3BL Blog

Are charities helping? We don’t know

In a recent debate, David Hunter’s article on the nonprofit sector has taken heat for its assertion that “While nonprofits work incredibly hard, with passion and dedication, and

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Short Term Profits Equal No Long Term Goals.

Businesses have an equal responsibility to the environment.  In the quest to “take while you can and no thought of the future,” businesses have seen profits and then folded when the heat was on due to illegal acts. (Take your pick or examine the coal mining business.) With multiple sites on the net that promote awareness to the environment and how beautiful it is, plus the benefits of reduce, reuse, recycle – why, oh why are profits still so important?  Are businesses banks?  Nope. They just want a piece of the pie and willing to justify a means to an end.

The other day a question...

You’re Sure You Want to Eat That?

A couple of weeks ago, the folks I follow on Twitter (a terrific bunch of CSR and social enterprise experts) were all abuzz about a New York Times article that told the story of a young woman from Minnesota. What was all the fuss?

Well, it turns out that this woman, 22 year-old Stephanie Smith, ate a bad hamburger – made from E.coli-laden beef – and it paralyzed her.

We’ve all heard about...

Green Clouds

A couple of weeks back, Federal CIO Vivek Kundra announced the White House Cloud Computing initiative.  Cloud computing, he said, was the "green computing option". The presentation video concluded with the phrase "lower cost, faster, greener."
 
Twice in the past few weeks I have been asked, "What is Cloud Computing and why is it green?". I expect - hope - to get this question more often. So let me practice an answer here - and I'd appreciate any suggestions you have to offer.
 
Basically, Cloud Computing is a model in which IT infrastructure and software are offered as services to users over  the Internet. 
 
Simple enough, right? At first glance, it doesn't sound particularly new.  Applications such as Salesforce.com and EMC's own Mozy On-Line Backup have been served up over the Internet for a while now.  And indeed, those applications are part of the gathering cloud. But cloud computing implies much more.
 
The difference
 
The cloud itself comprises many services running on a set of pooled, highly configurable hardware and software resources.  In fact, those resources are so dynamically configurable that services can easily get more resources, give some up, or even move to a different set of hardware while still running.
Clouds are be self-provisioning, or "on demand". Like the similarly named cable service, there's no human intervention necessary to order and start receiving your service.
 
Click here to continue reading.
 
 

Icestone CEO: "Buy American and Ask Questions" - An Interview with Miranda Magagnini

Today, I visited Miranda Magagnini, Co-CEO of one of New York's leading ethical companies, IceStone at its headquarters in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The Brooklyn site, which used to be owned by the U.S. Navy to produce the USS Missouri and other famous war ships, is now home to IceStone, which is waging its own battle for a better world by creating green alternatives to stone surfaces and counter tops. The company, which Miranda runs with Co-CEO Peter Strugatz, produces durable surfaces made of recycled glass and concrete. Their product is not only made from recycled materials but is also recyclable itself. The company has achieved an extraordinary level of certification, including LEED, Cradle to Cradle GOLD, and B Corporation.

Miranda was especially proud of their company's B Corporation Certification since big companies simply don't have the ability to be transparent enough to get B Corporation Certified. There are only 190 B Corporations, including Seventh Generation, Good Capital, and Greyston Bakery (listen to our interview with CEO Julius Walls, Jr. here). IceStone's logo is featured prominently on the B Corporation website. Miranda also showed me a stunning table made from their refined collection (pictured in photo from their website). She also had some cautionary advice for would-be ethical consumers.

Non-Profit Social Responsibility

In addition to some lively feedback (positive and negative) to my recent post about the The Bay’s current Think Pink campaign, I also heard from a number of people in the last week about the $2.7. million g0lden parachute that the SickKids Foundation gave former president Michael O’Mahoney (as it was reported in the Toronto Star, the $2.7M included his final salary of $600,000 and $2.1M in “incentive payments” and money to compensate him for leaving before the end of his contract).

 People I...

Kiva and fungibility

David Roodman, whom we previously interviewed, has a very interesting post up about a specific microfinance vehicle, Kiva.org.

Our existing report argues that donations through this sort of vehicle are likely “fungible,” and therefore better thought of (for impact purposes) as general support of organizations rather than as support of specific projects or people. Mr.

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Hyatt (still) should be ashamed

Business for Social Responsibility (“The Business of a Better World”) does valuable work with business around social and environmental issues. It’s helped organize efforts to get global companies to take responsibility for the rights of workers in their supply chains, particularly in poor countries.

So what will BSR do about its 2009 conference, the premiere event on the corporate-responsibility circuit, now scheduled for the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero in San Francisco?

You’ve heard about Hyatt’s labor problems by now, haven’t you? Last month...

Half-empty or Half-full?

Last week, EMC was ranked as #74 out of 500 in the Newsweek Green Rankings.  I received quite a few congratulatory emails, as well as one or two from folks puzzled as to whether this result warranted celebration

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. I'm glad we're in the top 100, of course - plenty of people in EMC have been working hard and making progress, and the recognition is well-deserved. But we're not satisfied with what we've accomplished so far - nor should any of us on the list be.

Oh, I get that...

My Journey for Sustainable Food

Last winter, my husband Dan and I noticed we were beginning to struggle in our quest for fresh, local food. As a Californian learning to endure my first Boston winter, I wanted more variety in our produce. At the same time Dan, a culinary school student, was learning more and more about the role of things like corn syrup and stabilizers in processed food. Between the two of us, we often ended up wondering what we could do to ensure that what we put into our bodies was healthy, fresh and ultimately unprocessed. So we took up cooking more and expanded our repertoire to include items like homemade bread, chicken stock, ice cream and others. Still, in hindsight we relied more often than we would have liked on cheap meat, poultry and dairy – often because it was what we could afford.

All of this came full circle recently in the sustainability class I took a few weeks ago. The day we talked about global food production – including factory farms, or Concentrated Animal Feedlot Operations (CAFOs) in the U.S. – I felt like the world opened up and swallowed me with it.

In Factory Farms, animals are packed in high-density pens, often with little or no room to move.
(Ashley’s Note: CAFOs are hugely depressing operations, in my opinion. For your sake and mine, I am not going to recount just how unhealthy and harmful these farms are for animals, for humans, for our economy and for our environment. I’ll just say that for a brief intro, google “Factory Farm” and see what comes up…)

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