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By Sarah Sanders

The basic economy works the same wherever you go: People spend money. The businesses that receive that revenue can expand and employ more people. Those newly-employed people then have more money to spend back into that economy, which further builds these businesses and continues the circle.

The question is: Which economy are we choosing to build? We have two choices: Circulate that money and growth inside or outside of our communities.

Circulating our business locally means more people will be employed in our communities. It means local businesses will be less fearful of expanding, and new business ventures may form as a result of the positive environment for growth. This can then impact the national economy as communities expand and support each other.

Ignoring local businesses, and sending our money solely to a national or international business, breaks that chain of growth and supports the monopoly of big businesses that can potentially minimize local growth and leave our communities stagnant. This gives people in other states or other countries the employment and economic growth that we should be seeing in our local area, and leaves our nation with a broken network of failing cities and economies.

For example, the Edmonton Social Planning Council said that the trend of the local economy was not looking too good in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, at the end of last year, Canadian publication CBC News reported. The council, which releases a Tracking the Trends report every two years, concluded:

• The number of Edmontonians receiving employment insurance benefits was up 55 percent in the first eight months of 2015, compared to the year before;


• The number of Edmonton households receiving social assistance benefits was up 9.1 percent  in the first nine months of 2015, compared to the 2014 average;


• 14,794 people were served by Edmonton's Food Bank in March 2015, an increase of 15.4 percent compared to a year earlier;


• 128,810 people in metro Edmonton lived in poverty in 2013, 10.5 percent of the population.

This trend is not just being seen in Edmonton. It happens in many cities across Canada and the United States. The solutions is found within our own homes: us. We can help make a difference in our cities. We have the power to stimulate the ecosystem of our local economies.

The nation cannot grow and succeed if the communities within are struggling. In an emergency on an airplane, you are told to always put on your own oxygen mask first, before you help those around you. If you can’t even survive yourself, you can’t expect to help anybody else. This holds true as well with local and national economies.

You cannot work backward. By supporting local business, we keep our communities from starving economically, and we support new ideas and local business decisions. Our local businessmen and businesswomen know what works and what is needed in our community. Giving our support to them is crucial to encouraging diversity and new ideas that can then spread to a national level when they are ready to grow.

Keep our communities alive and thriving, and give people a chance to work and support each other. Support local economies.

Graphic courtesy of the author.

Sarah Sanders is a full-time student, wife, and soon-to-be mother. She is a representative for garage storage and organization companies local to Edmonton, AB called Wicked Workshops Inc. and Inline Solutions, who support local businesses and the local economy. 

by Brian Collett

Three large US grocery companies are to switch to cage-free eggs by 2025.

Their decisions follow similar recent announcements from about 100 retailers, restaurants, manufacturers and service companies, apparently aimed at boosting reputations and business.

Certainly, the changes are a reply to consumer pressure.

Kroger, the biggest US grocery store chain, with more than 3,400 shops and convenience stores under various banners, including Harris Teeter and Ralph’s, says its “customer base has been moving to cage-free at an increasing rate”.

Albertsons, with more than 2,200 stores, whose brand names include Safeway and Vons, says the decision results from its animal welfare commitment and customers’ buying habits.

Delhaize America, which runs more than 1,200 stores, attributes the switch partly to “customer demand”.

Jaya Bhumitra, corporate outreach director at the anti-farm cruelty charity Mercy for Animals, said: “Now, more than ever, consumers are concerned about animal welfare on factory farms, and the public strongly opposes cramming animals into cages so small that they can barely move their limbs, walk around or engage in other natural behaviours.

“At a minimum, consumers demand that animals not be tortured in the process of meat, milk and egg production.”

Aaron Ross, campaigns director at The Humane League, another prominent animal charity, observed: “Every day more and more consumers are showing they do not support caging hens, and as a result food companies are responding.”  

Food policy director Josh Balk expected that by this month the league would be working with “virtually all the top grocers to go 100% cage-free with a timeline”.

In the eating-out sector, DineEquity, the largest casual dining company in the US, has announced that all eggs in its restaurants will be cage-free by 2025.

This decision too is mainly customer-driven. Patrick Lenow, communications and public affairs vice-president of DineEquity, parent company of IHOP and Applebees, explained: “As part of our ongoing commitment to animal welfare, we determined it was time to expand our commitment to cage-free primarily because of consumer expectations.”

Prediction from Balk: “There should be very few battery cages left in this country within a decade. The long history of this cruel and obscene production practice is coming to an end.”

 

 

Financially speaking, it’s tougher than ever to be young in America these days. The country is still rebuilding its economy after a recession. Unemployment rates are going down, but jobs are still tough to find for new graduates and many are saddled with enormous student loan debt.

Wealth accumulation has followed a predictable pattern in past generations: As people got older, they amassed significant assets through variables like college education, income, savings, length of home ownership and inheritance. However, even though the baby-boomer generation is in the process of transferring its life savings to the next generation (an estimated $30 trillion), every generation since has faced tougher economic conditions to accumulating wealth, with millennials facing the toughest uphill climb so far.

And the gap is not only between generations. A racial and gender divide puts women and minorities at a further disadvantage for accruing wealth.

The age wealth gap

Young people have always been poorer than older people who have been working longer, own property and have had many more years to acquire assets. But now, young people face even bigger financial deficits in the form of student loans, nascent mortgages (that have little equity) and little savings. This puts them at less than zero (negative net worth) as they are starting out and makes the road to financial security much longer and steeper.

 

The wealth gap between generations is growing wider, according to a 2015 paper by St. Louis Fed’s Center for Household Financial Security. In 1989, older families had 7.6 times more median wealth than young families. By 2013, this figure grew to 14.7 times. According to those economists’ calculations, a person born in 1970 has 25 percent less income and 40 percent less wealth than an identical person born in 1940. Generation X is faring worse than boomers, and millennials are going further into negative numbers early in life than any generation has before.

A PwC report, Millennials & Financial Literacy, found:

• Millennials have little financial knowledge. When tested, only 24 percent demonstrated basic financial knowledge.


• Thirty-four percent are not happy with their financial situation.


• More than half (54 percent) are worried about repaying their student loans.


• Eighty-one percent have at least one long-term debt.


• Nearly 30 percent are overdrawing on their checking accounts.


• Forty-two percent use Alternative Financial Services (AFS) heavily, including payday loans, pawnshops, auto title loans, tax refund advances and rent-to-own products.


• More than 20 percent with retirement accounts took loans or hardship withdrawals in the past year.


• Even with little financial knowledge, only 27 percent are utilizing professional financial advice on saving and investment.


• Only 8 percent demonstrated a high level of financial literacy.

The racial wealth gap

The age wealth gap doesn’t take into account other factors that have worked against minorities for decades -- such as predatory lending practices, barriers to employment and income advancement, and exclusion from government programs -- that gave white families a boost and widened the racial wealth gap.

 

In 2014, the New Republic's Dean Starkman examined the racial wealth gap. He found that just looking at income, African Americans have made significant strides since the Civil Rights movement, but the wealth gap tells a different story. In 1984, the median working-age white family had inflation-adjusted assets worth $90,851, compared to $5,781 for the median black family of working age. Twenty-five years later, the median wealth for white families had grown to $265,000 versus a $28,500 median for black families.

In The Roots of the Widening Racial Wealth Gap report, researchers from Brandeis University noted another factor: Since historically African Americans have overwhelmingly been employed in fields less likely to offer employer benefits like health care, paid sick or vacation leave, and retirement plans, more of their resources are needed to cover emergencies and daily expenses. At the same time, more whites have historically held jobs with benefits and can save more of their earnings. So, every $1 of income for whites results in $5.19 in new wealth over 25 years, while $1 of income for a black family only adds 69 cents to their total wealth.

“A penny saved is a nickel earned for whites – but less than 1 cent for blacks,” Starkman of the New Republic found.

The gender wealth gap

In the 2015 Women and Wealth study, author Mariko Chang found that since more women are going to college than men, more families will rely on women’s earnings than ever before.

 

“Two-thirds of mothers are either the sole breadwinners, primary breadwinners (earning the same or more than their partners) or co-breadwinners (earning 25 to 49 percent as much as their partners).”

Yet a severe gap exists across all family situations, ages and races. The report found that some of the factors obstructing women’s wealth are:

• Median wealth for single women is $3,210, compared to $10,150 for single men.


• Single women have 32 cents for every dollar of wealth men have.


• Single black women have a median wealth of $200. Single Hispanic women fare even worse at $100 – less than a penny for every $1 of wealth owned by single, white, non-Hispanic men.


• Millennial women have a median wealth of $0.


• Women 35-49 have median wealth of $1,000 (4 percent as much as men 35-49).


• Millennial women are more likely to have education debt then millennial men (49 percent versus 32 percent).


• Median wealth for men with a high-school diploma is almost $2,000 more than women, and at the graduate-school level, it is $51,000 higher than women with same level of education.


• Mothers have only 20 percent as much wealth as fathers.


• Black mothers have median wealth of $0; Hispanic mothers have $50.


• Women are more likely to have every type of debt, and the median debt for women is 177 percent higher than the median debt for men.

Another study, What Do Women Breadwinners Want?, found that as women breadwinners are becoming more common, 40 percent of women surveyed feel that family and friends pressure them to downplay their breadwinner status, with 28 percent reporting that their parents disapprove of their breadwinner status. At the same time, the survey found that 95 percent of women will be their family’s principal financial decision-maker at some point in their lives. Breadwinner women also assume more than 75 percent of all financial planning and as much as 90 percent of the responsibility for charitable giving, paying for college, retirement planning and overall saving.

 

What exacerbates all of these factors, the study reports, is the fact that many women breadwinners have little confidence in their wealth-management skills, and even those who work with financial advisors are less than satisfied. They require a wide range of financial services and strategies and rarely get them.

One solution? More financial knowledge

The factors and possible solutions for all angles of the wealth gap vary widely, but one solution that could address many of them is better financial literacy.

 

In 2012, PwC announced a five-year, $160 million initiative called Earn Your Future aimed at increasing financial literacy for more than 2.5 million students and educators. The company developed educational materials to teach financial skills in grades 3-12, covering topics like credit, identity theft, saving for college and financial planning. The materials are free and available to anyone. Research showed that less than 20 percent of teachers feel prepared to teach financial literacy, so PwC partnered with Knowledge@Wharton High School to train them.

“It is incredibly inspiring,” said Shannon Schuyler, who heads up corporate responsibility for PwC. She described going to a high school in Queens and “watching the light go on” when students realized that they could really understand how to manage money. PwC brought in famous athletes -- people the kids think make millions -- and had them go through how much they actually make. Then they asked the kids what they would buy with a million dollars. Soon, Schuyler said, the kids see that a million dollars really doesn’t go that far.

Other speaker advice? “Save 10 percent of anything you make, and you will always be safe.”

When the students see that they can actually do that, they feel like they have control over their future, Schuyler told us.

In a report released this week, PwC found that educators have realized extensive benefits in providing financial education. Millennial teachers are leading the way, with 62 percent encouraging financial education starting in elementary school.

One problem, Schuyler said, is that kids may learn good financial lessons at school, but when they don’t see that behavior at home -- their parents have poor financial habits -- they abandon what they’ve learned and mimic their parents’ decisions. Financial education still isn’t seen as a life skill.

Four years in, PwC has committed $30 million more (in 2015), and the program has succeeded past all estimates, reaching 3.5 million students and educators. Looking ahead, Schuyler said the company is discussing investing $350 million to $500 million more over the next five years.

“Regardless of where people end up growing up and working, we are an ecosystem," Schuyler said. "Having more savvy and being able to be more responsible impacts us all, and making better [financial] decisions impacts us all, whether you work for a mom-and-pop shop or a big corporation.

"This is incredibly important for people to have that appreciation, because we rise together and we fall together. The more educated we are, the more [financially] resilient we can be together.”

image credit: Got Credit via Flickr creative commons and Unsplash

The Clean Power Plan has friends in high places. Lots of friends, apparently.

On Friday, three separate amici curiae (friends of the court) briefs were filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals in support of the Environmental Protection Agency's strategies for cutting carbon emissions from power plants. The submissions are only the latest development in what appears to be a drawing of sides over the federal government's effort to implement its national Clean Power Plan and the belief that climate change "poses ... economic and social risk" for U.S. companies at large.

The EPA's efforts to kickstart the program were temporarily halted in February after more than two dozen states, along with utility and coal companies, filed a legal challenge to the rule. Since then, a broad spectrum of organizations and public figures have stepped forward to express their support for the plan.

The largest amici submission last week came from Congress. In an act that seems to defy the last eight years of remarkable political stalemates,  more than 200 present and former lawmakers joined together to express their support for the Clean Power Plan. The supporters, who included Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Mark Takai (D-Hawaii), argued that the Clean Air Act gives the EPA the authority to regulate air pollution. The proposed plan, they insist, complies with the intent of the Clean Air Act and therefore should be implemented.

To vacate not implement the Clean Power Plan, they argue, "would critically undermine not only the nation’s fight against air pollution, but also the statutory scheme that Congress put in place when it enacted the [Clean Air Act].  This Court should uphold the rule."

The amici submissions also included a 35-page statement by four of the country's largest tech companies, Google, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon. The "Tech Amici," as they called themselves, outlines reasons why a set of national policies that work toward reducing carbon emissions in the power sector is a good idea.

"[Delaying] action on climate change will be costly in economic and human terms, while accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy will produce multiple benefits with regard to sustainable economic growth, public health, resilience to natural disasters, and the health of the global environment," the brief states.

The tech amici brief also took steps to address some of the assertions that were put forth in the original legal challenge to the plan.  Responding to the the litigants' statement that the Clean Power Plan would be costly and prohibitive to businesses, the companies outlined four key benefits they have already gained from their years of supporting renewable energy in their own workplaces: "low, stable marginal costs;" on-site resilience; power expenditures that are "at or below the cost of fossil fuel-generated power sources;" and a supportive customer base that not only agrees with these values, but also wants to do business with eco-minded companies.

"Tech Amici have found that investors increasingly want to know what businesses are  doing to use more clean energy, and often evaluate companies with reference to  widely-cited sustainability ratings," the companies add. "In short, Tech Amici have found that increasing the use of renewable energy is good for the environment and good for business."

Also speaking up on behalf of the Clean Power Plan was a consortium of businesses that, over the past few years, have made their own individual efforts to increase sustainable practices in their operations. Mars, Adobe, Ikea North America and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (the Amici Companies) say they "view the Clean Power Plan and its emissions reduction program as a component of their domestic and international business risk mitigation strategies."

Without a national clean power strategy aimed at reducing the climate impact of carbon emissions, the Amici Companies assert, "the economic risks faced by domestic businesses [will be] staggering.  Companies currently are facing and  will face future damage to corporate property and infrastructure stemming from rising sea levels and increased intense weather events."

The brief also aligns the goals of the Clean Power Plan with those of the recent COP21 climate talks, by pointing out that many of the risks faced by businesses were highlighted at the Paris conference as a potential offshoot of climate change. Supply chain vulnerability, reduced access to financing, property, infrastructure and insurance risk exposure, as well as the health and welfare of labor supplies, are all potential risks for businesses during natural disasters and other incidents brought about by climate change.

"The Amici Companies believe that the Clean Power Plan will help address the threat to the public health and welfare posed by harmful emissions from fossil-fuel-fired power plants," the brief concludes. "[The] Amici Companies support complete and swift implementation of the Clean Power Plan to protect the public health and welfare."

It will be interesting to see whether further groups step up in support of the EPA's Clean Power Plan. With oral arguments not scheduled until June 2, and both sides appealing for an ear to their case, this debate appears to be far from over. But with more companies and cities voluntarily opting for renewable energy, it may be hard for opponents of the plan to find a cost-effective footing for their argument. Time will tell.

Image credit: Flickr/Emily Mathews

Park visitors leave behind 100 million pounds of trash each year. Fortunately, that's about to end. The National Park Service, National Parks Conservation Association, Subaru, and all the bears and squirrels agree trash is not their favorite thing, so they’ve started taking steps to ensure that zero trash is left at the park.

The initiative is starting with Yosemite in California, Teton in Wyoming and Denali in Alaska. Subaru of America put out an ad that tells the story in a beautiful way. The ad thought provokingly states: “We are what we leave behind.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Tx3wm8mN6g

So, why did the National Parks Service reach out to Subaru for help? Because the automaker is a waste reduction ninja.

“If you … went to a Starbucks this morning and threw away your cup, you’ve put more into a landfill than we have in the last 12 years,” said Tom Easterday, the executive vice president of Subaru of Indiana Automotive (SIA), the automaker's only U.S. manufacturing plant. This year the factory is expected to make 400,000 vehicles. For the past 12 years, SIA and two Subaru plants in Japan have produced zero waste. “May 4, 2004, was the last time we sent anything to a landfill,” Easterday said.

Subaru of Indiana Automotive sits on a 832-acre site in Lafayette, Indiana. Designated as a wildlife habitat by the National Wildlife Federation, the site is peppered with woods, 1800s prairie grasses, deer, coyotes, raccoons, blue heron, bald eagles and butterflies.

Since the time this manufacturing site achieved zero waste, more than 100 companies interested in learning how the heck they did it have come knocking on the door. SIA said 'Glad you dropped by' and agreed to benchmark with them. Easterday cited three familiar steps: reduce, reuse and recycle. (Hint: The order is important.)

“First you reduce, that’s the key," he said. From 2000-2014, the plant cut its waste production in half. “Once you reduce, you eliminate a lot of your waste to begin with." Reducing waste is the best thing for the environment and saves the most money. It's a win-win.

“After reducing, then you reuse.” In 2014, the plant reused more than 8,000 tons of materials — that doesn’t even include returnable packaging from suppliers since the suppliers’ own the packaging.

SIA also returned 1.4 million caps to suppliers for reuse. “On an automatic transmission, you’ll have a cap that will protect the lines during transportation so nothing gets into those, and then you have to take them off. Our associates on the line have barrels that are different colors and they will take them off and put them into the appropriate container. That’s then sent back to the supplier when we go back to pick up more of the parts that we’re getting from the supplier.”

Even the employee's lunch food scraps are reused. Two large onsite composters hold over 40,000 pounds of organics like food scraps. “We have a permit from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management that allows us to give that compost away. So our associates take it home and use it in their gardens.”

How does SIA come up with all of these brilliant ideas? Simple: It gets thousands of suggestions from employees.

These suggestions are called “kaizens,” a Japanese word that means continuous improvement. Employees earn points or financial rewards for kaizen suggestions that are implemented. Over 1,000 suggestions were given to improve environmental stewardship last year. And how many were implemented? “Well over 95 percent of all kaizen suggestions are reviewed and implemented at least in part,” Easterday told us. “Our associates do a tremendous job of environmental stewardship here at SIA.” No joke.

A couple of employees were even given cars because their kaizen suggestions were that great. One suggestion, to return transmission packaging to the parent company, not only reduces environmental impact, but it also saves the company over a million dollars a year. SIA has found reusing materials so practical that it sends over 7,000 tons of materials back to its parent company, Fuji Heavy Industries, for reuse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztiaCoZh6ig

After reduction and reuse comes recycling. That's because the reduction activities are what generate the most cost savings, then the reuse activities. Sometimes the recycling ends up costing money. Throw in the fact that recycling typically uses energy and often requires transportation, which emits CO2, and you can see why recycling is the least favorable option. In 2014, SIA recycled more than 35,000 tons of waste. It even recycles light bulbs in a cool machine called the Bulb Eater. The machine separates the glass from the metal parts and captures the gas in the fluorescent tube.

On a net basis the plant saves $1 million to $2 million per year due to reduction and reuse. No wonder Subaru has the best profit margin in the automotive industry.

The reuse and recycling doesn’t stop at the factory though. About 96 percent of the components in a Subaru vehicle can be recycled or reused: steel, aluminum, plastics, steering wheels, seats, batteries, tires, etc.

After learning about Subaru's zero-waste Jujutsu, it's pretty easy to see why the national parks would turn to Subaru for help. The automaker is the best of the best. When approached, Subaru of America sent over Denise Coogan, manager of safety and environmental compliance for SIA. She’s now visiting the parks and figuring out a game plan like a boss. She even dumpster dives when she visits. Based on her research, she’s confident the national parks can achieve zero waste.

“What we do at Subaru is not rocket science," Coogan said. "The model can work for a national park; it can work for a manufacturer; it can work for an NGO. It can work for anyone because it’s simple."

She says once the national parks taste some success, they will gain momentum. "And that will bring more success and more success, and before they know it they will be there.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07sbbIUsLb4

Image credit: Subaru

It has been 45 years since Daniel Ellsberg’s leak of the Pentagon Papers revealed unknown details of how the U.S. was waging war in Vietnam. This week, the release of what are known as the Panama Papers is showcasing how some of the world’s wealthiest and most corrupt leaders in business and government are, in their way, declaring an economic war on the world’s citizens.

At first, the response was relatively ho-hum. After all, the contents of the 11.5 million documents released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) did not reveal any surprising facts about how the oft-described “1 percent” is evading taxes by hiding their assets in offshore accounts. Everyone knows about the financial elephant in the room, so what's the big deal?

Publications including the New York Times at first buried the story, although the NYT has since been spinning its wheels to explain why the papers were not treated as front-page news. Other news outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, are dismayed at the ongoing questions as to whether these leaders, from Russia’s Vladimir Putin to the father of U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, are evading taxes or even not paying them at all. Avoiding taxes is a universal trait.

But what is revealing is the scope and scale by which many of the world’s wealthiest people, many of whom already have dodgy reputations, have accumulated assets. To its credit, the WSJ has acknowledged that the amount of income, and number of accounts in which these funds have been sequestered, merits more investigation.

The paper trail has footprints across the globe. Several leaders in Africa, or their associates and family members, are implicated in the leak -- the results of which could in the long run help these countries find ways to recover, or at least locate, endless sums of public funds that have gone missing.

And the dominoes are starting to fall: At press time, Iceland’s prime minister, David Gunnlaugsson, reportedly submitted his resignation. Gunnlaugsson really had no choice as many Icelanders suffered after the country’s economic collapse in 2008, largely because many of its highly-leveraged commercial banks collapsed. Many citizens in the country of 323,000 are still smarting despite Iceland’s overall recovery. So, as the saying goes, any allegations of offshore banking make for bad optics.

The evidence from these documents also suggest that the family of Syria’s Bashar Assad had access to offshore banks — despite the fact that international sanctions were supposed to circumvent such privileges.

Plenty of ire has been directed at the founders of the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, from which the ICIJ sourced the mountains of documents that will stain the reputations of countless “reformers.” Those who have some explaining to do include Chinese president Xi Jinping, Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko and even newly-elected president Mauricio Macri of Argentina, who has enjoyed a honeymoon after succeeding mercurial Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

But the stubborn fact is that plenty of professional service providers in Panama are in on these schemes. As the Atlantic explained, Panama’s laws allow the process of establishing an offshore company to be almost as easy as opening a PayPal account. Considering Panama’s history, it should not be surprising that its laws have led to this explosion in the news: We’re talking about a country artificially created by its separation from Colombia over 100 years ago as French and American business interests were hell-bent on building a canal through the Panama Isthmus, with President Theodore Roosevelt more than pleased to ensure that it happened. Fast forward to 2016, and Panama is estimated to have the world’s third largest total reserves of offshore bank accounts.

As more citizens see more resources going to the extremely wealthy, much of their ire has been directed at banks for their perceived lack of transparency. This made sense in the aftermath of the 2008-2009 worldwide financial crises, sparked largely by the re-securitization of assets -- notably those mortgage-based securities, which American bankers were successful in selling far beyond America’s borders. But the real lesson learned from the Panama Papers fallout is that service providers, including law and accounting firms, have been deeply involved within this shady game. Many governments have been unable, or unwilling, to examine their operations closely for a bevy of reasons. That may finally change as the scope of this leak becomes more understood.

Image credit: Flickr/Blobber

Visit a park in Hong Kong on a Sunday, and you may very well see it teeming with Filipino domestic workers enjoying their one day off. Stroll through a mall in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha or Kuwait and those staffing the retail stores are very likely to be Filipino. If you’ve got that high-powered job in New York City, have kids but want to “have a life,” a Filipino nanny can help you have it all.

It is estimated that more than 2.3 million Filipinos work abroad — and that is the official statistic. A recent article in The New Yorker estimates the number equates to a tenth of the Philippines’ population of almost 100 million people. Many work without the proper work visas, which makes them vulnerable to poor working conditions and human rights abuses.

The Philippines’ massive overseas workforce dates back to the 1970s. Then-president Ferdinand Marcos saw citizens’ migration to regions such as the Middle East as a way to cope with a stagnant economy, deal with restless young men who could otherwise stir up trouble and curb poverty through remittances. Even after Marcos was eventually exiled as democracy was entrenched in the Philippines, the domestic economy only marginally improved. Even today, the World Bank estimates that personal remittances are approximately 10 percent of the Philippines’ GDP. And migration from the Philippines only increases year to year.

Meanwhile, graft in all sectors has discouraged many Filipinos of all ages, who have long weathered the antics and corruption trials of politicians including former president Joseph Estrada; he in turn was succeeded by Gloria Arroyo, who left citizens even more jaded. It was Arroyo who over 15 years ago bragged about the efforts of OFWs, or overseas foreign workers. “They are the backbone of the global workforce,” she once said, and “are our greatest export.”

Lawmakers in the capital city of Manila say they are striving to improve conditions in the Philippines so expatriates will feel as if they can come home, but such policies are window dressing at best. Attempts to ensure OFWs are treated fairly and with dignity while abroad are not much more than public-relations ploys. For many Filipinos in the Middle East whose job security is affected by low oil prices, angst has become a daily distraction.

Filipinos are indeed the backbone of the United Arab Emirates’ service economy. Restaurants and retail workers, from McDonald’s to Nando’s to H&M and Marks and Spencer, are among the reasons why expats in Abu Dhabi and Dubai have no incentive to learn any Arabic. Emiratis are practically guaranteed employment by the government, but even if they struggle to find a job, no local will be seen working in the service sector.

Many of the Filipino workers in this sector have a college education, but have chosen, or feel compelled, to work at the UAE’s office parks, resorts, hotels and gigantic malls because they cannot get by working at home. Others are medical professionals at hospitals or work in professional service firms. Those who do not have the educational credentials are often live-in maids.

Whether they are architects, graphic designers or nannies, the hours for many Filipinos are long, and days often seem endless thanks to the long commutes from home to job. Many Filipinos in Abu Dhabi are relegated to living in Mussaffah, an industrial town southwest of the city center. Those who want some semblance of city life will crowd into an apartment in downtown Abu Dhabi, where rents are higher but there are more options, so that they can feel less isolated and part of the Emirates’ local scene.

And life as an expat worker in the UAE is hardly idyllic. Local press reports, as well as studies done by international NGOs, have detailed abuses suffered by Filipino workers, especially those working as domestics. A neighbor of friends with whom I used to stay in Dubai employed two sisters as domestics. As the family liked to have parties on weekends, which extended into the wee hours of the morning, the young women’s days often started early in the morning and lasted until 3 a.m. the next day. Meanwhile they shared the “maid’s room,” which was really not much bigger than a walk-in closet. Their employer, an Iranian national, sniffed at the idea that they were entitled by UAE law to have annual leave. “Why do they need to go home for a month to see their family?” he asked my friends incredulously one day.

So, why do Filipinos go to the UAE, Hong Kong or New York, often spending a lifetime away from loved ones? An employee at the hotel I lived in last year, who has since moved on to work at a resort in Dubai, explained to me in an email (he asked that I not use his name):

“We love our country and wish we could be there to be closer to friends and family. But even though there is some improvement in the economy, it is just too difficult to make a living there. Here [UAE] is not perfect, but I can save some money, help my parents out when they need it, and stay out of trouble. And let’s just face the facts — many of us have family here as so many of have left. With my sister and mom here, this feels like home, even though it’s 50 degrees here in the summer!”

That pretty much sums up the sad state of affairs in the Philippines, which has gone from one of the richest Asian countries in the mid-20th century to one of the poorest today.

Image credit: Leon Kaye

Food waste has become a major issue in the past year, as awareness of the adverse environmental and social impacts of throwing so much food away just because it was aesthetically unpleasing has become more widely known. The numbers are staggering: According to the UglyFruitandVeg campaign, around 40 percent of all food produced in the United States is wasted. In a country where millions of households face food insecurity, this just should not be a problem.

At the front lines of the push to reduce food waste are major retailers -- which often throw away completely edible foods, often not even donating it to food banks or other charities. One of the key reasons they do this is due to expiration dates that, amazingly, are almost completely up to the whim of producers and have no standards. That's right: There are few federal, state or local regulations on food date labels, who sets them and what they actually represent.

A new bill proposed by Assemblyman David Chiu, (D-San Francisco) aims to address this head-on in California. AB 2725, if passed, would implement a statewide standard on all foods that display date labels by creating two phrases: “Best if used by” would signify the date after which the food’s quality may begin to deteriorate, whereas “expires on” would signify after when a high level of risk would be associated with consuming the food product.

This bill hopes to solve a real problem – the staggering amount of healthy, consumable food wasted every day in California.

“In a state where 6 million families are food insecure, a startling amount of food is being wasted every single day because of these arbitrary date labels,” Assemblyman Chiu said in a statement. “We as consumers want to know what our labels mean and whether or not our food is safe to eat. This bill will clean up these confusing dates and reduce unnecessary food waste.”

California is, of course, the largest state in the country, and that's important. When a huge chunk of the market changes its regulations, the country often follows. Producers don't want to create separate labels for California and the rest of America. Chances are, if this passes, its impacts will be felt far beyond the Golden State.

The benefits will go far beyond just reducing waste. Such standardization will benefit the economy, the environment and, ideally, help give access to healthy food to those who don't have it currently.

“As a state, we can’t afford to throw out perfectly safe and healthy food. It’s bad for our economy, our environment and the millions of people who don’t have access to healthy food,” Nick Lapis, legislative coordinator at Californians Against Waste, which supports the bill, said in a statement.

If you live in California, call your assembly person and ask him or her to support AB 2725. The bill will be heard in the Assembly's Health Committee later this month and, hopefully, then work its way through the legislative process. This bill alone won't solve the food waste problem, but it will be a key step forward toward sustainability.

Photo credit: Gunnar Grimes via Flicrk

By Averill Brewer

A girl wanders into a house after discovering that no one is home — the owners of the home, three bears, are off walking in the woods while their porridge cools. This well-known fairytale makes use of the rule of three: Goldilocks discovers very quickly that the third time’s a charm. It is reasonable to assume that we have entered this Goldilocks’ principle of sustainable development: We have finally chosen the path that is just right.

First, there was more or less William McDonough and Cradle to Cradle; then there was LEED and BREEAM. And now we have entered the golden era, attributed to Ellen MacArthur Foundation's ecology: the circular economy, which has become the gold standard because it has truly given real thought to the values and the time and money components to which all businesses are slaves. That being said, last week the eagle officially landed in the United States: The Ellen MacArthur Foundation launched the U.S. chapter of its Circular Economy 100 program (CE100) at an inaugural workshop in San Francisco.

For the past three years, CE100 has experienced large success internationally by creating a network of business leaders, academics, innovators, policy makers and city authorities with a shared objective of developing and implementing circular economy opportunities. Global partners include: Unilever, Google, Cisco, IBM and many others. Now, the program aims to specifically target U.S. markets. CE100 was established to “enable organizations to develop new opportunities and realize their circular economy ambitions faster,” the Ellen MacArthur Foundation stated in a recent press release.

Perhaps if CE100 had a theme song, it might be Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" due to the program’s endeavor to bring together newly innovative circular businesses, as well as older, established corporations, in order to create a platform for collective learning and sharing from one another. For example, the member organizations of CE100 are provided with “unique collaboration, capacity building, networking and research opportunities, to help them achieve their circular economy ambitions more quickly.” With core principles like collaboration, networking and collective thinking, CE100 exemplifies through its success thus far that the best way for an array of stakeholders (including but not limited to business, governments, academics) to enrich themselves and move forward in a sustainable way is by engaging in this type of platform.

SunPower, Tarkett and Walmart became the latest corporate members of CE100 U.S., which acknowledges to the public that they are open to transitioning away from today’s linear ‘take, make, dispose’ business model, and instead want to contribute to a circular economy.

The circular economy offers businesses willing to capture new value from existing operations and resources, for example, by redesigning products and business models, building new relationships with customers, harnessing technology to increase utilization of assets, and switching to renewable energy.

Laura Phillips, senior vice president of sustainability at Walmart, stated: “Walmart is pleased to joining Circular Economy 100 USA to share our learning and learn more from other companies so that we can better engage suppliers and customers in these practices.”

Another company to note at the CE100 U.S. launch is Noble Environmental Technologies. As a CE100 International member and featured innovative technology partner, Noble Environmental Technologies of San Diego offers corporations and governments an immediate solution to the waste problem with ECOR, which was developed in partnership with the USDA. Noble Environmental Technologies believes ECOR is the future of green building, sustainable design and advanced recycling systems because its products and building materials consist of a cellulose fiber that is created from a wide range of waste materials — anything from old cardboard, coffee grinds, office paper to fabrics, textiles and hemp. In addition, ECOR is Cradle to Cradle certified, and Circulate reports that the manufacturing process “is a clean method that produces virtually no waste, uses no chemicals, adhesive or additives, and creates materials that are made from 100 percent recycled content.” The materials are also biodegradable and can be broken down and re-purposed into other products with a new life.

Noble’s technology, ECOR, is the epitome of circular, closed-loop design — proof that we can do better than the status quo when we try and don’t opt for the easy way out — that it is possible to foresee a future revolutionized by sustainable, circular design, consumption, and business.

“The fact is that we have the technology today that enables us to economically and sustainably convert literally any waste into a cellulose based fiber and upcycle it,” Robert Noble, founder and CEO of Noble Technolgoies told Circulate. The thing is: In order to actually make a change and be a true contributor to the circular economy, you must think about how to create products that continue to possess value, products that can continuously be upcyled into better products or else biodegrade safely into the soil. ECOR does that entirely.

You can read more about the concept of ECOR here.

“Now circular economics is forcing a different perspective. It’s saying, 'If you don’t do this, then good luck … and if you do this [engage in circular economics], then you can make a whole bunch of money in the bottom line of your financials,” Jay Potter, director of Noble Environmental Technologies, explained.

Attendees at the CE100 U.S. workshop included representatives from corporations, cities and airports. Potter believes this major turnout shows there is an unmet need, and the representatives sent to the CE100 U.S. launch are the decision-makers of their movement within their own operations.

“What I found so interesting at the launch was the turnout of attendees from these corporations, airports, cities; they were not there to talk. They were there saying, 'We're ready to do something,' and that's music to my ears."

Image courtesy of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation 

Averill Brewer is a writer covering the circular economy. She hopes to make it digestible for all. You can email her at averill.brewer@gmail.com.

By Pascal Mittermaier

I’m thrilled about an innovative new strategy to protect urban water quality that combines conservation science, a new financial tool and the power of community in our cities.

But to understand, first you need to picture rain falling gently on Washington, D.C.

It lands with a splash on the White House, runs down the dome of the Capitol Building, beats on the roofs of cars caught in traffic downtown. Water gushes down gutters and pools along curbs. Hundreds of puddles form along streets and the rain keeps falling.

In fact, an average 1.2-inch rainstorm in Washington, D.C. creates nearly 800 Olympic-sized swimming pools full of water, millions of gallons of water flowing at a high velocity down our city streets, into the Potomac and Anacostia rivers, and ultimately into the Chesapeake Bay. Fresh, life-giving water, right?

Not quite. My colleague Kahlil Kettering, urban conservation director for the Nature Conservancy in Washington, D.C., explains it this way: Think about how a fresh snowfall begins to look after two or three days – it turns brown, splashed with mud, dog urine, soot and oil from passing cars and fertilizers and pesticides from lawns. Imagine a fish swimming in that mess. Imagine that pollution floating in the water that you drink.

When polluted stormwater makes its way into urban waterways, that’s exactly what happens.

And a third of the city’s storm sewers, which carry this runoff, are combined with the sanitary sewer system -- creating the additional challenge of overtaxing water treatment systems.

“You see what’s happened to the Anacostia River, and the people living along the river are directly affected by pollution,” Kettering says. “Every year, 17,000 people fish in the Anacostia River. You know their families are eating that fish.”

Urban stormwater is a major contributor of water pollution in the Chesapeake Bay, the biggest estuary in the United States, with a watershed that’s home to 17 million people.

Stormwater is second only to agricultural runoff, and growing at a much faster rate, Kettering says. Meanwhile, the city leaders are facing ever-increasing pressures on their budget and hundreds of miles of sewer pipes – many of which are more than a century old ­– that will cost billions of dollars to update.

Nature-based solutions

Natural solutions like rain gardens and wetlands on public and private land across the city help to absorb stormwater and prevent runoff from entering our rivers. To solve this problem, Washington, D.C. joined cities like Seattle, Oklahoma City and Fort Worth, Texas, to implement a stormwater fee that charges landowners based on a formula that calculates how much runoff they create, which funds city projects to build natural solutions. However, by installing natural solutions on their property landowners can reduce their fees and help improve the environmental health of the city.

The fees for some landowners can run into several hundred thousands of dollars annually, offering an incentive for property owners who invest in natural infrastructure and see a reduction in their fees.

That’s where the Nature Conservancy comes in. Kettering and his colleagues in other U.S. cities are working with community leaders to provide opportunities for local landowners to develop green stormwater solutions for economic and ecological benefit.

Earlier this month, we were proud to be a part of launching a first-of-its kind partnership that will support a stormwater retention credit market, creating new funding mechanisms for projects that reduce both runoff and the resultant stormwater fees across the community.

The credit trading system allows conservation groups like the Nature Conservancy to direct payments from landowners to fund critical conservation projects in vulnerable neighborhoods where the impacts of pollution are felt more strongly.

“Not every drop of stormwater is created equal – that’s why we’re targeting projects in the places where they’ll have the most benefit for clean water,” Kettering says.

And stormwater retention projects can provide a wealth of other environmental and community benefits, including habitat for native species, trees that reduce city heat and help clean the air and green space for people who live in the neighborhood.

For example, installing rain gardens to collect and filter rainfall in a church parking lot could keep the river clean and provide an important financial boost to a pillar of the community.

“We want to fund projects that increase the health of the environment, benefiting local communities as well as create financial assets,” Kettering says.

Image credit: Paul Joseph Brown

Pascal Mittermaier is the Global Managing Director for Cities at The Nature Conservancy. He leads a team focused on transforming how the world’s growing cities harness nature’s power to build resilient, livable, thriving communities for millions of people. By mid-century roughly three out of every four people will live in a city. Pascal believes the Conservancy is uniquely positioned to help city leaders and stakeholders lead the world on a more sustainable path that fully values and protects the natural resources cities need to thrive.