Green Screen
By Tommy Rosen
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Not a single day has gone by in the last eighteen months when I did not struggle to come up with the words to describe the current global movement to address humanity’s biggest concerns, both social and environmental. The main problem is that the green business sector has not been successful at setting widely accepted definitions and standards for what it actually means to be “green,” “eco,” or “sustainable.” This has led to debate and controversy as governments, companies, organizations and individuals try to figure out what industry practices are truly sustainable. Continue reading Green Screen…
Posted on June 24, 2008 |
Ready, Get Set, To-Go Ware
By Jenn Breckenridge
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Stephanie Bernstein went to get some ice cream with her sister. They went to a little ice cream shop in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was 1997. They both ordered scoops in a bowl, no cone, and when they were served Stephanie got confused. Did they ask for the ice cream to go? Um, no. Why was the ice cream in a plastic bowl with a plastic spoon? To her deep disappointment, her local ice cream shop, along with so many other ice cream shops, coffee shops, and small restaurants around the country were starting to replace reusable dishware with paper and plastic single use containers. That day an idea was born.
A lot of university students carried their coffee mugs everywhere, mainly for the discount they received from the coffee shops around town, but also for the positive environmental impact. Stephanie wondered, what if we all just carried everything around that we’d need in a day-what would that look like?
Seven years later, in Northern California, Stephanie sold her first set of utensils in their own handwoven carrying case. They were a hit. Her first generation To-Go Ware sets feature bamboo utensils in cloth carriers woven by a women’s cooperative of Burmese refugees called WEAVE. The women of WEAVE are able to care for their children and their homes, while also creating income for themselves and their families.
The second generation of To-Go Ware was launched earlier this month. These sleek sets have a firmer case made of recycled compressed plastic bags. The bags are collected by ragpickers in India and formed into the colorful polymer by CONSERVE, a recycling and waste management organization. CONSERVE’s collection efforts help to clean the polluted streets of New Delhi while employing hundreds of people in need of work. Continue reading Ready, Get Set, To-Go Ware…
Posted on June 20, 2008 |
FSC-Certified Rubber: Helping The Amazon To Bounce Back
By Pippa Sorley
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Some of us have heard the term “FSC-certified” before, especially when shopping for furniture or paper products. The Forest Stewardship Council was established in 1992 to improve forest management worldwide and has been certifying wood-based products for more than 15 years. But there’s a new certification trend in town: eco-friendly rubber?
Rubber is used to manufacture thousands of our every day products. We use it to rub out our mistakes (pencil erasers), rub elbows on the tennis courts (tennis shoes), and even rub up against each other (condoms). Rubber is ubiquitous, but one rarely thinks of where it comes from…rubber as a product sourced from the Amazon Rainforest.
The rubber tree produces a sap that is extracted just like maple syrup. This sap is known as latex, and is typically harvested when the trees are 5-6 years old. Incisions are made just deep enough to tap the vessels without harming the tree’s growth, and the sap is collected in small buckets. This process is known as rubber tapping.
Though most rubber tree plantations are found in Indonesia, rubber trees are indigenous to the Amazon Rainforest. When Amazonian “rubber tappers” a.k.a. “seringuieros” are able to make a living wage from harvesting in the forest, it reduces greatly the likelihood that they may sell their land to timber companies for a quick, one-time payoff. This is a perfect example of when conscious commerce lends to both social and environmental sustainability at the same time, while also turning a profit a.k.a. serving the Triple Bottom Line.
Many companies in the US and Europe are starting to realize that they can participate in sustaining healthy economies and ecosystems abroad while sourcing the highest quality raw materials for their products. Anne O’Loughlin uses FSC-certified rubber to make the soles of her sneakers at her fair trade shoe company, Autonomie Project. According to Anne, “All natural rubber certified by the FSC is truly the most environmentally-friendly alternative possible for the soles of the shoes…The rubber earns its certification because it is completely natural with no added toxins or chemicals, and is tapped from a tree…in a sustainable manner.”
Interested in the Forest Stewardship Council? Take action!
- Look for the label and ask for FSC-certified products when buying lumber, paper, and rubber
- Source FSC-certified materials, if you manufacture items with rubber, paper, or wood
- Become a FSC member and vote on issues at the FSC General Assembly
Posted on May 27, 2008 |
The Natural Evolution Of Business: Introducing the B Corp
By Greg Berry
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Historically, progressive business leaders had a few different ways to create companies. The Limited Liability Corporation (LLC), ‘S’ Corporation, and ‘C’ Corporation are the most common legal forms of business. Some of the most socially minded business people have chosen to start ‘earned-income non-profit corporations.’ Without devolving into a Latin-laden deconstruction of these choices, each of the existing options includes some major flaws for this generation’s greatest heroes, the social entrepreneurs.
Our friends at B Lab have set out to change that, with the formation of the B Corporation (B Corp). The ‘B’ here stands for Beneficial. B Corp provides a comprehensive ratings system and certification to help both businesses and buyers distinguish “good companies” from “good marketing.” Founding B Corporations include eConscious Market, Method, Seventh Generation, and Dansko. We spoke to Andrew Kassoy, one of the B Lab founders, who explained their purpose as a way to support “the power of business to create benefit, and to ‘be the change.’”
The socially conscious business movement is by no means limited to a handful of lefties in Boulder and San Francisco. According to Kassoy, there are approximately 60 million ‘green consumers’ in the US today (roughly 20% of the population), 30-40,000 businesses that identify themselves as socially-driven businesses, and over 2.5 trillion dollars has been assigned to “more conscious investments” which span a diverse group of investors and strategies. Continue reading The Natural Evolution Of Business: Introducing the B Corp…
Posted on May 6, 2008 |
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