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Environmentalism 3.0

The Emotional Businessist — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 10:00:00 +0000

Innovation

It's a word that gets thrown around a lot, and for good reason: it lurks like a buzzard just out of reach, coaxing us out of our comfort zone, inspiring one more click, one more watch, one more buy. We want to be the first to know what’s being innovated. We want to be innovators. We want to be around innovators. But it’s never quite in our grasp. We’re always a second too late. The pinnacle slipped out the back door moments before we arrived.

It’s comforting to posit that most innovators feel behind the eight-ball themselves. (An inside source at a large Silicon valley micro-chip engineering company recently confirmed that, in order to drive production of the hardware inside iPhones 8, 9 and 10, the CEO regularly communicates on his Razr flip phone.) In fact, innovation is constantly happening all over the world in unexpected environments, and much of it has simply been recycled and renamed.

An example of this is the Mersey Model of Harm Reduction, developed in 1980’s Liverpool as a public health strategy to affect more change by reducing harm to drug users (and the local economy) rather than the previous model of forcing them to choose between abstinence or punishment. Programs like needle-exchanges, wet shelters, and DanceSafe were created to work in tandem with other approaches to reduce sexually transmitted diseases, violence, property damage, and emergency room visits.

I’m out on a limb here guessing that when you think of innovation, you don’t think of a wet shelter.

At the time harm reduction was introduced, it was a bleeding edge idea that fueled much resistance from the old model of drug and alcohol treatment. In fact, even decades later, this doctor (Dr Deluca) was fired for supporting harm reduction in Manhattan, NY, a traditionally liberal locale.

30 years post-Mersey Model, we see harm-reductionist philosophies applied to many systemic challenges, and not just in the area of public health (though that particular debate is far from over).

One of these areas is environmentalism.

If you ever shop at a grocery store or a farmer’s market — okay, let’s be honest, if you ever buy food from someone else — you’re probably aware of the organic movement. Word has finally spread to small- and large-scale farmers, and to consumers, so now most people agree that pesticides are bad. Unfortunately, “organic” is not synonymous with innovative or environmental, as organic practices can still be applied to monoculture and feedlots.

The organic movement is the latest iteration of harm reduction, and it is no longer innovative enough for the problems and the scale we are facing today. It’s a 1980’s approach to a twenty-teen problem and it needs to be revised with a quickness. We no longer have the luxury of reducing harm to the environment. We need to actively improve it.

And frankly, the organic conversation is boring me.

Remember when web 1.0 (static information) moved to web 2.0 (real-time information) moved to web 3.0 (push notifications), and stagnant web pages became totally yawn-inducing? Well, we need to move from environmentalism 2.0 (reducing harm) — environmentalism 1.0 being acknowledging the problem — to environmentalism 3.0 (active benefit).

Two companies are exploring this edge: Natura, the world’s largest B-corporation, and Farmland LP.

Natura is a two-billion-dollar Brazilian cosmetics company that makes beauty products out of seeds and fruit from the Amazon. They are on the short-list of agencies helping bring the Ucuuba tree out of endangered status by creating a market for the seeds of the tree rather than the wood, making it more valuable alive than dead.

Similarly, Farmland LP buys farmland, converts it to organic, establishes crop rotation, and leases it to farmers. In this business model, the ecosystem becomes healthier the longer they operate.

If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know I believe the greenest product is the one that isn’t made and there are myriad problems with the existence of the cosmetics industry (to be elaborated on in a future post). If the market for Ucuuba fruit becomes great enough to sustain large reforestation of this Baboonwood tree, the ecosystem of the Brazilian Amazon will be disrupted. There are also sure to be flaws in Farmland’s work as they continue. For example, I could imagine farmers facing income challenges when their crop specialty is phased out of the rotation.

Neither model is perfect. The point is that they are advancing approaches to business from reducing harm (passive) to improving benefit (active).

Let’s take a lesson from the industry that is constantly redefining innovation — the internet — and institute environmentalism 3.0, yesterday.

Do you know anyone practicing environmentalism 3.0? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Brand Category:

Living

A "Pay-It-Forward" Approach to Funding Solar Power

YES Magazine — Sun, 23 Feb 2014 05:00:00 +0000

Donations to a California nonprofit don't just fund one solar power installation, but circulate from one project to the next.

by Corey Hill

Solar energy doesn't spill or pollute, it's often cheaper for consumers than many other power sources, and three-quarters of Americans want more of it, according to recent polling. So why do so few buildings sport photovoltaic panels?

Any building owner or individual household that chooses to go solar must manage the steep costs of installing panels. Despite tax rebates and government incentives, such initial investments can run into the tens of thousands of dollars.

RE-Volv, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization, is working to make solar more financially accessible to local community groups. The organization is building a program that allows community centers to make the switch to clean energy with no upfront costs.

Here's how it works: Money donated to RE-Volv by community members and a growing network of solar enthusiasts is used to finance the purchase and installation of solar panels for a community center. Then, instead of paying a power company, the community center makes a monthly payment to RE-Volv. These payments are then rolled back into the revolving fund, providing the seed money for the next solar project. With each new project, RE-Volv increases the size of the fund—making more financing available to facilitate the spread of solar.

For example, the group's first project put solar panels on the Shawl Anderson Dance Center in Berkeley, Calif., last year.

"We raise the money [and] finance the system," said Andreas Karelas, executive director of RE-Volv. "[The community centers] pay us back every month and the amount [we bill them] comes up to 15 to 30 percent less than what they were paying for electricity before. And they don't have to put any money down."

There are other organizations that use a crowdfunding model to invest in solar projects, including Solar Mosaic and Collective Sun. The revolving fund is the difference between RE-Volv and these groups. Rather than offering a gradual return on an initial investment, donations to RE-Volv are continually reinvested in solar installations, providing an opportunity for backers—such as community members and solar enthusiasts—to make an impact that lasts well beyond the initial donation. The intent of the donors is critical: RE-Volv's supporters are motivated primarily by a desire to facilitate the spread of solar, rather than to see a financial return.

Moreover, while other solar funders help to finance solar installations for a wide variety of businesses, RE-Volv only supports projects for community centers. Karelas lists several reasons for this. First, the mission-driven nature of community centers means RE-Volv's hard work will always go to an organization making a positive impact on people's lives. And by focusing its efforts on well-established community anchors, RE-Volv believes it is able to maximize its marketing impact. Solar panels go up. People talk about it. More people are turned on to the benefits of solar.Karelas says he hopes the project will eventually reach a critical mass: Once the solar program has 12 projects sending payments back to the revolving loan fund, it should generate enough revenue to allow RE-Volv to fund one new project each year—without the need to crowdsource new funds to get started. As the organization grows, the number of active projects should increase.

RE-Volv recently raised funds to finance the installation of a 26-kilowatt system for the Kehilla Community Synagogue in Oakland, Calif., an LGBTQ-friendly, progressive faith community of about 350 families, which places emphasis on social justice and sustainability. RE-Volv estimates that the project will save the synagogue a total of $150,000 over a 20-year period and keep an estimated 18,500 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere each year.

Corey Hill wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas and practical actions. He is the membership and outreach coordinator at Global Exchange. Follow Corey on Twitter at @Newschill.

Brand Category:

Prosper