Education: Have you seen the RateMyProfessors.com website? This unique web tool allows students to leave comments about their teachers. The website then ranks teachers according to student ratings. I did a search of my undergraduate alma mater and found, among others, these comments: "Good quality." "Very easy. Just attend class and do the assignments." "She was extremely understanding of students' problems and needs." and "He's hot! I loved listening to him and watching him all through class." And as I did a little more digging, similar comments surface at most schools. Many students give serious critiques...
Energy & Emissions: The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico should have been enough to spur policymakers to invest in renewable energy and emissions reduction programs, encouraging a new wave of low-carbon innovation. Yet just in case there was any doubt that oil spills and other accidents are not a freak occurrence, but rather an unavoidable consequence of drilling for oil, maybe today's reports of a second oil drilling platform explosion in the Gulf of Mexico will drive the message home.
Proving BP is not the only oil company prone to accidents, the drilling platform in question this time belongs ...
Social Enterprise:
Social enterprises are beginning to dip their toes into the (often murky) waters of franchising. This relatively new movement, known as social franchising, is currently the hot topic within the social enterprise circles. In a previous article for Justmeans I explored the 'for' and 'against' arguments for social franchising. For me, the 'for' arguments are stronger. Vision Spring is a social enterprise that demonstrates why.
Vision Spring is the brainchild of Dr. Jordan Kassalow, a practicing optometrist. His idea for a social enterprise came when he realized th...
Energy & Emissions: What would Captain Kirk do? Say what you will, his ability to compartmentalize everything in a crisis and just keep moving forward was the implicit core of a vast majority of Star Trek episodes.
For us facing a climate crisis, on the other hand, maybe compartmentalization is not such a good idea.
There's an argument going on in the forestry community about the ability of forests to absorb carbon dioxide. Here's the problem: Older trees store more carbon, but younger trees absorb more carbon. So, cut 'em down or not?
Les Blumnethal reported in the Olympian that new satellit...
Social Enterprise: Is Social Enterprise a veil for fiscal and political conservatism? The sun-kissed optimism of Cameron's Big Society claims a large-scale energizing of "citizen volunteers" will revolutionize the local governance of everything from post offices to libraries. Critics, however, have a gloomier and grittier version of Cameron's vision. They contend that his ambitious re-imagining of British public life is a "cover" for massive cuts to social service programs and represents the de-legitimizing of the idea that government must ensure the well-being of its most vulnerable citizens. Cameron and his st...
Energy & Emissions: Harnessing the wind to generate renewable energy is one of the most popular methods of going green because it deals with a very abundant and easily used resource: the wind. However, the main issue with installing and operating a wind farm, aside from the large amount of space a bigger farm would need, is the simple fact that the wind just does not blow all the time. Even in the windiest locations around the world there will be moments when things get quiet and the turbines stop rotating for a long enough period of time to stop generating any significant amount of energy. However, Hybrid Wind T...
Sustainable Development: Usually, it's attributable to a recession. But in this case, there are other reasons, as well, to explain why the United States consumed significantly less energy in 2009 than it did in 2008.
Part of the reason is that our mix of energy sources is changing. As a nation, we burned much less coal, petroleum and natural gas in 2009, compared with 2008, and we relied a good deal more on electricity generated from wind power and solar cells, as well as hydro-electric installations and geothermal systems.
Another reason for the energy savings last year was the growing p...
Social Media: PatiensLikeMe is a website that is breaking all of the stigmas when it comes to the sharing of health information and is proving that publicizing health records and online social networking amongst patients can be a powerful combination. PatiensLikeMe has its users share their health symptoms on the site and provides a place for them to interact and empathize with others who have similar conditions. Not only is it a place for bonding, it's a place for analyzing what type of treatments work best. Users can log in and find out what type of treatments have been successful and track the progress a...
Ethical Consumption: Sustainable living can very well include a wide variety of products that is used on a daily basis. The cosmetic industry has been under a lot of fire lately due to the chemicals that they use in their products. Annie Leonard's Story of Cosmetics is an eye-opening short clip of the amount of chemicals we regularly douse ourselves with. These have been linked with cancers, reproductive disorders and environmental pollution. In the effort to created green products, cosmetic companies focus on various aspects of environmental awareness. Body Shop focuses on ethical sourcing and community upliftmen...
Corporate Social Responsibility: Sometimes I wonder if CSR can be entirely altruistic. Strategic CSR is one of the ways companies ensure their business interests are met through various socio-enviro improvements along their production line. Coca-Cola's partnership with WWF in China is a good case study.
The Yangtze is Asia's longest river and it is also one of the most polluted rivers in the world. Three Gorges Dam, the world's biggest hydel power station is being constructed on the river and has received an almost steady stream of criticism. The extinction of the Baiji or the Yangtze river dolphin is also anot...
Responsible Careers: For those interested in building a responsible career, it might seem as though there are no responsible jobs available out there. The US unemployment rate remained around 10% in August. which has further added fuel to the thought that the US is in jobless recovery. Moreoever, many young professionals get discouraged, because they don't understand that job postings are like 'wish lists'. In any economy, with optimism and the willingness to accept a job that is 'good enough' rather than to keep waiting for the 'perfect job' to come along, you might find out that there are numer...
Social Media: I recently read a post by Glenn Watkins on a social networking site called Ecademy to raise awareness about an organisation called Peace one Day and its campaign to create one day of Global World Peace on 21 September 2010. Apart from being completely inspired by this peace initiative and wanting to help to make this day a global success, I have been heartened how the power of social media has helped 'Peace one Day' gain momentum and wanted to further employ the strength of social media towards this day.
Peace one Day was created by filmmaker, Jeremy Gilley who has a...
Corporate Social Responsibility: The madness of globalisation means a bargain shop in York in the North of England is shipping in sweets from Indonesia even though the same ones are made in its own city. The reason for this environmentally disastrous and CSR-unfriendly decision is cost. The shop in question, Poundworld, sells 8 rolls of Polo mint sweets for £1, when they usually cost around 50p for each roll.
A local politician from the Green Party pointed out that the low cost takes no account of environmental impact - which in this case is sky high. Nestle, the manufacturer of the Polo Mint, has said th...
Social Enterprise: Across the Atlantic, Britain is taking a gamble - a huge one - on social enterprise. Britain's prime minister David Cameron spent the summer setting forth his vision of a "Big Society". On July 19, the Economist notes that Cameron delivered his manifesto on the topic in Liverpool. The prime minister spoke about the need for a Big Society Bank to "help finance social enterprises, charities, and volunteer groups through intermediaries". Intermediaries function as financial middlemen: they are often financed by larger organizations in order to infuse capital into grassroots organizations with the...
Education: My progress with changing my son's school lunches is slow. Luckily, my readers filled my email with lots of tips, primarily about Jamie Oliver. I further researched his Food Revolution and found that while it is terrific, it does not give concrete steps in challenging a school lunch program. However, the website's success stories and ideas inspired me to keep moving. At this point, I patiently await answers but here is my progress:
- First, I asked my son's teacher what school lunches normally entailed (are they always hotdogs and bologna?) She expressed concern over a bologna-b...
Social Enterprise: Yesterday's post examined some of the most common problems - cultural dysfunction, conflict with mission, concerned stakeholders, and different service focus - encountered when non-profits extend their operation to include a social enterprise component to generate an additional revenue stream. Transitioning from a traditional non-profit organization to one that incorporates a social enterprise component is a major decision demanding thorough analysis of the advantages and disadvantages. Once the decision has been made, however, properly preparing your board, leadership, team, and supporters wi...
Corporate Social Responsibility: Hearing that old refrain again ,this time from the WSJ, that CSR distracts business from its real business. The generic purpose of business can be narrowly defined as that of making a profit, sometimes expressed as the maximization of shareholder value. This simplistic statement of purpose advances greed as a praiseworthy attribute, wherein it becomes widely accepted that business enterprises are most successful when spurred on by avarice in a competing marketplace of other avaricious entities.
What then, differentiates business activities from that of criminal activities?...
Social Media: Social media has been a major player in the "opening up" of the Middle East and other regions with oppressive governments. Despite the ability of said governments to block their citizenry from utilizing social media, many people in these countries are finding creative ways to participate in the global social media frenzy.Actually, the same governments that are barring their subjects from social media usage are actually creating their own accounts on various social media websites. For example, North Korea now has its own Twitter account. This, of course, means that the leader ...
Corporate Social Responsibility: This is not a reference to the recent meeting between Bono and President Medvedev of Russia, in which the musician encouraged the politician to take up his project RED by noting its color comparison to the Russia flag. Neither is this related to Ian Bremmer's new book The End of the Free Market, in which he posits that state capitalism, as practiced by China and Russia, has taken hold in a number of other countries and is subverting the free character of global markets. These regimes use as ammunition the financial crisis, which they present as the natural failure of the free-marke...
Energy & Emissions: If you've done much work on energy and emissions issues, chances are you've run into questions about the intermittency of renewable energy. They come up all the time—both in interpersonal interactions, and even more in online forums. After you've sung the praises of renewable energy and made your point about how much potential there is to develop renewable power, someone asks a question that goes something like this: "What are we going to do when the wind's not blowing and the sun isn't out? Won't all the lights go off?"
This is one of the most common and pernicious myths i...
Transportation: The use of hydrogen fuel cells in green transportation has remained, for most of the last several years, more an interesting notion than a practical means of replacing fossil fueled cars. The reasons for the slow growth of hydrogen fuel cells are often blamed on the lack of a developed fueling infrastructure and the costs associated with developing the technology. Despite this, Honda has remained adamant that hydrogen fuel cells would become the future of green transportation while other companies seemed to take a step away from their projects. However, recent developments by Toyota and Hyunda...
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