Ethical Consumption | Caitlin Chock | Thursday 18th March 2010

If you are looking to revamp or change the décor of your green home, one of the more common ways to do so is with a new coat of paint. Few things can drastically alter the atmosphere of a room than a color change, and there are even color choices that could make you a more eco-efficient home too. For instance if you were to opt for a paler shade, white would be the best but let's face it is a bit

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	Telemonitoring your health: The (virtual) doctor will see you (online) Health \| Ano Lobb \| Monday 15th March 2010 Electronic medical records (EMR) are widely debated, studied, promoted, and slowly being implemented. A new review published in Deutsches Arzteblatt International looks at a related practice: Telemonitoring, or using technology to monitor patient health status from home. This ranges from a phone call to ask "how are you feeling?" to more sophisticated transmission of vital sign readings via the internet. The German review revealed some promising findings, as well as noticeable knowledge gaps. A host of studies have looked at the monitoring of heart failure patients, mostly via telephone. Overall, monitoring reduced mortality and rehospitalization by 20% for up to 16 months after initial hospitalization. A separate, smaller review found hospitalization rates reduced by up to 40%, and mortality reductions as high as 56%. Other conditions have not received as much study. Heart failure is a good candidate for such an intervention since it is exceedingly common, and can be difficult and expensive to treat. Cost effectiveness data lacks the consistency necessary to combine multiple studies to reach more solid conclusions. Improvements in patient quality of l...

	Palm Oil Biodiesel Market Opportunity Energy & Emissions \| Brian Coppa \| Monday 15th March 2010 The U.S. Senate recently approved the biodiesel blenders' tax credit as part of the Jobs stimulus bill, which is critical legislation for an emerging industry. The American Workers, State and Business Relief Act, included H.R. 4213, which would retroactively extend a former $1 per gallon biodiesel production tax credit that expired at the end of 2009. However, the tax credit still requires merging with a prior related House bill before any final approval. Biodiesel production has fallen considerably since this tax credit expired and new investments have been put on hold. In general, the renewable energy industry as a whole is well below expectations for 2010, which anticipated a carbon cap-and-trade system and national renewable energy portfolio standard 6 months ago to be approved by now. The National Biodiesel Board is aggressively advocating the tax credit and has stated that its 23,000 biodiesel green jobs in the U.S. will be impacted if it is not extended by at least another year. Palm oil can be processed and refined into biofuel for internal combustion engines. Biodiesel has been promoted as a renewable energy source to reduce net emissions of carbon dioxide i...

	World of Good takes green living to a whole new level Ethical Consumption \| Caitlin Chock \| Monday 15th March 2010 Where green living meets empowering the human spirit, this is where World of Good perhaps establishes itself as so much more than merely a venue for a sustainable marketplace. While of course the products sold at here online are eco-friendly, what's more is that they are further placing the opportunity for more global ethical responsibility to the individual hoping to take that on. Just what does this mean, and how is it achieved? Well, the journey has been years in the making, a vision of Priya Haji and Siddharth Sanghvi, which was first brought to light in 2004 with the ultimate goal of "solving a big problem: how do we increase wages and market opportunity for the hundreds of millions of women living under the poverty line around the world?" stated co-founder Sanghvi. From there the company has flourished and the fruit it bore could not be any sweeter to those millions of artisans now granted the ability to make enough profits off of their handcrafted wares to support themselves, their families, and ultimately create a better life. World of Good sets the stage for these crafters to bring their unique products to previously unknown expanses and in effect breaks down the re...

	Base your theory on reality - or else stop what you're doing Sustainable Development \| Sara Wolcott \| Monday 15th March 2010 If it sounds like I'm frustrated, it's because I am. I just listened to a very smart, very kind, very sweet and very Not In Touch With Reality economist. He was talking about migration - a key subject for anyone concerned with climate change, sustainable development or international development. He was sharing his experience in trying to mesh social theory of why people migrate with economic theory - ie, mathematical models which could predict people's experience of reality. I was intrigued. Afterall, behavioral economics and psychological economics have offered some fascinating insights - though I must say, most of them I could have told them before they did their proofs, but still, it was interesting. I've got tremendous respect for economics, and am grateful I get to work with many economists. So I went to listen. But I wasn't able to stay till the end - it was just too painful. Economists have an annoying habit of basing their theory on a reality that doesn't exist. Markets are not stable. Human beings are not rational actors. And in the case of this guy, discussing migration without discussing income is not realistic. He sought to hold incom...

	Can Seventh Generation's CSR lessons influence the mainstream? Corporate Social Responsibility \| Madeline Ravich \| Monday 15th March 2010 A few weeks ago, I received an email from a publicist for Jeffrey Hollender, the Co-Founder and Chairman of Seventh Generation. Mr. Hollender was about to release his latest book on CSR and she wanted me to review a free proof copy and interview him as part of my series. At 183 pages, the Responsibility Revolution: How the Next Generation of Businesses Will Win is a quick read. While some parts of it read a bit like other CSR literature (Green to Gold came to mind), the book contained a number of stories that were entertaining and thought-provoking. The big surprise for me was the chapter on employee relations, which focused on Linden Labs, the company that created the online virtual world known as Second Life. Here are a few of my favorite points from that chapter: 1) The company has a web page called the Love Machine, which its associates can use to send notes of appreciation to colleagues (most associates reportedly use it about once a day) which are visible to all employees. Each employee picks his or her favorite ten Love Notes to go into their reviews and to be made public on an internal website. 2) As...

	Homer & Friends on Executive Compensation and Say on Pay - Part 3 Sustainable Finance \| Michael Hassett \| Monday 15th March 2010 This column continues the panel discussion on executive compensation and Say on Pay featuring Homer Simpson, Gordon Gekko and Henry David Thoreau. Homer: Shareholders not care? What's all this "Say on Pay" stuff Lisa keeps yammering about? Gekko: I know, I know, it's really annoying isn't it. Some of the shareholders have started to get excited about this over the past several years, especially since my pals in the financial sector nearly ran aground and then paid themselves like princes just a year after they needed a government bailout to survive. Greed is good, but sometimes you need to lay low and think long term. Lloyd Blankfein had the right idea, but it's hard to lay low when your every move is dissected as a ploy in the media. Thoreau: Say on Pay, I like the sound of that, almost democratic. Gekko: Not so much. Led by institutional investors and managers, like Walden Asset Management, and AFSCME (a public employee union pension fund getting involved in exec pay - ouch) a growing number of companies have asked for an advisory shareholder vote on executive compe...

	Homer & Friends on Executive Compensation and Say on Pay - Part 2 Sustainable Finance \| Michael Hassett \| Monday 15th March 2010 This column continues the panel discussion on executive compensation and Say on Pay featuring Homer Simpson, Gordon Gekko and Henry David Thoreau. Homer: Forget the non-CEOs, tell me about the donuts, I mean the CEOs. Gekko: Back in the good old days, when I was hustling penny stocks, the CEOs had it made. They essentially selected the board of their own company and its committees. If the CEO didn't serve on his own comp committee (if there even was a comp committee) he made sure his friends did, and often he would serve as a director and comp committee member for companies run by those same friends - a mutual back scratching relationship that ensured friends would stay friendly in fair weather and foul. Even if a comp committee wanted to take a look at CEO compensation, the CEO would hire the consultant that provided data on comp at similar companies, and the consultants all knew who made the decision on which consultant to hire. Thoreau: Doesn't sound very democratic. Gekko: True, but I never said democracy was good, just greed. The old system worked...

	Homer & Friends on Executive Compensation and Say on Pay - Part 1 Sustainable Finance \| Michael Hassett \| Monday 15th March 2010 It's that time of year, March Madness, and by that I mean the annual wave of indignation and anger reacting to executive compensation disclosure reported, over and over, in mainstream media summaries and recaps of summaries, etc. Since we are only a small brook here, not a mainstream, we won't recap the recap, we will actually front run exec comp season. We won't even get mad, we'll just get even, with another peerless panel discussion featuring Homer Simpson (who needs no introduction), Gordon Gekko (soon to appear in a long awaited sequel to Wall Street) and Henry David Thoreau - not writing any sequels, but Walden Pond is still there, I drove by on MLK Day. Gekko: I can't understand what all the fuss is about. We've already been listening to a year of whining about Wall Street salaries just because the economy had a little hiccup and a few banking types took some TARP money. So a CEO makes a few million bucks, or even a few hundred million. That's a market economy. Nobody complains when Alex Rodriguez signs a quarter billion dollar contract or Arnold Schwarzenegger gets $100 million for delivering twenty lines in nea...

	"Undercover boss" Highlights CSR on TV Corporate Social Responsibility \| Amelia Timbers \| Monday 15th March 2010 CBS has produced a TV show called Undercover Boss where CEOs work alongside their employees. After watching the "White Castle" episode, it struck me that Undercover Boss was undercover documenting a CSR strategy. Although mainstream management literature has advocated open communication for at least a decade, advising that managers listen to and empathize with their people on the 'frontline' of their business, this rarely occurs in reality. Open communication is also easily compromised as companies grow. It was simple to hear from everyone when the company was 20 people, rather than 200. Even companies like Starbucks that work diligently to integrate ideas from all levels struggle to actually do so. It's a practicality issue that takes specific effort to remedy. Yet frequent feedback from the lowest paid positions in a company is important to the employee-welfare aspect of corporate social responsibility. A good solution would be, for companies over 200 people, to make management work, undercover or openly, in various front-line jobs as part of a their job descriptions. It's important to do this for a variety of reasons: 1) It grounds th...

	Unhealthy promotion: Are alcohol ads targeting kids? Health \| Ano Lobb \| Monday 15th March 2010 Television advertising is driven by many factors, most of all by data. Marketers for both television ad space and the products being sold are well informed by enviously detailed data on the demographics of viewers, the likelihood that they'll respond to marketing messages, and performance of past campaigns. It's the kind of data that public health professionals trying to raise awareness about HIV, for example, can only dream about. Little is left to chance, and by correlation, it's unlikely that the link between an ad campaign and increases in product sales are mediated by dumb-luck or coincidence. So what is driving the increase in underage drinking, especially binge drinking and consumption of spirits and alcopops (sweet, typically fruity flavored malt beverages) among girls? Could it be the result of industry advertising reaching under-aged drinkers, either by choice or happenstance? It appears likely. A new RAND study published in the American Journal of Public Health analyzed all of over 600,000 alcohol industry advertisements placed on national cable networks from 2001 to 2006. In time slots where the under-aged viewership was 30% or less, resear...

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	Telemonitoring your health: The (virtual) doctor will see you (online) Health \| Ano Lobb \| Monday 15th March 2010 Electronic medical records (EMR) are widely debated, studied, promoted, and slowly being implemented. A new review published in Deutsches Arzteblatt International looks at a related practice: Telemonitoring, or using technology to monitor patient health status from home. This ranges from a phone call to ask "how are you feeling?" to more sophisticated transmission of vital sign readings via the internet. The German review revealed some promising findings, as well as noticeable knowledge gaps. A host of studies have looked at the monitoring of heart failure patients, mostly via telephone. Overall, monitoring reduced mortality and rehospitalization by 20% for up to 16 months after initial hospitalization. A separate, smaller review found hospitalization rates reduced by up to 40%, and mortality reductions as high as 56%. Other conditions have not received as much study. Heart failure is a good candidate for such an intervention since it is exceedingly common, and can be difficult and expensive to treat. Cost effectiveness data lacks the consistency necessary to combine multiple studies to reach more solid conclusions. Improvements in patient quality of l...

	Palm Oil Biodiesel Market Opportunity Energy & Emissions \| Brian Coppa \| Monday 15th March 2010 The U.S. Senate recently approved the biodiesel blenders' tax credit as part of the Jobs stimulus bill, which is critical legislation for an emerging industry. The American Workers, State and Business Relief Act, included H.R. 4213, which would retroactively extend a former $1 per gallon biodiesel production tax credit that expired at the end of 2009. However, the tax credit still requires merging with a prior related House bill before any final approval. Biodiesel production has fallen considerably since this tax credit expired and new investments have been put on hold. In general, the renewable energy industry as a whole is well below expectations for 2010, which anticipated a carbon cap-and-trade system and national renewable energy portfolio standard 6 months ago to be approved by now. The National Biodiesel Board is aggressively advocating the tax credit and has stated that its 23,000 biodiesel green jobs in the U.S. will be impacted if it is not extended by at least another year. Palm oil can be processed and refined into biofuel for internal combustion engines. Biodiesel has been promoted as a renewable energy source to reduce net emissions of carbon dioxide i...

	World of Good takes green living to a whole new level Ethical Consumption \| Caitlin Chock \| Monday 15th March 2010 Where green living meets empowering the human spirit, this is where World of Good perhaps establishes itself as so much more than merely a venue for a sustainable marketplace. While of course the products sold at here online are eco-friendly, what's more is that they are further placing the opportunity for more global ethical responsibility to the individual hoping to take that on. Just what does this mean, and how is it achieved? Well, the journey has been years in the making, a vision of Priya Haji and Siddharth Sanghvi, which was first brought to light in 2004 with the ultimate goal of "solving a big problem: how do we increase wages and market opportunity for the hundreds of millions of women living under the poverty line around the world?" stated co-founder Sanghvi. From there the company has flourished and the fruit it bore could not be any sweeter to those millions of artisans now granted the ability to make enough profits off of their handcrafted wares to support themselves, their families, and ultimately create a better life. World of Good sets the stage for these crafters to bring their unique products to previously unknown expanses and in effect breaks down the re...

	Base your theory on reality - or else stop what you're doing Sustainable Development \| Sara Wolcott \| Monday 15th March 2010 If it sounds like I'm frustrated, it's because I am. I just listened to a very smart, very kind, very sweet and very Not In Touch With Reality economist. He was talking about migration - a key subject for anyone concerned with climate change, sustainable development or international development. He was sharing his experience in trying to mesh social theory of why people migrate with economic theory - ie, mathematical models which could predict people's experience of reality. I was intrigued. Afterall, behavioral economics and psychological economics have offered some fascinating insights - though I must say, most of them I could have told them before they did their proofs, but still, it was interesting. I've got tremendous respect for economics, and am grateful I get to work with many economists. So I went to listen. But I wasn't able to stay till the end - it was just too painful. Economists have an annoying habit of basing their theory on a reality that doesn't exist. Markets are not stable. Human beings are not rational actors. And in the case of this guy, discussing migration without discussing income is not realistic. He sought to hold incom...

	Can Seventh Generation's CSR lessons influence the mainstream? Corporate Social Responsibility \| Madeline Ravich \| Monday 15th March 2010 A few weeks ago, I received an email from a publicist for Jeffrey Hollender, the Co-Founder and Chairman of Seventh Generation. Mr. Hollender was about to release his latest book on CSR and she wanted me to review a free proof copy and interview him as part of my series. At 183 pages, the Responsibility Revolution: How the Next Generation of Businesses Will Win is a quick read. While some parts of it read a bit like other CSR literature (Green to Gold came to mind), the book contained a number of stories that were entertaining and thought-provoking. The big surprise for me was the chapter on employee relations, which focused on Linden Labs, the company that created the online virtual world known as Second Life. Here are a few of my favorite points from that chapter: 1) The company has a web page called the Love Machine, which its associates can use to send notes of appreciation to colleagues (most associates reportedly use it about once a day) which are visible to all employees. Each employee picks his or her favorite ten Love Notes to go into their reviews and to be made public on an internal website. 2) As...

	Homer & Friends on Executive Compensation and Say on Pay - Part 3 Sustainable Finance \| Michael Hassett \| Monday 15th March 2010 This column continues the panel discussion on executive compensation and Say on Pay featuring Homer Simpson, Gordon Gekko and Henry David Thoreau. Homer: Shareholders not care? What's all this "Say on Pay" stuff Lisa keeps yammering about? Gekko: I know, I know, it's really annoying isn't it. Some of the shareholders have started to get excited about this over the past several years, especially since my pals in the financial sector nearly ran aground and then paid themselves like princes just a year after they needed a government bailout to survive. Greed is good, but sometimes you need to lay low and think long term. Lloyd Blankfein had the right idea, but it's hard to lay low when your every move is dissected as a ploy in the media. Thoreau: Say on Pay, I like the sound of that, almost democratic. Gekko: Not so much. Led by institutional investors and managers, like Walden Asset Management, and AFSCME (a public employee union pension fund getting involved in exec pay - ouch) a growing number of companies have asked for an advisory shareholder vote on executive compe...

	Homer & Friends on Executive Compensation and Say on Pay - Part 2 Sustainable Finance \| Michael Hassett \| Monday 15th March 2010 This column continues the panel discussion on executive compensation and Say on Pay featuring Homer Simpson, Gordon Gekko and Henry David Thoreau. Homer: Forget the non-CEOs, tell me about the donuts, I mean the CEOs. Gekko: Back in the good old days, when I was hustling penny stocks, the CEOs had it made. They essentially selected the board of their own company and its committees. If the CEO didn't serve on his own comp committee (if there even was a comp committee) he made sure his friends did, and often he would serve as a director and comp committee member for companies run by those same friends - a mutual back scratching relationship that ensured friends would stay friendly in fair weather and foul. Even if a comp committee wanted to take a look at CEO compensation, the CEO would hire the consultant that provided data on comp at similar companies, and the consultants all knew who made the decision on which consultant to hire. Thoreau: Doesn't sound very democratic. Gekko: True, but I never said democracy was good, just greed. The old system worked...

	Homer & Friends on Executive Compensation and Say on Pay - Part 1 Sustainable Finance \| Michael Hassett \| Monday 15th March 2010 It's that time of year, March Madness, and by that I mean the annual wave of indignation and anger reacting to executive compensation disclosure reported, over and over, in mainstream media summaries and recaps of summaries, etc. Since we are only a small brook here, not a mainstream, we won't recap the recap, we will actually front run exec comp season. We won't even get mad, we'll just get even, with another peerless panel discussion featuring Homer Simpson (who needs no introduction), Gordon Gekko (soon to appear in a long awaited sequel to Wall Street) and Henry David Thoreau - not writing any sequels, but Walden Pond is still there, I drove by on MLK Day. Gekko: I can't understand what all the fuss is about. We've already been listening to a year of whining about Wall Street salaries just because the economy had a little hiccup and a few banking types took some TARP money. So a CEO makes a few million bucks, or even a few hundred million. That's a market economy. Nobody complains when Alex Rodriguez signs a quarter billion dollar contract or Arnold Schwarzenegger gets $100 million for delivering twenty lines in nea...

	"Undercover boss" Highlights CSR on TV Corporate Social Responsibility \| Amelia Timbers \| Monday 15th March 2010 CBS has produced a TV show called Undercover Boss where CEOs work alongside their employees. After watching the "White Castle" episode, it struck me that Undercover Boss was undercover documenting a CSR strategy. Although mainstream management literature has advocated open communication for at least a decade, advising that managers listen to and empathize with their people on the 'frontline' of their business, this rarely occurs in reality. Open communication is also easily compromised as companies grow. It was simple to hear from everyone when the company was 20 people, rather than 200. Even companies like Starbucks that work diligently to integrate ideas from all levels struggle to actually do so. It's a practicality issue that takes specific effort to remedy. Yet frequent feedback from the lowest paid positions in a company is important to the employee-welfare aspect of corporate social responsibility. A good solution would be, for companies over 200 people, to make management work, undercover or openly, in various front-line jobs as part of a their job descriptions. It's important to do this for a variety of reasons: 1) It grounds th...

	Unhealthy promotion: Are alcohol ads targeting kids? Health \| Ano Lobb \| Monday 15th March 2010 Television advertising is driven by many factors, most of all by data. Marketers for both television ad space and the products being sold are well informed by enviously detailed data on the demographics of viewers, the likelihood that they'll respond to marketing messages, and performance of past campaigns. It's the kind of data that public health professionals trying to raise awareness about HIV, for example, can only dream about. Little is left to chance, and by correlation, it's unlikely that the link between an ad campaign and increases in product sales are mediated by dumb-luck or coincidence. So what is driving the increase in underage drinking, especially binge drinking and consumption of spirits and alcopops (sweet, typically fruity flavored malt beverages) among girls? Could it be the result of industry advertising reaching under-aged drinkers, either by choice or happenstance? It appears likely. A new RAND study published in the American Journal of Public Health analyzed all of over 600,000 alcohol industry advertisements placed on national cable networks from 2001 to 2006. In time slots where the under-aged viewership was 30% or less, resear...