格林巴斯
//www.rinightclubs.com/
在可持续发竞彩足球app怎么下载展专业人士如何升高黑人社区
//www.rinightclubs.com/article/how-竞彩足球app怎么下载sustainability-professionals-can-uplift-black-community可持续性竞彩足球app怎么下载专业人员如何激发黑人社区 jarami bond mon，06/08/2020 - 02:11 亲爱的可持续发展社区，
我再次来找你。It’s been three years since writing my first article for GreenBiz, "Why diversity is the key to unlocking sustainability." I provided a quick glimpse of the anxiety and pain that the black community feels daily and actionable steps that the sustainability community could take to advocate for diversity and stimulate unprecedented change.
I write to you again today with heavy grief and a set of earnest pleas:
As sustainability professionals, we must lead the cultivation of a more inclusive, equitable and safe world for all. We not only must steward the environment, but also explore ways to meet the needs of the vulnerable and create healthy platforms for people of all backgrounds to embrace commonalities, celebrate differences and heal tensions. If not us, then who?
Ahmaud Arbery. Breonna Taylor. George Floyd. Say their names. These are just a few of many precious lives ended tragically and prematurely by people sickened by the venom of racism. The victims were not dangerous. They were not threats. They were unarmed. In their final seconds, they were powerless and vulnerable, diminished to a point where a cry for mother was the only hope.
If you really want to be a part of the change, it’s time to get uncomfortable.
Please know that these narratives are not new. They are just now being videotaped and disseminated globally across social media platforms. These narratives leave me and so many in my community numb, angry, speechless, depressed, traumatized, exhausted, afraid, emboldened and so on, all simultaneously. We have been crying out for centuries, for generations. We continue even today.
My good friend Joel Makower asked some poignant questions in his recent open letter. Among them: What led you to this work in the first place? Was it to protect the unprotected? To ensure the well-being of future generations? To engender community resilience? To create solutions to big, seemingly intractable problems? Or maybe, simply, to make the world a better place?
I ask you to reflect with honesty on your answers to these questions.
If you really want to be a part of the change, it’s time to get uncomfortable. It’s time to expand your social and professional circles. It’s time to listen. It’s time to ask questions. It’s time to engage with empathy. It’s time to study how our nation has systemically oppressed, crippled and stolen from the black community. It’s time to explore the part you have played.
As you shift your posture toward this crisis, your friends, family and colleagues may look at you funny. You may have to swim upstream. I acknowledge the looming tension you may be anticipating in this polarizing moment, but I promise you that it is miniscule juxtaposed to the generational anguish through which our community continues to persevere. However, I do promise that you would not be alone in your newfound, countercultural advocacy.
If you care — if you want to see justice, equity and restoration for my community, here are some actions you can take. Believe me. I encourage you to begin by picking one, two or more items from this list and leaning in wholeheartedly.
Before voting, understand politicians’ positions on environmental and social justice as well as criminal justice reform. Hold elected officials accountable once in office.
Fight against voter suppression and gerrymandering.
Find and support black-owned businesses
Push for your company to hire people of color. Ask your company’s HR department to hire more people of color in leadership positions. Call out workplace bias and discrimination when it happens. Promote truly inclusive workplaces.
Watch movies and read books that can help educate you on the black experience and race in America.
Do research to better understand and process your own biases and privilege.
Stop appropriation. Many non-black people enjoy the social currency and financial profit derived from embracing elements of our culture, while simultaneously devaluing our very lives.
Remember that silence is deadly. Address friends and family who spread ideals laced with racism and discrimination, no matter how subtle.
If you witness racism and violence against, record and share the incident. Digital evidence can help protect us against people such as Amy Cooper who weaponize racism, putting innocent black lives at risk.
I hope this list gives you actionable ways to get the ball rolling. Your voice and support hold weight and can go a long way in changing the narrative for my community. Don’t let the overwhelming number of ways to get involved hinder you from taking that first step toward real action.
In closing, I believe in us. As a community of purpose-driven professionals, we have an opportunity to help lead the conversation and lean into actions that provide hope for a better future.
I would love to hear from you. You can find me at @jarami_bond on Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Pull Quote
If you really want to be a part of the change, it’s time to get uncomfortable.
We believe that food delivery apps can implement some basic features to help consumers be more aware of the environmental impact of their food choices.
While systematic change in food production at all levels is necessary to achieve goals for carbon emission reductions, influencing consumer behavior to shift towards low-carbon food options has the power to simultaneously encourage food producers up the supply chain to reduce the carbon impact of their offerings, while also empowering consumers to reduce their own personal carbon footprints.
A recent study in Science magazine noted that "dietary change can deliver environmental benefits on a scale not achievable by producers." However, a major roadblock is the lack of transparency surrounding the carbon impacts of food.
Many consumers recognize that animal products have some negative impact on the planet, yet most don’t truly know the extent to which meat consumption can drastically increase carbon emissions.
Indeed, according to a recent study by the Yale Center on Climate Change Communications, about half of surveyed Americans (51 percent) would be willing to eat a more plant-based, low-carbon diet if they had more information about how their food choices affected the environment.
Through a six-week climate innovation program at Yale, we envisioned two ways that on-demand food delivery apps could empower their users to make more climate-friendly food choices. We based our idea off a successful project at Yale demonstrating the effectiveness of environmental impact ratings on consumers — in this case, students at Yale’s dining halls.
Rate the Plate is an initiative designed by current Yale students through which dining halls display posters containing the calculated range estimates for the amount of carbon emissions from each available entree. After running both a small-scale pilot and then expanding to all Yale residential colleges, the organizers had students complete a survey to analyze the effectiveness of the posters and ratings. The results show that 62 percent of students had a positive response when asked if they reconsidered their food choices after seeing the ratings.
Additionally, when asked if they would like to continue seeing the environmental impact posters in the dining halls, more than 86 percent of students said yes.
The results of this project inspired us to consider other ways to empower consumers to make climate-friendly food choices.
We believe that food delivery apps can implement some basic features to help consumers be more aware of the environmental impact of their food choices.
First, food order and delivery companies can create short monthly quizzes for users to test their knowledge about the carbon impacts of various food options. An interactive, visually appealing quiz can inform consumers about how their own food choices can affect the planet as a whole. Positive messaging alongside discounts or other incentives can encourage users to take the quizzes and act on the information they learn.
For example, online consignment retailer ThredUp already runs an online quiz that consumers can take to determine their environmental impacts in the apparel sector.
Additionally, companies could implement carbon labeling within their order menu interface. There are various existing methods to estimate and label the carbon emissions associated with food dishes, but a simple number or range of carbon equivalents would allow consumers to compare meal options within the app.
Using color coding or symbols such as trees to indicate high- and low-carbon footprint items also would be a non-obtrusive way to represent the information. The methodology could be explained in one of the quizzes released each month so consumers feel that they have both easy-to-read and accurate data. Order and delivery apps could include discounts for consumers opting into low-carbon food selections.
What’s in it for companies such as DoorDash and Snackpass?
Companies would be able to analyze the data on these strategies to fulfill internal corporate sustainability metrics on reducing GHG emissions, and such information could be advertised to demonstrate the company’s drive and success in sustainability compared to competing apps.
There is growing demand for sustainable business practices and purchasing options, especially among younger consumers. Being known as a climate-friendly option in the food-delivery ecosystem likely will be a selling point for many companies.
If food delivery apps implemented these various features, tracking the environmental impact would be relatively straightforward because it relies on digital technology and data collection. By looking at the number of people taking the carbon-impact quiz every month, companies could get a sense of the reach of these efforts among their customers. Eventually, they also could use the consumer order data to look for significant shifts in the carbon impacts of dishes people order.
What’s the role for restaurants?
While the relationships between restaurants and food delivery apps sometimes can be contentious, restaurants could benefit from advertising themselves as a climate-friendly option.
Restaurants would provide information about the ingredients lists of their dishes, allowing food delivery apps to calculate carbon impacts. As previously mentioned, discounts are offered to consumers who take the food carbon quizzes, which can help restaurants draw in new customers as well as highlight some of their vegan and vegetarian options.
Ideally, there would be a shift towards vegetable-based options and away from meat-heavy dishes after the carbon ratings and quizzes are implemented, which would demonstrate a positive impact on consumer decisions in terms of carbon emissions. This data from before and after the intervention also could be used to create a baseline to calculate how many kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions were avoided due to lower demand for meat-heavy dishes.
As food-delivery apps continue to gain popularity over the next decade, integrating information about the climate impact of food options has the potential to address the large impact the food-supply chain has on carbon emissions. This information gives consumers power in their food choices and allows food-delivery apps to demonstrate climate-friendly values.
Pull Quote
We believe that food delivery apps can implement some basic features to help consumers be more aware of the environmental impact of their food choices.
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星期一，08六月2020年6月09:00:00 +0000
安娜张
115878在//www.rinightclubs.com.为什么私营部门现在需要投资于保护性农业
//www.rinightclubs.com/article/why-private- ector-needs-invest-conservation-agriculture-now为什么私营部门现在需要投资保护农业 William ginn sat，06/06/2020 - 02:00
这是威廉J.Ginn的“ prialing自然”。版权所有2020 William J. Ginn。Reproduced here with permission from Island Press, Washington, D.C.
Resistance to change is universal. For example, despite more than 30 years of good science and best practices that support conservation agriculture in the United States, less than 5 percent of U.S. soy, wheat, and corn farmers use cover crops, and only 25 percent have adopted crop rotation and conservation tillage practices, even though the country is losing more than 10 billion tons of soil each year as well as more than $50 billion in social and environmental benefits. One challenge is the increasing percentage of farms owned by investors who lease land year to year to the highest bidder, which gives farmers little incentive to invest in conservation practices that might take years to be fully realized. Nevertheless, [The Nature Conservancy (TNC)], along with a consortium of farmers’ groups and a contingent of seed and fertilizer companies, has set a goal of getting half of the country’s wheat, soy, and corn crops into conservation tillage by [2025] (PDF). To achieve this goal, the same kind of incentives, extension services, and creative financial mechanisms being advocated for in the developing world are going to be needed in the United States too.
Building capacity and providing patient capital at the farmer level is a big challenge; at NatureVest, it is referred to as the last-mile problem. Although big-picture interventions are often understood in theory, the capacity of farmers to implement these solutions on the ground is often quite limited. Nearly everywhere these challenges exist, we need to dramatically increase the number of intermediaries who can help farmers through the difficult but necessary transition to new cropping and livestock-raising systems.
It is all high-risk business, and as such, it is not always successful. Several years ago, TNC entered into an agreement with an agricultural consulting company in Argentina with the objective of helping farmers improve sheep-grazing practices. Years of overgrazing had left the region’s grasslands substantially degraded; in fact, at one point in the early years of Patagonia’s colonization, more than 45 million sheep roamed free. Today, the region is home to between 5 million and 8 million sheep, but even that number may be too many.
Building capacity and providing patient capital at the farmer level is a big challenge; at NatureVest, it is referred to as the last-mile problem.
The restoration plan, called the Patagonia Grassland Regeneration and Sustainability Standard, or GRASS for short, incorporated conservation science, planning, and monitoring into the management plans of wool producers. The idea was not new: rather than grazing sheep in one place continually, they are moved in and out of different pastures depending on the conditions of the grasses. This practice encourages more diversity of native grass species and expanded yields from the revitalized pastures. Done well, ranchers, sheep, native plants, and animals can thrive together.
But what motivates ranchers to make these investments in better management and fencing? The basic business idea of GRASS was to improve management practices on ranches and produce a certified wool product that would attract buyers willing to pay more for sustainably grown wool. The program attracted two early adopters, Patagonia, Inc., a brand committed to sourcing their raw materials sustainably, and Stella McCartney, a high-end clothing manufacturer and daughter of Paul McCartney. Prior to this venture, both companies had been buying their wool primarily from Australia and New Zealand, but for Patagonia in particular, a shift to sourcing from Argentina provided a nice opportunity for alignment with their brand. Dozens of ranches signed up to participate, and many saw measurable yield improvements, even though the initial wool purchases were small.
Despite the program’s early successes, the program became unraveled when the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) released video footage of alleged animal abuse occurring at some of the ranches. As chief conservation officer of TNC at the time, I can say that I was not very happy with these practices, but I thought some of the allegations were overblown. For example, PETA considers docking tails of sheep to be inhumane, yet it is long-standing practice that arguably improves the health of animals. Nevertheless, both Patagonia and Stella McCartney abruptly ended their contracts with GRASS, and without a market partner, the program has failed to scale to a commercial model. Although any improvement in grazing is useful, the expected impact across the landscape now seems a distant objective.
Because feeding the world is an absolute imperative, farmers, investors, and aid organizations continue their quests for new models of sustainable intensification that will both feed more people and restore the soils and hydrological systems that are essential to agriculture. Providing capital in a way that reaches the hundreds of millions of small farmers across the globe as well as the necessary skills and technical expertise is a challenge that will remain for years, but business opportunities abound. Our shared natural assets — soil, water, and a stable climate — will only increase in value as the world demands more food.
Pull Quote
Building capacity and providing patient capital at the farmer level is a big challenge; at NatureVest, it is referred to as the last-mile problem.
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Communities of color also lose out at the other end of the food chain. In a disproportionate number of low-income black neighborhoods, redlining, segregation and weak zoning laws have led to the proliferation of junk food outlets and a lack of healthy alternatives. Food deserts — or "food swamps," which one researcher argues is a better term — are linked to obesity and other health problems.
These disparities are systematic and ingrained and very much with us today. They are one reason among many for the anger we are seeing right now. And history tells us that these forces, unless we actively resist them, will distort attempts to improve our food system. They will prevent "better" from meaning better for everyone.
Yet advocates for sustainable food — and I’m including myself here — are often guilty of treating racism as an urgent problem that somehow isn’t our problem. It’s an issue across the sustainability profession, in fact. Climate journalist Emily Atkin even has a name for it: a "Climate Chad" is an environmentalist who says they "care about pervasive racial inequality and police brutality but don’t believe these issues are related to the climate fight."
There’s no magic wand to be waved here. But there are many things that people in privileged positions can do. One that feels relevant to this newsletter is to insist that people of color are always present during critical discussions about the future of food. This has certainly not been the case in the past.
With that in mind, rather than signing off with my usual list of essential reads, I’ll end with links to pieces about individuals and organizations combating racism and promoting diversity in food and agriculture. Each is an opportunity to participate in change. My request to you is to consider how you might involve some of these remarkable people and projects in your work.
John W. Boyd Jr. is a fourth-generation black farmer and the founder and president of the National Black Farmers Association. More in this Guardian feature.
The Castanea Fellowship is a two-year program for diverse leaders working for a racially just food system. Meet the fellows for 2019 and 2020.
The National Black Food and Justice Alliance organizes for black food and land by promoting black leadership and influence in food systems and land stewardship.
New Orleans chef Tunde Wey uses food and dining to push people to confront issues of race. Learn more in this GQ profile.
The Seeding Power Fellowship invests in leaders creating a more equitable food system in the New York area. Here are the 2019-2020 fellows.
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周五，05日6月20日07:30:00 +0000
Jim Giles
115870年//www.rinightclubs.com种族主义在清洁能源中如何表现如何
//www.rinightclubs.com/article/How-racism-manifests-clean-energy种族主义在清洁能量中的表现如何 sarah golden fri，06/05/2020 - 00:00
As our institutions strain under the uprising in cities across the country, I’ve been struggling to comprehend the depth of racism in America.
I understand why these moments of police violence, the senseless destruction of black bodies caught on tape, would spark a fire that rages across this country. I also know that the tinder has been building for generations and is about so much more than this one horrific moment. Every sector plays a part. Including clean energy.
It's no secret that there are grave inequities in clean energy. In the spirit of this moment, I turned the microscope on my own sector to ask, how does racism manifest in clean energy?
Manifestation 1: 'I can’t breathe'
"I can’t breathe" refers to more than police violence. Black communities have been struggling to breathe for decades.
"The right to breathe isn't just related to surviving interactions with police," said Alexis Cureton, former electric vehicle fellow at GRID Alternatives, an organization that works to bring clean energy jobs and access to low-income communities. "It pertains to surviving and being able to breathe clean air."
Dozens of studies document the racial disparity in environmental impacts, and I've linked to a number of those below. To name a few, consider that in America black people:
Breathe 56 percent more pollution than they create.
Are exposed to 50 percent higher rates of particulate pollution than the general population.
Are more likely to live near highways, airports, refineries and other sources of hazardous air pollutants.
Are disproportionately exposed to toxic air pollution from the fossil fuel industry.
The impacts are also real. African Americans have higher rates of lung cancer and asthma, and are more like to have (and die from) heart disease. It’s no coincidence that African Americans are three times more likely to die from coronavirus than white people. To make matters worse, inequities in health care result in black communities paying almost twice as much in premiums and out-of-pocket expenses.
In this way, the story of George Floyd is symbolic of many struggles in the black community.
We have to remove the repercussions for constructive criticism around programs that don't address racial equity.
"A cop put his knee in the back of his neck and choked him to death, amid his cries for help. You can hear the dude calling for his mom," said Bartees Cox, director of marketing and communications at Groundswell, an organization that brings community solar to low-income customers. "You look at black people in America and our journey, every opportunity that we've had to get ahead has been choked out, fully, over time. Every bit of progress gets choked out."
But here’s the thing: Clean energy technologies exist to reverse this problem. The missing piece is getting them deployed at scale in the communities most affected by dirty energy.
Manifestation 2: Paying more and getting less from energy
More than any other racial group in the United States, African Americans struggle to afford baseline energy needs, a state known as energy insecurity or energy poverty. As a percentage of their income, black households pay upwards of threefold more than white households for energy. They’re also disproportionately affected by utility shut-off policies, leaving them more vulnerable to dangerously hot and cold days.
Why? It’s expensive to be poor. Many solutions that save money in the long run — electric vehicles, rooftop solar, energy efficiency upgrades — require upfront costs or access to capital that exclude many black communities.
Paying more and getting less means black households are often playing catchup. According to Cox, in some places African Americans pay more for energy than for rent.
"We're not putting people in a situation where they can succeed if they're spending that much on their energy consumption," Cox said.
That’s especially true for a community with fewer economic opportunities.
"We have a lack of jobs, we have a lack of access, we have a lack of money in communities," said Taj Eldridge, senior director of investment at Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI). "Economics are a huge part of it. All of the other issues that we see, from health disparities to educational disparities, the root of that is racism and economic discrimination."
Manifestation 3: Myopic clean energy equity programs
Well-meaning programs and incentives can go only so far if they fail to take a broader view of inequalities.
Take, for instance, a California program that aims to increase access to electric vehicles by providing incentives to install a charging station at your home — provided, of course, that you’re a homeowner. That does little to help African Americans who have been systematically denied homeownership through redlining and lack of access to capital.
"Inherently, that's racist," said Cureton, who worked with the program while at GRID Alternatives. "Programs like these aren't targeted at black people. They're targeted at people who always lived in California, who always had access to capital. Programs like that don't help to alleviate the systemic racism that is not only within this country but within this industry."
Cureton says that in order for these programs to work better, it’s essential for those who work in clean energy and equity to be able to talk about the shortcomings of policies without fear of losing funding or negatively impacting the organization.
"This equity push, it looks good and it sounds good," Cureton said. "But for people of color who are suffering right now, it doesn't feel good. We have to remove the repercussions for constructive criticism around programs that don't address racial equity."
All of the other issues that we see, from health disparities to educational disparities, the root of that is racism and economic discrimination.
To be clear, this critique isn’t to marginalize the hard work of GRID Alternatives — or other equity organizations working to support underserved people, such as Greenlining Institute, The Solutions Project and New Energy Nexus. Rather, it’s a reminder that systems of oppression are intertwined and that support needs to flow to those that understand the complexity of the problem.
"I think people get that there is an issue here," Cox said. "‘Equity’ and ‘intersectionality’ are, like, the foundation buzzwords of the last four years. It's where the big-money people are moving with their strategies. I think the next step is making sure the money gets to the right people."
Manifestation 4: Lack of representation
Organizations that design policies, programs and products usually are controlled by white people. That lack of diversity around the table leads to a lack of diversity in solutions.
The clean energy sector and companies with climate goals have tremendous power to change this.
Cox, who grew up in Oklahoma, never considered a job in clean energy. His turning point was when professional peers told him about the sector and encouraged him to get involved. That type of proactive engagement is what is needed to change the racial balance.
"The onus is on these companies to do outreach," Cox said. "Not just in the big cities, not just at Howard and Hampton, take it to Texas Southern. Go to Dillard. Go into the deep south, go into rural areas, recruit at these community colleges. Tell people about the jobs that are available, and push people into them."
Eldridge echos this sentiment, noting that white professionals are often disconnected from the deep bench of talent in the African American community.
"There's not a pipeline issue. There never was. It's a relationship issue," Eldridge said. "It amazes me when people say they can't find people to interview or to have these conversations with, because I see them in the room all the time."
This isn't altruistic. It's well documented that companies that embrace diversity perform better and have a happier workforce.
It also isn’t tokenism. Getting the people in the room that understand the black experience is key to finding the policies that untangle the systems of injustice.
"As it relates to shifting power and creating change, your voice can't be taken seriously if you yourself don't have an entity that represents you," Cureton said. "That's extremely important."
Pull Quote
We have to remove the repercussions for constructive criticism around programs that don't address racial equity.
All of the other issues that we see, from health disparities to educational disparities, the root of that is racism and economic discrimination.
There's not a pipeline issue. There never was. It's a relationship issue.
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Fri，05日6月20日07:00:00 +0000
莎拉金
115872在//www.rinightclubs.com海洋喷雾蔓越莓是如何成为美国“100%可持续”的作物的
//www.rinightclubs.com/article/how-ocean-spray-cranberries-became-americas--00-percent-sustainable-crop.海洋喷雾蔓越莓如何成为美国的'100％可持续性'作物 jesse klein thu，06/04/2020 - 01:45
蔓越莓不仅仅是美国感恩节的传统;他们也是美国土地的传统。该作物是北美的三个原生栽培水果中的三个。
，因为该植物实际上是在自然环境中生长，许多生长和收获的做法已经帮助了周围的土地，并且可以被认为是可持续的，在正常情况下。浆果在沼泽地，水浸土壤中增长最佳，这些土壤不能用于许多其他作物。每一英亩的蔓越莓沼泽都需要5.5英亩的野生沼泽所需要的 - 一个内置湿地保护策略。“这是一种共生关系，”海洋喷雾的全球企业事务和通信总监Chris Ferzli表示，着名的农业合作社，产生了约20亿美元的年收入。"The water in natural land supports the cranberry bog and in return, the cranberry bog enriches the soil that supports outside land."
Ocean Spray recently took advantage of the crop’s natural sustainability to become the first major food manufacturer in the United States to have its entire crop be certified "100 percent sustainable." Specifically, the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platform (SAI Platform) used its Farm Sustainability Assessment to verify that each organization within Ocean Spray’s 700-farm co-op is operating with regenerative agriculture in mind.
The water in natural land supports the cranberry bog and in return, the cranberry bog enriches the soil that supports outside land.
SAI’s Farm Sustainability Assessment dives into 112 questions over 17 categories to evaluate a farm’s investment in sustainable practices. The questions range from the safety of workers to nuanced issues of greenhouse gas emissions, and they are categorized in three ways: "essential," "basic" and "advanced."
For example, one question — "Do you take measures to maximize energy use efficiency such as optimizing your farm equipment and optimizing electricity use?" — checks if farmers are reducing non-renewable sources of energy, avoiding forest degradation or conversion and optimizing farm equipment usage.
In order for the crop to be considered 100 percent sustainable, all of Ocean Spray’s farms had to score well for 100 percent of the 23 essential questions, at least 80 percent of the 60 basic questions and at least 50 percent of the 29 advanced questions.
A third-party auditor, SCS Global, verified each Ocean Spray farm’s answers.
"The biggest challenge was the gap in how we define things and how a certifying body might define things," Ocean Spray farmer Nicole Hansen wrote in an email when asked to describe how tough the certification process was from the farmer’s point of view. "In the end, we are all talking the same language. Maybe just a different dialect."
Hansen’s farm, Cranberry Creek Cranberries, joined the Ocean Spray co-op in the late 1990s and is one of the largest producers in Wisconsin.
According to Ferzli, the adjustments the farmers had to make were few and mostly centered on upgrading technologies that made sense for the specific bogs.
There was such a strong sustainability mentality across the cooperative that making these few changes to verify this crop was worth it.
For example, moisture probes help farmers conserve water by collecting real-time data and only watering when the soil dips below a certain limit instead of on a set schedule. Temperature monitors feed into smart systems and are able to more accurately measure temperatures at both the top and bottom of a cranberry bed than traditionally handheld thermometers.
When building new beds, laser levelers help ensure the bed is flat and even, so that floodwater moves efficiently during harvest season, keeping the amount needed at a minimum. Farmers also addressed irrigation systems and sprinklers that had unnecessary runoff, causing water waste.
While most of these changes were inexpensive, Ferzli said Ocean Spray does help its farmers apply for grants so they can put the most innovative and sustainable technologies in place, including the Baker-Polito Administration grant that awarded $991,837 to 21 cranberry growers in 2019, 15 of which are part of the Ocean Spray co-op.
Another factor leading to Ocean Spray’s milestone was the structural history of the cranberry crop. Cranberries are already a very consolidated operation with almost all of the U.S.’s cranberries grown in Wisconsin or Massachusetts. In 2017, Wisconsin produced 5.4 billion barrels and Massachusetts produced 1.9 million. Ocean Spray’s co-op makes up a large percentage of those farms. In fact, of the 414 cranberry growers in Massachusetts, 65 percent are part of the Ocean Spray family.
The coalition of cranberry growers and the administrative structure in place was vital. Ocean Spray growers already submit a farm assessment survey required by retail partners such as Walmart that covers the health and safety of their workers and renewable energy.
That meant the co-op had the structure to distribute the SAI Platform survey, collect the data, make adjustments and comply with an audit, making getting to 100 percent much more feasible and streamlined than if the structure weren’t already in place.
"The farmers wanted to do it," Ferzli said. "There was such a strong sustainability mentality across the cooperative that making these few changes to verify this crop was worth it."
The verification applies to Ocean Spray's agriculture program and operations for three years. The company plans to survey the farmers every year and continue the verification process every three years when it comes up for audit. Only then will we know if growing sustainably is sustainable for the business.
Pull Quote
The water in natural land supports the cranberry bog and in return, the cranberry bog enriches the soil that supports outside land.
There was such a strong sustainability mentality across the cooperative that making these few changes to verify this crop was worth it.
Solving climate change depends, to some extent, on technological innovation.
The world’s leading climate authority, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published a landmark 2018 report highlighting the urgency of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The report outlines four potential pathways for reaching that goal. The pathways are vastly different, but one thing they have in common is a central role for new technologies, all of which fall under the growing category known as climate tech.
Relying on emissions-reducing technology isn’t the same as blind techno-optimism. New technology needs to complement existing solutions, deployed immediately. But the IPCC pathways make clear that the route to mitigation goes through innovation.
So, what does it take to turn a societal need into a functional reality? Scientific breakthroughs are only part of the challenge. After that, there’s a long road before solutions can be implemented at scale. They require funding through multiple stages of development, facing many financial and operational risks along the way.
There’s a parallel here with the response to COVID-19. Even if a working vaccine is developed, it must go through trials to determine efficacy and the logistical challenge of distribution to billions of people. But a key difference is that effective climate solutions are more varied than a single vaccine and usually more complex.
At a webinar last week hosted by Yale, Stanford and other groups, Jigar Shah, co-founder of clean energy financier Generate Capital, noted that climate technologies, unlike medical breakthroughs, must compete with systems already in place.
"In the biotech industry, which I think folks herald as a well-functioning market, once companies reach a certain validation of their technology and approach, there's a payoff there," he said. "And in [climate tech], there really isn't one [in the same way], largely because there are a lot of incumbent technologies that provide electricity, energy, water, food, land and materials."
The period when a new technology is costly to develop but too early-stage to produce commercial revenue is often called the "Valley of Death" because even promising technologies often fail during this period. Success requires the collaboration of a wide set of partners and investors.
As an Environmental Innovation Fellow at Yale, I’ve helped compile insights for investors on overcoming the unique barriers faced by nascent climate technology. Fortunately, many investors are already tackling this challenge.
The new wave of climate tech investors
In the early 2000s, there was a well-publicized boom then bust in clean energy investing. According to Nancy Pfund, founder and managing director of impact venture capital firm DBL Partners, much of this interest was from "tourists" looking for an alternative to the dot-com failures earlier in the decade. On a GreenBiz webcast last week, she observed that the current interest in climate tech is markedly different. "Today there’s such a high level of focus, commitment and knowledge on the part of both the entrepreneurs and investors," she said.
Pfund said the interest in climate tech is partially due to the compelling economics of renewable energy compared to alternatives. "There’s been a stunning cost reduction over the past decade," she said. "This brings in mainstream investors who are just making dollars and cents. They’re not even necessarily waving the climate banner. They want to rebalance their portfolio for the future."
During the same webcast, Andrew Beebe, managing director of Obvious Ventures, noted that an additional factor in the rise of climate tech has been the overwhelming public demand for climate action. "There’s been a societal shift as well," he said. "In entrepreneurs today and investors, I see an urgency like we’ve never seen before. People are not that interested in doing yet another social media company, unless it has a real impact."
In entrepreneurs today and investors, I see an urgency like we’ve never seen before.
It’s important to note here that climate tech takes many forms. There are software solutions that can help reduce emissions and that don’t face the Valley of Death I mentioned earlier. But some of the most critical solutions are physical technologies that require a lot of time and capital to succeed.
"You can't spell hardware without the word ‘hard,’ and everyone knows that," said Priscilla Tyler, senior associate at True Ventures, at the Yale-Stanford webinar. "Hardware is hard, which isn't to say it's impossible. And if anything, in my opinion, it begets more impact and more opportunity."
There are promising signals that climate tech is here to stay. Tyler is part of a group of venture capital investors called Series Green, which meets regularly to discuss climate tech opportunities. Additionally, multiple weekly newsletters share the latest deals in climate tech, and in a recent open letter, a long list of investors confirmed that, despite the COVID-19 economic downturn, they remain committed to climate solutions.
Going beyond traditional venture capital
A notable climate tech deal that happened last week was the $250 million investment in Apeel Sciences. The California-based company has developed an edible coating for fruits and vegetables that can help to preserve some of the 40 percent of food that normally gets thrown away. Investors in this round included Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund and celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey and Katy Perry.
A company such as Apeel doesn’t start out raising hundreds of millions of dollars from large institutional investors and celebrities. At the early stages, many new technologies depend on government grants and philanthropy. Apeel got started with a $100,000 grant from the Gates Foundation in 2012.
Apeel coats fruits and vegetables with an edible layer that can is designed to extend shelf life by two to three times.
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Apeel Sciences
Prime Coalition is an organization that helps foundations deploy philanthropic capital to climate solutions through flexible funding structures that allow for long periods of technology development and multi-faceted risk. It calls these funding sources "catalytic capital," because they can help unlock other forms of finance further down the line.
In addition to helping others deploy catalytic capital, Prime also makes its own catalytic deals directly through an investment arm called Prime Impact Fund.
"We're looking to support companies that have specific things to be de-risked before they will be attractive to follow on funders, and then we can be the source of that de-risking capital," said Johanna Wolfson, principal at Prime Impact Fund, at last week’s Yale-Stanford webinar.
By collaborating with one another, investors such as Prime can help technologies move through the stages of innovation, until they’re ready for more traditional investment structures. Catalytic capital invested today could help create the next Apeel Sciences several years from now.
At each stage, investors serve not only as sources of money but also strategic partners for the startups themselves. This is particularly true for corporate investors, who may have substantial industry knowledge to share and more flexible expectations than traditional investors.
There’s a lot more sophistication on part of corporate investors now than there was 10 years ago.
"There’s a lot more sophistication on part of corporate investors now than there was 10 years ago," said Pfund. "Then, you saw the agenda of the corporation being pushed around the board table more than you do today, and that’s never a good idea."
If their interests are aligned, corporations and startups can create mutually beneficial relationships, where each offers the other something that it couldn’t have obtained on its own.
"These corporate investors see so many different technologies, and they believe their own products are better than the startup products, so how do you actually get their support?" said Andrew Chung, founder and managing partner of 1955 Capital, on last week’s GreenBiz webcast. "Well, you need to have a widget or product they haven’t seen before or can’t build themselves."
Non-financial support also can be catalytic
Investors such as DBL Partners often connect the startups in their portfolio to corporates and other partners. These connections can be hugely valuable for startups, especially in emerging industries where networks are largely informal.
While investors’ main role is to provide capital, they also provide many forms of non-financial support, which can be essential to advancing innovation. In addition to connections, they also can help startups to navigate dynamic policy environments at the state and federal level.
"Policy plays a pivotal role," said Pfund. "We don’t invest in policy, we invest in people, but we know that our companies are going to have to address the changing policy landscape."
We don’t invest in policy, we invest in people, but we know that our companies are going to have to address the changing policy landscape.
DBL Partners helps to shape the policy landscape by convening roundtable meetings, advocating for legislation and reaching out to regulators in order to help create a more favorable environment for innovation. This sort of engagement is relatively low-cost in the short term, but it can have massive benefits in the long term, especially as new technologies begin to scale up.
Shah pointed out that the challenges facing climate tech don’t end once solutions reach commercialization. Nascent technologies still need to be deployed at a large scale to have impact.
"A lot of us focus on going from zero to millions," he said, "but then, in fact, millions to billions is still nascent."
Reaching the necessary scale requires a careful alignment of technological development, market creation, political support and investment across a wide spectrum of capital.
"All of these things work together in tandem to really unlock nascent technologies," Shah said.
This story was updated June 4 to correct Apeel's funding information.
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In entrepreneurs today and investors, I see an urgency like we’ve never seen before.
There’s a lot more sophistication on part of corporate investors now than there was 10 years ago.
We don’t invest in policy, we invest in people, but we know that our companies are going to have to address the changing policy landscape.
Many companies are doing it through corporate philanthropy; but engaging in community-oriented projects more directly would provide companies with visibility, goodwill, improved employees pride and enhanced societal trust.
Community involvement will be the yardstick with which stakeholders will measure companies’ sustainability and social responsibility performance in the post COVID-19 recovery period and well beyond it.
2. Develop coalitions with other businesses
This may be a promising approach for companies to engage in community-oriented projects. A critical part of community involvement should be the support for small and micro businesses in the area.
Initiatives taken by grocery chains, such as Publix, can play a critical role in providing much-needed support to save farmer markets and small farmers throughout the world. Local sourcing and purchasing can help revitalize small businesses and are well aligned with broad sustainability goals. Indeed, local sourcing also can uniquely demonstrate companies’ commitments to foster circular economies.
3. Display creativity
This is truer than ever. As goes the adage, "If you want creativity, take a zero off your budget. If you want sustainability, take off two zeroes."
The COVID-19 outbreak has removed those two zeroes for many companies. Sustainability managers could draw on such concepts as frugal innovation to spur outside-the-box thinking and to develop and execute sustainability programs that actually help in cutting cost, reducing waste and projecting companies as originators of cool, simple solutions to complex problems.
To clarify, it is not time to stall climate initiatives; but it is time to more vigorously engage with stakeholders who have urgent claims.
Workplace risk mitigation will be a priority for companies as economic reopening starts. Innovation in this area is already happening — combining smart scanning technologies, drone-enabled deliveries and artificial intelligence — but such high tech-high cost innovations will not be accessible to all companies.
Frugal yet effective sanitization, I believe, is the most important area in which sustainability experts can provide critical input. Keeping sanitization costs low while ensuring the safety of customers and employees alike is indeed a litmus test for creativity and innovation: Backed with expertise in design thinking, safety norms and customer expectations, sustainability managers are among the best positioned to advise companies on how to effectively handle sanitization in the most frugal way.
4. Show genuine concern
A core tenet of sustainability is a concern for all. These are periods of immense hardships. Indeed, bigger threats of climate change loom at us, and sustainability managers ought to not take eyes off that big issue. Yet the open wounds need urgent treatment.
It is exactly the time for sustainability managers to display concern for all and live up to their own ideals. Sustainability entails integrated thinking: The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are interlinked, after all.
It is an immense opportunity for sustainability managers to institutionalize integrative thinking in their companies and cultivate fraternity across functional units. By showing empathy for communities, employees and customers, sustainability managers will further ingrain stakeholder orientation within their companies.
To clarify, it is not time to stall climate initiatives; but it is time to more vigorously engage with stakeholders who have urgent claims and earn their trust and support for future sustainability initiatives that they may not otherwise support.
5. Get everyone on board with the changes
Finally, sustainability managers will need to make their co-workers on sustainability teams comfortable with the adjustments in their corporate sustainability programs.
Co-workers’ discomfort may emanate from their fearing job loss as they might perceive adjustments as curtailments. This discomfort also may emanate from a perceived value-misalignment as some co-workers simply may not value new approaches to sustainability.
Keeping up the spirits of team members and instilling in them the confidence that theirs is a critical role in helping the company recover from financial hardships is a new and important task for sustainability managers. Sharing with sustainability co-workers a short-, medium- and long-term vision of strategy will help sustainability managers keep co-workers motivated and creative.
Clearly, times are difficult. But these are exactly the times when the relevance of sustainability thinking will be put to test. After all, sustainability is about resilience and adaptation: Sustainability managers will have to show both in the coming months.
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Sustainability managers should also be active partners in helping their companies recover from economic hardships.
To clarify, it is not time to stall climate initiatives; but it is time to more vigorously engage with stakeholders who have urgent claims.
在过去的几日，在国家动荡在死亡另一个黑人在另一个白人警官手中之后，也遭受了同样充满了可持续发展的社区内的焦虑和愤怒。竞彩足球app怎么下载“我们做什么？”我们问过彼此。如果我们只是停留过程中，我们对气候和清洁经济中的工作，这是每天都在增长更为迫切下来加倍？ Or do we stop, take stock and rethink what we do?
Today, I’m not sure that staying the course is, in and of itself, what’s needed. It may be time for a radical rethink: Given all that’s changing, what does the world need of us now?
Whether you come from privilege or poverty, whether your education comes from the best schools or the streets, whatever your politics or identity, this is a brutally tough moment. The coronavirus and economic crash already had laid bare the inequity and disparity among the classes and races: those who have a job and those who don’t; those who are able to earn a living at home versus those who must risk going to an employer’s workplace during a pandemic; those who are able to afford food, shelter and healthcare, even amid economic upheaval, and those who can’t; those who feel comfortable walking or driving or just being outside their home, and those who fear that any moment could lead to their becoming the next George Floyd, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice or Sandra Bland.
Now, all of those inequities and disparities have been cast into the open. To the extent they existed in the shadows — festering societal problems to which those with power and privilege largely threw up their hands — they are now center stage. To the extent these problems could be ignored — that one could live life without having to reckon with race, poverty and inequality — they have been thrust onto our individual and collective doorsteps. To the extent they were topics relegated to hushed, private conversations — well, those conversations are full-throated, 24/7 and inescapable.
To the extent these problems could be ignored — that one could live life without having to reckon with race, poverty and inequality — they have been thrust onto our individual and collective doorsteps.
The calamities of 2020 — the physical, economic, social and psychological crises we’d already been confronting these past few months — have contributed to this raw moment, the culmination of centuries of systemic oppression and institutionalized racism. Words of comfort, of healing and hope, aren’t cutting it, and they shouldn’t.
For those of us working in sustainability, it raises some fundamental questions. Among them: What led you to this work in the first place? Was it to protect the unprotected? To ensure the well-being of future generations? To engender community resilience? To create solutions to big, seemingly intractable problems? Or maybe, simply, "to make the world a better place"?
If so, then this is the moment to live up to those lofty goals — fully and, most likely, uncomfortably. That means having difficult conversations with family, colleagues, friends and peers. It means recognizing — really, truly recognizing, not just mouthing the words — that nothing is sustainable if people are in pain. It matters little how much renewable energy is generated, how many circular supply chains are created, how much organic or regenerative food is produced if our fellow citizens are being exploited, discriminated against, threatened and worse.
This is what 'sustainability' should be about — the security and well-being of all species.
This is what "sustainability" should be about — the security and well-being of all species, including humans — and it no doubt will provoke nodding heads among many of you. But nodding heads aren’t enough. They never were and certainly aren’t now.
This is a moment for the private sector to step up. Not just in helping to calm and heal, although that will be a critical task in the coming days and weeks, but also to lobby for justice: economic justice, racial justice, criminal justice, climate justice. And to deeply understand what these terms even mean, and how they relate to creating the societal value that is the beating heart of business.
This is a seminal moment that is testing all of us — those in sustainability, certainly, along with most everyone else. And as we work on or support societal solutions — and countless ideas are likely to come out of this, from every conceivable source — it’s important to ask some simple but profound questions: Who’s setting the rules? Who’s calling the shots? Who’s being heard? Who’s left out? Who’s benefiting from the status quo and from the proposed solutions? Does it empower the marginalized or merely placate the restless?
These are the kinds of questions that have been woefully absent in the past. And we are living with the result. If we are to change the course, not simply aim to get back to some elusive "normal," these questions will need to be asked and answered. Failure to do that will lead us right back to where we are.
I’d like to end on a positive, hopeful note, much as I tried to do back in November 2016. But hope and positivity are in short supply right now. So I’ll just say this:
Don’t underestimate your power in this moment. You may not feel powerful, particularly in light of the deafening voices screaming in the streets and on our screens.
But there is power in us all: to care for those around us, to contribute time and resources at the community and national levels, to take the time to truly comprehend the issues before us and to understand that silence is complicity.
I invite you to follow me on Twitter, subscribe to my Monday morning newsletter, GreenBuzz, and listen to GreenBiz 350, my weekly podcast, co-hosted with Heather Clancy.
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To the extent these problems could be ignored — that one could live life without having to reckon with race, poverty and inequality — they have been thrust onto our individual and collective doorsteps.
This is what 'sustainability' should be about — the security and well-being of all species.
