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The past four years of drought have left aquifers and snowpack at low levels in California. Despite El Niño, which is bringing more rain, the effects of the drought won’t be reversed any time soon. Clearly, business-as-usual can’t happen ever again.

Seeing the effects of the drought helps to gain a grasp on the size of the problem. Sustainable Silicon Valley (SSV), an organization committed to sustainability in the Bay Area, partnered with Tibco, a software and data analytics company, to learn more about the effects of the drought and find new ways to conserve, recycle and locally source water. They created data visualization of the drought using Tibco Spotfire software with data coming from NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey and state of California water boards.

“It was hard work on the part of two companies. Sustainable Silicon Valley and Tibco came together to work on it,” SSV’s senior advisor, Bruce Naegel, told TriplePundit.

SSV established new initiatives that are partially based on the insights gained from these data visualizations as part of its Net Positive campaign. The organization first created a set of aspirational goals for 2015, which included sourcing only local water for the Bay Area’s water supply by 2050. “The idea is that we really have to about reducing our water consumption and coming up with resources so should be be cut off from outside water, which the snowpack event indicates, we need to start thinking along those lines,” Naegel said. Natural disasters could also cut the Bay Area off from outside water sources, he added.

Some of the new insights the visualization reveals are:

• How the drought has affected areas of California from 2013 to the present.


• Water usage by county and which industries within those counties are responsible for consuming the most water.


• The rate of water production in the state month-to-month, with a breakdown by water regions


• mandatory water restrictions in regions.


• Top recycled water suppliers in California.

In a video about the drought analysis tool, Naegel stated that the goal for Net Positive Bay Area 2050 in the water sector is to have “only locally supplied water,” and pointed out that the Bay Area receives 60 to 80 percent of its water from the snowpack. “If we lose that snowpack we’ll be forced to use only local water,” he said.

https://youtu.be/e24Tc87Myh0

The Bay Area had a GDP of over $738 billion in 2015, which would put it 20th among countries, but two-thirds of its water supply is imported. The goal of the SSV’s Net Positive water initiative is a five-year project that focuses on the following:

•  Working to form a task force to get a model ordinance passed for onsite water reuse with support from council members of Santa Clara County’s four biggest cities.


• Encouraging intelligent water use and reuse in new developments through Santa Clara County’s Water Efficiency New Development Task Force.


• A state ordinance bill to set standards for onsite treated water.

The first step of the water initiative was to “establish a baseline and see where we are at and what we need to do,” Naegel said. That’s what the drought visualization tool was all about. The next step was to launch pilot projects, which include:

• Helping Facebook and the city of Menlo Park collaborate to bring onsite water reuse to Facebook’s new campus.


• Encouraging both Santa Clara County and the state legislature to set standards to allow Google to bring onsite water reuse to their campus.


• Partnering with ARUP, the global engineering and design firm, to conduct water audits in the low-income community of East Palo Alto.

One of the great aspects of the work of SSV in general, and the water initiative specifically, is that it educates the public. And that work of education is one that needs to continue. Or, as Naegel said: “We are going to have to keep educating people.”

Image credit: Ray Bouknight

By Dr. Priya Motupalli

Following a tidal wave of cage-free egg commitments from major businesses like McDonald’s, Nestlé and Panera Bread in 2015, the $9 billion egg industry is now at the critical point of determining how to safely transition hens to alternative systems in order to supply the demand in 2016 and beyond.

As an animal scientist, I had a lot of preconceived notions about alternative farms -- some stemmed from my academic background, and others from simply working on farm and recognizing the complexity of shifting whole systems.

An opportunity to test these notions was offered to me by John Brunnquell, CEO of Egg Innovations, one of the top 45 egg companies in the U.S., and the largest commercially-viable system in the U.S. that allows birds access to pasture. Brunnquell made some bold claims about his facility, but I wanted to experience it firsthand.  Here’s what I expected to see:

1. Birds using only about 10 percent of the range offered to them. This is a number that has been repeated time and again by colleagues, academics and industry. This figure is one of those things that gets passed around until it becomes part of the agricultural canon. It’s often used to suggest that birds don’t really want to be outside — which may in fact be the case for individual birds, but it’s not necessarily indicative of flock behavior as a whole.


2. Birds displaying flighty and nervous behavior — so if you want to pick one of them up for a health check, you better act fast and grab with conviction!


3. Immediately apparent issues of feather-pecking/cannibalism.


4. A high mortality rate. Typically, alternative laying-hen systems struggle to match the low mortality rates of conventional systems.


5. A majority of the birds staying indoors, as the weather was grey and misty.

But what I experienced firsthand was not what I expected:

Birds using more range

In the barn I visited, the young hens had only been there for about 30 days and were already using about 20 percent of the outdoor range. Waterers at pasture encouraged range use, and losses due to aerial predators were controlled thanks to plastic owl decoys lined up like soldiers. 

Human-animal relationships

Birds in alternative systems tend to have fewer foot problems than those in conventional systems, but when they do have foot problems, they are usually more severe. I wanted to check this out among the hens we observed myself.

My bird-catching senses clicked into gear, and I lunged as fast as I could to grab the nearest bird, who skittered away. Brunnquell looked at me with a bemused expression and proceeded to calmly – and slowly - put his hand down on a nearby hen who looked up at him inquisitively and then turned away to continue pecking at her food. I marveled at the human-animal relationship that he and his staff had cultivated with the birds at a system of this scale.

When I did finally pick up a bird myself (with no fuss at all!), conducting a health check was a breeze!  Animal welfare scientists have long recognized the importance of positive human-animal relationships in promoting good farm animal welfare and ensuring productivity, and this was a classic example.

No severe feather-pecking

Feather-pecking was apparent, and some scars from healed pecking wounds on combs were visible on a small percentage of the birds in the house, but severe feather-pecking was not immediately obvious. It was nowhere near what I had come to expect from some large-scale alternative systems.

Low mortality rates

Brunnquell explained that records indicated that his birds outperform caged flocks by 2 percent (according to breeder guidelines) on average, and his annual mortality rate is low, between 5 and 8 percent.

Birds chose to be outside

20,000 birds had free access to a 50-acre pasture, from a 24,000 square-foot barn during the day. They were kept inside the barn at night, with access to two miles of perches, food and water, nest boxes, and a scratching area that ran the length of the building. In the morning, when the pop-holes were opened up and down both sides of the building, hens spilled out immediately and began exploring, foraging, scratching and fluffing their feathers in the rain.

Within about 20 minutes, a third of the barn was outside getting their morning exercise.  Many birds were still in the barn; but that being said, choice is a tenant of good animal welfare.  It’s recognized that environments that provide animals more control and allow them an opportunity to make more choices, like expressing individual social or thermal preferences, have a positive effect on their welfare.

In an industry where animals tend to have very little control over their own environment, allowing hens to make their own decision to stay inside or be at pasture (as long as they have been trained to understand the choice) has a profound influence on their welfare.

The hens seek affection

Who knew hens were basically Labradors? The farm staff informed me that the hens constantly sought “affection,” and one of the staff proceeded to teach me how to conduct a proper “butt scratch."  To my surprise, the hens fluffed up their feathers in response and leaned into it.

The bottom line

John Brunnquell told me that animal welfare became important to him because of his “belief that it could be good business,” and it was apparent during my visit that he was proud of his proven ability to combine good animal welfare with productivity and profitability, particularly when he was told that this “flat out couldn’t be done.”  His interest in animal welfare, however, quickly developed from a simple business decision into a core value of his company.  He initially transitioned to cage-free production, but has recently pushed the envelope further and now produces free-range and pasture-raised eggs.

Conventional systems developed for many legitimate reasons, one of which was to safeguard animal health, an important component of animal welfare. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that they safeguard animal welfare as a whole or that they provide for positive experiences on farm.  Even when there is general consensus that animal welfare should be continuously improved on farm, arguments for specific practices, including confinement, often stem around the notion that because we don’t have all the answers yet or experts don’t agree on the best way forward, we shouldn’t move at all.

John and Egg Innovations prove that this argument doesn’t make sense. His vision to move the needle on animal welfare in the egg marketplace is underpinned by the scale of his operation. He shared, “We’re bringing scale to pasture, in order to drive costs out of the system, but that [doesn’t mean] we concede on hen quality of life.”  John and his team at Egg Innovations are showing that alternative systems can be brought to scale without sacrificing animal welfare or profitability.  This lesson is particularly topical as the industry transitions away from caged operations, due to the multitude of public commitments we’re seeing from corporations. With or without butt scratches, systems like these are worth leaning into.

Priya Motupalli is an Animal Welfare Scientist with World Animal Protection.  She advises on animal welfare and best practice on farm via an evidence-based approach.  Prior to her work with World Animal Protection, Priya received her PhD in Applied Animal Behaviour and Welfare from Harper Adams University in the UK.  Her research focused on dairy cattle welfare, and the welfare and production implications of allowing farm animals more control over their own environment.  Alongside scientific publications, she has been featured in Meat Management Magazine for her excellence in science communication and written invited guest pieces for the Scientific American online blog network.

Photos (c) World Animal Protection

By Graham Sinclair 

Mainstreaming sustainable investment: If the many investor initiatives aimed at corralling investors toward sustainability had not already made environmental, social and governance (ESG) the new normal, 2016 should do it.

Groupings such as CDP (822 financial institutions, US$95 trillion assets under management), Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (120 members, €13 trillion AuM), and PRI (302 asset owners, 958 investment managers of US$59 trillion AuM) have continued to grow their signatory base and inflate the “big number” (see TriplePundit “$6.2 Trillion* is Not Enough” for more on the asterisk).

The investment industry organization CFA Institute just updated its CFA ESG Handbook and ESG-100 FAQs. COP21 in Paris kicked on. If all the big firms are doing it, it must be right, right?! They call it “mainstreaming," in the principal or dominant course, tendency or trend. For the longest time in the sustainable investment sector, much of the talk has been of how sustainability will show up in all investment houses and in all investment decisions, not just the niche that first acted on it. The investment industry is renowned for herding activity, so it is not surprising that making sustainability a “mainstream” investment practice has been sustainability practitioners’ goal for reaching scale and systems-level change. The underlying anxiety was some kind of inverse FOMO.

Now in 2016 the 200,000+ investment funds that investment analyst Morningstar claims to track will for the first time have ESG ratings, in a deal with ratings agency Sustainalytics announced last August. Environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues include gender diversity, separation of powers and labor rights.

Morningstar tracks the holdings of more than 200,000 global managed products, and Sustainalytics provides ESG ratings on more than 4,500 companies, allowing for Morningstar to create asset-weighted composite ESG fund scores based on company-level Sustainalytics ESG ratings. Swiss private bank Julius Baer (also “exclusive global partner” of the world electric car racing series FIA Formula E) was the first to license Morningstar/ Sustainalytics ESG scores for its fund research team.

The news of a major scorekeeper like Morningstar including ESG ratings is still flowing into the corners of the investment industry, with the European market as epicenter. (FT reported earlier this month that the “Morningstar ethical rating could cost funds billions.”) Using smartphones will be poignant: The 2016 ESG issues season kicked off in January with Amnesty International’s new campaign on cobalt mining that targets Samsung, Sony and Apple (not HTC or Xiaomi?) and their investors.

The reality of how every dollar is invested today is that ESG aspiration leads ESG execution. America's largest investment firm, Blackrock (US$4.5 trillion AuM) has been positioning itself toward “responsible investment” starting with engagement, claiming 15,000+ meetings where it votes annually and 130,000+ proposals voted on. Pointedly, Blackrock does not identify which votes are for or against company management, on which material ESG issues.

Other majors like Vanguard have not updated their ESG offering in a decade and so pre-date Twitter (yes, that is a unit of time!). State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) has one of the leading ESG practitioners but a huge portfolio to cover.

The clients of mega investment firms are more articulate about their expectations. Mega retirement plan CalPERS has four channels to influence their ESG work -- engagement, partnership, advocacy and integration into investment decisions. CalPERS has ESG expectations of its external investment managers. Great expectations. 2016 has kicked off with implementing ESG plans across CalPERS US$289 billion portfolio.

Now the clients of mega investment firms will be tracking the impacts and the outcomes. Investors are now chasing Volkswagen for lost billions from its emissions-cheating scandal, Reuters reported. In similar vein, you may expect an SEC lawsuit in the next few years based on the malpractice from some corner of a mega investment firm failing to execute the ESG-integrated mandate of its client competently. PRI promised to rank signatories' efforts, differentiating the fakers from the makers. Bloomberg reported the “five don’ts” of “investment that promise to do good.”

Pure-play sustainable investment firms are smaller. Small means agile, able to adapt to sustainability in their portfolios, hire sustainability proactive talent, and run their investment firms in a way mega investment firms cannot, or cannot do easily. Anyone working at any megafirm who has tried to order their next business card as eco-friendly will know the feeling!

MBA-101 predicts that a niche player must market their unique selling proposition as compelling competitive advantage. Pure-play ESG shops will go “all-in" -- making positive ESG investment in energy efficiency happen in all asset classes while also driving energy efficiency at head office; engaging portfolio companies on gender diversity while also being accountable to the firm’s own stakeholders on gender diversity at head office.

Like the millennials who are driving changes in how companies make and sell products, the attributes of ESG include transparency and authenticity. Millennials want to know what impact the product they buy or the career they choose has in the world. While greenwashing is evident across all types of businesses as firms cut corners to catch onto the sustainability wave, investment firms do so at their peril. Hollow reputations take years (and billions of dollars) to fill back up -- see VW. Failure is fatal. Every investment firm relies on its reputation as intangible asset in gathering client assets to manage and to generate investment returns for clients. Lose reputation and close down, either the portfolio or the firm itself.

The difficulty in making ESG happen in big firms with multi-line businesses can come from personnel who do not buy into the higher purpose. Like any firm with more than one operation, it may also come from apparent (and/or implicit) conflicts of interest. Failure may be triggered by a handful of people in a different business unit, like AIG. Questions of corporate culture arise.

In the same week that Goldman Sachs agreed to pay U.S. regulators a $5 billion fine for 2008 mortgage errors, the Goldman Sachs careers department was profiling GS global ESG head Hugh Lawson’s work on “how ESG investing is becoming mainstream in asset management.” Elsewhere, SSgA sister company State Street Bank and Trust Co. will pay $12 million to settle SEC charges of a pay-to-play scheme to win contracts with four Ohio public pension funds. Also this month, private equity mega investment firm KKR expounded on how “ESG issue management enhances private equity” at the Hong Kong Venture Capital and Private Equity Association’s Asia Private Equity Forum. The prospect of any major private equity firm in the U.S. -- with their infamous 2/20 fee model, tax advantaged principals, cost-cutting and financial engineering history -- should be expounding on the merits of ESG is anachronous to many practitioners of sustainability.  

The journey for mega investment firms is longer, harder and multi-speed -- maybe even impossible. Ensuring that sustainability -- authentic in spirit and deed -- is imbued in the culture and embedded across the practices of the whole firm is the critical question. But how to find answers: Interview the CIO and ask for the fair trade espresso? Mystery-shop the firm’s investment advisor?

Mega investment firms have huge staffs and many investment strategies, and so have a lot of work ahead. Maybe the mega firm can never reinvent itself into 21st-century sustainability themes while still running so hard. GE has partly succeeded; how will ExxonMobil? Few mega investment firms have pressed sustainability thinking-and-doing deeply into the fabric of the firm and its people, processes, products, practices and performance attribution. Is sustainability baked-in at the portfolio company level? The portfolio level? The investment committee level? The head office level? In a competitive marketplace, some of this will be driven by discerning and vigilant investment clients asking questions like ‘who is managing my money?’ or ‘what is the carbon footprint of the portfolio?’

Some of this goes to the way business is done and has to be solved by regulators making the playing field level, for example sanctioning insider trading. Some will be enlightened investment veterans charting a better path, like GMO’s Jeremy Grantham. Not all investment portfolios return above-average performance to their investors. Statistically, only 20 percent can be in the top quintile of performance. We should hope for more, but set our expectations for mega investment firms in the same way. Mega investment firms are not too big to fail sustainability. Which one invests your money?

Image courtesy of NASA

Graham Sinclair is Principal at SinCoESG LLC – Sustainable Investment Consulting LLC. Connect with him @ESGarchitect or LinkedIn.com/GrahamSinclair.

The Road Haulage Association is launching a campaign called She’s RHA, designed to address the shortage of women in road transport.

The industry has a workforce of 2.2m of which just 2% are women. As a result, the haulage sector misses out on a wealth of diverse talent and performance benefits that women can provide. She’s RHA aims to attract more women into the wide range of career paths available.

RHA chief executive Richard Burnett said: "The aim of She's RHA is to promote a new, welcoming, culture for this industry. Women already play a key role in logistics at all levels but we need to increase the numbers. We believe that by providing a forum for women to share advice, information and knowledge, She’s RHA will not only create a much-needed spirit of camaraderie, it will also highlight the vast range of career choices this vital sector can provide.

The initiative is the brainchild of RHA board member Lesley O’Brien. She believes inspiration is needed. “She’s RHA will encourage, support, mentor and empower women of all ages, skill sets and experience. We need to inspire women to choose a career in transport. I am delighted that the RHA recognises the contribution that women can make and has taken the initiative to work with its members to facilitate a dynamic support network through She’s RHA.”
 

Unilever, Rolls Royce, Standard Life, HSBC and Network Rail are just some of the 350+ businesses in the UK which have signed the Time to Change pledge, a commitment to take action to tackle the stigma and discrimination around mental health in the workplace.

Led by mental health charities Mind and Rethink Mental Illness, the Time to Change movement is supported with an annual Time to Talk Day which takes place this year next Thursday (4 February 2016).

The day's aim is to get as many people as possible across England talking about mental health. By joining together on one day, the charities believe that it can break the silence that often surrounds mental health, and show that talking about this once-taboo issue doesn’t need to be difficult.

According to the charities, mental health problems affect 1 in 4 people every year, yet people are often too afraid to talk about their experiences because they fear it will affect their jobs.

To find out how your business can get involved, click here. 

The weeks-long armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon has lost its erstwhile leader and several other key personnel, with the apprehension and arrest of Arizona businessman Ammon Bundy on a remote stretch of road last night along with his brother Ryan and three others. Unfortunately one supporter was shot and killed during the episode, two other key Bundy supporters were arrested in the nearby town of Burns without incident, and a seventh person has turned himself in to authorities in Arizona.

That's not nearly the end of the saga -- as of this writing, a score or more of armed men are still holed up in the refuge and have called upon a network of anti-government extremists to join them -- but it does mark a swift and significant turn for the worse in the remaining occupiers' position.

Armed extremists leave Oregon's Malheur Natural Wildlife Refuge, get arrested

TriplePundit has been following the Oregon occupation from a corporate social responsibility (CSR) perspective partly because it has exposed, in dramatic fashion, the group's "states-rights" stance as nothing more than a land-grab orchestrated by the conservative lobbying group ALEC.

We've also taken note of Ammon Bundy's leadership style, which appears to be imprinted from John Galt, the fictional hero of Ayn Rand's definitive libertarian novel "Atlas Shrugged." However, where Galt's superior intellect enabled him to plan for victory against a powerful foe, Bundy has blundered from one mishap to another, alienating every single conceivable stakeholder from local residents on up.

That failure of leadership has been coming into focus as the standoff enters its fourth week. Until now, law enforcement officials have taken a hands-off approach, and Bundy and his supporters have been able to come and go at will from the refuge. While this strategy has been extremely frustrating for residents and state officials, and it has provided the occupiers with ample time to rack up a wide range of offenses, including the destruction of federal property and the disruption of an important archaeological site, while drawing in additional armed extremists from around the country.

In effect, law enforcement turned the occupation into a honey trap, providing federal authorities with a convenient way to catalog armed and potentially dangerous extremists from all around the country.

The trap was finally sprung when Bundy made yet another in his series of tactical mistakes. Last night, with almost all of his key supporters in tow, he headed out on the open road to attend a well-publicized meeting in a neighboring county, where he had been invited to spread his views to a friendly audience.

The road-trip provided law enforcement with an opportunity to confront almost all of the occupation's leadership together, isolated from the other occupiers, in a remote location where there were no bystanders to endanger and no shelter in which to hunker down for a final standoff.

At least two Bundy supporters who were with the two-car convoy were apprehended but not arrested. Both appear to be cooperating with law enforcement and have gone online to plead for calm in the wake of the fatal encounter, warning other extremists against coming to the area.

Do me a favor, don't do me any favors...

Bundy has repeatedly claimed that the occupation is aimed at helping the local community, but he and virtually all of his active supporters have no ties to Harney County, where the Malheur refuge is located, or even to the state of Oregon. Aside from terrorizing the local population, the occupation has interrupted critical conservation work at the refuge, potentially setting back its value as an economic engine for the region's tourist, travel and recreation industries.

In that regard, it's worth noting that Bundy apparently maintains a residence in Idaho. His brother Ryan resides in Nevada, and the three others arrested with him on the road are also from out of state: Brian Cavalier of Nevada, Shawna Cox of Utah, and Ryan Payne of Montana. The person who was killed, Robert Finicum, is from Arizona.

The two persons arrested in Burns are Joseph D. O'Shaughnessy of Arizona and radio personality Pete Santilli of Ohio. Rounding out this initial group of arrests is Jon Ritzheimer, who surrendered himself to authorities in his home state of Arizona.

With almost all of its key leadership behind bars, the occupation finally appears to be on the path to collapse, whether that takes a matter of days, weeks or months.

Image (screenshot, cropped): Coyote pups at Malhuer National Wildlife Refuge via U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Organizations and companies, small and large, offer volunteering programs, especially here in the U.S., where volunteerism has long been part of culture. For many, volunteer programs are the most seamless way to launch a corporate citizenship agenda. The companies that have the resources and make the commitment to corporate responsibility reporting often disclose the time their employees spend on volunteer projects, and often enumerate that time to the exact amount of hours.

But beyond heartfelt words and high-res images that display a company’s dedication to volunteerism in a report or on a website, what are the exact benefits of such a program for a company and its people? One company that offers lessons on how firms, employees and local communities can thrive due to a comprehensive volunteer program is the American division of Boehringer Ingelheim (BI), the German pharmaceutical giant that employs over 47,000 people worldwide. To learn more about BI’s volunteerism journey, I spoke with Lilly Ackley, president of the BI Cares Foundation.

The foundation was launched about 10 years ago and largely focuses on two missions. First, BI employees are given the opportunity to work with NGOs to improve access to health care in underserved communities, especially in Connecticut, where the company's U.S. headquarters are located. In addition, BI volunteers work to improve STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education within poorer school districts. Over time, BI Cares has expanded its programs and partnerships with NGOs, offering more opportunities for employees to give back.

BI’s skills-based volunteering program began approximately four years ago. “At that time, what we wanted to do was amplify our financial contribution to nonprofits in Connecticut," Ackley told 3p. “We asked ourselves: How can we do more for our nonprofit partners, and how can we do more for our communities where our employees live and work?”

Ackley and her colleagues started researching volunteer programs, and discovered that BI’s lawyers were already providing pro bono work for many local nonprofits, largely because such tasks were a natural outgrowth of what they were already doing daily on the job. “Once we understood what the legal team was doing on this front, we started talking to them to find a way to create a more ambitious program across the larger population of our employees,” Ackley added.

The result was an arrangement with the 9/11 Day of Service and organization that strives to pay tribute to the victims and first responders of the Sept. 11 attacks. One of the programs with which BI employees became involved included sending company scientists to a Connecticut high school to encourage students to pursue STEM-related careers; another enlisted employees to partner with a local AmeriCares chapter in Connecticut that provides free medical services to those in need.

“From those pilot programs, we saw how employees were engaged and were more than willing to participate, while our nonprofit partners continually needed our help,” Ackley said, “and from that, we grew the skills-based program into a year-round service so that our employees can participate all year.”

While the BI Cares Foundation is primarily focused on challenges related to STEM education and health care access, Ackley and her colleagues realized there were plenty of other employees who were willing to volunteer for the right organization. “Whatever our partners need, whether they need help with reviewing their finances or need support in marketing, we realized there was opportunity to match our employees with organizations that needed those skills,” Ackley explained.

Matching BI’s employees with a nonprofit that could most benefit from such assistance was a huge chore at first. “It was very much a lot of elbow grease in the very beginning,” Ackley said, “as we made a lot of calls throughout and beyond our headquarters as we started telling organizations about this program and solicited people to participate.”

That initial heavy lift, however, paid dividends quickly. Through what Ackley described as a “focused connection” with BI’s human resources department, more employees became aware of the company’s volunteering program, and awareness and knowledge accelerated throughout the organization. Ackley learned that many employees were already volunteering their time in one way or another, which encouraged more of the company's professionals to consider taking on such assignments as these messages amplified throughout the company's U.S. offices.

“What is so critical for anyone managing such a skills-based volunteer program,” Ackley insisted, “is to be very well connected to human resources because your company’s HR department is most likely networked throughout the whole organization, and they are focused on the development needs of these employees.”

One example of how BI leverages an employee’s experience and skills to find success on a community project is the relationship that the company has with Community Solutions, a Connecticut NGO that works on a bevy of local issues including health care. Community Solutions' executives approached BI to find ways in which it could improve the delivery of health care services in northeast Hartford, one of the poorest areas of the state.  Alissa Heizler-Mendoza, who worked within BI’s patient advocacy department, was tasked with bringing a new perspective to the issue. Together, after studying area outcomes and speaking to area locals, they learned that managing illness within the community is dependent on much more than what happens inside a doctor’s office or a hospital. With this insight, BI, Community Solutions, and other partners developed a community healthcare worker (CHW) pilot program designed to better coordinate care and raise the quality of life for 500 medically vulnerable North Hartford residents.

The benefits BI gained through this volunteer program have gone beyond employee engagement and community citizenship. Ackley estimated that, in the past year, the 600 employees that worked on 125 projects in the U.S. and worldwide did work valued at approximately $600,000. However, the company saved an estimated $500,000 in employee development costs since they were able to practice their key skills in a new environment.

Strong community partnerships; open communication throughout all levels within a company; and developing a work culture that seeks results not only for the company, but for the communities in which they are based — all contribute to BI's rewarding skills-based volunteer program that enrich the lives of employees and better the communities in which they serve.

Image credit: Boehringer Ingelheim

A new report from a U.K.-based NGO says the enormous control and influence that the world's largest foundation has may actually be detrimental to global development.

In fact, the scathing report from Global Justice Now accuses the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with an endowment of $43 billion, of cozy relationships with big corporations, and a general lack of efficacy in tackling the challenges that form the core of its mission.

The Gates Foundation has not been without its share of criticism. We wrote last year about how Bill Gates refuses to divest the foundation from fossil fuels, despite his outward stance in favor of strong climate action.

Now, this report expands the Gates Foundation's shady practices beyond the fossil fuel industry, into genetically modified organism (GMO) research on behalf of corporations like Monsanto and Syngenta and close partnerships with pharmaceutical companies eager to tap into developing markets. This exhibits itself in the Foundation's narrow-minded focus on fighting single diseases like polio, rather than building resilient, locally-run health care systems, which have been proven to be more effective at actually fighting disease.

"The philanthropic vision of the Gates Foundation seems to be largely based on the values of corporate America," said Polly Jones, the head of campaigns and policy at Global Justice Now, in a press statement.

There is a fundamental problem with foundations that are run too top-down. The priorities tend to be set by a board that is disconnected from the reality of problems on the ground. Bill Gates, who is a brilliant technologist and businessperson, does not have experience in international development.

The Gates Foundation has been criticized for its focus on technological solutions, such as GMO crops or cheaper smartphones, even though the real problem in many developing countries is not lack of technology. It's lack of access to justice, education, health care – all issues that the Gates Foundation is, essentially, ignoring.

"The foundation is relentlessly promoting big business-based initiatives such as industrial agriculture, private health care and education," Jones continued. "But these are all potentially exacerbating the problems of poverty and lack of access to basic resources that the foundation is supposed to be alleviating.”

As someone who worked for years in developing countries, let me tell you, the problems are far more complex on the ground than they seem from a distance. The organizations that succeed are the ones that focus on empowering locals to make change, and are willing to put in the effort to not only listen to them, but also to design projects that think holistically, are cross-sectoral, and work on a local, not global, timescale. The Gates Foundation is not known as being hugely effective despite it's massive size and scope.

The Foundation defended itself forcefully against the accusations made in the report, and it is unlikely that it will change its focus away from promoting corporate globalization as a solution to the world's problems. And that's the true shame, because the impact that Gates and his Foundation could have if they were focused on local, grassroots solutions is immense.

Image credit: Jaklee via Wikimedia

By Bryn Huntpalmer

We say it all the time: It pays to go solar. Usually we're referring to the return in utility bill savings and rebates on a new residential solar installation. But of course there’s another, more literal, way that solar energy can pay you — with a job in photovoltaics. As residential solar adoption rates have continued apace (reaching a record 135,000 installs in the first half of 2015), the industry behind those installations has ballooned in tandem. In fact, while other businesses were still licking their recessional wounds, solar energy saw a rate of growth nearly 20 times that of the U.S. economy at large.

Solar energy itself is a broad category that spans multiple roles — jobs in manufacturing and installation, sales, and project development, as well as research and development positions in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) field. Distribution breaks down as you’d expect, with the most jobs available in skilled labor positions like installations and manufacturing. In fact, experienced installers are so sought-after that the number of positions has risen around 120 percent since 2010, in step with installation trends across the US.

Keeping up with demand

Heightened interest in solar means that manufacturers and, particularly, installers, have added huge numbers to their ranks. Installation specialists now represent the bulk of the solar field, with more than twice as many jobs as any other role.

But actually, just what qualifies a PV installer is a matter of some contention amongst solar professionals. Legally, there’s no official licensing process for specialists, and like most construction positions, the most valuable training occurs day-to-day on the jobsite. The demand for solar installers has spurred a debate: Should installation technicians have to meet the same requirements as certified electricians? As it stands now, most installers get by without a thorough electrical background — that work is subcontracted out to licensed electricians with expertise in residential or commercial setups. But at its core, grid-connected solar power is an electrical process, and some lawmakers are concerned that only a certified electrician has the know-how to safely assemble and mount solar panels.

The North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners (NABCEP) hopes to resolve the issue once and for all by offering a PV installation certification process that includes an exam and 40 hours of on-the-job training. Even though it’s not required, getting certified is a smart idea — at some point, adoption rates will likely flatten, meaning that a certificate may make the difference between sink or swim in a more competitive market.

Advancing technology through engineering

Although more and more homes are opting for solar power, the technology in its current iteration isn’t perfect — for instance, modern solar cells only clock an efficiency of around 20 to 25 percent. While that may be annoying for residents looking to go off the grid, it’s great news for those hungry to kick off a career in solar research. The development of more advanced cells and batteries should keep solar and STEM buoyant for some time to come.

Additionally, with big tech companies battling one another to develop ever more high-tech batteries, it’s highly likely that more firms will follow suit, meaning the next few years should be pretty busy for scientists and technicians who want to dive into solar specialization. Of course, research positions are always inhibited by funding and costs, so jobs here will only continue to grow if there is an eager public buying up more advanced goods.

However, the tech side of solar is truly propelled by engineering. The engineer’s hand is visible in every aspect of solar development, from the smallest elements — the semiconductors and metals, the electrical components and systems — to large, global details like the industrial and mechanical manufacturing and equipment. And yet, there is a huge dearth of qualified engineers. In fact, an astounding 53 percent of solar firms report difficulty hiring for these roles. It’s not totally surprising, considering the level of training that engineering requires — usually a high-level degree like a master’s or doctorate — and occasionally, licensure such as a professional engineering license issued by a state licensing board. Obtaining a PE license is no small feat, either, requiring two years as an engineering intern, four years of on-the-job experience supervised by a professional engineer, and successful completion the Principles and Practice of Engineering Exam.

But for those not interested in shouldering several years’ worth of student loans and testing fees, there are entry points into solar engineering that don’t necessarily require an advanced degree. Engineering technicians, who assist lead engineers, need only to have obtained an associate’s degree, although these roles do usually come with a work-history requirement, necessitating familiarity with data-analysis and manufacturing softwares and business practices.

Even as the dust begins to settle from the solar energy shakeup, the employment outlook should be pretty strong for those looking to go “green-collar." The Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee reports that solar historically creates more jobs per megawatt than any other energy field. So, for professionals transitioning into the industry, the future may be very bright indeed.

Image credits: 1) Pixabay 2) and 3) The Solar Foundation 4) Indeed

Bryn Huntpalmer is a mother of two young children living in Austin, Texas where she currently works as an Editor for Modernize. In addition to regularly contributing to Home Remodeling and Design websites around the web, her writing can be found on Lifehacker and About.com.

There is a limit to how many home furnishings people can buy. That’s something Ikea, the Swedish furniture giant, knows all too well. It has even come up with a name for it, peak curtains, reports, the Guardian.

Speaking at a Guardian conference, Ikea’s head of sustainability, Steve Howard said: “If we look on a global basis, in the West we have probably hit peak stuff. We talk about peak oil. I’d say we’ve hit peak red meat, peak sugar, peak stuff … peak home furnishings.” He said it could be called “peak curtains.”

The company “will be increasingly building a circular Ikea where you can repair and recycle products,” Howard said. He added, "If you look on a global basis, most people are still poor and most people actually haven’t got to sufficiency yet. There is a global growth opportunity ... but it’s a distribution issue."

Ikea promotes the reuse of its products

Ikea is big on promoting the reuse of its products. On its U.K. website it suggests ways to reuse old Ikea catalogs, such as making a garland, a DIY coaster, hanging art and a paper lantern.

In 2013, Ikea launched a marketing campaign with Norwegian agency SMFB to encourage the resale of its used and unwanted furniture. The campaign began by asking customers if they would like help re-selling their unwanted furniture. After receiving a big response, Ikea then launched its Second Hand Campaign, an online marketplace where Norwegian customers could sell and buy used Ikea furniture. “Even if we like people to buy our furniture, we don’t like to see old furniture go to waste,” the ad for the campaign proclaimed.

Tucked within Ikea’s 2015 sustainability report is a little section titled, "Converting to a Circular Economy.” The company is part of the Circular Economy 100 (CE100), which was established by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation to encourage companies to progress toward a circular economy. But what is a circular economy? Ikea defines it as an economy “where waste is eradicated in a cycle of repair, reuse, refurbishment and recycling.”

The company created the Circular Ikea concept, consisting of three elements: prolonged product life, designing for circularity, and resource chain. The concept is in the “early stages,” but there are already examples of it within the company’s operations. One example is that its customers can return their unwanted Ikea furniture to participating stores, where it is resold or donated to charity. Another example is that customers can return used mattresses through the company's mattress take-back initiative, which it launched in 20 countries at the end of 2015. The returned mattresses are sent for either energy recovery or their materials are recycled.

Unwanted furniture can contribute to landfill waste

Furniture that is discarded and ends up in landfills is a big problem. In the U.K. alone the Furniture Re-use Network estimates that 10 million household items are sent to landfills every year, and 3 million of those items could be “reused by people in crisis.” The problem in the U.S. is bigger. In 2013, Americans generated about 254 million tons of trash and only recycled and composted about 87 million tons of it, which is equivalent to a 34.3 percent recycling rate, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

How much of that garbage is old furnishings? In 2009, the EPA reported that furniture waste made up 9.8 million tons, or 4.1 percent, of all household waste. And unfortunately, furniture is the item that Americans recycle least.

Image credit: Hakan Dahlstrom