How AI Can Help Keep Ocean Fisheries Sustainable, Fast Company
Overfishing is a huge threat to global ecosystems, but experts are taking a cue from Silicon Valley to find a solution. By mounting cameras on fishing boats and using the same facial recognition tech that Facebook uses to identify people in photos, scientists can classify different fish species and help root out illegal harvests.
A Sober Utopia, Pacific Standard
A new program in Colorado takes a radical approach to helping homeless addicts — giving them the freedom to rebuild their lives on their own terms. Housed in Fort Lyon (ironically, a former prison), the program is a mix of rehab, university and startup, with many residents pursuing creative interests and building businesses as they become sober.
Inside LAX’s New Anti-Terrorism Intelligence Unit, The Atlantic
With 75 million travelers passing through its terminals every year, LAX is one of the most vulnerable terrorist targets in the U.S. But the airport behemoth has built an intelligence team from the ground up with analytic capabilities that “rival the agencies of a small nation-state.” The team’s innovative approach to fighting terrorism could signal a larger shift in the way global infrastructure sites protect themselves — building their own intelligence units when “the FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security [are] simply not good enough.”
Continue reading “Using AI as a Weapon Against Overfishing, A New Approach to Helping Homeless Addicts and More”
Tag: sustainability
Fuel Speed Ahead: With Their Latest Offering, Toyota Is Driving Sustainability
In the early ’90s, amid worries about dependence on foreign oil and global warming, the Japanese automaker Toyota mapped out initial plans for two revolutionary vehicles. One was the Prius, the car that arrived on American shores in 2000 and is largely responsible for popularizing hybrids here. (There are now more than 9 million hybrids on the road, globally.) A decade and a half later, the second vehicle is finally making its debut: the Mirai, which launched in California last year, is one of the first hydrogen fuel-cell cars available on the market. The zero-emissions vehicle has long been a goal for Geri Yoza, a 30-year Toyota employee who’s now the national manager of fuel-cell vehicles for the company’s American division. NationSwell spoke to her about the Mirai’s possibilities and Toyota’s next ambitious goal: to green the company by 2050.
First, can you walk me through how the Mirai works?
The vehicle is creating electricity through a chemical reaction in the fuel-cell stack. You fill up with hydrogen at a fueling station, and that combines with oxygen from the air to create electricity on-demand. Basically, you’re stripping off the electrons, and those provide power to the motor. Zero emissions come out of the tailpipe; the only byproduct is water vapor.
Why is this preferable to plugging in for a charge, as the Tesla Model S, Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Bolt all do?
All-battery electric vehicles typically have a shorter range than fuel-cell vehicles, and they often take several hours to recharge the battery. Batteries can be fairly heavy as well. Whereas, with a hydrogen fuel cell, vehicles have a range of 300 miles or more, and they only take about three to five minutes to fuel up.
The Mirai is currently priced at $57,500, a figure out of reach for most car-buyers. Over the short and long terms, how do you plan to make the car affordable?
Even when a vehicle has a high MSRP, there are incentives out there from both the federal government as well as states. For example, there’s an $8,000 federal tax credit if you purchase a fuel-cell vehicle like the Mirai. In California, there’s a $5,000 rebate that you receive if you’re a resident and you keep the vehicle in service for three years. They’re doing this because they understand that new technology is expensive — after your house, a vehicle is probably your second largest expense. In order to get the market going, sometimes you need these incentives.
Over the long term, if you look at the Prius as an example, we initially had a demographic of early adopters who were very highly educated and earning higher incomes. But as the vehicle was adopted by the mass market, you started to see broader appeal, with a greater range in education and income levels. As advanced-tech vehicles become more widespread, the production costs go down.
What do you tell skeptics who say there are too many obstacles, like a lack of fuel stations, for wide-scale use of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles?
There’s a challenge there, I will admit, in the infrastructure of fueling. We’re still at the beginning stages for hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle adoption, but we’re making progress. We have 25 retail stations up in California, with more on the way, and Toyota’s working with Air Liquide in bringing a dozen stations to the Northeast next year. Building the fuel-station network will take time. We saw that with all-battery electric cars, it took a while to get the standards and codes together to educate municipalities on the permitting processes for plug-in charging stations. There’s room for both types of zero-emission vehicles, and consumers should be allowed to choose based on their needs and lifestyles.
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Where do we get all this hydrogen from?
Hydrogen fuel can be produced from almost anything, including raw materials like natural gas, water and biomass. For example, right now, the most common way is steam-reformed methane. You take natural gas and apply heat and steam to it. The methane in the natural gas reacts with the water in a chemical process that releases hydrogen. Another way is taking waste from water-treatment plants or landfills and creating hydrogen from biomass. And hydrogen can also be made from water via electrolysis.
Under the Zero Emissions Vehicle program, California requires automakers to sell a certain number of electric cars. How is that regulation affecting the way Toyota does business?
The way it works is that manufacturers get credit for selling all-battery electric cars, plug-in electric hybrids or fuel-cell vehicles. If some manufacturers generate more credits than they need, they can actually sell those to other manufacturers who might not be on the exact same trajectory of zero-emission vehicle product development, if necessary, in order to balance out their portfolio.
In terms of being at the forefront, the regulation has really helped move California toward its zero-emissions goals, but we’re not there yet. We have so many conventional vehicles on the road in the state’s metro areas that it’s really been important to continue reducing our tailpipe carbon-dioxide emissions and other tailpipe pollutants, since they have a negative impact from a public health and quality-of-life standpoint. Now, other states have adopted some of California’s zero-emissions-vehicle standards, and that’s important because it helps promote adoption of these vehicles nationwide.
One of the other big regulations came in 2012, when the Obama administration set a standard that all cars and light trucks must reach 55 miles per gallon by 2025. How do those fuel-economy rules affect whether more consumers go electric?
Across the company, Toyota has a portfolio approach. We don’t have just zero-emission vehicles or efficient hybrids like the Prius, which already has an EPA rating of over 50 mpg. We also have very fuel-efficient internal-combustion vehicles, and we continue to develop new technologies to reduce our emissions, as well as increase fuel economy. Sometimes, it can be a challenge with gasoline costs being as low as they are right now. The market is about 60 percent trucks and SUVs, and one of the reasons is because of the low cost of fuel.
We hear the word “sustainability” batted around, much more than in the past. What does that term mean to you, and why should it be a priority?
Sustainability, to me, goes beyond the vehicle, even beyond manufacturing. How can we benefit society as a good corporate citizen? Within the company, one of the challenges that Toyota has for 2050 is creating vehicles that are zero carbon emissions in manufacturing, putting in systems that promote recycling and optimizing the resources that we have. One example is reusing the hybrid vehicles’ batteries at the end of their life in other ways, like energy storage for solar. There’s a second life. So, we’re looking at those types of solutions.
Sustainability also goes beyond the corporate into the personal. Everybody has a role to play in the decisions that they make, including the cars they choose to drive. It’s important from the next generation’s standpoint. I really do want to leave the world in a better place, environmentally, than when I came into it.
This Chef Has Been Putting Food Sustainability on the Table for Decades
Back in 2007, there were only two farmers’ markets in the country that offered a special deal for poor families: one in New York City and another in Columbia Heights, Md. That’s before Michel Nischan, a James Beard Award-winning chef long associated with the sustainable food movement, got involved. His grassroots organization, the nonprofit Wholesome Wave, helped persuade Congress to provide low-income families with extra bucks if they bought healthy, local fare. NationSwell spoke to Nischan by phone about his efforts to end food insecurity.
Wholesome Wave aspires to make healthy, local food more affordable to low-income shoppers. How have you accomplished that goal?
The target of our activity is federal dollars. The average person’s benefit through the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) is about $4.20 a day — and that’s to spend on breakfast, lunch and dinner. When that’s all you have to spend on food, you’re really forced to make choices that you might not want to make.
The 2014 Farm Bill included the Food Insecurity Nutrition Incentive Program, with $100 million dollars in federal funding that has to be matched in full from the private sector to double SNAP dollars spent on fruits and vegetables. We wanted to level the playing field between healthy food and artificially inexpensive foods, like instant rice and noodles or snack chips, which are cheaper because of agriculture policies, tax breaks for large manufacturing facilities and transportation subsidies that scaled system enjoys. We raised private money to double SNAP and started with fruits and vegetables at farmers’ markets. The message to the consumer was “Spend your SNAP on anything you want, but if you come over here [to the farmers’ market], you double your money.”
Why do fruits and vegetables often cost more than less healthy foods?
The major reason some foods are so incredibly inexpensive is the public support for soy, corn, rice and wheat. Cereal companies often pay a price that is below the cost of production. After world wars I and II, these crops were favored as the future, and we produced a lot of them, because whichever country or ally bloc had the most food for its marching armies would be the one to win a war. When we learned how to process food to make it last 10 years, how to make it lighter so it’s cheaper to transport, how to put nitrogen and phosphorous and potassium in the ground so things would miraculously grow, we felt secure. And we also thought we could end starvation and feed the world. In that compelling moment, it was really easy to get the American public and Congress on board. It wasn’t to give one sector an unfair advantage, but those systems are still in place. It’s kind of a false economy; it’s not a true free market. [The question now is], how do we create a case to shift all of that public money that goes to funding these artificially inexpensive foods, which we now know are not good for us and the environment, to the types of foods that are good?
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What has building this grassroots organization taught you about leadership?
We need people to understand what they can align on. What I’ve learned over the years — and I think this is endemic in our society — is that we only want to work with people who think just like we do. Whether it’s in business or nonprofits, you’d much prefer working with someone who shares your core values. People ask us, “Is Wholesome Wave anti-GMO?” Why are you asking us that question? We’re about affordable access. Let’s align on that. If the thing you deeply, personally believe in is migrant farm-worker rights, equitable access to land or a ban on GMOs, work on those things. But there are other ways, while we’re doing our work, to come together on food justice.
What can the rest of us do to help further this movement?
I think food is one of the most powerful lenses to evaluate the quality of a lawmaker when we’re going to the polls. What’s their stance on abortion or marriage equality? All of those are important things and informed by deeply held religious beliefs. But if you’re going to take a meal a day off the table of a child by eliminating nutrition in schools, or you say that you don’t see the point of paying for healthcare in schools, you’re probably a jerk. How they vote on food and hunger is a great lens into their soul. Personally, I want an honorable, good person in office making decisions on my behalf. When you show up to vote, make sure you know what these folks do with food votes. You can go on Food Policy Action, put in your zip code and get a score for your representatives based on how they vote on food issues.
What books would you recommend to read up on the current system?
I’d recommend Michael Pollan’s “Botany of Desire,” Wendell Berry’s “The Unsettling of America,” Mas Masumoto’s “Wisdom of the Last Farmer,” and “Fair Food” by Oran B. Hesterman. Still, none of those really touches on the potential power of changing the decision you make at the grocery store. Food has the amazing potential to fix human health, the environment, our economy and our society, and people need to be inspired.
What other innovations are you excited about right now?
With the advent of the Affordable Care Act, we see an opportunity in the way Medicare and Medicaid dollars are spent, now that we’re shifting to more of a prevention culture rather than a fee-for-service model. We could potentially see billions of dollars put toward creating a fruit-and-vegetable prescription program. [In 2011, Wholesome Wave launched the Fruit and Vegetable Prescription Program to encourage healthcare providers to prescribe fresh produce to patients.] Doctors, nutritionists and nurse practitioners can work together to diagnose an at-risk patient, work to increase their consumption of fruits and vegetables, and then measure that for health outcomes.
It’s actually less expensive to feed a family of four fruits and vegetables for 20 years than it is to have one person go on dialysis for four years. Dialysis from diabetes and kidney failure is the most expensive line-item in Medicare and Medicaid. And if we could get certain healthy food item SKUs coded as reimbursable for prevention, that would unlock billions of dollars and affordability for the country’s 66 million food-insecure people who are having difficulty making the lifestyle changes to prevent diseases that cost us over half a trillion dollars a year.
Billy Parish of Mosaic
Billy Parish studied climate change as a student at Yale, but it wasn’t until a summer trip to India after his sophomore year that the reality of the problem hit home. It was 2002 when Parish traveled to the source of the Ganges River, in the Himalayas, and met with scientists who were studying a glacier there. “They told me that the glacier had melted and was much further upriver than it was the year before, and that it was melting faster than anyone had been predicting,” he says. “The source of water for millions of people was at risk.” The experience had a huge impact on Parish. “Seeing the glacier was the first time I saw climate change face-to-face,” he says. “That for me was the moment of no turning back, when I said, ‘I need to do something about this.’”
That urge to do something eventually led Parish to create Mosaic, a company that provides financing for homeowners who want to go solar, in 2011. It’s a Certified B Corporation, meaning that in addition to turning a profit, Mosaic aims to have a positive impact on the world. Today, it’s the largest residential solar lender in the country. Mosaic works with roughly 250 solar installers, equipping them with software and financing products that they can offer to their customers. “There are now over 50,000 people who are prospering from clean energy through Mosaic,” Parish says, including not just those who own homes, but salespeople and installation crews too.
The typical Mosaic customer is a homeowner who wants to save money while doing something positive for the environment. Larry Allen and Heather Crelling, for example, recently had solar panels installed on their home in Cortlandt Manor, New York. They expect to save $100 a month initially, and twice that once they’ve paid off their loan. The installer they worked with, Sungevity, also guarantees them a minimum amount of savings; if they don’t realize those savings, they’ll get a check for the difference. “It’s very straightforward,” says Parish. “Our borrowers save money from day one.”
Mosaic is perfectly positioned to take advantage of the growing interest in solar technology. “There was a time where most analysts thought wind was going to be the dominant renewable energy,” notes Parish. But since 2009, the cost of solar panels has fallen 80 percent, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency, and the price is expected to continue to drop. Solar is also readily accessible to most everyone, leading Parish to predict that it “will be the dominant renewable energy technology of the future.”
Join the cause! Help the environment by signing up for renewable energy with your local provider. Need convincing? See 5 advantages of solar energy here.
The business opportunities in clean energy are enormous. Ultimately, Mosaic aims to move beyond providing loans for just solar panels. “Our plan for the coming years is to help homeowners finance everything they need to take their home to 100 percent clean energy,” says Parish. That could include updating HVAC systems; replacing windows, doors, and lighting; and purchasing a home automation system that helps conserve energy. For Parish, Mosaic is a unique opportunity to make a career out of making a difference. “What I love about coming to work every day is that I get to do something that overlaps completely with my personal mission, and do something that represents a big business opportunity,” he says.
That profit motive isn’t incidental. Getting people invested, literally, in the transition to clean energy is a key piece of Mosaic’s mission. “We started Mosaic because we believe that the more people who are participating in and benefiting from the transition to clean energy, the faster that transition will occur,” Parish says. People care about climate change, he notes, but it can be tough motivating them to make big changes. “We needed to tap into people’s interests in making money and saving money, and use that power to help drive this transition faster.”
Allen and Crelling agree that the financial benefits are partly why they decided to go solar. They expect to not only save money right away but add to the value of their home. They’re also excited about reducing their carbon footprint and doing something to help the environment. “It’s one of the motivating factors we had for doing this,” Crelling says. “It’s a big lesson we’re teaching our kids.” The couple have also noticed more and more homeowners in their area installing the panels. “I definitely feel like it’s a trend, at least in our area,” says Allen.
The solar movement is gaining momentum in a lot of communities around the country and around the globe. “The transition to clean energy will happen faster than people think,” predicts Parish. “I believe we can get to 100 percent clean energy by 2050.” The statistics are encouraging: Today, the solar-energy industry in California employs more people than does all of the state’s electric utilities, he says, and nationally, more people work in solar than in coal, oil and gas exploration, and mining combined. “The clean-energy forces are growing stronger, we are accelerating this transition, and I’m focused on getting us there faster by getting more people involved.”
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The 2016 AllStars program is produced in partnership with Comcast NBCUniversal and celebrates social entrepreneurs who are powering solutions with innovative technology. Visit NationSwell.com/AllStars from November 1 to 15 to vote for your favorite AllStar. The winner will receive the AllStar Award, a $10,000 grant to help further his or her work advocating for change.
In Indianapolis, Trash Is Everyone’s Treasure
What good can come from a demolished football stadium? That’s the question Indianapolis twins Michael and Jessica Bricker asked themselves in 2008, when the city slated the RCA Dome, home to the Colts’ NFL team for a quarter-century, to be dismantled.
To their surprise, the Brickers found they were the only ones asking if materials could be reused, rather than dumped. “We are very much in this place in history where architecture feels as disposable as plastic or anything else. We have this sense that once a place is old, it’s used up and just turns to trash,” says Michael. “These huge stadiums, which were all built in the 1970s and ’80s, are not nearing the end of their lifespans but are being replaced anyway. That’s not going to change. We have the opportunity, as citizens, to expect and demand reuse of those buildings as part of the plan.”
After city officials agreed, the twins salvaged 13 acres of waterproof, Teflon-coated fiberglass fabric, which had once stretched across the stadium’s ceiling. With it, they fashioned a series of bags, ranging from zip-up weekenders to clutches, that generated $70,000, essentially building a social enterprise a year before Kickstarter became a household name.
The Brickers invested the proceeds into a new nonprofit, People for Urban Progress (PUP), whose goal would be to introduce upcycling to the city. Calling themselves a “do-tank,” they took on a series of projects, like refurbishing 9,000 bright orange seats left over from the demolition of the city’s Bush Stadium and installing them at bus stops around Indianapolis. They also used some of the leftover fabric from the RCA Dome and built standalone canopies that provide shade in area parks.
PUP’s mission, Michael says, has been to get people thinking about sustainability — a word rarely heard in Indiana a decade ago — from the very beginning of any public-work design. Even better, he adds, is when sustainability intersects with the adrenaline-fueled world of sports, whose big-business spectacles generate a lot of waste. “We’re trying to almost reengineer the whole process,” Michael says. “We’re thinking about these resources through their entire life-cycle and trying to be smarter about how everyone can use them every step of the way.”
Indianapolis, located in a vast, flat expanse of Midwestern lands, doesn’t necessarily have a strong sense of place — nothing like San Francisco’s hilly terrain or New York CIty’s rivers and bays. Growing up there, the Brickers never expected their home would be a hub for smart design initiatives or a thriving arts culture. But as people have moved back to the Hoosier State capital’s urban core in the wake of the Great Recession, there’s been a revival of local brands and some new upstarts like PUP who are making investments in the city. Connected by a cultural trail that loops through downtown and various PUP projects dotting neighborhoods, Indianapolis’s identity feels resurgent.
For other cities admiring how PUP’s creative projects have benefited Indianapolis, the Brickers suggest starting by looking at all architecture as an asset. That includes not just repurposing bricks, steel and wood, but also textiles like firehose fabric, and structures like parking meters and payphone booths. If you’re willing to take on the cause and find designers with a fresh perspective, the Brickers say, you’ll have no trouble figuring out what to do with them.
Homepage photo of PUP messenger bag courtesy of People for Urban Progress
Mental Healthcare Resources Target Communities Left Behind, A Tech Giant Wages War Against ISIS and More
Rural America Finally Gets Mental Health Help, Governing
The absence of clinics, therapists and psychiatrists in our nation’s small towns have fueled incarceration, self-medicating opioid abuse and suicide. But developments like telemedicine and integration of mental health checkups into primary care visits have the potential to alleviate the psychic crises causing headaches in sparsely populated counties.
Google’s Clever Plan to Stop Aspiring ISIS Recruits, WIRED
The search engine is trying a new strategy to fight the Islamic State’s aggressive online recruiting campaigns. Rather than creating or hiding content, Google simply redirects traffic to videos featuring Muslim religious authorities debunking ISIS apocalyptic theology and undercover clips showing the devastation for Syrian and Iraqi civilians.
Can a Montana Community Run its Own Forest? High Country News
In 2002, to prevent real estate developers from subdividing 142 acres of lakefront property, locals in one small Montana town pooled their money to buy the land for the community. After financial hardships threatened to put the parcel back on the market in 2014, an under-utilized government fund saved the shoreline, preserving the West’s rugged landscape.
MORE: This Common Sense Program Could Be the Future of Mental Healthcare Nationwide
7 Ways to Be an Effective 21st-Century Political Activist
Earlier this year, Erin Schrode, a 25-year-old Californian, ran to be America’s youngest female Congresswoman. The New York University graduate and founder of the environmental nonprofit, Turning Green, waged an underdog fight against fellow Democratic incumbent, Jared Huffman. The opponents were in agreement about the issues facing the state’s liberal North Coast (which stretches from the Golden Gate Bridge to the forested Oregon border), but Schrode argued it was time for young people to take the reins in Washington. Although she came in a distant third in the June primary, Schrode brought a youthful energy to staid Congressional politics and believes she switched up the dynamics of the race.
NationSwell spoke to her recently while she was on a visit to New York City about the lessons she’s learned about political organizing in the era of hashtag activism.
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MORE: #ComeClean About Where That Vanilla Aroma Really Comes From
How Dallas Became a Role Model for Community Policing, The Secret Streams That Keep Hawaii Pristine and More
A Different Beat, Texas Monthly
The sniper attack that killed five Dallas cops this summer shocked locals: “Why here?” they wondered. Unlike other racially diverse urban areas, police relations in this Texan metropolis were quite strong. Since 2010, Police Chief David Brown harped on the need for community policing — even after his own patrol cops called for his resignation — saying a team of 80 neighborhood specialists are the city’s best crime-fighting tool.
Uncovering the Potential of Honolulu’s Hidden Streams, Next City
Open a manhole cover on Oahu, and one might find a stream of crystal-clear freshwater, dotted with fish wriggling upstream — just one of the many auwai, or canals, that native Hawaiians dug, then paved over centuries later. In Honolulu, a city well known for its sandy beaches, architects are reclaiming the rest of the tropical island’s buried waterways to accent public parks, buffer against flooding and repair coral reefs damaged by impure runoff.
America’s First Offshore Wind Farm May Power Up a New Industry, The New York Times
Several miles from New England’s shore, a brand-new energy project could have massive environmental ramifications. No, not oil drilling (with its hazardous spills), but the first-ever offshore wind farm. When three massive turbines near Block Island, R.I., begin twirling this October in the unobstructed Atlantic Ocean breezes (likely at faster, more consistent speeds than those on land), they could turbocharge the already booming renewable energy sector.
The Big Idea That’s Growing Green Business in America
After a lifetime of eating with disposable knives and forks, Michael Caballero, a 25-year-old industrial engineer at FedEx, looked the plastic cutlery in his workplace cafeteria in a new way. “I think in terms of process,” he says, tallying the environmental upheaval required to manufacture each fork — the extraction of oil from the ground, the overseas shipping, the refining and molding in a factory, the waste created by its packaging — a massive amount of pollution created for just a few minutes of usage before being tossed in a landfill.
Today, thanks to EcoTech Visions, a Miami incubator for green enterprises, Caballero’s 18-month-old company, Earthware, Inc., is building better disposable silverware. At EcoTech Visions’s current headquarters in Liberty City, Fla., Caballero is a member of a class of 26 “ecopreneurs” who receive 15 months of support and have access to office space, manufacturing equipment and other environmentally-minded folks. In the co-working space, architects and designers chat with electricians and engineers — a technical collaboration that’s rare but vital to successfully manufacture products, from battery-run motorcycles and aquaponics systems to plastic-based handbags and aloe salves.
APPLY: EcoTech Visions is an NBCUniversal Foundation 21st Century Solutions grant winner. Apply to the 2016 program today.
The buzzing incubator is the vision of Dr. Pandwe Gibson, an African-American businesswoman who wanted to spark a sea change in commerce by supporting green jobs, particularly manufacturing ones. Because the consequences of environmental harm are so visible in southern Florida (as atmospheric temperatures rise, the sea levels follow, causing the Atlantic’s high tides to annually creep nearly one inch closer to the art deco real estate along Miami’s coastline), city residents are eager to embrace products that won’t further damage the Earth in the process. When Gibson first came up with EcoTech Visions three years ago, she used her iPad to share the idea with anyone who had time to listen to her elevator pitch. Since its launch, the incubator has created 15 new jobs, won grants for nine of its companies to work on prototypes and helped three other businesses obtain seed funding to kick start operations.
Last year, EcoTech was one of NBCUniversal Foundation’s 21st Century Solutions grant challenge winners, supporting progressive community solutions. “What we love is that it has the four Cs — it’s a catalyst for out-of-the-box solutions, it offers a destination for collaboration, it’s building a community for idea-creators and problem solvers and it’s driving local change by expanding small businesses and jobs,” says Beth Colleton, senior vice president of corporate social responsibility at NBCUniversal.
EcoTech Visions played a vital role in helping Earthware produce a durable alternative to the 16 billion pieces of plasticware thrown away in America each year (its cutlery is made with a corn-based resin that decomposes in just six months) and grow to its current state. Perhaps most importantly, the incubator covers the entry-level costs that can prohibit a business from entering the market — office space and manufacturing equipment — while Caballero still works at Fed-Ex to make a living. Without the support, he would have needed to front the money for Earthware’s first injection molding machine (which spits out products in the shape of pre-made molds) and a consultant to help him pick the right one; instead, Caballero pays a small rental fee to EcoTech in order to use the machine they purchased on his behalf.
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Additionally, the incubator introduced Caballero to other locals that could bolster his burgeoning enterprise, including sustainability advocates and potential customers, like the local school board, which recently put out a request for compostable cutlery bids. “The whole goal is to become a leading provider of compostable, sustainable products, using Miami as a hub into Latin America and the Caribbean,” footholds to an international expansion, Caballero says.
Clean tech and green manufacturing, as sectors, could provide the biggest hope of restoring jobs that have been lost due to the historic decline in American manufacturing (nationwide, about 5 million have disappeared since the millennium). Unlike other compostable products, which ship foreign-made cutlery to the U.S., Caballero’s eco-friendly business aims to create high-paying, manufacturing jobs right here in America; the two dozen other companies at EcoTech Visions will only add to this green wave of business. Caballero believes green industries will be most successful if others join the movement. The demand for sustainable products is already there, he notes, but supply will only match those levels if more entrepreneurs and manufacturers arrive on the scene. Even though they’ll technically be his competitors, there will be enough supply that prices will fall and consumers generally will see planet-friendly products as the new standard.
EcoTech Visions is looking to expand nationally, starting with Los Angeles next. If it achieves its goals, not only will Caballero be just one of countless American manufacturers producing environmentally-conscious items and providing jobs around the country, but the incubator could find itself leading the United States into the green industrial revolution.
EcoTech Visions is a recipient of last year’s 21st Century Solutions grant powered by the NBCUniversal Foundation, in partnership with the NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations. The grant celebrates nonprofits that are embracing innovative solutions to advance community-based programs in the areas of civic engagement, education, environment, jobs and economic empowerment, media, and technology for good. Apply here for a chance to be one of the 2016 winners!
Headlines Focus on Environmental Disasters. But the Real Story Is How Renewable Energy Is Effectively Reducing Emissions
In the early 1970s, as part of an internship with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Frances Beinecke spent a summer developing land use policies in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York. That experience jumpstarted a long career of environmental advocacy that culminated in Beinecke becoming NRDC’s executive director in 1998 and its president in 2006. During her tenure, she built the organization into a powerhouse of lawyers and scientists that vocally advocated for green policies and forged connections with global organizations in China and India. From her office in midtown Manhattan, Beinecke, now retired, reflected on her career and conservation with NationSwell.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given on leadership?
The most important thing that I have learned is that it’s not about you. It’s about the other people you’re working with and motivating them to reach the result. When I was at NRDC (and I was there for a very long time), being able to be on boards in other organizations and really watch other people operate, to see how other people provided leadership and how other organizations worked, was absolutely essential to doing the best job that I could do at NRDC.
What’s currently on your nightstand?
Right now I’m reading Aldo Leopold’s “Sand County Almanac,” because I happen to be going out to give a talk in Wisconsin. In the early 80s, I had an opportunity to visit the shack that Leopold wrote about in the book, and I wanted to relive that experience in preparation for this talk. It’s interesting because Leopold was one of the early people to work on restoration of ecosystems. He had his old farm that had been exhausted by homesteaders, and he replanted the trees and restored the soil. A lot of what people are focusing on now is how do you restore these depleted ecosystems? How do you store carbon? So, it’s inspiring to read that.
This other book I’m reading is called “Braiding Sweetgrass,” also by an ecologist: Robin Wall Kimmerer. I recently went to Montana and visited this very exciting project called the American Prairie Reserve, where they’re trying to restore 3 million acres of prairie in eastern Montana right where Lewis and Clark took their Corps of Discovery through the Missouri River. One of the interesting things is all these lands were, of course, Native American lands. What our relationship is with that heritage is one that I felt I wasn’t thinking about enough. This is a book by a Native American ecologist about that relationship with the land.
What innovations in your field are you particularly excited about?
I’ve been working on climate for almost 30 years. In the early days — for the first 20 years, anyway — we talked about solutions, but it was hard to see how to put them in place. One of the things that has happened in the last three to five years is this very rapid deployment of renewable energy, particularly wind and, more recently, solar. Policies have been put in place to deploy it, and there’s been a drop in price. I get excited when I go around and I see wind farms or solar panels. If you go around the United States, you can see the difference in state policies by going across a border. Recently, I was in New York and we crossed over to western Massachusetts. There were a dozen wind turbines and every barn had solar panels — because they put these policies in place to make it very appealing for people to make the investment.
What do you wish someone had told you at the beginning of your career?
If you start in this line of work, you start very idealistically. You have hopes and you want to put solutions in place. One of the things that is very hard to understand is why doesn’t everybody think this way? If you’re very mission based, it’s so obvious. To be effective, it’s important to try to understand why people think differently. You can only be effective in advancing a solution if you understand why someone has a different perspective: their priorities are different. I didn’t understand that.
What inspires you?
[I]f you look back year-to-year, it’s hard to see progress. But if you look back 10 years, the progress is really significant. We used to say green jobs; now we can see green jobs. We used to hope we would have a strategy that would drive down emissions, but emissions are being driven down. We wondered if China would ever get on board to be a player on climate change, because they were going to be the largest emitter. Well, they are the largest emitter, but they’ve also agreed to capping coal at a certain point and they’re unleashing clean energy. One thing in the environmental sector that’s very different than the private sector is that the time frames are much more long-term.
How do you inspire others?
In the beginning, in the 90s, when we talked about climate change, we talked about it as a global problem, and then over time, we realized we had to break it down into a local problem. There was a lot of discussion about climate change in terms of how many parts per million or degrees in the atmosphere…Most people respond to things that are personal to them. That’s the way most people behave — if they’re concerned about their family’s health, their community’s well-being or what they are experiencing in their own lives. Being able to document that, tell the story and engage people in how things are happening in their community, rather than in abstract that the whole planet is heating up, provides a level of engagement that we never had before.
What’s your idea of a perfect day?
To spend some of it outside. I’m fortunate enough to have a dog who requires that on a daily basis, because, for me, being inspired by and connected to nature is essential to doing my work. And then, I like to feel during the course of the day that somehow I’ve been successful in either opening a dialogue or advancing a solution.
What’s something most people don’t know about you?
I have two adorable grandchildren. They’re nearly a year old, twins. The thing about that’s wonderful [about them], it gives you a time reference. My father is 102 years old. He was born in 1914. They were born in 2015. If they live long as he has, it’ll be 2117. Can you imagine? The thing about that is, that gives you a frame of reference for what you’re trying to accomplish. When we’re talking about climate change and 50 or 100 year increments, we know people who will be there then. It personalizes it in a much more significant way. It gives you even more motivation.
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This interview has been edited and condensed.
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