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Temple Grandin, an animal scientist at Colorado State University, says that being autistic helps her do better work to improve animal welfare in slaughterhouses. There’s a stereotype that people with autism are cold and unfeeling. However, Grandin is empathetic toward animals.

Grandin shared her thought process over at Grist, “To design a good restrainer system, you have to really care about the animals it will hold. You have to imagine what it would be like if you were the animal entering the restrainer. It is a sobering experience to be a caring person, yet to design a device to kill large numbers of animals. When I complete a project I am left with a feeling of great satisfaction, but I usually cry all the way to the airport.” That has got to be one of the hardest jobs in the world.

She also understands how animals think: “It was easy for me to figure out how animals think and how animals would react because I think visually. Animals don’t think in language. They think in pictures. It’s very easy for me to imagine what would it be like to go through a system if you really were a cow, not a person in a cow costume but really were a cow, and autistic senses and emotions are more like the senses of an animal.”

Thinking visually isn’t the only thing that helps her understand animals. Grandin explains: “My nervous system was hyper-vigilant. Any little thing out of place, like a water stain on the ceiling, would set off a panic reaction, and cattle are scared of the same thing. They’re scared of things like high-pitched noise, sudden clanging and banging, sudden movement, maybe even a little chain that hangs down in the chute and jiggles because it looks out of place, and things that are out of place can mean danger out in the wild.”

Her compassion for animals and strong understanding of the way they think makes Grandin a strong advocate for animal welfare. She says that animals deserve a life worth living. “First of all, you gotta make sure your air quality is good, they aren’t lame, they don’t have sores on them, they are clean, and they get to act out their behavioral needs.”

Here’s her strategy for making these improvements.

1. Design yards for cows

Keeping pens dry and cattle clean is the most important aspect of a feed yard. Take some big machines in and slope the land so that it drains well. If cows stand in mud, they are likely to go lame. Too much dust makes it hard for them to breathe. They also need shade to stay cool (particularly black cows). These are common problems.

2. Feedlot cows: Grain versus grass

“Feeding cattle grain is sorta like a diet of cake and cookies. And cattle love to eat sweet yummy cake and cookies.” This diet is unhealthy but “for a steer in a feedlot … you slaughter them before it hurts them. They love to eat it. They come running when the feed truck comes.”

3. Realistic improvements for chickens

There are two types of chickens: the ones you eat and the ones that lay eggs that you eat. For the egg-layers, conditions in battery cages are terrible. The cage ceiling is so low the momma chicken can’t even fully stand up. However, there are some new “furnished cages” that provide “enriched housing.” There are no bird recliners or TVs, but the birds can stand up all the way and there’s even a little nest box where they can scratch around and lay their eggs in a little hidden area. This is a good alternative for commercial operations. If the birds aren’t in cages they create a lot of dust, which makes breathing harder.

4. Are all animals entitled to sunlight and grass?

There’s a trade-off between the treatment of animals and the ability of people with low incomes to afford healthy food. Twenty-five percent of people work minimum wage jobs and need to buy cheap eggs. Grandin says beef is a luxury, but eggs are a necessity.

How much do hens care about enjoying sunlight and grass? Just like you have your favorite recliner, hens have living preferences too. A hen’s desires can be scientifically measured so you can see what’s most important. “There are objective ways to measure her motivation to get something she wants — like a private nest box. How long is she willing to not eat to get it, or how heavy a door will she push to get it? How many times will she push a switch to get it?”

A hen’s gut instinct tells her to hide eggs from foxes, so she needs a piece of plastic to hide behind. Hens don’t have as strong of a motivation to go outside. “The motivation is pretty weak compared to something like the nest box, which is hard wired. Take dust bathing — for a hen dust bathing is nice to do, but it’s kind of like, ‘Yes, it’s nice to have a fancy hotel room, but the EconoLodge will do too.’”

5. Breeding strategies focused on more than optimizing food production

“When you push that animal too hard — either genetically or whatever — you start to have problems with its biology. When you breed an animal just to be productive, productive, productive, there’s always a price. Nothing is free in this world. They were breeding some of the hardiness out. It takes energy to fight off disease … ”

“... Pigs still have bad structural issues that started back in the late ’80s. If you’re just breeding for production traits, you don’t bother to look at the leg structure to make sure it won’t get lame.”

6. The worst animal rights abuses

“One of the problems that the dairy industry got into was breeding these gigantic big cows that would last just two years milking. Some of the really progressive dairies now are starting to go to smaller cows that last three or four years milking, a much better cow. I visited a couple this spring.”

“There are about a third of the dairies here in Colorado that are really, really progressive and really, really good. And there’s another percentage that are not, that will milk cows until they are half dead and then market them. There’s a certain segment of the dairy industry that’s just horrible. About 25 percent of all dairy cattle are lame, and lame cattle are in pain — that’s just not acceptable.” The cows are lame because of genetic breeding and standing on concrete so much, Grandin said.

7. Warning for activist companies

“You have to pick out some specific thing to work on. I worked on improving slaughter plants — that’s a specific thing. You gotta pick out something specific if you want to make constructive change on the ground, not destructive change. We have this abstractification, with activists attacking things they don’t even know anything about. And ag has responded poorly. Ag gag laws: dumbest thing they could have ever done. That just makes you look guilty. Why are they passing laws to make it a crime to videotape something?”

Image credit: Micolo J via Flickr

Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from Steve Schein's new book, "A New Psychology for Sustainability Leadership: The Hidden Power of Ecological Worldviews" (published by Greenleaf Publishing and distributed by Stylus Publishing). You can buy the book here. 

By Steve Schein

Today, there are major changes happening inside a select group of the world’s largest corporations. In response to the Earth’s most pressing environmental problems, a growing number of the most recognizable multinational companies are transforming the way they do business.

These new developments hold great potential for our future. Using a process known as biomimicry, engineers are designing new products based on a more thorough understanding of how nature works. Using a tool known as lifecycle analysis, accountants are measuring the full environmental footprint of products, from resource extraction through the manufacturing supply chain, distribution, disposal and recovery. Large-scale collaborative efforts between multinational companies, environmental nonprofits and governments are leading to new systemic approaches to our most complex global environmental problems involving the oceans, farmlands, forests, river basins and our fellow species.

However, we all know this has not been close to enough. Whether as sustainability educators, corporate social responsibility (CSR) executives, environmental activists or simply concerned citizens, we worry about each new piece of depressing environmental news.

For those of us that follow the corporate sustainability movement, we know that only a relatively small percentage of progressive corporations are thoroughly integrating sustainability initiatives throughout their global organizations. We also know that only certain executives within these corporations are fully committed to sustainability as their highest priority. As a result, the quarterly earnings report is still the major driver in the corporate world, and CEOs with sustainability at the top of their agenda are few and far between.

A focus on corporate sustainability executives

During the last decade, the sustainability position in multinational corporations has grown considerably in influence. Beginning with the appointment of the first chief sustainability officer in 2004, today there are senior sustainability executives in hundreds of the world’s largest multinational companies. In many cases, the chief sustainability officer now reports directly to the CEO. These are highly influential individuals inside today’s global corporations.

Behind each major environmental announcement by a multinational CEO, a small group of executives dedicate themselves to a wide range of sustainability initiatives, much of it in the face of strong resistance. Their companies have tens of thousands of employees throughout the world. Their global supply chains affect millions of people. Their customers reach into the billions. On the one hand, we can blame corporations as a whole for the ecological crisis. However, when we consider their potential to radically reduce their impacts, reinvent their energy sources and repurpose their infrastructure to eventually restore Earth’s ecosystems, the sustainable business movement may be the single most important environmental movement in the world today. When we take into account how this affects the availability of food and water for the planet’s poorest people, a case can likewise be made that it is also the most important social justice movement.

Despite the global scale of their companies, the number of executives who champion sustainability initiatives on a daily basis is surprisingly small. Although much has been written about their accomplishments, we don’t know enough about their personal histories, their deeper motivations and how they think. We don’t know enough about how they think about nature, leadership, resistance and change. At its essence, we don’t know enough about what makes these types of global sustainability leader tick.

The limits of “sustainability”

At the same time, we have become aware of the limits of the term “sustainability." We know that it can mean very different things to different people. We have seen how it can be used narrowly to mean short-term economics, jobs and national security; or it can used expansively to mean a complete transformation to deeply ecological and restorative business models. Sadly, we have witnessed how sustainability can be misused and misunderstood. In our darkest moments, we fear that the sustainability movement has fallen well short of its overall goal to transform business and society.

We continue to ask ourselves: Why? Why, despite all the scientific evidence, don’t all senior executives have a strong sense of urgency about transforming business in response to climate change? Why doesn’t everyone see the clear and deep connections between our traditional ways of doing business and harming the ecosystems we depend on for life? Why is there so much resistance to change? Although we tell ourselves that politics, jobs and our fossil-fuel-dependent economy and culture are the obvious reasons, we continue to search for new answers.

I’ve written this book to ofer a new type of answer to these questions and a new place to look for solutions.

Cultivating a new psychology for sustainability

Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute and author of more than 50 books on global environmental issues, observes: “Every political movement has its psychological dimension. Persuading people to alter their behavior always involves probing motivations; activism begins with asking what makes people tick? The environmental movement is no exception.”

Although thousands of sustainability-related books, articles and corporate reports have been published in recent years, today little is known about the deeper psychological motivations of corporate sustainability leaders. Leadership consultant and human development researcher Barrett C. Brown observes that the more we understand how psychology and worldviews drive the behaviors required to lead sustainability initiatives, the more effectively we will be able to cultivate them, especially during times of complexity and rapid change.

As sustainability educators, executives and activists, we need to develop a new, shared understanding of what sustainability leadership must become. We need a new story, a new language and, most of all, a new psychology.

Ecological worldviews: A missing perspective

The research I share with you in this book draws on eight distinct social science traditions that have not been widely used to study corporate sustainability leadership. These include eco-psychology, deep ecology, ecological economics, social psychology, environmental sociology, indigenous studies and the new field of integral ecology. I also rely on developmental psychology research about how worldviews are constructed, how we interpret the world around us, and how this can change over the course of our lives.

Using key insights from these disciplines, I include in the book extensive quotations from my interviews with 75 global sustainability leaders in more than 40 multinational organizations. The interviews suggest that many of the most influential corporate sustainability leaders are motivated by their ecological worldviews, which can be thought of as the deep mental patterns and ways of seeing our relationship to the natural world. Ecological worldviews can also be thought of as our cognitive and perceptual capacity to see the world through the lens of ecology, which is essentially the relationship of species and their environment.

In the minds of sustainability leaders, ecological worldviews can enhance the perception of our interdependence with the Earth’s planetary ecosystems, which can strengthen the depth of their commitment in the face of continued resistance. The interviews further reveal expressions of what developmental psychologists call post-conventional worldviews, which can enhance their ability to effectively communicate to diverse audiences, collaborate across boundaries and unlock capacity to lead large-scale transformational change.

MIT professor emeritus and long-time sustainability scholar John Ehrenfeld reflects that, in order to address sustainability fully and meaningfully, we must make fundamental shifts in the way we think. Referring to our capacity to lead transformational change, he invites us to consider that, in the face of opposition, an individual can always change his or her own worldview.

For too long we have assumed that all multinational corporations, and by default all executives inside them, have the same worldview. If we are to advance the field of sustainability leadership beyond its current limitations, it is vital to understand how global sustainability leaders think, how their worldviews have been formed, and how this influences their actions.

By shining a light on the psychological dimensions of a large group of sustainability executives in multinational corporations, my hope is this book will open up new conversations and new research across a wide range of social science disciplines in the context of corporate sustainability leadership.

Ultimately, this can lead to a new psychology for sustainability that can be integrated into public and private institutions everywhere to support the development of the next generation of sustainability leaders for the benefit of all life on Earth.

Steve Schein is a sustainability leadership educator, researcher, and executive coach. After 25 years in the corporate world and 10 in academia, he sees the evolution of business leadership and education towards ecological sustainability a global imperative. To that end, his research focuses on the development of ecological and post-conventional worldviews in the setting of multinational corporate leadership. He has been a member of the faculty at Southern Oregon University since 2005, where he founded the certificate program in sustainability leadership. Prior to joining the faculty at SOU, he was a certified public accountant (CPA) and former CEO with senior management experience in several companies. Dr. Schein’s research has been published in The Journal of Corporate Citizenship, The Journal of Management of Global Sustainability, and presented at numerous conferences on corporate social and environmental responsibility. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for Net Impact and the GEOS Institute.

WWF-UK, Coca-Coca Great Britain (CCGB) and Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE) are partnering to help ensure a thriving future for England’s rivers. The partnership will see the three organisations significantly scale up their previous partnership to tackle the impacts of agriculture on water and promote sustainable farming to protect England’s unique chalk streams.

The new three-year partnership will support farmers in two chalk stream catchments to improve the way they manage their land and reduce the impacts of production on the freshwater environment. Improved practises will aid the resilience of agricultural supply chains, the organisations say.

Jon Woods, general manager, Coca-Cola Great Britain, commented: “Water is fundamental to our business, which is why we’re working with WWF to ensure we use it in a responsible and sustainable way. Over the last three years, we returned more than 286 million litres of water to the ecosystem exceeding our target by over 36 million litres. Together, we want to build on the success of our collaboration and show how businesses and organisations can reduce their impact on freshwater environments as well as lead the way in water efficiency.”

The new partnership follows the conclusion of a three year partnership which saw WWF-UK, CCGB and CCE working together to bring life back into two chalk stream catchments – the River Nar in Norfolk and the River Cray in South London near the Coca-Cola Enterprises’ bottling plant. The work improved over 7kms of river and replenished 286.3 million litres of water. 

Leendert den Hollander, general manager, Coca-Cola Enterprises, added: “Our mission is to “inspire sustainable soft drinks choices” to our customers and consumers. Water is the main ingredient in our products and is necessary for cooling, washing and rinsing processes in our manufacturing plants. Given that 97 per cent of the drinks that Coca-Cola sells in Great Britain are made within its borders, our business is determined to use water in a responsible, sustainable way. And our work with WWF supports that mission.”

Picture credit: Charlotte Sams

This article is part of a series on “The ROI of Sustainability,” written with the support of MeterHero. MeterHero helps companies and organizations offset their water and energy footprints through consumer engagement. To follow along with the rest of the series, click here.

Water reclamation is playing an increasingly important role in local and regional resource management these days. The threat of drought and dwindling fresh water supplies have forced many communities, businesses and organizations to rely on recycled water, particularly when it comes to serving non-potable needs. In many areas of the U.S. and Canada, golf courses, campgrounds and public parks now use recycled water to maintain their greens. In Southern California, some businesses run their air conditioning units on recovered water, and in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Volkswagen uses reprocessed water to stock its cooling tanks and flush its toilets. Orange County, California, has already taken the preliminary steps of transitioning to potable recycled water as a means of offsetting its three-year drought.

But as one company in Maine discovered, there are other ways that we use water commercially that drive up the ecological price of that resource – methods that aren’t as easy to address as, say, in the agricultural setting where irrigation can be more easily recycled.

“Steam is an important resource at Tom’s of Maine,” explains Susan Dewhirst, PR and goodness programs manager at Tom’s of Maine. The company, which makes natural personal care products such as toothpaste, deodorant and baby lotion, uses scalding-hot steam for everything from heating to cleaning and sanitizing its equipment. And that, just like running water, becomes a valuable, ephemeral resource when it isn’t recycled.

“The trick is to be more efficient with the water we use to limit how much we need,” Dewhirst said.

But how do you do that when you are using something like vapor?

The answer, says the company, is in the very system it uses to clean and sterilize its equipment, which is called “clean in place,” or CIP. The CIP system is designed to clean closed-loop production systems that can’t be taken apart or accessed by hand, such as a sealed piping system. The method began in the 1950s with a clunky system that involved a balance tank, a centrifuge pump and a manual hose fitting (and was still more efficient and easier than the elbow grease that was used prior to that time to clean less efficient equipment).

“We used to channel raw materials through a single pipe into mixing tanks. We had to clean the pipe every time we switched materials,” the company said.

Today, CIP is a state-of-the art digitalized system that is widely used in food and beverage industries. It has also made it possible for companies like Tom’s to ensure that the piping, hoses and other equipment that manufactures sticky substances like toothpaste and lotions are sterile at the end of the production schedule.

Best of all, the system allows the company to reduce its dependence on chemical cleaners and additives, which have the potential to pollute the environment.

Some of today’s CIP systems are built to recycle the water that is converted to steam. The process of heating the water into steam, condensing it back to water and recycling the resource will allow the company to meet its 2020 water conservation goal, which includes reducing its water footprint by almost half of what it used in 2011, Dewhirst said.

“We see the steam recycling system as a critical way to not only save dollars but minimize our overall water footprint,” said Dewhirst, who noted that the ability to recycle the steam means less impact on their energy footprint as well.

The company’s attitude toward water reflects a broader aim to work in concert with the environment, through its reduction of waste, carbon and extraneous packaging.

“Since our founding in 1970, Tom’s of Maine has had a deep respect for natural resources and reducing our footprint wherever possible, including in how we make our products,” said Dewhirst, who noted that the company also employs similar strategies when it comes to waste and fuel usage. “These are commitments we are continuously focused on and are always searching for new solutions. We saw an opportunity to be more efficient with the water we are using, and to think more broadly about recycling.”

Asked what advice she might have for other companies looking to reduce their footprint, Dewhirst said that tracking the company’s water and energy usage against long-term goals is essential.

“External energy audits are a great way to understand water usage and find ways to improve. It’s a continuous journey to find the best technology to recycle and reuse water efficiently and there always new methods to explore.”

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

Image credit: Tom's of Maine via Facebook

Yet another natural gas fracking study has come out, and the latest news should raise more red flags for vehicle fleet managers who are looking to replace diesel with a cleaner fuel, namely compressed natural gas or hydrogen sourced from natural gas. The latest study, from Stanford University, warns that thousands of fracked natural gas wells in the U.S. have been drilled at relatively shallow depths, potentially exposing local water resources to contamination.

Natural gas fracking, then and now

Fracking is short for hydrofracturing, the practice of extracting oil and gas from rock formations by forcing vast quantities of chemical brine deep underground.

In addition to the potential for contaminating groundwater, surface water resources are also at risk from contamination by spent fracking brine, as described by the new Stanford study:

"As part of the so-called frackwater they inject into the ground, drilling companies use proprietary blends of chemicals that can include hydrochloric acids, toluene and benzene. When the wastewater comes back up after use, it often includes those and potentially dangerous natural chemicals such as arsenic, selenium and radioactive radium drawn up from subterranean recesses."

Fracking has been used in the oil and gas industry for decades, but its impacts escaped notice for many years. Until very recently fracking occurred mainly in remote, thinly populated areas in the western U.S. That explains why the industry has been able to claim that the practice has a long track record of environmental safety -- at least, until recently.

After the Bush administration exempted fracking operations from federal environmental regulations, the practice exploded into more populated areas and farming communities, including Midwestern and Northeastern states as well as California (note, for example, the photo accompanying this article, which shows a fracking operation within an agricultural area, in sight of a nearby home).

That, in turn, has given rise to more impacts, and pushback has been growing rapidly.

A recent protest against a fracking operation in one South Los Angeles neighborhood illustrates how fracking has evolved from a relatively unknown, primarily rural operation to become an invasive force in established communities. In the case of California, the issue also has environmental justice implications, as a recent study has revealed that fracking operations are concentrated more heavily in Hispanic and non-white neighborhoods.

As the impacts of fracking have become more clear, local communities and entire states, most notably New York state, have placed moratoriums on the practice or banned it outright.

Yet another black eye for natural gas

This should be a banner year for the U.S. natural gas industry. More utilities are ditching coal and turning to natural gas for cleaner power generation, compressed natural gas is becoming popular as a low-emission alternative fuel for vehicle fleets, and hydrogen -- sourced primarily from natural gas -- is beginning to emerge as a zero-emission fuel for forklifts and other logistics vehicles, among others.

However, this has also been a banner year for studies demonstrating that cleaner emissions at the burn point need to be weighed against the natural gas fracking lifecycle.

The latest study from Stanford tears another hole in the industry's case for the safety of fracking. According to some fracking proponents, there is a very low risk of contaminating local water supplies because the wells are drilled deep underground.

However, the study found that:

"... At least 6,900 oil and gas wells in the U.S. were fracked less than a mile (5,280 feet) from the surface, and at least 2,600 wells were fracked at depths shallower than 3,000 feet, some as shallow as 100 feet. This occurs despite many reports that describe fracking as safe for drinking water only if it occurs at least thousands of feet to a mile underground ..."

In addition to recording well depths, the study also looked at water use:

Perhaps most surprisingly, the researchers discovered that at least 2,350 wells less than one mile deep had been fracked using more than 1 million gallons of water each. Shallower high-volume hydraulic fracturing poses a greater potential threat to underground water sources because there is so little separation between the chemicals pumped underground and the drinking water above them.

The findings indicate the need for improved safety standards for shallow wells, but the cat may already be out of the bag, as explained by lead researcher Rob Jackson:

"The public pays to clean up acid mine drainage today because of poor practices decades ago," Jackson said. "What are we doing today that may cause problems tomorrow?

Piling on the bad news for fracking

July really has been a bad month for fracking news. At the beginning of this month, TriplePundit noted three new developments that mess with natural gas's clean image, including "lost water" issues raised by the U.S. Geological Survey, a British government report that links fracking to destructive impacts on rural communities, and the aforementioned New York state fracking ban, based on a study that similarly connected the practice to undesirable impacts on established communities.

Last week, we also took note of a study undertaken by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University, which linked the density of fracked wells to a "meteoric" increase in local hospitalizations.

This all comes on top of an incendiary article in Newsweek earlier this year, followed up with more detail by Rolling Stone, that linked fracking to miscarriages and infant deaths in a region of Utah. Though anecdotal, the story is consistent with a study released by the University of Pittsburgh in June, finding increased incidence of low birth weight babies in a region of Pennsylvania.

Light at the end of the fracking tunnel

Fossil natural gas has serious lifecycle issues that fleet managers should not overlook, but more sustainable alternatives are emerging for compressed natural gas vehicles, including landfill gas and biogas.

For hydrogen fuel cell fleets, the future also looks promising. While hydrogen is sourced primarily from natural gas today, water-splitting with wind and solar energy is beginning to emerge among other more sustainable sources.

Image credit: Rob Jackson/Stanford University

Former vice present and climate change activist Al Gore is still pointing out inconvenient truths — this time criticizing President Barack Obama’s recent controversial decision that green-lighted Royal Dutch Shell’s oil-drilling plan in the Arctic Ocean’s Chukchi Sea.

In an interview this month with U.K. newspaper the Guardian, Gore called the conditional approval of Shell’s exploratory drilling plan “insane” and also called for a ban on all oil and gas activity in the polar region.

Shell plans to begin drilling in the oil-rich Chukchi Sea very soon now that the 400-foot Polar Pioneer has reached the Arctic, after leaving its Seattle berth last month. Gore said in the interview with the Guardian that Obama was wrong to ever allow drilling in the Arctic.

It was the only major point of contention from Gore on Obama’s efforts to fight climate change, at home and through a global deal to be negotiated in Paris at the end of the year, but it's significant nonetheless.

“I think Arctic drilling is insane,” he said in Toronto, where he was passing on his techniques for talking about the climate crisis to 500 recruits from his Climate Reality Project. “I think that countries around the world would be very well advised to put restrictions on drilling for oil in the Arctic Ocean.”

As conventional oil fields decline, the Arctic is the last frontier of the oil era, containing more than 20 percent of the world’s undiscovered, recoverable oil and gas. But after the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill five years ago, the risks of offshore oil drilling are clear: Gore said, “I think the Deepwater Horizon spill was warning enough. The conditions are so hostile for human activity [in the Arctic].”

For the most part, Gore gives Obama high marks on climate change policies, although he still says the White House has gone too far to accommodate the oil and gas industry. “I think he is doing essentially a very good job, but on the fossil fuel side I would certainly be happier if he was not allowing so much activity like the Arctic drilling permit and the large amounts of coal extracted from public lands,” Gore said.

A critical negotiating round on climate change in Paris is only five months away; but it is the president and the pope who are the most visible campaigners for climate action, not Gore.

Unlike the pope – who used an encyclical on climate change to deliver a scathing indictment of the prevailing economic order – Gore believes that “reformed capitalism” will eventually solve the climate campaign.

“I think that some form of market capitalism is at the base of every successful economy in the world today,” he said in the interview. “I think that reforms including putting a price on pollution to discourage more pollution is definitely a part of the solution.”

As the Paris summit approaches, Gore said he is the most optimistic he has ever been about finding a solution to the climate crisis. The time is ripe, he continued. Like same-sex marriage, like civil rights, he believes public opinion is about to make a massive shift in favor of action.

“Climate is now on that matrix,” Gore said. “The change is inevitable because [when] any great cause that becomes resolved into a binary choice between what’s right’s what and what’s wrong, the outcome becomes inevitable.”

He is confident there will be some sort of agreement coming out of Paris. “Even if it falls a little bit short of the 2-degree threshold, it will definitely lend a tremendous amount of momentum to an historic transition that is now well underway, away from carbon-based energy and towards renewables efficiency, battery storage and sustainable agriculture and forestry.

“My optimism is focused on primarily on the larger goal of making this transition and finding a solution for the climate crisis.”

Optimism from the man-who-should-have-been-president 15 years ago is refreshing given where we are with climate change today and the uncertainties surrounding where we are going with it.

Image: Al Gore at Web 2.0 Summit by Dan Farber via Flickr CC

Once seen as a sustainable way to balance economic opportunities with the sharing of resources, the sharing economy in recent years has morphed in an ugly way into what is often called the “gig economy.” Even presidential candidates have weighed in on the concerns of workers struggling to find decent paying jobs — and renting their rooms on Airbnb or shuffling people around town in their car to make up for that gap. In fact, Silicon Valley gadflies excited over a new sharing economy concept are quick to label a new idea “the Uber of" (insert service here: check out what happens on a search engine, e.g. private jets, shipping, food, weed ... ).

Speaking of Uber, this darling of Wall Street, and target for what many see as what can go wrong in our economy, has fomented an ongoing discussion across many news sites, including here at TriplePundit. The car-sharing site has been pilloried relentlessly for how its workers have been treated, and has been banned from some municipalities in the U.S. Uber has also found itself tied up in litigation abroad, due to questions over liability and the legality of its services. Over the past several months, the company has tried to soften its hard-nosed image, but most of those efforts have fallen flat as the company is still often viewed as the sharing economy wolf of Wall Street.

Now a company that often finds itself in its own fair share of controversy, Starbucks, is partnering with Lyft, Uber’s largest competitor.

Is this a victory for values-driven business like Lyft?

Last week Starbucks announced an agreement with Lyft that could prove beneficial for Lyft drivers, Lyft riders and even for some Starbucks employees.

All Lyft drivers can jump to Gold Level status in the Starbucks program (which means (hooray!) a free goodie every 12 purchases and refills), and both drivers and riders can earn Starbucks loyalty points during their drive. As the partnership develops Starbucks hopes to extend discounted Lyft rides to employees to make their commutes easier. Which should be well-appreciated.

Anyone who has to be at a Starbucks at 4:30 a.m. for that dreaded morning shift can tell you most cities have meager public transportation options at that hour. This additional transport option should make Starbucks employees' commutes just a bit easier.

This partnership could also boost what advocates of the sharing economy saw as a benefit when these services first emerged several years ago: a new way to build relationships. That's sorely needed in an age when most of us have our necks bent downwards and noses stuck in our smartphone screens.

For Starbucks, this move is a way to extend the brand with minimal investment—and in what some see as the creepy side of Starbucks’ agenda, the deal with Lyft extends Starbucks’ reach as the company wants its stores, and now its service, as that “third place” between home and the office.

While coffee snobs may roll their eyes at the latest Frappuccino, Starbucks provides decent wages — and tips — for countless students, those between jobs and single parents. The company has long spent more on health insurance than coffee. And while the program is relatively small, students do have the opportunity to earn a college degree on the company dime. Starbucks also doesn’t shy away from social issues, even if it makes its own baristas uncomfortable.

One could argue, therefore, that this joining of forces with Lyft over Uber sends a signal to the sharing economy marketplace. After all, Lyft has often been the foil of Uber’ shenanigans, and both companies have been spurred into action to clean up their acts and make their drivers happier. But with Uber’s reputation largely in tatters, and the enthusiasm over the sharing economy dissipating as yet another profit scheme for the big guys, Lyft has scored a huge win with its alliance with Starbucks.

Image credit: Starbucks

A fish by any name is still a fish. But sometimes names do matter, as a recent report by the ocean advocacy group Oceana reveals. The use of one name for one fish can help protect our oceans and the fish that swim in them.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires that only the “acceptable market name” be used on labels, menus and packaging. That is a good thing. However, the FDA often allows many different species of fish to be sold under the same market name, and that is not good. For example, 56 species are permitted to be called “snapper,” and 64 species are called “grouper.”

Confused? Join the club. The biggest problem with allowing so many different types of fish and seafood species to use the same market name is that it makes it harder to stop seafood fraud and illegal fishing. Oceana believes that using one name for one fish will help the seafood industry which is plagued with illegal and mislabeled products. One name for one fish will also benefit consumers, and protect endangered and vulnerable species.

Consider that seafood is the most traded and most valuable food commodity on the planet. Billions of people rely on the oceans for employment, recreation and food. The trouble is that, without the proper care of our oceans, we could lose an important part of the world’s economy.

Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is any fishing that operates outside of domestic and international laws and rules. The federal government is set to decide how to protect the seafood industry through the Presidential Task Force on Combating Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported Fishing and Seafood. The Oceana report recommends the federal government require the use of species-specific names, or one name for one fish, throughout the entire seafood supply chain. That would include everything from the fishing boat that catches the fish to the store that sells it.

The report suggests that since Latin scientific names are universally recognized, they could be used to identify species. That way language would not be a barrier since the Latin scientific names are recognized regardless of language. They are already used on many regulatory documents across the globe. The European Union already requires that all unprocessed fish products sold both in stores and online be labeled with the scientific name. If the U.S. did the same, it would “likely become a global movement, since together they make up 50 percent of global seafood imports by value,” the report states.

The use of one name for one fish would also mean that when we go to the store to buy fish, we would know exactly what we are getting. Gone would be the days when we buy a fish labeled “snapper” and after we cook it, realize it just doesn’t taste like snapper.

Image credit: Flickr/jh_tan84

By Darcy Hitchcock

Does the designation of for-profit or not-for-profit make any sense anymore? With the rise of social entrepreneurship, the line has been blurred between for-profit and not-for-profit. There are now for-profit businesses certified as B-Corps run by social entrepreneurs and there are not-for-profit organizations with for-profit businesses helping to fund their charitable mission.

But even social enterprises are often focused solely on their external mission, overlooking their employees’ needs for empowerment and wealth creation that worker-owned co-ops and democratically-run businesses can offer.

We need organizations designed to benefit society and employees at the same time!

As the diagram below indicates, there are a number of different points on the spectrum from traditional not-for-profits to traditional all-about-profit corporations. I’ve arrayed different organizational forms with two axes: pure nonprofits to full for-profits; and organizations that are designed primarily to benefit society versus employees. Below each type, I provide examples that can be easily investigated on the Internet.

Here are five innovative organizational forms. See how they can be mixed to provide a maximum-benefit hybrid.

Forms benefiting society

There are a number of different organizational forms focused on benefitting society (or the environment) beyond the traditional charity.

1. NGOs funded by their own businesses: Some NGOs (nonprofits) have responded by creating for-profit businesses where the profits go toward charities. For example, the late actor, Paul Newman, created a food company, and 100 percent of the profits go to the Newman’s Own Foundation. The company started selling his salad dressings, and it has since expanded into a number of different food items including pet food. By 2012, the foundation had given grants of over $350 million to charities around the world, arguably much more than if they had stayed with a pure nonprofit model.

2. B-Corporation: A B-Corp is one that has been certified that it provides social benefit. Greyston Bakery was created to provide jobs to people who needed them. They hire whoever shows up on a first-come basis. The profits from the bakery go to their foundation which then in turn funds more social programs.

Because the for-profit operation is also providing an important social benefit, Greyston became certified as a B-Corp. A number of states have passed legislation recognizing B-Corps, and some municipalities like San Francisco give preference to B-Corps in purchasing decisions. While B-Corps started in the United States, they have now spread to 37 countries.

3. BoP: I put Base of the Pyramid organizations in the upper right hand corner of the table because many of the largest consumer companies are experimenting with repackaging their products for the poorest of the poor. This may not be a separate organizational form, but it is a strategy worth investigating. In "Capitalism at the Crossroads," author Stuart Hart indicates that this may be the only remaining large market opportunity for companies that have saturated the developed world.

While on the face of it, it may seem immoral for rich corporations to sell products to the poor, the uncomfortable truth is that many poor people have to pay more for services than you do. You can buy in bulk (say, a liter bottle of clothes detergent, for example), while they may be only able to afford a single-use packet. You purchase cheap electricity from your utility, but they may pay many times that in kerosene. You may chafe at credit card interest rates, but they’re puny compared to loan sharks charging 25 percent a month to the poor!

Forms benefiting employees

The organizational forms I’ve mentioned so far are focused on benefitting society. But what about the well-being of employees?

4. Cooperatives: While ESOPs are usually formed more as a tax avoidance strategy, the employees are truly the owners in worker-owned cooperatives where they not only own stock but also make major decisions. The classic example is Mondragon in Spain, which has grown into huge economic engine with a wide range of businesses. In 2010 it generated just under 14 billion Euros in sales and employed about 100,000 people.

The company is committed to maintaining employment rather than profit margins, so if one business is struggling, employees get retrained and loaned to others. This meant that in 2008 while many in the United States and much of the world were thrown out of work by the Great Recession, Mondragon employees who were laid off were quickly transferred to other companies within Mondragon. According to a United Nations paper, Harnessing the Cooperative Advantage to Build a Better World, by 2010 most were back at their regular jobs again.

Worker owned co-ops are not just popular in the Basque region of Spain. The U.S. Federation of Worker Owned Cooperatives list members in practically all industries.

5. Democratic organizations: Mondragon operates in a democratic fashion, emphasizing self-management. It invests about 10 percent of its profits in social activities, ranging from research and education to cultural activities and social support services.

To me, this seems a more fair way to allocate wealth. Rather than having the lion’s share go to the CEO or people who only bought stock with a click of a button, why not have most of it go to all the people who work hard 40 or more hours a week to make it thrive?

Psychologists have found that having control over your work is key to job satisfaction. You get to vote for the president of the United States; why not your boss? Many organizations operate democratically; Zappos and WD-40 are two recognizable names amongst many certified by WorldBlu.

Why not a bit of both?

It seems the real opportunity is to blend social enterprise with worker-owned and democratically-run cooperatives.

In a Bloomberg BusinessWeek article called How three social ventures look beyond profits, John Tozzi talks about Cooperative Home Care Associates in New York. This co-op has 2,300 worker-owners, mostly poor, minority women who had been unemployed. They provide home care for elderly or disabled Medicaid patients. In addition to being owners in the business, they get time-and-a-half for overtime, extremely rare in the industry. The company has been in business since 1985 and are certified as a B-Corp. It’s as if they took my diagram and stirred.

Now we need to rinse and repeat!

Image credits: 1) Flickr/Kris Krug 2) Darcy Hitchcock

Darcy Hitchcock is the author of a number of award-winning business books including The Business Guide to Sustainability (now in its third edition). In her latest book, GREAT WORK: 12 Principles for your Work Life and Life’s Work, Darcy shares what she has learned about finding a calling, making a difference and leading organizations. It’s available in print and also three e-books: "Finding Your GREAT WORK," "Designing Organizations for GREAT WORK", and "Leading Others to GREAT WORK."

Despite the British government slashing support for renewable energy in the last few weeks, a new report from Frost & Sullivan finds that the UK is the market leader in the development of tidal energy solutions.

The UK is the frontrunner ‘buoyed by an ideal tidal pattern and a supportive regulatory scenario’, the analysis says. Canada, China and South Korea are also showing steady progress. The United States is one of the top innovators.

"The success of smaller demonstration plants will propel the immediate adoption of tidal stream and tidal barrage technologies," says Technical Insights Research Analyst Lekshmy Ravi. "The deployment of hybrid energy systems consisting of a combination of tidal and offshore wind energy seems probable in the long term."

The news contrasts with recent government action that has seen it abandon its two main policies to tackle carbon emissions, the Green Deal and the Zero Carbon homes plan as well as cutting subsidies on wind farm projects from next year.

In her first major speech last week on climate change, Energy and Climate Change Secretary Amber Rudd set out the Conservative commitment to tackling climate change whilst keeping bills down in order to deliver lasting economic security for hardworking families and businesses.

Speaking to business leaders in London, she said that the global climate change agreement to be finalised in Paris in December must work for business so that the private sector can play its full part in shaping the solutions to climate change through innovation, technology, enterprise and competition.