LEADERSHIP -
One of the highest standards for social and environmental responsibility in business, B Corp certification, was awarded to Fetzer Vineyards and praised by the U.S. Department of Labor last week. The certification developed by the non-profit B Lab now signifies over 1,400 responsibly run companies from 130 industries and 42 countries. The performance standards are comprehensive and transparent, and measure a company’s impact on all of its stakeholders, including workers, suppliers, community, and the environment.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
The average age of the American farmer is 58.3 years – it has been climbing for more than 30 years. Over the next 25 years, more than 700,000 new farmers will be needed to replace retirees. In part due to rising costs of education and land, the number of young farmers only increased by 1,220 in the five-year period between 2007 and 2012. Only 6 percent of farmers are under 35 years old.
CLEANTECH -
Fellows from the Environmental Defense Fund’s (EDF) Climate Corps program this summer helped more than 90 organizations in the United States and China identify energy efficiency and clean energy opportunities that could decrease energy usage by 134 million kWh per year, according to a recent announcement.
These energy savings could help cut these organizations’ collective energy bills by $90 million dollars, and reduce carbon emissions by 130,000 metrics tons per year — equivalent to the annual emissions of 27,000 cars.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Today, Target announced a new collaboration with MIT’s Media Lab and global design firm IDEO that will explore the future of food. The work will focus on areas such as urban farming, food transparency and authenticity, supply chain and health. Target says the goal of the multi-year collaboration is to push the edges of science, technology and design to give people better control over their food choices and help them to eat healthier.
CLEANTECH -
Equator Kenya, a food-processing company that produces African Bird’s Eye Chilies for export, has joined the Business Call to Action (BCtA) with a commitment to provide climate-smart technologies, training and market linkages to 8,000 smallholder farmers along the Kenyan coast.This business is designed to reduce the crop risks posed by climate change, which will help increase incomes among the farmers — 6,000 of whom are women — as well as improve crop yields and quality.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
JetBlue Airways and TERRA® Real Vegetable Chips today revealed the T5 Farm – a blue potato farm and produce garden at Terminal 5 (T5) at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. An experiment in ‘farm-to-air’ innovation, the farm will promote New York agriculture and enhance the JetBlue customer experience with more green space.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
On a blazing hot Saturday in Los Angeles last month, the Venice High School Garden, also known as The Learning Garden, hosted the latest in a years-long string of community events – this time, a “Tomato Late Harvest Summer Tasting,” hosted by local startup Cropdots.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
The world’s largest canned tuna company, Thai Union Group (TU), has been connected to forced labor, human rights abuses, and environmental devastation. Yesterday, Greenpeace launched a global campaign demanding that TU take urgent and far-reaching steps to clean up its act.
COLLABORATION -
The Hershey Company has announced it is joining Partners in Food Solutions (PFS), an international public-private partnership that connects volunteer experts from the world’s leading food companies with their counterparts in Africa to help them improve and expand their businesses.These high-potential African companies can feed more people better, safer, more nutritious and more affordable food, while at the same time providing more stable markets for the crops of smallholder farmers in their region, PFS claims. The volunteer experts connect through a new model of remote consulting launched by PFS.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
The 2015 Biomimicry Global Design Challenge (BGDC) attracted hundreds of ideas inspired by nature from nearly 2000 designers, architects, biologists, engineers, students, nature-lovers, and food enthusiasts from over 70 countries to rethink our food system. This week, the first-round finalist teams were announced and invited to attend a biomimicry celebration and awards event in Austin, Texas on October 4.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Monsanto has set its sights on global vegetable dominance and its lead contender is Beneforté broccoli, which is described as “even more of a good thing.” The agribusiness giant is hedging its enormous bets placed on a corn-and-soy-driven business as consumer demand for healthier and less processed foods assails CPGs in all food and beverage categories from soda to cereal.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
27 African social and environmental startups were recognized with awards last week at the 2015 SEED Africa Symposium. The recipients’ business models benefit local communities and help meet sustainable development challenges. Two of the awards were specifically designated for women-led ventures that focus on gender equality and women’s empowerment.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Cargill is casting its line into the aquaculture industry. The U.S. food giant recently announced its $1.5 billion acquisition of Norwegian salmon-feed supplier EWOS and a $30 million joint venture with Ecuadorian shrimp producer Naturisa to build a shrimp feed facility.
WASTE NOT -
Arizona State University Professor Peter Lammers and researchers at New Mexico State University are developing an energy-positive wastewater treatment method using a special kind of algae, The Guardian reports.The researchers believe that algal systems ultimately could eliminate sewage farms’ electricity bills, which can account for up to 60 percent of operating costs today, or even generate a surplus.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
Over 35,600 people have signed a Courage Campaign pledge to boycott several popular California produce companies after news that they may be using contaminated oil industry wastewater to grow their crops.
COLLABORATION -
New research from international non-profit organization WorldFish makes a strong case for how to improve nutrition in Bangladesh. The study finds that there are significant health benefits associated with the use of small fish in chutney and flour, especially for pregnant women and infants.Bangladesh has high rates of undernutrition; 24 percent of women in Bangladesh aged 15-49 have a body mass index (BMI) below the healthy range. For infants and children, undernutrition is a major cause of stunting which can adversely affect their development, especially in the first 1,000 days of life.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Superfood social enterprise Kuli Kuli has announced a partnership with the Clinton Foundation and a Haitian nonprofit, the Smallholder Farmers Alliance (SFA), to develop a new moringa supply chain in Haiti. Earlier this month, Chelsea Clinton met with Haitian women moringa farmers.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
This week, Domtar Corporation released its 2015 Sustainability Report, highlighting its environmental leadership in fiber-based product production and its support of sustainable harvesting.Among its most notable accomplishments, the company self-generated 74 percent of the electricity used in its pulp and paper mills through cogeneration technologies and hydropower, outpacing the US pulp and paper industry average of 59 percent. Nearly two-thirds of this self-generated energy came from renewable fuel derived from its pulping chemical recovery process and from wood residuals left over from log debarking.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Today, Asia Pulp & Paper Group (APP) announced it is committing to retire roughly 7,000 hectares (~17,300 acres) of commercial plantation areas to protect threatened carbon-rich peatlands — the first time that plantations on tropical peatland have been retired for conservation purposes worldwide.Peatland development in Indonesia represents one of the single largest terrestrial sources of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in the world1. Retiring these plantation areas will help support the Government of Indonesia’s target of a 26 percent reduction in emissions by 2020.