Public Produce: Filling the Sidewalks with Fruit Trees
Posted by Jen Boynton November 10th, 2009 
8 Comments
This review is part of the Green Books campaign. Today 100 bloggers are reviewing 100 great books printed in an environmentally friendly way. This campaign is organized by Eco-Libris, a green company working to green up the book industry by promoting the adoption of green practices, balancing out books by planting trees, and supporting green books. A full list of participating blogs and links to their reviews is available on Eco Libris.
Triple Pundit was thrilled to take part in the green books campaign because we love reading and we especially love reading books that have been produced in an environmentally responsible way.
We reviewed Public Produce: The New Urban Agriculture
At first glance, this doesn’t seem to have much to do with sustainable business, because the book argues for a shift in municipal policy. But Triple Pundit is a place where we love to talk about food and we’ve covered many businesses that deal with food innovation. The policy laid out in Public Produce has all the tenets of an innovative model: cost reduction, life improvement and a healthy a dose of “why haven’t I thought of that.” Author Darrin Norahl lays out all the problems with our current food production and distribution system: the dearth of affordable healthy food in the inner city and its connection to obesity; hunger; the 1500 miles the average piece of produce travels; outbreaks of food borne illness that sicken and kill people country wide and the environmental degradation associated with big ag. Then he provides an elegant solution:
Book Review–Starting Green: An Ecopreneur’s Toolkit For Starting a Green Business From Business Plan to Profit by Glenn Croston
Posted by Scott Cooney November 9th, 2009 0 Comments
Glenn Croston’s latest book, Starting Green: An Ecopreneur’s Toolkit for Starting a Green Business From Business Plan to Profits (Entrepreneur Press) is a useful resource for entrepreneurial types looking to enter the green economy.
Croston describes the green economy as entering Green 3.0: the stage where business is beginning to make green its focus, bringing the other 95% of consumers (in addition to the 5% that do it because the environment is the #1 thing they’re concerned with) into the green world by making it easier for them to do so. In Green 4.0, according to Croston, “Everything is green.”
C.K. Prahalad Q&A: Lessons from the Bottom of the Pyramid
Posted by Jim Witkin November 2nd, 2009 0 Comments
It’s been five years since the publication of “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits,” the seminal work by C.K. Prahalad, a professor of corporate strategy at the Ross School of Business of the University of Michigan.
The book combined a pragmatic framework with inspirational case studies to show companies how they could develop innovative business models and find new profits by serving the world’s five billion poorest people at the bottom of the economic pyramid (or BOP).
To commemorate the event, Wharton Publishing has issued a revised and updated anniversary edition that includes a new introduction by the author, as well as many new case studies.
I recently spoke with Professor Prahalad to discuss what these companies have learned as they’ve built profitable businesses in emerging markets while reducing poverty in the process. Excerpts from this discussion follow:
* * *
Triple Pundit: What are the big lessons learned over the past five years since the book was first published?
C.K. Prahalad: First, the thesis of the book that the private sector is an integral part of the poverty alleviation process is well accepted by multilaterals, aid agencies, many NGOs and large private sector firms as well. Second there is now a growing belief that the bottom of the pyramid provides an opportunity for business to “do good and do well.” Third, we recognize that the BOP is more than micro-consumers. It also represents micro producers and micro investors who can be connected to national and global markets. And the BOP can also be the source of major innovations that affect us all. These ideas were in the original book but have been confirmed and amplified.
New Book Gives the Low-Down on Green Business Models
Posted by Shannon Arvizu October 21st, 2009 0 Comments
There’s a lot of hype in this field about how “green is gold.” But there is little hard evidence that shows actual trends and models in green business operations. A new book, “Hybrid Organizations: New Business Models for Environmental Leadership,” aims to fill that gap by providing up-to-date analysis of green start-up firms.
Of course, we have to start with what makes a “hybrid organization.” The authors recognize that there are a lot names thrown around these days for classifying companies with an explicit social or ecological mission. They define a hybrid organization as “a market oriented, mission-centered organization which operates in the blurred space between for-profit and nonprofit enterprises.”
Are You Smarter Than a Chicken? And Other Green Business Wisdom From Gil Friend
Posted by Scott Cooney September 2nd, 2009 1 Comment
The Truth About Green Business, a new book by Gil Friend, founder and CEO of Natural Logic hit bookstores this month just as the nation grapples with a down economy and the prospect of cost cuts that are threatening many green initiatives at the nation’s largest companies. The timing couldn’t be better. In the book, Friend systematically dispels the myth that green costs more.
Friend spoke last week at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco to promote the book. Friend has a fascinating history, including working with Coca-Cola, Hewlett Packard, Levi-Strauss, Williams-Sonoma and others on their sustainability initiatives. He spent some time with Buckminster Fuller’s organization as a youth, coming up with creative ways to solve some of society’s most challenging problems. That exercise taught him that reverse engineering is often easier than traditional approaches when it comes to large social change. “Sort of makes the impossibilities disappear,” says Friend.
The Ultimate in Eating Local–Backyard Chickens!
Posted by Scott Cooney September 1st, 2009 0 Comments
When the University of Chicago undertook an assessment of the global warming caused by our diets, they found exactly what many vegetarian activists have been telling us about for many years, and that is that being vegetarian is the new Prius. Eating local, they found, was a mere 4 percent of the carbon footprint in our food, whereas the growth and production accounted for 83% of the total. The United Nations confirmed this in a report last month: “The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.” Much of this has to do with the fact that methane gas (a, ahem, by-product of animal agriculture) has 18-24 times the capacity for warming the planet than an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide, upon which much of our legislative efforts have focused.
But not all meat, and not all production methods are created equal. Rob Ludlow, co-author of Raising Chickens for Dummies, owns the website BackyardChickens.com. The site has been featured in some pretty high-profile places: the New York Times, Economist Magazine, and now, for Pete’s Sake, TRIPLE PUNDIT! Full disclosure, Rob is a friend of mine who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Regardless, the concept of localizing food is a terrific step toward lowering your carbon footprint. Localizing it to your backyard is the ultimate in local. And of course, chicken raised humanely and the eggs that they produce have a far lower carbon footprint than beef and pork.
The Green Workplace: A Holistic Guide to a Healthier Working Life
Posted by Tom Schueneman August 4th, 2009 0 Comments
Leigh Stringer is a converted “greeniac” who not that long ago didn’t think much about the idea of “being green.” It’s not that she necessarily had anything against it, she literally didn’t think that much about it.
“My husband drug me to see Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth,” says Stringer, and the rest, as they say, is history. She’s now an avowed greeniac (Stringer has formulated four levels of one’s, for lack of a better term, “greenness” 1) Greeniac 2) “Bottom line” environmentalism 3) Couch potato greenies, and 4) well, if you’re at this level, you’re not really so green, now are you?).
A trained architect with an MBA, Stringer is now a VP for Advanced Strategies, with HOK, a global architectural and sustainable design firm HOK, itself recently voted the “greenest design firm in the world.”
Stringer’s work at HOK’s Advanced Strategies involves consulting with clients in the initial stages of workplace and building design and help them make the best decisions for designing a workplace that best supports their mission and employees. More often than not clients want to incorporate sustainability and “green” in their plan, but are also just as often unsure of how best to go about it. Stringer found that often good intentions, while a good start, didn’t always lead to a sustained, comprehensive, and workable plan.
Book Review: Andrew Winston’s Green Recovery
Posted by Jim Witkin July 20th, 2009 0 Comments
Get Lean, Get Smart, and Emerge from the Downturn on Top
“Hunker down and play it safe” seems to be the mantra of many recession-battered companies, as they cut back on people, payrolls and purchases of non-essentials. Unfortunately, many of the green programs that may have gotten funded in good times are now finding themselves in this “non-essential” category. That’s exactly the wrong approach, argues Andrew Winston, the green business evangelist, in his new book Green Recovery, a follow-up to his 2006 Green to Gold.
In Green Recovery, Winston offers a compelling case for why the recession is the perfect time to use a green strategy to get lean, get smart and innovate your way forward. With success stories from industry leaders as examples – companies like Boeing, Disney, DuPont, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, and Wal-Mart – the book offers a four-point roadmap for using green initiatives to drive business performance during the downturn:
· Get lean: generate immediate bottom-line savings by reducing energy use and waste.
* Get smart: use value-chain data to cut costs, reduce risks, and focus innovation efforts.
* Get creative: pose heretical questions that force you to find solutions to tomorrow’s challenges today.
* Get engaged: give employees ownership of environmental goals and the tools to act on them.
I recently had a chance to speak with Andrew Winston about his work and his latest book.
Book Review: Strategy for Sustainability, A Business Manifesto
Posted by Brian Thurston July 15th, 2009 0 Comments
What do a category-5 hurricane and a global big box retailer have in common? For Adam Werbach, these two seemingly unrelated entities gave him inspiration for a more comprehensive look at sustainable systems thinking, and how this thinking is essential for moving forward in an unpredictable and rapidly changing world.
Opening his new book, Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto, Werbach shares a personal take on the Hurricane Katrina disaster. He recounts a trip he took to New Orleans in 1997 to brief the Mayor’s office on climate change, and the potential catastrophic effects it could have on their city.
Book Review: Living Above the Store by Martin Melaver
Posted by Steve Puma July 1st, 2009 2 Comments
Martin Melaver, author of the new book, Living Above the Store, is something of a rarity for an author of a sustainable business text: someone who actually has decades of experience doing the work to create a socially-responsible business. Which is very lucky for us, because while many books claim to be able to teach us how to do it, very few can do so with the wisdom of experience on their side.
The result is an honest and forthright look at what it really takes for shape and maintain values-based business in a very traditional industry.
Melaver is CEO of Melaver, Inc.-a third-generation, family-owned company based in Savannah, Georgia. Through a series of personal anecdotes, Melaver explains, in detail, how a small corner grocery store evolved into a major regional chain, eventually transforming itself into a real estate company focused on sustainable development and management. The fact that this happened was not by accident: all along its seventy-year history, the company chose to pursue a values-based path, even when it meant making difficult choice.
Despite its limitations, Living Above the Store has some really great information. Among my favorites are:
Other Random Eco-Stats, David Suzuki Style
Posted by Scott Cooney June 23rd, 2009 0 Comments
Ecopsychology Statistics, David Suzuki Style
Posted by Scott Cooney June 16th, 2009 1 Comment
Continuing a line of previous posts on terrific eco-stats coming from David Suzuki’s Green Guide (on energy, food, and travel), here is a summary of eco-stats related to the ecopsychology (mental health results of living a green lifestyle) that can be used by any green business in the wellness industry.
First of all, what is ecopsychology? According to Ecopsychology.org:
At its core, ecopsychology suggests that there is a synergistic relation between planetary and personal well being; that the needs of the one are relevant to the other.
And while I don’t have a psychology degree, I can say with virtual certainty that it is just really good for your mental health to go outside, breathe deeply of crisp, fresh air, walk around in the woods and listen to the birds, go for a swim in a warm ocean or a cold mountain lake, enjoy a beautiful sunset from Corona Heights Park in San Francisco, or simply go and read a book in a city park.
Just thinking about it, you’re already noticing your heart rate and blood pressure dropping, and your breath deepening, aren’t you?
Oooooommmmm……
So here’s your eco-stats, courtesy of David Suzuki:
Stuff-related Eco-stats, David Suzuki Style
Posted by Scott Cooney June 9th, 2009 0 Comments
Continuing a line of previous posts on terrific eco-stats coming from David Suzuki’s Green Guide (on energy, food, and travel), here is a summary of eco-stats related to the production, consumption, and disposal of STUFF that can be used by any green business in the STUFF industry.
Americans generate 189,200 pounds of waste and pollution annually.
Our economy uses three times each person’s body weight per person per day in resources.
1980 spending on advertising to children in America: $100 M
2004 spending on advertising to children in America: $15 B
Children see an average of 40,000 commercials per year.
Continued…
Eco-stats On Travel, David Suzuki Style
Posted by Scott Cooney June 2nd, 2009 0 Comments
Continuing a line of previous posts about terrific eco-stats coming from David Suzuki’s Green Guide (on energy and food), here is a summary of travel-related stats for the eco-conscious that can be used in marketing for any green entrepreneurs in the travel industry.
More Americans have died in car crashes than in all the wars fought in US history combined, including the bloodiest: Civil War, WW2, and Vietnam.
Children living near freeways suffer noticeable lung function decreases and 89% higher risk of asthma.
Cost of economic externalities (social and environmental) of our car-dependent culture are estimated at between $400 billion and $2 trillion annually. This does not include military protection of oil security.
The average Canadian spends 34 equivalents of 8 hour work days commuting each year.
Continued…
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