ISSP Offers the Cultivate Course

While the focus is personal, the benefits of this course also extend to your professional life. This course builds systems thinking, global awareness, and practical climate literacy—skills that can deepen your impact at work and in your community.

We’re living in a time that calls us to act—not with grand gestures, but with thoughtful, effective steps.

People care. About their families, their communities, the health of the natural world around them. They want to make good choices that leave this painfully gorgeous Earth better than they found it.

But even with the best intentions, navigating sustainability in everyday life can feel overwhelming. What actions actually matter? Am I doing enough?

Confusion and self-doubt can lead to inaction. When our choices feel small or uncertain, it’s easy to wonder whether personal change is even worth it.

The hard part isn’t finding the will; it’s figuring out how to act in ways that make a real difference. And doing this across all the systems that shape our lives: food, energy, transportation, waste, water, and more. And then sustaining that kind of change, even as the world keeps shifting around us.

That’s a lot to ask of anyone. But only when you lack the knowledge and support to guide you on your path.

Here’s a hopeful reminder: The climate crisis is real, but we are not powerless.

As Project Drawdown notes, individual actions—when multiplied across communities—can reduce global emissions by up to 30%. That’s not a side note. That’s a climate solution.

Thus, Al Gore urges us: “Help drive action on the climate crisis, in your workplace, in your community, in your network of contacts and friends, and most importantly in the public policy of the nation, in which you live.”

To be clear: this isn’t about putting the responsibility for climate change on the individual. Regulatory bodies around the world are stepping up to require increased action from industry too. In the U.S., California is driving industry-wide emissions reductions and disclosures. In the EU, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) will require some 6,000 businesses across 28 member states to comply starting this year. And these are just two examples. Rather, it’s about empowerment: If you care, then you can do something about it, and find enjoyment in the process.  

Even global frameworks like the Paris Climate Accord depend on individual choices. While the agreement is international, it’s meant to be strengthened from the bottom up—by people who lead by example and call for change. That means each of us plays a role—not in isolation, but as part of a growing, grassroots-driven movement.

We know that real change sticks when it’s tied to what we care about.

If you already know you care about sustainability, then the solution to living your best sustainable life lies in three steps:

Step 1.  Identify the specific values that drive your daily decisions
Step 2.  Discover the most impactful sustainability actions that align with those values
Step 3.  Take those actions using methods that are proven to support sustained behavior change

When we anchor our choices in what already matters to us, we create a sense of purpose that makes change easier to start and more fulfilling to maintain. Our actions become expressions of our identity, not obligations on a to-do list.

Until now, there hasn’t been a single resource that helps you do all three. You can find tools to clarify your values, content that lists high-impact climate actions, or tips for living more sustainably. But do any of them connect the dots—linking your values to meaningful actions and supporting you in making those changes stick?

A new resource to guide you—now available through ISSP.

That’s where Cultivate: Personal Sustainability for Professional Growth comes in. This self-paced, 10-module course is designed to support you through all three steps of sustainable behavior change:

Step 1. The course begins by helping you reflect on what motivates you most—whether that’s saving money, improving your health, supporting your community, or caring for nature. These “sustainability value drivers” help you clarify which types of sustainability actions will feel most rewarding and personally meaningful.

Step 2. Each module focuses on a different area of personal impact—travel, food, energy, waste, water, and more—and highlights science-backed actions that drive real environmental benefits. You’ll learn which behaviors matter most, and how they intersect with your values and lifestyle.

Step 3. You won’t just learn what to do—you’ll do it. Cultivate guides you in building a personalized sustainability action plan, then supports you in putting that plan into motion mid-course. Pre- and post-course assessments help track your progress and keep you motivated. In one company-led cohort, participants reported an estimated 43% reduction in carbon emissions and a 69% drop in water use.

How to get started.

Cultivate: Personal Sustainability for Professional Growth is now live in the ISSP on-demand course directory. It’s flexible, accessible, and designed for a global audience. You can complete the full 10-module journey or start with a topic that resonates—like energy, food, or water. Each module includes multimedia lessons, expert insights, and self-reflection activities that make the learning process engaging and meaningful.

And while the focus is personal, the benefits of this course also extend to your professional life. This course builds systems thinking, global awareness, and practical climate literacy—skills that can deepen your impact at work and in your community.

So whether you’re new to sustainability or an experienced sustainability professional, this course offers a clear, inspiring path forward. Check out Cultivate on the ISSP website today!

The post ISSP Offers the Cultivate Course appeared first on Triple Win Advisory.

Food waste is a major contributor to carbon emissions globally.

In fact, it is ranked by Project Drawdown as the fourth most important solution for tackling the climate crisis. 

Shockingly, nearly 40% of all food produced each year is lost or spoiled before it’s able to be consumed. Solving the 1.3 billion tons of food wasted globally could end world hunger and feed up to 3 billion people!

Cutting global food waste in half by 2030 is a key goal of the United Nations and is reflected in its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the world through Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production. This Goal is focused on combating waste across all points in the food system value chain, including at the retail and consumer levels; along production, transportation, and distribution channels; and at crop harvesting time.

No matter where food is wasted, the resources used to produce that food are squandered as well.

Such resources include land and freshwater to grow the crops, as well as energy, labor, and financial resources to harvest, process, and transport the food to market. To make matters worse, wasted food goes into a landfill—where it rots, emitting 3 billion tons of powerful greenhouse gases each and every year!

It is hard to fathom just how much food is wasted annually. Imagine that all the food that’s wasted in the United States were grown in one place, say on a “mega-farm.” That mega-farm would cover roughly 80 million acres, or over 75% of the entire state of California!

In your business:

• Educate your employees on how and why food waste is important so they can take action at every level. Have them watch this Food Waste Education video to learn more about how the minimization of food waste supports climate change mitigation.

• Conduct a Food Waste Audit in your organization to see where waste is happening, what actions you can take to reduce waste, and what resources you can leverage to support your goals. Look at every food activity from catering, to your break room leftovers, to waste generated from your procurement practices. Catalog food waste reduction ideas on a spreadsheet and rate them by how easy they are to implement and how meaningful they are in reducing total tons of food waste at your company.

• Launch a food waste challenge that leverages the passion and ideas of all your employees. What would that look like? Take a look at this food waste reduction challenge that TripleWin Advisory conducted with Bob’s Red Mill in their manufacturing facility. How can you create something similar and appropriate for your business? Making sure your employees understand why food waste reduction is important is critical to a successful outcome and a continuous improvement mindset. Set a goal for generating ideas and try offering small incentives to keep people engaged and motivated.

• Do you have a plan for dealing with leftover usable food? Retailers can look into partnerships such as Too Good To Go. If you are not a retailer, research local shelters to partner with that would gladly take your perfectly edible, leftover food.

• Take one more step before the landfill. If you have large-scale food scraps, find a farm that would be happy to use them to support its productive soils or feed livestock. Make composting available and label it clearly. Depending on where you are located in Oregon and what type of business you have, there are these composting services you can use. 

In your home:

Everyone can do something to eliminate food waste, no matter who they are or where they live. Use the guide below to incorporate smart food waste reduction strategies at home and with your family.

1. Purchasing: Have a plan when you go to the store so you only buy what you need and what you’ll use.

2. Storing: Learn how and where to store your food to keep it fresh longer. You can extend the life of your most perishable products (fresh produce) by following this guide.

3. Best By Dates: No, you do not have to toss out items on the exact date printed on the label. Learn how to distinguish a food safety’s guidelines. More than 80% of Americans discard perfectly good food because they misunderstand expiration dates. Also, keep your refrigerator and pantry organized so you can see and rotate these items so they don’t get lost.

4. Get Creative: This is the fun part. Play Top Chef and see what you can create before heading out to the store. Have just a few vegetables rolling around the produce drawer? Make a healthy soup or stir fry before they go bad. You’ll cook more creatively and save money along the way!

5. Embrace Composting:  Cut greenhouse gas emissions by saving those scraps from landfill. If you don’t have curbside composting, see what other options are available to use those scraps to enrich your garden or your community’s soils.

The post Taking on Food Waste climate action at work and home appeared first on Triple Win Advisory.

The reason I founded TripleWin Advisory was to effect transformational change within businesses in order to stop and reverse climate change and industry’s contribution to it. The work I do at TripleWin and for our clients is meaningful and impactful. I’m deeply passionate about what we do and the reasons for doing it. A significant part of my efforts is dedicated to educating others on the value and importance of deep sustainability adoption. I live stakeholder capitalism. I give primacy to stakeholder inclusion. My role in speaking to companies and working with the individuals that bring businesses ‘alive’, is to build agency and to empower action that is self-directed, purposeful and profound. My forthcoming book, Planting a Seed, 3 simple steps to sustainable living, is an homage to stakeholders everywhere — in life and in work. They are our sustainable future; our much needed agents of change. Read more about my thoughts for writing Planting a Seed…

Plant Seeds to feed your future.

Planting a Seed, 3 simple steps to sustainable living. That’s the title of my forthcoming book. I wrote the book to be a living, breathing thing. Well, not ‘breathing’ in the exact sense we typically think of as drawing in and expelling air. And not ‘living’ in the sense that it is something that possesses sentience. These are the aspects of human experience; of animal experience. Planting a Seed is a compilation of living (“alive”) ideas that are intended to breathe greater understanding and inspiration in you to see the worth, value and enrichment sustainability can bring to your life today and all the days to come.

The Climate crisis weighs heavily upon us.

Planting a Seed is timely. It asks you to gather up all your fear, concern and knowledge of climate change and the impacts of extreme weather that are roiling our world and changing our planet in ways that are unprecedented, chaotic, and disruptive; and invites you to channel that big bundle of uncertainty into sustainable action. Not just action for action’s-sake but meaningful, directed, purpose-filled initiatives. I’m asking you in Planting a Seed to change: the decisions you make, the behaviors you’ve shaped, the life you enjoy in ways that align with your values and sustain the Earth.

Sustainability Is a personal choice: self-directed and individualized.

Here is where the accessibility of my book comes into play. Becoming sustainable feels like a big task but there are a lot of little steps you can take to get there.  This roadtrip, journey, adventure, experiment, even, is a trip we all will need to take. Know you are among a like-minded community. By employing a mindset filled with curiosity, openness, and receiving, Planting a Seed guides you in mapping out the best sustainable path for your life and your family.

Be Open to seeing the world with new eyes.

The book is alive because it really is both a reference and guide for sparking a sense of empowerment deep inside each of us that if it could speak, would say, “I matter.  I am a force for good. I can move mountains with my intentions and actions.” This book is my humble house-warming gift to you. You’ve invited me into your home, into your life to convene together. The gift of “we matter”. In appreciation, I bring for you an heirloom seed, potted in soil and water, on the cusp of germination and growth. That seed is an idea; a tightly bound bundle of potential energy just waiting to be watered, cared for and coaxed into fruition. All it needs is a little tending to by you. With anything new in our life, we must get used to its presence; understand its place, spatially, in the context of our living. This seed that is meant to grow into a plant needs your attention, consideration and action. From the care we provide, it rewards us with its natural beauty. Other benefits accrue in ways we scarcely register like breathing cleaner air, feeling more productive, and exhibiting less stress.

Sustainability Is the idea of flourishing in a world that sustains you and you it.

So it is with sustainability. Living sustainably—in harmony with Earth and all its multitude of amazing species—bestows both obvious and a deep reservoir of hidden benefits to each of us. Sustainability is an idea to be internalized and cultivated; a way of living that is enriching; a new perspective that is holistic and inclusive; and our path to a world that is mutually up lifting. As we learn to respect nature for the gifts it provides both known and unknown; the growth of that recognition enriches us personally.

Hope, Vision and action is a winning sustainability strategy.

I wrote Planting a Seed, 3 steps to sustainable living because the world is getting scarier and feels more chaotic and out of control than anytime in the last half century. There is so much negativity out there; doom-and-gloom. It’s depressing. We need inspiration to be truly resilient. When we feel depressed, we lack the personal reserves to lift ourselves up, let alone others: family, friends, neighbors, communities, and nations. I choose to live with hope and marry it with clear-eyed vision, a well-developed strategy, aspirational but absolutely attainable goals, a good dose of persistence, and above all, action. I wrote this book to entice as many others with me along this lifelong journey called sustainability. Because sustainability is both a journey, a destination and a way of living. There is hope! Be hopeful. Then, bundle all that hopefulness deep inside yourself and use it as your energy reserves for the days, months and years ahead. Now, get going on your sustainability journey to a life and world that is flourishing!

The post Why I wrote “Planting A Seed” appeared first on Triple Win Advisory.

Employees and customers are your most ardent brand ambassadors. Stay relevant by providing your stakeholders with opportunities to fight climate change.

We’re in a climate bind. Global warming is causing major havoc around the world. Almost every day we face news of floods, droughts, water shortages, and wildfires. These events cause real economic disruption, job productivity loss, health concerns, and threats to human life.

People are not just concerned; they are in despair at the pace of the impacts of climate change on their communities. A majority of Americans see climate change as a huge problem in need of solutions. Simultaneously, most believe “there is little they can do on a personal level to mitigate climate change” themselves. Yet, Millennials are the swelling outliers. A recent Yale report showed that 20- to 30-year-olds prioritize action around global warming. They feel empowered to take action but need the tools to be effective in their sustainability efforts.

And guess what: those millennials are your employees and customers. In sustainability speak, they are your key stakeholders; in marketing speak, they are your most valuable and ardent brand ambassadors. It would serve every organization well to acknowledge their concerns, prioritize them and enable action through educational tool-building. If dismissed, their climate concerns fester, eroding trust and confidence in the companies they work for and purchase from, leading to both short- and long-term reputational repercussions.

Everyone can Mitigate Climate Change

Here’s the good news. Everyone has the power to make changes that support climate change mitigation in meaningful, measurable, and actionable ways. Sustainably committed companies and consciously aware individuals both know that sustainability is not merely about making better consumer choices; it’s about fundamentally reducing our carbon footprint across the breadth of our “span of control.”

What individuals need—and what companies can provide through educational workshops—is a framework for laying out an approach to enacting sustainable measures in their personal and professional lives. From that framework, individuals can build a custom checklist of sustainable strategies. This becomes a daily “to-do” list, whether it is tracked mentally or physically stuck to a refrigerator to chart the progress made and goals completed. Individuals start by understanding the “levers” they can pull and the scale and level of change they are willing to support and acknowledging the drivers that commit them to action.

Calling all sustainably-minded companies! Follow the decision framework below to support your stakeholders—your brand ambassadors—in building their personal sustainability muscle.

Know the Impacts

First, KNOW the impact areas where individuals have significant control over sustainable decision-making.

• Home dwelling: Size of structure; heating and cooling systems; roofing and insulation choices; and renovation and deconstruction considerations.
• Private property: Use of land, lawn, and permeable surfaces.
• Food consumption: Purchase of local and organic non-GMO produce free of antibiotics and steroids; reduction of animal protein.
• Material consumption: Sustainable and recycled material in clothing, footwear, furniture, and houseware; hard durables and shopping frequency.
• Energy use: Efficiency and utilization of appliances and personal devices, alternative lighting, and renewable energy sources.
• Water use: Efficiency and reuse, water-wise planting, and xeriscaping.
• Trash/waste: Repair, reuse, recycle, and compost.
• Travel: Mode of transportation and/or vehicle type.
• Local biodiversity: Native plantings, chemical use avoidance, and supporting community supported agriculture (CSA).

Understand Motivating Drivers

Second, UNDERSTAND what motivates individuals to build sustainability measures in their lives to:

• Save money.
• Live a healthier lifestyle.
• Better care for the environment.
• Support a vibrant community/local economy.

Once individuals identify their primary driver(s), sustainability measures can be aggregated and pursued. For example, if saving money is a primary driver of sustainable action, the subset of measures to pursue could include:

• Replacing all light bulbs in their home with LED lighting.
• Installing high-efficiency appliances to manage water and energy reductions.
• Utilizing a heat pump to heat and cool their home.
• Leasing or purchasing an electric vehicle (EV).

A similar set of sustainability measures can be compiled if individuals find that their primary driver is supporting a healthy environment. Consider the following:

• Composting all food waste.
• Using only natural pesticides and fertilizers for lawn and houseplants.
• Purchasing only man-made and/or recycled textiles.
• Growing a garden to cut grocery bill expenses; selling excess produce at farmers market.

Decide Commitment Level

Third, help individuals DECIDE the level of commitment they are ready to make that supports climate change mitigation. Commitments can be small, medium or large or anything within that range. Small measures have less of an impact on reducing carbon emissions than large ones, but both have beneficial effects. Driving a hybrid (small commitment) versus an EV (medium commitment) has less of an impact on carbon emission reductions, but both are more beneficial than blind loyalty to driving a combustion-engine vehicle. The same goes for skipping meat in a meal once a week (small) versus eating no meat (large); both are beneficial, but the latter is has a greater impact on reducing carbon emissions throughout the entire food chain.

Each scale of action requires a change in how individuals approach their daily activities as well as a financial investment in how they source and use resources.

Commit to Change

Fourth, reinforce the message that individuals must COMMIT to necessary changes in how they operate their lives. Measures that support personal resiliency to climate change require individuals to rethink and re-prioritize:

• Habits: How one unconsciously gets tasks done (e.g., 3-minute vs. 15-minute shower).
• Processes: The approach for completing necessary life tasks on a daily, weekly and monthly basis (e.g., commuting by public transportation or by bike).
• Financial commitments: Investment in technological innovations (e.g., LED bulbs, EV batteries, photovoltaic (PV) solar panels) that afford individuals the ability to do more with less, use alternative non-polluting energies, or reduce resource waste.

Sustainable Muscle Built to Last

Climate change mitigation requires individuals to understand all their options, determine personal incentives, identify resources, and map a plan that is clear, actionable and measurable. The framework above helps individuals codify a new system of operating that supports a sustainable way of living that is both unconscious and natural.

Companies that prioritize their stakeholders’ concerns see the results of those efforts. For organizations, this translates into a more committed, engaged, productive, and satisfied workforce that seeks to promote a company brand and its products. Today’s economic environment increasingly emphasizes a social and environmental imperative for brands, no matter what industry they serve. For individuals, sustainable knowledge builds confidence in their ability to take action and get results from the sustainability tools employed across the spectrum of their lives. Investing in your employees’ sustainability journey sends a strong signal to stakeholders that committing to a purpose and living purposefully are one and the same.

Kate Gaertner

Kate Gaertner is the founder & CEO of TripleWin Advisory, a corporate consultancy dedicated to helping companies pursue circular operations and net-neutral carbon goals across their business value chain. She marries her 20 years of experience working in and consulting to Fortune 500 companies with her entrepreneurial acumen running an apparel manufacturing company, to her corporate sustainability work supporting stakeholder engagement, strategic business case development and business transformation initiatives.

The post Stay Relevant: Building Sustainability into Your Brand appeared first on Triple Win Advisory.

When we hear about global climate change its scale can be overwhelming.  One of two responses can override our rational brain.  One response by some could be the thought that global climate change is such a big problem it is difficult to fully comprehend.  You would not be alone in thinking it is technically complicated and the issues, impacts and risks associated with climate change are not easily understood.  Because we have difficulty grasping the full significance of global climate change to our life, we decide not to worry about it and its implications to ourselves.  Cross our fingers, climate scientists will solve the problem for us!

Someone Else Will Fix It

The second response to global climate change is similar to the above scenario but with a different spin.  This second scenario acknowledges climate change effects are on a large scale – affecting the whole of Earth – and thus we rationalize that the problem must be dealt with at that higher scale level:  at the country, government level and/or at the international realm, noting that some of the most touted agreements are at this multi-continental, global-body realm such as  the Montreal Protocol, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris climate accord.  Again, this thinking is quite rational.  Global climate change must be dealt at the highest level – where countries agree to take action in a coordinated yet independent way to combat rising global temperatures and GHG emissions.  But it fundamentally misses a more important feature of global climate change:  its effects are felt and realized at various scale levels and scopes – globally, continentally, nationally, regionally, locally and yes, individually.

Solving the Problem at Various Scales

It is important to discuss a relevant idea called the ‘principle of subsidiarity’, which has its origins in the Catholic understanding of community as was formally enshrined by the Maastricht Treaty that formed the European Union on how decisions are decided and put into action.  Herman Daly, an influential ecological economist details how to think about the principle of subsidiarity when it comes to solving problems through policymaking.  The principle’s main idea is to “deal with problems at the smallest domain in which they can be solved…”  Taking that further into policymaking action, problems should be addressed by the relevant institutions (or organizations) on the same scale as the problem.  In regards to climate change, indeed there is a need to set a global policy structure to its mitigation.  Here is where the international agreements mentioned above are important and relevant.

The Biggest Scale:  Inter-Governmental Agreements

When a problem is identified as harmful to all inhabitants of a planet, it needs to be named, quantified, and then measurements developed and put in place to reduce the actions creating the problem.  This is part of how international agreements work.  The Montreal Protocol called for the gradual elimination (through the production and consumption) of substances (chemicals) that were identified to be known ozone depleting in nature.  Those substances were named and identified.  One hundred and ninety-seven countries ratified the treaty and worked independently but with a collective spirit to rid their individual use and production of those chemicals.  And the participating countries (effectively all countries on the planet) worked hard at all levels of government, municipalities, and industry to make the Montreal Protocol the most successful international treaty to date.   Successful in that it has been widely effective in closing the hole in the earth’s ozone layer.

Example:  The Kyoto Protocol

Another example of an international treaty that helps guide and govern the actions of nation-states is The Kyoto Protocol.  It is an international agreement that asks its country participants to commit to binding emission reduction targets.  Specifically, each country was given a GHG emission target to achieve over a given amount of time.  How each country went about achieving that target was up to its own discretion.  Countries could go about achieving their determined emission targets in various ways such as by:

• implementing a carbon tax (flat tax on industry or individuals) on GHG emissions; or
• developing a cap-and-trade scheme (tradeable permits that reward low GHG emitters with profitable permit sales, and penalize high GHG emitters with costly charges) for certain high polluting industries to meet nation-state target goals; or
• mandating industry to implement technological upgrades that decreased GHG emissions into the atmosphere, or
• requiring the adoption of renewable energy (RE) sources to drive industry output, altogether closing the tap on GHG emissions where RE inputs were implemented.

The Most Recent Inter-Governmental Agreement:  The Paris Climate Accord

The latest inter-governmental agreement related to global climate change was the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, an agreement by 195 countries that acknowledged climate change is real and that as many countries as possible need to work independently, but collectively, to keep the global average temperature from rising no more than 2oC above pre-industrial levels. The way forward for each country to support this agreement was up to them to determine individually.  The only ask from the Paris Agreement was that each country submit a comprehensive ‘national climate action plan’ (INDCs) that arguably, laid out a detailed way forward on how to limit global temperature rise from individual national action.

The Scale of Community and Individual

Let’s get back to the idea behind the ‘principle of subsidiarity’ and how it applies to individuals, not countries or inter-governmental agencies.  Rises in global temperature affect each and every one of us, who live on this planet.  No one is not affected by rising global temperatures caused by anthropogenic climate change.  We are all at risk from the mal-effects that are occurring and will continue to occur from global climate change.  A global policy must be accepted as necessary for action to occur at many levels.  And indeed, there is broad (almost universal)* agreement that global climate change is real and is currently and will continue affecting every nation and inhabitant on planet Earth.  Action must be taken at various scale levels where that action can and will make a difference.  Thus, nation-states have a real stake at making significant progress towards keeping global temperatures from rising 2oC above pre-industrial levels with a comprehensive national plan.  Additionally, at a smaller yet still effective scale, regional provinces with countries, for example those in Canada (of which there are 10) as well as some of the 50 individual states in the United States are each working on their own climate change mitigation action plans to develop, implement, measure and monitor GHG emissions into the atmosphere.  Actionable, measurable, and impactful action towards the mitigation of climate change and global temperature rise continues to be valuable at the city, town and individual levels as well.   Don’t believe me?  Not so sure of the value of impact at all scale levels mentioned herein? Then note that the Paris Agreement explicitly recognizes “the role of non-Party stakeholders in addressing climate change, including cities, other subnational authorities, civil society, the private sector and others.  In a call to all, the European Commission invites these “non-Party stakeholders” to:

• “Scale up their efforts and support actions to reduce emissions;
• Build resilience and decrease vulnerability to the adverse effects of climate change; and
• Uphold and promote regional and international cooperation.”

The horn has been blown.  The call to action is now.  All individuals have the capacity to positively influence the mitigation of climate change.  Now, where to begin?  It is useful to begin this march of sustainability responsibility by scale, from the largest: global, to the smaller yet fundamentally important scales of continental, country, region, city/town, and individual.  We, individuals, need to fully own and internalize how climate change impacts the relevant concentric circles of personal priorities and communities (e.g., immediate family, friends, home, work, neighborhood, town, city, state, region) where we place the most personal value.

*Only two countries did not sign the Paris Climate Accord in December 2015:  Syria and Nicaragua.  Syria was and is currently in the midst of a civil war.  Nicaragua did not sign because it felt the Agreement “wasn’t tough enough” in combating climate change.  In June 2017, the Federal government of the United States said it will withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement.

Kate Gaertner

Contact Kate Gaertner today to see what Triple Win Advisory can do to help your business and industry increase sustainability to result in a “triple win” for company profit and long-term competitive advantage, societal well-being, and successful environmental pollution mitigation.

[print_link]

The post Grounding the Scale of Climate Change appeared first on Triple Win Advisory.

It is not a pipe-dream to think we can dramatically cut our national and individual (or per capita) greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions.  “Drastic” reductions of at least 30 percent, 50 percent or more within the next decade is doable and well within our individual capacities to realize.   We need to know where to start.  Let’s first review total emissions of GHGs for the U.S and the rest of the world.

How Are We Fairing Globally?

Globally, GHG emissions have climbed a near continuous upward trajectory since 1900.   For the exception of the Global Great Recession Years (2007-2009) where GHG emissions took a noticeable decline (in large part due to depressed economies and high unemployement rates), global GHG emissions have been starting to flat line.  That’s true for 2016, where GHG emissions grew but at a slower rate.  The technical term for that is declining growth.  In 2017 however, that slowing rise in GHG emissions took a dramatic turn, growing by 1.4 percent and reaching a historic highwater mark for the world at 32.5 gigatonnes (Gt).  This renewed uptick of atmospheric GHGs directly relates to increased demand for fossil fuels last year; by some 2.1 percent, driven in large part by the growth economies of China and India.

Blog on Global_USGHGEmissions_05253018

For the exception of last year, global GHG emissions growth had been recently trending downward mainly due to three parallel factors in play including:

• Households are consuming less coal* than in previous years and total consumption has been on the decline.
• A switch to and greater reliance on Natural Gas** for energy supply, substituting electricity produced from coal.
• The growth of the renewable energy^ industry particularly wind and solar but also geothermal and tidal and its broader commercial availability and use.

The Who’s Who of GHG Culprits

The U.S. had long held the dubious distinction of being the country that produced the most GHG emissions globally.  Fortunately, the U.S. no longer holds that top position.  But, we as a nation, are far from innocent.  The U.S. still ranks^^ second in the world for emitting the largest amount of GHGs into the atmosphere, with China taking over the top emitting position just a short decade ago (2007).  Yes, China is the leader in world emissions with nearly double the amount the U.S. emits as a nation.  But the third largest global emitter of GHGs is India, and their emission levels are less than half of the U.S.  We have much room for improvement.

Talking About the U.S.

Total U.S. GHG emissions for the year 2015 was 6,586 million metric tons of CO2, an overall decline of just over two percent from 2014 emissions.  Of the total U.S. GHG emissions:

• 82 % is CO2 from fossil fuel combustion,
• 10 % is Methane mainly from the breeding of livestock,
•  5 % is Nitrous Oxide (N2O) predominantly from the use of fertilizers and pesticides in agricultural production, and
•  3 % is the release of Fluorinated Gases (i.e., gases released from the use of air-conditioners in vehicles and refrigeration units).

Although all of these GHG types are fueling the growing surface temperature increases of the planet globally, most of what we can affect as individuals is the output of CO2 within our home dwellings, in the ways we use our personal automobiles, and in how we consume products we need and want.

To further understand what we can personally affect to reduce the GHG gases we individually emit into the atmosphere, let’s look at the total U.S. GHG emissions in 2015 broken down by economic sector.

Those emissions’ splits include the following:

• 29% total emissions are from electricity production and supply
• 27% total emissions are from transportation of goods and services
• 21% total emissions are emitted by for-profit manufacturing industr
• 9% total emissions are from crop agricultural production and breeding livestock
• 7% total emissions are from the use and maintenance of commercial buildings
• 6% total emissions are from residential houses and other home dwellings

What’s Our Responsibility?

Clearly, six percent of all U.S. GHG gases emitted falls under our individual purview:  Residential emissions.  Six percent out of 100 percent does not seem like a lot, right?  Ok, but do we have any influence over any of the other economic sectors that play a very large part in GHG emissions into the atmosphere?  Yes, we surely do.

Breaking Down Our Buying Power to Make it Powerful

Within the Electricity Sector (producer of 29% of all GHG emissions), we have significant power to determine its level of annual GHG emissions.  How?  We have the ability to dictate how our power is generated and from what source?  This is the purchasing power we hold over our energy needs and our utility suppliers.  If you are purchasing electricity from a central utility in your area, tell them you want your electricity supply to be generated in part or in whole from renewable energy sources.  With increased demand from electricity consumers for renewable energy generation and power, more utilities will add renewable energy to their power generation mix (e.g., coal, natural gas, solar and wind farms).  Another option for about half of U.S. citizens, is to askew purchasing power from a central utility and to source power directly from a competing electricity market company.  These companies usually specialize in one or more renewable energy sources such as Natural Gas (a non-renewable energy source but a cleaner-burning fossil fuel), Solar, Wind, Geothermal, and Tidal); lawfully compete with a state or region’s entrenched utility provider, and both generate and supply renewable energy to residents in the area.  A third purchasing power is to install your own, distributed (the opposite of centralized) energy source in your community, neighborhood or on your private property such as earlier mentioned options of PV solar panels, geothermal underground loop, and even windmills.  Lastly, if none of these options are available to you, Green Certificates (a.k.a.: “green tags”, “renewable energy certificates” and “tradable renewable certificates”) are available for purchase as a way to support renewable energy generators in their mission to gain power in the energy marketplace.  Think of green certificates as gift certificates bought by you and given to the renewable energy industry for the purpose of realizing two goals:  first:  to support competitive renewable energy pricing to that of  inexpensive fossil fuel options, and second:  to drive demand of renewable energy from both the consumer- and generation-sides of the equation, making renewable energy more abundant, available, and affordable across the whole swath of the U.S.

Consuming is Not So Groovy

We also hold indirect sway over the GHG emissions from the Transportation sector.  Remember, this sector produces a whopping 27 percent of all GHG emissions into the atmosphere within the U.S.  How, you may ask?  If we dive deeper into the make-up of the Transportation sector, there are three categories or types of vehicles that drive the majority (92%) of this sector.  They include:

• 60% are light-duty vehicles
• 23% are medium and heavy-duty vehicles
• 9% are aircraft

Much of the activity of these types of transportation types are utilized for the transport and delivery of products to the end-consumer, either in the last mile to one’s home, or to the various entities that make-up the consumer supply chain including warehouses, distributors, retailers and third-party service providers who help with product builds and installation.  The GHG emissions by the transportation sector can be significantly, indirectly impacted by our relationship to products and what, where, why and how often we purchase goods of all types to consume.  It is a well-articulated argument by the manufacturing industries (e.g., clothing, textiles, technology) that their production life-cycles and how they design products are dictated by the wants and demands of consumers.  When consumers ask for change, they will deliver.  Well, in no-small way, we can kick-start the consumerism conversation by what and how much we purchase from manufacturers and retailers that commit themselves to long-lasting, durable, recyclable product design, sustainable packaging, green transportation means, and have implemented supply chain processes that support and prioritize material revalorization.

Tallying the Totals for Individuals

Now, if we tally the sectors we have direct (residential) and indirect (electricity and transportation) influence over, the number comes to 62%.  It is worth articulating loud and clear:  our personal decisions, actions and deployment of appropriate technology can substantially impact the growth or decline of the global climate change trajectory. The devil is in the details or in this case, the nitty-gritty of our life choices.

*Coal is the most pollutive fossil fuel energy source used today.

**Natural Gas is a cleaner-burning fossil fuel emitting half the CO2 than coal and petroleum.

^Renewable energy sources emit zero carbon into the atmosphere.

^^Ranking based on data from the European Commission, Joint Research Center/Netherlands Environmental Agency, and Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research for 2012.

Kate Gaertner

Contact Kate Gaertner today to see what Triple Win Advisory can do to help your business and industry increase sustainability to result in a “triple win” for company profit and long-term competitive advantage, societal well-being, and successful environmental pollution mitigation.

[print_link]

The post Affecting Climate Change Personally appeared first on Triple Win Advisory.

The role of women in our culture is all messed up and discombobulated.  From a very early age, girls are asked to carry themselves in a way that comports to societies expectations of them. And that society is patriarchal.  This is where the problem begins and persists.  At a young age, girls are expected to be kind, considerate, thoughtful and caring, giving and eager to please.  They are to be ‘obedient’.  Girls happen to be able to take instructions well, are team-oriented and cooperative, and academically-driven.  The graduation rates of women versus men in the U.S. is lopsided in their favor.  The median rate of women graduating from high school is seven percent greater than that of men.  This model of a good girl was true of myself from grade-school through high school.  I was a shy yet charismatic girl.  I excelled at school making the National Honor Society in high school four years running.  I was also gifted athletically.  I played three varsity sports; captain of two.

You Can Do Anything You Set Your Mind To

In college, women are feed a steady stream of positive ‘you can do it’ affirmations.  We are explicitly told and come to believe we are important, equal and respected. Through hard work, personal application, and fortitude we are told we can succeed.  Perhaps in a self-fulfilling prophecy, U.S. colleges are increasingly composed of women.  Fifty-six percent of all university students are female.  That percentage is expected to grow one percent more by 2026.  That is a role-reversal from the 1970’s when men were the majority college seekers by 58 percent.

The Foul-Taste of Patriarchy

It was during these independent, becoming adult years at college I first tasted the foul-taste of patriarchy.  I was by all accounts a successful, self-possessed, directed woman.  I attended an Ivy League college, maintained a respectable B+ average and was on track to graduate within four years of matriculation.  During my senior year, in my last semester of college, I decided to take an international trip with my boyfriend over Spring Break.  Although I had been dating my boyfriend for three years and he himself was an all-honor, academic scholar and graduate of Dartmouth, who held an envious and lucrative job, my dad was incensed at my decision to travel together with him. My father informed me that he considered the trip unsavory and unacceptable, essentially calling me a “street worker”.  He also threatened to stop paying for my college education. His reasoning was flimflam and absurdly extreme towards someone who had always followed the straight-and-narrow path of an upstanding and obedient child.  At 22, I was a responsible adult who could make responsible decisions.  I went on the trip.  My father stopped paying my college tuition and all miscellaneously-related charges.  It was an explicit take-down:  you do what I say and what I want or I roadblock the desired goals you seek for your future.  It was a brutal first lesson to be learned of many to come.

A Sense of Place in the Workplace

Next up:  the professional world.  The opportunity I had been waiting for to excel, achieve, and meet with success.  Oh, how the obedient lessons came punching back quick and fast.  It was during my three years working at a small strategic consulting firm located on the doorsteps of Washington, D.C., where the social strictures of how women professionals were expected to act were both subtly reinforced and explicitly articulated.   There was an openly aggressive tear-down of both my dedication to the company and my competency as a consultant in the first months at the firm to a mutual supervisor by a male counterpart, who clearly felt he had received an inferior education to my Ivy one. There was my annual review which had in writing and was discussed verbally of the need and benefit for me to “smile more” while conducting myself in the office.  I suppose seriousness and earnestness is not a pre-requisite to good work, amiability is.

Perceived and Assumed Notions of Appropriateness

At no point in my career path have I had access or been privy to non-work, recreational networking, say by playing a basketball pick-up game, tennis match or a round of golf with a higher-level executive, unlike most of my male peers, who were asked often by their superiors to participate in these activities.  You may ask yourself if perhaps it was because I was un-athletic.  The answer would be no.  In fact, both my male and female peers knew me to be an adept athlete who played varsity basketball for a consistently Ivy-League winning basketball team at Dartmouth.  At Wharton, I was recruited by the co-ed basketball team so they could have a better chance of winning games against other cohort teams.  So too, I was on the co-ed racing ski-team while at MBA.  No, my non-inclusion in this ritualized professional networking dance was because the perceived impropriety of having a single woman “canoodle” with executive-level men (whether married or not) was a breach of conduct that had to be abided by at all cost…and to much detriment when it came to quick promotions and corporate advancement versus my male colleagues.

Leadership: Assigned or Innate?

Even the qualities of leadership become distorted when applied to a woman versus a man.  I have had male peers openly read newspapers for the first 45 minutes of their work day, banter around the various “water cooler” office locations about current events, sports, and the like while always being perceived as strong, commanding, and projecting the qualities a leader possesses.   I found some of these men flabby in their industriousness and outright lazy in their daily business practices.  It so happened my office was situated just off the copy room where at any one time, projects were nearing completion or furiously readying for an in-person client presentation requiring reams of copying to be completed and decks built.  Because of natural circumstance, colleagues of mine often found themselves stepping into my office to chat.  This was a deliberate action on their part.  My desk faced away from the copy room.  And because my office was an open cubicle on a floor with a sea of cubicles, conversations were for all to see (and hear).  Now, I have got to assume that if I were not well-regarded by my peers, they would have resisted engaging me.  The actual opposite was happening.  At some point my VP mentor pulled me into his office to inform me that the organization found me to be a “trouble-maker”, who was causing havoc in the office by making people unproductive, and that this warning was a pre-cursor to a possible future firing.  I was flabbergasted since I did not court people coming to my office to seek my company.  Nonetheless, one could argue I was a natural-born leader:  charismatic, self-assured, disciplined, and respected by my peers. To give this situation perhaps greater context, I was at this point in my career, working dually as a consultant (my day job) and as the lead recruiter of undergraduate students to fill entry-level positions at the firm.  I did not seek out the recruiting position; the firm asked me to take that position because they found me to be compelling with a good sense at selecting successful candidates for the firm.  How quickly one’s standing can drop when power roles are not pre-determined, but naturally gifted.

Ahh, Sexism Rises Again!

As professionals progress, both men and women often look to higher-degrees to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace but also to make themselves more appealing and desirable to employers.  Unsurprisingly, women maintain their majority over men in gaining Masters and Doctoral degrees.

I did not lose my job.  I did matriculate at The Wharton School to gain my M.B.A.  From there I started a new chapter in my career in media and entertainment, managing digital platforms for traditional media assets (think:  magazines) as well as for a multibillion dollar start-up, XM Satellite Radio.  At the five-year mark, I scratched my entrepreneurial itch to write a business plan and launch a sustainable women’s active wear company.  Over the course of nine months, I heavily networked to raise funds for my new venture.

It was during this time I once again hit up against both the latent and blatant sexism I had experienced earlier in my career and as a striving young woman.  In pitch meetings with prospective Angel investors, almost always a wealthy, white male executive, I was indiscreetly asked when I was going to have children.  These were usually questions posed over documents and PowerPoint decks summarizing the competitive advantage of my business idea and the initial valuations one could expect if an investor determined to make a formal investment through a private placement memorandum (PPM).  My pat answer to these inappropriate inquiries was that I was not married and anyway, getting married and starting a family was not a current priority.

Horrifyingly, my own father told me point-blank that he’d invest in my business only if some man he knew peripherally but respected as a corporate executive, would run the company instead of me.  The implicit logic of the statement was:  only a man knows how to run a business and make it a success.

When Women Become DisObedient Is When the Trouble Begins

Obedient women are supposed to stay within their gender-specified, culturally-dictated roles:  that of someone who is kind, caring, thoughtful, listens (and takes orders) well. They are gals who are intended to do well by keeping to themselves – not creating any unnecessary waves – and accepting what they are given. On the other hand, “disobedient” women possess power and display it; are aggressive and use it; are risk-takers, change-makers, thought-leaders, and drive toward their goals without side-track.  If women decide to become entrepreneurs, their business ideas are negated more easily, their business drive questioned ceaselessly, and their access to capital and mentorship are denied more voluminously than men.  The majority of striving women must kowtow to men for their financial security, while holding their revolutionary ideas tenuously out on a platter to be tossed casually, and package their dynamism, vision, and great abundance of talent in a neatly-tied box that is pretty, well-considered, composed, and always, forever always, unthreatening.

Sexism and male-determined cultural norms around the appropriateness of women’s behavior and the roles in which they inhabit, have allowed the boogeymen to win.  It has not, however, stopped women professionals and entrepreneurs from rising up and succeeding in and of themselves.  But the unmistakable markers of turmoil and strife remain steadfastly a part of the landscape for women in business.  Women are striving, progressing, and earning accolades throughout their educational careers. Women are winning but without the rewards.  Women are succeeding but are asked to travel a longer, more arduous and land-mined filled professional career of working for less, being offered fewer and less lucrative promotions, dinged for starting a family, and forced to navigate and deal with the perceived “failings” of being, by all accounts, a successful and desirable company executive but through a pervasive lens that minimizes those hard-fought accomplishments.  This culture absolutely needs to change.

Bringing The Lessons Home to Be ReImagined and ReApplied

I bring my personal experience back-around to my two young children born from a loving, respect-filled relationship with a successful man, who values women and their valuable innate traits.  Obedience is not one of them.  Our children are split down the middle:  one girl and one boy.  Our daughter is now in third-grade and all the same traits of kindness, helpfulness, consideration and thoughtful application of oneself are there among my daughter and her female classmates.  My husband and I revel in her innate character traits but also recognize the need for her to be less amenable to others (if it impedes her personal needs unnecessarily), speak her mind more and more adamantly, and to ‘fight back’ when another (male or female) is aggressive, unkind, hurtful and generally, disrespectful of her person.  We are actively teaching her these more ‘male-attributed’ traits of interaction so that she may feel comfortable and right standing up for her beliefs and to help ensure her greater success in the often cut-throat world of business.

For our son, our daughter’s junior by four years, we seek to teach the near opposite traits we are driving to imbue in our daughter.  He already knows how to speak his mind – vociferously – is adamant, demanding, often aggressively so, and persistent with his wants and needs.  What my son needs to be taught are those nuanced, intuitive-brained traits we admire in girls but seem to try and take advantage of when they become adults.  We work diligently on various teaching lessons for him such as respect and care for others, control of one’s body and emotions, appropriate expression of behavior, valuing others input and opinions even when it is different from one’s own and the like.  Make no mistake about it:  respect is learned…for others and particularly for women.

Solution-Setting Around the #metoo Movement

The solution to issues surrounding the #metoo movement are multifaceted and diverse, need to be applied both top-down and bottom-up, and likely require a “re-learning” in how to speak constructively, act appropriately, and perceive rightly the value, efforts, and innate talents – however foreign and non-intuitive they may be – of women as they progress to adulthood and into professional careers.  Lessons of respect, valuing others and listening to differing opinions start early and must continue to be reinforced.  No amount of fakery around superficially “understanding the other” will result in lasting change in mindset.  Although corporate training is necessary given the awareness and widespread problems around respecting and valuing women in the workplace, training alone is a superficial, temporary salve.  Training must be buttressed with non-bendable, red-line enforcement of infractions that are openly communicated and widely disseminated to build trust around an institution’s ‘rule of law’.

As with any new habits we seek to build, we must throw-away the old, unconscious way of doing things, create a new process to replicate, and then get-to the hard, tedious work of consciously making new, more productive habits that serve ourselves and others better.  This transition is not easy, feels uncomfortable and may be downright scary, making us fraught with angst and uncertainty. However, at the end of the long, winding tunnel, greater respect and equality between men and women will be rewarded with broader contentment, freedoms now little understand and unrealized, and higher levels of prosperity among both sexes.

Contact Kate Gaertner today to see what Triple Win Advisory can do to help your business and industry increase sustainability to result in a “triple win” for company profit and long-term competitive advantage, societal well-being, and successful environmental pollution mitigation.

Kate Gaertner

[print_link]

The post The MisEducation of Women appeared first on Triple Win Advisory.

The impacts of climate change on our daily individual lives will be dependent on where we live within the U.S. but more generally, they will range from small to large.  Island residents and individuals living in or close to coastal communities within the 48 contiguous states have a strong likelihood of dealing with more frequent and more extreme storm surges and flooding events that are highly disruptive to the very economies and communities in which they live.  This means increasing intensity hurricanes, cyclones, and tropical storms have the very real potential to makes individuals’ homes uninhabitable, a lifetime of possessions destroyed, transportation inoperable, and jobs in office buildings temporarily meaningless when buildings are blown apart from high winds and rain.  Whole economies come to a halt as they strain over how to recover and rebuild from natural devastation enhanced by climate change.  People’s health suffers during these times for indefinite periods of time from increased risks of disease, mental suffering, and worst of all, untimely death for some.  During these landfall events where built infrastructure is compromised, the after effects of extreme storms compromise and cripple central municipal facilities to distribute energy services such as electricity, heat and air-conditioning to households, support the flow of safe drinking water and effective treatment of waste and sewage waters.  Storm event flooding not only risks riverbank overflows but often guarantees the commingling of industrial as well as urban contaminants into freshwater systems that support human health and safe drinking supplies.

When Wild Weather Forces You to Flee Your Home and Community

More unsettling to individual lives is the potential need (requirement, even) to resettle to a new town, city or even state, forcing individuals to literally start-over and reboot their lives from scratch.  This is not a far-fetched scare tactic or apocalyptic future-visioning scenario.  This “resettlement” idea is very real and very present-day.  Hurricane Katrina that hit Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005 forced 1.2 million people to evacuate their communities and homes.  Of the 100,000 people that remained to weather the storm in situ, nearly two percent (1,800) of that sub-population lost their lives to the direct or in-direct effects of the storm[1].  More than 800,000 homes were destroyed.  Twelve years after Hurricane Katrina, only half of the 14,000 lower 9^th ward New Orleans’ residents have re-inhabited the worst hit neighborhood of the city[2].

Climate Change is an Equal-Opportunity Challenge

Hurricane Harvey slammed into Houston, Texas in late August 2017, a sprawling metropolitan area of 6.6 million people, damaging more than 200,000 homes and destroying more than 12,000[3].  It also happens to be a rapidly growing city built on wetlands prone to overflow and flooding.  Questions continue to be batted around as to whether and to what extent some neighborhoods that have a conservative 10 percent estimate of flooding yearly – having flooded successively three years in a row from three 500-year floods in 2015, 2016, and 2017 – are worth rebuilding.  Climate scientists don’t mince words when they state that “climate change will increasingly require moving – not just rebuilding – entire neighborhoods…even abandoning [urban developed] coastlines”[4].  Hurricane Harvey outpaced the damage costs of Hurricane Katrina by 99 Billion, a 122 percent increase in total storm damage sustained by a metropolitan area.  One could rightly argue that human suffering and displacement due to extreme storm events facilitated by global climate change will increasingly be seen as “equal opportunity” disasters – the rich and poor, young and old, educated and non-educated, all races, and Republican- versus Democratic-leaning individuals face the same or similar level of suffering, economic turmoil, displacement, risks to health and uncertainty in the length of time it takes to rebuild their homes let alone their lives.

If you Think Human Migration Here in the U.S. is Hyperbole, Think Again.

No real-life example is more poignant in encapsulating the long-term, forced migration of individuals from climate change disaster than the residents of Puerto Rico.  The island was completely devastated and almost entirely flattened when Hurricane Maria made landfall in late September 2017 as it swept through the Caribbean hitting the island directly.  The Hurricane took out 100 percent of the island’s electrical power.  A month post-storm, still 80 percent of the island had no access to electricity, potable water or safe sewage treatment.  There are estimates that full restoration of energy to the whole of the island may take upwards of six to 12 months.  Houses have vanished.  Industries have entirely stopped operating.  Residents of Puerto Rico are literally in survival mode with no end in sight to their everyday miseries large and small.  It is no surprise, then, that large swaths of Puerto Ricans are abandoning their homes and lives on the island and take temporary but more likely, permanent residence on mainland U.S.  Of the 3.5 million Puerto Rican residents, nearly eight percent of the island’s total population have made their way to various cities in Florida, looking for permanent residence status, housing, and jobs.  Puerto Rican elected officials note that “Most islanders have moved in with relatives [on the mainland U.S.], and many have no plans to return home.”[5]

But Middle-America Is Better Protected from the Effects of Climate Change, right?

What about individuals not living near the coasts or on islands, but inland, say, in agriculturally-important regions?  They too will find their health, productivity and livelihoods challenged by the impacts of climate change.  Let’s take the 10 biggest and most productive agricultural states, which are listed below, and the key agricultural or feedlot products (highlighted in blue font) for cattle they produce:

• California: almonds, grapes, lettuce, strawberries, tomatoes, walnuts and hay
• Iowa: corn, soybeans, oats, hay, flaxseed, rye and wheat
• Texas: hay, sorghum, corn and wheat
• Nebraska: corn, soybeans, wheat, hay, sorghum, beets and potatoes
• Illinois: corn, soybeans, hay, wheat, rye, oats and sorghum
• Minnesota: corn, soybeans, peas, potatoes and corn
• Kansas: wheat, corn, soybeans, sorghum and hay
• Indiana: corn, soybeans, tomatoes, wheat, and hay
• Wisconsin: corn, soybeans, potatoes and hay
• North Carolina: cotton, soybeans and corn, peanuts and sweet potatoes

These states are home to a great number of farmers but also cattle ranchers.  Four of the five key agricultural states above (i.e., Texas, Nebraska, Kansas and Iowa) supply the majority of feedlots to the cattle industry.  The fifth state is Colorado, which is rated as one of the top five cattle feed lot and one of the top 10 cattle producing (i.e., meat) states.  The top states that supply the globe with meat and poultry for human consumption are Wisconsin, South Dakota, Iowa, Missouri, Oklahoma, California, Kansas, Nebraska, and Texas.

The Challenges of Climate Change in Fertile America

Climate change impacts such as rising air temperatures directly affect crop productivity as optimal growing temperatures, length of growing seasons, and levels of moisture and/or aridity in the air and soils are altered and increasingly become less predictable to forecast.  So too, climate change is expected to exacerbate water availability, making water scarcer.  Crops rely on steady water irrigation systems.  Water quantity and pricing will strain farmers’ ability to optimize crop yields.  Higher air temperatures across all seasons invariably translate into higher disease rates and increasing crop pestilence jeopardizing maximum agricultural productivity.  In fact, some crops don’t fare well with variable and rising temperature conditions.  Scientists expect declining crop yields over the coming decades and late in the 21^st century for crops such as maize (corn), tomatoes, rice, wheat, cotton, and sunflower to name a few.   Many of these are staples in a large majority of products we find on our supermarket shelves and in the kitchens where we cook.

It should be noted that nearly all of the top 10 agricultural states produce food for both human cattle consumption.  With declining crop yields and increasing water scarcity, cattle production is also negatively affected by climate change.  Cattle rely heavily on constant water consumption and with decreasing feed lot yields, cattle are more susceptible to disease and death.

Farmers and cattle ranchers in these states face declining revenues, more expensive inputs (namely, fertilizers, pest-resistant seeds, and feed costs), challenged and potentially rationed water supplies, and less productive lands.  Farmers operate on thin profit margins to begin with.  The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that 69 percent of all U.S. farms (2013) operate in a “critical profit margin zone” which is a financial classification of a near-failing farm that is not-profitable enough to support ongoing operations for the long-term[6].  With the added challenges of climate change to already tough operating conditions, farmer’s livelihoods and the families that rely on them will be strained at the best, or might disappear at the worst.  We are talking about 3.2 million farmers in the U.S., operating more than two million farms by the 2012 Census of Agriculture.  With an average household of 2.6 people in the U.S., more than eight million farming household dwellers or 2.5 percent of the total U.S. population, will be directly affected by climate change challenges that will make an earnable living in farming very difficult.

Phew, I’m not a Farmer or Cattle Rancher So I’m Safe

Don’t be fooled though, by those seemingly low numbers. Indirectly, nearly all of the 324 million Americans who rely on fresh produce and affordable meat protein produced here in the U.S. can likely see various food product scarcities occurring in the future.  With scarcity comes rising food, meat, and poultry prices.  We have not begun to touch upon the depletion of marine organisms across the globe, a very necessary and valuable source of protein for human populations.  When fish become scarce or are no longer fishable, prices skyrocket.  We see this today in the exorbitant Bluefin and Ahi tuna prices but also in the rising prices for fillets of halibut, abalone and even wild salmon.  Fish catches in the wild and through aquaculture farms supply more than 20 percent of the world’s dietary animal protein or support the health of 1.5 billion people[7].

Climate Change Impacts Are Real at All Scales

You can see where this is going.  Climate change is a global issue but at every scale including at the individual level, it has the very real capacity and high likelihood of exacting negative impacts, both directly and indirectly, to our livelihoods, health, living standards, transportation means, and energy usage.  It is worth then, exploring what we can do – as individuals and households – to both mitigate the effects of climate change to ourselves and to support the broader global effort of decreasing our dependence and use of fossil fuel energy including oil, gas, and coal.  We are all in this massive effort together, don’t kid yourself.  And any and all changes we do ourselves have a definite and dramatic impact to decrease GHG emissions into the atmosphere, the main driver of global climate change.   

Contact Kate Gaertner today to see what Triple Win Advisory can do to help your business and industry increase sustainability to result in a “triple win” for company profit and long-term competitive advantage, societal well-being, and successful environmental pollution mitigation.

Kate Gaertner

[1] Hurricane Science.org.  Katrina Impacts.  Retrieved from http://www.hurricanescience.org/history/studies/katrinacase/impacts/

[2] Santana, Rebecca. (2017, April 10).  12 Years Post-Katrina, Hope but Concern in Lower 9^th Ward.  U.S. News and World Report.

[3] Amadeo, Kiimberly.  (2017, September 30).  Hurricane Harvey Facts, Damage and Costs.  The Balance.  Retrieved from https://www.thebalance.com/hurricane-harvey-facts-damage-costs-4150087

[4] Kimmelman, Michael and Hanernov, Josh.  (2017, November 11).  Lessons From Hurricane Harvey:  Houston’s Struggle Is America’s Tale.  The New York Times.

[5] Alvarez, Lizette.  (2017, November 17).  A Great Migration From Puerto Rico Is set to Transform Orlando.  The New York Times.

[6] Hoppe, Robert.  (2013).  Profit Margin Increases with Farm Size.  USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service and Economic Research Service, 2013 Agricultural Resource Management Survey.

[7] Noble, I.R., S. Huq, Y.A. Anokhin, J. Carmin, D. Goudou, F.P. Lansigan, B. Osman-Elasha, and A. Villamizar, 2014: Adaptation needs and options. In: Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Field, C.B., V.R. Barros, D.J. Dokken, K.J. Mach, M.D. Mastrandrea, T.E. Bilir, M. Chatterjee, K.L. Ebi, Y.O. Estrada, R.C. Genova, B. Girma, E.S. Kissel, A.N. Levy, S. MacCracken, P.R. Mastrandrea, and L.L.White (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 839.

[print_link]

The post Level 0: Impacts of Climate Change on Us: Individuals appeared first on Triple Win Advisory.

Remanufacture is a bit of a misnomer.  Remanufacturer is a term for the manufacturing industry focused on the production of hard and large durable goods in which an old product is made nearly new again, to be reused as if it were new.  Remanufacturer also means rebuilding a product or piece of machinery so that it works like new, albeit made up of both new and old parts.  When this author talks about remanufacturing, it is in the context of an individual consumer to focus on leasing versus buying a product, machine or technology, whether durable or soft goods.  This economic paradigm shift has been called many names.  A popular moniker is the ‘Shared Economy’ where one buys, borrows or barters for goods and services.  The concept of consumer remanufacturing is a little different.  The idea is to embrace more of a service-based economy without negating the need for the manufacture of goods.

A Service versus Make Mentality

Traditionally, a capitalist-based economy is one where new goods are produced to ultimately be bought and consumed.  In this economy that we know well, we all individually, buy what we need and want, irrespective of how much a product, particularly, is utilized by any one individual.  A good example would a lawn-mower.  A person living in a region that experiences four seasons, may utilize a lawn-mower say, once a week for six months out of a year for a total of 26 times annually.  Or a person living in a more Northern region with a very short spring, summer and fall and long winter, may use a lawn-mower weekly for three months out of a year for a total of 13 times annually.  What about the use of an electric drill by an average home owner?  If someone has just moved into a new home, maybe that electric drill is used intensely for a two- to four-month period.  But on average, an electric drill owned by a typical person may be only utilized once or twice in any given year.

For Individuals, Remanufacture Means Leasing versus Buying Products

A service-based manufacturing economy that embraces a leasing versus buying mentality, is one where both hard and soft goods are produced and then lent out to you by others, ideally, many individual others.   This is not a lease-to-buy paradigm.  It is the idea of leasing in lieu of purchasing, either immediately or at some point down the road.  The idea is that manufacturers produce and then lease without an end-goal of a purchase, a range of consumer goods.  The concept is best exemplified with manufactured hard goods but there are exceptions to that rule with soft goods.  Think about needing a hardwood floor sander. Instead of buying one, you can go down to your local hardware store and rent one for a day or week.  A carpet steamer or upholstery cleaner can be leased versus owned.  Same goes for a weed-wacker or a chain-saw to tame one’s lawn or backyard.  There are two sustainable benefits to this service-based economic model.  First, fewer hard goods need to be produced to drive economic activity.  The shared products are put to better, more productive and voluminous use over their life-span.  Instead of sitting on a garage shelf for most of a year (or more), a house tool is in continuous use and can be both serviced and replaced more easily by one owner (e.g., a hardware store).  Second, the lessor of the durable goods is able to make money from both the sale of goods and on the lease of the goods.  One can refer to this business model as a “diversification of revenue streams”.  Either way, there is no economic disadvantage to a service-based economic model.

Yes, Leasing Applies to Both Hard- and Soft-Goods

Soft goods can also be service-oriented.  The best example of this is the carpet manufacturer Interface. The company was the first to innovate the way carpet is installed and purchased.  Interface is globally known for their modular carpets where square and rectangle pieces can easily be removed and replaced without the need to strip the entire floor carpeting out.  They create carpets from recycled materials and the modular replacements can be recycled into new future products.  Lastly, Interface pioneered the idea of leasing carpet installation.  Interface’s leasing model is called Evergreen Lease^TM.  In effect, they always own the carpet they install and through monthly and/or annual payments they insure that an installed carpet is maintained, cleaned and ultimately replaced when needed.  A customer pays for “keeping a space carpeted”[1].

Lease Options of Hard Goods by Retailers

This leasing versus buying mentality is increasingly more prevalent, more normal business practice, and fundamentally, makes broader economic sense:  for manufacturers, retailers and more specifically, for individuals.  Many more national and regional companies like Home Depot and Lowe’s Hardware lease out durable goods to customers.  Home Depot’s ‘Truck & Tool Rentals’ include a long list of items to be leased including:

• Various size trucks
• Augers
• Concrete Tools
• Compactors
• Demolition Tools
• Drain Cleaners and Plumbing Tools
• Floor Cleaners, Care and Refinishers
• Generators
• Air Conditioners and Heaters
• Insulation Equipment
• Backhoes and other Earth movers
• Lawn & Garden Equipment
• Moving & Lifting Equipment
• Air Compressors & Nail Guns
• Power Tools
• Pressure Washers
• Tile Saws
• Wall & Painting Tools

Lease options for personal automobiles has been a standard industry practice for decades.  But the transportation sector is taking that to the next level with hourly and daily car and bike rentals, generically called auto- (think:  Zipcar) and bike-sharing systems.  Think about a future where new houses built will not include an attached or separated garage.  Individuals will no longer have the need to “purchase” empty automobile storage space with their homes.

Lease Options of Soft Goods by Manufacturers

Other good examples of soft-good manufacturers that are leaning towards this idea of a service-based economy are companies like Patagonia and Denham the Jeanmaker.  Patagonia encourages its customers to seek repair of their apparel and outdoor accessories at one of their repair services, for a fee, instead of purchasing a new item.  Denham the Jeanmaker company (www.denhamthejeanmaker.com) based out of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, actively promotes repair of customer jeans, whether they are Denham jeans or other brands, through its Repair Retail Stores, again, all for a (service) fee.

The Benefits of Remanufacture to Individuals

The embrace of a consumer remanufacture economic mentality has a multitude of benefits from:

• Avoiding the purchase of rarely used durable goods
• Side-stepping the specter of planned product obsolescence
• Saving on large expenditures by buying when ‘use as needed’ rather than when ‘purchase is necessary’
• Reducing the need to think about recycling and waste management by transferring the burden onto the manufacturer or third-party distributor, who better knows how to recycle/remanufacturer and has truer (revenue) incentive to do so.

Contact Kate Gaertner today to see what Triple Win Advisory can do to help your business and industry increase sustainability to result in a “triple win” for company profit and long-term competitive advantage, societal well-being, and successful environmental pollution mitigation.

Kate Gaertner

[1] Interface Global.  (1995).  Evergreen Lease^TM.  Retrieved from http://www.interfaceglobal.com/Innovations/1995-Evergreen.aspx

[print_link]

The post Support Remanufacture: Adaptation Strategy #6 appeared first on Triple Win Advisory.

There are many adaptation strategies to be employed to combat climate change and to better prepare us to endure and recover from disasters that strike.  I’ve grouped them into eight major categories (see below).   These all generally relate to adaptations to be deployed by individuals.

• Recycle
• Reuse
• Efficiency
• Reduce waste
• Manage demand
• Support remanufacture
• Appropriate technology
• Support local

This blog singles out one of the  adaptations – managing our personal wants and needs – and goes into detail on what that means and what part we play.

Is What We Need, What We Want?

This is a tricky, sticky area to address.  Nobody wants to be told they cannot or should not do something.  We have free enterprise over ourselves, right?  I am not going to try to define how you should live your life.  What is important to understand and digest in our individual way, is this idea of consumerism and how it very definitely negatively impacts our environment.

Consumerism:  Is It Bad?

Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a ‘consumer’ as “one that consumes”. Ok.  We all need goods and services to live our lives.  But what is consumerism?  How is that different than buying and utilizing what we need to live our lives?  Again leaning on Merriam-Webster for a precise definition, ‘consumerism’ is defined as “the theory that an increasing consumption of goods is economically desirable”.  A further articulation of that definition is stated as “a preoccupation with and an inclination towards the buying of consumer goods”.  A pretty interesting definition don’t you think?  The key word to highlight is “theory” in that, consumerism was conjured up by someone or some entity – who or what? – and determined that purchasing behavior that increases over time is good for an economy.  If we take that definition at face-value, we have to wonder then, who or what is driving our want to purchase material goods over and above what we require for healthy living.

The Economic Paradigm We Live Under in the U.S.

First, we have to consider the economic system under which we live.  In the U.S., we operate under a capitalist system one based on the theories of neoclassical economics which is based on the equilibrium of supply and demand.  Ultimately, companies that make goods and services will regulate themselves to meet the demands of the marketplace – businesses and individuals looking for the products and services they require to live, grow, and succeed – and will make a sufficient amount of goods to satisfy the market.  If supply is too low (or when market demand is greater) products will be scarce and prices will rise.  Ultimately though, suppliers will make more of the product until demand is met, bringing down the price of goods to a fair price.  Similarly, is there is too much supply and it exceeds market demand, then the price of goods will decrease until the point at which all extra goods are bought and where supply is in equilibrium with demand.  The theory behind capitalism is that only goods and services that are wanted or desired in the marketplace will be produced.  Nothing extraneous will be made.  That is the theory.

Moving From Developing Products Based on Need, to Products Based on Want

Second, we have a global paradigm that was developed at the end of World War II (WWII) that essentially tied human well-being to economic output.  It was decided at the Bretton Woods Conference in the mid-1940’s by 44 allied nations of the U.S., that continuous economic growth, analytically measured by growing Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was the correct driver to the betterment of human social wellbeing.  In part this was adopted because the U.S. and Britain had put into hyper-drive industrial production in support of the war.  Now that WWII was ending, the U.S. needed some way to avoid an economic “let-down” (a.k.a. economic recession) and persuaded other nations that by fueling economic production – goods – in the name of improving the lives of individuals – everyone wins:  nations, economies, businesses, and individuals.  Thus, economic production in support of the war effort, which created very necessary goods and products for the military to conduct its activities, became economic production just for the sake of production.  Goods produced were not entirely necessary anymore.  So there became a need to convince individuals that the goods being produced while not necessary, were desirable and thus, needed for the sake of it.

Advertising Creates and Drives Our Insatiable Wants

Third, was the birth of the Advertising industry.  Advertising’s main incentive was and is to make products sexy, desirable and wanted so that individuals feel compelled to buy what they see and are convinced that all kinds of products will make their life fuller, better, happier…. you insert the best adjective here.  In recounting the history of Advertising, AdAge states that “the postwar abundance of the 1950s continued into the early ‘60s, providing a profusion of mass-produced goods for eager consumers…”[1]  AdAge goes on to reveal that “advertising provided the information and incentive to keep consumption at an all-time high…”¹⁸¹  during this period in U.S. history.

The Birth of Consumerism

These three drivers – capitalism, a drive for continuous GDP growth, and relentless product advertising – have in a very large way brainwashed individuals into believing that buying more, having more, making more, and even desiring more is the way to realize ultimate human happiness.  And where new technologies and product innovation was pursued during the war years to overcome challenges to ultimately win battles and bring finality to the fighting, now, technological advancement and innovations are often pursued not to solve problems but just to create an unrealized demand for new gadgets, that nobody knew they needed or wanted.

How Just-in-Time Manufacturing Supports Consumerism

The evolution of the Japanese manufacturing concept just-in-time (JIT) is fascinating and quite relevant to consumerism.  Developed in the 1970s by Toyota, the automobile manufacturer, JIT was designed to cut unnecessary waste and inventory in the production of automobiles.  JIT inevitably spread to other manufacturing processes, namely to the production of apparel and textiles.  It became a mechanism to speed-up and increase clothing production runs from four times a year to the introduction of new “seasonal” clothing collections every three weeks or so.  JIT was a very detailed waste reduction and resource management philosophy from the East that in some ways, has been bastardized by the capitalist West to increase consumerism.  Today in textile manufacturing we call it “fast fashion”.  The business model behind fast fashion is a continuous introduction of low quality but high volume merchandise into stores to keep consumers excited and wanting more.  What makes fast fashion effective is how inexpensive the products are.  Consumerism thrives on easily accessible products, ever-changing, and cheap so we keep coming back for more.

That Other Consumerism “Baddie”:  Planned Breakage

A second methodology companies use to drive consumerism is “planned obsolescence”.  It is a well-known insider business strategy within the technology and consumer product industries:  ensuring products break, die, or stop working so they get replaced.  The pro-consumer argument by industry argues that this “strategy” is for the benefit of consumers.  They don’t have to toil with old, sup-optimally working products. They can have the latest and greatest in technology and products that are new, more efficient, effective and relevant.  The pro-industry argument is that the shorter the lifespan of products, the more need for new or replacement products is and this business strategy supports continuous, every-growing revenue growth.  The truth likely falls somewhere between the two above competing arguments.  Either way, though, planned obsolescence is a strong engine driving consumerism.  Who wants to be stuck with an old version of some hot technology?  Some technology devices that are older than three years often are no longer system supported by their very manufacturers, making the devices slow to run and often to experience persistent system crashes with extremely sub-optimal user experiences.  Planned obsolescence with consumer devices such as light-bulbs, hair dryers, vacuum cleaners and the like, is more a nuisance rather than owning something that is not the latest-greatest model.  These consumer products are not expensive but often necessary to individuals living in developed countries and therefore, time and money spent replacing them seems to serve the purpose of the manufacturers making them.

Is What We Are Told We Need, Serving Us?

Putting consumerism in this light, we need to ask ourselves how our wants and needs for material goods, personal gadgets, and consumer devices are driven by these external forces, exacting pressure on the choices we make with are wallets.  How many pairs of jeans and shoes do we need? Just how many different types of socks, handbags, belts and jackets are necessary to be comfortable? How often do we need to replace our personal electronic devices and how many do we need to be satiated?

Fast Fashion has exponentially driven up consumerism just in the last two decades alone.  The U.S. EPA estimates that the volume of clothing that finds its way to landfills and incinerators has more than doubled from 7 million to 14 million tons in less than 20 years[2].   Those number equate to about 80 pounds of clothing purchased per person, annually, with near 85 percent of this fast fashion apparel finding its end-life in the trashcan¹⁸².  Only 15 percent of all apparel is getting reused and/or recycled into new clothing.

Or, we can look at consumerism another way.  A Cambridge University study reports that 10 years ago (2006) consumers were buying an additional one-third more clothing than they were in 2002[3].  Today’s woman owns four times more apparel than a woman in 1980 did¹⁸³.  Energy consumption in a typical U.S. household has more than doubled since 1980 and is expected to continue to grow at double-digit rates for the next 30-50 years[4].  This continuing need for energy consumption is driven primarily by our voracious appetite for consumer electronics, personal devices as well as portable appliances and personal care products.

Consumerism Is Directly Linked to Higher Levels of Environmental Pollution

There is a driving need to think deeply on these issues.  Consumption of an ever increasing amount of apparel and accessories, personal electronics and nifty consumer gadgets may (temporarily) make us feel good, look good and feel cool, but serve a marginal role in improving our lives.  More concerning is that consumerism has a very real impact on the growth of environmental pollution.  These days, 70 percent of the 63.2 million tonnes (2013)[5] of apparel that is manufactured globally is made with man-made (or technical) fibers such as nylon and polyester.  And that number is growing.  These fibers are derived from fossil fuel petroleum and are not biodegradable.  The vast majority of these petroleum-based apparel items are thrown-away, sit in landfills and contaminate both our land and our waterways with no hope of ever “disappearing” through the process of biodegradation.

So too, electronic waste (e-waste) is posing a more serious problem around the world.  With the proliferation of personal electronic devices and the acceleration of a product’s life span from an average of four to six years to somewhere in the ballpark of two years or less,[6] the volume of e-waste is growing with its attendant human toxicity and environmental contamination concerns.  Most of these electronic devices contain highly toxic substances such as lead, mercury, cadmium, nickel, beryllium, and zinc¹⁸⁶ that can cause human disease, cancer and death when exposed at high enough levels over a prolonged period of time.  Many of the components utilized in the creation of these personal electronic devices are classified as hazardous materials and need to be disposed of responsibly.  Of course, many are not.

Putting a Stopper on Our Wants.

Managing our desire for material goods impacts in what capacity these products are made, for how long they will be utilized, how consciously they are disposed of in the most effective way, and whether they have the capacity and ability to be recycled or (revalorized) to ensure longevity of material lifespan. In this way, we need to employ conscious decision-making.  Buy from manufacturers you know are seeking to reclaim and recycle their products after consumer use.  Support manufacturers through our spending power those that manufacture responsibly.  Consider the environmental impacts of their sourcing and production practices.  Become active recyclers yourself, so that what you buy and use, can ultimately become a reused, recycled, and/or revalorized product with little to zero impact on the environment.  Think of yourself as your own ultimate guest:  take care of what you are given, use only what you need, clean-up after yourself, do more than what is asked of you because it is the right thing to do and because, you would like to come back and have a same or similar experience – not degraded in any way – sometime in the distant future.

Contact Kate Gaertner today to see what Triple Win Advisory can do to help your business and industry increase sustainability to result in a “triple win” for company profit and long-term competitive advantage, societal well-being, and successful environmental pollution mitigation.

Kate Gaertner

[1] AdAge. (2003, September 15).  History:  1960s.  Retrieved from http://adage.com/article/adage-encyclopedia/history-1960s/98702/

[2] Wicker, Alan.  (2016, September 1).  Fast Fashion is Creating an Environmental Crisis.  Newsweek.

[3] Allwood, Julian M.; Laursen, Soren Ellebaek; de Rodriguez, Cecilia Malvido; Bocken, Nancy M. (2006). Well dressed?  The present and future sustainability of clothing and textiles in the United Kingdom.  University of Cambridge Institute for Manufacturing: 27.

[4] Fanara, Andrew; Clark, Robin; Duff, Rebecca; Polad, Mehernaz.  (2006, January 30).  How Small Devices are Having a Big Impact on U.S. Utility Bills.  Retrieve from https://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/prod_development/downloads/EEDAL-145.pdf

[5] CIRFS. (2016).  About Man-made fibres.  European Man-made Fibres Association.  Retrieved from http://www.cirfs.org/manmadefibres/Aboutmanmadefibres.aspx

[6] Needhidasan, Santhanam; Samuel, Melvin; Chidambaram, Ramalingam. (2014, January 20).  Electronic waste – an emerging threat to the environment of urban India.  J Environ Health Sci Eng, v. 12, pp. 12-36.

[print_link]

The post Adaptation Strategy #5: Managing Our Wants & Needs appeared first on Triple Win Advisory.