3p Contributor: Tori Okner
Recent Articles
The Darfur Stoves Project: A Market Solution to Poverty
Today, three billion people—nearly half the world’s population—burn coal, wood, dung, or compost to heat their homes and cook their food. In addition to the deforestation associated with open fire cooking, especially in regions of conflict, the need for fuel often leaves searchers vulnerable, exposing them to risk of attack.
This is particularly true in Darfur, where there are over two million displaced persons.
“Darfuri women must walk up to seven hours, three to five times per week, just to find a single tree…When women and girls spend extensive time outside of the camps, they become increasingly vulnerable to acts of violence,” according to the Darfur Stoves Project.
Soda Tax Ideas Grow Among Local Governments
The notion of a soda tax has taken on new importance over the last few weeks as local governments increasingly consider the proposition–the term is loosely used to encompass any tax on sweetened beverages, both to be paid by the consumer and the producer. This week, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter put forth his 2011 budget proposal, including a 2 cent-per-ounce tax on sugary drinks. Last week, Colorado Governor Ritter signed a series of tax bills in an effort to keep the budget balanced and, in the process, implemented a similar tax. Two weeks ago, California Democratic Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez introduced a bill to tax sugary drinks. In New York, 2010 marks the second year that Governor Paterson has proposed taxing sugary beverages, and similar proposals are gaining traction across the country.
The possibility of a soda tax grabbed headlines at Triple Pundit and with mainstream media last September when President Obama deemed it worth consideration in an interview with Men’s Health. At the time, no such tax had been proposed in Congress. Earlier in the year, the Senate Finance Committee included it in a paper on funding options for health care reform. Yet, despite several reputable reports in support of the tax, published by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, researches at UCLA, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the Committee did not suggest a National Soda Tax in its 2009 Health Reform Proposal. Reaction to the omission by the Committee lead to prescient stipulation that state government would adopt soda tax before the federal government.
USDA Tightens Organic Grazing Regulations
The recent announcement about USDA’s final regulation on access to pasture for organic livestock is a clear victory for the organic movement. The present language of the National Organic Program (NOP) merely stipulates that grazing livestock must have access to pasture. As the organic market share has grown, the differing interpretations of this language have created fissures in the community. With the expansion of industrial organic products, critics have questioned what organic signifies when some providers rely primarily on feedlots. As explained by the USDA, “the final rule provides certainty to consumers that organic livestock production is a pasture-based system in which animals are actively grazing pasture during the grazing season.“
The process to amend the current NOP language began nearly five years ago with a recommendation from the National Organic Standards Board that suggested, “ruminants obtain a minimum 30 percent dry matter intake for at least 120 days.” Published first in 2008, the proposal elicited an astonishing 26,000 comments. The voices of family farmers and animals rights, environmental, and nutrition activists mixed with local government officials, consumer groups, trade organizations, and industry representatives. “USDA closes organic loophole,” cheered nutrition expert Marion Nestle.
NYC Announces Comprehensive Assessment of Urban Food Systems
“Too often we allow food issues to be pushed to the fringe of public policy,” admitted New York City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, in announcing the creation of “FoodWorks New York.” This initiative is the first attempt by the city government to implement a comprehensive assessment of the urban food system. Quinn’s objective? To capitalize on opportunities for job growth while ameliorating environmental and health failings.
Quinn took advantage of the media presence at an event to promote the FRESH supermarket program. With $10 million of New York State funds earmarked to assist the financing of new markets in under serviced neighborhoods, the FRESH supermarket program is one aspect of the Governor Paterson’s Healthy Food/Healthy Communities Initiative. For Quinn, and in time perhaps for NYC, the event marked a turning point in the discourse on local food policy.
Community Food Enterprise: Local Success in a Global Marketplace
The Wallace Center, a program at Winrock International, has just released a compelling report on the business of local food.
Funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Community Food Enterprise: Local Success in A Global Marketplace is a global survey on the economic, social, and environmental impact of local food.
Using the B Corporation Ratings System, the report analyzes a diverse selection of 24 food businesses. The assessment offers a rare piece of good news. In contrast to the common assumption that local food is a small, struggling, and poorly run movement by and for the rich, it concludes that the industry is maturing into a “centerpiece” of development.
The research initiative began with a mailing sent to over 10,000 people requesting nominations for exemplary local food businesses. The authors’ chose a diverse group. Half of the companies are located within the United States, half abroad. No two American businesses are within the same state, no two foreign companies from the same country. Together, the selected “community food enterprises” (CFE) represent the corporate and non-profit sectors, public-private partnerships, and cooperatives. They operate in various niches of the food system: in production, distribution, training. value-added, and the restaurant industry Their contributions to local economies, social enterprise, and food security is magnificent.
Original Restaurants: Promoting Independent Local Restaurants
Ever take a side road out of town and stop for a bite at a truly charming restaurant and wonder how it stays in business? How it competes with the chains? The answer may lie with a rewards program run by Original Restaurants. Just two years old, it aims, “to promote unique, local restaurants,” a mission increasingly embraced by customers and small restaurant owners across the United States.
Entrepreneur Kermit Austin witnessed firsthand the struggles independent restaurant owners faced; he worked his way through college as a busboy, waiter, and bartender. He hunted for local restaurant specials – trying to save a buck in the Tuscon restaurant scene. With a Management Information System’s degree from the University of Arizona, Austin developed expertise in web design. The relationships he developed landed him website projects, work that helped pay for his degree, and paved the foundation for future successful businesses.
Whole Foods Invests in Mobile Slaughterhouses
This Thanksgiving, much attention has been paid to how your bird was raised, but how about the manner in which it was killed? The head meat buyer at Whole Foods, Theo Weening, made public the company’s effort to collaborate with both USDA and state regulatory agencies to develop certifiable mobile slaughterhouses for poultry. Before claiming a victory for the locavore movement, one has to ask, is this good news for family farmers?
First, understand that Whole Foods mobile units are a long way off. To begin with, the company must wade through USDA bureaucracy and has yet to identify an authority to approve a mobile poultry slaughter and processing facility. Whole Foods aims to overcome a barrier – the dearth of slaughterhouses – to a meet customer demand for local food products.
The number of USDA approved slaughterhouses has fallen dramatically over the last several years. The numbers vary; recent estimates cite a decline from 1,405 USDA approved slaughterhouses in 1992 to just 808 in 2008, with others as low as 550 in 2001 dropping to only 350 today. There is broad consensus in the sustainable food movement about improving the quality and quantity of slaughterhouses. Today, 99% of all animals raised for food are processed through the factory farm system. This consolidation of animal husbandry and continual agribusiness mergers has resulted in the channeling of the vast majority of meat through a few central slaughterhouses.
Cityscape Farms – The Evolution of a New Agricultural Model
Cityscape Farms, a greenhouse based urban farming initiative, promotes their mission with the slogan, “An idea whose time has come.” Whether it’s San Francisco’s new aggressive regional food policy or the famous organic garden on the White House lawn, the local food movement—specifically the urban local food movement—is garnering increasing media attention and validity. Yet, for Cityscape founder and CEO Mike Yohay, executing the launch of their pilot program has proven that where eco-entrepreneurship intersects with urban farming, there’s new ground to break.
Based in San Francisco, Cityscape Farms is a young company, currently in the initial stages of implementation. One could amend their slogan to read, “An idea in the making.” Yohay, a graduate of Dominican University’s Green MBA program, may be the next poster boy for the hipster meets locavore movement. Born in Brooklyn to a family of backyard farmers, his commitment to urban gardening evolved, paradoxically, when he left the city. When living in the Midwest, studying art and computer science, he observed industrial agriculture to be “massive and inefficient” and a stark contrast to the low-impact farming he participated in years later, in Costa Rica. There, he was impressed with the emphasis on recycling wastewater and its role in creating a self-sustaining food community.
The confluences of these experiences solidified Yohay’s vision. He has embraced, “the creative environment inherent in agriculture and horticulture,” and wants to seed cities with greenhouses, which he equates to “installations with a critical use.”
Sensors Will Not Remedy Agribusiness Ills
With swine flue spreading around the world, the Israeli company Cartasense captured much of the media spotlight at the spring Agritech conference in Tel Aviv. Cartasense is developing, “solutions for real time monitoring of agriculture goods…based on low cost tags.” Their sensors record conditions wirelessly; their pitch suggests increased access to health data can improve oversight and prevent the spread of disease.
With the rapid transmission of swine flu and the emerging link to the food industry, there’s a growing hunger for good news about agribusiness. According to Agritech co-Chair and Director of foreign relations for Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Arie Regev, the exhibition targets a foreign audience.
Yet, there’s a disconnect between their marketing and the industry they’re trying to woo…
Adina for Life?
With a compelling back-story and big name players, Adina is a perfect test case for sustainable entrepreneurship 2.0. Co-founded by Greg Steltenpohl, founder of Odwalla, and Senegalese businesswoman Magatte Wade-Marchan in 2006, this young beverage company garners a lot of attention. It was surprising then, when it was hard to make heads or tails of the company.
Adina for Life. Are they a natural juice company promoting international recipes or focused on fair trade coffee? Or is it herbal elixirs? Adina is in the midst of redefining itself.
Wade-Marchan approached Steltenpohl with a pitch to market drinks based on international, indigenous recipes. She landed a dinner meeting with a man who took a company from his backyard to a $181 million dollar sale to Coca Cola, and his wife, Dominique Leveuf, who would become Director of Creative Services and a willing investor. With Wade-Marchan’s expertise in sourcing from Africa, Steltenphol’s commitment to sustainability, and Leveuf’s business background, many believed Adina was poised to upset the natural beverage industry.
Today, Wade-Marchan is no longer involved in the company. Steltenphol remains Chairman, and Leveuf a key investor. Steltenphol now works alongside several industry veterans, including Interim CEO John Bello, formerly of SoBe beverages (who also received a lofty price for the company he built, selling SoBe for $370 million to PepsiCo).
To understand Adina in its current state we spoke to Chief Marketing Officer Bruce Burke.
Insight into Innovation Courtesy of Ron Gonen- CEO and Cofounder of RecycleBank
If you haven’t heard of RecycleBank, it’s only a matter of time. The company bills itself as a “premier rewards and loyalty program that motivates people to recycle” and the New York Times calls the premise, “elegantly simple.” In brief, RecycleBank partners with municipalities or private haulers to measure household recycling via a smart computer chip in each recycling bin. They then compensate participants based on the quantity of their recyclables.
Founded in 2004, RecyleBank is already active in 18 states. According to Marketing and Communications Director Lisa Pomerantz, Recycle Bank is on pace for exponential growth and projects that by the end of 2009 “We’ll be servicing millions of people as we launch across the states and into the United Kingdom.”
Winner of the World Economic Forum as a 2009 Technology Pioneer, the company won its seed money via the Eugene M. Lang Center for Entrepreneurship award from Columbia Business school. Ron Gonen, CEO and cofounder of RecycleBank, made some time to reflect on scaling the company from his New York City apartment to a growing global enterprise.
Growing a Green Business- with a Box
As the industry icons of the old economic order crumble, TriplePundit offers you an inspiring example of a new, highly-promising business model. Through a conversation with the founder of Rentagreenbox.com, we look at how one young company is winning green awards and turning a profit.
Rentagreenbox bills itself as “the first, zero-waste pack and move solution in America.” The California based company converts post-consumer trash to an array of moving products and offers a sustainable solution for both residential and commercial moves. In brief, the company offers a moving assessment, delivers the rented moving supplies in trucks powered by biodiesel or vegetable oil, and then returns to pick up the boxes. The material comes from local landfills, a key supply source for their sustainable operation. The recopack [recycled ecological packing solution], a stackable plastic bin, is the cornerstone of their business.
A successful product designer before launching Rentagreenbox (formerly Earth Friendly Moving), founder Spencer Brown’s environmental awareness extended to beach cleanups and frequent trips to the farmers market. Today, he says simply, “I’ve evolved.”
Pitching Reusable Packing – Is the RPA Missing the Point?
Obama-mania is sweeping the nation and concern for the environment, seeping into our collective conscience, is increasingly less likely to be perceived as the hobbyhorse of the liberal elite. As this surge of enthusiasm converges with recession it presents an opportunity for savvy marketing.
The reusable packaging industry, as represented by the Reusable Packaging Association (RPA), is doing just that. RPA Board Chairman Bob Klimko claims, “The time is ripe for businesses to embrace the concept of reuse and to realize its potential to help them reach their sustainability objectives while strengthening their own companies through cost savings and improved efficiencies.”
We introduced you to the RPA when they hosted an educational forum on the corporate benefits of reusable packaging. The RPA is primarily focused on packaging that “moves product from manufacturer to retailer.” With a new president at the helm, Jerry Welcome, we’re taking another look at the RPA and their efforts to promote sustainability.
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack: Harbinger of Sustainability or Ho-Hum?
As Vilsack said in an interview earlier this month, the Department of Agriculture affects every American. The Secretary of Agriculture oversees several departments including the Forest Service, the Food Service and Inspection Service, and the Food Stamp Program. Primary responsibilities include the direction of farm subsidies, food exports, soil and water preservation, national forest preservation, food aid, organic standards, animal disease, and pest control. After considerable lobbying and speculation, at a press conference earlier today, the president-elect announced his selection.
If confirmed by the Senate, Vilsack will take the reigns during a “period of intense volatility in the agriculture industry,” observed Clayton Yeutter, former Secretary of Agriculture under George H.W. Bush. Commodities and agriculture analysts are calling for expediency in addressing farm subsidies and crop prices. Details of subsidy allocation in the farm bill remain unanswered while corn, wheat, and soybean prices fall. Vilsack will also be tasked with balancing the growth of biofuel with food needs and the environmental impact of increased production-a debate at the center of any comprehensive renewable energy initiative.
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