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Too much packaging waste goes to landfills, where it can sit for thousands of years without breaking down. Procter & Gamble (P&G) is doing something to reduce packaging waste: Use it to produce more bottles.

P&G Fabric Care will manufacture 230 million bottles for select brands from 50 percent post-consumer recycled content. That’s the equivalent of the distance from the North Pole to the South Pole if the bottles were stretched from end-to-end. This initiative also increases P&G Fabric Care’s use of incremental recycled material by nearly 8.4 million pounds.

The first batch of recycled-content bottles are expected to be on sale in the first half of 2016, and includes popular brands like Ariel, Dash, Lenor and Downy Unstopables.

“At P&G, when it comes to sustainability, we believe that actions speak louder than words,” said Gianni Ciserani, group president of global fabric and home care, said in a statement. “The increase in post consumer recyclate in the packaging of our Fabric Care brands is a huge step in the right direction. We want to make it easier for consumers to choose sustainable brands whilst continuing to deliver superior product performance.”

Ciserani added that he would like “to continue this momentum in the future by partnering with organizations that can provide recycled materials globally.” Partnering with organizations would allow P&G to “increase the amount of recycled plastic in more brands and geographies.”

P&G’s fourth environmental action in 18 months, this latest announcement continues P&G Fabric Care’s progress to become more environmentally sustainable. Back in October, P&G announced two new packaging goals, including doubling its use of recycled resin in its plastic packaging by 2020. The other goal is ensuring that 90 percent of its packaging is either recyclable or programs are put in place to develop the ability to recycle it.

P&G’s packaging reduction initiatives are part of the company’s commitment to use more recycled material in its packaging. The goal is to manufacture 100 percent of its products and packaging from renewable and recycled materials. That's a lofty target that if achieved will set a precedent.

Another goal is to reduce packaging by 20 percent per consumer use by 2020, and P&G has achieved a total reduction of about 7 percent per consumer use since 2010. There are a few specific examples of packaging reduction: The first is a the redesigned Gillette Venus razor packaging for Venus and Olay, which is now made from 26 percent less plastic. It is also made from recycled plastic and paperboard and is recyclable. The new packaging increases cost savings and decreases carbon emissions from transportation.

The second example of packaging reduction is the Gillette blades and razors category switching its North America club packaging from plastic thermoform clamshells to a paperboard primary carton, achieving a reduction of more than 360,000 pounds of packing material annually. The new cartons are over 50 percent more efficient to ship and result in over $1 million in annual cost savings.

Image credit: P&G

We are entering into an exciting new age of wearable technology. In just over five years, there will be over 30 million devices connected to the web. As everything from home appliances to entire city systems begin to come online, we are witnessing an explosion of objects that are revolutionizing the way we interact with the world around us.

Technology and innovation are crucial to the development of the social impact sector. As the market for wearable technology grows, it is expanding beyond devices aimed at wealthy consumers, to supporting the needs and aspirations of the nearly 1 billion people around the world living in poverty. It is for this reason that United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is challenging social innovators, designers, entrepreneurs, engineers, makers and technologists all around the world to design wearables for good.

The Wearables for Good Challenge seeks to develop innovative, affordable solutions to make wearables and sensor technology a game-changer for women and children. This challenge is an effort to bring together the design, technology and social impact communities to encourage the creation of wearable solutions for social good.

Wearable technology for social impact

Wearables are primed to drive the next wave of development for social impact by opening up new channels for connecting the hardest to reach services, new ways for citizens to have their voices heard, and new opportunities for civic engagement in government processes. We now have an opportunity to expand upon the concept of technology for development by focusing on the potential applications of wearables in the developing world.

A wearable built to address social good would ultimately need to be cost effective, low-power, durable and scalable. The Wearables for Good Challenge is open to ideas within any of UNICEF’s seven strategic pillars: child protection, education, health, HIV/AIDS, nutrition, social inclusion and WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene).

Ideas for Innovation should strengthen health and community systems, scale up or integrate into existing services, and create an understanding of what systems are present in the intended market, as well as what can be further developed. The ideas should be sustainable, lend knowledge for implantation, and reduce inequalities that exist due to social and economic marginalization.

Principles of innovation

UNICEF Innovation is an interdisciplinary team of individuals around the world tasked with identifying, prototyping and scaling technologies for the greater good. “There is an untapped market in creating innovations for people in developing countries who truly need to access the three pillars of global citizenship: information, opportunity and choice,” the company explained in its Wearables for Good Use Case Handbook. “We want to encourage the idea that all of us -- makers, engineers, do-gooders, executives, computer scientists, inventors, innovators -- are making things that are not just nice to have, but that people need.”

UNICEF Innovation has developed nine Principles for Innovation and Technology in Development. These principles are not intended as hard and fast rules but meant as best-practice guidelines to inform the design of technology-enabled development programs, including those ideas submitted for the Wearables for Good challenge.

Design with the user. Develop context-appropriate solutions that are informed by user needs and useful for the most marginalized populations: women, children, those with disabilities, and those affected by conflict and disaster.

Understand the existing ecosystem. Participate in networks and communities with like-minded practitioners and align to any existing technological, legal and regulatory policies.

Design for scale. Develop in modular ways -- using, modifying or extending existing tools, platforms and frameworks whenever possible.

Build for sustainability. Utilize and invest in local communities and developers to help catalyze their growth. Plan for long-term financial health and engage with local governments.

Be data driven. Use real-time information to monitor and inform management decisions at all levels and design projects so that impact can be measured at discrete milestones with a focus on outcomes rather than outputs.

Use open standards, open data, open source and open innovation. Develop software to be open source and expand on existing open standards.

Reuse and improve. Employ a “systems” based approach to design, considering implications beyond and immediate project. Design ideas should be replicable and customizable in other countries and contexts. Demonstrate impact before scaling a solution.

Do no harm. Assess and mitigate risks to the security of users. Ensure equity and fairness in co-creation and protect the best interests of end-users.

Be collaborative. Engage diverse expertise across disciplines and industries at all stages.

Awards

The Wearables for Good challenge will run over six months, with two winners selected. Each winner will receive funding ($15,000 USD) and an idea incubation prize package to be supplied by the three challenge partners (UNICEF, microprocessor maker ARM and design firm Frog).

Winners of the Wearables for Good design challenge will get access to ARM technology, development tools and mentoring from wearables tech experts that will help take new inventions from the page to the production line. Frog will bring its product strategy and design expertise to the challenge by offering mentorship to the winners of the challenge. Challenge winners will also be mentored and incubated through UNICEF’s network of innovation labs and partners, giving the proposed solutions a chance to interact with real-word context, issues and opportunities.

Click here for more information about the Wearables for Good Challenge. Applications are open until August 4.

Image credits: UNICEF

By Graham Richard

Energy is a highly regulated industry, at both the state and national level. But which is more important for growth: policy actions or market dynamics? For the advanced energy industry, the two are intertwined, and the economic impact is powerful.

At just under $200 billion in revenue, advanced energy is now bigger than the U.S. airline industry, equal to the pharmaceutical industry, and nearly as large as consumer electronics. In 2014, the U.S. market for advanced energy products and services grew 14 percent, five times as fast as the economy overall. Growth was strong across market segments like energy efficiency, demand response, renewable energy, and electric and natural gas vehicles. (These are some of the findings in Advanced Energy Now 2015 Market Report, Advanced Energy Economy's third annual market analysis, containing four years of revenue.)

Looking across the market and policy landscape, I see five drivers of market growth for advanced energy companies, now and into the future:

1. Reducing carbon emissions

EPA’s Clean Power Plan won’t be final until later this summer, but the draft rule is already shaping markets for energy investment.

For reducing carbon emissions from the electric power sector, advanced energy is the answer. Energy efficiency and demand response: low-emission natural gas generation; zero-emission renewable energy; advanced grid technologies and energy storage. These are the measures states can use to meet EPA standards and modernize their electric power systems for the 21st century.

2. Customer choice

Among Fortune 100 companies, 60 percent have greenhouse gas reduction or clean energy goals. So do 43 percent of the Fortune 500. Corporations like Apple, Google and Dow Chemical are installing on-site renewable energy where they can and procuring renewable power offsite when they can’t.

Over 23 percent of the wind power contracts signed in 2014 were with corporate buyers and other non-utility groups, including universities, military installations and units of government. These contracts between wind developers and commercial and industrial companies, governmental agencies, and educational institutions totaled more than 1,700 megawatts in 2014.

3. State leadership

For years, individual states have taken the lead on renewable energy and energy efficiency standards. These states have set an example, driving the deployment of advanced energy technologies and demonstrating what is possible and beneficial to customers. That state leadership continues.

In California, Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed a bold set of new goals: 50 percent renewable energy, 50 percent more efficient buildings and 50 percent less use of petroleum by 2030. New York is taking a leadership position in utility regulatory and business model reform, with its Reforming the Energy Vision proceeding before the Public Service Commission. North Carolina is a leader in solar power, and Arkansas is making strides in energy efficiency – and building an industry. Many other states are stepping up, setting goals, and creating a prosperous economy powered by secure, clean and affordable energy.

4. Local leadership

The same kind of leadership is exhibited in major cities around the country. Mayor Bill de Blasio made a commitment to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of New York City by 80 percent by 2050. With 75 percent of New York’s greenhouse gases coming from the energy used to heat, cool and light buildings, that commitment translates into a massive agenda of building retrofits. But it’s not just the Big Apple.

More than 1,000 mayors across the country have set specific goals for sustainability and carbon reduction in their cities. Mayors are also leading the way in applying advanced information and communication technology to their infrastructure – water as well as energy. This is the smart cities movement, and it’s taking hold in cities from San Antonio to Pittsburgh. Navigant Research estimates that investment in smart city technology infrastructure will total $108 billion in this decade.

5. Jobs

For policymakers, the industries that matter most are the ones that create jobs. While there are no definitive national numbers, a variety of state studies have shown that advanced energy companies are significant employers – and growing – with states that have embraced advanced energy policies gaining the most jobs.

California has more than 431,000 advanced energy jobs – 2.4 percent of the state’s workforce, half as many as are employed in the state’s marquee motion picture, radio and television sector. With employers reporting plans to hire at a 17 percent clip in the coming year, California is well on its way to more than half a million people doing advanced energy work. With 88,000 advanced energy workers, Massachusetts matches California in the percentage of its workforce involved in advanced energy. Advanced energy employment in the Bay State has grown 47 percent since 2010. Illinois just topped 100,000 clean energy jobs, up nearly 8 percent from the year before.

These are the key forces that make the future bright for advanced energy companies, and for an economy based on energy that is secure, clean and affordable. With these drivers already in motion, we’re looking at a prosperous future powered by advanced energy.

Image credit: Pixabay/skeeze

Graham Richard is CEO of Advanced Energy Economy, a national business association.

By Martin Dejnicki

Imagine waking each morning with a realization that you will be in total control of your actions for the day, which will directly aid others. In addition, imagine being comfortable in knowing the products or services you offer will be given away freely, without any explicit agreement for instant or future rewards.

This gift economy reality is the most idealistic of the sharing economy family, which itself encompasses many terms -- Rachel Botsman outlines some of the many overlapping terms here.

The gift economy challenges traditional market behaviors by offering goods and services without a financial reward. This gifting can occur through technology via collaborative consumption. It can match needs and haves with unused and under-utilized assets through decentralized networks and marketplaces of the collaborative economy. This extends to the free sub-facets within the sharing economy and on-demand services.

Gift economies prior to proliferation of the Internet

‘Dama,’ a gift economy in Mali, has thrived for thousands of years. It places an emphasis on human relationships and community over profits. The only expectation is that the receiver will ‘pay it forward’ for the system to flourish.

Modern charity and philanthropy in traditional market economies prove that humans are willing to share and give freely without any expectations of reciprocity as long as their immediate needs have been secured.

Technology-based seeds

Technology offers potential gift economies with increased efficiencies, scalability and awareness.

The Buy Nothing Project has grown to over 100,000 members worldwide in just 18 months. It enables the creation of local gift economies where people join to de-clutter or save money, but quickly realize the value in the community-based support systems.

Shareneeds, a gift economy initiative in development by Digital Purpose, will focus on creating gift economies within ones established social circles. The core purpose behind the tool will be to create a heightened sense of ‘awareness’ of needs and desires within these networks.

Decentralization of industry

The modern farming industry was diverse and sustainable a few decades ago. Now it has become centralized and environmentally unsustainable. It is deeply integrated with the supply chain industries at the national and global levels. But how far should our food travel to get to our plates?

In this case, many will blame the market economy and its natural movement and biases towards 'perceived' increased efficiencies. But the gift economy is unlikely to be the solution. Instead, the farming industry needs to be decentralized and properly regulated within the current market economy.

A great example of offering decentralized options is the Open Source Ecology initiative: an open-source movement based on designing blueprints for open-source industrial machines which anyone may build for a fraction of the price of traditional commercial products. This will enable people to build businesses and become producers and exporters, instead of victims of rejected business loan applications.

It does not function as a gift economy in any regard. However, it offers individuals and communities with decentralized options to do business and even build local micro-economies.

Mainstream equilibrium

Some will argue that gift economies succeed as mere survival tactics among the world’s poorest and therefore are not a threat as an alternative to market economies. But why must we choose one over the other? Could they not both coexist in equilibrium?

If competitive market economies predominantly seek ever increasing efficiencies at the expense of the marginalized, could we not achieve balance with the infusion of gift economies into the mix?

Within a few short years, the sharing economy family of initiatives have begun to significantly disrupt traditional industries such as hospitality and transportation. Is the wide adoption of these tools among the general public the sole result of high income inequality?

These decentralized sharing-based movements do not strictly adhere to the definition of a gift economy, since the majority rely on monetary exchanges.

Gift economies may be too idealistic, while current market economies are challenging from a sustainability perspective. Then maybe the novel technology-driven sharing economy industries are the fusion of the two into a wide range. Each individual could be free to choose where to reside on the scale. The decision may be influenced by a simple question: “What is it to be human?”

Image credit: Stock image

Martin Dejnicki is the Co-founder & CEO of Digital Purpose, a digital marketing and technology company based in Toronto, Canada. The company focuses on minimizing its carbon footprint by encouraging remote work and harnessing its innovative culture to build disruptive technologies that make a difference.

By Jessica Oaks

Technology has provided society with countless ways to gain information and take action toward a sustainable lifestyle. With global warming being a hot topic and constantly inconsistent extreme weather patterns taking place all across the globe, it is now more apparent than ever that, regardless of any debate, awareness has been raised.

People may feel helpless when taking on the task of trying to save the planet, but that’s where technology comes to save the day. Thousands of useful apps and increased knowledge have become very accessible. The killer combination of technology and sustainability has led to the creation of the following apps that help people live a more sustainable life.

1. iRecycle

Reduce, reuse and recycle with iRecycle. This application is a go-to resource for recycling. It tells you how, where and when to recycle using your current location. Additionally, iRecycle is an educational platform that provides information on what can be recycled, especially for items that have specific requirements such as electronics. You can share your enthusiasm for recycling through the app’s social feature. Spread the word because recycling is an activity everyone can participate in — peace, love, recycle.

2. HowGood

You are what you eat, and the food you choose to buy not only affects how you personally sustain your life, but the process of how it was made also affects the environment.

 

HowGood is an app that lets you scan a product’s barcode at the store or search for its name to find out product info. It literally tells you how good something is for your health and the environment, and projects socially-based ratings for over 100,000 products. Ratings reflect a combination of factors including community impact, ingredient sourcing, growing practices and food processing. Using the application is a great way to stay proactive and well informed about the sustenance of the world.

3. Zero Carbon

To hold yourself accountable for doing your part in saving the planet, you can download Zero Carbon. The app works much like a fitness tracker, but instead of solely tracking your exercise and nutritional intake, it records your daily tasks that impact your total carbon emissions. It’s a personal carbon footprint calculator that adds things like meat intake, thermostat temperature and driving mileage, and then generates a list of CO2-reducing tasks to complete.

4. Green Tips & Tricks

At this crucial point in time in society, “going green” is in, or at least should be. Green Tips & Tricks is an app that helps users live an eco-friendly, healthy and sustainable lifestyle by providing just what the name says: “tips and tricks” for going green. You can bookmark your favorite newfound knowledge and pass along useful info to friends via social platforms and email.

5. JouleBug

Working toward the goal of a sustainable lifestyle can be fun with the JouleBug game. Each time you do something that shows you made an effort toward sustainability, the app rewards you with badges, points and pins. For instance, if you remember to use a reusable coffee mug versus paper cup, points for you! The bonus feature of JouleBug is the option to sync up to utility bills to see just how much is saved each month. Users showed an average savings of $200 a year with the app, a big feat toward change for the better.

 

If there’s one thing you can do in this tech-filled world we live in, it’s to use new innovations for creating a better world. There are so many apps to choose from when trying to build a more sustainable society. Even if it’s just one person, collectively, we can make a difference, so let’s leverage what the great tool and power technology has given us to reduce our carbon footprints and ultimately save the planet.

Image credit: Rami Al-zayat/Unsplash

Jessica Oaks is a freelance journalist who loves to cover technology news and the ways that technology makes life easier. She also blogs at FreshlyTechy.com. Check her out on Twitter @TechyJessy.

Environmental standards often aren't the first thing we think about when hunting for a new computer. We may check to see if it's well made, whether it uses a lot of energy to run and whether the manufacturer has a good rep. But oftentimes (probably too often), the bells and whistles win out over whether the apparatus was made with environmental concerns in mind.

It turns out that many companies are considering environmental design qualities anyway -- the reduction in environmental harmful emissions, the decrease in exposure to toxic substances like mercury and the use of substances that don't end up in landfills -- thanks to a set of privately designed standards. Those concerns are addressed by a set of standards designed through a consensus process of all key stakeholders.They are called EPEAT, or Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool, and they serve as the Green Electronics Council's gold standard for environmentally preferable electronics.

According to Sarah O'Brien, who serves as the director of stakeholder engagement for the GEC, the EPEAT program emerged as an answer to a dilemma shared by manufacturers and those buying their products: how to ensure that the equipment that purchasers were using were as environmentally compatible as possible.

"By the early 2000s, business and government organizations realized that their ICT (Information and Communications Technology) operations had huge environmental impacts – in terms of energy consumption, but also problems with unsafe disposal and recycling, toxic content, lack of recyclability or recycled content, and on and on," O'Brien said. "They wanted to address those issues and reduce their own impact, but struggled to define what constituted an environmentally preferable electronic product." The EPEAT program would eventually streamline the environmental standards for manufacturers and purchasers alike.

O'Brien noted that while it was the growing amount of e-waste that prompted a call for new, decisive regulations, the EPEAT program actually grew out of a consensus between industry representatives who proposed "'uniform measuring stick' of environmental performance criteria [that would] enable purchasers to easily incorporate these important criteria into their tenders." That stakeholder dialogue took several years of hard work, but in 2005, the Environmental Protection Agency recognized the efforts with a grant to support implementation of the program. That year EPEAT was accepted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and accredited as an IEEE American National Standard, launching the way for national and international recognition as an environmental standard for the electronics industry.

One of the most valuable contributions of the EPEAT program is the post-consumer recycling of valuable components and materials, steps that help reduce the presence of e-waste in landfills throughout the world. According to 2013 EPA surveys, only 40 percent of electronics are recycled in the U.S., as opposed to being sent to the landfill. However that statistic is improving, up by 10 percent from the year before. The EPEAT program both provides a mechanism for components to be recycled and reused, and publicizes the industry benefits of doing so.

"One of the particular advances linked to EPEAT is the inclusion of post-consumer recycled resins in electronic products – which was really unheard of when EPEAT hit the market," O'Brien said. As a result, "dozens" of new product models now contain recycled resin, reducing the demand for new plastics. The side benefit of the EPEAT program, said O'Brien, is that it helps support a growing market for post-consumer plastics.

The number of governments and private companies that have used EPEAT in recent years as purchasers of green electronics has helped EPEAT gain international recognition. The U.S. and Canadian governments, the state of California, Kaiser Permanente, and Microsoft have all made use of the EPEAT program in past years. This increased demand encourages manufacturers to adhere to standardized environmental guidelines.

In March 2015, President Obama issued an executive order updating federal sustainability requirements. Supporters of the EPEAT program noted that the order omitted the federal government's 2009 requirement for departments to adhere to EPEAT standards, and replaced the directive with an order that guarantees "procurement preference for environmentally sustainable electronic products." According to the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the directive was changed to reflect the administration's intention to "[avoid] endorsement or recommendation of any particular non-federal label." Later, Implementing Instructions issued by the White House Council on Environmental Quality and Federal Office of Sustainability clarified that EPEAT is still the only procurement standard for electronics that meets the Federal government’s requirements.

Other state, county and international government agencies, however, still maintain endorsement of the EPEAT standards as the go-to method for ensuring products are made with environmentally preferable components and are utilizing recycled materials whenever possible.

In addition, more than 50 different manufacturers now adhere to the standards, including LG, Lenovo, Apple, Xerox and Dell.

While the EPEAT program is currently limited to products such as desktops, laptops, tablets, screens and copiers, O'Brien said the standards are expanding constantly to meet the needs of the industry. On the drawing board are standards for mobile devices such as iPhones, tablets and other smaller devices that have taken the market by storm since the development of the EPEAT registry.

"The roadmap was developed in 2005," O'Brien said. "We all underestimated the speed with which [the development of] mobile devices would take." Those standards are expected to be out in about a year.

And of course, with the increasing use of solar energy, environmental standards for photovoltaic panels are also in the works. O'Brien said the GEC hopes to have the standards finalized within the next two years.

"I think the main lesson EPEAT teaches all of us is that when purchasers aggregate their demand [by banding together] to send a clear signal in favor of more robust, benign, efficient and effective products ... they can move the market," said O'Brien.

Editor's note: Care about green electronics? Consider attending the Emerging Green Conference in September.

Image credits: 1) Blake Patterson; 2) EPEAT; 3) LG

The third most populous state is waging a battle. It's a war that much of the population knows it probably won't win, mainly because the state government doesn't believe it exists.

The coastlines of southern Florida are disappearing, a precursor to what scientists say will eventually consume much of South Florida's lucrative real estate due to climate change. Experts estimate that within four generations the coastlines that shelter some of the country's richest business centers and vacation homes will have to be abandoned. Since much of that real estate is owned by some of the world's most noteworthy billionaires, the projection puts a whole new spin on the concept of refugee evacuations.

But it also forces Floridians to look at another issue that has been gnawing at their coastlines: The state government appears to believe that climate change doesn't exist - or at least isn't relevant to be discussed in the halls of the capitol, scientific studies or government agencies. The economy, which is what Gov. Rick Scott reportedly won his last gubernatorial election on, takes precedence in North Florida where coastal flooding is, if anything, just a distracting nuisance. For some in Florida, the link between the environmental degradation of the state's tourism empires like Miami, Key West and Disney World and the sinking of Florida's economy have not yet been scientifically proven.

And that leaves South Florida residents in a dilemma. How do they buttress the area's freshwater aquifers, which risk being contaminated by wash from coastal storms and surge, if the state won't recognize the need in the budget?

To a point, the government's reticence is understandable. Scientists are hard-pressed to state just how much the sea level is predicted to rise. Years ago, the figure was 1 to 3 feet by 2100. Now scientists say that number is conservative. Hard figures are difficult to ascertain. Plus, heady, technical terms like "amplifying feedbacks" that are meant to illustrate the seesaw effect that declining polar ice will have on warm seas thousands of miles south may sound sensible, but they seem to be a non-starter for a governor who has not yet publicly acknowledged that climate change is real.

But what also isn't being tackled yet is how to address what scientists predict will be "the great exodus" from Miami's shores in coming years, and how the state will deal with the tidal surge of populations as they move north. Whether Florida can absorb millions of environmental refugees within its own diminishing land mass and with a stressed water system is a question that is still in the making. And whether insurance companies will even be able to pay out on properties that are no longer viable is equally uncertain.

For now, some advocate developing a relocation strategy that would facilitate a more orderly move. It's an idea that understandably has a fair amount of pushback on Miami's million-dollar shorelines, where the resale potential of environmentally-stressed properties, especially those lots are slated to lose their access to potable water, is on the decline these days.

Still, some residents haven't given up on trying to convey the urgency of the situation. Organizations like ClimateCentral.org and HighwaterLine.org have realized that visual aids sometimes offer the most impactful messages.

HighwaterLine, which was founded by New York artist Eve Mosher, has come up with a very personal way to show residents in various cities just what high tide means. In 2007, with the use of a chalk marker, Mosher visually drew a line across New York City streets to show what endemic flooding (such as from storm surge) would do to the city if climate change continued. Her efforts were realized in 2012 following Hurricane Sandy, which was for many a watershed moment in accepting that climate change could, indeed, change the landscape of their city.

Today, HighwaterLine's visual message can also be found in downtown Miami, where flooding from rising sea levels is expected to bring unprecedented changes. ClimateCentral has bolstered these efforts by providing data that visually paints a picture of the infrastructure that will be lost as Florida's coastlines move inland.

However the Scott administration decides to address that unmentionable question of climate change, the government must know that the economic success of its top three industries: International trade (via -- you guessed it -- key South Florida ports), tourism and the Kennedy Space Center all rely upon the environmental well being of its coastlines. But since Florida's highest administrative office is limited to two four-year terms, the challenge of figuring out how to combat Miami's most pressing economic problem will most likely be the responsibility of Florida's next governor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inf-Wj2Xm40

 Images: Adapting to a Miami flood: Maxstriz; National Guard enters Melbourne Fla. community: DVIDSHUB; Drawing flood lines - Curtis Hamilton for the Canary Project

 Video map of sea level projections by Matthew Toro.

The House Committee on Natural Resources recently discussed the benefits that carbon emissions provide to the planet. Yes, you heard right, I said “benefits.” Greenhouse gases produced by burning coal, oil and other fuels are good, so some representatives and witnesses say. Shocking, I know.

Read the three arguments below if you want a good laugh.

1. No costs, only benefits, to burning carbon dioxide

Most environmentalists support taxing carbon emissions, which reduces these emissions and stimulates the economy. However, Kevin Dayaratna, the senior statistician and research programmer for the Center for Data Analysis at the Heritage Foundation, says: “There are literally no costs, but benefits, to burning carbon dioxide.” Therefore, the government should “subsidize, not tax, carbon dioxide emissions.”

How did he arrive at this, ahem, unusual conclusion? He looked at the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC), a metric that calculates how much damage a ton of carbon dioxide wreaks on society, and increased the social discount rate used to calculate the SCC. What is a social discount rate? The discount rate states how much we should invest today to prevent future damage. High discount rates underestimate how much stopping climate change now is worth.

The typical rate used is 3 percent, but Dayaratna used 7 percent, more than double the typical amount.

2. Carbon helps plants grow -- so the more we produce, the better

The director of the Cato Institute’s Center for the Study of Science, Patrick Michaels, said there are “thousands of scientific studies that point to the direct fertilization effect shown by an increase in carbon to agriculture.”

Really? Is that true? A little. Some crops do produce more for a time. But what Michaels not so accidentally failed to mention is that carbon increases damage other plants.

Climate Central states: “Plants do need CO2, but they also need water, nitrogen and other nutrients. Increase one of these without increasing the others and there’s a limit to how much the plants will benefit. Some do not grow much more at all. Others, like wheat, grow bigger but end up with less nitrogen. As a result, insects end up eating more to get the nitrogen they need. The nutritional value of food plants would be similarly reduced for other animals — including humans. Also, we could end up with vegetables that have too much carbon — perhaps producing spinach that would be very tough to chew!”

This is without even considering the fact that global warming is wreaking havoc on other crops due to higher temperature, severe droughts, stronger storms and flooding.

3. Cold weather brings the bubonic plague, warm weather brings cathedrals

“Fossil fuels have dramatically improved the lives of human beings,” Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) said. “Man does better when it’s warmer. It got colder; we had the Bubonic plague. [Fossil fuels] ought to be the standard.”

Well now, at last we have a logical argument -- cold weather brings the Bubonic plague. Except that a study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences actually says the opposite. It says that it was warmer temperatures (not colder) in Pakistan that may have caused the spread of the plagues in European harbors.

Duncan cited another reason warmer weather is better. “Between 900 and 1300, the earth was a lot warmer than it is today. Man did so well we saw this Renaissance, where cathedrals were built and there was art and man did not have to struggle to survive as much as they do when it’s colder.”

The underlying assumption here is that the warmer the earth gets, the better. During the warm period that Duncan references, the earth was between 3.6 degrees and 4.5 degrees cooler than it has been for the past 25 years. It’s now significantly warmer now than it was during their warm period.

Also, the warm period mentioned is thought to have ended around 1220 A.D., but the Renaissance peaked at the end of the 1400s. My question is: When global warming causes the waters to rise so high that they flood cathedrals like St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, Italy, will Duncan finally decide global warming is bad?

Image credit: Kim Seng via Flickr

We've let the cat out of the bag. After years of pressure from activists, including Jesse Jackson, companies including Google, Twitter and Apple have released demographic reports on their employees. And it's not good.

Facebook workforce still mostly white and male according to latest diversity figures - The Drum http://t.co/1zrfJfMvMg #Technology

— Tech News (@technews_google) June 28, 2015

The Google workforce - White & male: 70% men, 30% women; 61% white, 30% Asian, 4% >2 races, 3% Hispanic, 2% Black, <1% other

— Noreena Hertz (@noreenahertz) June 16, 2014

Twitter's diversity report: white, male and just like the rest of Silicon Valley | Technology | The Guardian - http://t.co/PKJjXBDMhD — furtherfield (@furtherfield) November 23, 2014

This, of course, is not really news to anyone who has lived in the center of the tech boom, the San Francisco Bay Area, where rapid population growth – chiefly driven by technology companies growing staff – has rapidly remade the region. Bars that used to be full of diverse artists and activists like myself a few years ago are now full of mostly male tech workers, nearly all of whom recently moved to the area. It is rare to go to a meet-up or tech seminar not full of white men – the same white men that dominate the staffing at technology companies across the Bay Area.

But the question that no one could answer was – why? Technology was driven by youth, the same youth who powered Barack Obama to the presidency and, as data showed, were more integrated, pro-diversity and pro-gay marriage than any other generation. Our generation is also the one that is seeing women graduate from college at a far faster rate than men. This isn't to say that youth are post-race and post-gender, but it is surprising that an industry dominated by millennials would be one of the most white, male-dominated industries in America.

The best answer I've found comes from Kathryn Finney, an African-American female working to bring more women of color into technology.

"To really understand why tech is having a hard time with diversity, you need to understand libertarianism.

"The idea of forced inclusion is one that goes against the very libertarian foundations of tech. The freedom to run your life/company as you wish without outside interference is a sacred right in this community. There are venture capitalists, who pride themselves on being free-range and not monitoring their investments."

If you really think about it, this makes perfect sense. Look at Uber, for example, or any of the “disruptive” sharing technology apps and sites. Their model is, quite frankly, to destroy an industry and ask questions later. This is exactly the libertarian philosophy: allow the market to speak and ignore or avoid government.

This type of thinking adversely affects minorities. Taxi drivers in many cities are most often immigrants of color, who often can find no other job with their limited skills. Their run-down taxis often support large extended families. This is not the typical raid-hailing app driver. The few times that I've taken Uber or Lyft, my drivers fit the demographics of Silicon Valley – all male, all white or Asian. In Portland, Oregon, the Uber “revolution” is leaving immigrant families lurching for money as their cars can no longer compete.

If more of Uber's staff had friends working in the taxi industry, do you think they would demonize it so much? Or would they better understand why taxi drivers across the world are getting so angry?

Finney is right – the technology industry needs to find a way to be much more inclusive. That means Uber should first empower existing taxi drivers with their technology before disrupting their industry and destroying lives. It means Twitter needs to involve African-Americans as its evolves its tools (which happen to be heavily used among minorities). It means that all the technology companies need to shift from focusing on being the first out with a disruptive technology and focus instead on ensuring that this technology does not disrupt and ruin people's lives.

Having a more diverse workforce would assist in this as it would change the ethos of the tech industry. It is time that the staff at Google and Apple reflects the users of Google and Apple, because if their technology is really as empowering as they claim it is, then it should also be reflected in their own hiring practices.

This means hiring outside the bubble (outside the existing tech networks that dominate referrals), more programs to do outreach in low-income areas, and, most importantly, an industry-wide effort to help promote technological education in minority communities across the country. We need to begin educating the next generation so that, in the future, the next Google, Apple or Uber is founded by someone who represents the rest of America. Then let's build some truly inclusive technology.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Costco is concerned about the antibiotics in fish. That’s why the nation’s third largest retailer ditched Chilean salmon in favor of antibiotic-free Norwegian salmon, Reuters reported on Thursday. Costco plans to buy 60 percent of its salmon from Norway, the retailer told Reuters, and that would reduce Chilean salmon by 40 percent.

Chile’s coast is teeming with salmon. The country is the second largest salmon producer in the world. The reason why Chilean salmon producers turn to antibiotics is that the coastal waters are also teeming with the bacteria called Piscirickettsiosis or SRS. It’s a rather nasty bacteria that, according to Reuters, causes “lesions and hemorrhaging in infected fish, and swells their kidneys and spleens, eventually killing them.” Salmon producers have yet to develop a vaccine to combat the bacteria.

Chile’s salmon industry produced about 895,000 tons of fish in 2014, and 1.2 million pounds of antibiotics. Antibiotic use increased a whopping 25 percent from 2013. Norway is the largest salmon producer, and while the country produced 1.3 million tons of salmon, only 972 kilograms of antibiotics were used in 2013. Norway’s use of antibiotics in fish and seafood is at the lowest it has been since the late 1970s, according to a recent report from the Norwegian Veterinary Institute.

Why is Costco so concerned about antibiotic use in fish? Jeff Lyons, overseer of fresh foods at Costco, told Reuters, “The whole industry is starting to shift.” He added that when people are asked about their biggest concerns with protein, “generally it's going to be hormones or antibiotics.” In other words, Costco is listening to its customer’s concerns.

Antimicrobial resistance is a growing threat

There is a reason why consumers are concerned about antibiotics use among livestock and fish. Antimicrobial resistance, which includes antibiotic resistance, is real and it is on the rise. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) characterizes antimicrobial resistance as a “growing global threat.” The FDA cites the use of antibiotics in animals as contributing to the rise of antimicrobial resistance.

A 2006 study looked the use of antibiotics in finfish aquaculture to combat bacterial infections “resulting from sanitary shortcomings in fish rearing.” It mentions that finfish aquaculture has seen “accelerated growth.” The trouble with using antibiotics in fish is that they stay in the aquatic environment. That, in turn, has caused antibiotic-resistant bacteria to pop up in aquaculture environments. Those resistant bacteria can be transferred to human pathogens.

The study called for “global efforts” to promote the “more judicious use of prophylactic antibiotics in aquaculture as accumulating evidence indicates that unrestricted use is detrimental to fish, terrestrial animals, and human health and the environment.”

In other words, more retailers need to ditch antibiotic-laced fish for more sustainable alternatives. The health of our aquaculture environments and our own health depends on it.

Image credit: Flickr/Boca Dorada