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The armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon continues to resonate long after ringleader Ammon Bundy and most of his active supporters were arrested and jailed. In the latest development, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) rolled out a new video ad for his presidential campaign, in which he endorses the same ALEC-inspired land privatization agenda popularized by Ammon and his father, Nevada rancher and longtime scofflaw Cliven Bundy.

The elder Bundy is also now behind bars, facing a laundry list of serious federal charges relating to a 2014 incident in Nevada, and according to news reports more indictments are on the way, along with additional arrests. So, why would a presidential candidate want to touch this very hot potato?

Ted Cruz and Cliven Bundy

Sen. Cruz has ties to ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council, a powerful lobbying group) and other organizations in the Koch lobbying network, and he has been a staunch supporter of the ALEC privatization stance. However, like other mainstream politicians he rides with the herd when it comes to ALEC's de facto spokesperson Cliven Bundy.

During the 2014 incident, Bundy called upon a gang of armed thugs to ward off federal agents who had come to chase his cattle off public lands, enjoying the vociferous support of Cruz and other leading Republicans. That support universally withered as Bundy's racist views became more widely known.

Our friends over at The Atlantic assembled a rundown of some of those leaders who changed their minds, and here are Sen. Cruz's statements about Cliven Bundy as events unfolded in 2014:

What he said then: On Tuesday, Ted Cruz called the Bundy standoff the "the unfortunate and tragic culmination of the path that President Obama has set the federal government on.” He added that the reason he believed the story was "resonating" was that the Obama administration has put American liberty "under assault ... We have seen our constitutional liberties eroded under the Obama administration."

What he's saying now: In an email to Mediaite, Cruz's Press Secretary Catherine Frazier said of Bundy's remarks, "Those comments are completely unacceptable.”

Cruz distanced himself from Bundy, but not from the ALEC credo. He soon doubled-down on his support for transitioning federal lands out of federal control. In July 2014, he introduced an onerous land privatization amendment to a bipartisan recreation bill, prohibiting the federal government from owning more than 50 percent of the land in any single state. Cruz's amendment would have required land above the 50 percent mark to be sold at auction or transferred to the state.

Ted Cruz and Ammon Bundy

By the time Ammon and his brother Ryan blundered into the Malheur Refuge, Republican leadership had already absorbed lessons learned from the negative publicity revolving around Cliven Bundy. High-profile Republicans hesitated to criticize the Malheur takeover at first, but they soon piled on with explicit criticism once it became clear that Ammon's gang consisted of out-of-staters whose actions were not welcome by local ranchers and other community stakeholders.

Cruz also hopped on the anti-Ammon bandwagon with this statement, as reported by NBC News:

"Every one of us has a constitutional right to protest, to speak our minds ... But we don't have a constitutional right to use force and violence and to threaten force and violence on others ..."

Fallout from the Malheur takeover

Republican leaders were wise to bail on Ammon as quickly as they did. As the occupation dragged on, Ammon and his gang of thugs revealed themselves to be, well, genuine thugs facing serious criminal charges. Nobody in mainstream politics would touch that with a ten-foot pole, with the notable exception of Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore.

Ammon's relentless ham-handedness also precipitated the arrest of Cliven, who flew to Oregon after Ammon released a jailhouse video pleading for supporters to visit him and his cohorts.

Cliven Bundy had never been called to account for his actions in 2014, and his choice of air travel provided federal agents with their first opportunity to arrest him, unarmed and without a gang of supporters, far from the safety of his Nevada ranch.

We bring this up because the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Nevada indicted Cliven Bundy last week on charges that could keep him behind bars for the rest of his life, including:

... one count of conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer, four counts of using and carrying a firearm in relation to a crime of violence, two counts of assault on a federal officer, two counts of threatening a federal law enforcement officer, three counts of obstruction of the due administration of justice, two counts of interference with interstate commerce by extortion, and one count of interstate travel in aid of extortion.

Ted Cruz's Cliven Bundy ad

This finally brings us around to Sen. Cruz's new campaign ad. In the aftermath of the Cliven Bundy indictment, it would seem counter-intuitive to attract support to one's presidential campaign by drawing attention to a known scofflaw who is now facing serious criminal charges, especially one who has been denied bail as a flight risk.

Nevertheless, Sen. Cruz's campaign went with it.

Released to coincide with the Republican primary caucuses in Nevada, Sen. Cruz's ad evokes both Ammon and Cliven Bundy by highlighting two images. One is of a silver-haired man dressed like a rancher with the same build and sartorial style as Ammon, and in the same 60-ish age range as Cliven. The other image depicts a cowboy on horseback with a herd of cattle.

You can find Senator Cruz's new campaign ad online, in a report by Think Progress. Do watch the whole thing for the complete effect (it's only 30 seconds), but for those of you on the go here's our transcript of the ad in full, narrated by Sen. Cruz:

"Eighty-five percent of Nevada is owned and regulated by the federal government. And Donald Trump wants to keep big government in charge. That’s ridiculous.

You, the people of Nevada, not Washington bureaucrats, should be in charge of your own land.

If you trust me with your vote, I will fight day and night to return full control of Nevada’s lands to its rightful owners: its citizens.

Count on it."

Backlash for the Bundys -- and Ted Cruz

To be fair, Sen. Cruz is not the only Republican presidential candidate trying to appeal to Nevada voters through the land ownership issue, apparently in response to frontrunner Donald Trump's support for the idea that the public has an interest in federal land ownership. However, Cruz stands out because he is the only contender to reinforce his argument with visual imagery that strongly evokes both Ammon and Cliven Bundy.

That's quite a high-risk gamble, considering that the Bundys -- and the whole land privatization push -- are probably not held in high esteem by mainstream Nevada voters (perhaps evidenced by Trump's defeat of Cruz in Nevada by more than 20 percentage points). It's also safe to assume that the folks behind ALEC are not too happy with the fact that the Bundys have exposed the organization's "states rights" lobbying agenda for what it is -- a land grab to benefit private interests.

Those interests include the Koch brothers, who are major funders of ALEC. The family company, Koch Industries, happens to be interested in logging, mining and ranching -- the same interests that Ammon Bundy has loudly proclaimed to support.

To hammer home the connection between the Malheur takeover and Ted Cruz, last week Ammon Bundy's legal team linked to the Cruz ad through Facebook with this observation:

"... For better or worse, you have to give props to the refuge protesters and cowboy campers forcing the presidential candidates to put these previously ignored issues to the forefront. You don't have to agree with their speech, their constitutional analysis, or their tactics, but you have to admit they are getting results politically without city riots and destroying neighborhood businesses."

For fans of Blazing Saddles the "cowboy campers" reference is a wee bit hilarious, but more to the point, the thinly veiled racism ("city riots" -- really?) certainly doesn't help Cruz among mainstream voters.

The fact is that the fallout from Malheur is continuing to fall. Earlier this week, The Oregonian reported that prosecutors are preparing a new indictment involving more charges and more defendants, based on papers filed last Friday by a federal public defender. Apparently the hammers will fall some time next week.

This all puts Sen. Cruz in a rather awkward position, given his track record of support from ALEC and the Koch brothers, including support from the oil and gas fracking industry.

On the other hand, Cruz has amassed quite a reputation for making enemies out of his allies on the Republican roster, so perhaps the senator's damn-the-torpedoes pursuit of the Bundy endorsement is just more of the same.

Recent developments bear that out. According to a report at Daily Kos, the Koch brothers have dispatched a top adviser to assist Marco Rubio, who seems on track to sail past Sen. Cruz in the race to catch up to Trump.

Photo: "A view of the Steens Mountains from the Buena Vista Overlook located in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge" via Oregon DOT, flickr.com.

Uber has once again found itself thrown into a public-relations crisis after news reports alleged that accused murderer Jason Dalton picked up fares as a driver for the ridesharing service between shootings that killed six people on Saturday in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

The company’s chief security officer issued a brief statement over the weekend saying that Uber is “horrified and heartbroken” over the violence. Nevertheless, Uber has again found itself on the defensive as critics say the company, which some suggest has a valuation as high as $70 billion, could do more to assure the safety of riders who have in greater frequency come to rely on the service as their main source for transportation.

While Dalton has no criminal record, Uber’s detractors point out that the company has long resisted fingerprinting its drivers. In fact, when the city council of Austin, Texas, voted to launch a program in which ridesharing service drivers could voluntarily register their fingerprints with a third-party registration service, Uber (and its main competitor, Lyft) threatened to leave the state’s fourth largest city. The company has reportedly tested some pilot fingerprinting programs, but it's still steadfast in its refusal to make it a company-wide policy.

Here in the U.S., the requirements for becoming a driver on Uber are fairly basic. Drivers need a driver’s license, proof of automobile insurance with a minimal liability threshold, the submission of a vehicle inspection, and disclosure of their date of birth and social security number. The benefits, according to Uber, are cost-effective rides, the highest wages in the transportation service industry and the ability for workers to be their “own boss” -- although that final point has long been a bone of contention between Uber and many of its drivers.

Could Uber be more thorough in its screening, adding a face-to-face interview along with running more comprehensive background checks? Uber’s response is that such painstaking reviews of drivers would not have screened out Dalton, who in less than one month completed over 100 trips and scored a very respectable 4.73 out of 5 from riders’ reviews.

Another frustration critics of Uber state repeatedly is the lack of a “panic” button on its smartphone app in the event anything goes awry during a ride with the service. After an Uber driver in India was accused of rape last year, the company quickly rolled out an emergency safety alert feature that allows riders to simultaneously alert Uber and local law enforcement. Uber hailed that safety measure as an example of the company’s “commitment to safety,” but the company has refused to install it in here in the U.S. A year ago Uber said it had a plan to install such a feature in Chicago after allegations of sexual assault were made against two drivers, but that plan never came to fruition.

In a conference call with reporters yesterday, an Uber spokesman said that for riders, “911 is the panic button and it’s the panic button we want people to use.”

Details about Dalton and the events of last Saturday’s Kalamazoo shootings are still unfolding, and it is not clear if all these safety measures would have prevented six people from dying and countless more from having their lives shattered. Nevertheless, this young company that is not even six years old has a long history of responding to controversy by hiding behind public-relations jargon with the occasional token philanthropic project.

Hence the company that some say has killed the sharing economy once it became mainstream has reached a turning point. If it is ever going to repair its already dented reputation, Uber has to do and say more than merely insist that nothing could have prevented this tragedy.

Image credits: Wiki Commons (Mxobe)

By Jennifer Tuohy

President Barack Obama’s dream of 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015 did come true, albeit globally. And while America still lags behind by about half a million, more than 100,000 plug-in EVs were sold in the U.S. last year. That’s a 30 percent increase over 2013. The rate of adoption may not be as fast as predicted by analysts or as hoped for by the president, but it is happening. EVs are becoming a part of the American consumer landscape.

There are many groups who should be happy about this, chief among them the utility companies. EVs have the potential to be a market-changing force for the electricity industry. A report by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) claims that if 100 percent of vehicles in the U.S. were fueled by electricity, consumer energy spending would shift half a billion dollars daily from the petroleum industry to the electricity industry.

That is an exciting number for utilities dealing with stagnant growth and decreasing revenues as consumers and governments adopt more energy-efficient lifestyles and policies. To some in the electricity industry, EVs are a very bright, socially and environmentally acceptable light at the end of the tunnel. Purchasing an EV will see the average American household increase its electricity use by 13 to 40 percent, translating into $340 to $515 per household, per year, according to the NRECA report.

However, the question of whether the grid can cope with EVs is an important one. As EV adoption grows, more and more consumers will charge their vehicles at home, increasing the “cluster” effect for local grids. According to EnergyBiz.com, just one or two active Level 2 Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) units in a neighborhood could overload a transformer. Does this mean the electricity industry will have to invest in costly infrastructure upgrades to distribution and capacity to support EVs? No — not if they can regulate how and when EVs charge.

Off-peak charging is critical

If utility companies can push EVs toward off-peak charging, then the consumer will save money and the grid can remain not only stable, but also more efficient. By charging off-peak, generally at night when less electricity is used, EVs would fill in the traditional “valleys” in system demand, helping to distribute overall energy use.

For example, a report for the Vermont Agency of Transportation, where EVs have seen a quarterly growth rate of nearly 40 percent since July 2012, found that if charging occurs off-peak, the Vermont grid is capable of supporting more than 100,000 EVs without needing to expand capacity. Similar studies across the country came to the same conclusions. This study found that, if charged overnight, 73 percent of the current number of cars in the U.S. could be EVs without the need for a single additional power plant.

However, as EV adoption grows and the proliferation of public charging stations, workplace stations and DC fast-charge stations follow suit, more and more EVs will be charging at peak times, such as during the middle of the day at work or on long road trips. When that stage is reached, the ability to control the release of power on the grid will be crucially important. To do this necessitates a smart grid.

EVs and the smart grid

A smart grid is comprised of sensors and two-way communication abilities built into the grid, the EV and the EVSE. In theory, the smart grid will be able to use the data it receives from the sensors to balance the power supply and EV demand responsively, and avoid overloading the grid. This is called demand response, and many believe it will be crucial to the long-term success of EV adoption.

In the short-term, however, EVs are not putting a strain on the grid.

“Right now, EVs are less than 1 percent of the new-car market in the U.S., and they'll have to get to a very high percentage to really need much flexibility around them on the grid,” says Zachary Shahan, director and chief editor of CleanTechnica.com, the top clean technology-focused news and analysis website in the world, and founder of electric vehicle media site EVObsession.com.

“For example, EVs have been accounting for less than 25 percent of the Norwegian new-car market, and I haven't heard of the electric grid facing any issues from that,” he adds. “By the time EVs pose a significant challenge for utilities, I think this sort of smart grid technology will be the norm. Naturally, though, its development is being hastened by forward-thinking entrepreneurs, large corporations and utilities.”

Are EVs a power storage solution for the future?

The development of the smart grid opens a huge range of possibilities beyond load control. Most intriguing is the ability for EVs to partner with the grid to store energy and discharge it when needed, making the EV an asset to the grid rather than a strain. In 2013, PG&E began a demand response pilot program to explore using EV batteries for grid stabilization.

Current grid technology leaves little room for energy storage, meaning energy has to be used as soon as it’s produced. But storage could be essential to meeting increased demand during peak periods, like when temperatures reach 90 degrees in the summer and everyone has their air conditioner running. Additionally, the current lack of grid storage renders many alternative energy sources unviable on a large scale, because there’s nowhere to put all that extra energy generated on a super-windy or super-sunny day.

Enter the EV, a potential portable mini-storage facility that sits unused for a majority of the day. Equipped with the right connections, EVs can absorb excess energy from the grid and send it back when needed. This is called Vehicle to Grid (V2G) power.

In December 2015, Nissan announced the launch of a V2G pilot project in Europe for its popular EV, the Leaf. The project allows Nissan Leaf owners and businesses with large EV fleets to create mobile energy hubs. “Electric vehicles can now become a fully integrated part of our national electricity systems right across Europe,” Paul Willcox, Nissan Europe chairman, said in a press release.

Here in the U.S., the University of Delaware has been working on V2G tech, partnering with both Honda and Nissan. However, for V2G to become a reality, an extensive (and expensive) infrastructure would need to be put in place that allows the vehicle, the grid and the end points, like homes and businesses, to communicate with each other.

Shahan notes that many are excited about this technology. But there is also some skepticism, he says, because batteries slowly lose capacity as they are discharged and charged again, meaning many owners may not want to risk decreasing the life of their battery for the benefit of the grid.

“[However], I think enough people are into the idea, and it provides enough benefit at very little cost that it will move forward,” he adds. “We've already seen and written about a number of pilot programs and initiatives where EV owners allow the local utility (or a third party) access to the car's battery in specific times or scenarios to provide brief backup, and EV owners get paid for participating.

"I think the technology is already there, and it's a matter of testing, testing, testing in order to determine what the right price is for a large enough number of EV owners to make it a useful demand-response mechanism for utilities.”

Yes, your car could power your home

In the interim, technology that lets consumers use their EVs to provide power to their homes, known as V2H, is quickly progressing.

An EV can act as an energy backup for a house by charging during off-peak times or absorbing excess energy from renewable sources, such as a home solar system. It can then supply that energy back to the house during high-demand times. EVs can also be used to power a home during an emergency, like a gas-powered generator. All that’s required is a device to hold the charge from the car that can be connected to the home’s distribution board.

The recently announced Honda Power Exporter 9000, a new product available later this year, could do this. According to Honda, it’s “an external power feeding device that enables AC power output from a fuel-cell vehicle with maximum output of 9 kilowatts.” This technology is already available in Japan, where Nissan sells a Leaf-to-Home System that resembles a giant battery and plugs into the Nissan Leaf to take on excess power. It then connects to the home’s distribution board to distribute that power when needed.

Shahan sees using an EV to power a home as a temporary solution that’s best for emergencies rather than long-term use, again because of battery capacity concerns. “I don't think a large percentage of customers would be eager to use their EV like a stationary energy storage system — they'd be better off choosing a storage system optimized for such use, like the Tesla Powerwall. For very occasional use as backup during a blackout, I think it makes sense, and it's already been done by some clever individuals in the U.S.”

The real potential for this technology lies not with the individual consumer’s EV, but in the fleets of large corporations that sit idle for predictable periods of time.

Conclusion

Electric vehicles are at a tipping point, poised to transform America’s energy consumption. Coupled with a shift away from generating electricity via fossil fuels and toward the use of renewable resources, the large-scale adoption of EVs and use of their storage capabilities is a vital step in the quest to end dependence on dirty power and push us toward a cleaner, greener planet. All this makes the EV an angel of the sustainability movement.

Image credits: 1) & 2) Shutterstock (purchased by the author for use in this article); 3) Courtesy of Nissan

Jennifer Tuohy is a tech enthusiast who has always been intrigued by electric vehicles and their impact on the environment. Jennifer provides insight on the best times to charge your car and the type of EV charger that’s best for you.  Click here to see Home Depot's selection of EV Chargers.

In Nevada, hundreds of people are out of a job while residential customers are left wondering if they made the right choice to go solar.  Rule changes in that state have created a mass exodus of leading solar industry companies. Nevada's energy controversy even entered the national spotlight due to spirited campaigning by Democratic presidential candidates.

On a recent campaign stop in the state, candidate Bernie Sanders visited with solar industry workers and criticized public utility changes affecting solar.  The Vermont senator called the rule changes, "incomprehensible," the Associated Press reports.

Both Sanders and Hillary Clinton, who edged out the senator in the Nevada caucus, have bold climate change statements as part of their campaign platforms.  Both have supported clean, renewable energy and steps to combat climate change, and both have been able to make timely comments on how the Nevada rule changes seem to unfairly penalize the solar industry.

The solar industry reports some of the most robust growth of any United States industry, touting more than 100,000 jobs.  Yet in Nevada, jobs are at stake as top solar companies are laying off or relocating workers or otherwise pulling out of projects. This despite Nevada ranking as a top-three solar-producing state in a big year for solar energy growth.

Solar growth has happened in great part because individuals and businesses can receive benefits of net metering.  This gives them credits for power produced from their own photovoltaic infrastructure.  In the infancy of solar, this was heavily subsidized, less so as solar becomes more competitive with other forms of power production.  Recently the Nevada Public Utility Commission made a rule change that significantly decreases the benefits solar customers can receive from net metering.  This affects approximately 16,000 solar customers.

The utility has decided to phase out the ability of solar customers to receive net metering benefits over a 12-year period.  This was adjusted from an earlier decision to phase out net metering over five years.  An argument against net metering is that solar customers are subsidized by conventional power customers. Yet solar savings is what entices many people to try small-scale PV for the first time.

The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) responded with this from its vice president of state affairs, Sean Gallagher:

“We are disappointed that despite all of the support this measure had, the Commission chose to vote against the will of Nevadans. While lengthening the transition time to 12 years instead of four will help provide a longer runway, the decision takes away Nevadans ability to choose where their power comes from.

"Without question, this is extremely detrimental to clean energy and job growth in the state and we do not view this as a productive step in Nevada's efforts to maximize the many benefits -- from environmental to economic -- that solar provides."

SolarCity announced it will lay off 550 workers in Nevada because of the utility rate changes.  The company already discontinued sales and installation of solar products in the state.

"Telling employees they can no longer work for SolarCity is the hardest thing we've ever done," said SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive. "These are hard-working Nevadans and a single government action has put them out of work.  This is not how government is supposed to work."  The company had recently opened a new training center in West Las Vegas that will now be obsolete.

SunRun also announced it will cease all Nevada operations in 2016.  This means hundreds more jobs lost, including subcontracting with local installers employed by other businesses.

Bryan Miller, senior vice president of public policy and power markets at Sunrun, commented: “Nevada passed incentives to attract residents to go solar. But after baiting homeowners with incentives, the state switched the rules, penalizing solar homeowners to deliver additional profit to NV Energy. This bait and switch hurts Nevada families, many of whom are retirees on fixed incomes, and who use solar savings to meet their monthly budgets.”

Vivint Solar CEO Greg Butterfield also criticized the Nevada rule change for jeopardizing solar progress in the state. "Were we and our competitors to proceed with operations in Nevada, customers would lose money, limiting adoption only to those willing to make an environmental statement — distracting from one of the first truly disruptive energy innovations in more than 100 years. Lawmakers in other states should focus on protecting jobs and reducing consumer costs, instead of following Nevada's dated model of corporate welfare for entrenched industries."

While the industry landscape is changing in Nevada, the SEIA reports that a record-breaking 7.3 gigawatts of new photovoltaic energy capacity was installed throughout the United States in 2015.  Nevada's installations were third only to those in sunny California and North Carolina.

Image courtesy FlourSackMama.com.

By Kayla Matthews

Climate change is a topic at the forefront of everyone’s mind, with articles and images popping up regularly that showcase melting ice caps and animal deaths as a direct result of climate change. Everyone, from the smallest individual to the CEO of the largest corporation, has started taking steps to lessen their environmental impact.

With large companies, though, it can be hard to find the balance between environmental-mindedness and profit. What struggles do environmentally-concerned business managers face on a daily basis? How do you balance being green and making a profit?

The curse of fossil fuels

Fossil fuels are used every single day in every corner of the globe. The world consumes about 92 million barrels of oil per day and millions of tons of coal. This unchecked consumption releases hundreds of thousands of tons of harmful pollutants into the air every single year.

Where would we be, though, without the electricity produced by coal-burning power plants and the product-transportation network of trucks, ships and planes?

This is one of the biggest challenges that business managers face when trying to reduce their carbon footprint and make their company more environmentally friendly.

However, there are steps that companies can take to reduce their use of fossil fuels. Companies with large transport fleets can transition to biodiesel engines for large trucks and solar or electric vehicles for smaller individual cars. Solar- or wind-powered office buildings can help to reduce a company’s use of coal-burning power plants.

While these steps can help to reduce a company’s carbon footprint, it doesn’t make good business sense if it costs more to be environmentally friendly than the company is bringing in at the end of the year. That’s where balance comes in.

CEOs need to be more concerned

While there are plenty of companies will good intentions when it comes to improving the environmental impact of their businesses, there are not enough CEOs who think climate change is an actual threat to their businesses yet.

According to a recent poll of business owners and CEOs, most are more concerned with over-regulation, geopolitical uncertainty and the possibility of cyber attacks than they are with climate change or the damage their business could be doing to the environment.

Right now, roughly 50 percent of company owners consider climate change as an active threat. Half of a global market, while substantial, is not enough to really facilitate the changes that need to be made to improve the environmental impact of the business and industrial sectors.

Balancing profitability and sustainability

The trick, and the one thing that is going to set companies apart moving forward, is the ability balance sustainability and profitability. Setting up a solar-powered factory is a great move toward sustainability, but it does you little good if you leave yourself without the ability to buy the equipment or supplies needed to keep your company moving forward.

With that in mind, though, it is important not to discourage anyone from taking risks or trying something new. You never know what amazing innovations will come from someone willing to take a risk and what that can do to help improve your industry as a whole.

For example, in 2008, a beverage-bottling company called Florida Ice & Farm took steps to reduce the amount of water it took to prepare a liter of any given beverage. When the company started, it took a whopping 12 liters of water to prepare 1 liter of drinkable beverage, including the water used to clean and sterilize the bottles. By the time it had finished, the company reduced that water usage from 12 liters to 4.9 liters. Pepsi, standing on the shoulders of giants, was able to further reduce the water usage to an astonishing 2.2 liters per 1 liter of beverage.

That innovation, first pioneered by someone at Florida Ice & Farm, has effectively changed the entire bottling industry. This step toward sustainability is the perfect example of balancing environmental concerns and profitability.

There are many steps we can still take to improve the sustainability of our businesses without negatively impacting their profitability. Finding the delicate balance between the two will depend on each individual business and the amazing and innovative minds behind them.

Image by Viktor Hanacek

A 2015 U.N. report predicts that the world is on track to face a 40 percent shortage of fresh (including drinkable) water in the next 15 years. If current usage habits don't change, the world will have only 60 percent of the water it needs in 2030.

Seventy percent of the earth’s fresh water goes toward agriculture production, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Most agriculture produces food for humans or livestock, but cotton, grown largely for the apparel industry, uses 3 percent of the total amount of water consumed by agriculture. In fact, WWF calls cotton "the most widespread, profitable non-food crop in the world." This cash-crop provides income for more than 250 million people worldwide and employs almost 7 percent of all labor in developing countries. Approximately half of all textiles are made of cotton.

According to WWF, it takes more than 20,000 liters (5,283 gallons) of water to produce just one kilogram (2.2 pounds) of cotton, which roughly equals one T-shirt and a pair of jeans. The cotton apparel lifecycle contains many places, from dirt to shirt to landfill, where we have made strides in reducing water consumption, but there is still work to be done.

Call for sustainable cotton-growing practices

CottonConnect (supported by C&A Foundation) and the Better Cotton Initiative (supported by WWF) are two global organizations that support farmer-level improvement to reduce water use and implement other efforts to make cotton farming more sustainable.

But since organic cotton still only makes up 1 percent of cotton farming, there are still plenty of improvements that can be made in the cotton lifecycle as a whole, concentrating on sustainable practices.

Irrigation

Ineffective use of irrigation and poor transportation and storage can lead to huge amounts of wasted water. WWF estimates about 73 percent of the global cotton crop is grown on irrigated land. Several cotton organizations like Cotton Inc., C&A Foundation and Better Cotton Initiative are working with cotton farmers to make sure that water is used effectively and efficiently.

Cotton Inc. is a U.S.-based industry research and lobbying organization (it's the one behind the "fabric of our lives" campaigns). The organization says that the majority of American-grown cotton (about 65 percent) is produced without irrigation. In the South and the Southeast, non-irrigated cotton systems dominate, while in the arid West nearly all of the crop-water requirements are met by irrigation water.

Farmers in the U.S. have improved water efficiency by 75 percent in the last 20 years, James Pruden, senior director of public relations at Cotton Inc., explained. But irrigation is still one of the villains of the water waste dilemma due to overflow and evaporation.

However, there have been many advances in irrigation like drip-irrigation installations that reduce the amount of water used to supplement rainfall, in regions where it is needed. Pruden explained that other technologies can detect where in a field the soil is dry and where it isn’t, concentrating delivery to areas where water is needed. These technologies can sometimes be financially out of reach for small farmers, but since their benefits are substantial, organizations are trying to bridge the distance.

“With CottonConnect, C&A Foundation is piloting financing schemes to give farmers greater access to drip-irrigation technology. These new irrigation systems can increase yields by 30 percent and reduce water usage by up to 60 percent,” Leslie Johnston, executive director of the C&A Foundation, wrote in the organization's More Crop Per Drop report.

Pesticide/herbicide use

Pesticides are a big dividing line between organically-grown cotton and other practices, but they also play a role in water conservation efforts when it comes to agriculture.

Pesticide use contaminates groundwater and can cause long-term pollution problems downstream from cotton farms. It is also an expensive practice, so there are several reasons that farmers are trying to curb or end pesticide use. U.S. farmers no longer apply pesticides in a cloud (a la Hollywood), Pruden explained, but they are encouraged to apply it at ground-level to a specific area, which reduces contamination. That said, any use of pesticide has the potential to affect groundwater.

Although certified organic cotton farming has lost some ground in the past few years, it looks like cotton organizations are encouraging more sustainable farming practices that steer farmers further from traditional wasteful cotton farming and more in the direction of organic principles as a whole. So, the industry is moving in a more sustainable direction, and slowly but surely, it is resulting in water savings.

Manufacturing

Manufacturing processes also use a lot of water. The dyeing process both uses a large amount of water and causes a huge amount of pollution. The water that runs off the fabric and down the drain into sewage systems pours chemicals into the groundwater, as well as rivers, lakes and other water sources.

Several brands have worked to develop processes that use less water.

Nike has a ColorDry process that eliminates "water from fabric dyeing." It also "reduces energy consumption by around 60 percent compared to traditional dyeing, eliminates the use of process chemicals, and uses nearly 100 percent of dye in the process, practically removing the potential for wastewater pollution," the company said.

Levi's launched a waterless jeans initiative that uses recycled water in parts of its process and saved 1 billion gallons of water as of 2015 by reducing the water used in garment finishing by up to 96 percent.

Consumer habits

Consumers can do several things to reduce water use for cotton products, especially apparel and household items (sheets, etc.).

The first thing consumers can do is buy less. Brands like Patagonia have even gone so far as to tell customers that they should repair their garments rather than buy new.

Another way that consumers can be aware is to find out where their clothes come from.

Eric Henry, president of TS Designs, a U.S.-based organic cotton T-shirt design company, says that his customers can look up any of their shirts to find out its journey "from dirt to shirt" using the Where Your Clothing website. TS Designs has a close relationship with their North Carolina, third-generation cotton farmer who grows their crop relying only on rainfall. The company also insists on paying a living wage to its workers up and down the supply chain, which is all within 600 miles.

The next way to conserve water is to wash your item less, use cooler water and line-dry whenever possible to use less water to clean the item and extend the life of your garment.

When a consumer tires of a garment or it is worn out, the best thing to do is donate it. In 2015, Holly McQuillan, senior lecturer at Ngā Pae Māhutonga – the School of Design, told 3p:

"The fashion industry will produce 400 billion meters of fabric [in 2015 alone] — just for apparel. This is roughly the amount of fabric it would take to cover the entire state of California. Fifteen percent, or 60 billion meters, will be wasted during the production phase (extra fabric, itself a finished product, that ends up on the cutting-room floor), before the garments even reach a consumer. The number of garments created each year is the equivalent of everyone in the world having 20 new items annually."

Annually consumers waste more than 11 million tons of textiles.

Efforts to recover these fibers will reduce the water constraints of the apparel industry by cutting the cotton-growing component out of the equation.

Manufacturers large and small are working to recover fibers for reuse. One startup, Evrnu, takes cotton garment waste, purifies it and breaks it down into a pulp -- creating, according to founder Stacy Flynn, "a pristine new fiber that is finer than silk and stronger than cotton - made entirely of garment waste." She told 3p this process uses 1 percent of the water used in the original cotton garment process.

Right now, Evrnu is the only U.S. company in the game, although there are companies working on similar technologies in the U.K., Finland and Sweden.

If cotton-farming organizations continue to promote sustainable practices, organic gains a bigger market share, and -- from the other end of the spectrum -- fiber recovery and remanufacture becomes more than a pipe dream, the water footprint of the  apparel industry might ease.

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

For-profit colleges are a $25 billion industry that gets no respect. They claim just 5 percent of the $500 billion Americans spend every year on higher education. Their critics call them "dropout factories" that burden students with debt and get billions in federal and state support while returning little value.

In the last few years, six for-profit colleges have re-chartered themselves to become benefit corporations, with a dual mission to pursue a public benefit while also making a profit. Are they greenwashing? B Labs, the independent social auditing firm that awards B Corp Certification and also promotes the movement for chartered benefit corporations, doesn't think so. But changing that image might take a while.

Critics of for-profit education cite a 2012 report by former Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, which analyzed 30 for-profit colleges and found that their associate's degrees cost four times as much as did similar degrees from public schools. Harkin also found that 63 percent of students enrolled in associate programs at for-profits in 2008-09 had dropped out a year later. The expenses and yields for other degrees were also poor in comparison to public and not-for-profit schools.

Two years ago, B Labs convened a diverse group of educators to develop specific social auditing standards for higher education. The group released the standards last September. A few weeks later, Laureate Education and Alliant University passed the audit to become the first for-profit colleges that are both benefit corporations and Certified B Corps.

"People say that for-profit colleges cannot keep students at the center of their operations, but the benefit corporation structure requires that they do," says Dan Osusky, a standards manager at B Labs. "The key to making this succeed is getting colleges to publish measures of accountability and performance."

Other for-profit colleges are talking the talk. "We're a 115-year-old company, and being a public benefit corporation is in our DNA," says Trenda Boyum-Breen, president of Rasmussen College, a regionally accredited institution serving 14,000 students online and at 24 campuses. It grants degrees in business, nursing and other job-oriented disciplines.

About 75 percent of Rasmussen students are women and over the age of 25. More than a fifth are African American. "For-profit colleges have a powerful opportunity to encourage upward social mobility," Osusky of B Labs says.

Rasmussen registered as a public-benefit corporation (PBC) in Delaware two years ago. "We saw it as a way to distinguish ourselves," says Dr. Boyum-Breen, president of Rasmussen, who is also a first-generation college graduate. "A PBC is the sweet-spot that allows us to deliver education for the public good while also having the efficiency and flexibility of a for-profit business."

That all sounds good. But Rasmussen is privately owned, so it doesn't release information on its revenues, its expenses or the names of major shareholders. Boyum-Breen says the college is consulting with B Lab, but it hasn't yet been certified. And Delaware law only requires that PBCs give their shareholders a statement regarding the progress of their social goals once every two years. The statement does not have to be done by an independent third party, and it doesn't have to be public.

"This is a controversial industry, and some for-profit colleges have questionable reputations," says Osusky, who adds that the best way forward is for the industry to adopt specific performance standards, greater legal accountability and public transparency. "Controversial industries are where the need is greatest to distinguish between good and bad actors," he continues.

Boyum-Breen, who became Rasmussen's president 10 months ago, says the college's directors will see its first internally-produced social statement at their meeting in March. She says that parts of the statement will also be released to the public and that the college will continue to work with B Labs.

She is also pushing changes that promise to lower the cost of a degree. More than three quarters of her students have already attended college somewhere else without graduating. Rasmussen's Flex Choice, which combines classwork with online study to allow students to pass course units based on their prior experiences, was expanded to all degree programs in January.

"There's a great opportunity here for a business to generate public good," she says. "An organization's tax status doesn't determine whether it is good or not."

Maybe so. But you can't assess a company's performance until you measure it, and you can't trust those measurements unless someone or something holds the company accountable.

Image credit: Flickr/CollegeDegrees360

No, the answer to how electric cars promote weight loss is not because they run out of electricity and you have to walk more. I've been driving the plug-in electric Chevy Volt for a week now. While the Volt’s battery did run out of electricity during extended trips, the car kept going because of its on-board gasoline engine.

New research links air pollution to obesity and diabetes

I came up with an outside-the-box idea that driving an electric car could promote weight loss based on just-released research by Duke University. Duke University researchers found that mammals exposed to air pollution have a higher risk of obesity and diabetes. Could it be that breathing deeply in our urban environments is as bad for our weight as drinking soda?

Obviously, driving electric cars will not solve our national weight crisis. But what we drive is part of the life choices we made that have created our national weight crisis. Seventy percent of the baby boomer generation is overweight or obese. It is projected that 50 percent of Generation Z, the first generation born in the 21st century, will be obese during their lifetime.

That is what motivated me to write "The Boomer Generation Diet." It profiles sustainable best practices that will reshape our bodies and environment for the better. What the Duke University research suggests is that the lifestyle choices that impact our weight and health now extend beyond food to include the type of cars we drive and the source of the fuel we use to generate electricity.

How fun-to-drive electric cars can promote weight loss

One of the research breakthroughs I found in my own weight-loss success is that there's a strong link between having fun and losing weight. We have all failed at dieting. We fail because dieting is a painful process based on denial or eating foods that have a taste somewhere between dull and awful.

We fail at exercising because it is painful and stressful. Who wants to walk into a gym filled with workout warriors when you're wearing plus-size shorts? "No pain, no gain" might have been motivational when we tried out for high-school sports, but in our adult lives we do not need more pain. So, we try exercising and then stop because it hurts. The couch, TV and comfort food seems the better alternative for reducing stress and pain.

Figuring out how to have fun while losing weight was my key to weight-loss success. I never go hungry. I eat a ton of good-for-me food that I think tastes good. I have figured out how to make sustained exercise seem like play by riding a mountain bike. Most days it is the best part of my day. It relieves stress. I laugh over my experiences on the trail. I lose weight.

The beach, fish tacos and the Volt

A huge step toward weight loss is getting out doors. That is where the Volt comes in. Owning a Volt makes you want to “get out there.” That is my observation of the Volt owners I follow on Facebook. They are always reporting on where they're driving their Volts.

That was certainly my experience during the week I test-drove the Volt. I went out of my way to schedule trips to the beach and desert. The following 90-second video profiles one of those trips. It is my trip to San Clemente driving a Volt.

San Clemente is one of my favorite beach towns. It has a great walking path right along the beach that is one of my favorite places in the world to walk. My dog Cooper loves it, too! I have fun. Cooper has a blast. We both keep trim.

And who wants to eat a hamburger and fries when you can sit at an outdoor restaurant on the pier and enjoy some of the best fish tacos in Southern California?

Driving an electric car not only saves money and cuts tailpipe emissions, but it can also be a fun way to find fun locations that promote weight loss. That was my experience in San Clemente!

https://www.youtube.com/embed/OTAla2RWDDQ

Image credit: Bill Roth

Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on the Connective Impact blog.

By Joanne Sonenshine

Whether you are an NGO employee seeking funding for your programs or a social entrepreneur exploring ways to scale your latest concept, fundraising can seem daunting. Even the most experienced fundraisers question their approaches from time to time.

Certainly the donor landscape is evolving, and with resources and priorities shifting, opportunities for funding can seem limited. With the right focus, preparation and foresight, fundraising need not be overwhelming.

I often whittle down the process in four simple steps for my clients. Try these yourself and you can be well on your way to scaling your programs and impacting your stakeholders in the most positive ways.

First and foremost, identify your aims. Make your goals clear and concise. I am not talking about dollar goals or even prospects. I am talking about what you hope to gain from your fundraising effort. Who will benefit? How and why? What does the world look like after you have completed your fundraising?

Prioritize one to three big-picture goals and include four to five activities that you plan to undertake within each goal so your donor audience knows exactly what options there are for fund dispensing. This allows you to be proactive and targeted in your prospecting. This process also ensures that you stay focused and not reactive. The worst type of fundraising is that in which you accept unallocated dollars and try to ‘make something happen.’ In every one of my experiences, this is where fundraising fails.

Second, build your prospect list based entirely on your one to three big goals. Which donors are apt to fund programs that match your end game? Do not limit yourself to big, government donors or large well-known foundations. Consider corporate donors that have business interests that match your priorities. Think about crowdfunding or target smaller, family foundations that have specific strategies for managing their donor dollars. Think creatively and don’t box yourself in. Reach out to experts if you need help identifying the donor options for your programmatic needs.

Third, undertake a matching exercise. Connect your one to three goal priorities to programmatic priorities of each donor. Do not go outside of your script, unless the opportunity arises. Donors want to see you being focused and specific around what programs and activities that need and want funding.

This process includes being clear on geographies, regions, communities, potential partners, opportunities for leverage, opportunities to utilize in-kind donations and understanding what a return looks like for a donor. By doing your homework, donors will be far more apt to fund your program than if you initiate too broad an ask.

Lastly, ask for help. It may seem counterintuitive to spend money to make money, but often times a fundraising effort cannot initiate itself. Having outside resources working on your behalf will save you time and money in the end. Consider connectors that can have conversations with high-net worth individuals on your behalf, or assign tasks to your board of directors if appropriate.

Do not discount the role existing partners can play in seeking out funding for joint projects you have underway, or simply making introductions. Finding entry points and building relationships is one of the most critical elements of fundraising, and this takes time and the right approach which cannot be managed in a vacuum.

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By following these four steps, your organization is well-poised to be proactive and successful in fundraising and ultimately can deliver greater impact to the communities you serve.

Image credit: Pixabay

Joanne Sonenshine is Founder + CEO at Connective Impact, aiding organizations in strategic goal development, partnership creation, consensus building and focused thinking in order to solve some of the most complex problems of our time.

Gardening is all the rage these days, and it's thriving even in densely-populated areas where urban farmers have little more than a balcony or a porch to grow those herbs or tomatoes.

But going from seed to seedling to thriving vine is not always easy. First of all, there is that pesky task of watering — most plants tend to grow better with an intense weekly watering instead of a frequent quick sprinkling of water. Of course, most of us work long days outside the home, and then there is that annoying issue of remembering to water your little garden in the first place. Then there are the watering restrictions in many communities as the majority of states here in the U.S. are either mired in, or heading toward, long-term problems due to drought.

A timeless design, however, is one water-efficiency answer to the question of how to keep that garden growing while maintaining a busy schedule and, of course, doing all of this sustainably.

GrowOya is the venture of three gardening aficionados who wanted to find an easy yet responsible way to keep gardens blooming and producing. Their terra cotta pots are based on ollas (“OY-yas”), a method of irrigation that has long been used in the Americas and has since spread across the globe.

The bulb-shaped pots are buried in gardening plots near the base-roots of plants. A narrow opening, which reduces evaporation, is exposed at ground level and only needs to be filled with water every five to 10 days. Because the pots are slightly porous, water seeps out slowly. The plant roots in one’s garden will gravitate toward the submerged pots within a few weeks, and will draw out water only when needed. Capping the spout with a rock or small tile reduces evaporation even further.

The results, say GrowOya’s founders, is a low-tech yet highly efficient watering system that is 70 percent more effective than surface watering. They can work in planters, raised beds and, of course, larger backyard and community gardens.

Plenty of artisans and small businesses make ollas, and for DIY enthusiasts, cobbling together one’s own collection of ollas is a fairly easy task. GrowOya’s founders, however, tinkered with their design and manufacturing process to make their pots even more efficient. For now these ollas, or "oyas" if that is easier to pronounce, are available for purchase within the U.S. and Canada on GrowOya’s website. Available in three different sizes, their costs start at $25.

Image credit: GrowOya