In Women We Trust

Stephanie Barger is Zeroing in on Zero Waste

Meet Stephanie Barger, the Founder, Treasurer and Executive Director for Earth Resource. She's also a nonprofit Consultant and Mortgage banker. On June 26, you can add Event Planner as she and many other concerned business professionals are coming together at the Irvine Ford Plant to learn how to create a zero waste producing business.

That's no small feat. Imagine what you would look like if you had to carry ALL the waste you generate every day in a bag tied to your belt. How long could you function? Now imagine trying to eliminate that "bag" for a whole company.

City planners, big and small business, manufacturers and facility managers will all be there. It's open to the public. If you're in Orange Country next week, you may want to drop by.

June 26, 2008 - 8 am to 5:30 pm at the Ford Motor Company, 1 Premier Place, Irvine, CA 92618.

For more information or to register go here.

And on behalf of Green Consumers Everywhere...

A couple weeks ago, Sustainable Life Media held a highly successful conference on how to market green or sustainable products in a truthful and authentic way. All the speakers and the participants were there to talk/listen on how to talk to this market. Only ONE speaker, Diane MacEachern, was there representing the consumer's side of the table.

The following is her presentation as taped by Mario of Melodies in Marketing.

Yes, we can (and must) Save the World through Mindful Shopping

Over on La M, the debate continues in the comment section on whether we can buy our way out of this global warming problem. The answer is not only "Yes," but "Yes, we have to."

[My thanks to Lynn Johnston for capturing in one cartoon why many give up before trying. On some level we all know our good work can be undone in a manufacturing minute.]

The "Smokestacks" are causing the problem and the ONLY thing that will keep the smokestacks happy is profit. Consumer action is half of the solution, the SMaRT Sustainable Standard is the other half. With both not only have we solved the emission problem, but transformed the market safely and kept our retirement portfolios intact. Yes, as Tom Friedman points out, we'll lose MANY products and companies along the way. Detroit's feeling that pain now, but we also will replace them with mindful companies and products we can all live with.

If you want to see how serious business is about change, take a quick read down today's blog at Sustainable Life Media. The stacks want to do it, they just don't know how to do it and they don't know how to talk about it in terms that breadwinners and buyers can understand. Oh, and by the way, it's also required by the EPA.

Not only do we/consumers have to do it, we have to write about our intent before or after we do it. Every time we write about Sustainable products we like, those products stay in the marketing mix and the other ones die.

GM has FINALLY decided that going small and green will bring bigger profits. Why? Because Toyota and Honda made the top ten brands and ate their lunch. You can't go 10 feet in California without running into either car.

Those top ten brands were made inside of buildings which a consumer can also affect - by DEMANDING that the brands are made using Sustainable Standards that certify when a product is in compliance. INSIDE the SMaRT Sustainable Standard are requirements for conserving energy and lowering emissions, VOCs and PVCs (plus over 1200 other chemicals). Not only do the standards cover their buildings, but also the operations and processes for the entire supply chain as well - even if those smokestacks are in China.   

The SMaRT Standard (Sustainable Materials Rating Technology) covers six areas of product development:

• Safe for public health & environment
• Renewable energy & energy efficiency
• Biobased or recycled materials
• Facility or company requirements
• Reclamation, sustainable reuse
  & end of life management
• Product Innovation

Under these areas, products are required to:

• Provide Feedstock Inventory Documentation
• Document No Input and Output Stockholm Chemicals
• Maintain a Manufacturing Facility Energy Inventory
• Inventory of all bio-based and Recycled Content Materials
• Have EMS Environmental Policies and Targets.
• Have Social Equity Indicator Reporting for Manufacturers
• Compete an ISO Compliant Life Cycle Assessment
• Have Operational Reclamation and/or Sustainable Reuse Program
• Meet Product Performance Durability Standards (long lasting products)

And encouraged to keep going until they have achieved:

100% Reduction of Over 1300 Pollutants covering 12 Environmental Impacts
100% Use of Green-e Renewable Power
100% Post Consumer Recycled or Organic/BMP Biobased Materials
100% Reuse/Product Reclamation
Social Equity for Manufacturer & Suppliers (worker's rights)

That's a pretty big stick, but sticks are also fun to chase - especially if you're one of the Big Dogs attending the Sustainable Brands conference.

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After the requirements are met, the Big Dogs can get competitive and earn higher and higher ratings of silver, gold and platinum. Its not impossible, Forbo/Marmoleum and Knoll Life Chair have already have done it. Milliken carpet is on its way.

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But they can't do it alone.

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They and all the other companies trying to go green need buyers for their Sustainable Certified products, people who appreciate the work that has been done on a very high level.  Which brings us back to the first side of the buyer/seller equation - consumers.

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Take a gander at that top ten list again. If you were hired to change the world, which "demographic" would you focus on to make it happen faster? On that list you have, groceries, cleaning supplies, lotion and potions, cars and home appliances. Without doing a massive research project, take a wild guess on which gender has the greater influence either directly or indirectly buying these products?

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In the end, after all the discussions and  the chatter it's going to come down to tightly linking these three tipping points together - women+companies+sustainable standards.

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That's the new balance of power in this global economy. What happens among them happens about the world and it all starts with the heart of a women making the right choices while her purse is open and being willing to talk about them.

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Men can expedite the process by educating the women in their life on the SMaRT Sustainable Standard or other Standards that use a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) across the entire supply chain. While women are the buyers, you are the "sellers." Let's get to work, shall we?

Your continuing ed starts here:

SMaRT Standard Market Overview - for High C's (9 pages)- Download">http://www.sustainableproductsblog.com/mts/files/mts_smart_sustainable_standard_overview_2.1.08.pdf">Download mts_smart_sustainable_standard_overview_2.1.08.pdf

SMaRT Standard Overview - Supplier Education - (slide show) Download">http://www.sustainableproductsblog.com/mts/files/act_smart_presentation.pdf">Download act_smart_presentation.pdf

SMaRT Standard for Consumer Orientation - (slide show)Download">http://www.sustainableproductsblog.com/mts/files/smart_sustainable_standards_102_consumer_orientation_51008.pdf">Download smart_sustainable_standards_102_consumer_orientation_51008.pdf

Forbo Sustainability Report - for High C's, Supply Chain, Distributors, Investors, Consumers (20 pages) Download">http://www.sustainableproductsblog.com/mts/files/forbo_sustainable_manufacturing_and_marketing.pdf">Download forbo_sustainable_manufacturing_and_marketing.pdf

Could Women Preserve Agricultural?

Coral Rose gave me a head's up on this story that asks, Could Women solve the food crisis? It recognizes the women who keep 80% of third world nation's fed. (thanks Coral)

On Tuesday, the United Nations will open a "food summit" in Rome. Leaders and high-level officials from around the world will meet at the Food and Agriculture Organization headquarters. The F.A.O. says they will discuss the effects of rising food prices, limited resources, climate change, increased energy needs and population growth. ... The International Center for Research on Women says one answer is investing more in female farmers. ... Rekha Mehra is the director for economic and development issues at the Washington-based nonprofit. She says improving women's ability to get resources and technology can directly increase agricultural productivity.... After all, women produce as much as eighty percent of the food in developing countries.

Coral has been doing her part as well. She's been working in the organic farming for the fiber industry the majority of her career. In her blog post today, she addresses how changing agricultural practices which will be needed to bring down climate change emissions.

"The Rodale Institute’s 23-year findings show that organic grain production systems increase soil carbon 15 to 28%. Moreover, soil nitrogen in the organic systems increased 8 to 15%. The conventional system showed no significant increases in either soil carbon or nitrogen in the same time period. Soil carbon and nitrogen are major determinants of soil productivity.

Over on Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, (thanks Diane ) Barbara Kingsolver, Steven Hopp and Camille Kingsolver record what it's like to grow your own the old fashion way. Growing your own was called everyday life when I was 16, now 40 years later I'm still growing things. Looks like the things I learned from my mother, stuck.

Over on Kitchengardners.org, Marge Braker, of Preserve shows us how to make your own small batches of homemade jam in about 15 minutes. Like Barbara, she's preserving more than jam, she's preserving a way to eat better and more backyard local.

The more we change, the more we need to stay the same in some areas. How about you - it's June 1, isn't it time you planted a few seeds?

Adding their Best to Best Buy

In 2006, I interviewed Julie Gilbert of Best Buy. At that time they had 120,000 employees, today they top 140,000. Then, Julie was a Vice President of WOLF (Women's Leadership Forum) and Entrepreneurial Initiatives; now she's a Senior Vice President of Retail Training, Learning and Innovation, Winning With Women, and WOLF. On top of all that, she also has taken on Sustainability issues, turning Best Buy into a woman-friendly, earth-friendly corporation. My kind of woman.

According to a recent profile, "Through her leadership in WOLF, Best Buy increased female market share by more than $3.6 billion, increased the number of female job applicants by 37 percent, and reduced female employee turnover by 5.7 percent." Hummm.... Best Buy has 20,000 women employees, that means 1140 stayed at Best Buy because of the WOLF program. Cool.

Apparently Julie wants to do better than 5.7%. On Wednesday this week, she was in town (Anaheim, CA) with about 1000 other "blue-shirters" and WOLF Omegas (women who are not part of Best Buy). The Blue Shirts and the Omegas formed one, big brainstorm to continue exploring why employees and customers stayed with Best Buy and why others left.

Fortunately, the conference was only about 5 minutes from my place, so I was able to join Julie and other manager and Omega types for happy hour at the Hilton. Since this conference was all about making women happy, I took with me a request from Eco-Mom, Kimberly Pinkson. She wanted Best Buy to, Take back the e-waste [recycle] and show her what they are doing with it. "I don't want my old computer to end up over in Africa polluting the landscape for the kids over there," Kimberly told me.

Kimberly will be happy to know that Best Buy is working on the beginning of that wish list. According to Julie, they are doing a test in three stores located in Minneapolis, Baltimore and San Francisco. People can take any kind of e-waste to the store regardless of where they bought it. Currently at all Best Buy stores you can recycle print cartridges, batteries and cell phones. They are also greening up the buildings as well adding solar panels.

When it comes to the "show me" part. Kimberly isn't alone e-waste disposal, over at Envio Mom they addressed the same concern. Trust, but verify! No one wants to recycle only to find out that we messed up some other country's back yard. I have two old computers sitting under my desk for that very reason. I don't trust where they'll end up if I take them to a recycling center. That picture in the National Geographic of E-waste in third world countries is too vivid. I'll be the first one to champion Best Buy's program when they are able to show and tell the full story.

I also visited with Omega consumer, mom and small business owner Taiha Wagner. She was there, traveling with her incognito sister to answer questions from Best Buy employees. Taiha was encouraged by Best Buy not to hold back (she didn't) and wasn't given any advice on what to say before she came. (Taiha's the one with the white shirt)

So why would you love a company as an employee and customer?

Over on Best of Mother Earth, Karen Hanrahan explores why she stays with her company. It started with products that she could trust as a consumer of eco-safe cleaners. Years ago she had to switch to a chemical-free lifestyle as cleaning agents bothered her health. When she found products that allowed her a way to not only live safely, but also make a living she was hooked and never left. "They just fit who I am as a person," Karen told me. "I've always been told I'm a mother earth sort, and these products let me live that life."

The more I read blogs and pay attention to what women want, it always comes down the same thing, give them something they can believe in - oh, and prove it.

Can Wall Street Help Your Street?

What does Wall Street have to do with women's green groups? Let's connect some dots, but first let's hear from someone who makes a living managing funds, Mindy Lubber. She is the President of Ceres an organization of investment fund managers.

"Climate change is the mother of all sustainability issues and will have an impact on every economic sector, whether from new regulations, physical impacts of growing demand for climate-friendly technologies. Thus, climate risk is embedded in every business and investment portfolio, which is why more Wall Street analysts are beginning to factor corporate response to climate risk into their evaluations of the companies they cover."

Ceres collectively oversees over $4 Trillion (that's with a T) in investments, Mindy flagged the issue that is quickly becoming THE issue. How do you measure and react to climate risk when it comes to investvestments?

At the same time, women's groups are gathering to manage the effects of their own climate change risk. My thanks to Diane for making me wish I lived in Washington DC. for Creating a Climate of Change: Women, Nuclear Energy and Justice in a Warming World an event on May 6.

"Women often lead the way in their communities in conserving precious natural resources, adapting their food crops to changing soil and climatic conditions, and rebuilding following floods, earthquakes and other natural disasters...Women's experiences, creativity and leadership must be part of the solution if we, whether from North or South, are serious about addressing global warming."

Creating a Climate of Change is hosted by the Nobel Women's Initiative , in partnership with the Green Belt Movement, Friends of the Earth, Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), Oil Change International , Action Aid , Feminist Majority Foundation , The International Forum on Globalization , U.S. Climate Action Network / and Heinrick Böll Foundation. I'll be the first to admit that I hadn't heard of many of these groups until Diane's email and yet they are all firmly entrenched and helping women around the world deal with their lack of natural resources.

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On the home front we have womens' groups forming to pro-actively change the world before they have to react to a world without water or food like those do in the above groups need to - Big Green Purse, Eco Mom Alliance, HolisticMoms, eco-chick... thankfully everyday more pop up.

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Can Wall Street fix your street? No, it can't, not by itself. In a twist of irony, it's the women on your street supporting the right kind of big business that will help turn things around. Wall Street depends on the the confidence and attitudes of the general public to keep their portfolios growing.

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Investors need guidelines, consumers need guidelines and that starts with education on both sides. If we don't have guidelines, we will get more websites selling more unsustainable stuff to women and furthering the problem that out of control consumerism has given the world. Begin here Download smart_sustainable_standards_101_5208.pdf. Learn what can keep consumerism in line with our eco concerns.

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Under bloggy disclosure, I'm the editor for www.sustainbleproductsblog.com. (a non-profit in DC)  Along with that I do a lot of volunteer work on bringing Sustainable Standards to women. If your group would like a free webinar, please contact me at Mary@inwomenwetrust.com.

Why Do Green Women Gather? See Below.

" Ever notice how bloggers talk about the same people over and over? That's because we have relationships with them." Yvonne DiVita, Lipsticking

I laughed out loud when I opened my email this morning. In one of my Feedblitz aggregators, the two new posts offered came from Yvonne DiVita and the other Toby Bloomberg. As I scrolled down to see what they were talking about I ran into myself and the cover shot from WECAI this month. (12,727 readers so far) WE is published by Heidi Richards, who is also another great blog and biz buddy with 35,000 on her mailing list.

What made it particularly poignant was that I just read an email from Emily McKhann from The Motherhood (who I met through BlogHer).(23,000 women bloggers/8 million readers) She asked if I (or Diane MacEachern) (2500 eco women) would be interested in talking to a grad student (another woman) regarding ECO women's green groups.

Why do we gather? For the same reason we blog together - to support one another.

These are crazy times, we need each other to help keep the crazies at bay. Kimberly Danke Pinkson of Eco Mom Alliance (11,000 women) sure knows the answer to that one. It's the same reason we join Weight Watchers or AA. Like any good 12 step program, first you have to acknowledge you have a problem and then, by being accountable to others in your group, you can work to solve it. Why are we accountable? Because we have a build a relationship with the members of the group.

Let's take it a step further, take a look at the banner on this blog, see the woman who is in the black suit (second from the left) that's Terry Gamer. She recently bought the rights to 500 women's small town, local level news sources which account for 36 million readers. Small, local papers who would have thought they have much to do with why women gather? The answer is as simple as to why do they subscribe to a small women's paper - it's all about the relationships that it helps to foster between women.

That's the short list, but these are the nine whom I intersected in the last 4 days. Nine women representing a reach into over 45 million women's lives. Why do green women gather? Because we can!

Green Gals Make My Earth Day Memorable

Happy Earth Day. How are you spending your day?

I can't think of a better way to celebrate then with new friends working to implement the choices we have to make.  This weekend, the California Chapter of N.O.W. the National Organization of Women met in West Hollywood, CA. I was honored to be asked to speak on Sustainability Standards and how women can bring them forward. With me was Kimberly Danke Pinkson, the founder of Eco Mom's Alliance (left) and Lani Lee, (right) a recent college grad committed to bringing eco-issues to N.O.W. (Lani moderated our panel.)

Kimberly is a single mom with a six year old son. She developed Eco Mom Alliance not as a business platform, but because it was needed. As she explained to the crowd, if anyone knows about making green ends meet, she does. She knows that making adjustments in our lifestyle is hard, but she also knows that with the help and inspiration of others in a peer group, that it can be done and it can be fun.

She was inspired to create the Eco Mom Alliance one day at a picnic table talking with friends about light bulbs and discussing which ones to buy. Since that picnic table day, the Eco Mom Alliance has grown to over 11,000 on their mailing list.

After meeting Kimberly, it's not hard to understand why she has such a strong following, she is gracious, encouraging and inspiring to be around. The Eco Mom Alliance had been quietly working at making their lifestyles greener and then the NY Times wrote about them. Kimberly said that they have since been deluged with requests from business and non-profits alike. Many want to be a part of their group as a sponsor or partner. That's the power of purses and peers at work.

Lani Lee was amazing as well. Besides running the panel, she also brought gift cards and items made of Elephant dung. Don't squirm, they were very cool paper products and they certainly had a wonderful story to tell. There are about 40,000 elephants in Sri Lanka and 4000 were killed last year because they were interfering with agricultural. To save the elephant, they needed to find a way to make them profitable. It turns out that elephants, as mass consumers of vegetation, they are also mass producers of mashed up pulp (per se) ready to be made into paper products. For a closer look check out www.mrelliepooh.com

If they can turn a profit from, well, recycled goods - think what you can do with a little creative thinking. Write me and tell me about your best way to rally the women and create a bit-o-fun in the process and have a great Earth Day.

Hey Starbucks (and ladies) I have an idea...

Gals, would you boycott Starbucks if they switched all their coffees to those that were good for the planet and people? I didn't think so. Would you let them know that? Maybe they'll switch out faster.

At 5:45am this morning I'm remembering that we don't have coffee in the house. EEK. We don't function without our morning blast off, and ever since we bought the Cuisinart grind and brew we must have real beans. It's too early for our grocery store, but the corner Starbucks is open.

Ten minutes later, I begin to search the racks for organic, shade grown, fair trade coffee. They had it last time, but this time only "organic" was available and only one option. I mention my dismay to the cashier to which he commented that Starbucks can't offer them all because everyone has their favorite brew. (Humm, and how did they get a favorite? Someone at Starbucks gave them that option.)

"What? Are you kidding me?" I ask, "Starbucks can put a coffee shop on every corner, but stocking the shelves with organic, fair trade, shade grown coffee isn't possible?"

"Here, take the idea card and submit it," he countered from the counter. I flipped over the card and there is MyStarbucksIdea.com. Good for them. So, I added my vote to the fair trade, organic and shade grown pile.

Starbucks is like everyone else right now. They want to do the right thing. They've done tons of right things already such as health care for part-timers and fair wages along with a consistent service that has become everyone's office and livingroom away from home. Help them make the next big decision to stock and serve nothing, but organic, fair trade and shade grown coffee.

They already know they have to do this, it's just a matter if enough people talk about it and ask. Am I wrong? Would you be upset if everything offered at Starbucks carried the triple bottom line?

Hope to Action - Power of your Peers

It seems like more and more women are mobilizing on the ground to create real, sustainable change. Hope to Action is the lastest to build out network of small groups of 15 or so women making small changes. Check out their video.