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Adidas plans to reduce its environmental impact by 15% by 2015 and source all of its cotton sustainably by 2018, according to the company’s latest sustainability report.

The report details the company’s plans over the next five years. With most of their production outsourced, Adidas has teamed up with other industry giants to build critical mass for the need of decreasing environmental impact throughout their supply chains. Adidas is working together with H&M, Levi Strauss & Co., Marks & Spencer and IKEA to accelerate the adoption of sustainable cotton production standards, created by the Better Cotton Initiative.

Adidas will also encourage more suppliers to use the String It system the company developed to track materials along the supply chain.

Two years after Coca-Cola Co. unveiled a bottle made partly from plant materials, PepsiCo says it is introducing a better one: the world's first plastic bottle made entirely from plant-based materials.

Pepsi announced a new "green" bottle that is 100 percent recyclable and made from bio-based raw materials, including switch grass, pine bark and corn husks.  In the future, the company expects to broaden the renewable sources used to create the “green” bottle to include orange peels, potato peels, oat hulls and other agricultural byproducts from its foods business.

PepsiCo says the new bottle, which could be several years from hitting the wider market, will reduce its dependence on petroleum. Their recent environmental innovations include a 100% post-consumer recycled bottle for the Naked Juice brand, a fully compostable bag for SunChips, and a program that replenished six billion liters of water across India after their manufacturing facilities consumed five billion.

Both Coke and Pepsi will continue to fill their bottles with their namesake carbonated drink products made primarily from high fructose corn syrup, which has been linked to increased risks for diabetes and heart disease.

Seventh Generation, leading producer of sustainable household products, announced that its Board of Directors has named John Replogle to serve as the company's Chief Executive Officer and President. Repogle has served as the CEO of leading green personal care products company Burt’s Bees since 2006, and was previously the general manager of Unilever’s skin care division in North America.

Replogle's appointment ends a CEO search commenced by the Seventh Generation Board following the September resignation of Chuck Maniscalco, who joined the company in 2009, replacing company founder, Jeffrey Hollender, as CEO. Peter Graham, Seventh Generation's Chairman, said that the Seventh Generation board unanimously selected Replogle based on his track record leading a complex organization, his demonstrated commitment to corporate responsibility, and his strong executive and personal qualities.

Chevy/GM begin production of the Volt. (December 2010)

Green America's individual members sent tens of thousands of emails and asked Chevy dealers nationwide to offer an electric vehicle.

The Green America Seal of Approval is your key to many of the most effective marketing doorways – from the Green Festivals® to World of Good at eBay. Our new online application makes it easier than ever to apply for the coveted Seal of Approval.

We teamed up with iReuse, GBN member and sustainability software gurus, to launch “iScreen.” It’s a brand new, easy way to fill out the screening application to apply for the Seal.

You can get started right now –

1) Go to this link

2) Then just click on “register for a new account.”

If you’ve been meaning to fill out the form, but have been putting it off, now is the time.

Approved members are eligible to exhibit at Green Festivals and are listed in the National Green Pages – print and online, which is the go-to site for thousands of mission-driven consumers.

Questions about the screening process or criteria? Please visit this page.

Questions about your company’s eligibility or membership status? Please contact Senior Researcher, Tish Kashani at 202-872-5338 or screening@greenamerica.org.

Last Monday, Hershey, one of the largest and oldest chocolate manufacturers in the US, released its first-ever corporate social responsibility report. According to a counter report released at the same time by Green America, Global Exchange, ILRF, and Oasis USA, Hershey failed to outline a credible plan for ensuring that its supply chains are free of forced labor, human trafficking, and abusive child labor – common problems for companies that source cocoa.

Coverage across the country on the two reports has called for Hershey to develop a stronger commitment to Fair Trade. John Robbins at the Huffington Post cited investigative reporting on child slavery in the Ivory Coast, and called the Hershey CSR report a “classic example of the practice of greenwashing - a PR effort to mislead the public into thinking a company's policies and products are socially responsible, when in fact they are not.”

Hershey has asked the public to give feedback on their corporate responsibility. Green America recommends respondents urge Hershey to work toward Fair Trade certification of their products, a commitment other large companies that source cocoa, such as Ben & Jerry’s and Cadbury, are currently working on with their products.

Tell Hershey what you think » 

Read suggested comments on the Green America website »

Read the Hershey CSR report » 

Read the joint report on Hershey’s CSR from Green America and allies »

HersheyReport_1.pdf

Every year, Green Americans nominate their favorite green businesses for the People’s Choice award. Find out below who made the cut of the top ten most popular green businesses. Voting will be open till October 6, and the award will be announced at the Green Festival in San Francisco. Meet the top 10 nominees...

People's Choice Awards Top 10 Nominees
(Listed in alphabetical order)

1. Brittanie's Thyme
Cedar Springs, MI | www.brittaniesthyme.com
"Small, upcoming company providing USDA-certified organic skin-care that is safe, economical and truthfully green. No excess packaging, reasonable prices, great natural products for your skin (and they work!)."
—Freyja G., La Grange, IL

2. Digital Hub
Chicago, IL | www.digitalhubchicago.com
"I work with dozens of printers as a marketing professional. Digital Hub stands out in its choices to voluntarily reduce its carbon footprint and preserve the Earth while continuing to deliver a great product."
—Nicholas Q., Homewood, IL

3. Ecobunga
San Carlos, CA| www.ecobunga.com
"This site works to help consumers save money and to encourage purchasing of greener products. They really work hard to find the best green deals and keep the site up to date with the latest green discounts."
—Elizabeth L., Swissvale, PA

4. Faerie's Dance
Harbor City, CA | www.faeriesdance.com
"This one-woman company offers affordable, beautiful, sustainable organic clothing, all beneficial for the consumer and environment (with the widest range of eco-intimates I’ve ever seen!)"
—Trisha F., Raleigh, NC

5. gDiapers
Portland, OR | www.gdiapers.com
"50 million diapers get tossed each day and each one takes up to 500 years to biodegrade. Ick. Home compost, toss, or flush the biodegradable gRefill for the smallest footprint on earth. gDiapers break down in 50-150 days."
—Rob D., Lake Oswego, OR

6. Grounds for Change
Poulsbo, WA | www.groundsforchange.com
"Fresh roasted high quality coffee. Organic, Fair Trade, shade grown, carbon-free certified, 1% For the Planet. They are always looking for ways to reduce their business' impact on the planet and improve the lives of those that live on it."
—Jodi R., Bethel Park, PA

7. Hazelnut Kids
Traverse City, MI | www.hazelnutkids.com
"This is by far my favorite green toy store: incredible customer service and a great selection. Easy- to-navigate site, and a tree planted for every toy sold."
—Mare D., Sag Harbor, NY

8. Stay Vocal
Norwell, MA | www.stayvocal.com
"Not only are they re-styling t-shirts that will just be thrown away, they ALSO package in recycled boxes! Repurposing stuff that is landfill bound is a great thing to do... best re-use project I've ever seen."
—Jennifer V., Las Vegas, NV

9. Theo Chocolate
Seattle, WA | www.theochocolate.com
"I'm continually amazed at how deeply Theo cares about their community — making sure the farmers are being paid well through transparent processes, letting farmers voice their needs, and educating the public about Fair Trade."
—Cat G., Corvallis, OR

10. We Add Up
Wickliffe, OH | www.weaddup.com
"They use 100-percent certified organic cotton for their tees, are a carbon-neutral company, offer carbon-free shipping, and they donate 12 percentof their sales to environmental non-profits."
—Hollie Ann H., Canton, OH

Vote for your favorite at the Green America website »

A decade ago, coffee was the only Fair Trade product available in the US, and it was hard to find. Today shoppers can easily find a wide range of Fair Trade products in stores, with more to come.

Globally, Fair Trade sales hit the $5 billion mark last year, helping more than one million producers (and more than five million family members) lift themselves economically.

In the 1990s, the organic market skyrocketed. Our editors tackle the question of whether Fair Trade is poised for the same growth in this decade. 

Burlington, North Carolina is about to get a new cooperatively owned grocery store thanks to the organizing efforts of community members, including Eric Henry of  T.S. Designs and Green America board member.

The project received a $300,000 state grant that will propel the construction of the co-op which is owned by 1,600 residents. Henry is excited to be part of this opportunity to “reconnect our community to local agriculture.”

Henry presented T.S. Design’s Cotton of the Carolinas at the BALLE Conference. This sustainable “dirt to shirt” line keeps the entire labor process within the Carolinas. The presentation with t-shirt maker Brian Morrell and cotton farmer Ronnie Burleson was the talk of the conference.

Learn more >> http://www.thetimesnews.com/news/downtown-34060-grant-street.html?cb=1275055231

See highlights from the BALLE presentation >> http://www.tsdesigns.com/balle-presentation/

The American appetite for sugar ensures that the US ranks not only among the top ten sugar-producing countries in the world, but also takes the top spot as the world’s largest importer of sugar. With nearly 3.3 million metric tons of sugar entering the US in fiscal year 2011–2012, Americans can find sugar originating from 40 countries around the world on their store shelves.

Unfortunately, the sugar industry can’t guarantee that those cheap bags of sugar don’t come at a terribly high cost to communities and workers at the beginning of the supply chain.

For example, in 2012, the US Dept. of Labor began investigating allegations of forced and trafficked labor on Dominican sugar plantations. Also in 2012, Human Rights Watch reported on Ethiopian state-run sugar plantations forcibly displacing indigenous pastoral communities. And in 2011, the US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report recorded more than 25,000 instances of workers in Brazil sold into trabalho escravo (the Brazilian legal term for “slave labor”), including on sugar plantations.

But what about the more than 7.7 million metric tons of sugar produced each year within the United States? The US sugar industry has its own problems. Starting in 2008, biotech superpower Monsanto began to dominate the US sugar beet market with beets genetically modified (GM) to withstand its Roundup herbicide.

Today, Monsanto’s GM beets account for at least 95 percent the US crop, from which most of our domestic sugar supply is made. Unless a bag of US-grown sugar specifies “cane sugar” (or is certified organic), it’s most likely made from GM sugar beets.

There’s another way to find sugar that is always GMO-free, often organic, and that ensures fair treatment of workers—look for Fair Trade cane sugar.

Dean Cycon (in white shirt) of Dean's Beans, a Fair Trade sugar importer, standing in the Peruvian cane fields with sugar farmers Miguel (far left), Raul (far right), and farm manager Esperanza Castillo (black shirt).

A Fair Deal for Workers
Three years ago, when Mathieu Senard, co-founder of San Francisco-based
Alter-Eco Fair Trade, visited the sugar cane farmers of on the island of Negros in the Philippines, he felt like he was visiting family.

“They’ve been selling with us for more than 13 years,” says Senard. “So, we arrive, the whole village comes out, and we share a dinner together where we give thanks to each other for this trading relationship.”

A volcanic island with a surface 80-percent covered by sugar cane, Negros is home to 27 groups of sugar farmers cooperatively organized as the Negros Organic and Fair Trade Association (NOFTA). Senard tells of meeting NOFTA member Imelda Cervantes, a life-long sugar farmer who has seen firsthand the changes Fair Trade brought to her island.

“She was telling me about her childhood, born on a sugar plantation, being woken in the middle of the night to cut cane, and working with chemicals that made her very sick,” says Senard. “But then her life was transformed by the cooperative.”

When NOFTA was founded in 1997, the island was still suffering from the collapse of world sugar prices a few years before. Sugar mills had closed, plantation owners had laid off workers, and families went hungry. Assisted by a government program that helped farmers obtain land, and by an infusion of capital from the microfinance lender Oikocredit, the farmers took matters into their own hands.

Instead of laboring to make plantation owners rich, the farmers established direct trading relationships that enabled them to keep more of their income in their communities. Today, the co-ops also control and operate their own mill. And the premium price Fair Trade provides protects them from sugar market fluctuations and helps finance community improvements.

“They’ve been able to diversify their crops, they built a community center for the village, an organic piggery, an eco-lodge for visitors to stay in, programs for the kids. The sugar is organic, so everybody is healthy,” says Senard.

According to Fair Trade USA, more than 23.7 million pounds of cane sugar was certified Fair Trade in 2011, and 81 percent of that was organic.

But while the Fair Trade sugar market has grown dramatically since the first 270,000 pounds of sugar were certified by Fair Trade USA in 2005, Fair Trade sugar hasn’t yet reached the scale or popularity of other Fair Trade products, like coffee.

Until more large-scale companies commit to using Fair Trade sugar, Senard says farmers depend on smaller-scale consumer support to remain in the Fair Trade system.
 

—Andrew Korfhage

It Doesn't Get Sweeter Than Fair Trade

To use your sugar purchases to lift up farmer communities around the world (and enjoy artisanal, organic, and non-GMO sweeteners at the same time), check out these companies:

Alter-Eco, 866/972-6879. Also sells Fair Trade rice, quinoa, and chocolate (made with Fair Trade sugar and Fair Trade cocoa).

Dean’s Beans, 800/325-3008. Also sells Fair Trade coffee and cocoa.

Equal Exchange, 774/776-7333. Sells individual packets of Fair Trade sugar in bulk, perfect for group meetings or faith communities that serve Fair Trade coffee or tea.

Frontier Natural Products Co-op, 800/669-3275. Sells many other Fair Trade spices, ingredients, and natural products.

Grain Place Foods, 888/714-7246. Sells US-grown GMO-free sugar, and many other GMO-free foods.

Wholesome Sweeteners, 800/680-1896. Also sells organic agave, honey, and molasses.

Imelda Cervantes with a bag of organic, Fair Trade, GMO-free Alter Eco sugar.

Whole Foods agrees to sell Fair Trade products alongside their own whole trade products. (September 2009)

Buying organic flowers protects your family, workers, and the environment, and they're easier to find than ever. 

Tara Beeman sprays an oil-based mixture of raw garlic and cayenne pepper on her annuals and perennials to fend off chewing insects. Jorge Chiriboga releases wasps and ladybugs into his greenhouses to combat aphids. Patricia Damery feeds lavender clippings to her goats, returning the manure to the field as fertilizer to keep her lavender crop healthy and thriving.

Drawing on tried and tested techniques for growing plants without chemicals, Beeman, Chiriboga, and Damery each produce beautiful, fragrant, organic flowers. Beeman sells her flowers in her own shop, while Chiriboga exports roses from his native Ecuador to the US, and California-based Damery partners with nearby retailers and farmers’ markets to sell her lavender. Together they represent a growing force that is changing the floral marketplace for the better.

While many consumers embrace organic products for the superior taste and health benefits provided by organic fruits and vegetables, organic farming itself originated as a strategy for preserving soil quality and keeping harmful toxins out of the environment.

“Any kind of organic farming protects the health of people and the health of the environment,” says Damery. “[Organic] doesn’t just have to be about food.”

With Mother’s Day and the June wedding season just around the corner, you can make your celebrations more meaningful by buying organic flowers that protect workers, your family, and the environment.

The Cost of Conventional Flowers

Flowers grown with conventional techniques contribute to the contamination of ground-water and streams through fertilizer and pesticide run-off, which can in turn impact wildlife and human health, as was documented in a 2003 San Francisco Chronicle investigation of contaminated wells and waterways near a California lily farm.

The paper reported many highly toxic chemicals in use among the region’s lily growers, including known carcinogens, and noted that the EPA is now looking into the possibility that endangered species may be threatened by the farms’ run-off.

Just as worrisome as potential soil and water contamination from conventional flower farms is the array of chemicals to which flower workers are exposed while on the job. More than 70 percent of the cut flowers sold in the US were grown in South America, mostly in Colombia, where farms continue to use pesticides restricted in the US and labeled as highly toxic by the World Health Organization, according to a 2003 article in the New York Times and a 2011 report in Smithsonian Magazine.

For Valentine’s Day alone, Americans imported more than 120 million roses, most of them from South American farms where normal procedures call for fumigating greenhouses with a range of pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides (sometimes with workers still inside) before submerging the flowers in preservatives to keep them from rotting during shipment. Such practices are taking their toll on the workers who must handle these toxic chemicals daily.

For example, in November 2003, according to Untraflores, the Colombian floral workers’ union, more than 300 workers were poisoned in a chemical accident at Flores Aposentos, a flower processing center in Bogota. Affected workers experienced headaches, nausea, swelling, rashes, diarrhea, sores inside the mouth, and loss of consciousness, and some were incapacitated for days.

A 2002 survey of 8,000 Colombian flower workers discovered exposure to 25 carcinogenic or highly toxic pesticides not registered for use in the United States, and the International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) reports that two-thirds of Colombian and Ecuadorian flower workers suffer work-related health problems ranging from stillbirths and miscarriages to impaired vision and neurological problems.

Furthermore, the International Labor Organization estimates that 20 percent of Ecuadorian flower workers are children, who are even more vulnerable to the harmful effects of these chemicals.

In addition to harming workers and the environment in the fields and greenhouses, the chemicals on conventionally grown flowers may impact consumer health, says Holly Givens, communications director for the Organic Trade Association. “If you’re really concerned about pesticides in your home, you should know that the way a decorative flower is grown can affect what you might be breathing in,” she says.

After investigating ten possible cases of pesticide poisoning among Miami florists in 1979, the American Journal of Public Health recommended implementation of safety standards for residual pesticides on cut flowers to protect both florists and consumers, but no such standards have ever been developed for the United States.

Making the Switch to Organic Flowers

There are many steps you can take to ensure that you beautify your home and celebrate holidays and special events with flowers grown in accordance with your values:

1. Grow Your Own. Buy organic bulbs or seeds and start an organic flower garden. Seeds of Change offers organic and heirloom seeds and bulbs that you can order online to help you get started. Clip your own blooms for displaying at home or for giving as gifts. Give clippings from your houseplants when you don’t have flowers.

2. Buy Local and Organic. Invest in your community, and save shipping costs and energy, by purchasing chemical-free organic flowers from a local farmers’ market or CSA.

3. Ask Local Florists to go Organic. Find out if your local florist purchases any organic and local flowers, and, if not, request them. Talk to other flower sellers, such as supermarkets, about the benefits of organics. Give them this article to help them get started.

“Consumers should express their preference for organic flowers by writing to conventional flower retailers,” says Nora Ferm, program officer for the ILRF. “Demonstrating that there is a market for [organically grown] flowers will encourage more producers, importers, and retailers to improve conditions [for workers].”

4. Buy Organic. Online retailers Organic Bouquet and Diamond Organics offer USDA-certified organic flowers that you can ship to loved ones all over the country. While Diamond Organics buys its flowers only from American family farmers, Organic Bouquet sells a mix of both domestic blooms and imports from farms that adhere 
to certified organic standards.

In addition, Organic Bouquet founder Gerald Prolman personally has visited each of his source farms to ensure acceptable working conditions.

“Organic flowers have a deeper layer of beauty that comes from the comfort of knowing that the people who grow them and the land they grow them on are treated with respect,” says Prolman. “Organic floral production is part of one movement toward a better world.”

Every morning, Mary Clive opens her Kiva.org homepage and sees the faces of 12 people, from countries such as Cambodia, Kenya, and the Philippines. Each of them wanted to break their cycle of poverty by starting or expanding a micro-business, but needed a small loan to do so. That’s where Clive, a Green America member who lives in Silver Spring, MD, comes in—last August, she invested $25 in each of these businesspeople, including a farmer who wants to buy a motorized hand-tiller and a motorbike taxi driver who wants to fix his bike. She has only been lending for a few months, but already she reports that this doesn’t feel like banking; it feels like building relationships. “It’s an investment in other people’s hopes and dreams,” she says. That’s the power of microlending.

“When a small business is successful, that can really have a life-changing effect for the family of a business owner,” says Fiona Ramsey, public relations director at Kiva. “Microfinance is about giving somebody a tool—financial services—so
they can create something sustainable long after your loan is repaid.”

Have you ever wanted to get involved in microlending but lacked the $1,000 or more it often takes to meet the minimum investment requirements for community development loan funds?

Kiva.org is one of a growing number of online sites that now allows you to participate directly in this type of community investing with small loans as low as $20–$25. These sites provide small, critical loans to low-income people from Ecuador to Lebanon to Idaho, who wouldn’t otherwise have access to capital. And as the holiday season approaches, investments like these make great gifts.

Small Loans, Big Impact

Community investing is a powerful socially responsible investment strategy that puts critical capital into the hands of low- and middle-income communities across the US and around the world that are underserved by mainstream financial institutions. It provides a hand up, not a hand out, that allows people in poverty to start small businesses, own homes, and attend college.

One powerful strategy for community investing, which was popularized by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus through the work of the Grameen Bank m in Bangladesh, is microlending: providing very small loans to worthy entrepreneurs in developing communities. For example, a farmer in Peru might grow potatoes, but can’t afford a cart to carry them to the market to sell them. In many parts of the world, such a person might not be able to get even a small loan from a conventional bank—she might be regarded as “high-risk,” like many low-income people who have no credit history, no formal employment in the job sector, and no collateral to offer against a loan.

That’s where microlending can make all of the difference. Take Bayamma from India, who received three microloans with the help of Unitus, which worked with local microfinance institution SKS. She went from earning 32 cents a day to generating a stable income for her family, all with loans totaling less than $500. Bayamma used her first loan to buy a buffalo. After she made her loan repayments and bought feed for the buffalo, she still made more money selling its milk and dairy products than she did at her old job. Then, she received a second loan to buy another buffalo and a cart to transport sugar cane. She used her third loan to lease six acres of land to grow rice.

Her family now can afford healthy foods such as milk, vegetables, and rice, as opposed to their previous diet of mostly starch. Bayamma was also able to afford to get her son out of bonded labor.

Steve Schwartz, media director at Unitus, says Bayamma’s story is one that “gets repeated so many times when you survey the impact microfinance can have. It’s a really compelling story on a personal level, [and] we encourage that story to happen as many times as possible.”

Microfinance for Everyone

Thanks to the new generation of online microfinance sites, you don’t have to contact your financial advisor to become a microlender—all you need is your credit or debit card and $20–$25.

Kiva.org partners with 126 microlending institutions in the US, South America, Central America, Asia, eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. You can choose the specific microentrepreneur to whom you want to lend and invest $25 or more. After a few months, your loans will start to be repaid in increments. In six months to one year, you’ll get your $25 back (or perhaps a little less because of inflation or currency exchange rates)—and any repaid loan money can be immediately lent again.

Donation sites: Unitus, GlobalGiving.com, and ACCION.org all allow you to invest $25 or more in communities far away or close to home. For example, Jewish Funds for Justice’s 8th Degree Infinity Fund helps New Orleans businesspeople rebuild their enterprises in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, while Unitus works with microfinance institutions in India, Southeast Asia, East Africa, South America, and Mexico.

The difference between these groups and sites like Kiva or Microplace is that your gift is a donation; the organizations will use your $25 to give microloans or help local microfinance institutions.

These donations are tax-deductible. GlobalGiving allows you to direct your microfinance donation to a particular community or country. The other Web sites will divvy up your donations among their microfinance partners.

Getting Personal

Some of the new microfinance sites let you make your lending completely personal—not just to a particular community in a particular country, but to a particular individual. At Kiva and GlobalGiving, you can see a photograph of the person (or people) who will receive your loan or donation, and learn how the loan will help the recipient’s business, community, and quality of life improve.

“The pictures helped tremendously,” Clive says. “I felt a personal connection [with] the kind of person I might know, I might talk to.”

For instance, you might see a picture of Afivi, a Ugandan woman sitting at a sewing machine, and read about how a loan to purchase thread and sewing materials will help her expand her tailoring business. If you lend to a project, such as the construction of a school for children in Guatemala, then you may read that it will serve 50 students, will be the first high school in the area, and will bring educational opportunities to children living in poverty.

You can also search for loans by project type, separated by issue (i.e. disaster recovery, human rights, women’s empowerment) at GlobalGiving and MicroPlace, and business sector (i.e. agriculture, construction) at Kiva.

With Kiva and GlobalGiving, you can go online and see firsthand how “your” borrowers are doing in repaying their loans. Both sites have a feature that shows how much money has been raised toward a microloan. With Kiva, you can even watch as portions of the loans you made are repaid every month, and you get e-mails when borrowers update their Kiva journals, talking about their progress.

GlobalGiving posts online updates “from the field,” so instead of just investing your money and never seeing what happens to it, you can witness your loan doing good in the world. It’s easy to feel connected to people who need to borrow a little bit to get their businesses going— after all, most of us borrow money to get ahead in life, like when getting a loan for college or for a house, says Ramsey. “Borrowing money is a way that you can advance yourself, and what microfinance is trying to do is let [other] people have that same opportunity to advance themselves,” she says.

How Risky?

You might be asking yourself, “If traditional banks think people in poverty are too risky to lend to, isn’t microlending to these same communities a risky investment for me?”

Microloans typically are lent by an institution that establishes repayment terms tailored to the recipient’s capacity to repay. Microcredit institutions also often provide education opportunities to ensure that the loans and the microbusinesses themselves succeed.

Any investment carries some risk, but microloans have around a two percent default rate, in contrast to a 30 percent default rate for US sub-prime mortgage loans, according to the Wall Street Journal. As the global economic meltdown has demonstrated very dramatically over the past year, impersonal lending can be a lot riskier than personalized lending.

The minimum investments of these Web sites are small amounts to put on the table, so the risk is minimal. You can also read the biographies of the borrowers, and lend to someone who already has a good track record, or lend to someone in a solidarity lending group, where all group members are responsible for each member’s loans.

“When you invest, you expect to get something back,” Clive says. With this investment, she says, you also know “that you made a difference in someone else’s life. It’s an investment that grows in your heart.”

As plug-in electric hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) and electric vehicles (EVs) come to market, many consumers will need some basic questions answered before making the switch. Here’s what you need to know:

How does an EV or PHEV plug in? Would I need a special outlet?

All of the EVs and PHEVs coming to market are designed to be plugged into a standard 120-volt outlet like those found in your home, garage, or carport. GM predicts that it will take about eight hours to fully charge the Chevy Volt’s battery when plugged into a 120 V outlet, and charging would be even faster using a high-voltage outlet at home, like the one that powers your clothes dryer.

Also, auto companies, private utilities, and the government are working together to build a network of public charging stations that will deliver higher voltage electricity, enabling you to charge your car quickly while on the go. A high-voltage charging station that’s up and running in Woodland, CA, can charge a Tessla Roadster EV in just one hour, and others can charge a car 80 percent in 20 minutes.

In 2009, all of the world’s major car manufacturers agreed to a standard charging port on the vehicle, so drivers will be able to pull up to any charging station for an electric refill. Most of the upcoming EVs are expected to have on-board systems to held you find a charging station wherever you are.

And charging your EV on the go will be even easier because the automobile industry has agreed upon a standardized plug—every EV in the world will have the same plug-in port on the car, so that wherever you are, you can charge your battery.

To see if there is a charging station near you, visit www.evauthority.com/ev-charging-stations.

Isn’t most electricity in the US generated from burning coal? So are electric cars really “greener” than cars burning gasoline?

Unfortunately, about half of the electricity in the US is still generated by burning coal. And it’s important to acknowledge that even if your EV doesn’t have a tailpipe, it’s still using energy. However, this isn’t a reason to shy away from electric vehicles. EVs charged with coal power still produce about 30 percent fewer greenhouse gases than conventional gasoline or diesel vehicles. PHEVs charged on the current grid mix would produce 42 percent fewer emissions. And unlike gasoline-fueled cars, EVs can run on renewable energy alone. As the US electrical grid gets cleaner, and more people begin utilizing renewable energy sources like solar and wind, the greenhouse gas impact of EVs will drop dramatically.

Chevrolet releases the Volt in 2010, the first PHEV prototype to come out of Detroit.

Won’t we need to build new power plants to meet the demands of electric cars?

We won’t need any new power plants to make the change to EVs and PHEVs. According to the National Renewable Energy Lab, since electric vehicles charge mainly at night, we already have the electricity to charge 73 percent of today’s cars, trucks, vans, and SUVs—and renewables can supply the rest. With the smart grid technology that experts say is on the near horizon, cars could be plugged back in at the office to help supply power from their batteries to the grid at peak usage times, or charged with solar energy during the day and then used to power your evening activities at home.

What about the batteries in EVs and PHEVs? Do they pose an environmental hazard?

Any battery can pose a hazard if not handled and disposed of properly. However, battery technology used in EVs and PHEVs is more efficient and less toxic than the lead-acid batteries used in combustion-engine cars. And with battery recycling rates for lead-acid batteries above 95%, it’s expected that recycling rates will be similar or higher for newer batteries.

Current EVs and PHEVs have used nickel-metal-hydride batteries, and some critics have noted that the nickel-mining industry is environmentally destructive. And while mining certainly leaves an impact on the Earth, nickel-mining has dramatically improved in the last decades; additionally, the auto industry currently uses only about 1% of the word’s nickel for use in batteries.

Car-makers are expected to make switch to lighter, more efficient lithium-ion batteries for use in EVs and PHEVs. A 2008 study by the California Air Resources Board (2008) predicts that lithium-ion batteries will be commercially available as soon as 2015.

I’ve been hearing about “smart grid” technology. Are EVs and PHEVs part of this plan?

Yes, though still mostly in planning phases, there is great opportunity for incorporating EVs and PHEVs into a “smart grid.” This smart-grid technology will have many benefits, including letting people see how much energy they’re using, connecting appliances to a network that will help “off-load” power back into the grid during peak-energy demands, and give solar-powered homes an easy way to put energy back on the grid.

Using the “vehicle-to-grid” technology that is currently being tested in cities like San Francisco, your car could actually put electricity onto the grid when needed. Just imagine a commuter parking lot of cars plugged in during the day while their drivers are at the office. Most of these cars would have been fully charged at night, and then driven a short distance to work, leaving excess power sitting in the batteries. When electricity demand is the highest in the middle of the day, the grid could draw small amounts of power from these cars, thereby reducing the need for extra power plants to meet these peak electricity demands. And the amounts would be small, so the batteries would be fully charged again by the time the commuters arrived back at the garage for their trip home.

What kind of tax credits can I get?

The economic stimulus package passed by Congress in 2009 provides a federal tax credit for EVs and PHEVs. The credit for light-duty vehicles (under 10,000 pounds) is a maximum of $7,500. (The credit is a base of $2,500, with an additional $417 for each kWh of battery pack capacity in excess of 4 kWh. The Chevy Volt, for example, would qualify for the entire $7,500.)

The credit will start phasing out after the total number of qualified PHEVs sold in the US hits 250,000.

To find state and local tax credits on EVs and PHEVs, visit www.dsireusa.org.

Use the following "Web exclusive" articles from our Fall Green American magazine to help you walk more, bike more, and reclaim the streets:

• Calculate how much money you’ll save by walking, biking, or taking transit to
your most frequent driving destinations by using our Car-Lite Worksheet.

• Read how Mollie Gore helped create Santee-Cooper’s innovative employee car-pooling program.

• Start a bike share for people who can’t afford bicycles or who just want to try one out for a day. Eric Cornwell talks about how he founded the Athens Yellow Bike Taxi Service.

• Learn how Phoenix bikes refurbishes old bikes while helping at-risk teens.

• Find out how mixed-use zoning can help your city become more walkable and bikeable.

• Got questions about electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles? Senior writer Sarah Tarver-Wahlquist answers the ones we get the most in the Green America offices.

Van Jones is working to combine solutions to America's two biggest problems: social inequality and environmental destruction.

In 1996, Van and Diana Frappier co-founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, headquartered in Oakland, California. Named for an unsung civil rights heroine, the Center promotes positive alternatives to violence and incarceration.

Van Jones.

Van and the Ella Baker Center were instrumental in working with House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Rep. Hilda Solis (D-CA), Rep. John Tierney (D-MA) to pass the Green Jobs Act of 2007. This historic piece of legislation could provide $125 million in funding to train 35,000 people a year in “green-collar jobs.”

Green America editor Tracy Fernandez Rysavy spoke to Van about why green-collar jobs are an intrinsic part of creating a socially just and environmentally sustainable world that truly works for all.

Green America/ TRACY FERNANDEZ RYSAVY: When you first started your social justice work, I noticed that it focused mainly on civil rights.  You said you were not an environmentalist at the time. How did you start to see the links between the two?

VAN JONES: I’ve always cared about the world and the Earth, but when I got out of school in the 1990s, it seemed like you had to choose. You either had to choose to care about the environment or care about people. And then you had to choose again; Okay, you care about people, but do you care about economics or criminal justice or immigrant rights? Everything was so divided up, that even if your heart might incorporate everything, your job description couldn’t and didn’t.

So, like a lot of people, I found my way, as best I could. When I first got out of law school, I had an opportunity to help the Sioux fight off a Chevron refinery in Richmond, California, which was an environmental justice case.

But when I was trying to find more clients, many of them were more concerned about police brutality than they were about asthma, so I wound up veering in the direction of police brutality and prisons.

If there was a turning point for me, it came around the year 2000. I had a real emotional breakdown because of overwork and burnout and was trying to look for more hopeful answers than just opposition to injustice. I wound up meeting Julia Butterfly Hill and going to the Social Venture Network and going to Bioneers, and I started to realize that there was something positive happening in this world of green solutions. I could see that there could be a link between green solutions and social solutions.

I just had this kind of flow that came into my mind around “green jobs, not jails.” It just made sense to me, that if there’s going to be all this cool green stuff—organic this and hybrid that and solar the other thing—then the people who most need new hope and new jobs and new investment and new opportunities should get that stuff.

It didn’t seem like a big revolutionary thing in my mind. It felt like a natural extension of trying to solve problems.

I think it came from years of banging my head against the wall in terms of police brutality and prison expansion, and not really seeing a way out, short of a complete, revolutionary transformation of our whole society. It was very frustrating and very painful. But what happened for me was that I saw the green capitalist movement that was trying to find a better way of doing business and trying to put forward real solutions to ecological problems. It made me feel more hopeful, and I felt like this was a good little engine that needed to hitch other constituencies and concerns to it, and also to accept the added boost from a new caboose or two that came from other parts of society.

TRACY: It sounds like it’s more than a caboose, though, from what I’ve heard you discuss about “eco-apartheid” and “eco-equity.” You’re talking about retrofitting the whole train. Can you tell me more about those two concepts—what are they, and how do green collar jobs fit into the equation?

VAN JONES: Well, eco-apartheid would be a situation where you have ecological haves and ecological have-nots. You can see it in northern California now, where Marin County has a lot of ecologically friendly products and services, and Oakland has much less of that and a lot more pollution-based industries that cause asthma and other problems. The real nature of eco-apartheid is not only that it’s completely immoral, but it’s also deceptive. It won’t work.  It leads to a kind of blindness to the real extent of ecological problems, because you end up with this attitude of, “Oh, everybody I know eats organic, or everybody I know owns a hybrid, or everybody I know is recycling, so we must be making progress.”

And that’s very, very dangerous, because if only 20 percent of the economy is sustainable, that means 80 percent is not sustainable and will be undoing all the good work of people trying to do things more sustainably. So in order to have a green economy that really works, everybody needs to work in a green and clean industry, take green and clean transportation there, and have homes that are energy efficient. Getting the green benefits spread broadly across society is the only thing that makes sense.

And yet, many people believe that if we just had the right technologies and good entrepreneurship, everything is going to work out fine. That strikes me as a kind of trickle-down Reagan-omics in “greenface” applied to the biggest problem in the history in the world.

You have to have smart government involvement, you have to have the labor movement engaged, you have to have communities of faith, and racial justice communities, and others actively involved. Everybody can’t go hit Whole Foods and spend a bunch of money paying a green premium to be part of this movement. So the best-intentioned folks in the world are in some danger of falling short of true eco-equity. And eco-equity is the only outcome that will avoid a real catastrophe.

Eco-equity means you have a green economy that is strong enough to lift people out of poverty, and give everybody a stake in the clean and green future.

What does that look like? Well, it looks like green-collar jobs for people who might be displaced in either the globalized economy or in the transition to a low-carbon economy. We’ve got to make sure those people actually wind up in the workforce and not displaced or disgruntled. We’ve got to think about highlighting and foregrounding the health benefits. We’ve got to be shutting down a bunch of incinerators, dumps, and power plants.

We’ve got to try to make sure that the people who most need clean and green energy for their own health benefit early. Put the solar panels in the ghetto first, in the barrio first. If you’re going to weatherize buildings, start with where the poor people live, so they don’t have to spend so much of their income on heating and cooling and leaky homes.

Put young people in the neighborhood to work putting up those solar panels and working on those wind farms. Don’t stop there—help them become managers and owners and truly economically empowered through this green process.

A commitment to eco-equity is saying that the green wave will lift all boats, and then doing everything we can to make sure we do that. That’s the next step of this environmental revolution. The next step is to expand the coalition against global warming and ecological destruction to include people of all races and classes.

TRACY: Can you give an example of how ignoring working-class people hurts everyone?

VAN JONES: California gets celebrated as this place where everybody is for the green revolution, but in November 2006, California voters rejected a clean-energy ballot measure, Proposition 87. The idea was to take a little bit of the money from the oil and gas that was being extracted in California and put it toward a big clean energy fund that would have supported new technologies—basically using oil money to replace oil. It would have really benefited the planet in terms of global warming, it would have cleaned up the air and created more jobs in the solar, wind, and renewable fuel industry.

It was a great idea, but it went down in flames. Why? Because the polluters spent a bunch of money telling poor and working-class Californians that it was a big tax that was going to sock them in the pocketbook, and voters turned against it. Nobody made the arguments to working-class people about how it would help in terms of wealth and jobs and health improvements. When Bill Clinton and Al Gore got on the airwaves to try to sell the initiative, they didn’t speak to the kitchen-table concerns of working-class Californians, so people turned away from it and voted it down. Even a leader in the NAACP came out against it because she said it would hurt her constituency.

You know, if you can’t pass a clean energy tax in California without polluters reaching out to poor people and sinking the measure, then how are you going to get one passed in Kentucky or any place else?

Our view is that despite the state’s green reputation, working-class Californians have not been convinced that what’s good for the planet is good for their pocketbook.

In order for us to have a stable political majority in the country that can support this transition to cleaner, greener capitalism over the next couple of decades, we have to actively look out for the interests of working-class people. We have to take every step we can to minimize the pain and maximize the gain for poor people and people of color in this transition. We cannot accept a reality where low-income people get hit first and worst by all the ecological bad stuff like Katrina but are expected to benefit last and least from all the ecological good stuff like solar panels and improved transportation and cleaned up air. That is unjust.

Working-class and low-income people are going to have to be included in the environmental revolution based on tangible benefits to themselves and their families.  And those tangible material benefits will not occur automatically, without very deliberate design on the part of business leaders, government, and civil society.

TRACY: And you’re trying to do a microcosm of that design with the Oakland Green Job Corps?

VAN JONES: Exactly. In Oakland, we feel like we’re following the example of the civil rights movement. And it didn’t start in DC, despite all the pictures you see of Dr. King in front of the Lincoln Memorial. The movement started in its modern form in Montgomery, Alabama, which was one town that stood up and said we’ve been moving in one direction for 100 years, and now it’s time to move in another direction.

That one little town stood up, and pretty soon, towns all around the South were standing up, and we got federal legislation. We’re saying Oakland needs to be one of the Montgomerys of the new century, in terms of saying that for 100 years we’ve had a pollution-, poison-, and poverty-based economy, and now we need to have a clean, green economy that’s strong enough to lift people out of poverty, and we’re going to start it right here.

Everybody sees the environmental revolution in terms of consumer choices and entrepreneurship and cool technology, and that’s one way to look at it. But we look at it from the point of view of the workers—and the people who would be workers if they had a chance. If you’re going to have a world-class green economy, you’ve got to have a world-class green-collar workforce to do all the work. Somebody has to put up all those solar panels and weatherize the buildings and reforest all the countryside and urban landscapes, and all of that’s labor. It’s good vocational labor that can be the first step on a pathway out of poverty.

If the green economy can speak to those kinds of people—people who need work, who are present in the US in large numbers—you suddenly have a very formidable force of people who are supporting this U-turn. If we don’t reach out to working class Californians or working class Americans, they will be organized by the polluters and the foot-draggers. We saw that in California with Prop. 87.

TRACY: So, how, exactly, is the Green Jobs Corps is going to work?

VAN JONES: It’s fairly straightforward in that we already have a training apparatus in the US. Most people know it as their community colleges and vocational programs. The problem is that 1) they’re dramatically underfunded, and 2) they’re targeted toward the  poison- and pollution-based economy.

Why is that? It’s because the good, old-fashioned, pollution-based businesses are used to going down to City Hall or a workforce investment board and saying, “We’re expanding in this kind of way, and we’re expanding in that kind of way, and we want people trained in this kind of work.” And the community colleges respond, and they figure, “Well, if we train up 500 people, we’re fairly sure they’re going to get jobs.”

But the green businesses don’t go down there. The eco-entrepreneurs and the people who are trying to figure out how to make solar work don’t go to city council or workforce investment meetings. They may not even know those options exist. They’re hiring their college buddies and posting on Craigslist.

So our strategy is very simple: It’s to re-purpose the existing job training infrastructure so it supports the green economy, not the gray economy.  

We already have good contacts with our local community college system. It was not a tough sell to them. They could see that something was changing in the economy. And there were already people who independently wanted to get engaged but didn’t necessarily have the time or the resources to connect all the dots and to sort through all the funding. We worked through all that stuff, and got the Oakland City Council to agree to spend about a quarter million dollars setting up a strong Green Jobs Corps program at our local community colleges. Right now, it’s not 100 percent settled that it will go through our community colleges, but we think it probably will.

What the Green Jobs Corps will do is give both soft-skill and hard-skill training to people who need it. By soft skill, we mean the behavior that makes you job-ready before you get trained—being able to come to work on time, understanding the way that workplaces function, and so on. These things are not always obvious to folks who have not had work experience yet.

Everybody can’t just volunteer, so we want to set up paid internships with decent stipends on the way to a pre-apprenticeship.

A green economy can’t just be about reclaiming throwaway stuff. It also needs to be about reclaiming throwaway people and communities. And at some point, we have to start reinvesting in people who may have been neglected or hurt by underfunded public school systems or foster care or juvenile halls or prisons. Getting those folks job ready and getting them plugged into jobs that can’t be outsourced to India or China and have to be done in the US by definition is a great service—for them and for the community and for the world.

The good thing about these green-collar jobs is that they can’t be done by a call center in Asia. You’ve got to put up the solar panels here. The buildings have to be weatherized here. It’s the wind blowing across Oakland that has to turn that wind turbine. So you need a local worker to build that and maintain that. And those are great jobs for people.

Again, we don’t want to stop there. We don’t want to create a lot of happy workers on the solar plantation. It’s about giving people true career pathways out of poverty and to be able to continue to move up in these developing industries.

TRACY: You’ve talked about going to get the people who might be on the streets, going into the prisons, and getting caught in the system because of poverty and bad education and all that. But how are going to reach those people, who think they can’t afford community college?

VAN JONES: We may not be able to. Right now, we don’t even have a pathway to work for the people who do want to and are already entering at the community college level. We have to build that first, and then we may be able to build a carpool lane for people who need more comprehensive help.

We don’t want to over-promise and say we’ll get every single person in America, no matter how poor or damaged, a great job in a great industry. But what we do say, is that we’re going to try. And we’re going to take it step by step. Once we have this first on-ramp, we can start trying tougher and tougher populations.

TRACY: I’m wondering where you’re at now. What’s it going to take to get the Jobs Corps really going?

VAN JONES: We need additional funding to support the city dollars. Everything takes longer than I want it to. I wish we could start it now.

But by this time next year, there will actually be people going through the Green Jobs Corps. The more philanthropic and government dollars we’re able to pull in, the faster and better everything is going to go.

TRACY: And if people want to donate, they’d do it through the Ella Baker Center?

VAN JONES: Yes, just go to the Web site.

TRACY: So once you get Oakland going, what’s the ultimate goal?

VAN JONES: Our ultimate goal isn’t any different than anyone else’s ultimate goal. We have to cap and reduce the amount of carbon in the environment. We think there are smart ways to do that that actually generate revenue for the government that should be captured and reinvested in communities and people. So we talk about “Cap, collect, and invest” as a slogan to guide the national level. Cap carbon, collect fees from people who continue to put carbon in the air, and invest those fees in people, communities, and technologies.

Our more specific ideas have to do with ensuring equal protection for vulnerable people from the worst of ecological peril, and at the same time ensuring equal access and equal opportunity for vulnerable people everywhere in the face of all this ecological promise. Protect us from the bad stuff and give us a fair shot at the good stuff.

It used to be, the greener you were, the more estranged you were from working-class America. Now, the greener you are, the closer you should be to working-class Americans, because we’re going beyond the lifestyle solutions to the big macro solutions. Those solutions require a lot of well-trained labor, and that’s where we can re-engage with people.

We want to put clean technologies in every public high school. We want to have green- collar vocational training available in every neighborhood. We want to put solar panels on your house, and plug up all the holes, so that you’re not paying the electric company, the electric company is paying you.

What I’m excited about is that this is going to be the birth of an environmentalism that’s rooted in creating opportunities for working-class people. If you can imagine an environmentalism with a hard hat and a lunch bucket and the sleeves rolled up, we can fix America. And that worker is every color under the rainbow and every gender and faith and sexual orientation.

That’s where I really think the environmental movement has to go. We see ourselves as a bridge organization helping to show that kind of green politics to America.

TRACY: How can people who don’t live in targeted neighborhoods help with the environmental justice and green jobs movements?

VAN JONES: The thing is, wherever you are, there are poor people around. And the question has to be asked, do their kids have a future?

Anybody who’s investing money in a green company should ask, “What is your job- creation strategy for giving a chance to these throwaway kids and throwaway neighborhoods and communities?” Everybody has to redefine green, so it’s not just about the throwaway stuff, but about the throwaway people, too.

And ask the question: “You want me to buy your product, you want me to invest in your company, you want me to wear your T-shirt? Well, I used to ask you only how you were dealing with toxins and water and energy. Now I’m going to ask how you’re dealing with people. Not just people in overseas factories but also people right here in the US, who equally deserve economic opportunity. How many green collar jobs could be created for people who need them?”

It requires a lot more from the government, from the eco-entrepreneur, from everybody to get that green job to a kid who’s been in foster care and who doesn’t want to be homeless when s/he is emancipated, but who will be [homeless] if s/he doesn’t have a job. If you’re going to create jobs, what’s your responsibility to make sure at least one of those kids gets through your program?

I’m an employer, and I’ve been an employer, and it’s not easy. People don’t work out sometimes. But kids from Harvard and Yale don’t work out sometimes, too. You have to be willing to take that chance.

It’s important to recognize that ensuring an economic, social, and political stability in the US during this transition to a cleaner economy is critical for the whole world. There has to be a job strategy for this transition. We will have a right-wing backlash against this transition like you will not believe. When energy prices start going up and hybrid solar Hollywood talk gets louder and louder while people aren’t able to make ends meet, it will be very easy for the Rush Limbaughs to forge a backlash alliance of the polluters and the poor to derail everything we’re talking about. So ensuring green jobs for all is not just charity. It’s the right thing to do morally, and it’s the smart thing to do strategically.

This interview is intended to complement our “Environmental Justice for All” article, which appeared in the Fall 2007 issue of Green American. To order extra copies, call us at 800/58-GREEN.

To contact the Ella Baker Center on Human Rights, call 510/428-3939, or visit www.ellabakercenter.org.

In the closing hours of the first DC Green Festival® in 2004, regional manager Alix Davidson was approached by an incredulous staff person at the Washington Convention Center. “Where’s your trash?” he asked. 

The convention center’s staff was expecting the tens of thousands of tons of trash routinely generated by large events. The Green Festival—which Green America co-produces with Global Exchange—had welcomed more than 15,000 people that year for a full weekend of speakers and exhibits. “They couldn’t believe we only had a few bags of trash to show for it,” Davidson recalls.

Zero Waste Festivals

As the Green Festivals have grown, welcoming enthusiastic crowds of over 100,000 a year in San Francisco; Washington, DC; Chicago; and now Seattle to support the green economy and work for social justice, we have also modeled a more sustainable way to produce near-zero-waste large events. In general, events as large as the Green Festivals are notoriously wasteful: one study commissioned by California’s Integrated Waste Management Board last year estimated that public events and venues generate more than 2.4 pounds of waste for every visitor, two-thirds of which is landfilled or incinerated. 

Green America and Global Exchange have developed a model for making sure that these “Parties with a Purpose” leave very little waste behind. Minimizing waste begins with the food vendors and other exhibitors, all of whom agree to use compostable serviceware: cutlery made of potato-based plastic, cups made of corn-based plastic, and paperware made from sugarcane. All Green Festival vendors sign a statement that they will not distribute plastic disposables. 

Then, throughout the Festivals, hundreds of volunteers assist attendees at waste receptacle stations, making sure that they dispose of items in the appropriate bins: “recycle,” “compost,” or “landfill.” At the end of the festival, teams of volunteers wearing rubber gloves help behind the scenes with further sorting. While sorting garbage might sound like an unenviable responsibility, many volunteers find the experience inspiring. 

“My experience made me think a lot more about how much we waste,” Cecilia Parker wrote after the Chicago Green Festival. “I now shop thinking more about packaging.”

When the party winds up on Sunday evening, Green Festival organizers drive the truck full of compostables to municipal composting facilities. The recyclables are picked up by municipal recycling services. 

The results of this innovative green approach are dramatic: After the 2007 San Francisco Green Festival, for example, which welcomed 37,000 visitors over three days, volunteers ultimately diverted 96 percent of the waste generated—fully ten tons—from the landfill through either recycling or composting. All three of last year’s Green Festivals, including events in DC and Chicago, could boast “resource recovery” rates over 91 percent, on average. 

Every Green Festival is showing thousands of volunteers, tens of thousands of attendees, and even the operators of a few convention centers that with good planning and cooperation from vendors and volunteers, it’s possible to hold a large event that generates dramatically less waste. And this model and know-how have helped reduce waste at other big events—another great success for our Green Festivals. Seven Star Events, the green event planning company that helps put on the Festival, has gone on to use the low-waste strategies they learned on the job at Green America and Global Exchange’s Green Festivals to green other large events, including the “Live Earth” concert for awareness of the climate crisis last summer. 

Dynegy canceled coal-fired power plants. After a campaign by Green America and allies, the utility announced it was cancelling its plans to build multiple coal-fired power plants.

Ford agrees to introduce more hybrid and plug-in cars and stops promoting ethanol as a clean fuel source.

Jon Ellenbogen says the best payback for the new solar power system on his house is that he stands taller: "I love watching the meter run backwards during the day because I'm making more clean energy than I'm using. I'm proud to tell people about it—they think it's so cool!" 

Many homeowners like Jon and his partner Rebecca Sachs want to help curb climate change by generating some of their household’s electricity with rooftop solar panels. Today, in most parts of the country, it can cost between $30,000 and $40,000 to purchase and install a basic four-kilowatt photovoltaic (PV) system. If you would love to stand taller with a home solar system, but have assumed that you can’t afford it, take a second look. A variety of available incentives can combine to bring the true price of a solar power system down from the number on the price tag.

A Little Solar Power, or a Lot?

There are three different variables that can determine how large a solar system homeowners should choose, says Neville Williams, founder of Standard Solar, which sells and installs solar home systems in the Mid-Atlantic: “The size of their roof, the size of their pocketbook, and the size of their electric bill.”

He encourages people with smaller roofs or pocketbooks not to feel they have to generate all of their power with a solar system—they can purchase only two or three kilowatts of solar generating capacity. Even a small solar system lowers your energy bill and your carbon footprint.

“Almost everybody can afford some level of solar power,” says Williams. Also, be sure to take all the smart energy efficiency steps first, so your solar system can better cover your now much-lower energy needs.

Federal, State, and Local Incentives for Solar Power

Both national and local governments have put programs in place to sweeten the deal for residents installing solar power. Through the end of 2007, a federal incentive offered a tax credit for 30 percent of the cost of a solar electric system, up to $2,000—which solar advocates are working to get renewed for 2008 and beyond.

All but a handful of states now offer financial incentives for renewable energy and energy conservation.

State incentives may take a variety of forms, including rebates, grants, loans, or tax incentives. To learn about programs in your state, visit the Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency (DSIRE).

Some cities and counties have their own incentives; check with your state, city, and county’s Department of the Environment.

Decades of Energy Savings

From the day that a solar PV system goes up, it generates energy that reduces the amount of conventional power you’ll pull from the grid. Your current energy rates, as well as any future cost increases in energy rates, determine how much money the system will save you over time. 

“When you buy solar power,” says Williams, “you have bought that power at a fixed price for the next 25 years. It’s hard to calculate utility prices for years into the future, but rates are going to go up.”

In other words, even if infl ation raises the dollar cost of energy over the next two decades, the energy your solar panels provide in 2028 will have been purchased in 2008 dollars, a dramatic longterm savings. And if, as experts expect, new carbon regulation and financing constraints dramatically increase the cost of coal power over the coming three decades, the savings from pre-purchased solar power will be even more significant.

Net Metering

Home solar PV systems rarely make more solar energy than the household uses overall; but they often do make more energy than the household is using during the sunny daytime. About 40 states have laws guaranteeing that a homeowner with a solar system can place “net” extra solar power onto the grid when their panels are over-producing, and then pull the same amount of free power from the grid when they’re under-producing. You'll want to find out if your state has net metering, if the utility pays in full or at a discount for the power you supply, and if the net is calculated annually or monthly. While local details vary, a solar system in a netmetering state can reduce homeowners’ energy bills more dramatically than if they only benefited from the solar power they could use at sunny times. 

Increase in Home Value

One thing that helped the Ellenbogen family justify the expense of their new solar system was that they anticipated that it would increase the value of their home, and with good reason.

“The American Appraisers Association has proven that, on average, every dollar saved on your monthly electric bill” by an energy-saving renovation such as a solar system “adds $20 in value to the house—which can start to add up,” says Williams. And studies in California show that “the houses that have solar sell for much more—by more than the cost of the solar.”

Solar or Home Equity Loans

As with any major home improvement, you can finance a solar system with a loan, generally repayable over a 15-year period. Though home solar systems should in theory be eligible for much more generous financing than, say, a kitchen renovation—because only a solar system will continue to save homeowners money—the major credit providers haven’t created preferential solar loans yet, says Gary Kremen of Clean Power Finance, in San Francisco. Though some mortgage companies market their generic home equity loans or refinancing rates to solar customers, solar customers would be best off for now simply shopping for a favorable home equity loan or mortgage refinancing. Clean Power Finance, for the time being, serves as a broker between solar PV customers, solar installers, and major banks, working to secure good loan rates for customers who want to undertake energy-saving and energy generating renovations. But they, too, are currently shopping among generic loans.

Note, though, that for new homes, you can add the cost of a new solar system directly to your mortgage; and if you are purchasing or refinancing a home using a loan guaranteed by the Federal Housing Administration, you can raise the maximum loan limit by 20 percent if the home has a solar system or you’re planning to install one. Some states, municipalities, and PV providers also have favorable loan programs.

A "Rooftop CD?"

If you are fortunate enough to have $20,000 or more in Certificates of Deposit (CDs), these low-risk, insured financial products will bring around a 3.5% interest rate over a five-year time period. You can think of solar as a rooftop “CD” with a guaranteed return.

A small (2 kw) solar electricity system will cost around $20,000, and federal, state, and local incentives may bring the cost down to $13,500. And assuming you pay average energy prices (about 10.8 cents/kilowatt), the average annual savings from a system of this size will be at least $280 per year, corresponding to a 2% "interest rate." And in regions where energy rates (and therefore savings) are higher, a solar system can start to look like a very reliable, if unconventional, Certificate of Deposit that lives on your roof instead of at the bank.

While the analogy isn't perfect, because the value of the solar installation will decline over time, the increased value of your home due to a solar system can be seen as similar to the initial “principal” placed in a conventional CD.

What About Waiting for Solar Prices to Drop?

Green America’s Solar Catalyst program is working hard to bring down the price of solar power to be competitive with coal power within the coming decade. And rising energy costs will only hasten the day when installing a solar system is a significant, money-saving proposition. If you’re not in a position to put up solar at today’s prices, make major energy-efficiency improvements around your home so your energy needs will already be reduced when solar costs come down in the future. Meanwhile, everyone who is ready to ready to install solar now can play a valuable role in supporting and expanding the solar market.

Solar Appliances

Even if you’re not in a position to invest in a PV solar electricity system right now, you may be able to consider solar-powered appliances to reduce your household energy use.

A solar attic fan, powered by a single PV panel, vents hot air from the top of the house, reducing the load on air conditioners. The fans cost $300–800 and may be eligible for energy conservation rebates in some states (check www.dsireusa.org).

A solar hot water heater can reduce your energy bill by more than half. They come in several different designs, generally cost $1,000–$6,000, with federal and state rebates covering up to a third of the cost. Learn about solar hot water heaters in our previous Real Green article.

Purchasing Green Power

Whether or not you can generate any green energy on your own roof, you can direct your energy dollars towards renewables by purchasing “green power.” This may be an option through your utility (check the EPA’s map), or you may be able to purchase Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs, or “green tags”) that support putting as much wind or other clean energy onto the grid as your household is using. NativeEnergy, for example, sells RECs generated by its wind projects that benefit small farmers and Native American communities. 

Everyone who can afford solar now is sending a big signal to companies and politicians that it’s time to scale up on solar in a big way. (Here is a tool for finding a ballpark estimate of how much it will cost you.) And Williams hopes the day is coming soon when homeowners won’t have to consider solar a luxury expense: “We’re getting closer to the tipping point,” he says. “The minute the economic argument is strong, everyone will do it.” For right now, he says, “Solar is a great long-term, high-value investment.”

The Problem with Seafood from Thailand

Thailand is the world’s third-largest seafood exporter, behind only China and Norway. Every year, the Thai fishing fleet finds itself short by about 60,000 crew members, so human traffickers help boat captains fill that gap by kidnapping men from Thailand or luring men from Myanmar (formerly Burma) and Cambodia onto the boats with false promises.

Once aboard, the workers toil for years in horrific, extremely dangerous conditions, including 20-hour workdays, homogenous diets of scrap or “trash” fish, cramped quarters, and physical and mental abuse. Some never see land for years.

Only one in six Thai fishing boats is registered—the rest operate as a “ghost fleet”, coming into port and leaving without registering their presence or their workers with authorities.

After hearing stories on the street in Myanmar about men disappearing from villages to become modern-day slaves on fishing boats in Thailand, journalist Becky Palmstrom knew she had to act.

She teamed up with award-winning journalist Shannon Service, and the two women set out to uncover what was happening to the disappearing fishermen. After nine months of on-the-ground investigations in Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, and Cambodia, they released a two-part series for National Public Radio that told the stories of several fishermen who had indeed been enslaved on Thai fishing boats. With this series, the two were among the first to break the story in the US and in many countries abroad, and, in the words of Matthew Friedman from the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking, “helped to bring international attention to the plight of fisherman in the Mekong Region.”

Today, Palmstrom and Service are completing The Ghost Fleet, a ten-minute short film that expands their NPR piece, and they’re working to turn the hundreds of hours of footage they and their crew have filmed into a long documentary.

Green America’s Tracy Fernandez Rysavy talked to Shannon Service about her experiences with the “ghost fleet” fishermen.

photo by Shannon Service

In part because so many young men are being enslaved on Thai fishing boats, families in Cambodia lack able-bodied men to help make ends meet.

Green American/Tracy: What’s the status with your film, The Ghost Fleet, and what are you hoping turning your NPR piece into a documentary will accomplish?

Shannon: We’re finished with the first round of filming, where we interviewed several men who had escaped from Thai fishing boats. We plan to put out a short film in the next several months and use it to raise money for a long feature.

One of the things we are trying to do is provide the story and the in-depth human aspect to this whole landscape. The advocacy piece is coming together with a number of organizations working on the issue. What we think we can provide is the stories of a few people whose experiences stick in your mind and capture your heart and show you that these are guys ... I was going to say they’re normal, everyday guys, but I can’t because they’ve been on a crazy odyssey.

Green American/Tracy: Right. How does that odyssey start? How are the men lured onto the fishing boats?

Shannon: Inside Thailand, the biggest route is being drugged in a bar or brothel and kidnapped, especially in port towns, because it’s all about the captains needing crew.
For people outside of Thailand, probably the biggest route to ending up on a Thai boat is that they’re sold straight out of their villages—usually by people they know—to brokers, who make money by selling men. It’s an informal network that stretches into villages in Myanmar and Cambodia.

A cousin or neighbor might say, “Things aren’t going so well with your rice harvest. I can get you a great job in Thailand, where the baht is strong, in a factory or other situation. You’ll make three times as much money, and you can come back whenever you want.”

The cousin or neighbor will get paid by a broker, who will sell men to another broker and then to another. A broker at the border will then smuggle them across and sell them to Thai brokers, who sell them again to others, who sell them to fishing boat captains. It’s an incredibly difficult thing to track, like a spider web. In some cases, the men do end up in good factory jobs, work in good conditions, and can leave when they want. Those men come back and build expensive houses in their villages, so other men think, “That looks great; I want that, too.”

The problem is you just don’t know where someone will end up, especially with the hand-offs from broker to broker. The biggest deciding factor is whether someone has enough money to pay the brokers. If a worker can pay, chances are high he’ll end up in a good situation, because he’s the client. Because most are coming from economic hardship, the next broker is the client, and the men aren’t—they’re the goods. So they’re shuttled along, and they take their chances.

A lot of migrant workers come to Thailand, and brokers will approach them and lie: “I’ll take you to a warehouse, or a short-haul ship that goes out and comes back in the evening.” And then it goes out for years.

Green American/Tracy: Tell me about the conditions the men endure once they’re on the boats.

Shannon: First of all, the boats are not large. They’re about the size of an 18-wheeler with ten men working aboard. These men are usually from different countries, speaking different languages. A lot have historic problems or wars between them, and they might not like each other much. So they’re living and working inside a very confined space, typically without proper medicine. If someone gets cut, they may die of infection. They don’t have access to a variety of food and are mainly eating trash fish that won’t sell.
There are resupply boats that come out to meet the fishing boats, which is what allows them to stay out at sea for so long. Captains don’t want to bring their boats close to shore, because they’ll lose their slaves. The resupply boats bring ice, food, men, and bring the fish back to shore so the boats can stay out there. I met one guy who was out for ten years without seeing land at all.

photo by Shannon Service

Sok Chan, one of the fisherman in the Ghost Fleet documentary, was lured onto a Thai fishing boat by the promise of good pay. He wasn’t paid at all and ended up escaping.

The men will work up to 20 hours, sometimes more, at a stretch. The captains often give them methamphetamines to keep them working for hours without full nutrition. It’s a common thing that they will kill each other. They’re growing stronger through work, and they start to come into conflict because they’re in a small space and on amphetamines.

So conflict is common, and it takes violence to control them. They’re beaten routinely with engine belts, butts of rifles, stingray tails. I talked to one man who saw his crewmates beheaded. It’s not at all uncommon to pull up body parts in their nets. Every single guy I talked to, well over a dozen, told me a captain or slave master had killed someone in front of him.

One of the major problems is that the boats aren’t tracked, and the men on them aren’t tracked. These boats are called the “ghost fleet,” because they come in, leave, and no one knows how many men are on them or what their names are. Nobody tracks that ten men left and nine came back.

On the flip side, many men are able to keep themselves largely sane, keep each other sane, and develop friendships that keep each other safe. I heard many examples of heroism and sacrifice in these conditions.

There was a father and son who jumped ship and were sheltered by a Cambodian crew on a resupply boat. They hid in the ice compartment of the boat in total darkness and cold until they escaped to shore. The crew risked their lives—if they’d been caught, they’d surely have been killed.

Green American/Tracy: You said one of the purposes of your film is to put a human face on this issue. Would you share one of the fishermen’s stories with us?

Shannon: One of the guys we’ve focused on in the short film is Asorasak Thama. He actually was tricked onto a Thai fishing boat by a friend of his. The friend said he’d get plenty of money and have great working conditions, and he could come back after a few weeks. He wasn’t paid at all, and he was kept out at sea for a year. The only reason he made it home was that the boat was captured [by authorities] while illegally fishing in Indonesian waters.

Years later, he was drinking in southern Thailand and was drugged and ended up on a fishing boat again. He told us that when he woke up, “It was horrifying, but I also knew what to do. I’d done this before, so it wasn’t as horrifying as the first time.”

Fishing is incredibly intense, dangerous work, so he felt that at least this time, he knew how to fish. He did fish with the second boat for several months—the time frames are always a little squishy, because it’s not like they are sitting there with a calendar.

One day, he started arguing with his captain, who had been known to kill people in the past. So when boat came into shore to get a fishing license from Malaysia, he waited until the captain had had a few drinks, then punched him and ran.

photo by Shannon Service

Vannak Prum left his village in Cambodia looking for work. He was enslaved on a Thai boat for three years before he escaped.

He had no way home. It takes a lot of money, and he had no passport. Men like him jump ship, they go through unbelievable things [to escape], and then they can’t get home. He had to make his way working on palm oil plantations. He eventually met a nice local guy, Sani, who used hand signals to ask if he was hungry. Sani took him in and fed him, housed him with his family. Turns out Sani was a local fisherman, so Asorasak and Sani would fish, and Asorasak was able to keep some of the catch. But it wasn’t enough to earn his way back.

When our crew met him in this remote area of Borneo, we told him we knew some organizations who could get him home. There’s a small network of local organizations that have been helping men like him—none of which have it in their mandate to do this, but they just ended up doing it. They work with the governments to raise money and get men repatriated.

It took over 70 days for him to get travel documents, but he did manage to get home, and we followed him.

We don’t know where his mom is, because she was working. His sister and aunts were there, uncles, cousins. It’s a small town, so everyone was really happy to see him. Looking at family, most were older. He was the only young, able-bodied guy that I saw. In a rural family, that’s a really big deal.

That also points to another major issue. If you go to parts of Cambodia, and probably Myanmar, there are basically no able-bodied working men, just old men and boys. They’re not all slaves on Thai boats, but seeing that lack gives you a sense of the outflow of men trying to support families. When they don’t send money back or don’t come back, it’s a major problem. Fields don’t get sown, families don’t eat. Every one of the men [we talked to] was tied to a family who has been struggling.

The scale [of the slavery problem on Thai boats] is hard to gauge because it’s all underground. But so many men are absent from Cambodia and Myanmar because they’ve been enslaved. And there are so many extra men in the southern regions of Asia like Indonesia and Malaysia. According to the ambassador in charge of human trafficking for the US State Department, there are so many absent, it’s knocking the entire economy of Southeast Asia off kilter.

Take Action: Green America campaign

For the past few years, Green America has worked to protect the rights of fisherman in Thailand. In 2014, in response to pressure from NGOs including Green America, the US State Department downgraded Thailand to “tier 3,” or the worst level, in its annual Trafficking in Persons report, This downgrade sent a strong message to the Thai government to end the corruption that allows human trafficking to persist.

Recently, the Thai government proposed a scheme to supply prison laborers to fishing boats—a plan that would replace one vulnerable population (migrants) with another (prisoners) and would do nothing to prevent human rights abuses. In January 2015, Green America and our allies were quick to oppose this plan in the press, and the Thai government has stated it will not move forward.

The Thai government is not the only actor that bears responsibility for labor abuse in the country’s fishing sector. Global seafood companies profit tremendously from cheap labor and lax regulation in Thailand. In 2014, the Guardian connected the “trash fish” used to feed shrimp sold in Costco and Walmart to slave labor.

Sign our online petition demanding that Costco source from only sustainable and socially responsible fisheries and fish farms, and trace its shrimp down to the boat level, including the boats catching “trash-fish” used as feed on fish farms.

Green American/Tracy: Does the slavery ever come to an end nonviolently? Or is this just an indefinite condition for these workers until they are killed or can escape?

Shannon: There are some good captains who will drop off men who are too unruly or too ill. But it sounds like that’s pretty rare.
There’s a rumor, I haven’t seen it, that there are some remote islands where men are dropped off. I don’t know under what kind of conditions. [We’re investigating that as] part of the bigger feature. What it sounds like to me is that it’s more a matter of expediency. If the boats happen to be close to these islands, they’ll drop men off. If it’s easier to simply kill, that’s often what’s done.

Sometimes the boats will illegally fish inside the boundaries of other countries. If they’re busted, eventually the crew will go home. Although sometimes the crew will be prosecuted for the crime they “committed” while enslaved.

Sometimes the boats do come back to shore to be repaired. If there’s a crew member who’s too sick to work, he’ll be let off, and more men will be bought.

Every guy I talked to so far has escaped. I have yet to talk to someone who didn’t have to jump ship or hitch a ride or punch his captain to get home.

Green American/Tracy: You said that the Thai government and police are complicit in the slavery on boats.

Shannon: Usually you have large groups of men who are moving [illegally] through borders and ports. That doesn’t happen without it being noticed. The local police, particularly at the ports, are being paid by the brokers or boat captains to look the other way.

We interviewed the governor of a Thai district where men are commonly trafficked. Probably thousands of men are going through the border checkpoint [in his district], so we asked him why he wasn’t doing anything about it. He said because the military and police are paid off—they won’t arrest anyone because they’re in pockets of traffickers.

Then you have police who, as [non-Thai] workers are being transported illegally from the border to the boats, will stop the trucks. The men are stacked like lumber in the back of these trucks, with a tarp thrown over them, and the drivers regularly take certain routes. The police will pull them over and bust everyone on immigration charges. Then they’ll extort everyone on the truck, including the enslaved men.
There are a lot of reports that the police in southern Thailand are busting boats for having undocumented workers on board. They’ll arrest the workers, and then sell them to other fishing boat captains.

We went into a station and asked [about this practice]. At first, the police fully denied it. Then they said, “Okay, it happened here, but it wasn’t us.”

Green American/Tracy: What is the connection between this issue and exploitation on palm oil plantations?

Shannon: Boats will go out in middle of ocean when they have slaves [to keep them from escaping]. Fish like being close to shore, so there isn’t a lot in the middle of the ocean. If you’re a boat captain, you may have to chase fish into the border waters of other countries. You can either do pirate fishing, or, if you’re afraid of getting caught, you apply for a fishing license.

The point is that the boats will come close to shore to pirate fish or to obtain a legal fishing license. That’s when men jump, and there are areas where men have historically jumped ship in Indonesia and Malaysia. The police figured out that they could wait for the men.

The men would jump, run, hide. They’d go to the police speaking a foreign language, saying, “Cambodia”, “Myanmar”, or “Vietnam”, and police would put them back on boats or sell them to palm oil plantations.

The plantations are better than the boats, but we’re comparing horrors. They’re forced to work, and then there’s a company store where they’re charged at exorbitant rates for the things they need. Every month, they find they have to keep working to pay a debt they can never work off. They have to run again from the palm oil plantation.

Vannak Prum, one of the men we talked to, was kept on a fishing boat for three years. He jumped to one of the areas where police would wait for the escaped men, and he was sold to a palm oil plantation. Malaysia has since cleaned up that area, but it was like that for a long time.

Vannak worked at a couple of palm oil plantations before he could escape again.

Choose Fish Responsibly

Over the past decade, global awareness of overfishing has grown, and in response, a number of standards and certification bodies have been developed to ensure the world doesn’t fish the ocean empty. However, there is still work to be done with seafood companies and certifiers to address human rights issues in production, not only environmental problems.

Here are some labels you are likely to encounter at the grocery store and what they mean (and don’t mean):

Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) Standard for sustainable marine-caught fisheries
Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) Standard for sustainable fish farms

The MSC and ASC standards help ensure fish was caught or farmed in a sustainable way. These standards focus primarily on ecological issues, such as preventing overfishing, minimizing the environmental impact of a fishing operation, and monitoring waste water and genetic diversity. These standards do not focus on human rights issues; however, they do require certified partners to follow local labor laws.

At present, neither MSC nor ASC has certified any fishing operation in Thailand.

Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP)
BAP certification focuses on the sustainability of fish farms, as well as hatcheries and processing facilities. The BAP standard includes provisions for both environmental and human rights issues. BAP has certified hundreds of fishing operations throughout Asia, Australia, the US and Mexico, and South America.

Green American/Tracy: What are the men enslaved on these boats catching, and how can Americans avoid fish that’s connected to the Thai fleet?

Shannon: They’re catching everything—tuna, squid, etc. The boats send the fish back to Thailand to be processed, canned, frozen, and sent elsewhere. The stuff that is transported mainly to us in the States comes in the form of pet food or frozen fish. If you go to frozen food aisle in the grocery store and pull out fish, if it says “product of Thailand,” it doesn’t necessarily mean slaves caught that fish, but there’s a higher likelihood. The likelihood is lower that fresh fish on ice is coming from Thailand.

I personally avoid frozen and canned fish products that are coming from Thailand, and I try to make sure that fish I eat is fresh, ideally local, ideally seasonal.

There’s no independent certification that ensures boats are tracked through the supply chain. It does come down to US consumers putting pressure on supermarkets to put fish on the shelves that they know to be ethical. And therefore, it’s up to supermarkets to use their purchasing power to choose clear supply chains that customers can check ourselves, or to go through a third-party to examine the supply chain to make sure there’s no slavery or forced labor. It’s within their power. But whether they take those steps will depend on the consumer.

Learn More

The Ghost Fleet Movie website includes the original NPR story on the Thai fishing fleet, as well as information about the upcoming short- and long-documentary.

Greenpeace USA’s “Carting Away the Oceans” report ranks US retailers based on their commitment to selling environmentally sustainable seafood. In their 2014 report, Whole Foods, Safeway, Wegmans, and Trader Joes all earned high marks for sustainable sourcing, while Kroger and Publix scored near the bottom.

The International Organization on Migration released a report in 2011 on the Thai fishing industry, “Tracking of Fishermen in Thailand”, and assists escaped fishing workers.

Seafood Watch, a program run by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, helps people choose fish that are farmed/caught sustainably and avoid those that are overfished. Its free guides are updated throughout the year and by region.

Slavery Footprint in Oakland, CA, helps former Thai fishing workers get home and obtain mental health services.

Tenaganita, based in Kuala Lumpur, aids refugees in southeast Asia, including helping escaped Thai fishing workers get back home.

Dominion cancels 3 coal-fired power plants. (June 2006)

With the New Year in sight, many of us start looking ahead to 2015, setting our priorities, goals, and intentions. But maybe this year, instead of making some of the same old promises to yourself (this writer confesses to ritually vowing to be more organized with paperwork, bills, and properly archiving the hundreds of pages of kid artwork that come into our home), you can set your sights on some vital and easy-to-take steps to clean up and green-up your finances.

Make 2015 the year that you make important (and easy!) changes that will move your money into alignment with your values, and you can go through the year knowing that your New Year’s resolution isn’t just good for you, but for the whole world. Here are four ideas to get you started in 2015.

WHAT? Make your New Year’s resolution to improve the health of your finances.

WHY? The new year is an ideal time to take stock of your financial health—and make improvements to ensure you save as much as possible for your future..

WOW! It’s also a great time to ensure your money is working for you and for a better world.

1. Save More for Your Future

Start paying yourself first, if you haven’t yet taken this step, by regularly setting aside as much as you can for retirement.
“One smart and concrete resolution is to commit to putting a certain amount of your paycheck into retirement every month,” says Bob Dreizler, a Chartered Financial Consultant® in Sacramento.

If you are putting even a little away each month, that savings will build over time and help create a more secure future for you and your family.

It’s always a good idea to contribute the maximum amount you can to your retirement accounts. If your workplace offers free matching funds if you contribute to an employer-sponsored retirement account, make sure you meet the requirements to take advantage of it—it’s free money!

The New Year is also a time to make sure that the women in your family, in particular, are saving appropriately. Cindy Hounsell of the Women’s Institute for A Secure Retirement (WISER) points out that women tend to under-save for their retirement.
“Because women tend to live longer, they need to have more retirement savings,” says Hounsell. “This is compounded by the fact that women often make less than men, so they have to save more while making less.”

If you’re a woman, don’t delay in securing your future. And remember, as Hounsell points out, “One of the gifts you can give your family is to take care of yourself through savings and retirement.”

In addition, January is a perfect month to consider moving more of your money into green retirement accounts.

“For people who want to become more involved in mission-aligned green investing, the best place to start is often to find out what kinds of investments are inside the mutual funds in the retirement plans they participate in,” says Dreizler.

He recommends visiting the websites of your retirement accounts—your employer-sponsored 401(k) or 403(b), as well as your IRAs and other individual retirement accounts. Dig down to find out the top ten stock holdings in the mutual funds that make up those accounts—and then go online to research if the companies mesh with your values.

Keeping your retirement savings in a socially responsible retirement vehicles is a great way to build your savings while putting your investments dollars towards a better world. Many socially responsible investment companies, like Calvert Investments, Portfolio 21, Green Century Funds, and others, have both Roth and traditional IRA funds available.

Advanced step: If you have a 401(k) or 403(b) through your employer, ask your benefits manager about socially responsible options. If one isn’t currently available, distribute a copy of Green America’s free guide, “Planning For a Better Future,” which helps employers discover how to offer socially and environmentally friendly retirement options through work plans.

2. Break Up With Your Mega-Bank

You’ve heard us say it before, but if you haven’t already, it really is time to break up with your mega-bank and switch to a community development bank or credit union that will keep your money in your community and funding projects you can be proud of. Need a reminder of why breaking away from your mega-bank should be a priority for 2015?

• Mega-banks JP Morgan Chase, Citi, and Bank of America have led the way for banks financing climate-changing coal since 2005, according to BankTrack.org, which tracks the operations and investments of commercial banks.
• A 2012 report from the Centre for Research on Globalization found that banks Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, UBS, Deutsche Bank, HSBC Bank, and others are making heavy investments to buy up access to water worldwide, including purchasing thousands of acres of land with aquifers, lakes, water rights, water utilities, and shares in water engineering and technology companies all over the world.
• Despite continued evidence that small businesses are essential drivers of the American economy, the New Rules Project reported in 2010 that the 20 biggest banks “devote only 18 percent of their commercial loan portfolios to small business.”

The list goes on, and you can read more reasons a break-up is necessary at Green America’s breakupwithyour megabank.org. By following a few steps to switch your accounts to a community development bank or credit union, you can put your money to work funding affordable housing, small businesses, and projects that build up communities rather than break them down. Our free guide (see the resource box) can help you find a community development bank or credit union in your city. If a local bank isn’t an option, many banks make it easy to do all of your banking from a distance.

Advanced step: Don’t forget that most credit cards are also backed by a mega-bank. For help finding responsible credit cards that aren’t connected to mega-banks, see the resource box, and see p. 19 for more on the Green America Visa, offered through Beneficial State Bank.

Green America’s Investment Resources

For a list of credit cards backed by credit unions and community development banks, visit Green America’s Take Charge of Your Card campaign website. Consider the Green America Visa, which supports community development banking and Green America’s programs

Our Break Up With Your Mega-Bank campaign makes the case for breaking up with that mega-bank for good, and connects you with resources to switch to a community development bank or credit union.

Our Guide to Fossil Fuel Divestment and Clean-Energy Reinvestment digs deep into the reasons to divest from fossil fuels, and how you can reinvest your money in an economy that will help people and the planet. Access the guide for free.

Greenpages.org is the free online version of Green America’s National Green Pages®. Consult the “Financial—Advisors & Planners” category to find socially responsible investment companies and financial advisors.

Ask your employer to offer socially responsible retirement options. Green America’s free guide, Plan For a Better Future: How to Add Socially and Environmentally Responsible Retirement Options to an Employer’s Retirement Plan, can help.

3. Conquer Your Fears

If the thought of examining your finances or having conversations about money keeps you up at night, the new year is a good time to face some of your fears and develop a clear understanding of where you stand financially. If you get into the habit of doing it each year, you may be able to cut down on some of that anxiety and find joy in a new relationship with money.

“Engage!” recommends Lousville-based financial advisor Carrie VanWinkle. “Take a step towards engaging with something in your financial life that you’ve been keeping at arm’s length. Maybe it’s that quarterly investment statement that you never open. Commit to opening the envelope, Googling some terms in the statement you don’t yet understand, or asking your financial advisor for more information. By taking those small steps to engage, by the end of the year you will become more confident in that area of your financial life.”

“The new year is the perfect time to improve your overall financial responsibility,” adds Bob Dreizler. Dreizler points out that the beginning of a new year means you’ll be receiving statements from your bank, mutual funds you invest in, student loans, and more, making it a great time to assess where you stand each year.

“Use the information on these statements to do a balance sheet,” he recommends. “Write down where your assets are, the total of all your assets, and also the total of your liabilities—what you owe on your credit card, on your car loan, student loans, etc. At the end of the year, get out your balance sheet and compare it to the year before. Make sure your assets are growing and liabilities decreasing.”

Advanced step: Facing your financial fears this January 1st might also mean looking ahead to the future and making sure you have a will or estate plan in the case of your death.

“At the very least,” says VanWinkle, “Make sure that the beneficiaries on all of your accounts are up to date. This is especially important for LGBT couples in states where they can’t yet marry or for couples who choose not to marry for whatever reason.”
Unmarried couples can face specific hardships in dealing with financial matters upon the death of one partner, points out Emily Bowen, a Michigan-based financial advisor with experience working with LGBT couples.

“What is the state of your will, power of attorney, and medical power of attorney?” she asks. “Will your spouse have to deal with the uphill battle of probate—on top of losing the love of their life—because you didn’t plan well for them?”

4. Divest from Fossil Fuels and Reinvest in Clean Energy


While you’re talking with your financial advisor, ask him or her about fossil-fuel divestment. Divestment emerged as a dynamic activist strategy in the 1980s when investors sold off stocks they held in companies that supported the apartheid regime of South Africa. Today, in a bid to pressure corporate America to take action to mitigate the rapidly worsening climate crisis, socially responsible investors around the world are divesting from companies that hold reserves in fossil fuels. Burning these reserves could result in a catapult past the two-degree rise in world temperatures that scientists say will result in the most catastrophic forms of climate change.

“In the past couple of years we have seen a huge movement to divest from fossil fuels,” says Fran Teplitz, Green America’s social investing director. “University endowments, city government pension funds, religious institutions, foundations, and countless individual investors are pulling their money out of oil and gas companies with fossil fuel reserves and switching to investments in clean energy” (see p. 4).

The South African divestment movement showed the world that the stigma associated with widespread divestment campaigns have motivated companies to change their ways. With our climate getting closer to the tipping point of catastrophic changes, commit to supporting fossil-fuel divestment in 2015 and investing to support clean energy.

• Purge your own portfolio of the worst oil and gas companies. Gofossil
  free.org lists the top 200 global companies with the largest fossil fuel reserves.
  If, like most people, you don’t manage your own investments, ask your financial advisor to look for fossil-free funds and investments.
• Encourage your institutions to divest. University endowments, pensions funds, charitable foundations, and religious institutions have been leaders in the fossil-fuel divestment movement. Visit gofossilfree.org to find a list of ongoing campaigns pressuring endowments, cities, and other institutions to divest, and add your voice to the chorus of concerned citizens who support a cleaner economy.

To help solidify your resolution to divest and help build the US movement for a clean-energy future, take the Divestment Pledge for Individuals at
divestinvest.org.

Advanced step: Consider re-investing your money in clean, green energy. One of the easiest ways to make sure your investments aren’t going toward the burning of fossil fuels is to invest through trusted socially responsible mutual funds that screen out companies who, among other things, hold fossil fuel reserves. You can also find funds that specialize in supporting green energy like solar and wind. Search greenpages.org for a socially responsible mutual fund, or to find a financial advisor who specializes in matching your investment strategies with your values.

For 2015 and Beyond

Let’s be honest—a lot of our would-be resolutions, whether it be exercising more or staying away from chocolate, don’t last all year. But when you commit to one of the resolutions above, and put time into shifting your investments or establishing a retirement account, your work for the year is done! All you have to do is move your money once, and all year long and beyond it will be at work for communities and clean energy industries who need it the most.

—Sarah Tarver-Walhquist

Procter & Gamble committed to sell Fair Trade Certified™ coffee products through its speciality coffee division, Millstone