Mark Stoiber

“Executives today are being taught about ’social innovation’, a term that seamlessly incorporates the best of the above three terms, and reaches further – bringing along collective spirit, new thinking and economic responsibility for the ride.

“How does this work in real life? Consider:

“Ford developed a plastic shipping container used to ferry parts from one plant to the next. The shipping container eliminates the use of cardboard, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, reduces the number of shipments required, and is more ergonomic for factory workers. It is also recycled into splash shields for the F-150.

“This shipping container saves Ford 25% in shipping costs, helps people, and helps the environment.

“Another thing we need to do – show people that there is an intersection where desire and virtue meet. You can still fulfill your desire for wants beyond needs, and make the world a better place at the same time.

“Maybe Bono summed it up most succinctly, talking about his new line of products under the RED label…

“‘And that’s what Red is all about, the knowledge that desire – the desire to shop – and virtue – the wish to see the world a better place – are not always contradictory.”

“No longer optional.

“We need to make sure companies that we work with know that if they don’t start acting on sustainability initiatives now, they are going to be stuck in a losing game of catch up.

“Sustainability is on the very cusp of being mainstream and it will move forward quickly. Grab the advantage before it becomes table stakes.”

Marc Stoiber is an entrepreneur with experience building brands, and has nearly two decades of global experience in every sector from packaged goods and beverage alcohol to pharma, financial services and tech. In addition to leading Change, he is a public speaker on the subject of green brand innovation.

North Pacific gyre source: OleLog

Nielsen reports: “Can you imagine what happens when marine garbage ends up in such a vortex? It will never leave it again, all plastic will circulate, new plastic come by and circulate. Ships continue dumping their garbage at sea, and you end up with the world’s biggest landfill in the Pacific Ocean.

“It has been given different names like the “Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches”, sometimes collectively called the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”, the “Pacific Trash Vortex”, or for short the “Plastic Vortex”. The garbage patches present numerous hazards to marine life, fishing and tourism. Plastic constitutes 90 percent of all trash floating in the world’s oceans. The Eastern Garbage Patch floats between Hawaii and California and is first and foremost a Pacific island of rubbish twice the size of Texas and created from six million tonnes of discarded plastic. In the peer review journal, Marine Pollution Bulletin, Charles Moore estimated the plastic mass in the Pacific Gyre to be six times that of plankton.

“In June (10 June to 25 July 2009) a high-seas mission departs from San Francisco to map and explore the Pacific Garbage Patch. Scientists and conservationists on the expedition will begin attempts to retrieve and recycle this ugly monument to throwaway living in the middle of the North Pacific. With a crew of 30, the expedition, supported by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Brita, the water company, will use unmanned aircraft and robotic surface explorers to map the extent and depth of the plastic continent while collecting 40 tonnes of the refuse for trial recycling.

“Bottle caps, plastic bags and polystyrene floating with tiny plastic chips, worn down by sunlight and waves, disintegrates into smaller pieces. Suspended under the surface, these tiny fragments are invisible to ships and satellites trying to map the plastic continent. The damage caused by these tiny fragments is more insidious than strangulation, entrapment and choking by larger plastic refuse. The fragments act as sponges for heavy metals and pollutants until mistaken for food by small fish. The toxins then become more concentrated as they move up the food chain through larger fish, birds and marine mammals.”

We hope posts such as the one above from Mr. Nielsen helps end such wasteful, polluting nonsense.