ecofrenzy: what’s good in green

Tom Szaky has created a new form of capitalism, eco-capitalism, in which waste is re-conceptualized as a raw material and becomes an economic driver. In his new book, “Revolution in a Bottle,” Szaky reveals the secrets to TerraCycle’s success as well as its twists and turns along the way to becoming a national consumer products company, renowned for creating products from — and packaged in — waste.

I first learned of TerraCycle when reading “Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World” by CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farm, Gary Hirshberg. I was so intrigued by the company, I requested an interview with Szaky and to my astonishment he agreed (this was at the very start of my still fresh blogging career — you can read that article here). And, full disclosure here, as a result of what I learned, I decided to invest in the company.

Here are 10 pieces of advice I gleaned from Szaky’s new book, which will be of interest to entrepreneurs, environmentalists, business people and TerraCycle-fans alike:

1. “You can’t study to be an entrepreneur, you learn by fire.” Szaky is the ultimate American Dream success story. He dropped out of Princeton in his second year to found TerraCycle and has since been named the No. 1 CEO under 30 by Inc. magazine in addition to many other accolades. But he never went to business school, nor completed his undergraduate degree. He learned everything on the job.
2. When something isn’t working, try something new. This sounds intuitive, but many business leaders will run their heads into the same wall time and time again without considering the option of changing. In Szaky’s case, TerraCycle was originally envisioned as a food waste hauler — they would be paid to haul waste and feed it to worms. The worm poop fertilizer was just a nice byproduct. When waste-hauling wasn’t scaling, they shifted focus to the worm poop itself. TerraCycle Plant Food became a huge hit.
3. “Never dismiss an opportunity.” Throughout the history of TerraCycle, Szaky has followed this piece of advice. His sitting down with me for an interview is an example. Our conversation ended up being the basis for four blogs and, as noted above, I also became an investor in the company. So it was worthwhile for him to give a brand new blogger 30 minutes of his time, but he had no way of knowing this at the time.

Continue reading for tips 7-10 on GreenBiz.com.

Do You Viv?

Arul Velan and Dinesh Thirupuvanam, founders of San Francisco start-up Viv, have a bright idea – give businesses a simple way to go green while driving sales and profits. Viv is founded on two principles: 1) Small changes add up and 2) Give consumers the power to do good without going too far out of their way, and they will.

Viv believes that it will take consumers and businesses coming together and working on many solutions at once to turn the tide of global warming. As such, Viv offers a simple, easily adoptable, almost elegant, program to help businesses and consumers embrace environmental sustainability. Essentially, consumers are empowered to vote with their wallets for their favorite businesses to green their practices by consuming as per usual. Customers show their Viv sticker to participating businesses at the time of purchase. Businesses that accept Viv stickers commit to making their own stores more eco-friendly as more Viv purchases are made.

Once a certain number of Viv transactions occur (usually 50), the partner business will switch all lights to CFLs, exchange all cleaners for biodegradable alternatives, start a composting program, or whatever other green action the business has agreed to. The program continues such that businesses will make more green changes as each threshold of Viv transactions is hit (50, 100, 200, etc). Viv will even spec out the most impactful and needed green improvements for the business, tailored to each individual store. And Viv will check in to ensure changes take place as planned, as well as record them on the website to reward businesses with publicity and inform consumers of their impact.

Founders Arul and Dinesh are two entrepreneurial cousins who’ve spent their share of time learning the secrets of the business world from the inside out (between the two of them they have experience at American Express, Facebook, Accenture, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and they’ve been educated at top institutions including Stanford Business School and Wharton). So it’s not surprising they’ve come up with such a unique and timely idea. As a writer who focuses on green business innovations, I’ve been following Viv closely since emergence from stealth mode in September 2008 and I’ve been looking forward to writing about them. Viv is a new idea that is unique in many ways, and intelligently combines innovative elements from other companies I admire:

Like RecycleBank, (which I’ve also written about), Viv gives consumers the chance to make a difference, which is rare aside from sheer purchasing power, and communicates those actions through the website.

Like Carrotmob (now part of Virgance), Viv harnesses that very purchasing power and uses it as a catalyst for green change.

Like Green Zebra (my former employer), Viv highlights local businesses and drives sales for establishments that have greened or are willing to green their operations.

Viv’s plan is to start in San Francisco and expand outside of the Bay Area by the end of the year. In just a few months, Viv has set up shop in over 60 San Francisco businesses across the city, and many of the businesses have started to make changes. For example, a bar switched to biodegradable cleaning products, a wine store has started to recycle, and a dog-grooming shop has started to compost leftover hair from their groomings!

What Arul and Dinesh understand is that simple, cost-effective green changes at businesses city-wide, and eventually nationwide, will add up quickly. They also realize that consumers often feel helpless when fed piles of environmental problems, and very few solutions are available for day to day life at no cost. Everybody wins with Viv, and I think the program can really make a difference. Want to get involved? Get stickered, sign up your business, and tell a friend today.

What do you think of Viv? I will make sure Arul and Dinesh get your feedback.

SVT Group, my place of work, is one of about 180 B Corporations across the country.  If you aren’t familiar with the B Corporation movement, it is an exciting development you’ll want to learn about.  Read on for an overview of how B Corporations are paving the way to allow companies to embrace and enhance social and environmental (as opposed to strictly shareholder financial) value.  Susan Hollingshead of B Lab graciously contributed the following.

Founding B Corporations and their community partners recognize that non-profit social innovation and government intervention are necessary but insufficient to address society’s challenges. Private sector leadership is required to address our challenges with the speed and at the scale required. Private sector Social Innovation requires investment capital to scale, but current corporate law and capital markets were not built to embrace sustainability. Corporate law requires short term shareholder value maximization at the expense of social and environmental interests. Furthermore, investors do not have the transparent and comparable measurement tools to assess the social and environmental impact of their investments.

B Corporations are a new kind of company which uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems. B Corporations address two critical problems which hinder the creation of social and environmental impact through business:

1. the existence of shareholder primacy which makes it difficult for corporations to take employee, community, and environmental interests into consideration when making decisions; and
2. the absence of transparent standards which makes it difficult for all of us to tell the difference between a “good company”and just good marketing.

In a little over a year, there are already over 180 Certified B Corporations from over 30 industries, representing over $1 billion in collective revenues and $6 billion in capital under management and the community of B Corporations continues to experience rapid growth. Certified B Corporations meet higher standards of social and environmental performance and accountability. It’s like a LEED certification, but for a business, not just a building (or Fair Trade certification, but for a business, not just a bag of coffee). The performance standards are comprehensive and transparent.They measure a company’s impact on its employees, suppliers, community, and the environmental.

Unlike traditional corporations, Certified B Corporations are legally required to consider the impact of their decisions on the long term interests of their employees, suppliers, community, consumers, and environment. Long term this will lead to a legally recognized new corporate form (like a C corp or an S corp) and tax incentives, procurement preferences, and a social stock exchange for sustainable businesses.

B Corporations’ legal structure expands corporate accountability and enables them to scale and achieve liquidity while maintaining mission. B Corporations’ transparent and comprehensive performance standards enable consumers to support businesses that align with their values, investors to drive capital to higher impact investments, and governments and multinational corporations to implement sustainable procurement policies.

The vision of B Corporations is simple yet ambitious:to create a new sector of the economy which uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems.

Each day I become more aware of how critical our water problems are becoming – the availability of water has profound implications for our health, productivity, and economic development, all of which will flounder in the absence of clean drinking water. Currently, 20% of the world’s population lives without enough water. Last week’s Clean Tech Forum was a chance for clean tech companies addressing this and other problems to “to fund and be funded” as 3p’s Jen Boynton pointed out. One of the many exciting ventures present at the forum was Cardinal Resources, whose Red Bird System can provide clean water affordably to communities around the world.

The Red Bird is a solar powered water treatment system that uses no more than salt, sand, and sun to produce clean water for a fraction of a penny per gallon. It functions without pre-existing infrastructure, and can therefore be used in remote and rural communities globally, where clean water is needed most. One Red Bird System can provide for an entire community. The Red Bird can use water from a variety of sources, and can be set up in just a few days to provide water that meets US standards.

The Red Bird is only one of Cardinal Resources’ water solutions, and the company, which was founded in 2004, is cash flow positive and profitable with successful projects in 14 countries. Other next steps for the company include expansion into West Africa, Mexico, the US, and China and development of a trailer-based Red Bird for emergency response scenarios.

Cardinal Resources divides its target market into 3 divisions: developed economies, emerging economies, and NGO’s and aid agencies. Water purification systems are not new – what makes the Red Bird unique is it runs off of renewable, solar energy and requires only salt, rather than other chemicals, for purification. It will be important to educate target markets of these differentiating factors, as well as to convince NGOs and aid agencies that Red Bird is an appropriate technology to solve the problems at hand. The development of the Red Bird is just one exciting, encouraging example of innovative, yet simple technologies that we are capable of developing to solve our water and other problems at hand.

What other practical solutions to critical water problems are being developed that we should know about?

[I originally published this on TriplePundit.]

California Academy of Sciences

It is becoming increasingly clear that we all need to take action against climate change. For those of us born in the last quarter century, an awareness of “sustainability” is hard to avoid. But I would contend that someone born in an earlier generation does not have luxury of ingrained climate consciousness that my generation has enjoyed. So how do you reach these adults? Here’s one solution: Entice them to visit the local science museum and drive home messages about climate change.

How do you get adults to the science museum? Serve liquor, play music and create a trendy scene. At least, that’s what the California Academy of Sciences is doing. Every Thursday from 6 to 10pm you can wander the cutting-edge museum with a drink in your hand, checking out the aquarium, tropical rainforest, and planetarium.

There are two things I like about this concept:

1) I always appreciate a good use of space – why confine the Academy to typical museum hours and functions? Why not bring in a new crowd after-hours?

2) Adults don’t often have a reason to explore a science museum absent of kids. The event is 21 plus. What a great way to make learning fun!

Wandering around the aquarium, I was in absolute awe of how beautiful nature’s creatures are. Truly fascinating. And in that same evening I explored an entire exhibit about climate change that made it very apparent that the way we are going, we will destroy the very creatures I had just discovered in the aquarium. The climate change exhibit is not all doom and gloom – in fact it is fun, hands on, with a ‘we can do it’ attitude that encourages we all make small changes in our daily lives. One of the exhibits allows you to measure your carbon footprint using an interactive scale, another is a virtual game wherein visitors can save polar bears from melting ice caps, and yet another invites all visitors to write down their own suggestions of solutions and simple changes we can all make.

What a great way to spread the message in an attention grabbing, honest, guilt-free, interactive, and even breath-taking setting. What more could I ask for from a Thursday night?

I originally published this piece on JustMeans.