The Avon Lady Comes to Mozambique, Hawking Cookstoves

| Wednesday May 16th, 2012 | 2 Comments

3p Editor Jen Boynton is in Mozambique this week along with TreeHugger’s Brian Merchant to get the full story on a remarkable triple-bottom-line business model. Read on…

Sales rep Lonola Tembo explains the cook stove to me

There’s no denying that charcoal cookstoves are a huge problem in Africa. Used to cook meals in many family homes, they contribute to massive deforestation to create the charcoal, which is expensive to buy, and when they are operated, they fill homes (and lungs) with dirty black soot. And, it’s hard to control the temperature of the cooking flame. Imagine cooking by an indoor campfire for every meal of your life.

There are many companies and NGOs working to attack the problem from different angles. We’ve covered solar cookstoves a few times here on TriplePundit before, and they have an obvious benefit with their clean, free fuel. However, they still lack the ability to control temperature and are difficult to use indoors unless you have a lot of windows. None of these solutions has managed to gain traction despite the multi-million dollar economic opportunity they represent.

One company, CleanStar Ventures, understands both the financial opportunity and the social and environmental imperative. CleanStar invests in, builds, and scales triple-bottom-line business models in emerging markets around the world. CleanStar Mozambique, their latest and fastest growing project, was founded to tackle the cookstove problem with a bilateral solution: new clean-burning ethanol stoves and an ethanol processing facility to fuel them. This full-service solution means that they’re creating jobs not only for the folks who market and sell the stoves, but for producers and cassava farmers to create the ethanol. Thus far, they’ve had multiple investments in the 7-figure range from multi-national corporations including Novozymes, ICM, and Bank of America.

We’ll be covering the entire value chain in a series of posts – starting with this simple question: how do you enter a market that is pretty much entirely fragmented with individual charcoal vendors and stove welders? Try a western model, applied to an African audience: the Avon lady.

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Interview: Matt Bannick, Managing Partner, Omidyar Network

| Wednesday May 16th, 2012 | 0 Comments

Omidyar Network is a philanthropic investment firm started in 2004 by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Since 2004, the firm has invested close to $300 million in both non-profit and for profit ventures, all of which have a stated mission to catalyze social, economic, and political change. We’ve written about many of the companies that Omidyar has helped start over the years – Ashoka, Mango, Kiva.org, CouchSurfing, and D.light just to name a few.

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Omidyar Network’s annual executive forum in Redwood City, CA.  It’s an event designed to bring all of the Omidyar Network’s grantees and investments together under one roof for 3 days of brainstorming, inspiration, and learning.  This year the vast majority of Omidyar’s 100+ companies had at least one representative present, some having traveled from as far as Zamiba.

The network’s areas of investment are concentrated in two main areas:  Access to Capital (focusing on microfinance, property rights & entrepreneurship) and Media, Markets & Transparency (focusing on technology and government/corruption).

Determining which of the world’s problems can be solved with profit generating entrepreneurial ideas and which are more suited for traditional non-profits is a difficult decision.  It’s one that Omidyar grapples with every day.   I sat down with Matt Bannick, Managing Partner for Omidyar Network to look for some perspective:

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Chevron’s 2011 CSR Report Provides a (Too) Rosy Picture of the Company

| Wednesday May 16th, 2012 | 0 Comments

Few years ago, a CSR report released by an oil company sounded like an oxymoron. Even later on when these reports became more common, it still looked to many people like a greenwashing attempt. After all, can a company really show it cares about the environment and stakeholders when its core business is oil production? I was hoping Chevron’s 2011 CSR report would prove this assumption to be wrong and that the “bad guys are trying to be better.” Is it too much to ask in 2012?

Apparently yes, although to be honest, there is no simple answer of yes or no to this question. While it does look like Chevron is making some progress, these are mostly baby steps, and when you’re one of the largest oil companies in the world, baby steps might not be enough.

The problem starts with the general tone of the report which is positive to an almost ridiculous degree. Now, to be fair, almost every CSR report is very positive, but a growing number of companies understand that reports that only include good news are not trustworthy and therefore try to maintain some balance (see Unilever and Timberland, for example). Yet, in this case it seems like Chevron didn’t manage to create a balance, providing almost only good news. Don’t get me wrong – Chevron has numerous achievements to be proud of, like reduced flaring and venting in operations by 33 percent since 2003 or continuing its strong workforce safety performance in 2011. But in too many parts of the report, the positive information is either presented in a biased way or is missing some important parts.

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Patagonia Maps Out Its Supply Chain For Even More Transparency

Leon Kaye | Wednesday May 16th, 2012 | 0 Comments
patagonia, footprint chronicles, transparency, supply chain, supply chain transparency, human rights, sustainability, fashion

Map of Patagonia's supply chain

Patagonia has long been a sustainability leader, and pokes its competitors in the eye with programs, from asking consumers to buy less to working with fisheries to the preservation of salmon populations while rolling out new snacks. Now the outdoor clothing and gear company is pushing supply chain transparency to a new level.

Now Patagonia has released its Footprint Chronicles, one tool to help customers and stakeholders learn more about the the company’s global operations and suppliers. The interactive map allows visitors to click on locations of the company’s textile mills and factories all over the world.

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Largest U.S. Mutual Funds Not Passing Climate Change Resolutions

Gina-Marie Cheeseman | Wednesday May 16th, 2012 | 1 Comment

Although the three largest mutual fund companies in the U.S. (American Funds, Fidelity and Vanguard) voted on a number of shareholder resolutions related to climate change, none of the resolutions passed, according to an analysis of proxy votes cast in 2011. American Funds, Fidelity and Vanguard managed over $1.6 trillion in U.S. securities in 2011. American Funds voted against every climate change resolution filed in 2011. Fidelity abstained on 89 percent of the resolutions, and voted against 11 percent of them, while Vanguard abstained on 88 percent of the resolutions filed, and voted against 12 percent.

Ceres analyzed the proxy votes cast by 44 of the largest U.S. mutual fund companies. In total, Ceres tracked 111 resolutions filed with 81 U.S. and Canadian companies during the 2011 proxy season on climate change and sustainability. The analysis found that other mutual fund companies fared better. The funds with the best voting record included TIAA-CREF, Wells Fargo, Fifth Third, Credit Suisse, Oppenheimer, GMO and Delaware.

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Romney Gets Sustainable Fisheries Right, Then Wrong

RP Siegel | Wednesday May 16th, 2012 | 0 Comments

You would think that Mitt Romney, as the former governor of a coastal state, would have a better handle on the fishing industry. For him to come out and say at a campaign stop in New Hampshire that the reason fishermen up there are having such a hard time earning a living is because of excessive regulation, not because the fish in that region are overfished, is either ignorant or disingenuous.

He told the crowd. “It’s a tough time to be in the fishing business in America. Not just in that industry, but in many industries, Small business has really felt like it’s been under attack over the last several years. [...] Across America regulators are just multiplying like proverbial rabbits and making it harder for enterprises to grow and to understand what their future might be.”

Considering the trajectory of his career path, it’s true that he probably understands regulation far better than he does scarcity.

But the facts are in, and overfishing is real and is getting worse.

  • The worldwide fish catch has increased fourfold in the past 40 years
  • As of 2006, some 1173 fish species were threatened with extinction, including the Atlantic Cod, the primary moneymaker for New England fishermen
  • 80 percent of the world’s fish stocks are overexploited
  • The world’s fishing fleet is growing faster than the amount caught

This last fact is important because it indicates that there are lots of fishing vessels now scouring the oceans for fish, making regulation difficult, but all the more necessary.

The truth is, Governor Romney knew this, but he chose to act as if he didn’t, since that fit in better with his overall theme of regulation being a job-killer. Never mind the fact that only 0.3 percent of all layoffs are traceable back to some kind of regulation, while those same regulations may, in fact, add more jobs elsewhere in the economy.

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Dutch Organization Wants to Make Fair-trade Gold the Standard

| Wednesday May 16th, 2012 | 0 Comments

Earlier this month Solidaridad, a worldwide group of development organizations unveiled the Netherlands’ first-ever fair-trade and fair-mined gold jewelry. The UK pioneered the “Fairtrade & Fairmined” (FT&FM) label last year and the Netherlands is the second European market to offer this certification.

The label guarantees that the 100 million people who rely on the sector for a living have fair, safe, and environmentally friendly working conditions. The label also covers the 20 million small-scale and artisanal miners worldwide.

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Loaning Your Money for Impact Can Also Generate Income

HIPInvestor | Wednesday May 16th, 2012 | 0 Comments

22nd in a series of excerpts from the book The HIP Investor (John Wiley & Sons, 2010). See other articles in the series here.

Fixed income investments play an important role in investment portfolios, generating regular income with reduced risk as compared to equities, although not immune from it of course. Within the family of fixed income investments there are four categories where you can seek to be more HIP, with the potential for both positive human impact and profit:

1) Fixed-income mutual funds
2) Pooled loan funds
3) Microfinance funds
4) Peer-to-peer loans

Each of these different categories of fixed income investments have their own traditional and evolving characteristics, and each of them have the opportunity to enhance human impact and potential profit.

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Smart Booth Transforms Lowly Phone Booth Into Solar Powered Community Hub

| Wednesday May 16th, 2012 | 0 Comments

In the last five years, the capabilities and applications of mobile phones has enormously expanded in a seemingly endless array of categories. The phone booth has stayed largely put, evaporating from the landscape, becoming a vandalism prone object of a bygone era.

The Smart Booth aims to change that trend.

Currently being tested in Turin, Italy as part of a broader EU Smart Cities initiative, these booths are as much a demonstration of what’s possible as they are aiming to usefully add to the surrounding community.  Along with being a touch screen-based information portal for area students, tourists, shoppers, social networkers and more, this solar powered booth will be offering wifi, conduct pollution monitoring, and has video surveillance that could be linked to the Municipal Police operations room.

Its video displays could serve as both revenue and awareness generators, showing advertisements and public service announcements, and information relevant to their location.  Six electric scooters or bicycles at a time will be able to recharge here as well.

Created by Telecom Italia, the Smart Booth is wide open as to how it will evolve.

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Renewable Aviation Fuel: A Market in the Making

3p Guest Author | Wednesday May 16th, 2012 | 0 Comments

This is part two of a three part series introducing the renewable aviation fuel market in partnership with The Carbon War Room & reprinted from CCW MagazineRead part one here.

The renewable jet fuels market is on the cusp of remarkable success. Just a few short years ago, the idea of manufacturing fuels from algae, various plant species, waste, industrial off-gases and other feedstocks was theory – a glint in a scientist’s eye. Yet today, through a combination of research breakthroughs and demand from an industry eager to switch from fossil fuels, production of renewable jet fuels in the quantities needed to enable our hunger for air travel is just around the corner.

Technologies are proven, performance tested, and certification by bodies such as ASTM has been gained in a number of cases.

For some of the leading lights in this new market, scale-up to commercial production is underway; others are actively seeking investment to allow the millions of gallons of fuel required to power the world’s aircraft to flow.

Rapid development

Graham Ellis, vice president of fuels and business development for California-based Solazyme, whose fuel production process is based on genetically modified algae, says: “If you look back to 2007, the world didn’t have renewable jet fuels at all, we were sitting in labs and had just about figured out it was possible. A year or two later there were demonstration fuels being produced to show the processes would work and test flights began. And now we’ve got ASTM certification.”

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