Image Credit: David Shankbone 2011

I hope those of you living on the East Coast all came through hurricane Irene without any damage to your homes and property and of course hoping all your loved ones are safe as well!  We were quite lucky here in New York City as the storm surges were not as high as predicted and the resulting flooding didn’t cause too much major damage.  What really struck me was how Mayor Bloomberg and his administration were able to successfully shut down a city with 8 million people with relative ease.  By exercising true leadership, amazing teamwork, excellent planning, and clear communication, they literally took a city that never sleeps, a city that is constantly alive with activity, and turned it into a ghost town.  In my 30 years of living in Manhattan (OK, actually I was in Queens for two years), I have NEVER experienced ANYTHING like this (aside from 9/11 – which is a totally different story).

On Saturday, when they shut down the subway and bus system at noon, I was thinking – what the heck?  It’s not even raining yet! But the Mayor and his staff knew that it would take 8 hours to completely get the system off line.  As New Yorkers, we collectively dealt with the consequences of this shut down, we made other plans, we stayed home on a Saturday night for a change.  Not to say that there weren’t huge inconveniences for many people.  For example, my parents depend on their home health aide to arrive from Brooklyn at 6:30 every morning to get my mom, who is paralyzed from a stroke, out of bed.  Instead my 90 year old dad had to do that.  I’m sure thousands of businesses suffered major losses from closing for 2 days since their employees couldn’t get to work.  Weddings and parties were cancelled and rescheduled, Broadway shows closed, tourists had to hunker down in their rooms (were the hotel bars even open?), I couldn’t order Sushi from my favorite restaurant after returning to NYC after four weeks out of town (boo hoo, poor me), and countless other inconveniences were incurred.  But I don’t hear any New Yorkers complaining.  We all knew that this was what had to be done as a preventive measure in case Irene turned out to be a devastating storm (like unfortunately she was in upstate New York, Vermont, and other places).

It makes me wonder what we can accomplish as a nation, with some good leadership, planning, clear communication, teamwork, and a HUGE threat.  Oh yeah, the threat is already there, it’s called CLIMATE CHANGE.  Unfortunately we are lacking the leadership, planning, communication and teamwork needed to tackle this one…

Last weekend I went to my 30th high school reunion (yes, I’m that old).  I was blown away by how good everybody looked.  Earlier this spring, I went to my 20th business school reunion and I have to say that not everyone aged so well.  Why the difference?  Is there something in the water up in my hometown of Croton-on-Hudson that makes people age better?  My husband pointed out that the reason everyone looked so good was probably because the folks who didn’t look so good decided not to come to the reunion. The whole point of a high school reunion, after all, is to show up and say “look how great I look and how well I am doing!”  The motivation behind attending a business school reunion, on the other hand, is likely networking and business opportunities – regardless of how you look.  So I’ll venture to say there was a bit of self selection going on at the high school reunion.  What on earth does this have to do with anything??  Well it got me thinking; I wonder how much self selection is contributing to our environmental crisis?  At the risk of sounding like a simpleton, here’s my theory:

Business and the for-profit world attract people who are motivated primarily by money.   Non-profits attract people who are motivated by making a difference and trying to change the world.  Business has more power that non-profits, so efforts to curb pollution, conserve our resources, and save the environment take a back seat to profit making ventures.  The government is led by politicians who are either also motivated by money, or seem to be so distracted by their secret sexcapades and scandals, that they can’t effectively get anything done.  Sad state of affairs we are in.  Oceans are in crisis, climate change is upon us, landfills are overflowing, children’s asthma rates are soaring, and cities are running out of fresh water.

So what do we do?  We change the face of business.  Those of us motivated by social good need to infiltrate the business world.  While social entrepreneurship is not brand new, it is still in its infancy.  When I went to business school 20 years ago, my choices for a “major” were: Finance, Marketing, and Management/Operations.  The “Social Enterprise” program is maybe 10 years old, if that.  There was no “Green Business Club” back then, and this was the first year that the Earth Institute at Columbia (my alma mater) offered a Masters in Sustainable Business Management.  This is our future, our hope, and our best bet for change.  I’m not saying that non-profits don’t have their place, they are extremely important and play a crucial role in counterbalancing big business.  And so are those politicians who are fighting for change against the pressure from big oil and the powers that be.  But the more we marry business and social good, the better off we will be.  Kudos to pioneers like Gary Hirschberg of Stonyfield Farms and Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation. They have made incredible inroads as environmental activists and successful business leaders. They are my heroes.  But we need more folks like them to choose this path.  We need to realize that the most effective way to make change is by solving social crises with business solutions.  As those businesses succeed, their leaders with a conscience will hold more and more power in our society.  And we will have self selected our hope for change.

Here are a few of my favorite social ventures:

TerraCycle

RecycleBank

Wearable Collections

What’s your favorite “Social Enterprise”?

Photo by Diana House

You would think that it’s a no brainer to replace plastic, styrofoam and paper disposable dinnerware with bagasse or another compostable kind – the latter doesn’t sit in a landfill forever, right? Well, it’s a little more complicated than that. I’m not trying to talk you out of replacing your plastic/styrofoam/paper plates with the compostable kind. There are still many environmental and health benefits to using these products. But I think it’s important to understand how it all works.

The first part of this is examining the materials used and the manufacturing process. Most compostable goods are made of renewable resources: sugar cane fiber, bamboo, wheat grass, and palm leaves. Isn’t paper a renewable resource, you may ask? Well technically, yes, but trees take years to grow and replace, and the process is pretty energy intensive. On the other hand, gathering fallen palm leaves or using sugar cane fiber, which is a by product of sugar production, is not so resource intensive. Also, many disposable goods are made of plastic and styrofoam and these materials can leach toxins. Do you want your kids eating off of styrofoam trays and ingesting all the toxins they give off? Of course not.

The more complicated and often misunderstood part of this is the disposal of these products. Compostable goods are meant to be composted, not sent to a landfill.  When food scraps and biodegradable garbage go to a landfill, one of two things will happen, and they’re both not good: 1) the conditions in the landfill are such that very little biodegradation will occur at all (you may have heard of the discovery of 40 year old hot dogs in landfills) or 2) biodegradation occurs, but because of the lack of exposure to oxygen, the process creates methane gas – a greenhouse gas 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide.  This process is called anaerobic biodegradation.  There are some landfills that capture this methane gas and produce energy from it (which is very cool) – but not all do.

So what happens if you compost the stuff? Well if you use a home composter or a composting service, most likely it will be done aerobically (with the aid of oxygen). The gas released in this process is carbon dioxide, not methane, which is one positive result. But what’s more important is that you will be creating much needed nutrient rich soil to return to the earth. And when compost is used in place of raw manure for fertilizer, it reduces groundwater pollution. The great thing is that with the advances in composting technology and all the great services available, you don’t even have to deal with smell, worms and all the other yucky things associated with composting.

So, go ahead and switch to compostable goods and please try to compost them. If the composting part is not an option right now, I still say these products are better than plastic, styrofoam and paper. The materials and manufacturing process are more environmentally sound, less toxic, and if they happen to end up in a landfill that does capture methane gas, then they will be helping to produce new energy!

Disclaimer: We sell compostable dinnerware on EcoPlum.

My Son Noah, Circa 2000

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with gadgets. I remember going to the Science Museum in Boston and playing with a really cool calculator that made clicky noises when you pressed the buttons – my parents had to tear me away from it. I even made a hand held “communicator” out of a juice box and tin foil that had an antenna, buttons, and was capable of transmitting secret messages to other kid spies all over the world. In my wildest fantasy I could not have imagined that something as cool as an iPhone would exist in my lifetime. I grew up before personal computers, cell phones, MP3 players, Windows and the internet existed. Then I think about my ninety year old dad, whose childhood pre-dates even television, and I am blown away by the technological progress we have made in the last century. OK, so we don’t yet have the flying cars pictured in the futuristic 1970s Woody Allen comedy “Sleeper” – but we’re pretty damn close.

So when I look at my son with his android phone that does just about everything but brush his teeth for him, and my daughter watching videos on her iPod I think – where do we go from here? Clean energy, that’s where. I know, the pundits have been saying that President Obama’s focus on ” clean energy” in his State of the Union address was just lip service because he knows he has given up on trying to enact any kind of meaningful climate legislation (not to mention the fact that he included COAL, NUCLEAR and NATURAL GAS in his definition of clean energy – Pheh!). Yet I’d like to take the optimistic road (for a change) and point out that anything’s possible. I realize that without the same subsidies that are enjoyed by the oil companies, clean energy companies will have a hard time competing. I also understand that big oil is powerful, nasty and desperate to keep its reign. But the times they are a changin’. At least I hope so:

1) The BP Oil Spill -While it was not the huge catalyst for change that it could have been, this disaster had an effect on people’s attitudes towards the need for clean energy. Graphic images and pleas for help spread over social media like wildfire. These images will remain embedded in our minds for a long time.

2) Crazy Storms – The effects of climate change will become increasingly obvious and the general public will no longer be able to ignore them. While those who believe that “God has our back” will never be convinced, the majority of people out there who are currently too busy and wrapped up in their daily struggles to be concerned will be jolted into paying attention as their cities start to sink under water.

3) Growing Eco-Aware Consumers – a few years ago, terms like “urban farming,” “collaborative consumerism” and “group buying” were virtually unheard of – now they are mainstream. Consumers are getting smarter about their purchases and are finally starting to revolt against planned obsolescence and inferior goods.

4) Education – more and more schools are incorporating environmental education into their curricula. As an example, my son is doing a science project on the effects of BPA. (No – not at my urging – I had no idea he was doing this until I stumbled upon some of his discarded notes.)

All of these things will lead to a greater demand for clean energy. While putting a price on carbon and methane emissions would certainly speed things along, I believe we are on the right path. I can only hope that my kids will one day say “I remember when I was a kid we still depended on fossil fuels for energy.”

Do you remember where you were when MTV debuted on August 1, 1981? (If you’re too young to remember, then hurray for you). I was at a sleepover at my friend Allison’s apartment on West 95th Street in Manhattan. I lived in the suburbs at the time, so those city sleepovers were super cool. The first music video ever played on MTV was “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles. That song has been stuck in my head for the past two weeks because: “look at me now, Mom, I’m a radio star!” OK,maybe I’m not exactly a “radio star” – but I was interviewed for two radio shows this last week. The first interview, which was taped ahead of time, will air on John Shegarian’s Green is Good Radio show on Clear Channel network and on greenisgood.fm the week of August 27th. I also had the pleasure of appearing LIVE on “Valerie’s New York” last Friday, July 23rd on WOR 710 Talk Radio. Click on Valerie Smaldone’s picture to listen:

Why all the publicity? Well, of course I want to get the word out about my social venture EcoPlum. But if you listen carefully to both of my interviews, you’ll hear that I am desperately trying to reach people – trying to get them to be aware of their ecological impact. We are trashing the earth and we don’t even seem to care. While I am encouraged by all the hard work by environmental advocates like Annie Leonard, Sylvia Earle, Bill McKibben, Ken Cook, Kieran Suckling, and way too many others to name, I am also very frustrated. Excuse me if I’m starting to sound like a broken record (to continue with the “multimedia” theme) but based on what I see every day all around me here in NYC, people just don’t get it!! WHY CAN’T WE ALL STOP THE MADNESS? I mean seriously, what’s it going to take to get people to be more conscious of their impact? While I am tempted to start standing outside Duane Reade stores yelling “did you really need that plastic bag?” and “are you sure you want to use those chemicals on your baby?” and “are you kidding me? – you did not just drink half of that bottled water and throw it in the garbage!?!” – I know that’s not the answer. We just need to get through to people on a higher level.

A colleague of mine recently recommended that I watch this video series by economist Joshua Farley where he talks about Ecological Economics. I thought he made a lot of sense, so I’m passing it along in the hope that it will resonate with someone in an “AHA” sort of way.

Economics not your cup of tea? Well there’s always the good old “Story of Stuff” video that does a great job hitting home the message. Other good videos are: No Impact Man, Tapped, An Inconvenient Truth, Food Inc.,
Crude Impact, and Who Killed the Electric Car.

So here’s what I’m thinking: most of you reading this don’t need to be converted – you already are doing as much as you can to reduce your ecological impact. But I know you all have friends, colleagues, co-workers, family members who are still going about their business as usual and not thinking about their destructive behavior. So please pass this on to one of them and ask them to take a few minutes to listen to my radio show or watch one of these videos. If they do this and write to me (or better yet – send a video) with ONE thing they learned and ONE habit they will change, I’ll pick one lucky winner of $100 worth of EcoChipz that can be used for purchases in our EcoShop or donated to environmental causes. It’s that simple. Let’s all be video and radio stars and get our message out, one person at a time.

Please send all submissions to videostar@ecoplum.com or post them to our FACEBOOK page.

This past Saturday, I spent the day with actor Matthew Modine and 1,000 other parents, educators, students, vendors, facilities managers and community leaders at the Green Schools Alliance Resource Fair here in NYC. OK, I didn’t really “spend” time with Matthew Modine. Actually, I didn’t even talk to him and I arrived a little late for his presentation, but the point is that he and I and 1,000 other folks decided to spend a precious spring Saturday indoors, away from our families, because we all believe that school should be a place for our kids to learn about environmental stewardship in a safe, non-toxic facility.

The event was a mix of presentations, break-out workshops, and a resource fair with almost 100 exhibitors showcasing everything from “litter free lunch” materials to climate education to various schools’ green accomplishments.  What’s amazing is that many of these school greening efforts were spearheaded by parent volunteers who selflessly devoted hours and hours to working on committees, meeting with the school administration as well as the NYC Board of Education, decoding the maze of city bureaucracy, dealing with unions and associations, all so that our kids learn to be responsible citizens of planet earth while not getting exposed to toxic chemicals and wasteful practices at such an early age.

The speakers were all inspirational – I was so excited to hear Jamie Cloud of The Cloud Institute speak about the importance of teaching systems thinking, and to hear about Matthew Modine’s Bicycle for a Day program.  Steve Ritz’s stories of converting Bronx teens from craving “Crack to Cucumbers” through his urban farming program at school literally brought tears to my eyes.  After attending so many depressing presentations over the last few months in the wake of Copenhagen, it was heart warming to hear so much optimism and hope for our future.  I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that PS 166, where my daughter goes and my son went to elementary school, was presented with an award for winning the Green Cup Challenge for New York- a contest in which schools competed regionally to reduce their energy use over a month.  This was again due to the efforts of some unbelievably dedicated parents and a cooperative school administration.

What struck me the most about this event, in addition to the shear number of participants, was the interesting break down in the background of the participants.  While a large number of them were true greenies who have been fighting for the environment for decades, an equally large number were reformed MIGGs like me, only relatively recently clued in to the dangers that wasteful practices, processed food and toxic products have on the health of our children, ourselves and our planet.  This is an excellent thing to see, all of us working together towards the same goal, all of us getting our butts out of bed, missing brunch, baseball and soccer games in the park, and forgoing other Saturday happenings to secure a better future for our children and their children as well.

Last Friday I had started to wake up my kids for school, when I looked out the window and thought better of it. I checked my text messages and there was a notification from the NYC Board of Education that all NYC schools were closed – SNOW DAY! Since my son Noah has a particularly violent reaction to being woken up, I was happy to let him go back to sleep and save myself from some berating and screaming (my husband usually is the butt of this behavior, but he was stuck in California since his flight was canceled due to the snow storm). So I happily crawled back into bed for a little more sleep and reminisced about the snow days of my youth. This is the second Snow Day NYC has had in a month – woo hoo! I started thinking about how people have actually been using the snow to support their “where has global warming gone?” jokes.

Have you seen the Jon Stewart clip making fun of the global warming deniers? I posted it on our Facebook page a few weeks ago, but in case you missed it, here it is, let’s call it Exhibit 1:

Pretty hilarious, in a sad sort of way. But you may say – he’s just a comedian – what does he know? I then turn to the respected Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, for Exhibit 2: at a speech to the Columbia Business School Alumni Club last week, Sachs talked about climate change in an alarming way. He said things like: “we can’t go back” and “we are acting ignorantly, indignantly” and “we are diverging from a sustainable trajectory” and my favorite: “if we all had our own CO2 clouds over our heads, we’d be OK.”

That’s not enough for you? Well, for Exhibit 3 I give you NY Times Columnist Thomas Friedman when he writes about “Global Weirding” in this recent Op-Ed: “Of the festivals of nonsense that periodically overtake American politics, surely the silliest is the argument that because Washington is having a particularly snowy winter it proves that climate change is a hoax and, therefore, we need not bother with all this girly-man stuff like renewable energy, solar panels and carbon taxes. Just drill, baby, drill.”

So what can we do? Well this week, Repower America has launched the largest call-in campaign for climate ever to urge the Senate to support a strong clean energy and climate bill. Please join me in calling the senate! And don’t put away those snow shovels yet, I hear more snow is to come!

I love discovering cool internet tools. The geek in me speaks again. So when I took a moment to check out URTAK.com I was happy I did. One of the many Columbia Business School email lists I subscribe to is made up of CBS entrepreneurs. I had seen some postings by a company called URTAK but never paid much attention. I guess what grabbed my attention this time was the following: “you might like this free collaborative poll – to embed on your site or blog.” Something that is free, collaborative, provides some feedback and insight into consumer attitudes, and has an embeddable widget? It sounded too tempting to blow off.

At EcoPlum, we are always interested in gaining insight into human behavior and attitudes about “going green.” We’ve developed complex surveys and have collected some compelling data. But I must admit it takes quite a bit of effort to obtain the survey responses. The nice thing about URTAK is that it is easy, quick, and gives instantaneous results. I don’t love that the questions are limited to “Yes or No” type questions, but I understand why they started with this format.

So here is my first attempt at using URTAK – which is clearly in beta and needs a lot of usability upgrades, but nonetheless is pretty cool.

Please – answer these questions, add your own, share with your friends, and let’s get some interesting data about eco-attitudes! Thanks!

What is Your Eco Attitude?

HAPPY FRIDAY! I love Fridays. I remember the euphoric feeling I would get on Fridays when I was in high school. Maybe I was going away for the weekend on one of my youth group’s “conventions” and I was giddy with anticipation of the fun and flirting and camaraderie ahead. Or maybe I was just elated to know that I didn’t have to get up at the crack of butt for school the next day. Whatever the reason, Fridays made me happy. Now that I’m a middle aged mom and life can be a drag at times, I’m thrilled that Fridays still have that hint of excitement. Today I’m feeling generally excited about the direction of Sustainable Business. (OK, a little geeky, but true).

Over the past months, I’ve been very involved with a series sponsored by the Columbia Business School Alumni Club of New York‘s Sustainable Business Committee called “Making Green from Green.” The presenters have been phenomenal and I sense a true commitment to sustainable practices from these industry leaders. Yes, I know, lately I have been skeptical, frustrated and generally down on big business and its ability to lead in this area. Why just a couple of blogs ago I was saying that the consumers need to be the ones to demand and drive change. And I do believe that. But I am also seeing a genuine effort by businesses to do the right thing.

I recently discovered this really cool company, CSRHUB, that ranks about 5,000 publicly traded companies on their environmental, employee, community and governance actions and performance. They have gathered data from 50 different sources of company Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) data and aggregated it for us all to use. In fact, one of their sources is the non-profit Climate Counts, one of EcoPlum’s environmental causes. So I decided to go through and pick some companies that scored well, and see what you all thought.

Do you agree? Disagree? Have you had experiences with these companies that you would like to share?

Have a great weekend.  I know I will be tickled pink when the alarm clock doesn’t go off at 6:30 am tomorrow.

Well the Copenhagen conference did not exactly have the outcome many had hoped for, but let’s look at the positive in all this:  two years ago, we had a president who did not even acknowledge that man made Global Warming existed.  Now we have one fighting for a global climate agreement.  And while many feel that Obama let the world down, one reporter who was in the room at the talks said “I saw Obama fighting desperately to salvage a deal, and the Chinese delegate saying “no”, over and over again.”  I’m guessing it was some combination of China’s manipulation and Obama’s need to accommodate all his domestic interests that brought us to where we are.  There is not much we can do about China, but we can help change the priorities right here in the U.S.

How?  Are we all powerless pawns of big business’s schemes?  The answer is NO!  Of course first you need to buy in to the unpleasant fact that business has power and that business decisions are made based on profit.   Sure there are socially minded business pioneers out there like Gary Hirshberg of Stonyfield Farms and Ray Anderson of Interface, but they are few and far between.  They were able to find a way to make money and do good and the same time.  But for the most part, when it comes down to profit vs. doing good, business will come down on the side of profit. That’s the basis of our capitalist society and, well, it  isn’t going to change in my lifetime.

So where does this leave us?  We must not forget that WE are the consumers and without us many businesses could not exist.  How is it that we have allowed ourselves to be duped for so long?  Fine, before the internet, social media, and the “age of transparency,”  companies could get away with keeping damaging information locked up in their secret vaults, but not anymore….Things are coming out, choices are becoming available, and we need to show that we will not stand for being poisoned, losing our oceans and lakes, and of course, being made extinct by Climate Change.

I was visiting with a friend this past weekend and was reminded about how much I am in the minority.  Here is a well educated, intelligent, caring, socially minded, gay mental health professional, for Pete’s sake!, and she is still buying junk food full of chemicals, still buying water bottles, still using plastic bags – what will it take for her to WANT to make more healthy, positive, sustainable choices?   Not to pick on anyone, but aren’t we all responsible for this planet?  Don’t we all have the obligation to speak up against businesses and demand quality products that will not harm us, our children, or the environment?   If people stop buying products such as plastic water bottles, the companies will have to stop making them!  If people demand food and personal care products free of toxic chemicals and materials, the companies will have to change their ingredients. I refuse to believe that the only way companies can be cost effective and competitive is to use materials that are poisonous!   I’m sure that is not true.

It’s all about being informed consumers and not letting the big corporations pull the wool over our eyes any longer.  I refuse to sit back and be manipulated and I urge all of you to do the same.  Make your voices heard,  vote with your wallets, stop buying all this CRAP and demand the quality products that you and your family have always deserved!!

Please make a pledge this holiday season to make ONE change, just one, that will send a message to corporations that you can and do hold the power to make a difference.   And please reward the companies that are already making a difference.  Share your pledges and actions in the comments section below!  We’d love to hear from you!

Here are some resources:

Climate Counts ranks companies on their efforts to be good climate citizens.

Green America approves companies that have met strict Environmental,  Fair Trade and Labor standards.

The California Integrated Waste Management Board has a directory of companies that sell recycled products.

And of course at EcoPlum, all of our products meet one of the third party certification and approval standards commonly relied upon by industry, and we give back with every purchase – either to you or to one of the great non-profits out there working tirelessly on saving our environment.

Peace, Love, Happiness and Empowerment to you this holiday!  Happy Holidays to all…and to all a good night….