http://www.ssireview.org/articles/ Strategies, Tools, and Ideas for Nonprofits, Foundations, and Socially Responsible Businesses en walker_kelsey@gsb.stanford.edu Copyright 2008 2008-09-02T19:00:01-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/cultivating_the_green_consumer/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/cultivating_the_green_consumer/ At long last, the impulse to go green is spreading faster than a morning glory. Organizations of all types are launching green campaigns—from the city of London’s Congestion Charge on automobiles, to Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s push to sell organic foods, to the University of Texas’s construction of LEED green buildings. Consumers too are getting behind the idea of being greener. In almost every opinion poll, consumers say that they are very concerned about climate change. They worry about rising seas, declining air quality, shrinking animal habitats, lengthening droughts, and newly brewing diseases. And they connect the dots back to their own purchases, finds a 2007 McKinsey & Company global survey of 7,751 consumers in eight major economies.1Our results show that a full 87 percent of these consumers are concerned about the environmental and social impacts of the products they buy. But when it comes to actually buying green goods, words and deeds often part ways. Only 33 percent of consumers in our survey say they are ready to buy green products or have already done so. And, according to a 2007 Chain Store Age survey of 822 U.S. consumers, only 25 percent say they have bought a green product other… Environment, Corporate Social Responsiblity 2008-09-02T06:00:00-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/whats_next_the_sun_boat/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/whats_next_the_sun_boat/ For sale to the right government: a 400-meter-long potable water transporter, fueled by electric, solar, and wind power. No worry that the “Aquatanker,” designed by Australia’s Solar Sailor Holdings Ltd., has yet to be ordered and built. “The size of the concept needs vision from governments,” explains Solar Sailor CEO Robert Dane. Plus, the company has already experienced success with its similarly hybrid ferry, currently leased to Captain Cook Cruises, and recently signed a contract with the U.S. Navy to develop unmanned, open-ocean surveillance vehicles. The Aquatanker would be as fast as an oil tanker—15 knots—but because of its solar sails, which could be as large as 1,000 square meters, it would use half the fuel and emit half the greenhouse gases. It would drop off its cargo of water at a single-point mooring—a large buoy with hose connections to a sub-sea pipeline to shore, and the mooring’s small size would relieve governments of buying land for pipelines or canals. Dane says that Aquatankers what with the skills and compensation crewmembers would need. But what really floats Dane’s boat is that because water is not a time-sensitive cargo, Aquatankers could sometimes go slower than oil tankers, and thereby shrink their… Environment 2008-09-02T06:00:00-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/whats_next_the_green_to_go_green/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/whats_next_the_green_to_go_green/ Leave it to Berkeley to bring solar to the people. Within the next few weeks, the über liberal Northern California city will allow property owners to pay for pricey solar electric systems—typically $15,000—simply by signing up for a 20-year surcharge on their property tax bill. The tax stays with the property even if the owner sells it (the solar panels would stay with the house). The groundbreaking plan, known as “Berkeley FIRST” (Financing Initiative for Renewable and Solar Technology), works like this: A property owner hires a city-approved solar installer; the city then pays the contractor for the system and its installation, minus any state and federal rebates, and adds an assessment to the property owner’s tax bill to pay for the system. The extra tax includes administrative fees and interest, which are lower than what property owners can get on their own. The city would use its access to low-interest bonds and loans, just as it does when residents want to move utility wires and poles underground. Property owners end up paying an extra $100 to $115 a month in taxes, and will get much of that back with savings on their electric bill. (And like other Berkeley solar… Environment 2008-09-02T06:00:00-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/fast_food_and_the_family_farm/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/fast_food_and_the_family_farm/ Almost 30 years ago, my family bought a small farm along the Mississippi River in northwestern Illinois near the historic town of Galena. The farm has a couple of pastures where the neighbors’ black-and-white Holsteins graze, a hayfield that provides winter feed for the horses, a vegetable garden, fruit trees, and several beehives. It quickly became a cherished place to escape from the busy lives my siblings and I led three hours away in Chicago, as a young lawyer (me), doctor, and theater producer. Our neighbors had scraped out a living in this rough, rocky landscape for generations as dairy farmers. But today, most of them either are out of farming altogether or pursue it only as a hobby. They are among the well-documented casualties of our switch to large-scale agriculture—and there are other consequences of that change. In Illinois and elsewhere, we now produce vast amounts of corn and soybeans that become animal feed or ingredients in processed foods. As a result, the food we eat no longer comes from across the street or state, but from the other side of the country or world. It has typically traveled 1,500 miles or more before it appears on our dinner… Environment, Government 2008-08-24T14:00:00-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/a_lot_of_hot_air/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/a_lot_of_hot_air/ To its residents who still have a sense of smell, Mexico City is redolent with the perfumes of exhaust and ozone. The metropolis’s air pollution levels routinely rocket past the World Health Organization’s maximum limits, leaving people sick in their wake. Vehicles are the most generous contributors to the city’s acrid cloak, chortling forth 99 percent of the carbon monoxide, 81 percent of the nitrogen oxides, and 46 percent of the volatile organic compounds in the atmosphere, according to a Mexican federal report. And so in 1989, the Mexico City government rolled out a new program to get its denizens out of their cars and onto public transportation. The program, called Hoy No Circula, forces most drivers to give up their cars one weekday every week according to the last number of their license plate. For example, people with license plates ending in “5” cannot drive on Fridays. Regardless of what number their license plates end in, many residents seem to manage to drive on all days ending in “y,” finds Lucas W. Davis, an economist at the University of Michigan. In the February 2008 issue of the Journal of Political Economy, Davis shows that air pollution levels have not… Environment, Government 2008-08-18T14:00:00-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/from_the_ground_up/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/from_the_ground_up/ The Western Ghats, a mountain range running 1,000 miles down the western coast of India, is one of the world’s natural treasures. With rain forests, dry forests, swamps, and rivers, the range is home to 1,600 flowering plants found nowhere else on the planet, as well as to scores of endangered animals, including tigers and elephants. No less important, millions of people live in the Ghats, and many of their livelihoods are intertwined with the region’s natural bounty. But in 1993, when botanist Kamal Bawa received a World Wildlife Fund grant to help the Soligas, an indigenous tribe living in the Ghats and dependent on forest products, he found a region devastated by deforestation and misuse. In the developed world, fragile ecosystems often enjoy ample research describing them, organizations attempting to preserve them, and policies protecting them. But all Bawa saw in the Ghats was a patchwork of government protections that amounted to little more than a conservation Band-Aid. Most of the existing research was irrelevant to the Ghats’ problems or didn’t link to government policies. NGOs tried to help, but they invariably overlooked the social and economic aspects of conservation. Meanwhile, the Ghats faced pressures from mining, dam building,… Environment, Social Entrepreneurship 2008-07-28T14:00:00-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/praise_the_lord_but_dim_the_lights/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/praise_the_lord_but_dim_the_lights/ When the Rev. Sally Bingham speaks from the pulpit of Grace Cathedral, a landmark Episcopal church atop San Francisco’s Nob Hill, she’s more likely to preach about saving the Earth than saving souls. Global warming is a moral issue, she tells the faithful: “If you profess a love for God, then you have a responsibility to be a steward of creation.” It’s a lofty message. But it turns out that doing the right thing, spiritually speaking, can be as easy as changing a lightbulb. Congregants at Grace Cathedral and thousands of other houses of worship are putting their good stewardship into practice by monitoring their energy use, installing energy-saving appliances, and even placing solar panels near their steeples. Bingham and her nonprofit organization, the Regeneration Project, have launched the Interfaith Power and Light Campaign, which is gaining converts across the United States – and garnering attention everywhere from Capitol Hill to CNN. The campaign includes 4,000 congregations in 23 state chapters. Starting with their places of worship, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and Christians of all denominations are taking deliberate steps to reduce their carbon footprint. “This kind of effort helps us celebrate our common ground,” says Dr.… Environment, Arts, Culture, and Religion, Government 2008-05-02T06:00:01-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_greening_of_wal_mart/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_greening_of_wal_mart/ In 1989, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. launched one of the first major retail campaigns to sell environmentally safe products in recyclable or biodegradable packaging. The corporation promoted these eco-friendly products by labeling them with green-colored shelf tags. Although the company boasted more than 300 green products at its peak, it did not directly set or monitor the environmental standards of its suppliers. This resulted in negative publicity for Wal-Mart when the public learned that a green-labeled brand of paper towels had only a recycled tube – the towels themselves were unrecycled paper treated with chlorine bleach. The green tag program began to wane, and by the mid-1990s environmental issues seemed to have slipped off the company’s list of priorities. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart’s reputation among consumers was also slipping. Issues surrounding its competitive practices and labor policies loomed large in the public eye. “The company’s environmental record was nothing to boast about, either,” according to one Fortune article.1 Indeed, a 2005 McKinsey & Company study found that between 2 percent and 8 percent of consumers had stopped shopping at Wal-Mart because of the company’s practices.2 Against this backdrop, Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott Jr. unveiled a new plan… Environment, Corporate Social Responsiblity 2008-04-07T15:32:00-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/garden_variety_revolution/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/garden_variety_revolution/ Of earthworms Charles Darwin wrote, “It may be doubted if there are any other animals which have played such an important part in the history of the world as these lowly organized creatures.” With the help of a talented social entrepreneur, hard work, and good luck, earthworms are making history again at TerraCycle Inc. in Trenton, N.J. The eco-friendly gardening supply company, which turns worm castings into organic liquid plant fertilizer, is growing faster than a wonga wonga vine (Pandorea pandorana) in springtime. It’s also affirming the green movement’s place in mainstream business. TerraCycle not only takes worm castings – the technical term for worm poop – and makes organic plant food, but also uses recycled soda bottles and other recycled containers to package all its products. Although the company purchases most of its recycled packaging from professional suppliers, it also reimburses charities and schoolchildren for sending in their recyclables. TerraCycle buys the castings from independent worm farmers around the country and then brews them in big tanks at a Trenton facility called “the worm gin.” “Better, greener, cheaper” is the company’s motto. The company’s natural market is home gardeners – especially those worried about the safety… Environment, Social Entrepreneurship 2008-03-30T06:00:00-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/equal_partners/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/equal_partners/ At dawn, a handful of tourists sit in watchful silence on a floating platform, hoping to spot one of the giant river otters that live in this Amazonian oxbow lake. Their Peruvian guide peers through her binoculars. She directs their gaze to a macaw whose call descends from the rain forest canopy. Back at the lodge, the tourists relax in thatched-roof open-air buildings constructed from sustainable forest materials. At dinner, they enjoy a buffet of traditional Peruvian foods, some grown by local farmers. All of the kitchen and cleaning staff, the drivers, and many of the multilingual guides come from the local community. The tourists are guests at Posada Amazonas, an ecologically friendly lodge in southeastern Peru that operates as a partnership between the Lima-based for-profit company Rainforest Expeditions and the community of Infierno, which includes the native Ese’eja people and more recent settlers. “Tourism operators often strive for buy-in from the local community, but Posada Amazonas goes further,” says Amanda Stronza, an assistant professor of anthropology at Texas A&M University. The partnership engages the local people as owners and decision makers, she says. As a result, the business gains valuable local knowledge and labor and the locals gain valuable… Environment, Economic Development, Arts, Culture, and Religion, Corporate Social Responsiblity 2008-02-08T22:21:00-08:00