The short version:

This issue is long and complicated. Here's a quick summary of what you can do, followed by the full blog with explanations.

Call your representatives in Congress. 

Divest from: Geo Corp, CoreCivic (CXW: NYSE), Wells Fargo (WFC: NYSE), Bank of America (BAC: NYSE), JPMorgan Chase (JPM: NYSE), BNP Paribas (BNP: NYSE), SunTrust (STI: NYSE), and US Bancorp (USB: NYSE), Accenture, and General Dynamics

Also divest from: "the Million Shares Club,"a list of companies that each own over 1 million shares in Geo Group and CoreCivic

Contact and complain: Accenture, Comprehensive Health Services Inc., Dynamic Service Solutions, LLC, Dynamic Education Systems, a subsidiary of Exodyne, General Dynamics, MVM, Inc., Southwest Key Programs, Frontier Airlines, JetBlue, Southwest Airlines, Delta Airlines

Thank for its policies: American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, United Airlines

March wherever you are on June 30th 

Donate supplies like toothpaste and diapers, and funds for legal support.

The full issue breakdown:

There’s a lot of misinformation on the Internet about US immigrant detention policies. The facts, confirmed by multiple sources, are as follows: Conditions in immigrant detention centers have been horrible for years, under Trump, Obama, and presidents before them, especially in those that are run by private companies. However, what changed under the Trump administration is that adults—including those lawfully seeking asylum—are being forcibly separated from their children in huge numbers. The Associated Press reported on June 19th that even babies and toddlers are being sent without their parents to “tender age” shelters in South Texas. 

The family-separation policy, announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in April and May, is nothing short of “torture,” as a Washington Post editorial noted. You can use your economic power to send a message to the companies involved in immigrant detention and family separation that they need to stop profiting from America’s broken and unjust immigration system.

What Trump’s Executive Order Really Will Do

While Trump recently reversed the family-separation policy through executive order after a massive public outcry, it still remains to be seen what kind of actions the government will take to reunite the families already separated. Experts note that that reunification is likely to be a complex, drawn-out process, if it happens at all.

“More than 2,300 children have been taken away from their parents and sent to shelters, facilities and foster families all across the country, with seemingly no clear tracking mechanism. The executive order does not say anything about the plan to reunite these families, and the administration confirmed that it will not be not be making any special efforts to do so," writes Lorella Praelli of the American Civil Liberties Union in a June 21st blog. 

In addition, Trump’s new executive order now states that the government will keep families together but may detain them “indefinitely”—indicating that more human rights violations could occur under this administration, as immigrants are denied the right given to US citizens of a “fair and speedy” hearing or trial.

Under previous administrations, most immigrants who crossed the border illegally were deported within an average of one to two months from their detention, according to NPR, while asylum-seekers and legal permanent residents accused of committing a crime have had to wait an average of 13 months for their cases to be decided. Prior to Trump, many of those seeking asylum were allowed to be free on bail.

In addition to contacting your Congressional representatives to voice your opposition to inhumane immigration policies and practices, here’s what you can do to use your economic power to help change the system.

Divest from Private Prisons and Their Funders

Private prison companies Geo Corp. (GEO: NYSE) and CoreCivic (CXW: NYSE) (formerly Corrections Corporation of America) run several US immigrant detention centers and are profiting from unfair immigration policies, as Green America editorial fellow Sytonia Reid noted in her recent article, "On Sale Now: Prison Labor."

Reid notes that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been arresting those seeking asylum, locking them up for prolonged periods without bail—a violation of US and international law. In fact, she writes, “In March, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit ‘to challenge the Trump administration’s arbitrary and illegal incarceration of thousands of asylum seekers who fled persecution, torture, or death in their countries of origin.’”

Conditions in these centers leave a lot to be desired. Reid’s article details some of the abuse, including forced labor, immigrant detainees experience under detention. And, as we were getting ready to post this article, the Associated Press broke a story about detained immigrant youth as young as 14 alleging they were physically abused while handcuffed and put in freezing solitary-confinement cells while naked.

Due to the poor conditions inside private prisons and detention centers—as well as the political lobbying these companies do to promote policies that encourage incarceration and immigrant detention—activists are calling for divestment from Geo Group, Core Civic, and the banks that fund them: Wells Fargo (WFC: NYSE), Bank of America (BAC: NYSE), JPMorgan Chase (JPM: NYSE), BNP Paribas (BNP: NYSE), SunTrust (STI: NYSE), and US Bancorp (USB: NYSE).

The nonprofit Enlace is also calling on investors to divest from what it calls "the Million Shares Club,"a list of companies that each own over 1 million shares in Geo Group and CoreCivic. 

For assistance with screening your stock holdings and mutual or exchange-traded funds for these banks, prison companies, and other companies funding prisons, find a socially responsible investment advisor at GreenPages.org. And visit Green America’s BreakUpWithYourMegaBank.org for help moving your accounts out of the banks profiting from immigrant detention.

Put Federal Contractors on Notice

A handful of defense contractor companies are working with the government to detain and care for immigrants who have attempted to enter the US, and so are profiting from US immigrant-detention policies.

You can do two things regarding these companies:

1. Divest from those that are publicly traded if you hold their stock shares or have mutual or exchange-traded funds that include them. Those listed below are noted by ticker symbols (shortened company names used for stocks) after the company names.
2. Contact the companies to demand they stop profiting from unfair immigration policies. Click on the company names to go to their contact or investor relations web pages.

Accenture (ACN: NYSE)—This company won a five-year, $297 million contract last December to help Customers and Border Protection recruit and hire 7,500 additional agents “amid President Donald Trump’s push for increased border security,” according to Washington Technology, a magazine for government contractors.

Comprehensive Health Services Inc. (Private company)—Since September 2017, this company has been awarded nearly $65 million in federal contracts for emergency immigrant-detention shelters—including those for unaccompanied children (and likely those separated from families)—as well as other services for detained immigrants, according to Yahoo News.

Dynamic Service Solutions, LLC (Private company)—Another federal contractor that earned $8.7 million on a contract to provide shelter care to unaccompanied children. Yahoo News notes that this company is likely providing shelter to children separated from families, as well.

Dynamic Education Systems, a subsidiary of Exodyne (Private company)—This company provides emergency shelter operations for unaccompanied children and other immigrant detainees, according to Yahoo News.

General Dynamics (GD: NYSE)—According to multiple sources, General Dynamics provides services like medical care to children who have been detained, including those separated from their parents under the Trump policy.

MVM, Inc. (Private company)—MVM provides child care, transportation, and other services for detained immigrant children. It also recently advertised on Indeed.com for a compliance coordinator to help with “rapid deployment of an Emergency Influx Shelter for unaccompanied children,” the Daily Beast reports. MVM told Yahoo News that it has not accepted new contracts associated with immigrant families and children since the implementation of the family-separation policy.

Southwest Key Programs (Nonprofit)—The Washington Post reports that this company operates an immigrant detention facility in a former Walmart in Texas where hundreds of immigrant children who were separated from their families are currently being held. It plans to open another in a vacant warehouse in Houston.

Thank the Airlines Saying No to Family Separation

Detained immigrants, including children separated from their families, have been flown to detention centers in 17 states across the US, but federal officials won’t say how they get there, notes Bloomberg.  

But the media and the public wanted to know. After fielding questions about whether they had helped separate immigrant families on June 21st, American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, and United Airlines asked the US government not to fly immigrant children who were separated from their families on their planes.

“Based on our serious concerns about this policy and how it’s in deep conflict with our company’s values, we have contacted federal officials to inform them that they should not transport immigrant children on United aircraft who have been separated from their parents,” United CEO Oscar Munoz said in a statement.

And American released a statement that read, in part: “The family separation process that has been widely publicized is not at all aligned with the values of American Airlines—we bring families together, not apart. … We have therefore requested the federal government to immediately refrain from using American for the purpose of transporting children who have been separated from their families due to the current immigration policy. We have no desire to be associated with separating families, or worse, to profit from it. We have every expectation the government will comply with our request and we thank them for doing so.”

Alaska Airlines released a similar statement on Twitter.

Other airlines followed up with their own statements, though most were weaker.

Frontier Airlines said it would not knowingly transport immigrant children away from their families but did not mention asking the government not to use its planes to do so.

JetBlue did not respond to media requests for comment, though it does have a statement on its website saying that it “does not transport deportees/detainees, with the exception of JetBlue's non-compliance with entry regulations, such as the required tickets and entry documents, results in a JetBlue customer being detained/deported according to Immigration Authorities.”

Southwest Airlines publicly appealed to “anyone making those types of travel decisions” not to use its airlines to separate immigrant families.

Delta Airlines responded late on June 21st, calling the policy “disheartening” but did not say whether it had helped separate families or would do so in the future. The company simply said in its statement, “We applaud the administration’s executive order resolving the issue of separating children from their families at the US border.”

Despite American’s statement, lawyer Michael Avenatti tweeted a picture of several immigrant boys awaiting an American Airlines flight to be transported out of the area. It’s clear that the public is on the lookout for immigrant children sans families being transported on US airlines. American released a statement saying the photo “concerned” its employees, and they approached ICE.

“We have been assured by the escorts of this specific group, and further confirmed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, that these individuals are being reunited with family members who live in the United States," American Airlines said in a statement.

Click on the company names above to thank American, United, and Alaska, via their investor relations sites, for taking a stand (and let them know you’ll be watching their future moves on this issue), and tell the others to follow suit.

Raise Your Voice in Other Ways

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA)—a longtime immigrant-rights leader-turned-Congressional representative (as detailed in our 2017 interview with her)—recently announced a nationwide march scheduled for June 30th. While it was initially conceived to protest family separation, Jayapal and organizers note that Trump’s executive order does not solve the overall problem of inhumane immigrant detention, and it paves the way for long periods of incarceration for immigrants. The protest will go on as planned, “to say that families belong together—and free.”

As Jayapal tweeted on June 20th on Trump’s executive order, “Donald Trump’s new order is a response to the outcry from the American people. We must reject the false choice between separating children from parents and putting families in cages. Both are horrific. Both are wrong. We cannot let up until we have a humane system in place.”

Sign up for one of the June 30th protests via MoveOn.org. (For marchers who need buttons, posters, stickers, or books supporting immigrant families, the Syracuse Cultural Workers, a progressive publisher and Green America Green Business Network member, has several great options.)

In addition, several good organizations are working at the border to help immigrant families, especially those whose young children have been separated from them and could use financial support. The Daily Beast lists several, including two that have online wish lists for those wanting to purchase needed baby and toiletry items for detained children.

No matter what your stance on border enforcement is, it’s critical to not allow the government to abuse or indefinitely detain immigrants or separate families. Act now for a fair and just immigration system

AT&T announced an additional purchase of 300 MW of energy from two wind farms, both in Texas. This follows up on its February 2018 agreement to purchase 520 MW from two wind farms in Oklahoma and Texas. Once these changes are implemented, this will take AT&T's use of renewable energy to roughly 30%. Using a total of 820 MW of renewable energy is equivalent to removing 530,000 cars off the road each year. 

Green America's "Hang Up On Fossil Fuels" campaign has been calling on AT&T and Verizon to commit to 100% renewable energy by 2025. AT&T has not made a commitment to 100% clean energy yet, but these new wind purchases are a significant step in the right direction for the company. Verizon, by contrast, still uses less than 2% renewable energy. Please help us keep the pressure on AT&T and Verizon until they reach 100% renewable energy. 

Are you excited about joining the Climate Victory Garden movement but not quite sure how to do it? If you have a lawn, then this comic is for you. There are so many benefits to ditching the lawn and planting a Climate Victory Garden—not only are you beautifying your yard, saving money, and producing delicious, healthy food, but you could actually be sequestering carbon dioxide and fighting climate change! 

Already have a Climate Victory Garden? Great! Register it here to see others nearby. Also, join our Climate Victory Gardener facebook group to get weekly tips and join discussions around best practices.  

This article was originally published by YES! Media.

Jennifer Luxton and Erin Sagen created this comic for YES! Magazine. Jennifer is a journalist by training, graphic designer by profession, illustrator by passion, and amateur taxidermist by moonlight. She is the lead designer at YES! Follow her visual endeavors at www.jenniferluxton.com. Erin is an associate editor at YES! Magazine. She lives in Seattle and writes about food, health, and suburban sustainability. Follow her on Twitter @erin_sagen.

Your cell phone and other favorite electronics may have been made in an abusive sweatshop—and poisoned the workers who made them. 
The nonprofit China Labor Watch (CLW), a longtime ally of Green America’s, has a history of exposing what life has been like in Chinese supplier factories, which make many of the electronics on US store shelves. CLW has sent a number of undercover workers into those factories to report on their experiences.  

Most recently, from October 2017 to January 2018, CLW infiltrated the Catcher Technology Co. Ltd. factory in Suqian, China, which manufactures electronics for Apple, IBM, Dell, Sony, HP, and other brands. CLW identified major issues at Catcher regarding worker health and safety, pollution, and forced overtime.

CLW says the Catcher factory employs a complex shift rotation schedule that results in workers putting in overtime hours without earning overtime pay. 

An average schedule at the factory was ten hours a day, six days a week, while the company promised an eight-hours-a-day, five-days-a-week schedule in a work regulation pamphlet. Production line workers had to stand for all ten hours, as the factory doesn’t provide seats, resulting in workers quickly becoming exhausted. 

Catcher workers encounter toxic chemicals on the job, according to CLW. But the factory provided CLW investigators and other workers with less than one hour of safety training and only paper masks, as well as cotton gloves that appeared to be used. The factory did not distribute eye protection.

Catcher doesn’t disclose to workers—or the public—what chemicals its workers might encounter on the job. But one CLW investigator had to leave the factory after four weeks due to respiratory issues from chemical exposure. 

In addition, states a CLW report, “there is a foul odor present in the workshop, but workers are unsure what object is producing the smell. Workers privately discuss how severe the pollution is at Catcher, and there were rumors that workers who worked at [a particular] workshop for a substantial amount of time might develop cancer.”

There is hope that things will improve. Some major tech companies (whose names you’re likely familiar with) are now working with Green America’s Center for Sustainability Solutions to make their supply chains safer. 

The Center’s Clean Electronics Production Network (CEPN) is bringing together major electronics retailers and suppliers, labor and environmental advocates, and occupational health and green chemistry experts, along with the workers themselves, to eliminate worker exposure to toxic chemicals in electronics factories. CEPN convenes regular gatherings of these industry stakeholders to focus on the following: 

1. Creating a system to simplify data collection on toxic chemicals,
2. Ranking chemicals used in the industry to prioritize those that are highest risk for action,
3. Developing cleaner substitutes for toxic chemicals, and
4. Devising a framework for factories to use to substantially involve workers in protecting themselves and others from chemical exposure. To read our exclusive from CEPN director Sarah O’Brien detailing more of this work, e-mail info@greenamerica.org for a digital copy of the article. 

While CEPN has helped some big industry players make big strides for worker safety, Samsung continues to be a laggard in the industry, refusing to take steps to improve supplier factories. Green America and allied organizations from around the world delivered 200,000 signatures on various chemical-safety petitions to Samsung in April. The petitions addressed findings from reports about how Samsung factory workers in South Korea and Vietnam were being exposed to toxic chemicals. 

“The fact that major brands are now working with their entire supply chains, including workers, to finally address this problem in a meaningful way is very exciting,” says Caroline Chen, Green America’s social justice campaigns manager. “Now, Samsung needs to step up and protect the workers in its supply chain.”

Sign our letter to Samsung, telling it to take action for worker safety from toxic chemicals.
 

Big, rechargeable batteries are key to a green future. They’re required for electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, which are a huge part of how the world plans to combat climate change. Norway, the UK, the Netherlands, India, and France have all set timelines for bans on the sales of new cars with fossil-fuel-powered engines. China has also made a commitment to phase out the combustion engine but hasn’t set a date. Home storage cells for saving solar energy generated by day for use at night, like Tesla’s Powerwall, have already mitigated reliance on dirty fossil fuels. But far from sleek electric cars and green homes, barefoot children and vulnerable adults make up the beginning of the green battery supply chain—all because these batteries they help create use a mineral called cobalt, a byproduct of nickel and copper. 

The mining practices used to extract cobalt from the Earth involve child labor and dangerous working conditions. Even if you don’t have a taste for cutting-edge green tech, you’ve probably had your hands on something touched by problematic mining practices: Anything with lithium-ion batteries, including all cell phones, tablets, and laptops, uses cobalt.

Caption for header photo: A man enters a tunnel dug with shovels in a cobalt mine located 22 miles from the town of Likasi in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Schalk van Zuydam / Associated Press 

Where Cobalt Comes From

Amnesty International and The World Bank estimate more than half of the world’s cobalt originates from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The DRC meets more than half of worldwide demand for cobalt through artisanal miners. (The rest comes from industrial mines in China, Australia, Zambia, and Russia.) Artisanal mining sounds quaint, but what it means is that miners don’t have an employer—they dig mines with shovels instead of power diggers and climb through them without safety equipment and without engineers to map out safe 
mining routes. 

An estimated 40 million people earn their living in artisanal mining (not just in cobalt), according to the World Bank. In comparison, industrial mining operations employ only seven million worldwide, meaning that most miners don’t have an employer. 

Children as young as seven sift piles of ore coming out of artisanal mines, looking for pure cobalt. During this process, they may inhale toxic dust from heavy metals. The miners sell what they find to refiners at local markets, who may not give a fair price. 

The Hazards of Cobalt Mining

Experts do not consider cobalt a “conflict mineral”—like tungsten, tantalum, tin, and gold—because the profits from the mines go to the miners, not to military groups for weapons purchases. But cobalt miners still have significant safety issues to worry about.

Amnesty International and Afrewatch’s 2016 report, This is What We Die For, compiled research about the human rights and health concerns of artisanal cobalt mining. The report highlights that since most miners do not have any safety equipment, they’re exposed to cobalt dust, which can cause asthma and breathing problems, and even a fatal disease called “hard metal lung disease.” One scientist from the University of Lubumbashi in the DRC told the Washington Post that a high number of premature births and birth defects may be linked to toxic exposure related to mining activity in the country overall.

Hand-dug mines, which can be up to 330 feet deep, according to the Amnesty report, are poorly ventilated and are prone to collapse. There aren’t official data on the number of fatalities, but a DRC radio station tracked more than 80 miner deaths between 2014 and 2015. The report says, “The true figure is likely to be far higher, as many accidents go unrecorded, and bodies are left buried underground.”

Child Labor at the Mines

The DRC government has promised to eliminate child labor in mining by 2025. But with 40,000 children working there in cobalt mining alone, the problem is “massively complicated,” says Mark Dummett, business and human rights researcher at Amnesty International. He doesn’t believe the DRC can eliminate child labor that quickly.

“You can’t just send police in and chase kids out of the mines. You need to put in place all kinds of measures: They need to go to school instead, so there need to be schools in place. There need to be economic incentives for parents as well,” Dummett says.

He’s heartened by the country making such a commitment though. When Amnesty came into the country to do research on the problem in 2017, a government official had denied any children were working in mining at all.

What Big Tech Can Do

Darton Commodities, a company that buys and sells metals wholesale, says the world demand for cobalt is growing from 46,000 tons in 2016 to a projected 325,000 tons in 2030. That’s a 663 percent increase in only 14 years. In June 2018, at the time of print, a metric ton of cobalt cost $91,000. 

Benchmark Mineral Intelligence analyst Caspar Rawles told Investing News Network (INN) that the supply for cobalt could become critical as soon as 2020, when most electric vehicles will come to market.

Cobalt mines do exist elsewhere in the world; Canada, Australia, and the US all have industrial mines that are far safer than artisanal mines and provide better pay. Even with new mines opening in these countries, both Rawles and Dummett say the demand for DRC cobalt will continue to increase.

“We forecast the DRC to become a bigger part of the cobalt supply pie, to become more dominant in the near term,” Rawles told INN. “There is no lithium-ion [battery] industry without the DRC.” 

Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk promises that Tesla will only use cobalt mined in North America for its products, but Dummett thinks that won’t be possible because of the outsized portion of the supply that comes from the DRC.

Companies are racing to develop new batteries that use less cobalt content, so they won’t have to rely so heavily on the DRC, likely due more to the political instability in the country and the soaring price of the mineral, than to human rights concerns. But because the demand for lithium-ion batteries is so great for the booming electric vehicle market, Dummett says the demand for cobalt will rise even if the amount needed in each battery goes down.

The end game for tech companies wanting to be responsible is to tackle the health, safety, and human rights concerns around DRC cobalt mining.

“It’s very difficult for companies which rely on cobalt to avoid DRC cobalt, so they all have to address the problems [with mining in the country],” Dummett says. 

In February, Apple announced that it would buy its cobalt directly from miners, instead of buying the complete batteries from manufacturers, which get their cobalt through refiners. Apple is looking to sign contracts for several thousand metric tons per year. Samsung, Tesla, BMW, and Volkswagen are all racing to follow suit, according to reports from Bloomberg.

Companies are making this change because the supply of cobalt is dropping while the demand is skyrocketing, explains Dummett. They’re not doing it to improve transparency. That said, by cutting middle merchants, companies are creating a system in which they could have a huge impact on the wages and safety of workers mining cobalt if they wished, as they’d have control over every step of the mining process.

“At the moment, these miners work in dangerous and exploitative conditions, because companies just want to buy the cheapest available cobalt, without caring about where it has come from,” Dummett says. 

If they were working on the ground, , big tech companies could create an official industry where right now, artisanal mining is king. They could build mines that would pay adult laborers a fair wage, enough to feed their families and send their children to school, and provide safer conditions for mining.

Companies could also institute electronics take-back programs, to help increase the amount of old electronics that are responsibly recycled. Recyclers remove cobalt and other minerals from electronics so these minerals can be reused, which reduces the need to mine more.

Customers, Take Note 

To start creating change in the cobalt industry, Dummett says that companies like Apple that are securing multi-year cobalt supplies first need to zero in on where it comes from, especially if they have no sense now. 

Shockingly, 26 out of the 29 companies—including smelters, battery manufacturers, and consumer-facing tech companies—that Amnesty International contacted about their supply chains said they could not or would not disclose where they got their cobalt. It’s possible that some may not know their full supply chains.

“We think there’s a good chance that cobalt that’s been mined in these dangerous artisanal mines has entered the batteries of every major [tech] company. No company was meeting what we consider to be [best practices for] responsible sourcing of minerals,” Dummett says.

Consumers can do the following to pressure companies to do better for cobalt miners and the Earth: 

• Ask questions: Dummett encourages consumers to ask tech companies questions, especially because there is no way to avoid cobalt without avoiding tech products altogether. The more companies get the sense that their customers care about cobalt miners, the more likely they are to change their supply chains for the better. 
  
  “A key question to ask companies is where they get their supplies from, and mention cobalt. Ask about tracing and sourcing, and about remediation, and what they’re doing to make things better,” Dummett says. “It has to start with transparency, before you even look at changing conditions on the ground.”
• Recycle old electronics: It’s also critical to recycle your electronics. Taking cobalt from a battery where it’s already refined means relying less on new materials from the Earth.
  
  Call2Recycle is one of the largest battery recycling companies operating in North America. Last year, it collected 2.6 million pounds of lithium ion batteries, including cell phone and laptop batteries, and 85,000 of cell phones (It also recycles other types of batteries, including alkaline and nickel cadmium). 
  
  Call2Recycle CEO Carl Smith estimates those 2.6 million pounds represent less than five percent of the batteries on the market. He thinks a majority of unused, old batteries sit in drawers, as some folks forget about old technology in their homes, don’t know what to do with it, or are saving it for an emergency.
  
  One thing to be sure of is that any old electronics go to a trustworthy recycler. Some “recyclers” and scrap shops will take used batteries but will ship them to open-air heap recyclers in Asia and Africa, where poorly paid workers will break down the metals with little protection from dangerous chemicals.
  
  Recycling e-waste has more benefits than just yielding cobalt and other minerals for reuse. According to the 2017 United Nations report Global E-Waste Monitor, the estimated total potential value of materials in worldwide e-waste in 2016 was $68 billion. For every 1,000 tons of used electronics, 200 repair jobs can be created; a robust recycling system for devices could bring 45,000 new jobs. 

Recycle Your Electronics!

To reduce the need for new cobalt, it’s critical to recycle your old electronics—don’t let them sit in a drawer! 

• Find an e-Stewards Recycler: These recyclers, certified by the Basel Action Network’s e-Stewards program, recycle responsibly, in ways that minimize toxic exposure for workers and the Earth, and without shipping recyclables overseas. They also ensure that toxic electronics aren’t processed by prison, slave, or child labor. 
• Drop your old electronics at a Staples store: All US Staples stores accept old electronics, ink and toner cartridges, and rechargeable batteries for recycling. Staples is an e-Stewards Enterprise, meaning it’s committed to using only certified e-Stewards recyclers. 
• Become an e-Stewards Envoy. Envoys are individuals who pledge to reduce, reuse, and recycle their electronics responsibly. They also commit to spreading the word about how e-waste harms workers and the Earth.
• You can also responsibly recycle rechargeable, single-use, and cell phone batteries through Call2Recycle. Enter your zip code to find a battery drop-off box near you. You can also purchase battery-recycling kits from Call2Recycle, including kits for damaged lithium-based batteries.

Lucrecia Camacho comes from Oaxaca and speaks Mixteco, one of the Indigenous languages and cultures of Mexico that were hundreds of years old before the arrival of the Spaniards. Today she lives in Oxnard, CA. Because of her age and bad health, she no longer works as a farmworker, but she spent her life in Oxnard’s strawberry fields, and before that, in the cotton fields of northern Mexico.

I’ve always worked the strawberry harvest here in Oxnard. I’d finish that in July and go to Gilroy to work the jalapeño peppers, bell peppers, and cherry tomatoes. I brought my oldest daughter and son with me, and the three of us worked there. They would get out of school in June and worked July and August with me to earn money for their school clothes. They went back to school the 15th of September, so they worked with me 40 days.

I’d take my kids back to Oxnard for school and return to Gilroy to work all of September and October. I lived in a large room that was divided into smaller rooms. It had a stove and outdoor bathroom. We were paid by the piece rate instead of the hour. They paid 80 cents for a bucket of jalapeños—[those] with the stem were paid at $1.10 a bucket. I was able to fill 38 to 40 a day.
I’d get back to Oxnard in November, rest a bit, and then start the strawberry harvest again about January 20th. I worked a long time in Gilroy, starting in 1985. It’s been six to eight years since I haven’t gone. I couldn’t find housing one year, and after that, they wouldn’t hire me anymore. 

In strawberries, they also paid by the piece rate in April, May, and June. The other months, they paid by the hour. When I first started, it was three dollars an hour, and the piece rate was 80 cents a box. The year before, I was paid $8.25 an hour. The regular box rate was $1.25, the little box was $1, and the two-pound box was $1.50. If I was able to fill 40 boxes, it was a good day. The younger, faster men can pick 70 to 90 boxes a day.

The strawberry harvest looks easy enough, but once you try it, it’s hard. I don’t wish that kind of work on my worst enemy. When you’re young, you work hard and get tired, but once you get home and take a shower, you’re fine. Now that I’m old, I deal with arthritis and osteoporosis; my feet hurt, and they swell. Many workers have been permanently injured. I have a nephew who hurt his back working in the strawberries, and a cousin who died of pneumonia because we worked in the mud when it’s raining. 

The fruit that brings the most money here is the strawberry crop, but they pay us a wage that hardly allows us to make a living, then they turn around and sell each box of strawberries for $18 or $20. If we pick 80 boxes, how much do you think they make from that? You’d think the owners would have enough money to pay workers higher wages, but they pay it to the foreman instead. He has a brand new car every year, and the worker doesn’t get anything.

The foremen now choose workers who can pick 100 to 130 boxes per day. I know one who only hires immigrants without papers because she says legal residents complain too much. They tell the ones without papers they’re going to call immigration officials or fire 
them if they complain. These workers try and stay on the foreman’s good side by bringing her homemade tortillas, mole, and even Chinese food. I’m not going to bring her anything. I don’t get paid enough. If the foreman doesn’t like you, he makes you redo the work. In the strawberry fields, you’re always worried that the foreman is going to send you back and tell you to redo your box because it’s not full enough.

We just have to put our heads down and work quietly. There were many times I stayed quiet and didn’t defend a fellow co-worker, but one time I did speak up. I had a woman foreman who spoke to us disrespectfully; when I asked her why, she told me to give her my tools and fired me. I told her I didn’t understand why I was being treated that way, but the other foreman grabbed me by the arm and told me to leave.
Our work and life are hard here, and we don’t see many benefits. Have you seen the current gas prices? Before, we had to work an hour to cover our cost of gas, and now we have to work two hours. We don’t have anything left. The more we earn, the more they take away. We can’t move forward. 

I tell my kids how much I’ve struggled. I’m old now, so the last four years, I was told I worked too slowly. But it’s difficult to work in the rain and mud. At times, you’re lucky and find a good foreman who gives you waterproof ponchos. Other places charge for them, $25 for ponchos and $25 for rain boots. 

I felt so strong when I was young. I could work 24 hours. When I was picking cotton in Mexico, I could easily lift 50 kilos (120 pounds). I don’t know if it’s old age or my diabetes, but I work a lot slower now. The machine in the strawberry fields goes very fast, and it’s frustrating to get left behind. I can’t fill the amount of boxes I used to. I feel [nauseous] and get headaches. 

They won’t give me a job anymore. If the foreman doesn’t like you, then you aren’t hired. They always choose the pretty women and family members first. As a woman working in the fields, if you didn’t have a good foreman, you were treated badly. You had to ask for permission to take a day off, but you were given a ticket. After accumulating three tickets, you were fired. 

I’ve also heard complaints of sexual harassment from women. Sometimes, women don’t want to speak up. There are a lot who have 
lived through it but are afraid to say something for fear that they’ll be reported to immigration officials. 

In Culíacan, when I was young, I had a foreman who always sought out women to be alone with. He said he liked me, but I told him I knew he had a wife and mistress. He told me that if I let him do what he wanted to me, I would still have a job. If not, I needed to look for another one. I told him he would not see me there the next morning. Some of us women don’t take that kind of abuse, but many do what they feel necessary to keep their jobs, even if it means being in the hands of the foreman. My daughter tells me about her factory job and how that still happens there. The women that let the foremen do what they want move up in position. Those that don’t, stay in the same position.

We need someone to help us and provide us with support. There are only a few of us in Líderes Campesinas. [Editor’s note: Lideres Campesinas is a nonprofit organization that develops leadership among women farmworkers, so they serve as agents of political, social, and economic change in the farmworker community.] If I had a hidden camera, it would be so easy to show others what we face. I think a union would help, but it’s been difficult for one to get organized in the Oxnard area. When I began to wear my Líderes Campesinas T-shirt, I was told there wasn’t work for me anymore. I’ve been looking for work ever since. 

When I came here, I didn’t expect a better life. I knew I would have to earn my living with physical labor. ... I hope to retire soon and go back to Mexico. I don’t plan on staying here, and I’ll leave neither rich nor poor. The only thing I’ll take with me is aches and pains, because it’s not like I have any money to take with me. 

I n the fields of America’s breadbasket and beyond, from California to Florida, Wisconsin to Louisiana, farmworkers rise with the sun to pick the fruits and vegetables you see in stores, or to pull weeds on organic farms. It’s hard work, but someone has to do it to keep food on America’s tables. And usually, that someone is an immigrant worker—nearly three-quarters of farmworkers are immigrants.

Ninety-five percent of US farmworkers are from Mexico, three percent from Central America, and the rest from other countries, according to the US Department of Labor. A little over half have legal immigration status. But it really doesn’t matter if they have papers or not—what they all have in common is that many are subjected to too-low wages, unsafe conditions, sexual assault and harassment, and more. 
“Agriculture [in the US] was founded with a slave labor force. It was profitable because farms didn’t have to pay for labor. That created a culture and an understanding of what farm work is worth,” says Rosalinda Guillen, a former farmworker and executive director of Community to Community Development (C2C), a “community-led, eco-feminist organization” in Washington state that supports farmworkers as they advocate for their rights.

As a result, she says, farmworkers are almost invisible to the general public: “The invisibility of farmworkers helps justify the low wages, the lack of rights,” she says. “If we don’t exist, then we’re not counted when it comes to opportunities to have an equitable position in the community—unless it’s in a charity model. But we don’t need saving. We just need the same opportunities and rights as white people.”
In the tradition of legendary farmworker-rights activists Dolores Huerta and César Chávez, farmworkers are fighting on the ground for those rights. 

Caption for header photo: A boy picks strawberries in a crew of Mixtec migrants from Oaxaca. He says he’s 18 years old, a claim he’s been told to make if a photographer takes his picture. Photo by David Bacon.

Union Power

Guillen’s colleagues say she’s brilliant at seeing connections between multiple areas of food sustainability and the farmworker rights movement, so C2C works at the intersection of a broad array of issues: labor rights, environmental sustainability, food access, immigration, and more. It’s also fundraising to develop a training center to help farmworkers create farming co-ops. 
“We’re providing support to farmworker leaders already out there trying to improve conditions for the community,” she says. “Farmworkers tell us  what issues are important to them.”

As part of this work, C2C supports unions like the United Farmworkers of America (UFW), the nation’s largest farmworker union, and Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ), an independent union of over 500 Triqui-, Mixteco-, and Spanish-speaking workers at Sakuma Brothers Farms in Burlington, WA. These unions realized two prominent farmworker victories, with Guillen’s and C2C’s assistance. 

The first occurred in 1995, when UFW won a union contract with Chateau Ste. Michelle wineries after an eight-year boycott over low wages, unpaid overtime, and a lack of collective bargaining rights for farmworkers in the company’s WA vineyards. At the time, Guillen was a UFW regional director in WA. 

Today, Chateau Ste. Michelle has one of the best union contracts in the country, she says: “It’s union wine from vines to cork. The Teamsters have a [union] contract for the bottling component, and the vineyards have a contract with UFW.”

In 2013, FUJ farmworkers had been protesting working conditions at Sakuma Bros. for more than a decade, saying that they’d been subjected to wage theft, poverty-level pay, poor living conditions for migrant farmers, and worker abuse. Since they hadn’t made much progress, that year, the workers asked Driscoll Berries, a strawberry company that is Sakuma Bros. largest client, to use its clout to help them negotiate a union contract to address these abuses. When Driscoll refused to step in, FUJ called a state-wide boycott that soon turned into a national boycott. 

After four years of boycotts, worker strikes and walkouts, and public pressure, Sakuma Bros. finally caved and signed a collective bargaining agreement in June 2017. The new agreement formally recognized the union; raised farmworker wages to $15 an hour; ensured that workers facing discipline would be treated fairly; arranged for regular meetings between Sakuma Bros. and union members; and agreed to develop a retirement plan for farmworkers by 2019. Guillen says that because of the union contract, things “are going really well” for farmworkers at Sakuma Bros. today. 

C2C’s latest campaign supports farmworkers who come to the US on H2A guestworker visas, who say they’ve had to endure extremely oppressive working conditions, with no clear system for addressing abuses. 

Under the program, farms in the US contract temporary farmworkers from Mexico to pick crops in their fields. Growers are supposed to provide housing, food, and travel under the program, says Guillen, but workers are being housed in terrible, barrack-like camps, and “exploitation at the farms is getting worse and worse every year.”

In 2017, 28-year-old farmworker Honesto Silva Ibarra died after falling ill on the job at Sarbanand Farms, a blueberry farm in Sumas, WA. While Sarbanand attributed his death to complications from diabetes, farmworkers and C2C claim Ibarra died from “extreme dehydration, malnutrition, and exhaustion.” 

The Washington State Department of Labor and Industries ruled in February that no workplace or safety violations contributed to Ibarra’s death. However, the agency did cite Sarbanand for potentially up to $150,000 in fines for violations related to missed breaks and late meals for workers. 

Farmworkers at Sarbanand held a protest in the days following Ibarra’s collapse and death, including a road march. Sarbanand fired about 65 of the protesting workers, according to the Lynden Tribune, a local newspaper.

“This year, we’re keeping an eye on Sarbanand,” says Guillen, noting that farmworkers could call for a boycott if conditions don’t improve. C2C is also calling for the H2A program to be modified or ended altogether. 

Guillen says that the H2A program is being expanded under the Trump administration, even while states seem to lack the ability to ensure that guest farmworkers are safe on the job: “That’s their solution to farmers saying they don’t have a workforce [in the wake of the administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants], instead of humane immigration policies.”

Struggles on an Organic Farm

Organic certification does much to ensure a farm adheres to practices that are beneficial to the environment. But it does not address worker welfare. Even on organic farms, you’ll find farmworkers subjected to long hours, low pay, and abuse. Farmworkers are often fired when they speak up for their rights, but instead of stopping the fight there, some are taking farms to court. 

In January 2017, two farmworkers, along with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Coalition (EEOC), filed a federal lawsuit accusing one of Florida’s largest organic farms of abuse.

The lawsuits alleged that Glaser Organic Farms, which grows organic produce for Whole Foods and others, stole tens of thousands in overtime pay from vulnerable workers who were undocumented or spoke limited English. The lawsuits also state that Glaser allowed supervisors to verbally abuse workers, and the farm fired workers who spoke up.

The EEOC lawsuit alleged that Glaser subjected Latin American kitchen employees to racial abuse and discrimination, including managers telling workers, “You Mexicans are ignorant,” or “Mexicans are lazy,” and calling Deborah Velasquez, a Guatemalan worker, things like “burra,” and “the chocolate one.” Velasquez was fired after she complained. Owner Stanley Glaser denied the charges.

In April 2017, Glaser settled the suit by agreeing to pay Velasquez and another kitchen worker $15,000, to implement an anti-discrimination policy, and to provide bilingual training to workers on their federal rights against discrimination and retaliation, overseen by an independent monitor. 

Domestic Fair Trade

Many Green Americans know about fair trade, a system that helps farmworkers and other workers achieve fair, living wages, safe and healthy working conditions, collective bargaining, and more transparency. The system also encourages sustainable production. To date, fair trade has been primarily for workers in the developing world. But now, farmworkers are advancing fair trade in the US and Canada. 

The Domestic Fair Trade Association (DFTA) formed in 2008 as a membership organization to “unite the values of organic agriculture with the principles of fair trade” in the US and Canada. DFTA members include farmworkers, farmers, retailers, and processors. Five North American companies hold DFTA membership, including Maggie’s Organics, Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, Maple Valley Inc., Farmer Direct Co-op, and the Organically Grown Co.

“The concept of domestic fair trade was created because farmworker and small-producer organizations in the US and Canada, as well as organizations and businesses already working internationally on fair trade, found that many of the injustices occurring abroad were also happening right here [at home],” says Erika Inwald, DFTA’s national coordinator. “At the same time, organic certification was growing in the US, but this label largely did not address worker welfare. The domestic fair trade movement seeks to help the public not only choose food that is healthy and sustainable, but also just.”

Rosalinda Guillen and several farmworkers helped launch DFTA and develop the standards for domestic fair trade, which closely match standards in farmworker union contracts. Guillen says she has no idea why companies like Chateau Ste. Michelle don’t label their union food and beverage products, as she thinks it would add value in the way that fair trade labels do for coffee, tea, and other commodities. 
DFTA is mainly an advocacy and policy organization. Inwald recommends looking for Food Justice Certification and the Equitable Food Initiative label. Both certification programs adhere to DFTA standards. 

A Penny Per Pound

In the tomato fields of Immokalee, Florida, farmworkers, most of them Latin American and Haitian, pick tomatoes in the hot sun, many of which are destined for prominent fast-food chains like Wendy’s and Taco Bell. In 1993, realizing that their wage of 50 cents per 32-pound bucket hadn’t increased in 30 years, those farmworkers started the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) to collectively bargain for a raise and for an end to worker abuses on Florida farms.

Since then, the CIW created the groundbreaking Fair Food Program (FFP), which fast-food, food service, and grocery chains can join to ensure independent farm monitoring to prevent worker abuses, and to provide tomato pickers protections in cases of wage theft, sexual harassment, and forced overtime. Companies that sign onto the program also agree to a rate increase for farmworkers of a penny more per pound of tomatoes, which they say makes a big difference in farmworker earnings.

In 2005, Taco Bell became the first to sign the agreement. Others include Walmart, Burger King, Chipotle, Subway, McDonald’s, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Stop & Shop, Giant, Aramark, and more. 

Bottom-dweller Wendy’s continues to balk at signing the agreement. The CIW says that rather than joining, Wendy’s pulled out of the Florida tomato industry altogether. The company did release a new code of conduct for its suppliers, but the CIW says it lacks the enforcement and monitoring of the Fair Food Program, as well as the higher wage.

“[It’s] a perfect example of the failed, widely discredited approach to corporate social responsibility that is completely void of effective enforcement mechanisms to protect farmworkers’ human rights,” the group said in a statement. 

#MeToo in the Fields

In February 2018, CIW also released a powerful new report, Now the Fear is Gone, detailing the plight of women farmworkers in the fields. Women encounter the same wage theft, abuse, and harsh working conditions as men, but they’re much more likely to be victims of sexual harassment or assault. 

As the report states, “Over eighty percent of women farmworkers suffer sexual abuse and harassment. Assault and the most extreme forms of harassment are so common that many women consider it unavoidable. ... As one female worker succinctly described it, ‘You allow it, or they fire you.’”

Rather than just detailing the problem, the report offers a significant dose of hope in the form of a powerful solution: the CIW Fair Food Program. 

In 2010, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission conducted a study of women farmworkers in California’s Central Valley. It found that the overall statistic remained true in the Valley: over 80 percent of the women had experienced some form of sexual harassment or assault. 

“Hundreds, if not thousands, of women had to have sex with supervisors to get or keep jobs and/or put up with a constant barrage of grabbing and touching and propositions for sex by supervisors. A worker from Salinas, California, eventually told us that farm workers referred to one company’s field as the fil de calzón, or ‘field of panties,’ because so many supervisors raped women there,” states the EEOC study.

However, the Fair Food Program is making a real difference for farmworkers. Growers must abide by the FFP Code of Conduct, which has a zero-tolerance policy for sexual abuse. When a worker complains, the CIW says that “remediation is rapid, since growers must fix violations or lose the ability to sell their produce to Participating Buyers,” which are mainly large chains that make huge purchases. Those who violate any of the Code’s zero-tolerance stipulations find themselves terminated and barred from work on any FFP farms. The FFP provides education to terminated workers to help prevent future occurrences on other farms.

C2C’s Rosalinda Guillen says that union contracts provide similar protections for farmworkers against assault: “Contracts provide a legal mechanism for taking action—that workers trust. Nobody can be fired for complaining.”

In March, CIW farmworkers traveled to New York City to stage a five-day fast, calling on Wendy’s to help end sexual assault in the fields by joining the FFP. 

“In the age of #MeToo, business leaders like [Wendy’s board chair] Nelson Peltz must use their power to end sexual violence in their companies’ supply chains, and not hide behind a shroud of silence that prevents survivors of sexual violence from obtaining justice,” said CIW farmworker Lupe Gonzalez in a statement. “Inaction in the face of a problem like sexual assault is unacceptable, but inaction in the face of a solution is unconscionable.”

Students from across the country participated in the March for Our Lives in Washington, DC, on March 24, 2018, to call for common-sense gun safety laws. The march was organized by survivors of the February shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. Photo by Scott Serio via AP Images.

Shareholders Press for Change

Every day, an average of 96 Americans are killed with guns, and the gun homicide rate in the US is 25 times higher than that of other developed countries, according to the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety. 

The US public largely supports enacting common-sense gun-safety laws to help reduce these fatalities, such as laws to ban attachments that allow a gun to fire bullets more rapidly. An NPR survey—conducted shortly after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, last February that killed 17 students and faculty and injured 17 more—found that three-quarters of Americans want stricter gun laws than we currently have.

Unfortunately, Congress remains gridlocked on gun safety, even after another school shooting happened at Santa Fe High School near Houston, killing ten and injuring ten more, as the Green American went to press. Investors, however, are taking action. 

Investor members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), a nonprofit shareholder advocacy group, have been working behind the scenes with companies and through the shareholder resolution process to pressure weapons manufacturers and retailers to stop selling military- and assault-style weapons and accessories to civilians, make guns safer, and support gun-safety policies.

“Our end game is not to shut down the gun industry. We’re not talking about civilians who use guns to go out and hunt,” says Susana McDermott, ICCR communications director. “We are restricting [our investor efforts] to what are really military weapons [that are] being sold to civilians. At the very least, it’s about ensuring that those products don’t get into the wrong hands.” 

Shareholder activists have already achieved important victories with gun manufacturers and retailers. Much of the leadership on the gun safety issue comes from Catholic sisters, who have been working on what Sister Judy Byron calls “militarism” issues since the 1970s, when they took part in anti-nuclear efforts. Byron is a member of the Adrian Dominican sisters and director of the Northwest Coalition for Responsible Investment, an ICCR member in Seattle.

“We’re about the mission of Jesus, and He certainly called us to care for people and have a just society,” says Byron. “I’m sure He would have done something about these weapons, if they’d been around in His day and age. Our Catholic social teaching also drives what we do.”

In 2016 and 2017, Catholic sisters across the US bought up stock in Dick’s Sporting Goods, Sturm Ruger and Co., and American Outdoor Brands (formerly Smith & Wesson), aiming to use their investor power to drive change at the companies. They then sent letters to all three asking for dialogues on gun safety.

“We were quiet about our work, because we thought if the companies were inclined to talk to us, it might not happen if we were out talking to the press,” says Byron. “There was no response. So we decided we would file our shareholder resolutions [for the 2018 shareholder season].”

St. Louis-based Mercy Investment Services—the investment program for the Sisters of Mercy and an ICCR member—led things off by filing a resolution at Dick’s in January, asking the company to commit to conducting background checks on gun sales, support universal background-check laws, and reevaluate its sales of assault-style weapons, including accessories like bump stocks and high-capacity magazines that increase a gun’s firing rate. 

While most guns are sold at gun shows and smaller shops, corporate stores like Dick’s are responsible for 12 percent of assault-style weapon and 23 percent of rifle and handgun sales in the US, says the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

In addition, ICCR members Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, in Marylhurst, OR, and Catholic Health Initiatives in Colorado filed resolutions asking American Outdoor Brands and Sturm Ruger, respectively, to report on their efforts to make their gun products safer, to report on the reputational and financial risks associated with their products, and to monitor “violent events” associated with their companies. 

But then the Parkland shooting changed everything, as the Stoneman Douglas High students catalyzed a nationwide movement for gun safety. The sisters and other ICCR members took the opportunity to approach Dick’s behind the scenes “about the clear business and moral case for immediate corporate action.” 

On Feb. 28th, Dick’s agreed to stop selling assault-style weapons, and it raised the minimum age of gun purchasers in its stores to 21. The sisters dropped their resolution at the company.

In April, Dick’s took its commitment even further, committing to purge assault-style weapons and accessories from its shelves and destroy them, rather than selling them or returning them to the manufacturer. A month later, the company announced it was hiring a firm to lobby Congress on gun-safety policies. 

“With Dick’s, we have achieved our goal regarding the positive role retailers can play in ending gun violence,” says Sr. Valerie Heinonen, director of shareholder advocacy at Mercy Investment Services.

Though not the subjects of gun-safety resolutions, Kroger announced it would end all gun sales in its Fred Meyer stores, and it would stop selling magazines about “assault rifles” in all of its stores; Walmart raised the minimum age for gun purchases to 21 and will no longer sell high-capacity magazines; it does not sell bump stocks and stopped sales of military-style rifles in 2015.

In May, the resolution at Sturm Ruger received a rare majority vote of 69 percent. While even a ten percent vote on a socially responsible shareholder resolution is often enough to bring companies to the negotiating table, a majority vote sends a clear message that a company’s stock ownership wants action.

“Sturm Ruger needs to not only take their fiduciary responsibility to investors seriously but also their broader and more important responsibility to society,” said Colleen Scanlon, chief advocacy officer at Catholic Health Initiatives, shortly after the vote. “We are heartened by today’s vote and look forward to dialoguing with the company on ways to make episodes of gun violence a thing of the past.”

Another 2018 shareholder resolution, filed by Stewart W. Taggart, an individual shareholder, asked Chubb Ltd. about the “Carry Guard” insurance it underwrote for National Rifle Association (NRA) gun owners worried about liability in self-defense shootings. The SEC ruled that Chubb could omit the proposal from the ballot on technical grounds, but shortly after the Parkland tragedy, Chubb disclosed that it ended its contract with the NRA three months earlier. While not targeted by shareholders, insurance broker Lockton Affinity said at the end of February that it would no longer act as Carry Guard’s broker and administrator. 

A vote on the American Outdoor Brands resolution will take place at the company’s annual meeting this fall.

Mainstream Investors Get on Board

Responsible investors have also conducted outreach at mainstream investment companies like BlackRock and State Street Corp., asking them to use their financial might to press for gun safety, says McDermott. Those efforts have yielded impressive results. 

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, stated in February that it would speak with the weapons manufacturers and retailers in which it invests “to understand” their response to the Florida high school shooting. BlackRock also noted that it does not hold weapons manufacturers in its active funds—only in index funds, which are funds that mirror third-party stock indexes.

The company said in a March 2nd follow-up statement: “For manufacturers and retailers of civilian firearms, we believe that responsible policies and practices are critical to their long-term [financial] prospects. Now more so than ever. That is why, over the past week, we have reached out to the major publicly traded civilian firearms manufacturers and retailers to engage in a discussion of their business practices. We have already had constructive discussions with some, and we are continuing to pursue our engagement with them all.”

In April, BlackRock introduced two new exchange-traded funds and a line of pension plans that do not include companies that manufacture or sell civilian firearms. It also backed the gun-safety shareholder resolution at Sturm Ruger. 

A few days after BlackRock’s initial statement, State Street Corp. announced it would engage with gun manufacturers and sellers over what these companies will to do support “safe and responsible use of their products.” 

More Companies Make Moves

Several corporations took positive steps on gun safety this spring, bowing to public pressure after Parkland. On March 22nd, Citigroup announced a new US Commercial Firearms Policy “to do our part as a company to prevent firearms from getting into the wrong hands.” Under the new policy, Citi requires new retail-sector clients and partners to 1) refrain from selling firearms to those who have not passed a background check; 2) restrict weapons sales to people under 21; and 3) not sell bump stocks or high-capacity magazines.

On April 10th, Bank of America announced that it would stop lending to gun manufacturers that make military-style assault weapons for civilian use, prompting the powerful gun lobby to decry the actions of these two “gun-hating banks”.  

Outside the financial sector, L.L. Bean announced that it would stop selling guns to anyone under 21. And Canadian-based Mountain Equipment Co-op said it was suspending further orders from five brands owned by Vista Outdoor, a Utah-based gun-manufacturer. 
US outdoor company REI announced it would suspend orders from 50 brands owned by Vista, which include CamelBak water bottles and Jimmy Styk surfboards.

Shortly after Parkland, the NRA came under public fire for its extreme lobbying against gun-safety laws, including opposing measures to create a universal background check system in the US for weapons sales. 

#BoycottNRA went viral on social media this spring, which may have at least partly influenced several companies to take anti-NRA action: 

• Insurance giant MetLife tweeted that it would no longer offer discounts to NRA members on transportation insurance.
• Other companies ended discounts or deals for NRA members including: Symantec (Norton security software and LifeLock identity-theft services); Enterprise Holdings (Alamo, Enterprise, and National car rental); United Airlines; Delta Airlines; Allied Van Lines; North American Van Lines; TrueCar; SimpliSafe; and Starkey Hearing Technologies. 
• And First Bank of Omaha announced in February that it would stop issuing its NRA Visa affinity credit card. 

Credit Card Companies

On February 19, journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin, in an op-ed in the New York Times, called on the finance industry to “set new rules for the sale of guns in America”.

“Collectively,” he wrote, “they have more leverage over the gun industry than any lawmaker. And it wouldn’t be hard for them to take a stand.”

Sorkin called on the big credit-card companies to refuse to allow their cards to be used by retailers that sell assault-style weapons and accessories.

If that doesn’t work, Sorkin noted that banks and credit-card-processing companies could take steps to prevent their credit cards and card-processing services from being used at such stores. Finally, he urged retailers like Amazon, CVS, and Apple to pressure the payment-processing industry to act, since they’re among its largest customers.

McDermott says that the media pressure exerted by Sorkin and others “is making [the financial industry] realize we need to figure this out,” she says. She also notes that one coalition of responsible investors is currently talking behind the scenes to the big banks, pressing them to ban the use of their cards to purchase assault-style weapons and accessories. And another coalition is talking to big conventional mutual funds about encouraging such action. 

In May, members of Green America’s Green Business Network® (GBN) launched a letter asking major financial institutions to restrict the availability of accessories like bump stocks, and to require gun buyers to be at least 21 and pass a background check. Individuals can sign our letter to the big banks with a similar ask. 

Social Investors Take Action

Several GBN members in the responsible financial sector have taken action. Many socially responsible mutual funds offer weapons-free options—or, if they do hold weapons companies, it may be for the purpose of exerting shareholder pressure on them as ICCR members did with Dick’s and Sturm Ruger. If you want weapons-free investments, on May 31st, As You Sow launched WeaponFreeFunds.org, an online tool to help you check whether your mutual and exchange traded funds are exposed to gun manufacturers and retailers. 

On March 27th, ICCR and nearly 150 other institutional investors, including many GBN members, released an “Investor Statement on Gun Violence.” The statement called on companies to embrace the Sandy Hook Principles, a set of gun-safety measures for corporations selling guns or ammunition. The principles were named after Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, the site of a school shooting that killed 20 children and six staff members in 2012. The principles encourage steps like developing tech-based safety measures for guns and supporting universal background checks.

“As shareholders concerned about the social impacts of our investments, we believe it is incumbent on all corporate actors to use their power and influence to contribute to the well-being of the communities where they operate and, more broadly, to society as a whole,” the statement reads. “The dangers presented by gun violence threaten the lives of our children, our communities, and the very fabric of our society. In the coming months, we will be engaging with companies we own to urge immediate and positive action that addresses gun violence.” 

Investor Resources

Use your economic power to pressure companies for common-sense gun safety. 

• Sign Green America’s letter to the big banks asking them to restrict credit card purchases of assault weapons and accessories. 
• Share Newground Social Investments’ infographic: which gives a quick visual run-down of how you can start getting weapons out of your investments.
• Divest from weapons: Since the 1990s, responsible investors have been screening weapons out of their portfolios. You can screen on your own, or get help from a responsible financial advisor. Find one at GreenPages.org. 
• Choose socially responsible funds. These mutual and exchange traded funds may hold some weapons companies, but it can be because they plan to use their investor power for change. Find them at GreenPages.org and WeaponFreeFunds.org. 
• Vote for responsible shareholder resolutions on weapons. Visit ShareholderAction.org to view Green America’s list of resolutions to watch, including those on gun safety. 
• Break up with your mega-bank. Some mega-banks help financially prop up weapons companies and retailers. Find a responsible bank at BreakUpWithYourMegaBank.org.
• Take charge of your credit card. By using a credit card from a responsible bank, you’ll know that your credit card fees aren’t bolstering weapons manufacturers and retailers. Find one at TakeChargeofYourCard.org.
• If you own a business that uses credit-card processing services, consider switching to a responsible processor like Dharma Merchant Services. Dharma does not serve companies that sell weapons or ammunition.

Like the Standing Rock Sioux before them, the Menominee Nation has taken up the mantle of “water protectors” in the Midwest. They’re also trying to safeguard their Tribal history. 

As the Green American reported in our Fall 2017 issue, Aquila Resources, a Toronto-based mining company, wants to site an open-pit sulfide mine, called the Back Forty Mine, in Upper Michigan, 150 feet from the Menominee River. 

The Menominee, together with other local residents, are turning out in force to fight off the mine, which would be located on their traditional lands, in the area that’s the location of their origin story. Sacred burial remains of Menominee ancestors have been discovered near the mine site, as have mounds, dance rings, raised garden beds, and other features of cultural and archaeological significance.

While Aquila says it conducted its own archaeological survey and the mine will not encroach on those cultural sites, the Menominee counter that Aquila did not consult them or obtain their consent.

They do not trust that the Aquila survey was as thorough as an independent survey in which the Menominee themselves took part would have been. 

Menominee Nation organizer Tony Brown conducted a tour in April of just some of the sacred and historical Menominee cultural areas near the mine site, pictured below.

Menominee Nation organizer Tony Brown points to an ancient Menominee storage mound (raised ground behind the small pine trees, and inset photo) near the Back Forty mine site, located on traditional Menominee lands. Brown says the mounds acted as natural refrigerators, keeping goods cold. Anyone who needed something could simply take it from one of these mounds. 

“Further up the river is where [archaeologists] found bones [of Menominee ancestors]. To support the people that were on this river, the Menominee had a gifting economy. Today, we all have things that can be sold or taken away from us. Here, everything was shared. ... We don’t have a big war history, the Menominee people, because we understood [the importance of cooperation]. Here was joy, love, everything you needed. Our Garden of Eden."  --Tony Brown, Menominee community organizer

"This is a raised garden bed. At first, you might think it’s a road track. You can see how much they blend in if you weren’t looking. [Archaeologist Dr. David] Overstreet and his people put those stakes in the ground to mark it. These weren’t just one family’s garden. They stretch for big distances. It was a whole village garden. People were much more cooperative, much more interdependent. Part of what’s gone on with this society is we’ve become independent, and that’s really not healthy.”  --Tony Brown

“If this raised garden is here, and that mound is there, you want me to believe there’s nothing over there on the mine site?” Brown said on the tour, gesturing toward Aquila’s fenceline. “I don’t. They haven’t been trained in the way [the Menominee have been]. How would they know that’s a garden bed? How would they know that’s a mound? They haven’t done the research, and they won’t let us, the Menominee people, go look.”

Brown noted that while archaeologists have dated the Menominee settlement near the Back Forty site as being more than 13,000 years old, Tribal historians say it’s even older.

The faint, ring-shaped outline in the grass is an ancient Menominee dance ring, marked by signs put up by the state of Michigan It’s located in the Shakey Lakes State Park, adjacent to the mine site.

“This area ... this was heaven. They found the oldest [type of] wild rice, which was plentiful, here. Wild rice used to grow here. We’re called ‘the people of the wild rice’ because [we knew] you go out there and you get what the Creator gives you. You don’t exploit it. You don’t plow it up. You don’t give up everything else. We’ve got a choice of paths. If we make the right ones, the people, as the Creator made them, will survive. That means all people, not just the Menominee. If we go down that burnt, black path [of siting the Back Forty Mine], it frightens me. You learn quick that cooperation benefits a lot more people than the destructive path.” --a Menominee water protector who wishes to remain anonymous

This ancestral burial mound is among the archaeological sites that could be impacted by the proposed Back 40 mine. Photo by Kevin Lancour

The Menominee and other local activists are also against the mine for the impact it could have on local water supplies. Since sulfide mining is more toxic than conventional mining—exposing sulfide ore to air and water easily creates corrosive sulfuric acid—any leakage from the mine could wreak havoc on the environment. It could also poison drinking water supplies, since the Menominee River feeds into Lake Michigan, the water source for millions.  

Aquila received a conditional, final  permit from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) on June 4th to start construction on the mine. Aquila must provide the DEQ with plans to model, monitor, and prevent potential environmental damage from the mine, to secure the agency’s final approval.

Local activists say they won’t stop fighting the mine, and members of the Menominee Nation say they’ll put their bodies between Aquila’s equipment and their traditional lands if they have to. 

For more information and updates on the water protectors’ efforts, see our article, “The Back Forty Mine: Is It the Next Standing Rock?”

Sign our letter urging the four main investors in Aquila Resources to pull their funding, as the company is moving forward with the mine without community support. To date, more than 14,000 supporters have signed onto this action.

Our economy rests on the backs of workers who are practically invisible, toiling in fields, mines, warehouses, and factories under unspeakable abuses. They’re fighting to change the system—and everyone can help. 

For the past decade, Green America has been campaigning against chocolate companies to give voice to child laborers working in cocoa fields in West Africa.  Chocolate companies earn billions of dollars in revenues from selling treats to consumers, and those resources should be leveraged to help farmers and children in West Africa. However, despite almost 20 years of industry and government initiatives, the number of child laborers working in cocoa fields in West Africa has increased. The University of Tulane estimated that in 2015, there were over 2 million child laborers in cocoa fields.

In 2015, the United Nations launched their Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of 17 goals to “end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity of all.” Goal 8 is about ensuring that everyone gets a chance for decent work and economic growth, with target 8.7 specifically setting goals to eliminate and prohibit child labor in all forms by 2025.

As part of global efforts to combat child labor, the United Nation’s International Labour Organisation (ILO) declared June 12 as World Day Against Child Labor. World Day Against Child Labor is a day to raise awareness on the plight of child laborers throughout the world, as well as highlight the work that governments, civil society, and workers organizations are doing to combat this pressing problem.

The ILO estimates that 152 million children are victims of child labor. Child labor is concentrated primarily in agriculture, with an estimated 71% of child laborers involved in the industry worldwide. Other industries with child labor include manufacturing and mining/quarrying. Child labor impedes on children’s ability to receive an education and a healthy childhood, which then can impact their development as well as the social and economic development of their communities.

It’s clear that the current approaches governments and companies are taking are not enough to eradicate child labor; they’re also not enough to eliminate farmer poverty, one of the root cause of child labor in cocoa.

So on World Day Against Child Labor (and every day!), we hope you’ll join Green America in standing up against child labor. You can start by taking action with us and telling Godiva to step up their commitments to combatting child labor in their supply chain, improve farmer livelihood, and publicly share their plans and progress – sign our petition here.

What else can you do to address child labor, both in cocoa and in the other sectors that it’s prevalent? The Department of Labor has some tips that will sound familiar to Green Americans!

• Ask questions: Ask companies and governments about what they’re doing to combat child labor. Challenge yourself and see if you can find out what products you purchase may have come from child labor.
• Take action: Stay updated on the issues, share the word amongst your communities and the companies you buy from and invest in, support organizations that are working to combat child labor
• Demand change: Hold companies accountable to their commitments; use your investments to promote responsible supply chain practices; and raise your voices against child labor.

And, remember to vote with your dollars every time you purchase chocolates for yourself and your loved ones.  You can use Green America’s handy Chocolate Scorecard to help guide your purchasing.

Want to build a better world with every swipe? Our Credit Card Guide can help you find a card that benefits people and planet.

You might have heard a few scary things about recycling lately, like news headlines hinting at its demise. The industry is certainly at a crossroads but is not doomed to collapse if we mend its malfunctions. We’re going to break down what is happening and how your actions are essential in repairing recycling. 

Why is this happening? 

For decades, the US has exported a third of its collected recyclables, and half of that has gone to China¹. American companies became reliant on overseas buyers for the flawed, low-quality recyclables not in demand domestically. But now, China is pushing back. A policy called the “National Sword” has gone into effect and has shaken up the recycling industry with its stringent requirements on contaminated items. The policy includes a ban on 24 types of imported scrap materials and has set what has been called a “nearly impossible” 0.5% contamination limit for bales of recyclables.  

Contamination refers to either non-recyclable items being mixed in with recyclables or items that are still dirty with food or beverage residue being placed into recycling streams. Contamination is a problem in the US due to the way many people and municipalities practice recycling. Material recovery facilities (MRFs) are where our recyclables are taken to be sorted, baled, and sold to processing plants. About 65% of MRFs in the United States are single-stream, meaning all recyclables go into one bin. This removes the need for residents to sort before they put something in the bin, and makes participation easier, but it increases chances for contamination.

Think of putting a juice bottle with a bit of liquid in with a stack of old magazines. The residue can easily soak the paper fibers and contaminate them, making them unfit for sale. Contamination can also come from putting improper items in the bin, like plastic straws that aren’t recyclable and can easily be sorted incorrectly and contaminate paper bales. Considering the average MRF receives materials with up to 32% contamination², this is not an easy problem to correct overnight.  

What are the impacts? 

The extent of how this policy may be impacting your local recycling program can depend on how reliant your area was on exporting materials (learn more about impacts in your state through Waste Dive). But stakeholders throughout the system have acknowledged that we’ve needed to clean up our recycling for a long time and while jarring, this policy should come as no surprise. Some MRFs have begun operating machinery and conveyor lines at a slower pace to more thoroughly pluck out non-recyclable items. Some companies are frantically searching for new foreign markets. A few municipalities are scaling back what materials they accept, and there are cases of counties suspending all recycling for the time being⁴. These are discouraging responses, but this change is a crossroads for the industry, not a death sentence.  

How can you help? 

Households and business nationwide need to be at the heart of solving the contamination issue. It might seem hard to believe that our daily choices can collectively result in massive improvements to the recycling system, but the idea that our actions are inconsequential is the myth that’s contributed to this problem. There are four key action steps we can weave into our daily habits that will bolster recycling and allow us to achieve even greater environmental and economic benefits.  

1. Don’t be a wish-cycler. Wish-cycling is putting something in the bin that you hope is recyclable instead of only things you know are. Follow local rules of what is accepted for recycling. These are made based on what your local program can collect, sort, and sell. Making sure to follow these rules reduces the odds of putting an unacceptable item in the bin and can curb contamination. You can find these listed on your town’s website or search using resources like Earth911.
    
2. Empty and rinse recyclables. You don't need to scrub your recyclables perfectly clean, but it's important for them not to be coated with food or liquid. Make sure containers are emptied out and if needed, give a quick rinse and shake excess liquid off before tossing them in the bin. 
    
3. Choose recycled-content products. If we aren’t demanding recycled materials to displace the need for virgin material extraction, then we aren’t closing the loop in recycling. When purchasing a product, look for a label about its recycled content (not just that it’s recyclable). Often a company will print the percentage of a product or packaging that’s recycled content on the label. Not all products that have recycled content will specify, but picking items with a clear commitment to using recycled materials is one important way to signal that demand. 
    
4. Communicate to your local government that you value recycling and it needs to be a priority and tell companies you buy from to make products using recycled materials that are recyclable in all areas. You can do this through contacting entities directly via social media, email, or sending in letters. If you learn that your municipality is considering halting recycling collection, gather resident and business signatures together and submit it to your local officials to show how important recycling is to the community.  

The actions of individuals and businesses are pivotal to making this a catalyst for positive, permanent change. Contamination that has spurred these issues is something we can prevent every day.

You can learn more about recycling wins and fails in our Rethinking Recycling issue of the Green American.

¹ https://www.npr.org/2017/12/09/568797388/recycling-chaos-in-u-s-as-china-bans-foreign-waste 
²  https://resource-recycling.com/recycling/2017/06/29/data-corner-the-dirty-details-on-contamination/
³ https://www.wastedive.com/news/what-chinese-import-policies-mean-for-all-50-states/510751/
⁴ https://www.nrtoday.com/news/environment/updated-douglas-county-landfill-suspends-recycling-as-chinese-recyclable-market/article_e8e56d07-2674-5f58-aef6-68b1ca4756a6.html   

This blog was updated on 1/2/2019.

Coming soon.

Ground Floor Partners provides strategic business advisory services to small businesses, start-ups and non-profits. We are located in Chicago, Illinois, but we serve clients throughout the United States. We have been in business since 2003.

We engage business owners and senior managers in an intensive, collaborative process to identify and resolve any issues and challenges that may be preventing your company from achieving its fullest potential.

We work with a variety of clients at almost every stage of the business life-cycle. We love to work with innovative businesses that don’t quite fit into any standard classification scheme. Most of our clients have annual revenue less than $10 million, but this is not an absolute requirement.

We love green, sustainable, and socially responsible businesses!

Services include:

• Management Consulting
• Business Plans
• Marketing Plans
• Feasibility Studies
• Market Research
• Strategy Consulting
• Business Assessments

In March, Starbucks found itself under a scorching spotlight for racial profiling when a manager called the police on two African American men who were waiting to conduct a business meeting in one of its stores.

Since then, the coffee chain has launched into a corporate crackdown on discrimination in efforts to restore trust with customers, and on May 29, all of its 8,000 US stores will close for racial bias training.

As Green Americans observe Starbucks’ effort to address this crucial social justice issue, evidence shows that the dominating coffee chain still has blind spots to other areas of concern—in particular, its labor practices—as employees continue to speak out against corporate failures to improve worker conditions.

In June 2016, ten-year Starbucks shift supervisor Jaime Prater published an online petition on Coworker.org to address what he described as an “infuriating” labor situation in which understaffed and overworked baristas are struggling to keep up with the demand for service. Prater’s petition also noted that Starbucks’ pay and the lack of full-time work hours made it difficult for employees to financially support themselves. Since its 2016 posting online, Prater’s petition has garnered 20,470 signatures.

While Starbucks provides a number of competitive benefits to employees, including college tuition assistance, 401(K) matching, and the opportunity to purchase Starbucks stock via the company’s Bean Stock program, the average Starbucks barista earns about $10 an hour and $20,000 a year. Though many Starbucks retail workers appreciate these benefits, they have also voiced frustrations with not being able to cover necessities.

One store employee told Business Insider, "My team wants to be able to afford rent and groceries. If you had asked partners if they could have the option for higher pay or the college achievement program, somewhere around 90 percent of all partners would have asked for increased pay."

Valuing Customers AND Workers

Starbucks executives call store employees “partners” to communicate how central baristas and other retail workers are to the corporation’s success, yet many employees have expressed concerns that the corporation prioritizes the customer experience over their strenuous working conditions.

In April 2017, Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson introduced the North Star Initiative, a two-year program led by executive vice president Kris Engskov, which aims to strengthen the emotional connection between employees and customers. The North Star program emphasizes five pillars: Recognize me, Include me, Appreciate me, Support me, and Delight me, where the “me” represents the Starbucks customer.

Since its 2017 roll out, Starbucks baristas—the people largely responsible for establishing these connections, have criticized the North Star agenda for failing to outline specific and tangible practices to improve performance and for making it seem like baristas aren’t trying hard enough to provide good customer service.

For baristas, North Star’s expectation of personal connections and speedy, high-quality service cannot come without proper support. In 2017, Starbucks had $22.3 billion in revenue and operation expenses totaling to $9.6 billion, according to data collected by the NASDAQ stock exchange. NASDAQ also reports a net income of $2.88 billion for the company.

What's Next at Starbucks?

The world’s most successful coffee chain can afford to pay its approximate 250,000 store workers a living wage and hire enough of them so their workload is manageable.

Following the corporate tax cuts Congress approved earlier this year, Starbucks announced plans to roll out new employee benefits, including wage increases, $500 in stock grants to its retail workers and $2,000 to store managers, accrued time off for sick leave, six weeks paid leave for non-birth parents, and the creation of 8,000 new jobs, according to USAToday. The six weeks paid leave for non-birth store employees is half of what the corporation's salaried employees receive, and as Starbucks celebrates these improvements, there's still work to be done to ensure that all of its partners are supported fairly.

Green America's Green Business Network emphasizes the importance of caring for workers and improving communities, in addition to being a leader in social responsibility. To make the strides it desires in building personal connections, Starbucks should develop more rigorous frameworks in support of living wages and investments in community development. On the discrimination front, Starbucks executive vice president Rossann Williams said to employees, "May 29 isn't a solution; it's a first step." Experts say both recognizing individual privilege in race, gender, class, and sexual orientation—and the fact that everyone has unconscious biases— is essential to making this day of action effective.

TomatoInk is an eco-friendly, low-cost provider of ink and toner. By packaging ink in remanufactured cartridges, we pass along substantial savings both financial and environmental to you. Our products give the same vibrant, high-quality results you expect from the name brands but at prices up to 80% less! Combine that with our partnership with Eden Reforestation Projects, and you can print with ease knowing TomatoInk is thinking about you and the world you live in.

May 21, 2018//Washington DC//Americans who want to fight climate change and high food bills are being urged today to follow the World War II lead of their grandparents by planting a “Climate Victory Garden” in order to reduce carbon emissions while growing safe, healthy and less expensive food. 

Green America today announced their new Climate Victory Gardens campaign. The campaign urges all Americans to plant a “Climate Victory Garden” in their backyard or community garden. Climate Victory Gardens include practices like no-till, cover crops, perennials, and composting that help to create healthy soils. The effort is aimed at mitigating carbon emissions and storing carbon in the soil while growing safe and healthy foods.

During the first and second World Wars, Americas rallied to feed their communities at home and support troops overseas by planting “Victory Gardens.” By 1944 nearly 20 million victory gardens produced eight million tons of food, equaling about 40 percent of the fresh fruits and vegetables consumed in the US at the time.  

How realistic is it to assume 40 million Climate Victory Gardens can be started? According to the National Gardening Association, 35 percent of all households in America, or 42 million households, are growing food at home or in a community garden.  In addition to new Victory Gardens, many of the of these existing gardens could adopt climate-sensitive practices.

“Americans want to take actions that have a direct impact on climate change,” said Todd Larsen, Green America’s executive co-director of consumer and corporate engagement. “They are also increasingly concerned about the chemicals on store-bought produce.  Climate Victory Gardens gives us all a way to reduce our impact on the planet, while ensuring the food we feed our families is safe and nutritious.”

“Agriculture is currently a major contributor to climate change,” said Jes Walton, food campaigns specialist at Green America. “Climate Victory Gardens are a way for all Americans to change that, turning food into a practice that feeds the earth and reduces greenhouse gasses.  The gardens are also a great way for all Americans to better understand where our food comes from and the importance of preserving healthy soils for generations to come.”

The U.S. must immediately sequester carbon from the atmosphere, putting back what has been released from the soil because of years of destructive industrial agricultural practices. 

Industrial agriculture is one of the most carbon and water-intensive industries, and the massive chemicals used in industrial farms damages the soil, pollutes local communities, and put the consumers’ health at risk.  Climate Victory Gardens are a campaign of Green America Re(store) It! Program that advocates for a regenerative agricultural system in the US that protects our soils and sequesters carbon, while eliminating toxic chemicals.

A recent study found that if the state of California alone planted gardens that nourish the soil and used compost for their gardens, it could meet 7 percent of California’s climate mitigation goals. On a national level, Climate Victory Gardens can be an important way for all Americans to help mitigate climate change, while growing healthy foods for their families.

All the resources they needed to get started are available here: https://greenamerica.org/climate-victory-gardens. Americans are asked to pledge their commitments here: https://greenamerica.org/climate-victory-gardens/commitment-grow-climate-victory-garden.  Climate Victory Gardens across the U.S. are being mapped here: https://www.greenamerica.org/climate-victory-gardens-map. 

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About the Groups 

Green America is the nation's leading green economy organization. Founded in 1982, Green America (formerly Co-op America) provides economic strategies and practical tools for businesses and individuals to solve today's social and environmental problems. http://www.GreenAmerica.org

Media Contact:   Max Karlin, for Green America, (703) 276-3255 or mkarlin@hastingsgroup.com.

Envest Microfinance is a microfinance investment vehicle dedicated to making financial services universally available by connecting the microfinance sector to capital markets. It lends to small, but financially solid, microfinance institutions (MFIs) that, in turn, lend to traditionally marginalized borrowers. This approach allows Envest to support the ongoing development of a more dynamic microfinance sector.

Are dirt and soil the same thing? NO! This blog explores some major differences and highlights why understanding soil is so important to discussions around regenerative agriculture, carbon sequestration, and climate change.

Soil. You might have noticed this word coming up more and more around here at Green America, especially in our new Re(Store) It! campaign. We’re excited to be talking about building healthy soils to reverse climate change and improve farmlands in this campaign. But, as we do more research and talk more about soil, we’ve come to realize that this important resource is often misunderstood and oversimplified. Isn’t it just stuff that holds plants in the ground? Soil is oftentimes mischaracterized as lifeless and unimportant. It’s treated like dirt. We’re hoping this blog will shed some light on this complex and magical biosphere!

How Can Soil be Healthy or Unhealthy? Isn’t It Just dirt?

We love this statistic: a teaspoon of healthy soil holds more tiny organisms than there are people on earth. Isn’t that incredible? And, it’s not just about quantity; the diversity of this same teaspoon has been compared to that of the Amazon rainforest. This is an impressive quarter of all of Earth’s biodiversity. Some of these organisms are visible to the eye—things like earthworms, beetles, and ants—while others are impossible to discern from other elements in the soil—such as bacteria, algae, fungi, nematodes, and many more. In fact, soil organisms are so numerous and abundant that scientists are still in the very early stages of identifying and understanding them. These little creatures are major players in soil health and should be respected for the hard and important work they do.

When talking about soil health, we think it’s helpful to think of soil as a “macro-organism” or living network made up of smaller lifeforms. Soil is a complex web of interrelated organisms that rely on and support one another. It’s an ecosystem. Some use the analogy of a human body to show the importance of each (organ)ism to the whole. Soil is made up of these hard-working organisms along with organic matter, minerals like sand, clay, and rock particles—the non-living “dirt”—and the air and water in the spaces between. The health of soils is all about the balance and diversity of these components.

Another thing that makes this ecosystem unique is that most of these organisms don’t merely exist in the soil, they physically create it. They break down organic materials like dead leaves—burrowing, eating, and churning them up—resulting in the rich humus that crops and other plants need to grow. We (and all living things) rely on these organisms’ role in growing the food we eat and, increasingly, the potential for drawing harmful carbon dioxide gas out of the air. 

Organic Matter: Why it Matters, from the Tiniest Microorganisms to the Entire Planet

Let’s consider the components of healthy agricultural soils. All soils are different, but generally consist of around 25% air, 25% water, and 45% minerals. The remaining three to six percent are soil organic matter (SOM). SOM includes all organic materials and soil organisms—essentially everything that is or was alive in the soil. This is a small percentage, but it’s also one of the most important components of soil.

There are so many benefits to having healthy soils, rich in SOM. These range from the physical—like reducing rain runoff and increasing the capacity of farmlands to hold water—to the chemical and biological—like increasing nutrient availability for crops and attracting insects that control agricultural pests. These are perks for consumers, farmers, and the environment, but there’s potential for amazing benefits to be realized at a global level too (check out our infographic to see how the full system works and benefits YOU!). 

SOM contains humus, which has the potential to draw carbon dioxide (a major greenhouse gas) from the atmosphere. Here’s another important buzzword: soil organic carbon (SOC). Humus contains soil organic carbon, it’s the result of all that decomposition taking place in the soil. SOC depends on SOM, meaning that soil holds more carbon when it has more organic matter. 

So, to quickly recap: soil is filled with tiny organisms that break down organic materials (SOM) to create humus that contains carbon (SOC).

Healthy Soils Fight Climate Change, But Farming Needs to Change

Unfortunately, much of our food comes from an industrial agricultural system that treats soil like dirt. It uses the soil like a pincushion for plants and synthetic chemicals. The majority of agriculture in the United States today relies heavily on disruptive farming practices, including invasive tilling and heavy chemical use—both of which wreak havoc on these sensitive soil communities. When soils are disturbed, carbon leaves the soil (known as respiration) and goes into the air where it creates a warming effect. 

Conversely, regenerative agricultural practices aim to support the soil to ensure the carbon stays where it belongs. These practices include: planting perennial and diverse crops, reducing or eliminating tillage and using mulching on fields, rotating crops and using cover crops, composting, and using careful livestock management practices. Carbon gets into the soil through decomposition and photosynthesis. This happens in all agriculture, but regenerative agriculture ensures this carbon stays in the ground. Regenerative agriculture builds SOM and SOC, benefits food production, and has the potential to reverse climate change.

Soil is a nonrenewable resource, meaning it cannot be created within a human’s lifespan. Unhealthy soils are subject to wind and water erosion, blown and washed away to areas where they cannot be used for agriculture. In the United States, we lose the equivalent of a 116 mile-long train full of soil every day. Globally, some scientists estimate that we have only 60 years of farming left, if we continue to degrade our soils. These facts are an important indication of the need for regenerative agriculture and building up soil carbon.

These statistics are scary and show just how important soil health and regenerative farming practices are to the survival of our species. Farmers are our allies in these uncertain times and regenerative agriculture is one way we can fight climate change and ensure adequate food supply into the future. 

It’s time we start showing soil the respect it’s due. Soil is the basis for life as we know it on this planet, and as the current stewards of the land we must build up the soil and save it for future generations.  

Learn more about how you can honor and build up the soil in your own backyard and communities by starting a Climate Victory Garden.