Business & Finance

At dawn, at the loading dock behind the kitchen at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital of Ann Arbor, Michigan, small lift loaders and handcarts trundle boxes from food trucks to storage rooms. The perishables go straight to immense walk-in refrigerators packed with processed produce—buckets of cubed melons, bags of pre-washed lettuce, packages of onions diced by the quarter-, half-, and three-quarter inch.

Africa is no longer the "lost continent" of popular imagination. The region has been growing rapidly for over a decade, the private sector is expanding, and a new class of consumers is wielding considerable spending power. And because of its young and growing population, the sky is the limit for future growth: Between 2010 and 2020, the continent is set to add 122 million people to its labor force. An expansion of this magnitude should set the stage for dynamic growth, but capturing this potential will require a change in economic development strategy.

Certified Greenhouse Farmers and SureHarvest have begun collaboration on a next generation sustainability certification platform based on the principles of performance metrics, technology innovation, continuous improvement and stakeholder engagement. SureHarvest CEO Dr. Jeff Dlott says it will be the first comprehensive performance-based system in agriculture.

Sue Chiang, pollution prevention co-director of the Oakland, California-based Center for Environmental Health, spoke with CIO Journal about how IT departments can make their work greener. Read the full story

When I first joined the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, I was both inspired and slightly skeptical about its ambitious goals. The newly established Luskin Center sought to “create a new model of problem solving to permanently alter how scholarship impacts society.” Three years later we are still learning how best to translate research into real-world policy solutions in the areas of environment, energy and sustainability. Yet through it all, I am confident that our business model is both effective and replicable.

At MIT, the project was led by a graduate student group at the MIT Sloan Laboratory for Sustainable Business, under the guidance of Jason Jay, Ph. D., director of MIT's Initiative for Sustainable Business and Society and a lecturer in sustainability at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Dr. Jay is also conducting research on organizational structures and processes that promote environmentally sustainable business practices. The project was recently completed, and Sugarmade is now incorporating the MIT team's recommendations into the LCA.

In August 2011, federal marshals raided the Gibson Guitar Corporation in Tennessee, apparantly preparing to charge the famous builder of instruments with trafficking in illegally obtained wood. In the aftermath of the raid there was intense media attention on the company and its sourcing practices. Andrea Johnson of EIA was interviewed by NPR because of her previous work on Gibson's allegedly illegal sourcing practices in Madagascar.

Garrett Fitzgerald is the sustainability coordinator for the city of Oakland, and says Solar Mosaic is a great alternative for people who are passionate about renewable energy, but do not have the financial or logistical capacity to install their own solar system. He said they are a model for combining social good with economic benefit. “These kinds of companies are the future of the green economy in Oakland,” Fitzgerald said. Read the full story