If you want to feel good about cocktail hour, consider pouring out some Patrón Tequila, a brand deeply committed to preserving the environment, and as Greg Cohen, VP of Communications says, “It starts at the top.”

“Our founder John Paul DeJoria is deeply committed to preserving the environment, supporting environmental causes, and giving back to communities in which we do business,” explains Cohen. “This has been an important part of our business since day one.

Thanks to its efforts, Patrón Tequila has earned an ISO 1400 Certification, an internationally recognized environmental standard shared by Diplomatico Rum.

Here are just a few of the many reasons that you can feel good about drinking Patrón Tequila.

1. Patrón Tequila Uses Recycled Materials Whenever Possible

To reduce its carbon footprint, Patrón Tequila uses several recycled materials, such as shipping boxes made from recycled paper.

Use of these boxes has been reduced as well. Patrón Tequila has cut box use by 30 percent in order to reduce excess paper usage, by abandoning individual packaging for bottles being shipped directly to bars and restaurants.

2. Patrón Tequila Recycles Waste Byproducts of its Production

“Water is vitally important to the production of tequila, so much in fact that it was a key factor in choosing where to locate our distillery,” says Cohen, who notes that the naturally soft water well on-site is essential to the production of the tequila.

But it is just as important to dispose of wastewater correctly. Patrón has developed industry-leading reverse osmosis technology that recycles 70 percent of its stillage, or leftover distillate, into clean water. Remaining stillage is combined with the byproducts of the agave used to distill the tequila, and the resulting combination is used for compost in the distillery’s on-site vegetable garden.

The resulting clean water, meanwhile, is used in the Hacienda’s facility cooling towers and gardens.

Patrón has also implemented a system of garbage separation in their facilities, which makes recycling even easier.

3. Patrón Tequila is Involved in the Local Community

In addition to these environmental efforts, Patrón donates to various causes, including the Waterkeeper Alliance, an international association chaired by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of clean water advocates committed to protecting communities, ecosystems and water quality.

“We’re also very actively involved in civic and charitable causes in the small town in Jalisco, Mexico where the Patrón distillery is located, including support for orphanages, homes for the elderly, and food banks,” explains Cohen.

Patrón Tequila also recently installed a natural gas pipeline, to reduce harmful air emissions from production.

For these three reasons — and many more — you can feel good about pouring a glass of Patrón. Here are just a few recipes to enjoy.

Lil Mizz Sunshine (Created by Rosie Ruiz, Cole’s (LA))

Serves 4-5

Ingredients

6 oz Roca Patrón Reposado
2 oz Patrón Citrónge Mango
3 oz Orange/Chamomile Tea-Infused Sweet Vermouth
3 oz Lime Juice
10 White Sugar Cubes
6 oz Club Soda

Directions

Muddle sugar cubes with lime juice, Stir all ingredients (except for club soda) with ice. Strain over 1 large block of ice. Add club soda, and garnish with orange wheels and edible flowers.

Orange Chamomile-Infused Sweet Vermouth
-5 tsp Orange Chamomile Tea Leaves
-750ml Dolin Sweet Vermouth

Infuse tea in vermouth for 2 hours. After 2 hours, strain out tea and refrigerate.

Rosa Picante Margarita (Created by Jordan Corney, Bohanan’s)

Serves 1

Ingredients

2 oz Patrón Silver
.5 oz Patrón Citrónge Lime
1 oz fresh squeezed lime juice
.5 oz ginger syrup
Bar spoon jalapeño oil
Dash rosewater
Rose petal sea salt

Directions

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker and shake with ice to chill. Strain into a chilled cocktail coupe that has been half-rimmed with rose sea salt, and top with a dash of rose water. Garnish with a rose petal, if available.

El Camino (Created by Carlos Ytuuria, Lure + Till)

Serves 1

Ingredients

1.5 oz Roca Reposado
1 oz peach and basil puree
1 oz Lemon juice
.5 oz agave nectar
Garnish: basil leaf

Directions

Shake all ingredients. Serve over ice. Garnish with basil leaf.

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Images care of MBooth

The post 3 Unbelievably Good Reasons to Drink Patrón Tequila (Plus 3 Delicious Cocktail Recipes!) appeared first on EcoSalon.

At first glance, Foodstand appears to merely be an app: One where foodie Instagrammers can post without the backlash that so often comes with repeated photo updates of their lunch. In fact, Foodstand serves more as an incubator than it does as an abstract mobile platform, fostering New York area food startups with a mission to change the way the city eats.

It does so with several initiatives that only begin with its app. While admittedly Instagram-esque, it maintains an element of exclusivity. Only those within the food industry are invited to participate, be them chefs, food writers or foodie entrepreneurs. Foodstand exists, according to its website, “to reconnect with our food community” and “make it easier for everyone to help grow a better food system.” A regular celebration of that mission comes in the form of the Foodstand Spotlight Series: An event where food startups can pitch their business models and purposes to a panel of experts, as well as an audience of industry representatives.

Last Tuesday’s Foodstand Spotlight event featured four food startups looking to make major changes in the way New Yorkers eat and think about where their food comes from.

1. The Pixie and the Scout

Katy McNulty knows her way around a kitchen and holds strong tenets for the ingredients that belong in it. That credo remains a motivation behind The Pixie and The Scout, the catering company that she co-founded with her husband, offering “sustainable events” and “intelligent hospitality,” she says. Today, one of the company’s goals is to become a regular alternative to the cafeteria-like settings to which busy professionals commonly restrict themselves, and to earn status as a regional household name that is viewed, as McNulty puts it, like “a sustainable cafe in-house.”

The Pixie and the Scout’s price point is steep, with catered business lunches going roughly for the tune of $250 or more. However, the proof is in the sustainably-sourced contents of each meal. “To actually use…farms and farmers is difficult,” says McNulty. “[We’re] trying to make high-end catering…much more approachable.”

2. Eco-Farm on Wheels

It’s been proven time and time again: Good habits begin in childhood. Carol Lake, owner of the Ridgefield, Connecticut biodynamic Dancing Dog Farm, agrees. Her mission: If urban-dwelling kids can’t come to the farm, bring the farm to them. Armed with live rural animals (pigs, mostly), compost boxes, and buckets of dirt and worms, Lake and her team travel to New York City to teach children the fundamentals of food cultivation. The worms eat the apple core, then produce soil, and that soil is used to plant seeds that turn into fruits and vegetables. Eco-Farm on Wheels has already won a fairly big first client: The New York Public Library.

3. Mountain Morsels

Rebecca Scott is a one-woman shakeup of the snack industry’s landscape. Her company, Sustainable Snacks, produces Mountain Morsels: Five flavors of vegan, dairy-free and gluten-free energy bites, the ingredients for which Scott hand-slices, mixes and produces entirely on her own. Mountain Morsels’ naturally-named varieties (e.g., “Harper’s Ferry Cherry” and “Great Valley Ridge Raisin”) are presently available in 15 locations, with Scott looking to saturate the New York market and beyond.

4. Green Top Farms

Hydroponics are a friend to the urban farmer, allowing eco-friendly vegetables to be grown in non-conventional settings. That’s how Josh Lee, better known as “Farmer Josh,” came to launch Green Top Farms, a producer of microgreens that employs indoor seed trays to locally harvest and distribute sustainable produce. A North Carolina native, Lee gained his expertise in agriculture during the summers he spent working on area farms, today putting that knowledge toward both Green Top Farms and Nourish International, “a non-profit that fights poverty through student action,” according the the former’s website. Weekly microgreen subscriptions can be purchased from Green Top Farms for $20 each, affording four days  of 2.5-oz fresh salads.

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Harvest vegetables image via Shutterstock

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Berlin, Germany has become the world’s contemporary creative capital not in spite, but as a direct consequence, of its post-Apocalyptic legacy. In the humiliating and fragile aftermath of World War II, the Soviet construction of the Berlin Wall effectively calcified the society’s healing process, and the city remained a willy nilly bastion of still recent blood-let and stark economic inequity. Officially, the Wall fell over 20 years ago, but its first cracks were but symbols. Its physical dismantling was hard-won, and this is to say nothing of the intervening, painstaking gains toward cultural reunification.

View of Berlin from Hello Etsy conference center rooftop

In the wake of the global financial crisis, Germany’s export driven industry has emerged as an economic powerhouse and finds itself in the awkward position of propping up the entire euro-zone from financial collapse; yet Berlin, a city of artists and ex-pats, remains poor, with unemployment rates hovering around 12 percent. It’s Berlin’s ongoing monetary malaise that has over the past twenty years evolved this locale into a destination spot for creatives the world over – visionaries attracted by the city’s ever diversifying internationalism, cheap rent, and abiding sense of emergence. Berlin is, if anything, a city that is still coming into being and lacks a singular, unified cultural definition – in this marvelous metropolis there is nobody telling you what to do.

These reasons make Germany’s capital the ideal location for last weekend’s Hello Etsy: A Summit on Small Business and Sustainability. A wildly successful, 2005 founded online marketplace for handmade and reclaimed goods, Etsy is even more so an alternative economic template that relies on interdependence and human scale sustainability rather than competitive, winner-takes-all free-market capitalism. The conference in fact wasn’t an occasion for the transaction of wares and currency at all, but rather an international convergence of creatives sharing skills and exchanging ideas about community based initiatives.

ewerk dining hall – note industrial hook in upper-right panel

Hosted in ewerk, the oldest preserved commercial power plant in Germany (constructed in 1885), Hello Etsy held court in this building surviving two world wars, enduring destructive Communist rule, and eventually emerging as one of the world’s most influential techno music clubs. Against this storied backdrop, Etsy was in full form, ratcheting up the DIY factor with all manner of artisanal accents – from bright hued bricks of handmade soap and homespun towels by the bathroom sinks to conference dining hall tables decorated with reclaimed milk cartons repurposed into planters for potted herbs and other green flora.

The line-up of approximately 40 speakers addressed over 500 attendees and delegates from the United States and Europe, and included a broad spectrum of thought-leaders – from Facebook’s Head of Commerce Partnerships, Google’s Conversion Specialist and Twitter’s European Communications Manager, to an urban farmer, filmmaker, and author. Panels and lectures ranged from practical education (nuts and bolts of running a small business, for example) to the theoretical (corporate globalization is unsustainable, unethical and Etsy’s word, “unfun“).

Attendees at Hello Etsy listen and learn

Main Room speaker Judy Wicks, a spitfire social activist in her retirement years with no intention of slowing down, delivered a talk about what she calls the Local Living Economies Movement. This theoretical framework emphasizes an alternative business model in which growth is measured not in terms of market expansion, but rather through maximized relationships-businesses reinvesting profits right back into the community generating its revenue to develop deeper networks of solidarity, belonging and, Judy’s word, “fun.”

Hello Etsy conference organizers also published an event specific compendium of essays penned by the summit’s panelists and speakers, with a wellspring of advice, abstracts, and inspiration from figures like Alabama Chanin founder and designer, whose contributing essay “The Commandments” offered ethical business entrepreneurs advice such as: Quality is its own testament. Run toward fear. Share and play well with others. Get a good accountant (and an understanding of QuickBooks).

Do bricks of handmade soap really hold the answer to our future? Etsy thinks so

At its core, Hello Etsy was a celebration of business, a critical examination of capitalism’s current un-sustainability as well as ideas about harnessing and transforming the existing system to grow a sane, compassionate future. Judy Wicks in her lecture put it well:  The heart of business doesn’t have to be an engine of greed, but rather sharing love within your community to yield a ‘living’ return on investment.

Business, at its core, is about relationships; money is but a tool for building them.

The post Etsy Barnstorms Berlin appeared first on EcoSalon.

ExclusiveLast month, we began a series of articles looking at progressive issues in the world of equity investment. Our first piece, VCs, Angels and Investing in Women: What Are They Not Thinking?, explored the female business community’s relationship with those groups that play such a major role in driving our economy and business values. What follows is the second article in the series. It focuses on entrepreneurial investment in clean tech and green business.

At the opening of what would become the legendarily (and to some, notoriously) “pro-business” 1980s, President Ronald Reagan took clear and immediate steps to show his commitment to supply-side capitalism. He weakened and busted unions, initiated an unprecedented deregulation movement, and changed tax law to favor corporate interests. He was the champion of “trickle down” economics and, depending whether one sees the man as heroic or demonic, his legacy casts a bright light or dark shadow on us to this day.

In the shadow department, Reagan took an extremely dim view of alternative energy and the budding green movement, in general. This was in part evidenced by his halving the Solar Institute’s budget from 1980 to 1982 and, in 1986, symbolically removing solar panels from the White House.

The panels were clearly a symbolic gesture in the first place. President Jimmy Carter had placed them on the Pennsylvania Avenue mansion in 1979 as a display of American ingenuity and to send a message to that we, as a nation, were committed to exploring environmentally friendly ways to wean ourselves off foreign oil (a national addiction that continues to grip us 30 years later and would, less than a year after the panels went up, play a key role in Carter losing the Presidency). At the installation ceremony, Carter said: “No one can ever embargo the sun or interrupt its delivery to us.”

What was Ronald Reagan saying to the entrepreneurial community when he ripped those solar panels from the roof of the White House – and, through his policies, the nascent alternative energy industry up by its delicate new roots? How did this figure into a free market proposition? Was it a really pro-business? Or simply pro-existing-business?

Better Late than Never

Thirteen years after Ronald Reagan took office, Nancy Floyd got into the green-energy investment business. It was 1993 and it was, as she puts it, “a lonely game.”

Floyd had the chops: In 1982, she founded NFC Energy Corporation, one of the country’s first wind development firms. There she put together more than $30 million in projects and three years later sold the company for a 25-fold return on the original investment. Then, in 1985, she helped found PacTel Spectrum Services which was sold to IBM in 1987.

Yet despite the financial gravitas of the messenger (and a few others like her), the question in the early 1990s remained: when it came to raising green funds, were investors ready to listen?

“At the time, the only market driver was the deregulation of utilities,” remembers Floyd. “There were really no other players or considerations. And though the political winds had changed [with the entrance of the Clinton Administration], our crisis memories are short. OPEC, gas lines, all of it had had been forgotten. Gas was cheap, consumers were apathetic, and the climate crisis was anything but mainstream. Right now, only 50 percent of people believe that [global warming] is real. You can imagine what it was like 20 years ago.”

But Floyd and her small community set out to educate investors as to the possibilities. It was a forward-thinking proposition, but some saw the opportunity (read: a looming crisis) and a discussion around clean tech and “doable” alternative energy began to take shape. This discussion was broad based, and included both environmentalist concerns as well as ROI to be realized by dealing with national and global energy challenges.

Slowly, things began to change, and as we entered the new millennium, says Floyd, forces subtle and less so had brought some hard realities to consumer (and thus investor) consciousness. From Al Gore to Osama bin Laden, climate and cultural realizations had exposed a powerful new marketplace. For investors, an opportunity for “doing well by doing good” had arrived.

“We were [by 2004] and continue to be at a true inflection point,” says Floyd. “Globally, the status quo is untenable. It’s not a spot crisis any more. Big issues have to be resolved and they represent [market] drivers that will play out over decades. It’s not a matter of politics or tree hugging. This is about national and consumer requirements, and business – not on an ideological level, but on a bottom line level.”

Indeed, green investing seems to have come of age. According to Cleantech Group, 13 percent of all venture capital dollars are now going green – making it the largest sector in VC. Comparing just the last quarter of 2010 to the first quarter of this year, investments in clean-tech deals were up 26 percent (54 percent over the same time period last year). Since January, green companies have raised $1.1 billion, and a accompanying surge in green technology jobs appears to be in the wings. Not bad for a down economy – if it wasn’t clear just a few years ago, it’s clear now: this once “progressive” investment arena has achieved lift-off.

For her part, Floyd is no longer a lone wolf. She is founder and Managing Director of Nth Power, a “nothing else but” green tech venture capital firm focused on “energy technology, materials and other related businesses.” The San Francisco-based group currently manages $420 million that’s invested in 58 companies, including “market leaders” in renewable energy (solar, wind, geothermal, etc.), energy efficiency, smart grid, clean transportation and green buildings.

And while her efforts clearly target the “doing good” part of the equation, “doing well” for her investors remains paramount. “Our investors are big pensions and corporations,” she points out. “’While we’re differentiated as clean tech, consciousness is a small issue. What they want from us is to look at teams, strategies and execution plans. What’s important is money. And it can be made in clean tech.”

The Game Board – Clean Tech and Double Bottom Line

To understand today’s robust, green equity-investment community, it helps to understand two primary investment angles – “clean tech” and “double bottom line.”

Floyd’s Nth Power is a VC firm dedicated to clean tech. “It” believes that “the way society values and uses energy is in the midst of a significant transformation will lead to the widespread adoption of energy technologies and the creation of new companies led by a new breed of energy entrepreneurs. With the growing consumer demand for reliable, digital quality power, questions regarding the viability (and price volatility) of coal, oil and other fossil fuels, and the growing threat of global climate change, the opportunity for technology innovation in the energy sector has never been greater.”

Quite a mission/vision/pitch. But the bottom line is that there are clean tech markets to be tapped and mastered. Aside from those market leaders mentioned earlier, these also include biofuel, conservation, recycling and waste reduction, sustainable agriculture and manufacturing, and much more.

The other camp, or investment approach, is the much-discussed double bottom line (or triple or quadruple or whatever the case may be). This view says that one should measure the pay off of investments in more than one way: hence the – at least – “double.” Cash return on equity remains the driver, of course. But another measurement might be, say, job creation, or literacy or poverty alleviation – or an environmentally positive impact. (We’ll further explore the broader benefits of double bottom line investing in an upcoming article in this series.)

A perfect example of such a VC firm is DBL Investors, which was created from the spin-off of the Bay Area Equity Fund I from JPMorgan in January 2008. The group’s double bottom line strategy is “to invest in companies with the potential do deliver top-tier venture capital returns while working with [its] companies to enable social, environmental and economic improvement in the regions in which they operate.”

One of the firm’s two Managing Partners is Nancy Pfund. Formerly a Managing Director at JP Morgan, her financial background and focus on wealth creation is matched by her commitment to outcomes such as eliminating poverty. She explains her firm’s relationship with green investing: “Our second bottom line is having a positive impact on the communities where our companies end up doing business. That can be a positive environmental impact, and that can be by creating jobs though clean tech. Many of our companies do many positive things, not just one.”

Her partner, Cynthia Ringo, is formerly a Managing Director of VantagePoint Venture Partners. “We play in the venture capital space, which is of course driven by innovation,” she says. “Any venture capitalist is looking for disruptive companies that will displace incumbents and generate wealth. We also happen to be looking at poverty alleviation – sort of giving a lifeline to people. Clean tech is fantastic at that.”

As it was for Floyd, 2004 was an important transition time for Pfund and Ringo’s double bottom line approach. “Our target was $75 million,” says Pfund. “It took us a few years to do it but we did close in 2004. We had lots and lots of investors, including banks, pension funds, foundations, etc. At that time, clean tech was not what it is today, so we didn’t focus our marketing on that, per se, but we did focus on a broader double bottom line. In the end, though, 60 percent of the fund went toward clean tech.”

Says Ringo: “Clean tech is perhaps the most obvious way to accomplish our mission, because we will not take a reduction in a financial return in order to accomplish a social goal, and this concept is well understood in this sector. The business factors related to clean tech are very strong.”

Raising their second fund in 2008 was even tougher, given the economic environment. “But we just had our final close,” says Pfund. “It was for about $140 million, so we almost doubled the size from the first time around. Part of that is because our focus is now on the Western United States and not just Northern California and the other part is out strong track record. But, still, 50 percent of this fund will be green focused.”

The reasons for success in clean tech investment are increasingly consumer driven, and they’re not just about climate change. “Where’s that consumer pull coming from?” asks Ringo. “Maybe it’s because people want to reduce the amount of money that they’re spending on their utilities or on transportation. Maybe they are concerned about the health impact of certain types of products. Looking back [prior to the changes of the early ‘00s], there was not a lot of consumer pull and those that were making demands were called tree-huggers and other derogatory names like that. It was a much smaller demographic than it is today. Now, if you speak to a panel of mothers who range in age from 25 to 45, how high do you think their concerns around issues of health for their family go? Very.”

Where Angels Come to Play

Whether the focus is in pure clean tech or double bottom line, angel investors are, of course, also in the green mix. By definition, however, these have traditionally been individual players in arena, gathering their own contacts and research to make smart decisions. But one group, Northwest Energy Angels, is taking a pooled intelligence approach to mining these rich opportunities.

The Seattle-based non-profit is a membership organization of private investors that only funds clean tech entrepreneurs. They believe that through such investment they can find “the intersection of our desire to make successful angel investments, our personal values and the world we want to leave our children.” The group is comprised of “seasoned angel investors and venture capitalists, as well as new angels learning by participating in a cooperative and supportive environment” that place “a high value on sustainability, the ecosystems that support life on earth and social responsibility.”

Kiki Tidwell is a leading clean tech angel investor who sits on the Northwest Energy Angels board of directors. Last July, she was admitted to the Kauffman Fellows Program, “a highly sought-after two-year program dedicated exclusively to the world of venture capital and the cultivation of new high-technology, high-growth, high-impact companies.”

Her background leaves little question as to why she’s sought out that clean tech sweet spot where making a profit meets making a difference.

“I was in computers back in 1982, teaching people how to use the first mini-computers,” she recalls. “I was right there during the start up of that industry and to me clean tech has the same vibe. We don’t know what will be the next Microsoft but there will be huge winners. On the philanthropy side, I’ve seen how renewable energy and our tremendous natural resources can have a major impact, especially in rural economic development. (Tidwell has lived in Idaho since 1981 and is the president of the Tidwell Idaho Foundation, as well as Idaho Land & Pine, Inc.)

“When I was serving on the board of the Idaho Community Foundation – the Governor’s Council on Families and Children – I saw these tiny farm communities struggling to meet their social service needs and keep their farms going year round, even when the cost of irrigation pumping runs into the millions. Approaches using geothermal, solar, wind and biomass resources are going to be critical to these farm communities.”

Tidwell says angels face a different investment proposition than VC investors. “I think one of the main differences is that because it’s our own money we [angels] are investing, we have the luxury as to invest in the one out of a hundred opportunities that looks good to us. And we don’t have to deploy capital in a ten-year timeframe. That said, the venture capitalist has resources devoted to understanding some of the issues, as well as more time to devote to helping companies post-investment.”

The point of her group, then, is to deal with some of these issues by promoting clean tech and educating angels around some of the science and business issues that are in play.

“By banding together, we can share a lot of information,” she says. “We have speakers who come in to address specific technologies. We have discussion groups between investors about issues in our portfolio companies. We have presenting companies giving us pitches once a month.”

A Leg Up

Whether it’s clean tech or double bottom line investing, VC or angel money, what was once a cutting edge approach to equity investment is now not only big business – it’s big politics and policy, too.

“It’s a very complex sector,” says Floyd. “There are so many considerations given the policy and regulatory overlay. Federally and globally there are a multitude of regulations to be aware of and, of course, there’s a whole world of incentives out there.”

Mastering these polices, regulations and incentives thus becomes a major value-add for groups like Nth Power and DBL. For green investors, working with the likes of Floyd, Pfund and Ringo is like having the combination of a good agent who knows the people you should know, and a good financial specialist who knows how to work every regulation and incentive detail to your monetary advantage.

DBL realized this early on during their first play. “It started with the first fund and actually morphed into a big idea,” says DBL’s Pfund. “We had to think of what’s in it for a company to site in a low-income neighborhood. And so we thought, well, when you go into these targeted economic zones like Richmond or parts of Oakland [California] you can get benefits in terms of tax treatment or low interest loans or even grants at times. We saw that worked very well, so we kind of layered on other ways to navigate that public/private sector interface to the benefit of both parties.”

This approach is particularly important in the green sector. “You are being watched by everyone from the local chapter of the Sierra Club to the mayor to the governor, and they can either help or hurt your business,” explains Pfund. “Reaching out and embracing that is part of what we advocate; we have been able to show how that’s beneficial and companies end up doing it themselves once they get off the ground.”

Shifting Winds

It’s no secret that this thriving arena has been the beneficiary of a type of affirmative action in recent years, with government playing a helpful role and, in some ways, simply getting out of the way. As the nation has warmed to the notion that Washington and State Capital USA do have roles to play in encouraging clean tech and environmental protection, the flames of this investment community are stoked.

Conversely, as seen during the ’80s, a lack of attention and accompanying incentives can allow those flames to all but die out. And it’s also no secret that there’s clearly a different political climate now than there was just two years ago when Barack Obama took office – and, incidentally, replaced the solar panels on the White House.

Yes, enter the Tea Party and science-deniers and the success of campaigns well-financed by a Supreme Court-loosed, corporate political-giving system that’s hostile to those potentially “disruptive” entrepreneurs that DBL’s Ringo speaks about. Add to that a growing public intolerance for government subsidies – at least for those that are on the agenda of media savvy interests – and, well, what’s a well-meaning, robust-but-still-requiring-incentives investment community to do?

“The pitch of the entire discussion [around green tech and the development of green-friendly business] has to change,” says Pfund. “We have to ask, what’s the subject matter that we’re speaking and thinking about when it comes to green investing? Certainly it’s very political and we get huge questions about the role of the Tea Party or the Republican Congress on a lot of the programs that are subsidizing clean tech. And those are good questions that are not easy to answer, so you have to develop a plan B. Clean tech is cleaner and getting cheaper, but it’s not as cheap as coal and natural gas. We just aren’t there yet, so that’s not the story.

“It gets back to this notion of connectedness,” she says. “I made a speech at Stanford [University] recently on large-scale solar in the deserts and [Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan] George Schultz was in the audience. He more or less said ‘I agree with you but you should ditch the environmental argument and just focus on energy security and our over-dependence on foreign oil.’ He’s not alone in saying that.

“Some Republicans, and some Democrats for that matter, hate the clean tech argument. They like the energy security argument, so he is saying face facts. The Republicans are a potent political force, so we need to speak their language. You do whatever you can to get it sold. And you don’t want to be pigeonholed into saying that this makes sense only from a global warming point of view and have people not want to talk to you. You don’t want to sabotage your argument by making it unnecessarily narrow.”

All told, it’s like any effective marketing strategy. You size up your audience and figure out what will be most appealing message. Says Tidwell, who is particularly interested in smart grid technology, about positioning: “This is not about tree hugging. This is about financial gain for investors, consumer benefit and energy security.”

The Color of Money

In the end, it might be counterintuitive to think mindsets that have been saddled with identifiers ranging from “progressive” (the most diplomatic) to “environmentalist wacko” (dismissive) could not only point to money-making propositions, but to the money making propositions that have the power to drive our economy and national security for decades to come.

Looking back, Ronald Reagan’s (and other “pro-business” leaders like him) commitment to existing enterprise at the expense of entrepreneurial activity was shortsighted on its surface. Forward-thinking government support, if not outright incentive is the cornerstone of what it means to be pro-business. 

For now, the Floyds, Pfunds, Ringos and Tidwells of the world go to sleep dreaming about two kinds of green.

“What I wake up thinking about is what any entrepreneur thinks about,” says Floyd. “The challenges faced by individual young companies.”

Image: quinn.anya

The post The Color of Money: VCs, Angels and Green Investing appeared first on EcoSalon.

I first heard about Alejandro “Alex” Velez and Nikhil “Nik” Arora’s plan to grow mushrooms from coffee grounds about two years ago. At the time, I dismissed it as one of those ideas that sounds great as part of a green business contest for graduate students but that would probably get dropped as soon as the lucrative job offers came along.

And, for awhile, that’s essentially what happened. Nik and Alex did the MBA thing, interviewing for jobs in investment banking and consulting and securing offers from great firms. But fast forward a year: I’m meeting Alex in a dodgy parking lot under the freeway overpass in Emeryville to tour the warehouse of Back to the Roots Ventures, his and Nik’s start-up. He drives up in an old beat-up sedan and hops out in jeans and a plaid shirt … not exactly banker garb.

We head into the warehouse and Alex introduces me to their warehouse manager and a young intern who’s busily packing cardboard kits. “We came to a point where the mushroom thing was really taking off and Nik and I decided to go for it,” Alex explains. “We turned down our job offers and became farmers instead.”

Well, sort of. What started as a small agricultural business is now a booming consumer product business: Nik and Alex’s Grow-Your-Own Mushroom Garden, a do-it-yourself mushroom-growing kit, is currently sold at all Whole Foods around the country. It’s a pretty amazing trajectory for a business that started just over two years ago as a project in the boys’ fraternity kitchen, with a few buckets-full of coffee grounds and some mushroom seeds.

Both MBA students at Berkeley at the time, the two had shared a class focused on potential business uses for the world’s waste products, during which they learned about various uses for coffee grounds. For some reason Alex still can’t quite explain, he and Nik were drawn to the idea of growing mushrooms from the stuff. They began experimenting and eventually managed to grow oyster mushrooms. “We took them over to some people we know at Chez Panisse to have them try them and tell us whether they thought we had something, and they said wow, these are really good.”

That was their first stroke of good luck: Not every MBA student has connections at Chez Panisse. Buoyed by a thumbs-up from that venerable Berkeley slow food institution, the two took their next batch of product to the popular Berkeley Bowl market. “Then the guy at Berkeley Bowl introduced us to the regional buyer for Whole Foods and once they were interested we started to realize this could really become a business,” Alex later told me.

It may sound like a string of amazing coincidences, but it’s partially the pair’s passion for what they’re doing that has managed to get so many other folks on board so quickly. The Whole Foods buyer loved the idea of mushrooms grown from a waste product and soon had Nik and Alex supplying oyster mushrooms to all of the Bay Area’s Whole Foods, and participating in the market’s local producer loan program as well. The problem? It’s tough to make money in mushrooms unless you’re running a major agricultural operation, and the Back to the Roots guys weren’t really interested in that. That’s where the mushroom kit came in.

Packed with about a pound of coffee grounds plus the mushroom seeds, the Grow-Your-Own Mushroom Garden promises a pound of mushrooms within 10 days. All you have to do is spritz it regularly with the tiny water bottle enclosed in the kit, and keep it out of direct sun. The kit retails for $19.95 and is available at Whole Foods and through the company’s own website. To get coffee grounds they need, the two also inked a deal with Peets, which pays them to pick up over 10,000 pounds a week of grounds, and also sells the kits in some of its shops. Meanwhile, the spent mushroom substrate they’re left with after they make the kits turns out to be an excellent soil amendment, which they’re now selling as well.

Bouncing around aisle after aisle of mushroom kits, Alex is excitedly describing their journey, a tale punctuated often by segues like “Oh! And kids really love the kits, too, and any kid that sends us a photo of them with the kit, we send them a free kit.”

He’s so genuine it’s hard not to get swept up in the excitement, despite the fact that I’m cold and everything smells vaguely mildew-y. And the excitement continues at home, where I’m thrilled to find that even with my minimal gardening skills, the mushrooms were sprouting out of the kit on my counter in days. Sure, I forgot the spritzing half the time, but I still managed to get some nice shrooms out of it, and it’s hard not to feel pretty pleased with yourself when you’re harvesting mushrooms you grew from coffee grounds.

Follow Amy on Twitter @amywestervelt.

The post Back To The Roots Ventures Turns Coffee Grounds Into Gourmet Shrooms appeared first on EcoSalon.

Love it or hate it, you can’t deny that whatever the giant retailer, Walmart, does sends shock waves through their supply chain. Lately they’ve introduced some bold initiatives in greening their supply chain. Are the efforts real or are they marketing? Will they help the environment, consumers, workers and producers – or harm them? The answer is: All of the above.

Walmart has been busy developing a sustainability index for every product it sells. I could argue (and others have) that flimsy, cheap plastic consumer goods people don’t actually need are not sustainable by definition.

But what about food and household cleaners? Those are not recreational purchases.

And many people, in many parts of the country, need to shop at Walmart because, frankly, there are no other options or they simply can’t afford the local stores.

According to Change.org, opening Walmarts in areas known as “food deserts” is really just a band-aid that masks the underlying causes of poverty and inequality.

This is true and there’s no doubt it is a complicated issue. Similarly, many commenters pointed out in this article by Marc Gunther that the entire model of how Walmart builds and spreads across the landscape is flawed. Again, indisputably true.

But Walmart isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon. Is it possible to look at some of their initiatives in a positive light?

For example, the recent news that Walmart is partnering with the leading green cleaning product brand, Seventh Generation, was widely lauded for its potential to bring truly green products to a larger audience. But on the other hand, as this Treehugger piece asks, does the partnership simply lend undeserved credibility to the retailer’s green efforts?

And what of the retailer’s local food initiatives?

In the midst of a highly entertaining grocery smackdown in The Atlantic in which a bunch of foodies choose Walmart produce over Whole Food’s in some aspects of a blind tasting, there’s a little tease about Walmart’s Heritage Agriculture program. The program encourages farms within a day’s drive of one of the company’s warehouses to grow crops that would normally be trucked from far-away states.

The three-tiered strategy of the Heritage Agriculture program is to create a transparent supply chain of local and regional sources, support women and minority businesses, and reinvigorate historic growing areas for produce that is popular with the United States’ growing minority communities.

This all sounds great. On the surface, it could be a powerful way to re-regionalize the food system, keep farmers on their land, and increase the diversity of crops grown in different parts of the country. A regional, diverse food system is better for the environment than monocropping and more likely to result in increased accessibility to better quality food for consumers.

The problem is that Walmart doesn’t do anything without a compelling business reason. And often when a whale as large as Walmart moves an inch, it displaces everything around it. In Walmart’s case, the business reason is always to obtain products at the lowest price possible and pass that savings on to consumers. This could end up being a problem for the very farmers Walmart supports with the initiative. In 2006 farmers received just 19 cents of every dollar consumers plunked down for food. That’s a pretty small margin to work on, and with Walmart in the mix, it could get worse.

Walmart has a reputation for squeezing suppliers. Consider if Walmart, with its immense power, offers to buy a small, regional farmer’s entire harvest. The farmer, already squeezed by the system, may jump at the chance to sell all her output. If the farm no longer had sufficient supply to continue to sell to its local mom and pop and co-op stores (assuming any exist) then those stores would have to find other suppliers and try to compete with Walmart on price.

Competing with Wal-Mart on price is impossible. Those stores would likely go out of business, taking with them the only other outlets that small farmers have for their products, putting people out of work, and decreasing choices for community members. Once all other buyers are gone, Walmart could pretty much pay the farmer as little as it wants. In this way, we could end up with the control of our food system concentrated in the hands of one corporation, killing any chance we might have of rebuilding community based food systems that are more democratic in nature.

And it’s not just the farmers. Walmart squeezes entire communities economically. Once Walmart is one of the only employers in an area it can effectively keep wages down and unions out. When the farmers don’t make enough money to live on and neither do the employees of the only game in town, you can bet everyone is dependent on the always low prices that Walmart offers.

It’s true we need affordable, accessible, high quality food in all communities, but wouldn’t it be better to fix it from the ground up systemically instead of leaving it to one company?

Maybe Walmart’s grand plan to green and localize its supply chain will remove XX amount of carbon from the atmosphere. But some things can’t be quantified. Like the pleasure of talking to your neighbors and connecting with the people who grow your food. It just makes for stronger communities and relationships. This article makes the point that no matter how much local food Walmart buys, it can never replace the deeply human interactions that happen in a farmers’ market.

I would also add that it’s within these interactions that democratic change happens and, while we may cautiously applaud Walmart’s efforts for the great impact they might have, it’s not time to roll over yet. I think a more democratic food system is worth fighting for. As long as I have a choice, I will continue to shop for seasonal produce at my local farmers’ market.

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Image: Monochrome Flickr

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Have you ever bought a product on impulse because of some vague claim like “green,” “natural” or “earth-friendly,” brought it home and found it’s not green at all? Not all companies are trying to deceive us, but with the lack of a unified standard for green labeling, it’s all too easy for consumers to be confused.

Of course, some companies like it that way, because it means they can get a piece of the green market without putting forth any real effort. That’s why, according to a Brandweek editorial by Andrew Benett and Greg Welch, businesses that want to be trusted by consumers need to think beyond green.

“In sum, green can mean virtually anything,” write Benett and Welch. “And that suggests it will eventually mean absolutely nothing. What today’s more mindful, savvier and more demanding consumers are seeking are brand partners that have evolved beyond green to something else: clear.”

It’s all about transparency – something the business world could use a lot more of. The “clear brands of tomorrow” won’t have mission statements packed with ambiguous language about improving people’s lives, they’ll outline specific actions and goals and invite consumers to track their progress.

But that’s just the beginning of “going clear”, say Benett and Welch. “Consumers are no longer willing to let businesses exist simply for the purpose of making money; they want them to contribute to the greater good.”

Open lines of communication between company leaders and the public are vital, but most of all, what businesses will need to do is prove that they care by raising the bar. For example, XYZ Beauty Co. can’t cut parabens from its products and be content with that lone action – they’ll need to continuously strive for the next improvement and find ways that they can take sustainability even further.

Perhaps we’re a long way away from green business, let alone clear business, being the norm, but it’s important to aim for a world where companies are truly held accountable for their social and environmental impact.

Image: Neubie/Flickr

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Okay, when I threaten to send my daughters to reform school, this is not at all what I’m talking about. This fanciful emporium at 3902 Sunset Blvd. (in the hip L.A. Silverlake neighborhood) is earning major gold stars, not demerits, for its forward thinking and commitment to responsible design.

Most girls would be thrilled to go to this ReForm School, a store and web shop founded by Billie and Tootie (see below) who met in high school and dreamed of opening a retail business focusing on the four R’s: reduce, reuse, recycle and rebel. Call it the Breakfast Club goes organic!

The irreverent duo peddles an artful assortment of hot home decor, including embellished vintage pottery by Esther Derkx, soft rocks and felted birds by Tanya Aguiniga and those hemp pillows we adore by mother-daughter team Shelly and Mary Klein of KStudio.

“Sustainable design is a huge focus for us and green living is important to us, not only in business but in our personal lives as well,” say the owners. “We wanted to be eco-friendly without being too in-your-face about it. The last thing we wanted was to be another shop selling all things hemp and bamboo (not that we don’t love hemp and bamboo).”

Featured Below: Improved Pottery by Esther Derkx, who screenprints quirky images onto vintage crockery in such a perfect manner; Handcrafted felted birds by L.A. artist, Tanya Aguiniga; Rain hemp pillow by KStudio; and a tea towel by Third Drawer Down, entitled Trivia’s Pursuit by Karla Pringle.

I also love the reclaimed wooden objects for home, such as the decorative stools by Zaishu made by various craftspeople around the world, and the seriously stylish retro-inspired Magno Wooden Radio by Singgih Kartono, who sculpts from sustainable wood.

Wait, the bell didn’t ring just yet. Class is not dismissed, you naughty kids! I want to let you know that this site also has some lessons to teach on pretty organic scarves, trinkets, bath products and books.

Just remember to bring your credit cards to class. You have to pay the price for the high quality and original design, but you will see, it is well worth the investment when compared to the cheaply made, mass-produced junk at those other schools. I give ReForm School an “A” for Atta Girl! Keep up the good work.

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