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TriplePundit has been exploring the efficacy of boycotts, or lack thereof, and we could be on the verge of yet another test case. Retail giant Walmart has joined a growing list of companies to publicly oppose U.S. President Donald Trump over climate change and the rollback of the Clean Power Plan. That could set the stage for yet another boycott from the Breitbart organization.

In recent months, Breitbart promoted boycotts of Kellogg, Nordstrom and Starbucks to no avail, so maybe the fourth time will be a charm.

Walmart, Apple and GE zing Trump over climate change

The news about the Walmart position on climate change broke last week. Bloomberg's Christopher Flavelle picked out this money quote from a company statement:

“This work is embedded in our business,” Walmart spokesman Kevin Gardner said in an email. It’s “good for the business, our shareholders and customers; if ultimately we are able to positively impact the environment in the process, that’s a win too.”

Walmart is far from alone. Flavelle also cites Apple, quoted here in a joint statement with a number of other top tech companies including Amazon and Microsoft:

“We believe that strong clean energy and climate policies, like the Clean Power Plan, can make renewable energy supplies more robust and address the serious threat of climate change while also supporting American competitiveness, innovation and job growth,” Apple wrote.

General Electric also weighed in early on the Clean Power Plan rollback. Politico got the inside scoop from an internal company blog post authored by CEO Jeffrey Immelt:

“Companies must be resilient and learn to adjust to political volatility all over the world … Companies must have their own ‘foreign policy’ and create technology and solutions that address local needs for our customers and society.”

People are going to freeze in the dark...not

By way of counterpoint, Flavelle teased out this remark from Robert Murray, CEO of the coal company Murray Energy Corp.:

“People are going to freeze in the dark because of the destruction of the reliable electric power grid under Obama and the Democrats ... Mr. Trump is doing the right things.”

However, Murray's position seems to be an isolated one.

Major U.S. companies have been transitioning to renewable energy for years, and they are not likely to slow down.

The movement heated up considerably in 2015, when scores of companies joined the Barack Obama administration in a concerted effort to support a strong U.S. position on decarbonization, in advance of the Paris climate talks.

The administration's so-named American Business Act on Climate Pledge launched in July 2015 with 13 companies, including Walmart. That number ballooned to 81 in only three months.

Also in advance of the climate talks, in September 2015 nine Fortune 500 companies joined the RE100 pledge for 100 percent renewable energy. Walmart was there, too, along with Goldman Sachs, Johnson & Johnson, Nike, Procter & Gamble, Salesforce, Starbucks, Steelcase and Voya Financial.

And those pledges were not all hot air. In 2015 The Rocky Mountain Institute's Business Renewables Center totaled up the results for its initiative to streamline clean power purchases for the business community:

"BRC companies now represent total annual revenues of $1.3 trillion, global annual electricity consumption of 41.7 TWh (equivalent to around 3.8 million American homes), and for publicly traded companies, a collective market capitalization of $2.14 trillion."

Here's a snip from the BRC blog:

"New corporate members include Autodesk, Avery Dennison, Cisco, Digital Realty, EMC Corporation, Equinix, Etsy, FedEx, Microsoft, Starwood Hotels, Steelcase, Workday, Xanterra Parks & Resorts, Yahoo!, and others.

"New sponsors include 3Degrees, Affordable Solar, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Capital Power, Community Energy, Duke Energy Renewables, EDF Renewable Energy, Gaelectric, Iberdrola Renewables, Infinity Wind Power, K&L Gates, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, ReneSola, Renewable Energy Systems Americas, Sempra U.S. Gas & Power, SoCore Energy, SolarCity, Sol Systems, Tradewind Energy, and WSP Group."

The Walmart name pops up again here, too. Walmart was an early client of the Rocky Mountain Institute, calling on the organization to advise it on store and transportation sustainability back in 2006.

So, are we going to boycott Walmart?

Breitbart tested the Walmart boycott waters in December 2016, when it zinged the company for providing third-party sales of "Bulletproof/Black Lives Matter" clothing on its website, while banning the sale of Confederate flag-themed merchandise.

Walmart quickly dropped the line before any meaningful boycott got under way. That looks like a case of no harm, no foul -- the Bulletproof line certainly wasn't central to Walmart's business (or, for that matter, the third-party seller), and dropping it barely made a ripple in the Walmart pond.

The Clean Power Plan rollback is a different story altogether. The threat of negative publicity was sufficient to force Walmart into a quick behavior change before the Bulletproof issue snowballed. But forcing the company to alter its behavior on climate change would require a substantial change in its day-to-day operations as well as long-term plans.

Walmart has taken plenty of hits for its employment policies but it continues to set a high bar for action on climate change, and those strategies are deeply entwined with its business model.

A 10-year relationship (and counting) with the Environmental Defense Fund is one factor that has enabled the company to reach deep into its own operations -- and those of its supply chain -- for decarbonization strategies.

As Walmart raises the sustainability bar, the company will continue to come into conflict with Trump administration policies.

That ups the opportunities for Breitbart -- a staunch advocate for President Trump with close ties to the administration -- to push back.

So far, Walmart is walking a careful line on its support for the Trump administration. But in addition to climate change, the company also staked out an opposing position on Trump's border tax. Trump's travel restrictions could also become another point of conflict that makes Walmart ripe for a boycott by Trump supporters.

Given the Breitbart track record on boycotts in recent months, though, the chances for a successful campaign are slim to none.

In the meantime, Breitbart is suffering through a boycott of its own. The Sleeping Giants boycott campaign now stands at more than 1,700 companies that have blocked automatic ad buys from appearing on the Breitbart site, and it shows no signs of slowing down.

Photo: Solar installation on Mountain View, California Walmart store courtesy of Wal-Mart via flickr.com, creative commons license.

America desperately needs affordable, universal health care. Americans pay more for health care than any other developed nation. One of out of every five dollars spent in our economy is spent on health care. Even with this much money being spent, we are last among developed countries in terms of human health.

Could things get much worse?

Yes. Our country now stands at a dangerous crossroad. The Republican American Health Care Act (AHCA) has been withdrawn. President Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan now threaten to allow, or even enable, the collapse of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, commonly known as Obamacare). This will only increase healthcare costs even more for America and Americans.

This three-part series searches for answers to America's continued failure at providing affordable and effective health care.

 

Our failed insurance business model is driving healthcare costs higher

An insurance business model that can raise prices with little consumer recourse is the first-tier explanation of why our health care is so expensive. Examples of how this system is failing consumers include:

1. Use of highly complex rate structures and contracts to limit the consumers' ability to understand prices, gain price transparency and challenge price hikes


2. The power of insurance companies to serve as their own arbitrator after they deny a claim


3. Price discrimination between demographically similar consumers through the use of artificial insurance pools built around whether a person works for a big company, a small company or is self-employed


4. Little or no performance link between consumer payment and medical service results

The bottom line is that our current insurance business model charges higher prices because it can.

Extreme American behaviors are driving healthcare costs to record levels

While our insurance model charges us more for health care, our lifestyles and behaviors are the underlying reason why it remains so expensive. These seven data points define how our lifestyles and actions are driving healthcare costs to record levels:

1. We are in a national weight crisis. Fifty percent of Americans are either overweight or obese. This weight crisis is driving a costly national diabetes and heart disease epidemic.


2. Gun deaths are comparable to vehicle deaths. Gun violence kills over 33,000 Americans annually. The good news is that gun violence is not growing. The horrible news is that every day 30 people die from gun violence and 200 are injured.


3. Over 50,000 Americans die annually from drug overdoses. Drug abuse is now an epidemic. Drug overdose deaths have grown three times higher in just 15 years.


4. The rate of increase in vehicle accident deaths is at a 50-year high. Annually, over 38,000 Americans are killed, and an additional 4.4 million seriously injured, in vehicle accidents.


5. America’s infant mortality rate compares to Serbia and Bosnia. America’s infant mortality rate is approximately three times higher than Japan’s.


6. End-of-life costs. Approximately a third of all Medicare expenditures occur during the last six months of life because only Oregon and Washington empower the individual with end of life decision-making.


7. White middle class economic depression. Our white middle class, in economic distress from factory and middle management job losses, is self-medicating their pain through drug/alcohol abuse and suicide.

Healthcare costs will continue to soar until Americans come together on these public policy issues.

The American bottom line on healthcare costs

The path to affordable healthcare requires two key steps.

The first is to replace the current insurance business model with one that protects consumers against price gouging and pricing discrimination.

The second is for Americans to adopt healthy behaviors. None of us want to be told what to do. None of us want our rights diminished. But with liberty comes responsibility. Until Americans take responsibility for their health, and healthcare costs, the cost for healthcare will continue to soar. Americans coming together on public policy that protects their health is an absolute requirement if we are going to achieve lower healthcare costs.

Obviously, both steps one and two are easier said than done.

The next two articles in this series will outline what America, and Americans, can do to gain affordable health care.

Image credit: Pexels

It's pretty obvious what to do with cans, glass containers and even plastic bottles once they're empty. But for other products, such as plastic toys, recycling can pose a tricky question. After all, the types of plastics that are accepted into waste management streams vary by municipality.

But natural personal care company Tom’s of Maine, in a partnership with TerraCycle, says it has a solution.

As part of the brand's Less Waste Challenge, consumers can collect and box broken or unwanted toys and send them to TerraCycle. The process is simple. Customers click a link to print a free shipping label, and then send the goods to TerraCycle. Both companies infer that any toys will be accepted, including plush toys such as stuffed animals.

In the meantime, TerraCycle is trying to boost the recycling of toys, including electronic gadgets, by selling boxes that are designed to encourage and scale their recycling. Neither company has disclosed how the toys they collect will be recycled or upcycled.

Tom’s of Maine has promoted the recycling of toys before. Two years ago, the company tried to raise awareness of the fact that billions of toys are purchased annually, and cited statistics suggesting that over half of them are tossed away when no longer wanted. The company also partnered with TerraCycle on the initiative, which similarly allowed customers to mail in their old toys for recycling.

There is one caveat: Both companies suggest that customers not ship the box until at least 10 pounds of toys are tucked inside. But unlike other recycling campaigns -- such as TerraCycle's recent partnership with Garnier, which also called for a high volume of waste in one package -- accumulating 10 pounds of toys should not be too steep of a challenge for the typical household.

As the global economy recovers, the sales of toys have surged. One trade association reported that the American toy industry alone surpassed over $20 billion in sales last year. But the wide use of plastics in these toys, many of which have a short life, highlights concerns that far too many of them end up in municipal dumps. Reports from publications including the Guardian, which suggest that recycled toxic electronic waste has come back as children’s toys, further indicate that the industry can do far more to become more responsible and sustainable.

This toy challenge is part of a Tom’s of Maine initiative to educate consumers about the amount of waste their households send to landfill. Last year, the company accelerated its waste diversion awareness efforts by urging customers to reduce the amount of waste tey throw away by one pound a week. The maker of natural toothpaste and deodorant says such behavior changes have prevented the disposal of over 226,000 pounds – or promises from approximately 4,300 customers.

Image credit: Diane Bales/Flickr

With a busy week behind you and the weekend within reach, there’s no shame in taking things a bit easy on Friday afternoon. With this in mind, every Friday TriplePundit will give you a fun, easy read on a topic you care about. So, take a break from those endless email threads, and spend five minutes catching up on the latest trends in sustainability and business.

With the atmosphere in Washington shifting decidedly away from sustainability, it's easy to assume most American companies will follow suit.

In reality, 60 percent of firms with revenues greater than $1 billion said the Donald Trump administration will have “no impact” on their sustainability strategies. And these consumer engagement campaigns tell us companies don't plan to stop putting funds behind environmental stewardship, diversity and sustainable development. Let's all breathe a small sigh of relief.

Kashi rallies shoppers around organics

https://youtu.be/rpA5hDDh_zk

Last year Kellogg subsidiary Kashi — known best for cereals and snack bars — made waves for its choice to establish a transitional organic label.

It's expensive for farmers to go organic. And it takes at least three years -- a so-called 'transition period' -- for certifications to go through. During this time, farmers are making costly improvements to their practices without being paid more for their wares.

Kashi and Quality Assurance International cited this gap as a major barrier that prevents small farmers from going organic. With transitional organic certification, farmers can begin charging more for their crops as they make steps toward that coveted USDA seal.

The company says supporting transitional organic products will help the market catch up with demand -- and make it easier to source organic ingredients. Kashi released its second product containing transitional ingredients last month. And executives say they hope the expanding product line can engage customers around organic agriculture.

“Kashi has a role to play in promoting dialogue with consumers about the need for more organics,” Nicole Nestojko, senior director of supply chain and sustainability at Kashi, told 3p. “This is the first time consumers can directly support the transition to more organics through their purchases."

Peet's wants customers to know who grew their coffee

https://youtu.be/KJuGzSGT0FE

Peet's Coffee is arguably the country's first high-end coffee chain. They've served up high-quality and fairly-traded brews since 1966. And many of the same smallholder coffee-farming collectives still work with the company to this day.

Its latest initiative, People and Planet, seeks to engage customers around the work the company is already doing to support coffee farmers. The People and Planet line includes nine coffees: each from a different region and a different group of farmers.

Additional People and Planet coffees will be announced throughout the year, as well as events where Peet’s will invite its customers to engage around the initiative.

3p spoke with Doug Welsh, VP of coffee and ‘Roastmaster’ for Peet’s, to learn more. You can read our coverage here.

H&M asks customers to recycle their old clothes

Up to 95 percent of the clothing Americans throw away could be reworn or recycled, according to H&M.

In 2013, the fast-fashion giant set out to recapture some of those old clothes with a national rollout of its garment collection program. Over the past four years, H&M customers recycled a staggering 32,000 tons of clothing and textiles -- which are given new life through rewear or recycling in partnership with I:CO.

“Fashion is a resource that can be used again and again,” Anna Gedda, head of sustainability at H&M, told 3p Editor in Chief Jen Boynton when she visited the company's headquarters in Stockholm last year. “It’s a new way of thinking about fashion.”

Boynton is heading back to Sweden to learn more about an exciting new announcement from H&M. Check 3p next week for more details.

P&G puts cash behind women's empowerment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biQsNTgbbcQ

Consumer packaged goods giant Procter & Gamble has been busy this year. Along with offering disaster-relief services to communities in Mississippi and Georgia, the company and its brands put philanthropic and advertising dollars behind women's empowerment.

The company's Pantene hair care brand launched an ad campaign celebrating diversity last week. In its powerful "All Strong Hair Is Beautiful" ad, the company seeks to dispel myths about African American hair -- which is often misrepresented in the media and pop culture.

"Mass brands, like Pantene, have inadvertently been a part of this pervasive hair bias with a history of advertising showcasing a limited representation of African American hair styles and textures and promoting long, shiny, smooth hair as the pinnacle of hair health and beauty," the company said in a press release. "Pantene has set out to change this perception and empower all women to embrace their strong and unique hair, because all strong hair is beautiful hair."

P&G's Always feminine hygiene brand is also active in empowering women and girls. The company launched its #LikeAGirl campaign with an ad spot during the 2014 Super Bowl. The initiative tells young ladies there's no shame in "playing like a girl" and seeks to build up women's athletics.

As part of the ongoing campaign, Always linked up with Walmart to support 50 girls sports teams in 50 states. The campaign successfully wrapped a few weeks ago, with both companies putting financial backing behind girls teams across the country.

Dell educates customers about ocean waste

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgieHvpD4EM

This summer, Dell will be the first company in the electronics industry to make packaging from waste collected at sea. Starting April 30, Dell will begin transitioning its XPS 13 2-in-1 laptop packaging to an alternative made from 25 percent ocean plastic.

The packaging will also feature educational information to "raise global awareness" about ocean health, the company said last month. Dell claims its pilot, in partnership with the Lonely Whale Foundation, will prevent 16,000 pounds of plastic from entering the ocean this year.

Garnier rallies customers around bathroom recycling...

https://youtu.be/YXhr9pDdeWM

Most Americans have mastered the simple behavior change of tossing beverage and food containers into the recycling bin -- at least in neighborhoods where curbside recycling pickup is available. But recycling is more easily forgotten in other rooms of the house.

Garnier is out to change that with a campaign to remind customers to recycle those empty shampoo and body wash bottles. Although these bottles are recyclable, up to half of Americans toss them in the trash, according to Garnier.

To that end, the personal care products company owned by L’Oréal launched its fittingly-named Rinse, Recycle, Repeat campaign earlier this month. It enlisted a popular YouTuber and DoSomething.org to spread the recycling gospel. And it partnered with TerraCycle on a mail-back disposal solution for customers who don't have access to curbside recycling.

"[The campaign] combines my three favorite things: beauty products, creativity and, most importantly, doing my part to help the environment," said YouTube star Remi Cruz. "I'm excited to be a part of this campaign, and ready to show young people that there is a fun and easy way to make an impact."

... And so is Johnson & Johnson

Garnier is fairly new to the bathroom recycling game. But fellow personal care giant Johnson & Johnson has been at it for years.

The company first launched its Care to Recycle campaign back in 2013. After learning most of its customers weren't recycling in the bathroom, the company put out surveys to find out why.

In its 2017 survey, 60 percent of moms confessed they wish they remembered to recycle more. But they also said they would be more likely to recycle in the bathroom if they had a bin there to help them remember.

They asked, and J&J answered. The company is partnering with CVS to offer free recycling bins with qualifying purchase on CVS.com starting April 9.

And customers can translate those recycled bottles into donations for the Student Conservation Association: J&J will donate $1 for every photo uploaded for the SCA through its Donate A Photo app (up to $60,000).

The company hopes this animated infographic will spread the news across the Web. As social media addicts would say, #totesadorbz.

Lyft doesn’t want to be a nice guy anymore. As Uber seems to be dealing with a new crisis every week, Lyft is striving to use this opportunity to build its brand as a clear alternative: a brand not shy of taking positions and action around political issues like President Donald Trump’s travel ban.

“We’re woke. Our community is woke, and the U.S. population is woke,” Lyft co-founder and President John Zimmer told Time magazine earlier this week. “There’s an awakening … Our vote matters; our choice matters; the seat we take matters." Curiously, he went on to add: "We’re not the nice guys. We’re a better boyfriend."

These statements coincide with a new Lyft initiative dubbed Round Up and Donate: The company will soon give users the option to “round up your fare to the nearest whole dollar and push the difference toward issues impacting everyone everywhere, from climate change to the pursuit of equality,” it announced in a blog post this week.

In the post, Lyft emphasized: “Treating people better along the way is just the way we do it,” subconsciously reminding you of that other company that doesn’t seem to treat people well, whether it's employees, drivers, city officials or other stakeholder groups.

Lyft seems intent on making this humanitarian sentiment a key message as it was also repeated by Gina Ma, who now heads up the company’s brand strategy, in an interview with the Guardian: “The one thing that really sets Lyft apart is how we think about treating people,” she told the paper.

So naturally, we need to ask ourselves: Is Lyft truly woke, does it treat people better and, how to put it, does the company act as a better boyfriend?

Let me start with the last part. I have to admit I am not really sure what a ‘better boyfriend’ actually means, so I can only guess. Maybe Zimmer was looking for a metaphor for a relationship you have with a really cool guy who you later learn isn't so cool at all, recognizing that the other guy, the nice one you didn’t really pay attention to, is actually much better for you because he is just a better person. My advice to Zimmer: Don’t use this metaphor. It doesn’t serve the narrative you have constructed, and some would say it actually goes against it.

Now, to the question about treating people well. I would say this narrative doesn't accurately reflect the reality. In fairness, I believe that Lyft and its founders’ mindset is different from Uber's. As Lyft’s Ma puts it: “John [Zimmer and co-founder Logan Green] have a very clear moral compass for the way they make designs, treat people and build teams. That’s a huge part of our secret sauce.”

I agree with that. (Full disclosure: I have worked with Lyft on class projects in a sharing economy course I teach.) However, I believe that the fact that Lyft drivers are independent contractors without almost any basic benefits makes this statement more of wishful thinking. You can’t claim to treat people well without treating the people that create value for you well, providing them with decent working conditions.

In that sense, Lyft is closer in its model to Uber than to Juno, a New York City ridesharing upstart that provides drivers with equity in the company and is looking to eventually hire drivers as full-time employees. With all its uniqueness, Lyft still subscribes to a model that doesn’t treat service providers well. Only when it significantly changes this element in its business model will Lyft be able to make a clear case that it indeed treats people better.

Let’s look at the “we’re woke” claim a bit closer, too. As Verge’s Andrew Hawkins explained this week: “Most people define 'woke' as being alert to social injustice, especially racism, and expressing a commitment to stopping it.”

Hawkins’ 'woke' analysis looked at issues including ties to the Trump administration (Peter Thiel, a supporter of the president and a Trump advisor, is also an investor in Lyft); social awareness (Lyft opposed the Trump travel ban and donated $1 million to ACLU); treatment of drivers (Lyft shares the same vision of a shift to autonomous cars only with a vague premise that “there would be a “huge role for humans being part of the autonomous transition”); and diversity and inclusion (unlike Uber, Lyft has yet to release diversity data, although it claims to stand for “inclusivity””). Bottom line? The jury is still out.

The main problem with Lyft’s new branding effort is that the company seems to be taking credit for values and practices that are only partially correct, i.e. the company is treating some people well (but many not that well) and is somewhat woke (support some causes but still mostly aligns with a Silicon Valley ‘business as usual’ agenda).

As I wrote here last month, the Trump era requires clarity and commitment. And it is certainly true for companies that want to position themselves as the right moral choice in this new political age. This era also requires consistency: You can’t be committed to treating only some people better – either you are fully committed to treat all of your key stakeholders with dignity and are willing to share with them the fruits of your (and their) labor, or you're not. Similarly, you can’t be somewhat woke – either you are making a serious effort to make a difference or you aren’t.

I believe it is time for Lyft founders Logan Green and John Zimmer to make a decision. Their heart seems to be in the right place. But Silicon Valley’s way of doing business seems to be more dominant in shaping the company’s culture and therefore the way it works and makes a difference overall.

Usually it is quite difficult for leaders to overcome the pressures of investors and the market, but here there’s actually an opportunity for Green and Zimmer to make their case that adopting a truly progressive mindset can be not just morally right, but also makes good business sense. This is an opportunity for Lyft to find a clear voice and what makes it different from Uber. If it misses it, there might not be a second one.

Image credit: Flickr/CB2017_

Banking giant JPMorgan Chase slashed its online advertising this month, and its online presence remained more or less the same, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.

Just a month ago, ads for Chase banking and other JPMorgan services could be found on over 400,000 sites, the company told Times reporter Sapna Meheshwari. But in the wake of a backlash against companies that advertise on fake news portals or sites such as Breitbart, the company slashed its online advertising down to approximately 5,000 pre-approved sites.

Despite limiting the Internet properties on which it advertises, JPMorgan claims that it has seen almost no changes in the cost of impressions (the instances a banner ad appears on a webpage) or the visibility of the company in the online world. JPMorgan says it is being far more judicious about where its ads appear across the web, and that includes alongside online video content as well.

Last week, the banking giant joined Johnson & Johnson and other widely-known brands in suspending their advertising spend on YouTube as some users had reportedly seen such ads alongside offensive videos. Additional companies, including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Walmart and Dish Network, also announced that they would cease advertising on YouTube due to similar complaints. That news rocked Alphabet, the parent company of Google, as YouTube had emerged as one of the company’s more popular and profitable ventures. Shortly after those companies’ announcements, Alphabet’s stock price dropped 1.2 percent, though it has since then recovered.

The sudden avoidance of YouTube and other internet sites is a blow to programmatic advertising, which had surged in popularity in recent years. Advertisers, especially those representing consumer brands, have eschewed ad buys on individual web sites as the technology that allows for targeting based on people’s web browsing habits became far more cost effective. As a result, someone browsing the web could see that smartphone ad on a popular web property or random individual technology blog. And if you were close to purchasing a product on a site such as Amazon, but either changed your mind or just forgot to follow through, programmatic advertising is why you might see that same gizmo appearing on various web sites week after week despite your loss of interest.

This shift in advertising will hurt many third-party advertising companies, who are largely responsible for these large ad buys. And this trend could also hurt smaller web sites, as they reap some financial benefits from these massive ad purchases. The average internet user, however, may be relieved – as in the author of this article, who has often been rankled over the fact that every time he posts an article about Armenia or Armenians on his personal site, banners for the dating service “Armenian Friends” often appear. And this shift is hardly fool-proof, as the Times has also reported that some brands attempting to block their ads from appearing on Breitbart or similar sites could find their ads occasionally sneak through anyway.

Nevertheless, JPMorgan’s change in tactics shows how the current political climate can prove toxic for brands and their advertising partners. Whether or not a company wants to appear aligned or distant from Donald Trump - or any controversial public figure or organization, for that matter - the sword cuts both ways. Depending on the product or service, half of a company's customers will be jubilant, while the other half enraged. But as the growing outrage over fake news proliferates, paired with the growing evidence of Russia’s influence on the past election – and ensuing cover-up – the vast majority of marketing and brand managers will err on the side of caution.

Image credit: Joe Montiel/Flickr

Watch for a war of words to erupt between U.S. President Donald Trump and “Jina” at any moment.

A major Chinese daily, the Global Times, lashed out at Trump on Thursday in the wake of the White House announcement that it would overturn many climate-related policies implemented under the former Barack Obama administration. While Trump insists these moves are necessary to save the U.S. coal-mining industry and its jobs, the Global Times’ editors attacked the policy shifts as a “retreat from action” on moving the world toward a low-carbon economy.

The newspaper, which often covers international news from the Chinese Communist Party’s perspective, has courted its share of controversy in the past. Its editors have taken an aggressive stance against anyone in the international community who has defended the work of artist and political activist Ai Weiwei. Last year, the paper dismissed Australia as a “paper cat” over a diplomatic row over access rights to the South China Sea.

When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, then a nominee, suggested that U.S. ships deny China access to disputed islands in that region, the Global Times described that any such provocation would lead to a “large-scale war.”

But this same paper also took a conciliatory tone toward Japan after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that damaged the Fukushima nuclear plant.

The paper’s editors reminded the Trump administration that China and the U.S. have worked on climate change cooperation since 2014, the result of which included both countries signing the 2015 international climate agreement during the COP21 talks in Paris. The article also argues that as the lone superpower in the world, the U.S. is in a unique position with its technological capabilities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But the paper's editorial board followed that argument with a head-scratching comment that China is still developing, writing: “The task of industrialization has not been completed yet.” Considering China has become the world’s manufacturing center, and has struggled with pollution as a result, that assertion will come to the country’s critics as a cop-out. Of course, the country’s massive increase in carbon emissions and noxious air quality problems is the result of two decades of more manufacturing moving from industrialized nations to China.

China’s contribution to climate change notwithstanding, the paper described Trump’s executive orders on climate and energy as “political selfishness,” and insisted that Western opinion keep the pressure on Trump’s White House to not walk away from the 2015 global climate agreement. So far, however, the newspaper described the Western media’s ability to hold the Trump administration accountable as “somewhat feeble.”

China is hardly the only voice in the international community decrying Trump’s position on climate change. Yesterday, The Vatican urged the White House keep an open mind to the “dissenting voices” urging the U.S. to keep its global climate action promises. In an interview with Reuters, Cardinal Peter Turkson, often credited as the most ardent supporter of the 2015 encyclical letter touting the Vatican’s emphasis on environmental protection, said China’s investment in solar and wind power technologies could position the world’s most populous country as the global leader in clean energy development and leadership.

Trump’s dismissal of climate change as “hoax” perpetrated by the Chinese in order to sabotage the U.S. economy has long been documented. But the evidence suggests China is seeking to capitalize on climate science for its own economic gain regardless of other nations’ policies. According to several news reports, the country is on target to spend $360 billion on clean power generation by 2020, which will could create as many as 13 million jobs over the next several years.

Image credit: The Climate Group/Flickr

Qdoba Mexican Eats and Jack in the Box, part of the same parent company, joined a long line of food giants in announcing new animal welfare standards this week.  

The companies set a multi-pronged approach for 2024, in part by switching to broiler breeds the Global Animal Partnership (GAP) approves as having higher welfare outcomes. Fast-growing breeds make up 98 percent of all commercially available chickens in North America. GAP-approved breeds grow about 23 percent slower than conventional chickens. But fast-growing breeds can develop immune and musculoskeletal problems.

Both restaurants are committed to reducing stocking density of broiler chickens in barns to GAP standards of equal to or less than six pounds per square foot, which gives the birds about 25 percent more space than conventional chickens. They are also committed to enhancing the living environments of broiler chickens with improved litter, lighting and enrichment, according to GAP standards, and to switching to a multi-step controlled-atmospheric stunning to ensure the chickens are unconscious before they are processed.

“We’ve always been committed to the well-being of animals in our supply chain,” said Lenny Comma, chairman and chief executive officer, in a statement. “As examples, in recent years we've worked with our suppliers to improve housing environments for egg layers and sows.

“Jack in the Box and Qdoba’s commitment to improving the welfare of chickens in their supply chains by meeting Global Animal Partnership standards will reduce the suffering of countless birds,” said Brent Cox, vice president of corporate outreach for Mercy For Animals, in a statement. “It should also inspire other leading restaurant chains to implement identical commonsense welfare improvements.”

Animal welfare across the supply chain

Qdoba and Jack in the Box have set goals for other animals in its supply chains, including egg-laying hens and sows. By 2020, the fast food chains expect their egg suppliers to transition most of their egg supply to cage-free, and to fully transition to cage-free eggs by 2025. Most egg-laying chickens in the U.S. are housed in cages that only give them 67 to 76 square inches of space per chicken. However, non-cage systems are rapidly growing and account for 10 percent of U.S. production, an increase of four percent in just a few years. Many food companies have set similar goals to those of Qdoba and Jack in the Box, so in about a decade caged systems will likely be far less.

Most sows in the U.S. are housed in gestation stalls, which are so small they are barely able to move. Qdoba and Jack in the Box state in their animal welfare standards that they “believe group housing is a preferable housing system for sows.” In 2012, they set a goal that by 2022 all pork products in their supply chains would come from supply systems where pregnant sows are kept in group housing. They have increased the percentage of pork raw materials sourced from group housing since adopting the goal. Several major suppliers are working to convert their company-owned farms to group housing by 2018.

Antibiotics use is another area where Jack in the Box has set a goal. Jack in the Box does not buy poultry that have received antibiotics important to human health and is working with its suppliers to eliminate other routine uses of medically important antibiotics by 2020.

Animal welfare groups hope that other restaurant chains will follow the lead of companies that have adopted better animal welfare standards. As Cox said, “Companies that fail to adopt this meaningful chicken welfare policy will simply be out of step with consumer expectations and business trends.”

Image credit: Flickr/U.S. Department of Agriculture

In much of the world, aging infrastructure causes cities to lose a staggering amount of water to leakage before it can ever reach a home or business. In 2014, NPR reported that a sixth of America's treated water is lost to leakage, totaling 2.1 trillion gallons annually. Forbes tallied losses exceeding 30 percent. Even higher leakage rates are reported in some U.S. municipalities and, of course, worldwide.

One Israeli startup says its technology can not only detect leaks as small as an eighth of an inch, but it can also locate potential weak spots in pipes before they even sprout a leak.

Aquarius Spectrum is a startup located just north of Tel Aviv, Israel. Founded in 2009 by David Solomon, the company develops both sensors and software that can work together to monitor a water utility’s pipe system and send alerts at the very moment a leak starts to develop. TriplePundit recently spoke with Aquarius Spectrum’s CEO, Oded Fruchtman, to learn about the company’s growth and how its technology solutions can save utilities both water and money.

Real-time leak detection is a relatively new technology. For decades, water utilities really could not do much more than be reactive in the event that a pipe leaked, and were often not aware of such a problem until a water main burst. Then 20 to 30 years ago, listening sticks emerged, which allowed civil engineers to listen to underground pipes in order to gauge whether a leak possibly existed. Data would be collected on a regular basis and then be dumped into a spreadsheet or database. But while that advancement helped speed up the pipe repair process, the monitoring of leaks was still an inexact science. Typically, if a leak was detected, entire swathes of land would have to be dug out – and on average, the cost to excavate land in order to repair pipes on average costs about $1 million a mile.

Aquarius Spectrum’s sensors take much of the guesswork out of leak detection. Pipe monitoring systems can be installed on pipes, hydrants and valve pits. Every night at the same time, those sensors take acoustic measurements and then send them to a cloud server.  The company’s software then uses correlation in order to determine the distance of a leak from a sensor. By analyzing these sounds, Aquarius Spectrum’s technology can pinpoint the location of a leak with an average deviation of 1 percent.

In other words, if a leak is determined to be 100 feet away from a sensor, Aquarius Spectrum claims that in the end, an underground leak’s location will be off by only one foot at most. “When you can find leaks that small, you don’t have to react in an emergency manner, or work on weekends or holidays,” explained Fruchtman.

The company’s acoustic technology can also help provide utilities information on leaks in private buildings. “We can tell if the leak’s in an office building or a flat, or if the problem is with the water meter, a pressure reduce valve—anything that creates a noise that should not be creating a noise,” Fruchtman continued during the interview with 3p.

According to Fruchtman, Aquarius Spectrum’s technology can provide water utilities additional benefits. As many cities’ infrastructure ages, this same software can provide employees information suggesting where the weak spots are within a city’s water works. By having the ability to start preventive maintenance, a job that in the past would have involved digging up an entire street can now be localized. Water utilities can plan ahead and use their employees’ time far more effectively. “The fact is that you now need less service teams to do surveys on a weekly or monthly basis. You have everything you need in the palm of your hand with this information,” he said.

One of Aquarius Spectrum’s first customers was HaGihon, Jerusalem’s water and wastewater utility. The city of 800,000, which has long coped with rapid growth, mountainous terrain and old infrastructure within its central core, proved to be a perfect testing ground for the company’s sensors, cloud software and mobile technology. In 2013, the utility installed 1,600 sensors across much of the city’s water distribution network. Three years later, Aquarius Spectrum’s system found 226 hidden leaks across Jerusalem, with 55 of them occurring within privately held properties. While the number of visible leaks or bursts sharply declined, the city also reported an 18 percent decrease in non-revenue water, or NRW – a financial metric that is the bane of a water utility’s day-to-day business operations. HaGihon now has 2,700 of the company’s sensors set up across Jerusalem.

The company currently has 10 pilot operations underway here in the U.S. In addition, two large water utilities in the United Kingdom have adopted this technology, and Aquarius Spectrum has just started to launch new business in China. For water companies, the potential to reduce water loss while increasing customer service is huge. Fruchtman noted that one UK water executive told him that his utility had been frustrated trying to locate a leak within its system for five years. During that period of time, that leak caused the loss of 10 cubic meters of water an hour, day after day, which after five years is enough to fill at least 175 Olympic-sized swimming pools. In two days, Aquarius Spectrum’s sensors and software were able to pinpoint the leak. As a result, the utility saw its NRW losses crater in that particular district metering area by 90 percent.

Image credit: Magnus D/Flickr

By Scott Huntington

There is something iconic about the U.S. railway system. Whether you’re watching the trains fly down the track or watching the landscape speed by from your seat inside one, a train ride is an experience that stays with you.

Rails and subways are a big part of the public transportation infrastructure in areas with a high population density but when it comes to trains, the U.S. is lagging behind the rest of the world. What sort of future are we looking at for the U.S. railway system?

First, a look back

We can’t look at the future of the railway system without a quick glance into the past. Railroads have been an essential part of the country’s transportation and industry since 1815, when the first railroad charter was granted. With the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, the era of the railroad had officially begun.

Rail is still a big part of industry, with thousands of tons of materials and finished products transported by train every year. The goal now, though, is to bring more train-related travel options to the general population.

Private vs. state funded

Traditionally, rail development and maintenance has been state or federally funded. Of course, this means that when the demand for these things drops, the funding drops with it. While there are still federal funds available for rail improvement and innovation, the full funding has never really recovered. In response, many cities have turned to private funding.

BrightLine is one of the first forays into private funded high-speed rail in the United States. Based in West Palm Beach, Florida, this company has completed their first train set and is working tirelessly to set up transit lines in West Palm Beach, Miami, Fort Lauderdale and eventually Orlando and beyond.

While they won’t be as fast as the high-speed rails that provide transportation for places like Japan, the BrightLine rail will make the trip much faster than a standard car ride, and paves the way for private-funded rail systems.

Drive or take the train?

One of the biggest benefits of these new high-speed rails is their positive impact on traffic congestion. Miami, one of the first destinations for Florida’s high-speed rail, has some of the worst traffic in the country. While population density is partially to blame for the congestion, the biggest problem is there just aren’t enough roads, and, in swampy areas like South Florida, there’s nowhere to expand.

An easy to utilize high-speed rail system could help eliminate or at least reduce the massive traffic congestion. The first stretch of this rail system is supposed to open between West Palm Beach and Miami in July of 2017. Driving between the two cities takes drivers more than an hour and a half as they drive up I-95. Some of the busier stretches of this interstate service upwards of 200,000 cars every single day.

By giving commuters another option to travel between the two busy cities, the high-speed rail could reduce the number of I-95 drivers dramatically. Plus., as an added bonus, reducing the number of cars on the interstate will reduce the state’s overall carbon footprint.

An alternative system

The railway system of the United States might not ever fully replace the passenger car, but it is a great alternative to help reduce roadway congestion and reduce carbon emissions. As it stands, most advances in the rail system will likely be privately funded, enabling cities and states to set up their railways without begging for state or federal funds.

While the future of the U.S. railway system is still up in the air, it’s a lot brighter than it used to be.

Image credit: Pexels

Scott Huntington is a writer and blogger. Follow him on Twitter @SMHuntington.