identified that climate change posed immediate risks to national security, that the risks are continuing to accelerate, and that they are now a catalyst for conflict.

The results of the findings regarding the national security implications of climate change have made the U.S. military a leader in new clean-energy initiatives. By January 2016, the Navy alone had procured 1.1 gigawatts of renewable energy, about half of its power requirements. This helps to increase resiliency by enabling the installations to continue operations in the event of a commercial grid disruption.

The Department of the Navy has also investigated the use of biofuels. The most obvious example of this work is the Great Green Fleet, a year-long initiative that deployed the John C. Stennis Strike Group using alternative fuels, "including nuclear power for the carrier and a blend of advanced biofuel made from beef fat and traditional petroleum for its escort ships.” The purpose of the program was to allow ships to go farther, stay longer and deliver more firepower. And it “helped usher in the next era of Navy energy innovation.”

Last month, current Defense Secretary James Mattis told Congress that "climate change is a serious national security threat" and a driver of global instability that “requires a broader, whole-of-government response,” Politico reported. But the Wilson Center’s Sherri Goodman said, despite Mattis’ assertion, it is unclear how DoD climate change and clean energy programs would be funded in the proposed budget. However, she said the biofuels investment likely will not be included.

Saleemul Huq of Bangladesh cited three impacts to the implementation of the new executive order and cutbacks in U.S. climate funding:

• Difficulty reaching the long-term goal of limiting increases in temperature to 1.5  degrees Celsius as called for in the Paris accord, if the U.S. doesn’t do it’s share.


• Failure to make good on a commitment from developed countries to provide $100 billion annually to tackle climate change that would be provided to developing countries beginning in 2020. The U.S. commitment is $3 billion annually.


• Lack of support for U.S. citizens and communities that will be impacted by climate change.

Heather Coleman, Oxfam America’s climate change manager, is focused on the international ramifications. She said the proposed budget essentially eliminates all climate-related foreign aid. She said Oxfam will join with other organizations to protect foreign aid funding in the current and future budgets.

“We are on the brink of four famines in Africa and given the situation in the U.S., it doesn’t look like they [the administration] are going to be sending any funds to help,” she said last week. On its website, Oxfam said “famine has been declared in South Sudan, and is already likely happening in parts of in northern Nigeria, while Yemen and Somalia are on the brink."

Goodman included water mismanagement and political strife as part of the instability equation in Africa and added other areas of potential concern to the military. She called part of the Pacific Ocean “disaster alley” in an area including the Philippines, Southeast Asia, Vietnam and Bangladesh, as well as low-lying Pacific Islands. She also added the Arctic to the list. “The big unknown is when the dramatic changes occurring in the Arctic will lead to an incident, an oil spill or accident, for which the U.S. or other forces are unprepared or unable to respond.”

Will famines, sea-level rise or the warming Arctic contribute to global political instability requiring more military intervention on the part of the U.S.? It's too soon to say, and only time will tell how U.S. policies and final decisions on federal funding initiatives will work to prevent unrest through what Oxfam’s Heather Coleman calls “the soft power of foreign aid.”

Image credits: 1) MRCTI; 2) U.S. Navy

Last week, Wells Fargo reached an agreement in principle to pay $110 million in order to settle a class-action lawsuit filed in a Northern California court over the company’s dubious retail banking practices. The bank expects the exact terms of the settlement to be sorted out by the end of this month.

The trouble started brewing late last summer, when it was revealed that Wells Fargo employees opened as many as 2 million fake banking and credit accounts in order to meet aggressive sales quotas. The uproar continued in September, when it turned out that as many as 5,300 retail employees lost their jobs while the banking giant’s executives appeared to walk away from the scandal scot-free.

The ensuing consumer backlash, and grilling by Congress, soon led former CEO John Stumpf to retire from the company and forego as much as $41 million in unvested stock, salary and executive bonuses.

But for many employees, their careers and professional reputation were left in tatters. Tales of a toxic and punishing corporate culture, marked by goals many considered unattainable, have made the rounds on many a news show.

“They needed to hit their goals, no matter what,” said Susan Fischer, a former Wells Fargo retail banking manager in the Phoenix area, during a CNNMoney interview describing her employees' struggles to meet these directives. “And so it would be phone calls all the time, it would be emails, it would be visits, it would be constant in your face, ‘What are you doing?’”

The company has a long road to recovery from the public-relations fiasco as consumers have either left or avoided Wells Fargo in droves. Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that new credit card applications fell 43 percent during the fall 2016 quarter compared to the year’s previous levels; new checking accounts during the same period tumbled 40 percent.

But Wells Fargo’s critics are quick to point out that it is not clear if the company has learned any lessons from the scandal and resulting customer revulsion. As revealed by the Times and other media outlets last week, the company received a “needs to improve” rating from federal lending regulators on its community lending practices, due to evidence suggesting that discriminatory and illegal credit practices are rampant across the company.

Meanwhile, protests against the company continued last fall. More consumers became aware they were limited in what legal recourse they could take against the bank, as most account and credit card holders were constrained by arbitration clauses. The fine print buried in agreements, signed by consumers when they opened a new account, precluded consumers from joining class-action lawsuits.

Instead, they would have follow an arbitration process, which many consumer advocates say is unfair as judges in such cases tend to favor big companies over individual consumers. As the Washington Post reported, Stumpf found himself stumbling while he was testifying to Congress about the arbitration clauses last fall; the result was a hastening of his exit from the company, while further angering Wells Fargo’s customers and critics of the banking sector at large.

Last week’s settlement will likely do little to mollify those critics. That $110 million figure may sound like a huge sum, especially considering the $185 million in fines that Wells Fargo paid for the fake accounts scandal, which dated back to 2009. The bank expects that sum to wrap up the claims from another 11 class-action lawsuits that are still pending. But as Los Angeles Times reporter James Rufus Koren estimated in a recent column, after attorneys’ fees (which would take approximately 25 percent of that total), the final payout would end up totaling less that $40 per “fake account.”

Koren also interviewed attorneys representing plaintiffs in other class-action lawsuits – and they insist the current settlement as it stands is unfair to Wells Fargo customers (and, from their perspective, unfair to the attorneys working on this litigation). From their point of view, these lawyers worked too hard to let one boutique firm score more than the lion’s share of settlement fees. Of course, a risk for the customers who believe Wells Fargo wronged them is that the ongoing legal wrangling could wind up with no settlement at all.

Whether this settlement is approved or not, Wells Fargo faces a long road ahead as it seeks to both regain its stature within the global banking sector and repair its shattered brand reputation. The company has found itself showcased in business cases -- and not in a flattering light, but as a poster child of unethical corporate behavior.

And as its most recent annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission disclosed, Wells Fargo is still under several investigations led by federal and state regulators, including accusations that the company skirted rules protecting military personnel from home foreclosures and automobile repossessions while they were on active duty.

Image credit: Ken Teegardin/Flickr

An age of innovation may be coming to an end for nuclear giant Westinghouse. On Wednesday, the company that designed those conical AP1000s that have become emblematic of U.S. nuclear plants is seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The move was approved by its parent corporation, Toshiba Corp., as part of an effort to ensure Westinghouse’s financial problems would not endanger the Japanese electronics manufacturer.

In its 109-page filing, the company said that requirements put in place by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission following the September 11 attacks resulted in unforeseen design specifications and licensing costs.

“These new  requirements and safety measures created additional, unanticipated engineering challenges that resulted in increased costs and delays on the U.S. AP1000 projects and  other AP1000 projects  worldwide,” Westinghouse wrote in its bankruptcy filing.

The company said repeated changes in requirements continued to complicate its efforts to complete two key projects, the Georgia-based Vogtle plant and the VC Summer plant in South Carolina. But as Forbes writer James Conca reported last week, both projects were rife with organizational problems that ultimately spelled the demise of Westinghouse.

Critics also don’t agree whether the bankruptcy, which will likely spell the end of Westinghouse’s role in building reactors, will sound the death knell for nuclear energy in the U.S. Motley Fool writer Travis Hoium said he did the math and noted that while it was, as he put it, “missteps” that led to the bankruptcy, the gains from nuclear may no longer add up when paired against renewable giants like wind and solar,.

“[If] we assume an 8 percent internal rate of return on the $22 billion investment in Vogtle, a 30-year life, and energy production 100 percent of the time, the capital cost alone is 10 cents per kWh. And that doesn't include any operational cost, fuel, or financing,” Hoium wrote last week.

Conca, on the other hand, pointed to the company’s convoluted dealings with contractors for why it ultimately hemorrhaged.

“The cause of this latest problem seems to have nothing to do with nuclear power and everything to do with incompetent business practices, particularly Toshiba’s construction contractor,” Conca wrote.

In fact, the tale of how the company, a leader in nuclear power construction, resulted in a $7 billion write-down for Toshiba may become as storied as Westinghouse’s name itself.

“If you want to understand why Toshiba Corp. is about to report a multi-billion dollar write-down on its nuclear reactor business, the story begins and ends with a one-time pipe manufacturer with roots in the swamp country of Louisiana,” explained Bloomberg writers Jason Clenfield and Yuji Nakamura.

Repeated “blown deadlines” and cost overruns by Louisiana contractor Shaw Group were significant in leading up to the demise of Westinghouse, Clenfield and Nakamura reported. Increased scrutiny by the NRC after if found faulty construction slowed down the projects further. And issues that suggest nuclear power construction isn't Shaw's expertise contributed as well, they argued. Shaw's assets and contracts were eventually sold to Chicago Bridge & Iron.

In 2012, realizing it had made a mistake, CB&I sold the contracts to Toshiba for $229 million to get out from under them.

The problems didn’t end there for Toshiba, which has since found that its losses will actually exceed the $5.6 billion it paid for Westinghouse a decade ago.

But Westinghouse seems to have found a tentative path out of the mess. The company accepted financing from Apollo Investment Group, which offered an $800 million debtor-in-possession financing deal, with Toshiba investing about $200 million. The courts still have to approve the deal.

The restructuring would allow Westinghouse to ultimately concentrate on design, service and fueling of nuclear power plants and step out of the construction business, reported Anya Litvak, who has been following the story from Westinghouse’s home turf in Pennsylvania for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Litvak pointed out that while the debacle will have a defining impact on Westinghouse’s future, Pennsylvanians are still holding tight to the hope that the company will be able maintain the volume of its operations as is. Westinghouse employs more than 11,000 workers around the world, with 4,500 in Pittsburgh and 358 in its home town, Cranberry.

Still, the future of nuclear power in the U.S. is largely uncertain. While Westinghouse still plans to finish the two projects and must also sort out legal issues with CB&I (with which it is embroiled in a suit), its restructuring paints far from a rosy picture for the  global nuclear power industry. General Electric has begun to ramp back plant construction, and the French nuclear company Areva -- once a leader in the industry -- is also in the process of restructuring, also as a fuel supplier.

With wind energy still developing at a formidable pace and solar projecting positive gains, it will be interesting to see how Westinghouse and its nuclear competitors fare in the coming years.

Wikimedia/Nuclear Regulatory Commission (Public Domain)

Late last week, as the clock ticked closer to an NCAA deadline to repeal controversial HB-2, known widely as the “bathroom bill,” the North Carolina lawmakers passed legislation that aimed to reverse that law.

The NCAA, which relocated athletic championship events from North Carolina this academic year, has reportedly warned the state that it could lose the right to host any national collegiate athletic events through 2022 if the law was not overturned.

The state’s Republican-dominated legislature and newly-elected Gov. Ray Cooper agreed to HB-142, a compromise legislation, late Wednesday evening. But LGBT activists say the replacement law still leaves to door open to discrimination, and as of press time the NCAA has not responded publicly to the new law.

Forbes writer Debbie Clark was one of many commentators who expressed skepticism over the new law. “The only problem is that the compromise simply won’t work,” she warned in an op-ed.

To some analysts, last year's passage of HB-2 is about far more than who can use which bathroom, and went beyond nixing the safety and human rights of gays, lesbians and transgender citizens.

Writing in The Nation, Jeffrey Tobias described HB-2 as a symptom of the growing backlash from state governments against municipalities that pass ordinances banning discrimination, living wage laws or new environmental protections. Tobias reminded readers that lost in the rage over the bathroom controversy, HB-2 also banned cities and counties from enacting laws related to issues such as child labor or minimum wage increases.

The new bill still leaves North Carolina with no statewide law banning discrimination against LGBT citizens. Local governments are prohibited from passing any related ordinances until December 2020, a month after the state’s next gubernatorial election – rather convenient timing.

The Human Rights Campaign described the new law as “shameful.” And its president, Chad Griffin, described HB-142 as an effort that only “doubled-down on discrimination.” One national newspaper, the Chicago Sun-Times, urged the NCAA to “not be fooled,” and insisted that should the college sports governing body allow national championship events to be held in the Tar Hell State, it would send a signal that “it’s just fine to marginalize LGBTQ folks at least for a few more years.”

Gov. Ray Cooper, whose narrow victory was widely attributed to anger and embarrassment over HB-2, made it clear that the GOP super-majority in the state legislature did not give him much wiggle room. “This new law is a compromise,” he said in a public statement. “But we stopped Republican leaders from adding provisions that permanently placed LGBT rights subject to referendum or allowed people to use religious beliefs to discriminate.”

Cooper claimed the law largely removed most of HB-2’s most punitive actions, eliminated the bathroom restrictions and gives citizens three times as much time to file discrimination complaints than what had been previously allowed by state law. But Cooper’s predecessor, Pat McCrory, agreed with LGBT advocates that the new law was not a full repeal.

The bill became law as the state, despite having one of the fastest growing economies in the U.S., continued to suffer many lost opportunities to boost state coffers, from the hosting of national trade shows to the loss of this year’s NBA All-Star Game. Estimates over the past year largely suggest the state lost hundreds of millions of dollars in potential revenues; a recent Associated Press analysis concluded that the total amount of losses could reach $3.76 billion over the next dozen years.

Image credit: Ron Cogswell/Flickr