Dana Frasz is a food entrepreneur.  She wants to recycle food, taking the food that’s not consumed and putting it into the hands of those who cannot afford it.  She wants companies to stop wasting so much food – at the grocery story and in restaurants.  She wants us all to be aware of how much we’re throwing in the dustbin.  Too idealistic?  Frasz would argue otherwise.  Hear her talk about her passion – FoodShift. 

How much waste is there currently in the US and how accurate are these figures?

40% of all the food produced in the US is wasted.

This figure is from national experts on food waste – author, Jonathan Bloom wrote “American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half its Food” and Dana Gunders has been researching this issue for at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

What are grocery stores doing currently to prevent food waste?  Are there any policies in place to prevent this?

Some grocery stores are donating excess food or marking down the prices of food that is still good but may be past its peak freshness, damaged in some way or cosmetically imperfect.  There is a federal policy in place to encourage food donation.  It’s called the Good Samaritan Food Act and it was passed specifically to encourage the donation of food.  It protects food donors from liability as long as they are donating to a non-profit.  Many food donors can also receive tax deductions for their donations.

What has been the toughest part for you, as an activist and a social entrepreneur, in this effort?

I am really disturbed by the excessive waste and consumption in American culture.

Our materialistic lifestyles in the US have negative social and environmental impacts around the world. Rather than living in harmony with the earth, we are perpetuating a culture that is dependent on exploitation, extraction and acquisition. Food waste is not only a waste of nutrition, it squanders water, depletes soil, wastes fossil fuels and adds greatly to the world’s carbon footprint.

What is your solution? 

Food Shift is working with Oakland schools to ensure surplus food from the cafeteria is redistributed to students and families rather than thrown in the garbage. We are working with a local grocer who has expressed interest in paying Food Shift to recover food from their stores.  This would allow us to employ someone in the process while reducing waste disposal costs for the business.  We are interested in developing food recovery and redistribution models that increase access to more nutrition food, reduce waste and generate revenue in some way so they can sustain and scale – like low-cost markets and value-added products.

How feasible is it?

We have trash and recycling removal in this country, why not have a food recovery service sector that recovers and redistributes surplus food as an extension of our current waste management system?

It may sound crazy, but it is realistic strategy and could create a lot of jobs in the green economy.  Generating revenue from food that would otherwise be wasted is possible, but by no means easy.  It’s a difficult challenge to ensure food safety, to establish new distribution channels and to pilot new models that are outside of the current norm.

Why do stores not simply list fresh foods items as 50% off at night, an hour or so before closing?  That seems to make sense to avoid waste and still make some money. 

It makes so much sense – and people love a good deal.  Berkeley Bowl estimates it sells $1,500 per day of produce off its bargain shelf, which offers bags of damaged or nearly expired produce for  99 cents, Andronicos is running a program with Food Star to sell cosmetically imperfect produce at a low cost and Zero Percent is a technology that is allowing food establishment to post their surplus through an online application at either a discount or for donation.  These are all great innovations that more businesses should adopt to reduce waste, save money and protect the environment.

Are there models for food waste elsewhere in the world (that you’ve read/seen) that you would like to see implemented here in the US?

The United Kingdom is leading the way on this issue. A campaign there called Love Food Hate Waste has reduced food waste by 18% over the course of 5 years.  The UK has also standardized date labels so they are not so confusing for consumers.  Many grocery stores there provide storage instructions for fruits and vegetables and informational tips and ads are displayed in over 12,000 stores.  Instead of buy-one-get-one-free promotions, some UK stores are piloting a buy-one-give-one-free or get one later program. I also really like Rubbies in the  Rubble – a company in the UK making jam and chutney from rescued produce.

What can each person do? 

Become a food waste champion within your family and circle of friends!  There are lots of recipes and other tips online.  Here is a storage guide. And until May 12th you can vote for Food Shift in this contest to win $50,000 of free advertising on San Francisco’s public transit system.   If Food Shift wins this contest, it would mean thousands of people would be exposed to informational ads about the social and environmental costs of wasted food. Our campaign would be the first of its kind in this country and would inspire and invite Bay Area residents to be part of the solution. Help us win by voting now and sharing with your friends!   http://bit.ly/ZfntKG

THOUGHTS POST SKOLL WORLD FORUM:

When it comes to sustainability, one of the things that has always nagged me about companies that “go green” is that it typically just means recycling things around the office, some minor carpooling and installing or purchasing renewable energy.  There is nothing wrong with these efforts, but it’s a bit like the Human Torch staving off Mr. Freeze with a Bic Lighter.  Sure it’s the right direction and maybe even setting a good example others will follow, but it’s a serious, nearly negligent under-utilization of power.

The vast bulk of most companies’ environmental and social impact comes well before they decide how to power the lights in their offices.  The majority of a product’s impact is often in the sourcing and manufacture of its material components.  In others, like automobiles, the impact is in how the product is used (ie burning fuels for 10 years).  Rarely, therefore, is the majority of a company’s impact in the scope of a typical greening agenda.

Sustainable sourcing is a major step forward and was the subject of the session Sustainable Sourcing: The Business Imperative.  Moderator Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto led an interesting discussion on the topic and seeded the most interesting and actionable insight in the process.   Together with the panelists, William Rosenzweig, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Physic Ventures, Mary Jo Cook, Chief Impact Officer of FairTrade USA and Jason Clay, Senior Vice President, Markets of World Wildlife Fund US, the Dean Martin explored audience selected topics.  The process started with a macro conditions exploration including these gems paraphrased from Jason Clay –

The foreboding:   In the next forty years we have to produce as much food and fiber as in the last 8000

The more hopeful (room to improve):  the bottom 25% of producers create 50% of the impact and only 10% of the products

The most interesting portion of the discussion was that on the barriers to adoption of truly sustainable sourcing, playing off some highly relevant audience members.  It became clear that there are indeed political barriers in convincing CEO’s and investors that sustainable sourcing can be good or at worst neutral to the bottom line and communication challenges in bringing that message down through organizations to the purchasers who ultimately select products.  But, an undercurrent that had been popping up throughout the discussion became acutely apparent.  There is a very real practical challenge in enacting a sustainable sourcing policy.  Supply chains are so complex and often opaque that it is incredibly challenging to actually determine how much carbon or water may be required to produce a product or whether all components meet humanitarian or labor standards.

The need, as Dean Martin highlighted, is for a comprehensive toolset to allow all actors in the value chain to enact sustainability goals.  He advocated an assemblage of foundations and non-profits working in related areas to come together around this issue as one that can transform so many others.  I believe he is right that all too often those seeking change will look to closely at their particular issue’s direct on the ground impact, and miss the root causes or potential solutions that could exist.  He further advocated that this assemblage work to create a tool map of sorts which can be disseminated and then broken off by anyone who can fill the puzzle.

This got me excited and thinking:  This could be a real step towards real change.  But, what would such a toolset include?  My own first pass would be:

-        Open supply chain mapping data & software

-        Common ranking and metrics for impacts – positive and negative

-        “Additive Impact Analysis” – my name for the ability to take the impact of a component product and add it to the whole, all the way through the value chain

-        Choice software that allows a purchaser to quickly see the impacts and balance them against cost and more common factors quickly and clearly

-        Better business methodologies for measuring supply chain risk as it relates to environmental and other “soft” factors

-        A mechanism for supply chain insurance that does not require creation of a duplicate supply chain but instead makes existing ones more distributed, sustainable and secure

-        Public indexes for key environmental data from suppliers around the world.  This can help bring aid and attention to the worst and plaudits for the best

-        A more comprehensive consumer facing labeling system – there are too many to the point where impact is being lost

-        Metrification of environmental and social impacts

It’s imperative that those who have super-hero leverage over the levers of the global sourcing system activate them.  The top 1000 companies control 33% of the global economy; if they act, the world changes.  What tools do you think are missing to convince even a less forward leaning company that they can source sustainably?

This is a guest post by Michael Thornton, a current Skoll Scholar and MBA student at Said Business School, University of Oxford, who attend the Skoll World Forum this April.

(Photo: Antonio Viva, Creative Commons)

Investors and partners at the Youth Employment Partnership ribbon cutting ceremony on Dec. 11. 2012, in East Oakland. (Photo by Mosaic)

by David Bornstein

This originally appeared in the New York Times as a Fixes column.

If you wanted to get large numbers of people actively engaged in helping to solve global warming, how might you go about it? For years, the main approach in the environmental movement has been to sound the alarm bell and implore people to consume less, switch to green products, recycle, and speak up to companies and politicians. It hasn’t always been an easy sell. However, if the approach of a promising Oakland-based start-up takes hold, there may be another line of action that could become available to ordinary people: directly financing renewable energy.

In January, a company called Mosaic, made a splash in the renewable energy world when it introduced a crowd-funding platform that makes it possible for small, non-accredited investors to earn interest financing clean energy projects. When Mosaic posted its first four investments online – solar projects offering 4.5 percent returns to investors who could participate with loans as small as $25 — the company’s co-founder, Billy Parish, thought it would take a month to raise the $313,000 required. Within 24 hours, 435 people had invested and the projects were sold out. The company had spent just $1,000 on marketing. All told, Mosaic has raised $1.1 million for a dozen solar projects to date. Now it is connecting with other solar developers to identify new projects for financing. More than 10,000 people have already signed on and are standing by to invest.

A generation and a half after the first Earth Day, we may be witnessing the coming of age of solar power. Last year, when Warren Buffett’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company floated an $850 million bond offering for the Topaz Solar Farm, in California, it was the first time a public bond offering for a U.S. photovoltaic power project had been deemed “investment grade.” The offering was oversubscribed by more than $400 million and the company is now planning a second round to raise potentially $1.265 billion more. And last month, it was reported that First Solar, a manufacturer of solar panels, had signed an agreement with the El Paso Electric Company to sell its power for less than half the cost of power from typical coal plants. In 2011, almost half of the 208 gigawatts of electric capacity added globally came from renewable power, primarily wind and solar (pdf), and almost half of the additional power capacity in the European Union came from solar alone.

A big reason is cost. Over the past five years, the price of photovoltaic panels has declined by about 80 percent. We’re used to hearing about Moore’s Law, which refers to the steady and predictable increases in power and decline in cost of integrated circuits. Swanson’s Law holds that each time global manufacturing capacity of photovoltaic cells doubles, the costs fall by 20 percent.

From 1977 to 2013, the price per watt of crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells dropped from about $77 per watt to 74 cents per watt. Couple that with another innovation — the spread of companies that lease, rather than sell, solar power systems – add in some tax incentives — and decentralized solar has become a viable option for many homeowners and businesses. This is a far cry from the time when buying a solar system meant paying upfront for 25 or 30 years of power.

If it seems far-fetched to imagine millions of Americans becoming mini energy producers, just look at Germany, where 51 percent of the country’s clean energy production is owned by individuals or farmers, while major utilities control just 6.5 percent of it.

One of the Mosaic financed systems now sits atop a 26,000-square-foot building in Oakland’s San Antonio neighborhood owned by the nonprofit Youth Employment Partnership, which provides education and workforce skills training to a thousand teenagers each year. YEP’s system, which cost about $265,000, was financed by a combination of its own funds, government and private grants, and a crowdfunded loan. Its utility bills have dropped by 85 percent. Because of the grants, YEP is leasing its system for 10 years and will have the ability to purchase it for a low price after that period. (Without subsidies, the lease would likely run for 20 or 25 years.) YEP’s monthly utility and lease outlays are less than before. “By year 10 we can own the system outright and then most of our power will be free,” explained its executive director, Michele Clark. “But what really matters is that it frees up money that we can use for our case management and mental health work.”

If electricity costs continue to rise – for many consumers, they have tripled since 1980 – the economics will prove more favorable. “If you buy solar, you fix your energy costs for the next 25 years or longer,” explains Marco Krapels, executive vice president of Rabobank, a major solar financier, who is a member of Mosaic’s board of directors. “You can have power independence. And it happens to be clean.”

There is another benefit, added Clark. The system aligns with YEP’s educational mission. “We have this great little computer program that shows us the electricity we’re producing,” she said. “We look at it on sunny days and see it at the top of the chart and discuss it. Then we take our students on field trips to the roof.”

Last June, Bloomberg New Energy Finance published a report (pdf) estimating that the expected continuing surge in demand for solar systems over the next nine years in the United States would require $62 billion in new financing. That’s a big gap. Even though more than half of American adults say they are “alarmed” or “concerned”about global warming and about a quarter of the nation’s rooftops are suitable for solar power installations (pdf), including two thirds of those in New York [1], only a small number of U.S. banks are involved in financing solar projects. Many lack the expertise to evaluate the risks; others have little interest in modest power projects. “Solar is still by and large an asset class that’s not well understood,” said Krapels, of Rabobank.

But peer-to-peer lenders like Prosper.com and Lending Club – once considered improbable businesses — have revealed new possibilities. Combined, they have brokered over $1.8 billion in loans, offering lower interest rates and higher returns than borrowers or lenders could get from banks. At the same time, crowdfunders like Kickstarter, RocketHub, Indiegogo, Seedmatchand the aptly named Crowdfunder, have helped groups raise hundreds of millions of dollars for a multitude of projects and business ventures. Kiva has built a bridge that has allowed individuals to lend over $400 million to microfinance institutions. Now, we’re seeing the early application of this idea to clean energy, with Mosaic and others, including SunFunder and Milaap.

How many people will want to participate? How quickly could the pipeline of investments grow? How will the investments perform? All these are open questions. But other crowdfunders have solved them. Currently, one bottleneck is the time and expense of due diligence for each deal. Mosaic is a founding member of a working group called TruSolar which is developing standards to streamline this process and ensure project quality. Mosaic is also drawing on the experience of online business lenders like On Deck Capital andKabbage, which leverage large data sets to evaluate lending risks cost effectively. “We’re building a portal for solar developers to submit project information electronically in an efficient manner that automates initial credit screening and analysis,” says Parish. “This will make the loan process much simpler, faster and more transparent for borrowers — and improve project quality for our investors.”

Another concern is panel quality, explains Conrad Burke, global marketing director for DuPont Photovoltaic Solutions, which is also a TruSolar member. As costs have plummeted, solar module manufacturers have had to fight for survival. “In such an overcapacity situation, corners are being cut,” he said. Some manufacturers have compromised on the quality of things like panel backsheets, which protect solar cells. “We’ve seen panels which are less than 10 years old deteriorating or failing,” he added. “You have companies which are two or three years old warrantying products for 25 years. We have to raise awareness about this. The industry can ill afford a black eye.”

All power systems fail at times, but if solar modules are not highly reliable over their warranty periods, the economic argument for their use is much weaker.

Crowdfunding holds particular promise for the developing world, where financing for renewable energy is even harder to come by — and where distributed solar power is an urgent need, observes Justin Guay, of the Sierra Club’s international climate program. The irony is that very poor people in the developing world who lack electricity pay far more for kerosene and candles than they would for solar energy. Over a decade, a poor family may spend $1,800 on these energy sources, five or six times what it would take to install a home solar system that could power lights, cellphones, computers, television, and so forth.

Today, with NGO, businesses and microfinance networks reaching into villages and shantytowns around the world, an infrastructure exists to deploy solar systems using a sustainable leasing business model. Just replacing kerosene — a fire hazard and contributor to pulmonary disease – with solar would yield enormous health benefits, reduce greenhouse gases, improve quality of life and expand economic and educational opportunities.

But the money needs to be fronted. “Large international financial organizations like the World Bank are not structured to do it,” says Guay. “Their bread and butter is to push out a huge coal plant or a hydro dam. If we’re looking at a distributed renewals future, crowdfunding is an exciting approach, particularly if it is coupled with the ability to invest through mobile phones.”

The biggest levers remain government policies. Domestically, if the U.S. government changed regulations around Real Estate Investment Trusts and Master Limited Partnerships (a bill recently introduced by Senator Chris Coons aims to do the latter), it could open up billions for renewable energy investments. Internationally, governments and multilaterals could reduce the perceived risk of solar investments through loan guarantees and other incentives.

But all that takes political will. Which gets back to the crowdsourcing ethos: let everyone participate in the solution and they will get more engaged. “Even if people invest $25, it helps them to think about energy in a completely new way,” says Parish. “They can be an energy producer, not just an energy consumer, and it will help them understand how our energy system works.”

“If we are going to solve this problem,” he adds, “We need to build a propositional movement, not just an oppositional movement. We’ll need to tap into people’s enlightened self interest.”

FOOTNOTES

[1] Solar power does best in the south, of course — a system in San Diego provides about 50 percent more energy over the course of a year than a similar one in Seattle (pdf) — but it is suitable for northern areas, too. New York City is home to 560 solar projects that generate 11.5 megawatts of power. But the city has the rooftop capacity to increase its solar output 500 fold. Theoretically, it could supply 40 percent of its peak electricity needs from solar. (For a look at the city’s rooftop capacity in detail, check out thiscool interactive map developed by Sustainable CUNY. According to the calculations, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s roof has enough space to generate the carbon saving equivalent of 6,600 trees – more than a quarter of the total in Central Park.)

In the latest YES Magazine (“What Would Nature Do?”) the natural world takes center stage.  Questions such as, how much is enough?  Can new designs come from nature itself?  Can we start to think of nature as alive, as a holder of rights much like ourselves?

Sven Eberliein writes:

Viewing nature as a source of ideas—rather than merely a source of goods—has a lengthy history among indigenous people. But Western industrial culture had mostly relegated such inquiry to the realm of obscure academic research.

Activist Vandana Shiva looks at what is wrong with our idea of growth and how the answers to sustainability are not locked in boardrooms or annual reports, but in the forest.

Today, at a time of multiple crises intensified by globalization, we need to move away from the paradigm of nature as dead matter. We need to move to an ecological paradigm, and for this, the best teacher is nature herself.

She draws from the noted (and much loved) Bengali poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore

In his essay “Tapovan” (Forest of Purity), Tagore writes: “Indian civilization has been distinctive in locating its source of regeneration, material and intellectual, in the forest, not the city. India’s best ideas have come where man was in communion with trees and rivers and lakes, away from the crowds. The peace of the forest has helped the intellectual evolution of man. The culture of the forest has fueled the culture of Indian society. The culture that has arisen from the forest has been influenced by the diverse processes of renewal of life, which are always at play in the forest, varying from species to species, from season to season, in sight and sound and smell. The unifying principle of life in diversity, of democratic pluralism, thus became the principle of Indian civilization.”

But this isn’t limited to the Indian borders. The lessons of nature are global, she says

The forest teaches us enoughness: as a principle of equity, how to enjoy the gifts of nature without exploitation and accumulation.

Runa works with 2,000 indigenous farmers of Kichwa nationality (as pictured above) in the Ecuadorian Amazon to produce guayusa tea (Photo courtesy of subject).

By Lindsay Hebert

In December, the World Wildlife Fund Switzerland teamed with Ennovent, a supporter of sustainable innovation, to present the Tropical Forest Challenge . The initiative seeks to discover for-profit enterprises who promote tropical forest biodiversity through their work.

Runa, winner of the company category, creates US markets for guayusa, tea grown by indigenous farmers in Ecuador. Planting Empowerment  won for the startup category and advocates responsible use of natural resources through agroforestry projects in Panama.

Dowser speaks with Runa’s CEO Tyler Gage and Planting Empowerment’s Director of Marketing Andrew Parrucci about mixing business with stewardship of the forest. 

When did your appreciation for the forest begin?

Gage: Since I was a kid I was fascinated by the concept of the Amazon. Growing up in a suburban area, the idea of the rainforest was like a fantasy to me. I can remember seeing a map of South America, pointing to Ecuador and saying “I want to go there.”

Parrucci: Even when I was very young I had a passion for working with my hands. After I graduated from college, I took a year off and did woodworking for a company that does architectural restorations. After, when I was volunteering for the Peace Corps in Panama, the wood they were logging out of the area was wood I had used as a woodworker. So I was able to see the other side of the industry, the tropical deforestation and the drastic environmental consequences.

How do your business models promote biodiversity and sustainability?

Parucci: The traditional forestry model is to plant a single type of tree. It’s cheaper to do that, but it’s more damaging for the environment because it requires heavier chemical inputs. Typically, the more biodiverse the forestry system, the healthier it is. By showing the people that we can help them earn more income with the land they’re using now, we hope to keep them tied to that land, instead of going out to cut more rainforest. (See graph on left, courtesy of Planting Empowerment).

Gage: One of the main issues with modern agriculture is that it’s not consistent with how the Amazonian people relate to the environment or a sustainable way to manage resources in a biodiverse place. The community does forest gardening, managing small gardens with fruit and medicinal plants within the forest. Native plants had been grown this way but hadn’t reached the market. This gave us impetus to produce them in a sustainable way while providing financial incentive to avoid destruction of the forest.

Planting Empowerment leases land from Panamanians while Runa works with farmers in the Amazon rainforest. How does the local culture contribute to ideas about conservation?

Parucci: After living in Panama for two years, my partners and I came to understand that people who are cutting down trees depend on them as a source of income. It’s a big part of how they put food on the table. It’s easy to say that deforestation is bad, but it’s different when you understand that it has social consequences and in some ways, [conservation] would be taking away their livelihood. It’s a constant balancing act. That’s why we lease land from them to show that we can take deforested land, regenerate forest cover and generate revenue.

Gage: The rainforest plays an essential role in the identity of the local people. It is part of who they are in the deepest way imaginable. It’s not just the place that they live, it’s their supermarket and pharmacy. Runa means “fully alive,” or most fully a person, but their notion of personhood isn’t dependant on being human. There can be jaguar runa or tree runa. They have a very intimate relationship with the forest.

Photo courtesy of Nari Uddug Kendra, one of Global Fund for Women’s Bangladeshi grantee partners.

By Lindsay Hebert

The fire that killed 112 garment factory workers in Bangladesh last month led to the scrutiny of brands like Gap and WalMart that use factories abroad to produce low-cost clothing for American consumers. Perhaps the most disturbing account came from a 19-year-old woman who survived the blaze by jumping from a third floor window of the building. She is now desperate to get her job back.

One of the world’s poorest countries, Bangladesh has a $20 billion a year garment industry that makes up 80 percent of its exports. About 80 percent of the industry’s workers are female.

Shalini Nataraj, director of advocacy and partnerships for the Global Fund for Women, said that the growth of garment factories in Bangladesh has created opportunities for women to become wage earners and to transcend restrictive cultural norms.  However, dire economic factors make them vulnerable to exploitation.

“We need to have global consensus on things such as basic workers’ rights, so that companies and countries can’t create their own conditions that have lower standards,” she said.

But corporate and government action is slow moving. Inspections prompted by the disaster uncovered several factories without basic fire safety measures; clothing production will continue in the month offenders have been given to remedy the deficiencies.

“Bangladesh does have law and labor and safety codes on paper. What needs to happen is uniform enforcement,” Nataraj said. “Self-policing by corporations is just not sufficient.” Major retailers have yet to sign on to a mutual agreement for safe working conditions.

As fire safety dominates press releases and media coverage, women’s advocate groups propose a more comprehensive agenda for reform.

The Global Fund provides resources to women-led and women-focused groups in Bangladesh, enabling them to set their own priorities for change. These organizations have used their newfound employment as a platform for legitimizing women’s rights.

The Bangladesh Centre for Workers’ Solidarity (BCWS), a Global Fund grantee, was founded in 1999 by three displaced women garment workers who were appalled by the exploitation of their fellow employees. They have since helped women establish trade unions to bargain for fair wages, maternity leave and safe labor conditions.

Phulki, another grantee, works with over 2,000 workers and helps provide childcare facilities at factory sites. The organization also campaigns employers to offer skills-development training by promoting the economic benefits associated with capacity building.

“We believe that supporting our grantees will benefit everyone in the long run – consumers, workers and the companies for which they manufacture products,” said Nataraj.

Photo Courtesy of Water.org

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By Lindsay Hebert

Tilling virtual crops from their urban apartments and assembling criminal empires from the comfort of suburban homes, gamers seem to live in worlds far removed from reality.

Zynga Inc., the provider of some of Facebook’s most popular games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars, projects a different picture. This month, the company has partnered with Water.org to raise money for a resource precious to both FarmVille 2 farmers and actual communities all over the world – water.

During the month long campaign, three branded items – sprinklers, water pumps and jerry cans – are available for purchase within FarmVille 2. Zynga will donate 100 percent of the proceeds to Water.org.

Founded by Gary White and the actor Matt Damon, Water.org provides safe water and sanitation to communities in need. Funds support well-building, toilet and microfinance initiatives.

This collaboration marks a growing trend in gaming for social impact. Nonprofits welcome the opportunity to raise awareness for their causes within vast player networks. FarmVille 2 has over 56 million monthly active users, many who play the game several times per day.

“We try to catch them in the place where they’re enjoying themselves,” said Mike McCamon, chief community officer of Water.org. “It’s an interesting place to introduce them to the problem.”

Ken Weber, executive director of Zynga.org, believes that the immersive environments of social games attract passionate players who invest their time for months and even years.

“These games are contextual for them,” he said. “Water is important in farming and in the world – it is a naturally occurring relationship. We are connecting something in people’s lives. We are interested in creating a dynamic that makes it work.”

That donors are having fun, increasing the production of their online farms while supporting development in communities worldwide, creates a parallel less prominent in other campaigns such as Facebook Gifts. Released earlier this year, the Facebook feature allows users to donate to one of eleven charities (Water.org included) on behalf of their friends. Although this brings publicity to both the cause and the Facebook user, it doesn’t help the virtual grass grow.

Developers linking virtual challenges to real world results capitalize on gaming’s allure. Game designer Jane McGonigal created SuperBetter while she was bedridden after a concussion.  The game allows players to become superheroes fighting their own health battles by accomplishing tasks in their everyday lives. Bad habits are more exciting to break when reframed as “bad guys” in the virtual environment.

But gamer goodwill for the physical world should not be discounted. More than just a fundraiser, the Water.org campaign aims to educate users about the world water crisis. By clicking on the Water.org items for sale, players are presented with information about the organization and given the option to visit the nonprofit’s website.

Many players are willing to step out of the game to learn about the real one. According to McCamon, several of Water.org’s highest web traffic days have been due in large part to visitors redirected from FarmVille 2.

Weber echoes this sentiment about the interests of Zynga’s users. He says that Zynga.org, the company’s philanthropic division, was developed in 2009 in response to employee and player demand for a connection to real world issues. One of the first campaigns raised over $1 million for Haiti earthquake relief in 2010. This success led Zynga to focus on everyday philanthropic causes beyond unpredictable natural disasters. To date, Zynga has raised over $13 million for nonprofits such as Save the Children, Habitat for Humanity and World Food Programme.

So there you have it, virtual farmers, mobsters and superheroes – keep gaming, and recruit your friends.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ann Leonard exemplifies new media – by fusing cartoony graphics with activism, her first video, The Story of Stuff, went viral in 2007 getting over 15 million views online.   Now, she’s got a new video (see above) that takes the message further.  How do we materialize all these ideas and civic engagement into tangible results?  How do we create change, not just talk about it.

Dowser speaks with Ann and co-director, Michael O’Heaney about the new campaign,  ”The Story of Change.”

Do you have any data on how many people ultimately saw the last video, the story of stuff?

The Story of Stuff was the first film we put on the Internet, in December 2007. We had hoped to get 50,000 views in its lifespan; to our surprise, it had that many views in less than 2 days! It’s now had over 15 million online views. Every day we hear of teachers, ministers, corporate H.R. programs and others who use it in group settings as well, so we can’t track the total number of views. We now have 8 films – all free to watch at www.storyofstuff.org – that have together been viewed over 20 million times online.

How did that project transpire and what were your intentions with it when you started it?  Did you have certain goals that you wanted to hit – did you?  I imagine that it going viral was not on the agenda but an added bonus.

Prior to making The Story of Stuff film, I spent over a decade visiting the factories where our stuff is made and the dumps where our stuff is dumped.

I got to see firsthand the often hidden environmental, social, and health costs of the way we make, use and throw away stuff. I was frustrated at how little awareness there was on these issues and I wanted to turn the volume up on the conversation. I started experimenting with ways to talk about it without getting trapped in wonky technical language or leaving audiences weighed down with guilt and fear.  I developed a fact-filled but entertaining presentation which was the precursor to The Story of Stuff.

When I couldn’t keep up with requests to give the talk in person, I decided to make a film to reach a broader audience. I hoped it would spark conversation, but in my wildest dreams I never expected it would be viewed by millions, in every country in the world, translated into over two dozen languages, and inspire a book and film series. I am delighted that so many people are ready to dive into this much needed conversation about how we can do things better.

With this new campaign, how do you ensure that these “changemakers” really to do act upon their principles?

After almost 5 years of making and sharing content (films, podcasts, curricula), we’ve developed a pretty robust community of people who care about issues related to Stuff. It’s a diverse community – some are focusing on toxic exposures to workers in electronics factories, others work on shifting their own life to feel less weighed down by consumerism – but overall the community is clear and aligned about our core values and destination.

Turn vacant lots into community gardens! Lobby for bike lanes and more public spaces! Work for chemical policy reform!  Get corporations out of our democracy! It’s all good.

On the practical side, we stay in touch with the people who take the Changemaker quiz and who have signed up on our website or social media platforms – both via email and in person when possible. We have over 350,000 people signed up already and we’re going to keep sharing information, offering guidance and facilitating exchanges to flex our citizen muscles.

How do we get corporations to change their ways? Money seems to still dictate the world.

Corporations are not a homogenous bunch.

Some are leaders in finding sustainable solutions – either because they happen to have leaders who honestly care (think Patagonia or Interface Carpet) or because they realize the economic benefits of environmental improvements. Others are begrudgingly making changes, after being targeted by citizen campaigns or because they realize the inevitability of stronger environmental health protections.

Some though are real laggards, continuing to invest in the dinosaur economy and using their financial might to sway elected officials to delay real solutions. Ultimately, the best way to get across-the-board improvements in corporate behavior is with stronger laws that prioritize public health and environmental sustainability over short-term corporate profit.

And the only way we’re going to get that is by getting corporations out of our democracy and getting people back in. Corporations have more money, but people have more voice and more votes – if we use them.

How much progress do you think that we’ve made in the last decade as more and more global governance meetings are addressing this and there are platforms such as the UN Global Compact for companies to attest to more “people-friendly” approaches?

While there has been huge progress on raising awareness, a bounty of “green speak” by business and government leaders, and some real progress in specific isolated areas, overall, we’re losing. We’re losing big time.

The biological and physical systems are the planet are increasingly stressed, terrifyingly near tipping points from which it will be difficult to recover.

Globally, we’re now using 1.5 planets worth of resources and waste assimilation capacity each year. This is a problem when we only have one planet. Our trajectory is not sustainable, especially with both population and per capacity consumption on the rise. I understand that this is not the most fun thing to talk about, but we’ve got to put it on the table and figure out what to do as quickly, efficiently and fairly as possible.

What did you learn in the process of the Story of Stuff campaign?  What were some of the challenges?

My experience with The Story of Stuff taught me that there are millions and millions of people who are ready for this difficult conversation and who want to work together for a better future. It’s fueled my sense of hope and possibility!

It’s always a challenge to talk about such serious and grim information in a way that leaves people engaged and inspired, rather than scared and depressed. The empirical data about the environment today is scary and depressing, but that’s not a great place from which to make change, so I like to acknowledge that reality and then move on to a more hopeful and powerful place.

What is your ultimate goal with this campaign?

My goal is to transform systems of production and consumption – or how we make, use and throw away Stuff – to be healthy, sustainable and fair. In doing this work, I’ve learned that there’s no technical reason we can’t achieve this; we just need more engaged citizens demanding better of our leaders in business and government. So a secondary goal has evolved – to inspire people to be engaged citizens so we can make positive change together.

Do you feel that video via the Internet is the best way to communicate these ideas?  Or do you like any other new media platforms as well?

Freely sharing our films on the internet has been enormously successful. They’ve been viewed all over the world, translated in many languages, shown on TV, incorporated into dance performances and inspired puppet shows and parade floats from Boston to India to South Africa. There’s just no way we could have reached so many people without a free, internet-based film. But we’re excited about evolving communication tools, too. At The Story of Stuff Project, we experiment with all kinds of new media tools and platforms, as well as tried and true tools: talking to people in person, presenting at gatherings, writing a book. Just as our audience is diverse, we need diverse communication platforms. The single voice broadcast model is dead.
What is the greatest lesson from Gandhi’s efforts against apartheid and suppression by the British (which you mention in the video) that can be applied to this campaign?

There are a number of lessons from Gandhi that have influenced my work and that I bring to The Story of Stuff: Aim high. Don’t compromise our values. Respect our opponents. Embrace diversity. Question what doesn’t seem fair. Be willing to be uncomfortable. Maintain compassion and love.

What does the new economy that you refer to look like?  Isn’t the most sustainable solution to get rid of these so-called “mega marts” or stop selling sugary bubbly water (cola)?  But that’s not likely to happen.  So, what’s a happy medium?

Looking at our current economy and corporate money-marinated government, change may seem unlikely. But looking at the data about the state of the planet and the growing number of people calling for a better future, change is inevitable.

The question is not if we’re going to change, but how. Are we going to refuse to innovate until our backs are against the wall and our options are few, or are we going to be proactive, strategic, and compassionate and figure out together how to build an economy that works for all? We don’t know exactly what that new economy will look like since it hasn’t been invented yet. Physical realities dictate that it will have to be an economy that recognizes the planet’s limits. If our movement is successful, this new economy will produce safe products, happy people and a healthy environment.

Kumi Naidoo, International Executive Director of Greenpeace, on a visit to India interacts with Greenpeace volunteers near India Gate in Delhi. (Photo by Greenpeace)

KUMI Naidoo of South Africa has emerged as the Intl. Executive Director of Greenpeace after a lifetime of activism.  He was recently seen at the much publicized Rio+20 conference.  We ask him about the effectiveness of these conferences and if the private sector is really taking any tangible steps towards environmental protection and sustainability.

You said that Rio was a failure much like Copenhagen was a disappointment.  Have you lost hope in global governance for environmental issues?  Have you found any of these meetings to be useful/fruitful?

Our governments have been taken hostage by short term corporate interests and that is indeed a depressing reality.

But meetings such as Rio and Copenhagen also always spark change and ripples that go beyond any official political outcomes. Copenhagen helped to make the Danish-owned energy company, DONG, abandon coal, for example, and Rio put a global spotlight on the urgent need to protect the Amazon. Standing together with the Catholic Church and the landless movement in support of our Zero Deforestation citizen law initiative in Rio was an inspiring moment for me and I am convinced we will, in the wake of Rio, collect the 1,4 million signatures we need to force the Brazilian parliament to vote on a law that could end deforestation in Brazil by 2015.

Corporations are constantly talking abut sustainability and have appointed Chief Sustainability Officers – but is any of this resulting in real change? Is there a company that you can point to and say – this is working, they’re actually trying to create change?

There are companies who are showing signs of walking the talk. For example, Google is investing prolifically in renewable energy, Nike and H&M are eliminating toxic chemicals from their supply chains, supermarket giant Sainsbury’s is sourcing sustainable seafood and backing marine reserves, and a growing number of corporations including Unilever and Nestle are refusing to buy from APP as long as it continues to clear rainforests and destroy peatlands in Indonesia. There is a lot of positive change happening out there, the tragedy is that it is not fundemantal and fast enough. Unless we get the regulations that change the status quo and make unsustainable practices expensive or illegal, we will always be playing catch up and be witness to changes that are far too incremental rather than radical.

You’ve come into this executive post having been a strong activist.  How do you balance your executive post now which requires you to engage with heads of state/ business leaders with your grassroots activists.

We are all humans and I actually find that on a one to one level there is not that much difference between talking to a grassroots activist and a CEO. My friend and fellow activist Van Jones has said that I can give a speech to poor kids and get them excited, and then give the same speech at the World Economic Forum to the richest people in the world, and get a standing ovation. I think he is exaggerating, but I do find that speaking from the heart and the soul, it is possible to engage all types in the battle for our survival.

What direction do you want to take Greenpeace towards – do you want to focus on specific issues? There has been criticism, as you know, that Greenpeace lost its core and deviated from its intent.

Greenpeace above all is about giving a voice to the earth and future generations and that passion is something I see grow every day, and every time I meet our volunteers. There is no question that climate change is the battle of our time and that we need to change our energy system and end deforestation if we want to beat it.

Greenpeace can´t do this alone and so I do want Greenpeace to work more and more with allies in civil society.

The fight against climate change and the fight against poverty are two sides of the same coin, for example.

Climate change destroys the livelihoods of millions of people. It makes the poor even poorer. The solutions to climate change like decentralized renewable energy systems also go part of the way to lifting people out of poverty.

There’s a strong connect between poverty and environmental issues – how do you try to get the global governance community to understand that there are economic implications for environmental issues and that some of the world’s poor (who pollute the least) are being hit hard by this?

The tragedy is that most people in the global governance community – or indeed in the global elite – understand this full well. If you talk to people at Davos, they *know* that they poorest are hit first and hardest by climate change, for example. But they feel stuck in structures and incentives and also at times do not have the courage to break out of established patterns.

Greenpeace does not need to preach, but use the widespread sense of something going wrong to speed up the transition to the fair and green economy we need. We need to create inspiring visions of the world we’d like to live in, and this is happening. We are campaigning for an Energy Revolution with business partners, for example. It´s our blueprint, backed up by the right science, of a renewable energy future.

Kumi Naidoo protesting oil rigs off the coast of Greenland (Photo by Greenpeace)

You said that you’d like to focus on the financial industry.  “Our aim is to get all banks to say we won’t make loans to oil, coal, gas and deforestation-related activity. We want to shut off the flow of capital. The time is right because the banks are at their most vulnerable in terms of public legitimacy.” Do you see this as even feasible?  Why would they agree?

Because risk is a language that capital understands.

We’ve exposed the financial risks for the tar sands (see here and here) and Lloyds of London – who set the gold standard for risk assessment –  have also rung the alarm bell for Arctic oil. Lloyds and the respected think tank Chatham House believe that an oil spill in the Arctic would constitute  “a unique and hard to manage risk”. Our own report Out in the cold shows that Shell investors should be worried about Shell´s Arctic plans. Our report shows that even if investors don’t care about the environment, they should be very concerned about the risks Shell is running with their money, and their future prosperity. It´s this expertise that will get us heard.

A big part of the problem with sustainability/ environmental preservation is growth – growth is seen favourably (the story of Asia’s growth has been celebrated widely) but it’s not good for the environment.  So, how do we redefine growth – should scalability not be so highly touted?  Should more local solutions be the answer?

First, growth as a goal in an of itself must be abandoned. The economy needs to be a tool to deliver societal needs and aspirations, not stand as the be all and end all of our existence.

Some sectors – such as the renewables industry – will need to grow, some people and communities will certainly need more access to resources, land and money, but overall GDP growth in the developed world in particular must not be a goal. Solutions exists and will vary from small to large, from local to global. Our energy revolution, for example, requires both massive local and decentralized solutions as well as some large-scale global ones. What matters is that we act, and that we do so fast.

Doug Lawrence is the Managing Principal of NY’s 5 Stone Capital, a new equity investor in green real estate and green business.  He speaks to us about the recent Jobs Report that has garnered some serious press.  And offers more comprehensive solutions – that don’t just target the environment but also healthy living, veterans affairs, and unemployment.

The Jobs Report that came out last Friday unveiled a rather dismal economy.  What was your take on the report?  If you had to point out one aspect of the report to policymakers (make them pay attention to it), what aspect of the report would you point to – the unemployment numbers? Low consumer confidence? Manufacturing on the decline?

What miserable report?  May 2011 seasonally adjusted unemployment was 9%.  May 2012 seasonally adjusted unemployment was 8.2%.  Are we better off now than just a year ago…YES!

But the non-seasonal number is even better.  Without the statistical smoothing of seasonal adjustments, the unemployment rate was BELOW 8% at 7.9%.  Wow!

The jobs report is completely misunderstood by the press.  In fact, there are 6 different jobs reports.  The press only looks at one.

Think about it this way. We think about unemployment as a percent of the labor force.  That’s on the chart and is line U-3. May was amazing for this measurement.

First, the labor force increased .2 percent in May.  Whoa….311, 000 more people were in the labor force in May over April.  That is a shock to the system because not all of them could be absorbed in 30 days. People were feeling more optimistic and they returned to look for work.

Healthcare, Transportation, wholesale/trade, manufacturing added 97,000 jobs in May.    Those sectors are growing.

Where were jobs lost?  Construction lost 28,000 jobs in May. May-August is traditionally the busiest part of the year for construction, yet we lost jobs.

What is the solution… President Obama yet again should ask Congress to provide and an infrastructure bill. In other words, we should put taxpayer money to work to move people, products and ideas faster.  Making our infrastructure world class, will promote our growth because those assets will last more than 100 years and therefore magnify the right things about the economy.

The multiplier effect would be enormous. In fact, Moody’s Analytics indicates that for every $1.00 spent on infrastructure, GDP would increase S1.59.

An answer to strengthening the employment rate is to get the construction and reconstruction going.

In general, what do you think we’re doing wrong when it comes to addressing unemployment?  What would you tell policymakers or even the private sector – what changes do they need to make to fix this trend?

I’d plead with them to put the country first.  We know that austerity does not provide growth.  It cuts growth.   Austerity cuts employment and elongates recessions.  We’ve seen in the last 20 years two clear phenomena worldwide.

We know supply side tax cutting economics does not work.  We’ve tried it twice in the 80’s and again in the 00’s.  We were left with the economy in wreckage.  The 80’s saw interests rise to 21%.  The national debt tripled from just $1 Trillion in 2000 to $3 Trillion by the time Reagan left office.  From 1789 to 2000 the entire accumulated national debt of the United States was just $ Trillion.  But under Reagan, the debt rose to $4 Trillion.

National Debt by President

Under Reagan and both Bushes we had 20 years of national debt increases. And deficits increased faster than GDP.

An increase in national debt crowds out the ability for business to borrow and grow. If business can’t borrow it can’t grow. Large national debts reduce employment therefore.

So the answer is to increase growth by stimulating the parts of the economy which have the greatest multiplier effect AND pass tax hikes but dedicate those tax hikes to pay down the national debt.

Briefly, what is your organization doing to help the unemployment problem in America?

We are working to create temporary and permanent jobs by developing high performance buildings.  We like using technology to make real estate operations more efficient, particularly in its use of energy and water.  We also like re-tasking real estate to do new things, such as urban farming. That way we solve a need, and create jobs, and create a new revenue stream from fallow real estate.

When crafting your company, what was the driving force – were there three or four points in your head that you kept at the forefront?  Goals that you wanted to achieve with this for-profit solution?

Yes, our goals are pretty straight forward. They are:

• Use green technology and sustainable best practices to deliver integrated energy, housing, food and employment security
• Make all projects have world wide application, and be rapidly deployable, replicable and scalable with high quality.
• Minimize the amount of equity investment at risk to complete projects
• Maximize distributable cash flow

Why is this all encompassing, comprehensive approach so important?  And do you feel that it has the capacity to scale?

In 1950, the US had 150 million people, today we have 310 million, and by 2050 we will have 450 million citizens.  The world’s population has exploded as well.  In 1960, world population was 3 billion. Today it is 7 billion, and by 2050 the estimate is that the world will have 9 billion people.  There is a resource supply and demand imbalance clearly coming.

The US is less than 5% of the world’s population and consumes 30% of its resources and produces 30% of its waste.  As competitive nations’ populations grow, and drive to become middle-class, competition for resources will increase, which will cause prices to go up.  It’s inevitable.

We think the commercial real estate opportunity is to do much more with much less.  Technology will be the way the U.S. maintains its strength.  Green technology, when employed as a way to reduce operating expenses and future capital expenditures has the ability to make real estate operationally more efficient thereby increasing its current net income.

Our model is to build housing and urban farming projects which we think will create higher quality housing with a lower cost to operate, and also grow fresh produce from the urban farm which in turn creates local jobs, and takes often underutilized real estate, revives it and re-tasks it, and makes  a vital national production sector , food production,  more secure.

The model is scalable globally because it meets 3 basic human needs; people need a safe home, healthy food to eat, and employment security.

What role has the government played in your work, if any?  Have they been supportive, helpful, and encouraging of this enterprise?

We have found government to be very, very supportive.  But, we don’t see government as an enemy.  In fact we see government generally as a positive contributor to our efforts.  There 13 or 14 federal agencies with green initiatives and there are 142 cities with sustainability initiatives, 54 of which we think are truly real estate investment magnets.

Photo: Courtesy Doug Lawrence