Many interestedin organic food are, since Kosher Turkeys are required by Jewish law to be slaughtered in a particular fashion designed to be humane. Sarah Palin’sTurkey video has just increased awareness of the issue this year!
They are also often organic by default, that is raised without pesticides, growth hormones, etc…. and, of course, are considered exceptionally tasty.
I heard this story on NPR’s Marketplace this morning..”There’s a shortage of kosher turkey and beef thanks to the closing of supplier Agriprocessors, which had provided much of the country’s kosher meat…” and immediately wondered how our Thanksgiving would turn out since, the friends with whom we hope to share the holiday meal swear by these birds.
Agriprocessorshalted production earlier this week and then closed its doors. The company that supplies an estimated 40% of the country’s kosher turkeys has found it self in well, if not the oven, in hot water!
Agriprocessors was the site of a May immigration raid in which 389 workers were arrested. Plant managers later were charged with violating child labor laws, wage and hour regulations and safety rules.
I love to read, but am lucky if I have time to finish even one book a month. Fortunately, I can “cheat” and listen to author interviews on the radio or via podcasts, and I just listened to an engaging interview with Pamela Hartigan, the founding partner of the yet-to-be-launched Volans Ventures and the founding director of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, about her new book titled The Power Of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World.
The podcast is part of Stanford Social Innovation Review’s “Design for Change” series, and I recommend that you listen to it.
Whatever you think of Hillary Clinton, she has always been a champion of Shorebank. Actually both Hillary and President-elect Obama are big supporters of this microlender and their work in both Arkansas and Kenya. This bank, with over $2 billion in assets recently sponsored the After Green Festival Party in San Francisco as part of the Green Festival attended by several of us here at Green Options.
ShoreBank is the only bank in the world that has been Protecting the Environment, Building Community and providing a Social and Financial Return on Investment for over 35 years. The bank’s motto is “Let’s Change the World,” and they make loans that strengthen communities and preserve the environment. Read the rest of this entry »
This post was originally posted on Eco-Libris blog on November 18.
I love to read good books about green business and when it’s a book written by one of the people whom I consider to be one of my “green biz” teachers, it is a real delight!
In the last couple of years I have read Joel Makower’s blog Two Steps Forward on regular basis and it became one of my best resources to learn and better understand the green economy. I see in Joel one of the best teachers I had (and still have) in the complex world of green economy and therefore I was very excited to hear about his new book. And I wasn’t wrong.he green market from the consumer perspective and tries to make some logic in all the information we’re constantly fed with about the green consumers - from the surveys we hear about all the time about the green preferences of consumers to the many definitions of green market (LOHAS, greenback greens, cultural creatives, etc.).‘Strategies for the Green Economy’ doesn’t have all the answers and leaves you with some questions that only time might gives you the answers on, like “how green is good enough”?, but it gives you plenty of information and tools (including the Ecological Roadmap of Cara Pike that is brought at the end of the book and includes valuable data on people’s environmental values) to figure out what green business is all about.
The WHC is a twenty-year-old partnership between corporations (A-B was a founding member) and environmental organizations (the American Farmland Trust, Izaak Walton League of America, National Wildlife Federation and World Wildlife Fund). The organization was founded in order to “…[help] large landowners, particularly corporations, manage their unused lands in an ecologically sensitive manner for the benefit of wildlife.” The Wildlife at Work program not only certifies wildlife restoration programs, but also provides step-by-step training for companies interested in making unused lands more friendly to animal and plant life.
Amazon has launched the second version of the popular XO Laptop campaign. The what campaign? Basically, this:
Buy an award-winning laptop for $199, which is donated directly to a child in the developing world; or
Buy two for $399, and keep one.
Why a laptop? Well, the very impressive mission statement says it all:
To create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning. When children have access to this type of tool they get engaged in their own education. They learn, share, create, and collaborate. They become connected to each other, to the world and to a brighter future. Read the rest of this entry »
If you are an avid Twitter user, you might have been able to notice the power of social media and the perhaps terrifying way this new phenomenon can impact businesses large and small. This past weekend when #Motrinmoms surpassed “Obama” as the most searched for term on Twitter , it forced J&J’s McNeil Consumer Healthcare into a company in dire need of a social media crisis plan!
But, I contend, Twitter was only part of the story!
Two days after a new ad push for Motrin triggered an online backlash, J&J’s McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit is pulling the campaign, from the New York office of independent shop Taxi, and begging a vocal mommy-blogging nation for forgiveness.
I had a bit of an inside view of this phenomenon, as Jessica and I both write for Our sister site, Eco Childs Play and Silicon Valley Moms and I follow her on Twitter. So, as a social media marketer, it was interesting to me to watch this whole grass roots campaign develop over the weekend. Read the rest of this entry »
In an interview on CBS’ 60 Minutes, his first since the election, President-elect Barack Obama talked about the economy, the housing market and how to create a sustainable auto industry. He said that the $700 billion bailout plan has done little to improve the economy so far, but he credited the Bush administration Sunday for working to address the global financial crisis.
“There’s no doubt that we have not been able yet to reset the confidence in the financial markets and in the consumer markets and among businesses that allow the economy to move forward in a strong way,” Obama said. “And my job as president is going to be to make sure that we restore that confidence. We shouldn’t worry about the deficit next year or even the year after. … The most important thing is that we avoid a deepening recession.”
The president-elect also said that not enough has been done to address bank foreclosures and distressed homeowners. Read the rest of this entry »
The “shock” of the financial meltdown has passed, now comes, the “awe,” and with it plenty of questions. Primarily, “What’s next?” Is there another bubble brewing? What happens if millions of Americans begin to default on their credit card debt?
Overstock.com chairman and CEO Patrick Byrne, says we are less than 50% of the way through the mess, he predicted the coming of this current crisis many times before, starting 3 years ago, Watch this montage to see Byrne’s predictions beginning in 2005:
Dr. Patrick Byrne has learned at the knee of Warren Buffett, the greatest investor of all time. As a child Byrne’s parents would allow him skip school so he could spend time and get an education from the “Oracle of Omaha.” Byrne founded Overstock in 1999, and in 2007 the company generated nearly a billion dollars in revenue.
Today Byrne is suggesting one of the following scenarios could occur in the coming years:
Reagan Recession: A deep retraction reminiscent of the recession under Reagan in the early 80’s.
The Lost Decade: A protracted recession similar to the one suffered by Japan in the 90’s.
Great Depression: A severe economic dip on par with the Great American Depression in the early 30’s.
Mad Max: Not likely, but still possible, a catastrophic breakdown of society with mass shortages of energy, food, and water.
Which way do you think the economy is going? What does this mean for sustainable economics?
Under Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) of the U.S. Treasury, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs received $25 billion each and Bank of America received $10 billion in federal bailout funds. It has been argued that much of the the global economic meltdown was brought on by the country’s largest financial institutions. In response to the recent bailouts, Harrington Investments, Inc., a socially responsible investment (SRI) advisory firm, announced that they have submitted binding bylaw amendments at Citigroup, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs that would create Board Committees on U.S. Economic Security.
The bylaw states that the board should consider the impact of bank policies on U.S. economic security as part of their fiduciary duty:
U.S. Economic Security’ impacted by bank policy may include, among other things 1) the long term health of the economy of the U.S., 2) the economic well-being of U.S. citizens, as reflected in indicators such as levels of employment, wages, consumer installment debt and home ownership, 3) levels of domestic and foreign control, and holdings of securities and debt, of companies incorporated or headquartered in the U.S. and 4) the extent to which our company holds securities of foreign companies or has employees or representatives holding positions on the boards of directors of foreign companies.
The shareholder statement argues that taxpayer efforts to stabilize the U.S. economic system were precipitated by “years of irresponsible lending and business practices. Unregulated trading in speculative derivatives and a general lack of management and board oversight at major U.S. financial institutions has brought the global economy to the brink of disaster.”
Are you looking for a Kosher turkey this year?
