GLOBE Series

     I just learned about an interesting CSR-based project named GLOBE.  It has been in existence since 1990, and, as the name suggests, is an international collaboration. 

     A description on its website says "GLOBE draws the best and brightest of the international sustainable business community, making it an unsurpassed forum for learning and networking."  GLOBE is comprised of dozens of leaders in a variety of specialties: corporate sustainability, finance advisors, climate panels, and other institutional leaders who support and guide GLOBE in its initiatives.

     GLOBE's main offering is the summit it holds every two years in Vancouver, CA.  There it hosts thousands of companies and leaders with the goal of expanding environmental business innovation through networking and idea-spreading.  Its website describes the summit as "where leaders come to devise winning strategies to conserve resources, ignite innovation, and develop ideas and partnerships that help them be more resilient, more efficient, and reduce risk." 

     Examples of the innovations and solutions that result from the collaborations of GLOBE can be found on its website.  The project can also be followed on Twitter by @GLOBE_Series.

Glorious Garden

     I wanted to stick with the farming/gardening theme for this post and write about another fantastic garden that was on the Slow Food First Coast Tour de Farm: the University of North Florida's Ogier Gardens.
    
     The garden was founded on and continues to operate by principles of organic farming and sustainability.  It incorporates agroecology into its growing practices and grows a wide, unexpected variety of fruits and vegetables.  Plants include several different types of lettuces, herbs like moringa, root vegetables, citrus fruits, and there is even a tropical corner where garden staff experiment with fruits normally not found in north Florida's climate.

     Ogier Gardens is also committed to educating on "the importance of biodiversity, local food, and social justice in the food system," according to its website (all fantastic CSR examples).  It achieves this by myriad programs for students and volunteers, including Intro to Organic Gardening, Composting 101, Eat for the Planet, and Tea at Three, where participants can learn to dry their own herbs for tea.  The garden also accepts volunteers to come and work in a bed for an afternoon, or also a person or a group adopting their own bed to cultivate on a regular basis.

     Although anyone is welcome to participate in the garden, serving university students is Ogier Gardens' top priority.  It encourages all students to be involved, and donates produce to the university's Lend-A-Wing pantry program, which provides free food to food-insecure students.    

     If you're in northeast Florida and in the mood for some great gardening and learning, Ogier Gardens is the place to be.  You'll walk away having contributed to your health, others' health, and the planet's health.

Slow Food First Coast

     Today I am happy to write about an event going on where I currently live in Jacksonville, Fla.  It beautifully represents the sustainability and ethics aspects of CSR.  It's called Tour de Farm, and is part of the Slow Food First Coast movement.

 

 

     Slow Food is an international movement that began in Italy in 1986.  A group of activists wanted to return to the focus of enjoying good food made at a slow, intentional pace instead of the fast, processed direction food had moved toward over the previous decades. 

 

     The three guiding principles of the movement are good, clean and fair.  Food should be good for you and taste good naturally.  It should be produced in a way that minimizes harm to the environment.  Producers should be paid fair wages, and prices should also make the food accessible to consumers.  Sustainability and health for people and the environment are natural consequences of these principles. 

 

The photo shown at left was taken today at GYO Greens, one of the participating farms in the Tour de Farm. It demonstrates aquaponics, one of the sustainable farming practices of the slow food movement. That and the similar hydroponics are examples of permaculture, one of the leading production concepts in the slow food movement.  Permaculture means minimal space and resources (e.g. water) are used to grow food, and those resources can be reused not only at no additional cost to the environment, but also give back to the environment.


Supporting farms like this and principles of the slow food movement provides a host of benefits to growers, consumers and the planet.  Abiding by these principles helps to heal the planet of the burden humans have put on its natural resources, supports our essential farmers, and gives all of us tastier, healthier food!  Cheers!

CSR for employees

     Business Journal recently published a Gallup and Healthways study which reported on the combined factors of employee well-being and engagement.  These two factors contribute to the others' strength and increase not only employee performance, but also turnover rates and safety. 
    
     Gallup and Healthways used their research to define employee well-being in terms of five components: Purpose, Community, Financial, Social and Physical.  The more employees feel satisfied in each of these categories, the more likely they are to feel engaged in their work, and therefore perform better. 

     The statistics of highly engaged employees who felt a high sense of well-being were quite impressive:  they were 42% more likely to rate their lives highly, 27% more likely to rate "excellent" both their own performance and that of their company, and 37% more likely to report a full recovery after illness or injury.

     Given this data, the other aim of the research was to help employers figure out ways to increase employee well-being.  It was concluded that employers could encourage participation in well-being activities, recognize employees for well-being achievements, include employee ideas on workplace well-being initiatives, and explicitly connect well-being initiatives to one of the above mentioned five components.

     This study is a great representation of how internal CSR benefits everyone.  The more satisfied employees are, the more efficient business can be, which leads to more satisfied customers.

Here is a Google map of all pools in Jacksonville part of JaxParks Aquatics.

Jacksonville's best spots

This is a map created by my online emerging media class. It lists all the best non-chain eateries, bars and groceries of Jacksonville. I added BioMax Natural Foods, on Atlantic Blvd. in the town center of Atlantic Beach. It is a great supplement and natural foods store with an organic juice bar that makes it stand out.

CSR for government

     Recently, a friend asked me a question that another friend posed to him:  "What do you think could create the biggest change in government for the better?"  He gave me 30 seconds to think and answer.  Feeling the pressure, my mind started racing.  Just when my time was about up, it finally hit me: CSR.  The theme of this blog and my greatest area of interest in business. 

     It just makes sense.  Instead of basing decisions on political affiliation, why not base them on CSR.  Considering the components of CSR in every decision would inherently incorporate integrity into them.  If every policy were designed based on considerations of transparency/ethics, environmental impact, impact on all people involved, and the benefit it could bring to those it implicates, then the government would inherently be trying its best every time.

     It is quite the lofty goal, and I'm sure will only ever exist in my imagination.  Nonetheless, it is the answer I believe in. 

    What's yours?

The Best

This week I've managed to combine two of my favorite topics into one post: CSR and chocolate!
I opened up one of these bars today

and soon thought, "What a perfect topic to write on!"  Yes, I adore these bars because of their superior taste and superior commitment to giving back.  First of all, cacao bean harvesting is a highly controversial issue on the food world.  Take a look at this entertaining, insane video for a primer.

     This company, Endangered Species Chocolate, only sources Fair Trade chocolate, defined by fairtradeusa.org as "certification that ensures that farmers receive a fair price, allows farmers to invest in techniques that bring out the flavors of the region, and strictly prohibits slave and child labor."  Need I say more to encourage fair trade purchases?  The company also commits to donating 10% of its profits to various partners of animal welfare  (particularly wildlife) and environmental sustainability.  

     Cacao bean harvesting doesn't even directly affect some of the conservation organizations they donate to; they just donate because they can.  Partners include the Rainforest Trust and the African Wildlife Foundation.  

     AND, as if that weren't inspiration enough to patronize Endangered Species Chocolate, they are also Non-GMO Project Verified.  Case closed.

Water Works

     This post falls more into the category of a positive topic. It combines one of the massive corporations of the world, one of life's most essential resources, and a cute, furry animal: Coca-Cola, water and beavers. According to the website TakePart - which describes itself as "a digital news and lifestyle magazine and social action platform for the conscious consumer" - Coca-Cola is invested in over 200 water projects in communities throughout the world to replenish water in ecosystems that surround its manufacturing plants. This is due to the sheer volume of water used to produce its drinks - about 41 billion gallons per year.

     They are strategically placing beavers in areas where replenishment is needed since beavers are natural engineers and shapers of the landscape. The beavers will make dams and ponds to help sustain ecosystems and water supplies for the people who surround them. Coke's goal is to equalize the amount of its drink output with the amount of its water replenishment by 2020.

    Though I am no supporter of Coke or its products, this demonstrates a concerted, commendable CSR effort on Coke's part.

This photo of the "World of Coca-Cola" museum in Atlanta was taken by Rundvald in 2007 and is public domain.

Post 2 - Save the bees!

Estimates say that 30% of the bee population dies every year.  For farmers who are beekeepers, this means they have additional expenditures of time and resources to replace that population each year in order to keep up with the world's food demand.  The pollinators responsible for the majority of our fruits, vegetables, nuts, and let's not forget honey, have been dying rapidly for several reasons.  The most damaging offenders to bees include herbicides, pesticides, insecticides and the transportation of bees between states to help pollinate areas where there is a lack of pollinators.  Considering herbicides, pesticides and insecticides are used on the majority of our crops, it would seem like bees are doomed.  However, there are ways to support bees surviving and thriving, and everyone from farmers to you and I can play a helpful part.  Primarily, we can advocate for the removal of the aforementioned toxic chemicals in our crops.  (This is also one of the primary issues in the case against genetically modified organisms - GMOs).  Crops without these chemicals are safer for the bees and safer for us.  The Environmental Working Group (EWG) provides constant news on health threats such as these and offers dozens of ways to take political action: www.ewg.org/take-action.  Additionally, those with the space and ability can also plant their own flowers, fruit trees or fruit bushes– free of pesticides, herbicides and insecticides.  That will assure additional, healthy plants to support healthy bees.  Healthy bees means the world can continue to enjoy the literal fruits of their labor.

Produce by Brianna Ehrhart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Intro. & Bees

For my first post, I want to introduce this blog as one centered on a theme of worldly social and environmental issues.  Not all bad, not all good.  I will post about current, varying topics that I believe are important for everyone to know at least a little about as a citizen of the planet.  I am not a sensationalist; I simply believe in being informed. So, I will try to present information without the typical fear and guilt-inducing tactics ubiquitous in mainstream media. 

One seemingly insignificant, but truly monumental issue currently, is the decline of the honeybee population.  The decline has been massive enough to convince the White House to pass legislation to find ways to save them and research habitat preservation.  The reasons for decline are extensive and complicated – they’ll come in the next post.  For now, I’ll keep it basic by explaining why bees are essential: they are pollinators responsible for one-third of the world’s food supply.  This heavy statement has been cited by various sources, such as in the attached video by SciShow.  This means we have honeybees to thank for our bountiful supplies of fruit and nuts, as well as other foods and plants.  Without them, parts of our food supply would be hugely diminished and scarce.  The decline is already bad enough that, for certain crops, bee colonies are transported to pollinate from different states, and bee keepers all over the U.S. are trying to help make up for the population loss by cultivating more of their own colonies and hives.  Savannah Bee Company is a great grassroots company based in Savannah, Ga. that produces various goods from honey and maintains bee colonies.  They also provide great and fun information on bees: http://savannahbee.com/bee-education/.  NPR also has a collection of news stories on bee population decline and the efforts to reverse it.

Bees are essential and some of the most valuable contributors to our livelihood.  Let’s appreciate them, and in the next post I’ll include insights into how to support them.