Convergence You Can Hear on Earth Day

Where will you be tomorrow on Earth Day 2011 when the silos of effort begin to converge?

When I attended the first Earth Day Celebration on the University of Michigan's campus in 1970, who knew that it would take over 40 years to take hold? Today there is no turning back only turning green together.

Three acts of convergence.

1. Illiterate grandmothers are being trained to electrify their remote villages. It's a great example of co-creation between genders. The Barefoot College idea came from the founder Sanjit Bunker Roy, “an Indian educator, has, since 2005, succeeded in bringing 140 such women to the Barefoot College, a school he founded in 1972 in Tilonia, a village in Rajasthan State, about 95 kilometers, or 60 miles, from the state capital, Jaipur." 

Today the Barefoot College has 400 trainers, mostly grandmothers. They tried training young people, but they wouldn't put their knowledge to work at home, they wanted to leave and live in a big city. And there are some men doing the work, but the majority of graduates are women.  

Grameen, the micro loan group invests in poor women as well. They learned that the majority of poor men that they loaned money to didn't start business nor repay the loans. It's a trust thing...

2. In today's mail, MomsRising.org wants my support to ask Campbells, Del Monte and Progresso to take Bisphenol-A (BPA) out of their food packaging. BPA has been linked to  breast cancer, infertility, early-onset puberty, ADHD and obesity. 

They are appealing to the cause-ors directly to fix a wrong. Such a fix in core companies this size would set off competition in all peers to do the same. Imagine picking out a can of soup and seeing Campbells with a label that says, "BPA-free cans".

But, just in case the companies don't self-regulate, they are putting the pressure on congress to change laws.

If the companies were smart, they'd comply and pick up on the positive marketing that would come from the move. Thanks to the many mommy bloggers who have posted on BPAs affects, many moms know of this problem and would buy a BPA-free product in a second. Think about it, even if you didn't know what it was, if you saw shelves carrying cans "free of BPA" and others that weren't, wouldn't you chose the product that appeared safer for your family. I know I never buy tuna unless it's dolphin safe. 

Eventually, corporate peer pressure and the sharing of can-making-sources would take the BPA problem literally off our shelves and every day would be Earth Day.

3. Some companies, don't need to be pressured by consumers into doing the right thing. Some companies, such as Interface made it their soul purpose to not only become safe and sustainable across their supply chain, but to be able to prove it with a LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) on their product line. 

If companies are "people", as the supreme court has determined, then Interface is one of the few "adults" taking responsibility for it's actions. Thank you Interface to setting the direction for others to follow with:

"advancements in recycling and diverting used products from landfills; cumulative reductions in greenhouse gas emissions; committing to greater transparency in the form of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs); and educating employees and other stakeholders about the benefits of sustainability....

- 40% of raw materials were recycled or bio-based sources.

- Diverted 28 million pounds of carpet from landfills.

- Reduced greenhouse gases by 35%

While the above is wonderful step towards sustainability, nothing happens until someone rewards the actions by buying the product -- when it comes to flooring, the person making the decision is most likely a woman. 

From engineering and installing solar panels for a poor village in Africa, to rallying moms against BPA to corporations doing the right thing first and marketing-to-women second,  women are the connective glue determine the success of the eco-friendly efforts.

The sound of convergence is marching ahead and that's worth celebrating. Viva La Revolution!