Category Archives: Good Fact

LED Farms Could be the Growing Fields of the Future

As humans flock to cities and the surround them with suburban sprawl we have covered some of the most arable lands in concrete. This has caused problems of food security, access, and sustainability. Urban farming is nothing new and will continue to spread, but what about industrial-scale farming in cities?

A farmer in Japan has taken an old warehouse and modified it into an enamours and efficient farming operation using specialized low-powered LEDs.

The farm is nearly half the size of a football field (25,000 square feet). It opened on July and it is already producing 10,000 heads of lettuce per day. “I knew how to grow good vegetables biologically and I wanted to integrate that knowledge with hardware to make things happen,” Shimamura says.

The LED lights are a key part of the farm’s magic. They allow Shimamura to control the night-and-day cycle and accelerate growth. “What we need to do is not just setting up more days and nights,” he says. “We want to achieve the best combination of photosynthesis during the day and breathing at night by controlling the lighting and the environment.”

Shimamura says that the systems allows him to grow lettuce full of vitamins and minerals two-and-a-half times faster than an outdoor farm. He is also able to cut discarded produce from 50 percent to just 10 percent of the harvest, compared to a conventional farm. As a result, the farms productivity per square foot is up 100-fold, he says.

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New York State Bans Ivory

New York state has amended its existing ivory trade bans to make it harder for illegal ivory traders to practice their trade. This is good news as too many elephants are killed (or otherwise harmed) for their ivory which is used to make decorative objects or crushed to become a health product (which has no actual health benefits). Way to go New York!

The legislation amends the state’s environmental law to ban elephant ivory sales with only a few exceptions for antiques with small amounts of ivory, certain instruments made before 1975, and transfers for educational and scientific purposes or through the distribution of estates.
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New York is the number one importer of elephant ivory into the United States. This state legislation will enhance federal efforts to tighten the elephant ivory trade ban on a federal level. Large-scale poaching of elephants and trafficking in ivory presents enormous economic and security challenges across Africa and beyond. The illegal ivory trade both flourishes from and contributes to a climate of instability and lawlessness in many African elephant range states, in which humanitarian crimes have risen dramatically.

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Read more about how IFAW is ending the Ivory Trade.

Illinois Bans Microbeads in Beauty Products

In the USA, Illinois is he first jurisdiction to ban the sale of microbeads. Microbeads are tiny plastic spheres used in exfoliants which are cheaper to use than natural products like seeds and nuts. This ban is great news because along the great lakes microbeads are found inside the belles of fish and other marine life. The environmental damage caused by microbeads is still being figured out, we already know that they are awful for nature so the ban by Illinois is hopefully one of many to come.

The new law bans the manufacture of personal care products containing microbeads by the end of 2017, the sale of personal care products and the manufacture of over the counter drugs by the end of 2018, and the sale of over the counter drugs by the end of 2019.

Environmentalists have said the non-biodegradable plastic particles used as exfoliants in many facial cleansers and soaps slip through sewage system filters and pile up in waterways, where they suck up toxins and harm wildlife. Preliminary studies in Lake Michigan have found millions of microbeads.

Read more here.

Why Investors Care About Sustainability

For long term investors sustainability is an obvious concern, but for some investors who look only for profits in the next quarter sustainability can be forgotten. The tide is starting to turn as companies that don’t have sustainable practices in place are being beaten by more efficient operations.

The Guardian has outlined why poor investors ignore the environment while providing good reasons to care about it from a financial standpoint.

As a first step, we need to recognise that rapidly declining natural systems are bad news for business. There is a two-way street between the economy and the environment: businesses damage the environment, and the damaged environment then creates risks to the bottom lines of businesses.

But why should members of the investment community care? After all, they are not trying to save the world; they have a fiduciary responsibility to generate returns to their shareholders. Three reasons explain why investors should include sustainability considerations in their decisions, and why doing so is compatible with fiduciary responsibility.

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When Investing, Millennials Care More Than Previous Generations

Millennials are savvy investors who care about the planet and social justice. Previous generations have treated their investments as risky and didn’t care about the environment or other important issues. Some financial advisors are shocked to find out that not only are young investors interested in creating a better world, but that they are risk-adverse due to the economic disasters previous generations created.

The financial advisers at British firm deVere Group recently surveyed baby boomer, Generation X and millennial investors to get a sense of their priorities. The group discovered that while all three were scared away from risk by the recent financial crisis, millennials want more out of their investments than just an unending stream of payouts. Social responsibility matters, and that may not be millennials’ youthful ideals talking.

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