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Make The World Better Magazine

EcoMeter: Measuring Foodprints to Support Sustainability

There’s no doubt that the advent of take-out apps has furthered the convenience of at-home dining, especially during the pandemic. While the benefits are clear, the amount of wasteful packaging that’s often used can make us lose our appetites. 

EcoMeter, the 2021 winner of Brands for Better’s Brand Battle for Good competition, is helping Vancouver consumers find sustainable restaurants and restaurants find sustainable partners. We spoke with Jill Robinson, Project Manager at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia and EcoMeter Project Co-lead, about this volunteer-led sustainable restaurant guide.

The EcoMeter decal is displayed in Metro Vancouver restaurants that have adopted practices to be more sustainable. Photo credit: Missy Shana

Tell us about EcoMeter’s mission.

EcoMeter is a community-based resource hub that highlights the most sustainable restaurants in Metro Vancouver. We make it easy for consumers to make better dining choices by supporting eco-minded businesses. As well, we help connect restaurants that want to make a positive change to industry partners with the expertise to help them. 

What inspired you to start your organization?

EcoMeter was the 2021 winning concept of the inaugural Brand Battle for Good, a zero-waste conference followed by an accelerated ideation and pitch competition. Our original inspiration was the compulsory restaurant health code ratings in New York City, where every establishment must display their rating from A – B – C based on their health inspection. We took this concept and applied to it a lens of sustainability and community support to ask, how can we educate consumers on the best places to eat that are mindful of their carbon “food” print?

EcoMeter volunteers proudly raise their reusable cups to celebrate the positive change realized through a big team effort. Photo credit: Missy Shana

What were some of the challenges you encountered?

When we started, none of our team members knew much about the food waste and packaging industry when it came to restaurant orders. That led us to consult and collaborate with some key partners who had been in the space much longer – industry partners like Ocean Wise, ShareWares, and Vancouver Food Runners gave us valuable advice that helped pivot our concept as it matured. We’ve learned to dream big and to listen to the experts in the field.

What do you consider to be EcoMeter‘s biggest success?

Our website, eco-meter.ca, officially launched in May 2022, just 12 months after the concept was born at the Brand Battle for Good. A lot of research was distilled into the four key categories that make up our restaurant grading system: food waste, supply chain, take-out packaging, and community initiatives. Already, more than 500 Metro Vancouver food establishments are listed on eco-meter.ca, so it feels great to spotlight these green-leading restaurants to consumers who care.

Take-out packaging is a factor on EcoMeter, and many restaurants have adopted ways to reduce single-use waste. Photo credit: Missy Shana

What makes EcoMeter unique?

EcoMeter addresses the elephant in the room when we’re talking about dining out or getting take-out. We’re experiencing a climate emergency, and local governments are stepping up measures to curb food waste and reduce single-use items. It’s a lot to consider when you just want to get some lunch before carrying on with your day, so we designed EcoMeter to highlight the food establishments that have adopted environmentally-progressive practices to make the decision-making process easier for consumers. The restaurant owners that we’ve connected with are extremely proud of their eco-friendly initiatives, and that sentiment gave us a lot of encouragement to see this project through.

How do you feel your organization makes the world better?

These days, everyone is ordering food from apps like DoorDash and Uber Eats – a number that has grown exponentially during the pandemic — but many of us aren’t thinking in terms of our carbon footprint when we choose the convenience of ordering from or experiencing a restaurant. We believe that knowing the impact of everything that goes into a meal will help us make better choices. EcoMeter exists to shine a light and educate our local community.

Supply chains are a factor on the EcoMeter that considers the entire food experience from farm (or ocean) to fork. Photo credit: Missy Shana

Tell us about EcoMeter’s goals.

We’re pushing back against the sobering statistics. According to the National Zero Waste Council, CA$49 billion worth of food is sent to landfill or composted each year in Canada, and in Vancouver alone, 82 million single-use cups and 103 million single-use utensils were thrown in the garbage in 2018, according to the City of Vancouver.

EcoMeter strives to change consumer behaviour and lower the carbon footprint of restaurants. We want to align with the City of Vancouver’s Zero Waste 2040 plan and help to create the greenest city in the world.

Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects you’d like to share?

We are openly exploring next steps to allow this project to blossom into its full potential as a driver of change. Conceivably, we could hand off this opportunity to an organization with an aligned mission and dedicated resources to harness the scalability and promise of the EcoMeter platform. Our team is so proud of what we’ve built, and it’s remarkable that it was all done through volunteers’ efforts. We will be looking for a partner with a similar passion.

Food waste, take-out packaging, supply chain, and community initiatives affect a restaurant’s EcoMeter rating. Photo credit: Missy Shana

What do you most want people to know about your organization?

We truly think that education can empower and ripple change throughout the industry. The facts of climate change and huge amounts of waste around the globe are both sobering and inevitable; however, EcoMeter is a resource for our community to make a positive and preventative change to support businesses that give a damn. 

We are privileged to work, live, and play on the ancestral and unceded Coast Salish territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations (commonly known as Vancouver), and we need to take care of this land for generations to come. 

How can people help or contribute to EcoMeter’s mission?

Visit eco-meter.ca to discover your next favourite restaurant and so many others that are taking steps to be more sustainable. Tag @ecometer on Instagram when you eat at a restaurant you found on our website. And when you spot the EcoMeter decal – a leaf pointer on a four-level scale – displayed on the windows and doors of a participating restaurant, let the owners know that you appreciate their efforts to be more sustainable.

This story was featured in the Make The World Better magazine:

Learn about more world-changing individuals and organizations:

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Impact Inspiration & Initiatives Sustainability Tips

Sparx’s Sustainable Gift Giving Guide: 25 Eco-Friendly and Zero-Waste Gift Ideas for 2022

‘Tis the season of giving, both to our loved ones and back to our communities. They say “it’s the thought that counts” when gifting, but for purpose-driven folks, seeing the 545,000 tonnes of annual waste generated in Canada during the holidays makes it hard to not feel like the Grinch.

Whether you’re looking for a zero-waste Secret Santa present or sustainable gifts for your family, we’ve researched a wide range of mostly Canadian eco-friendly products and other green gift ideas that will tie a ribbon on a year of circular efforts. Together, let’s go walking in a sustainable wonderland!

Candles 

Help make even the darkest evenings bright for your loved ones with these eco-friendly candles. 

EastVan Bees-Beeswax Candles: Crafted in Vancouver, these 100% beeswax candles are non-toxic and biodegradable. 

Mala the Brand Candles: Made of custom-blended coconut-soy wax, these paraben-free candles are biodegradable, toxin-free, come in recyclable packaging, and are hand-poured in Vancouver. Plus, for every candle purchased, a tree is planted. 

Siblings Candle Kits: Built on a “reuse, refill, relax” model, these candle kits enable you to repurpose and reuse containers by pouring candles yourself, again and again. Plus, these candle kits have 100% compostable packaging, are non-toxic and paraben-free, use coconut blend wax, and are carbon neutral.

Sequoia® Candles: Bring the outdoors in with these candles made from phthalate-free fragrance oils and essential oils in scents like sweetgrass and blackberry sage. Plus, they come in a reusable tin. Sequoia is a Proudly Indigenous brand that is 100% owned and operated by Indigenous women.

Stationery 

Rewrite traditional stationery gifts with these regenerative alternatives. 

Sprout Plantable Pens: Along with being sustainably made, sustainably sourced, non-toxic, and biodegradable, each of these pens contains seeds and can be directly planted in soil once the ink runs out. The seeds are drawn from an assortment of vegetable, flower, and herb seeds, making for a nice, zero-waste surprise.

Flowerink Greeting Cards and Paper: Illustrated and printed in Montréal, these unique greeting cards and paper products are made mostly from seed paper that is plantable/compostable, plus their packaging is zero-waste.  

Wisdom Supply Co. Weekly Planner: This zero-waste weekly planner is made from 100% recycled paper and plant-based inks and is shipped from a zero-waste, B Corp-certified fulfillment centre. 

Personal Care 

Gift these circular personal care products to make your loved ones feel pampered all season long.

Old Soul Soap Company Lip Balm: Canadian-made, these filler-free, all-natural lip balms are a zero-waste gift option that comes in plastic-free packaging. 

Etee Chewpaste Toothpaste: This chewable toothpaste ditches the plastic tube in favour of a reusable glass jar, providing a sustainable way to make smiles sparkle. 

The Yukon Soaps Company Soaps: Indigenous owned and operated, these handcrafted soaps are sustainably sourced and all-natural. With biodegradable plastic, reusable muslin, and other eco-friendly packaging, these soaps make for beautiful low-waste gifts. 

Nature’s Bodega Beard Care Box: Handmade in Vancouver, these beard care kits have all-natural ingredients, fully recyclable packaging, and no synthetic fragrances, making them a great eco-friendly gift option for the Movember participants in your life who opted not to shave come December.

Sisters Sage Bath Bombs: Made from all-natural ingredients, these delicious-smelling bath bombs from Sisters Sage, an Indigenous women-led company based in Vancouver, are vegan, palm oil/cruelty-free and come in reusable or recyclable packaging. 

Food & Drink 

These eco-friendly gifts are good for your body and good for the environment too.

Retea Sustainable Bubble Tea Kits with Reusable Cup: This Canadian company provides DIY bubble tea kits featuring a wide range of flavours, reusable bubble tea cups, straws and teaware, and recyclable and low-waste packaging. 

Susgrainable Banana Bread Mix: As seen in Make The World Better Magazine Issue 3, this banana bread mix is made from rescued spent grain produced by craft breweries, plus it’s low on sugar, full of protein and fibre, and loaded with flavour. 

Avanaa Vegan Chocolate: Canadian-made, this artisan chocolate is made from 100% natural and plant-based ingredients; supports farmers in Ecuador, Dominican Republic, and Colombia; and is packaged in recyclable paper. 

Salt Spring Coffee Holiday Bundle with Wooden Box: A featured company in Make The World Better Issue 1, Salt Spring Coffee is offering a holiday bundle that comes with sustainably shade-grown organic coffee, reusable mugs, and eco-friendly packaging, perfect for anyone who can’t live without their good cup of Joe. 

Pukka Teas: B Corp-certified and part of 1% For the Planet, Pukka teas are organically grown and fairly-sourced, come in sustainable packaging, and can be enjoyed in a plethora of flavours.

Stojo Cups: Portable, collapsible, and made with silicone that’s BPA-free and free of other toxic glues and chemicals, these reusable coffee cups and water bottles are safe and sustainable. 

Portable Collapsible Straw Kit: This metal straw kit is fully portable, reusable, and sustainable, keeping drinks plastic-free at home and on the go.

Apparel & Accessories 

Wrap someone you love in warmth with these sustainable clothing articles and accessories.

Hemp & Company Socks: Made from hemp, these socks are warm, sustainable, and produced by a BC-based brand. 

Anne Mulaire Fleece Clothing: Help the women in your life stay cozy with these fleece products from Anne Mulaire, a women-led, Indigenous business based in Winnipeg that puts sustainability and natural fibres at the forefront. 

GOGO Sweaters Zero-Waste Toques: This hand-knit, made-to-order toque is made from the scraps of sweaters in Canada. 

Kombi Balaclava: Have an avid ski or snowboarder on your list? This Canadian brand offers an adjustable balaclava made from 100% recycled polyester. 

rü Bags: Made from 100% recycled GRS certified fabric that’s OEKO-TEX Standard 100 certified, these lunch and tote bags are reusable, durable, and sustainable.

Rok Cork Leather Bags: Crafted from natural, sustainable, biodegradable cork, these bags are fashionable, functional, and good for the planet. 

While is great to buy eco-friendly gifts, it’s also important to think of the other parts of the gift-giving process. We recommend considering your environmental footprint while shopping — for example, walking or taking public transport to the store instead of driving — and wrapping your gifts in recycled, reusable, compostable, and/or upcycled materials.

Giftwrap Your Marketing with Sparx

Engaging in purpose-driven efforts to make the world better? The experts at Sparx can help package up your message and deliver it to your audience. Contact us for a free marketing consultation. 

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Impact Inspiration & Initiatives Sustainability Tips Work Life & Culture

Sparx’s Reimagined Secret Santa

It’s not a holiday get together at this time of year without a time-honoured tradition: the Secret Santa Gift Exchange. While we enjoy the act of giving, we had to come to terms with an inconvenient truth about these kinds of exchanges: many of us seldom keep our Secret Santa gifts. We believe that something as wonderful as the act of giving a gift shouldn’t come at the expense of the planet, so we started thinking about how we could iterate and improve upon this classic activity so that it aligns with our mission to make the world better, and came up with a solution.

For this year’s Secret Santa, Sparx is going sustainable all the way! All the gifts we’re giving are good not just for bringing a smile to our co-workers faces, but better for the environment too. 

Here’s how we reimagined Secret Santa to be more sustainable. We hope our experience will inspire you to jingle bell rock the boat for your own exchange!

How We Made Secret Santa Better

This year, Sparx has been laser-focused on waste-reduction efforts, from publishing the Circular Economy edition of Make The World Better Magazine to attending the Zero Waste Conference 2022 and celebrating Waste Reduction week. Sustainability is a vital part of making the world better, so we wanted to ensure our gift exchange would align with zero waste goals.

We kicked off our process by setting some ground rules. First off,  participants must only choose gifts that will either produce minimal to zero waste or will enable recipients to live more sustainably. Secondly, the gifts must fall within a budget of $20.

To ensure everyone could be involved, we selected a date and provided ways for gifters to mail their gifts, if unable to attend in-person. Then we set up our exchange on Elfster, a platform that allowed us to randomly and anonymously select our gift recipients in a totally paperless way. The platform also has a feature for making wishlists – a great way to ensure we pick gifts that are not only good for the environment, but will bring real personal value to our recipients.

Finding Mission-Aligned Gifts

While it might sound difficult to track down sustainable gifts for $20 or less, our research revealed a whole workshop’s worth of options. 

Compiling a few categories of eco-friendly items, such as items that replace single-use products, gifts made from recycled materials, items using recycled or recyclable packaging, and non-perishable goods, we launched our search.

We checked what was available at Vancouver-based eco-friendly shops, as well as products from Canadian vendors operating in both online and offline formats, and came up with a plethora of great ideas.

Leveraging this research, wishlists took shape and gift planning gained focus.

Green Gifts for $20 or Less

Here are some of the sustainable gifts we found for under $20.

  • Imperial Earl Grey Tea: All-natural and packaged in fully compostable bags and a recyclable box. Price: $14.85
  • Stojo – Jr. Bottle: Collapsible and made from safe silicone, this reusable bottle can be carried anywhere for sustainable hydration on the go. Price: $17
  • Bamboo Bottle Brush: This zero-waste brush is a great companion for reusable cups and bottles. Price: $9 

Package it all up in a sustainable way – using a recyclable box or tin, recycled wrapping paper, or a wooden trinket box – and you have a perfect, low-waste, eco-friendly gift.

Sparx Can Help You Get on Santa’s “Eco-friendly” List

Donning a green santa hat this year? If your organization is working to make a positive difference throughout and beyond this holiday season, the experts at Sparx can help amplify your impact and share your purpose-driven initiatives. Contact us for a free consultation. 

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Make The World Better Magazine

Project Learning Tree Canada: Planting Conservation Literacy

These days, being called a tree hugger is aspirational, not disparaging. To protect our planet for generations to come, we need so-called tree huggers to save our forests to capture CO2 and foster biodiversity. But when it comes to conservation, we need to make sure we’re not missing the forest for the trees.

Project Learning Tree (PLT) has been a leading environmental education program for nearly 50 years. We spoke with Jessica Kaknevicius, Vice President of Education, about PLT’s educational and career-driven resources, as well as their diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging initiatives. 

A GIS analyst performing fieldwork in Frederick Arm, BC.

Tell us about Project Learning Tree’s mission.

Project Learning Tree is committed to advancing forest literacy and environmental education. In 2018, we launched our career pathways programming, and initially focused on providing valuable work experiences for young professionals. 

We’re an initiative of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) which is dedicated to promoting sustainability through forest-focused collaborations. SFI is an independent, non-profit organization that collaborates with its diverse network to provide solutions to local and global sustainability challenges. We accomplish our work through four pillars — standards, conservation, community, and education — to achieve our vision of a world that values and benefits from sustainably-managed forests.

What inspired you/your founders to start your organization?

Project Learning Tree was launched in the US in the mid-1970s with the goal of developing an effective environmental education program. In 2017, SFI took on PLT and expanded it to Canada, with the goal of increasing its impact on educators and youth and exploring the opportunities to grow green career paths.  

Today, Project Learning Tree is one of the most widely used preK-12 environmental education programs in the United States and abroad, and it has expanded its programs and resources to include career pathways and forest literacy. PLT provides educators, parents, and community leaders with peer-reviewed, award-winning curriculum support materials to engage students in learning about the environment. It promotes forest literacy so that people acquire the tools and knowledge they need to keep our forests sustainable over the long term while continuing to benefit from them. Project Learning Tree also helps build a diverse and resilient forest and conservation workforce through our skills development resources, mentorship programs, and high-value work experiences.

What were some of the challenges you/your founders encountered?

Like many organizations, we had to pivot several of our programs because of COVID-19. Prior to this, most of our programs and content were delivered in person. In fact, our first PLT Green Mentor cohort launched right at the beginning of the pandemic, and we had to adapt to deliver it completely virtually. 

We recognize the benefit of having an in-person, local connection to make it relevant for communities on the ground. However, we quickly realized the benefits of going virtual and using webinars and online resources. With virtual programs, we can reach more people, no matter their location.

Students from Hardy School in Washington, DC learn how to monitor a forest’s condition.

What do you consider to be Project Learning Tree’s biggest success?

Our scale and reach of the work we have achieved.

Since 1976, Project Learning Tree has reached 145 million students and trained 765,000 educators to help students learn how to think, not what to think about complex environmental issues. Then, as previously mentioned, we launched our career pathways programming in 2018, which initially focused on providing valuable work experiences for young professionals. Now, we’ve supported over 400 employers and helped place over 6,000 young adults into green jobs including over 900 Indigenous youth from more than 100 different Indigenous communities in Canada.

What makes Project Learning Tree unique?

Project Learning Tree is able to have a significant impact because of the scale and reach of our diverse network. Be it through SFI-certified organizations, educators, Indigenous communities, youth, conservation organizations, and more, we are able to reach a variety of audiences and find collaboration opportunities to co-create positive change and advance nature-based solutions.

How do you feel your organization makes the world better?

We believe that sustainably-managed forests are critical to our collective future. From climate change to water quality to biodiversity, well-managed forests provide viable solutions to many of the world’s most important sustainability challenges. We advance sustainability and nature-based solutions through forest-focused collaborations, specifically promoting forest literacy. 

As well, we provide educators, parents, and community leaders with educational resources to help develop students’ awareness, knowledge, and appreciation of the environment; build their skills and ability to make informed decisions; and encourage them to take personal responsibility for sustaining the environment and our quality of life that depends on it. 

Through these resources, we engage diverse youth in  learning about exciting and rewarding green career pathways that support nature-based solutions for a more sustainable planet. As they get older and begin considering possible jobs, they can explore our skills development resources, grow their network with our mentorship programs, and potentially land their first work experience.

Mentees and mentors posing for a group photo during the 2022 SFI/PLT Annual Conference.

Tell us about Project Learning Tree‘s goals.

Project Learning Tree’s goal is to advance environmental literacy, stewardship, and career pathways using trees and forests as windows to the world.

Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects you’d like to share?

SFI and PLT are working in partnership with Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Sciences (MANRRS) to ensure greater opportunities for rewarding careers in the forest and conservation sector for young Black Americans. This will include skills training resources and a mentorship program, as well as Black Faces in Green Spaces: The Journeys of Black Professionals in Green Careers, which tells the stories of Black Americans who have taken this career path and have advice and resources to share. You can learn more here and sign up to be the first to hear about the guide’s release!

What do you most want people to know about your organization?

Project Learning Tree aims to develop a lifetime of learning to create a forest-literate society. It’s critical that we learn and value the benefits that sustainably-managed forests have on the environment, our communities, and the economy. Educators, parents, and community leaders can use PLT resources to build forest literacy while engaging students and growing the next generation of environmental stewards. Plus, as youth grow up, they may be inspired to pursue a green career pathway and will have the resources and support to get there.

Project Learning Tree’s lifetime of learning helps grow future forest and conservation leaders and ensures our forests are kept sustainable over the long term.

Activity sheets and supplies needed to conduct Project Learning Tree’s monitoring forest condition worksheets.

How can people help or contribute to Project Learning Tree’s mission?

Get involved with one of our programs! Learn more about Project Learning Tree in your own region: attend a PLT training session for educators, hire a green jobs youth, become a mentor or encourage a young professional to sign up to become a mentee, and/or access great resources to get your family and friends outdoors. We also accept donations to Canadian and US programs.

This story was featured in the Make The World Better magazine:

Learn about more world-changing individuals and organizations:

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Make The World Better Magazine

FoodMesh: Rescuing Food for the Sake of People and Planet

Picking up fresh produce for a nice at-home meal or eating at a favourite restaurant is many people’s go-to self-care in our ever-topsy-turvy world. As the meals go in our bellies, it can often be forgotten how much food waste happens behind the scenes — food waste that has a huge environmental impact and is a dig at our growing food insecure divide.

FoodMesh is helping the food industry change the course of food waste — literally — to ensure it doesn’t end up in landfills and, instead, helps to feed those who are food insecure in Canada. We spoke with Jessica Regan, Co-Founder and CEO, about FoodMesh’s journey, tangible successes, and upcoming plans.

Food Stash Foundation in Vancouver is one of the charitable organizations FoodMesh partners with to redistribute retailers’ unsalable food to people in need. They use the food donations they pick up from retailers to create rescued food boxes, stock a community fridge, and host a rescued food market — all designed to make it as easy as possible for people in Metro Vancouver to access nutritious food in an affordable way. Here a member of the team is pictured after some of their pickups.

Tell us about FoodMesh’s mission.

FoodMesh is dedicated to helping organizations reduce their food waste.

Our professional food recovery services help businesses divert the food they are unable to sell away from waste streams and ensure it is put to its highest end use, feeding people first, then animals.

We do this primarily through our managed food diversion service where we match retailers to a diverse network of charitable organizations and farmers in order to redistribute their unsold food by rescuing it quickly and efficiently. As well, we measure the volume of food the retailer is diverting, so they can track their progress against their food waste reduction goals and share the social and environmental impact of their donations with the public.

What inspired you/your founders to start your organization?

The journey began in late 2015 after I, along with our other co-founder, came across photos of beautiful edible produce headed to the landfill because it was too ripe for retail. Unable to shake these images, we started to investigate the root causes and scale of the food-waste problem.

We discovered that more than half of the food produced in Canada is not eaten, according to research done by Second Harvest and Value Chain Management International. Food is often wasted because it is easier and cheaper for businesses to pay to have their overstock, close-to-expiry, aesthetically-imperfect, and mislabelled food sent to landfills than to find an alternative use for it. Meanwhile, one in eight Canadians lacks reliable access to affordable and nutritious food, according to Community Food Centres Canada. 

We also learned that food waste is hurting our planet. With 8-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions created as a direct result of lost and wasted food around the world, it is one of the leading causes of global warming, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 

That’s when the original idea for FoodMesh was born — to make it as beneficial, convenient, and cost-effective as possible for businesses to divert the maximum volume of their unsalable food away from waste streams for the sake of the people and health of our planet.

What were some of the challenges you/your founders encountered?

While many businesses have the desire to do the right thing, they are producing an enormous amount of waste and finding alternatives costly. 

We are lucky to work with some outstanding retailers that are committed to reducing their food waste and have employed us to help them ensure that the maximum volume of their unsalable food is being redistributed to people who need it so that it doesn’t end up in the landfill.

These retailers are seeing some significant gains from their hard work. For example, one of our customers has reduced its waste-related greenhouse gas emissions seven-fold since it started diverting its unsold food to charitable organizations.

We are encouraged to see an increasing number of businesses, both in Canada and around the world, publicly committing to reducing and reporting on their food waste. This means there is a growing need for data on the volume of food they divert away from waste streams, as well as the services to help them do it. 

We are currently in the process of developing new software that will make it as easy as possible for businesses to collect, aggregate, and visualize data on their waste practices — not just food but for all their waste streams. The idea for this software is to equip businesses with a true picture of the waste they generate in real time, so they can take necessary action to reduce it. Stay tuned for more information on this initiative!

A Better Life Foundation has a dedicated food recovery chef, Eileen Stanley, who turns the food donation she receives from local retailers into restaurant quality meals, to share with around 25 local outreach organizations that support mothers and their children, seniors, Indigenous groups, and street-entrenched youth residing in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

What do you consider to be FoodMesh’s biggest success?

We are extremely proud of the fact that through our managed food diversion service, the retailers we work with rescue the equivalent of more than 1 million meals every month to our charity partners to help offset some of their operational costs.

With one in eight Canadians reportedly food insecure (a number that only stands to rise with the rising costs of living), it is extremely heartening to know that we are not only helping businesses keep huge volumes of their unsold food out of landfills, but we are supporting the organizations that are working hard to put food onto the plates of people who really need it. This means a great deal to us.

One of our customers has reduced its waste-related greenhouse gas emissions seven-fold since it started diverting its unsold food to charitable organizations.

What makes FoodMesh unique?

We are excited to see a growing number of organizations that are working toward the same mission as FoodMesh, to waste less and feed more; it’s this ecosystem of food waste warriors working together that will help make the change we want to see. What we think makes FoodMesh unique in that ecosystem is that we have the head of a business and the heart of a charity.

We offer professional food recovery services that provide our customers with a commercial guarantee that we will help them reach their food waste reduction goals.

As well as serving the food waste reduction needs of our customers, we ensure the rescued food is diverted to where it is most needed — meaning only organizations with a social impact have access to the edible food being donated. We have also built a revenue-sharing component into our service so that the organizations receiving the food donations also receive a financial stipend for the pick-ups they make in an effort to help offset some of the operational costs associated with collecting and sorting the food donations. This also helps us ensure that we are receiving regular data recording of their donations for better traceability.

We are not driven by making a profit out of food waste; we are driven by our mission to eliminate food waste. This means our job is to make it as attractive and viable for everyone involved to play their part.

Our diverse network comprises more than 2,000 organizations across Western Canada, which means we are uniquely positioned to help businesses redistribute the maximum volume of their surplus food to where it’s needed most, quickly and efficiently.

While some supermarket food may have aesthetic imperfections that render it unsalable, it’s often still perfectly edible. Fresh produce, like that pictured here, is included in the 1,000 food hampers that City Reach Care Society distributes to families, seniors and other individuals in their local communities every week.

How do you feel your organization makes the world better?

Because we track all the food that the organizations we work with are diverting, we know quantifiably how our organization makes the world better. 

Since 2017, the organizations we work with have collectively diverted 18,876,288 kg of food, which is the equivalent of 27,398,463 meals or approximately 1 million meals each month. In keeping this food out of the landfill, we have also saved 48,494,671 kg of CO2e emissions from entering the atmosphere as of July 31, 2022.

It’s the knowledge of this that gets the team really excited about the work we do.

Tell us about FoodMesh’s goals.

Our vision is to build a platform that digitally connects the entire food supply chain so that we can eliminate avoidable waste and create new value.

Right now, we’re focused on the retail sector, but our goal is to extend our reach across the entire supply chain.

When food is past its best for human consumption, it is shared with farmers to feed their animals. Save-On-Foods at Park & Tilford in North Vancouver donates the fresh produce food that it can no longer sell and is not appropriate to donate to its charity partner to feed Maplewood Farm’s 76 animals, including horses and ponies, cows, sheep, ducks, guinea pigs, rabbits, and goats. Pictured here, from left to right: Selina Merrick, Supervisor of Maplewood Farm, and Bruce Currie, Energy and Sustainability Manager of Save-On-Foods.

Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects you’d like to share?

We are really excited to be in the midst of a three-year project to build a Metro Vancouver food recovery network. With Metro Vancouver’s support, we are raising awareness of food waste amongst local businesses and encouraging them to join the network, so we can help them connect with organizations to recover their unsold food, so they don’t have to dispose of it.

Any organization — whether they have a surplus of food or have a use for a surplus of food — is invited to join the network. We will connect them to a service that best meets their needs. If FoodMesh’s services can’t help them, we will draw on our extensive network to try to connect them to an organization that can. 

What do you most want people to know about your organization?

Our work focuses on helping businesses reduce their waste headed to landfills by diverting it to higher-end uses, ensuring edible food goes to the organizations that can put it onto the plates of people who need it most.

But reducing food waste isn’t just the right thing to do for the people and health of our planet, it makes good business sense also. Research shows that for every dollar a business invests in reducing their food waste, they save $14, according to the World Resources Institute. We want everybody to think critically about the waste they are generating and the steps they can take to eliminate it — either in their work or in their daily lives.

How can people help or contribute to FoodMesh’s mission?

Of the 58% of food lost or wasted in Canada, 21% is happening inside our homes, according to Second Harvest and Value Chain Management International. Love Food Hate Waste Canada is an outstanding resource that provides information, resources, and practical tips to help us eliminate food waste in our homes, including everything from how best to store food for maximum life to how to use up leftovers.

As well, we can work together to hold our service providers accountable for their wasteful practices. Wherever you buy your food, whether it’s a supermarket or restaurant, ask them what they are doing with their unsold/leftover food. How are they keeping it out of waste streams? Do they have processes in place to ensure it is all being diverted, or just some of it? Only when consumers demand change will it happen.

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Too Good To Go: Satisfying Your Appetite for Sustainability

From Canada to Copenhagen, food waste is a pressing issue around the world. The need to improve how we minimize, dispose of, and reuse food is a key piece to sustainability and managing increasing food costs. So, together, let’s save some cheddar — literally and figuratively. 

Too Good To Go started to combat the global food waste problem and saw the opportunity for businesses and individuals to save money at the same time. We spoke with Sarah Soteroff, PR Manager, about how this Copenhagen-headquartered organization has expanded to 17 countries (and growing).

Friends enjoying the contents of their Too Good To Go Surprise Bag on a hot summer day.

Tell us about Too Good To Go’s mission.

Too Good To Go is a social impact company with a goal to end food waste globally.

What inspired you/your founders to start your organization?

Too Good To Go was founded in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2016. Our Founders were dissatisfied with the amount of waste being thrown away at every level of the food industry — at home, grocery stores, and restaurants — and believed there must be a better way to save food, money, and the planet. 

What were some of the challenges you/your founders encountered?

Like any start-up, getting capital to fund the operation was the first big challenge. As well, it was initially challenging to spread the word to consumers to use our service — which started as a webpage and eventually evolved into an app — while simultaneously getting businesses on board to ensure consumers have a high selection of options when they use our service. 

What do you consider to be Too Good To Go‘s biggest success?

To date, globally, we have saved 144 million meals from going to waste in 17 countries, with more than 168,000 partners. These numbers are staggering; they tell us that food waste occurs at every level and in every country, and that there is an appetite (pun intended!) for this type of business to connect food sellers with consumers, as shown with 64 million users of our app and 163 million of our surprise bags sold to-date globally. It also tells us that people are actively concerned with lowering their personal footprints and that sustainability doesn’t have to mean a sacrifice.

In Canada, we have surpassed the 800,000 meals saved milestone in less than a year. We launched in seven markets and surrounding areas, and we have signed more than 3,000 partners — and we’re just getting started!

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What makes Too Good To Go unique?

We are a registered B Corp; our status has just been renewed, and this means we are held to the highest sustainability standards. However, we recognize that food waste isn’t just a sustainability issue — it’s also a monetary one. We provide a mechanism for businesses to make money off their surplus food while also doing something great for the environment. At the same time, we help consumers save money on necessities, the costs of which we know are always rising, and, yet, have to be purchased. We provide a win-win-win model for everyone along our journey.

How do you feel your organization makes the world better?

Whatever small impact we’re making we are tremendously proud of. By spreading the message of eliminating food waste, we hope to give people across the world the tools to make small changes at home, grocery shopping, and dining out that will have massive global impacts. Eliminating food waste starts at the local level and doesn’t require huge changes to your lifestyle or spending — in fact, you may even save money! We love the planet and want it to last longer, which is why we need to eliminate waste at every level.

Tell us about Too Good To Go’s goals.

Three simple words: end food waste!

Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects you’d like to share?

We celebrated our one-year anniversary in Canada in July and are celebrating our one-year anniversary in Vancouver in September, which happens to coincide with the UN’s International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste (IDAFLW). We encourage everyone to make September 29 a day of zero food waste across Canada. It can be as simple as not throwing out a brown banana, and instead, freezing it for smoothies or making a baked good out of it!

The Too Good To Go app, available for download in the App or Google Play Store.

What do you most want people to know about your organization?

Ending food waste is possible; it’s achievable and necessary.

How can people help or contribute to Too Good To Go’s mission?

Download our app Too Good To Go in the App or Google Play store and start saving delicious food and money from local businesses today. If you’re a food business, sign up today and start making money off your surplus food waste!

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Susgrainable: Fighting Food Waste with Fibre

From pilsners to stouts, lagers to fruity milkshake IPAs, craft beer has taken over the hearts of beer drinkers around the world. The downside? Spent grain waste. The silver lining? Spent grain can be made into raw ingredients so good you’d barley beer-lieve these grains also made your pint (okay, we’ll cool it on the puns now).

Susgrainable is leading the charge here in Canada, using spent grains from craft brewers for their own line of delicious, fibre-rich raw ingredients. We spoke with Marc Wandler, CEO, about this start-up’s fascinating journey, from classroom to grocery shelves. 

Marc (left) and Clinton (right) at their very first retailer CHFA tradeshow. Turns out, retailers were very interested in what Susgrainable is up to. This event signalled to the Susgrainable team that the upcycling facility was going to be needed sooner rather than later!

Tell us about Susgrainable’s mission.

Susgrainable Health Foods rescues spent grains from craft brewers to create nutritious, delicious, and easy-to-make flours and baking mixes. Susgrainable is on a mission to rescue the over 450,000 tons of brewers’ spent grain produced by craft breweries in Canada daily – doing our part to decrease the staggering 58% of wasted food. 

Our mission is to also promote the discussion around consuming enough fibre. Spent grain is primarily composed of fibre and protein, with the sugars being used for the beer itself. Most Canadians aren’t even getting 50% of their daily fibre intake; one Susgrainable cookie can help you get 25% of your daily fibre while fighting food waste at the same time!

What inspired you/your founders to start your organization?

Our story began during my time as an MBA student at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business. During one of my classes, we were tasked with identifying a problem and creating a possible business solution for the problem, and a colleague who came from Vancouver’s craft beer industry mentioned the issue breweries were having with disposing of the spent grain byproduct. With my background in health promotion, I realized this byproduct is exactly what Canadians needed more of in their diets. 

After the class project ended, I carried the business forward with friend and business partner, Clinton Bishop. Clinton was raised on a farm that grew barley (not to mention he’s a beer lover), so he was motivated by the idea of using much more of the grain. 

Susgrainable’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix was a finalist in the BC Food & Beverage Product of the Year Awards, pictured alongside the trophy and eventual winner. Both products make for a great healthy kids snack!

What were some of the challenges you/your founders encountered?

At first, people we talked to were skeptical about us taking on something so innovative. However, once people tried the product, they started believing we were onto something after all. Another challenge is building awareness on a bootstrapped budget and raising capital as first-time founders. 

By far, however, the biggest challenge has been COVID-19. We had to completely pivot the business and accelerate our timelines on some of the tasks we had for the future. This came with a lot of risk and uncertainty. We often joke that we aren’t technically first-time founders, as we have pretty much bootstrapped two businesses due to COVID-related market flipping causing us to rebuild from scratch. 

What do you consider to be Susgrainable’s biggest success?

This might be a toss-up between our Kickstarter campaign and our first-ever tradeshow, CHFA West run by the Canadian Health Food Association. Despite having some serious things go wrong operationally behind the scenes, we were able to pull things off just in time. The excitement both events generated was tremendous. 

What makes Susgrainable unique?

While our signature Upcycled Barley Flour is a unique ingredient, our circular economy approach to building our business is unique as well. We are disrupting the way to do business within the food industry in more ways than one. The sum of all parts when it comes to how we do business and live our values is Susgrainable’s secret sauce. 

One Susgrainable cookie can help you get 25% of your daily fibre while fighting food waste at the same time.

How do you feel your organization makes the world better?

Susgrainable is making the world better by fighting food waste, tackling the lack of fibre in the Canadian diet, and creating work opportunities for students.

We like to say our primary focus is on creating impact with positive financial impact being the byproduct of this work – most traditional for-profit businesses focus on creating financial returns first with impact as a secondary focus. We believe flipping the hierarchy of these two goals is the future of successful, sustainable businesses.

Tell us about Susgrainable’s goals.

Currently, our biggest goal is to launch British Columbia’s first-ever dedicated upcycling facility. This will increase our capacity to rescue grains from 10,000 kg/year to up to 5 million kg/year. With the facility, we can then be in a better position to partner with other food businesses and retailers to innovate on different products and make Upcycled Barley Flour a more known and common ingredient. 

A secondary goal we have is to work more closely with a few key retailers to grow awareness about Susgrainable’s mission and products.

Clinton (left) and Marc (right) learning about the spent grain and distilling process at a potential upcycling facility partner.

Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects you’d like to share?

The upcycling facility is a big next step and is currently taking up the majority of our time and focus right now. We are currently fundraising to bring this idea to reality.

That being said, customers have increasingly been asking for us to get the product into grocery stores, so we’re excited to announce that we have recently launched into select Safeway, Thrifty Foods, and Nature’s Fare Markets locations in BC!

What do you most want people to know about your organization?

We want people to know that we are there to support them in their journey to live a healthier and more sustainable lifestyle. Upcycled Barley Flour can be a fun ingredient to play with in baking. It has a great story, and you can make some incredible products with it; my favourite is the Banana Bread while Clinton’s is the Pancake and Waffle Mix. The mixes are a great starting point because they are easy enough for kids to bake something up without making too big of a mess. Plus, it makes for a great conversation starter when talking about being mindful of food waste.

How can people help or contribute to Susgrainable’s mission?

The first step is giving our products a try – we’ve got a starter pack on our website, or you can look up where to find the product in-store. After that, sharing Susgrainable’s message with friends and family is a huge bonus. Word-of-mouth marketing is greatly impactful for small businesses. 

We love seeing posts on social media with people enjoying the product; it gives us motivation on those tough days. For those who want to play a bigger part, feel free to reach out and let us know what you have in mind. We are always keen to collaborate when we can. Creativity and collaboration are our jam!

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Brands for Better Foundation: Uniting for Impact

With today’s pressing social and environmental issues, there’s no shortage of individuals and brands doing their part to make a difference. Some issues, however, quite literally take a village. Harnessing the power of the collective can amplify existing efforts and fill in the missing pieces necessary to make a lasting change. 

Since 2018, Brands for Better Foundation has been uniting brands across Vancouver to tackle the issues affecting the city. We spoke with Karla Peckett, VP Brand at SOLE/ReCORK and Founder & Executive Director of Brands for Better Foundation, about their fascinating start, big wins, and future projects. 

Brands for Better Foundation, Scot Sustad (left) and Karla Peckett (right)

Tell us about Brands for Better Foundation’s mission.

Brands for Better Foundation is a volunteer-driven not-for-profit organization based in Vancouver, BC that unites brands to tackle pressing environmental and social issues in our community. We do this by developing and hosting inclusive events and initiatives where brands unite, share resources, combine their brilliance, and multiply the effects of their efforts for the local good, turning brand teams into changemakers.

What inspired you to start your organization?

Brands for Better was conceptualized in 2018 at the Outdoor Retailer Expo and Conference by our team at SOLE/ReCORK when we invited sustainable and ethical brands across the show to share lightning talks on their impact efforts. The goal was to amplify the good work of brands that were using their businesses as a force for good, and it drew in quite the crowd! 

Seeing great success through this initiative, our team returned to our home base in Vancouver with an idea to bring Vancouver-based brands together in a similar fashion.

Founded by SOLE/ReCORK executives Karla Peckett and Mike Baker, as well as Digital Hot Sauce and Inbox Booths Founder Scot Sustad, Brands for Better Foundation was established with a clear mission: to bring measurable positive impact to local communities by harnessing the united power of brands and their people. 

In 2018, 35 senior leaders of Vancouver’s biggest brands were invited to a vision lunch to learn about a conference and design thinking pitch competition called the Brand Battle for Good, aimed at tackling local social and environmental issues. What set us apart was our promise of implementation and measurable impact; the winning idea would be brought to life with the help of the Brands for Better founding partners. With volunteers raising their hands, the interest was obvious and immediate.

What were some of the challenges you encountered?

The first Brand Battle for Good, aimed at moving Vancouver toward zero waste, was meant to happen in late 2020 but was postponed a year and reshaped to a virtual event because of COVID-19, thus launching in April 2021. In the interim, our fresh but eager network got together, giving virtual consultations to five local businesses in need on how to pivot in the face of the pandemic.

Virtual meeting tools have proven invaluable but can’t compare to the palpable energy that comes from being in the same room with like-minded folks ready to make positive change. Our next iteration of the Brand Battle for Good will be a hybrid of a virtual conference and in-person hack-a-thon.

Brands for Better Foundation Meet and Greet

What do you consider to be Brands for Better Foundation’s biggest success?

Our inaugural Brand Battle for Good in April 2021 saw brands like Arc’teryx, Lush, Hootsuite, Unbounce, Vancity, Earth’s Own, Happy Planet, and Swany in attendance, alongside founding brands, SOLE, ReCORK, Digital Hot Sauce, and others. 

In the end, the winning concept was EcoMeter, an online resource for finding sustainable restaurants and connecting restaurants with sustainable partners. EcoMeter officially launched in May 2022 with the help of the Brands for Better network.

What makes Brands for Better Foundation unique?

Until now, there really wasn’t an avenue for Vancouver brands to connect and create impact. Brands are looking to give back to the city where they live and work, and our organization offers flexible volunteer and event opportunities to cater to any professional or business. We harness the collective power of brands and their people and direct their focus on pressing issues that are affecting their city.

How do you feel your organization makes the world better?

Social justice and environmental conversations are as loud as ever, but governments can only do so much. Brands and individuals will need to step up to help catalyze change. We’re looking to make it easier and more impactful for brands and professionals to start making a difference locally.

Tell us about Brands for Better Foundation’s goals.

Our number one priority is ensuring sustainability of the Brands for Better initiative. We’re starting to think about funding an organizational structure and how we can fine-tune, so we can not only ensure its success in Vancouver, but activate Brands for Better chapters in other communities beyond. 

If mirroring Brand Battle for Good events started popping up in other major cities throughout the world, imagine the amazing reach it could have.

Behind the scenes at the 2021 Brand Battle for Good Zero Waste virtual event, held in Vancouver

Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects you’d like to share?

With the help of the Brands for Better volunteers, we are thrilled to be launching our second Brand Battle for Good this fall, a two-part hybrid event with a virtual conference on September 28 which will feature close to 35 educational seminars from over 55 local and international subject matter experts, and an in-person strategy hack-a-thon on October 5. With this event, we aim to bring together Vancouver’s top brands and industry pros to come up with the most compelling, creative, and practical solutions to combat social isolation and loneliness in Vancouver.

This interactive event promises a mixture of learning, networking, professional development, and team building, combined with a polished production of storytelling, friendly competition, live art, comedy, music, and a party to finish. Each team is composed of 10 individual or brand team participants and two local undergraduate or master’s students, plus a dedicated volunteer design thinking facilitator to guide them through the event. 

The issue we’re tackling this year is social isolation, a pressing concern in Vancouver which has been exacerbated by the forced isolation of the pandemic. Leveraging the influence and the existing synergy of their internal teams, a brand with an original solution could spark real change that builds a greater sense of belonging in our city. We expect many ideas coming out of this event will have the potential to make a difference for struggling communities.

Behind the scenes, Brands for Better is working on an upcoming initiative called the Spark Factor Project, geared toward youth career development. The Spark Factor’s long-term vision is to be a youth development project aimed at increasing diversity in the workforce by inspiring enthusiasm in youth of diverse backgrounds who traditionally face barriers to inclusion and support their learning and skills-building journey.

The project aims to unite local brands to support Vancouver’s youth on their career journey by offering a behind-the-scenes look at a company through experiential workshops led by leading industry marketers, giving these youth hands-on experience of taking a product from concept to product launch. We are actively onboarding retail brands to get involved. You can apply on our website. 

What do you most want people to know about your organization?

Brands for Better believes that the biggest and most impactful change is created when brands unite their power: resources, ideas, strategies, experience, and people. We connect brands and individuals who want to create positive change with opportunities to tackle pressing environmental and social issues in our shared community. We are a network of people and brands that care. 

How can people help or contribute to Brands for Better Foundation’s mission?

Those interested can contribute by participating in or supporting any of our future events. Send your company’s team of creative thinkers, innovators, and disruptors to a future Brand Battle for Good to learn about and devise solutions for the issues facing our city, donate to our cause to help us continue to offer these incredible opportunities, or reach out and apply as a volunteer! If you’re interested in getting involved with Brands for Better, visit our website at brandsforbetter.ca to get in touch.

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A Full Circle Movement: Make The World Better Magazine Issue 3 Sneak Peek

You care about your organization’s waste footprint. Perhaps you’ve reduced packaging, offered transit passes to employees, or implemented initiatives to eliminate take-out coffee cups. But what’s even better than reducing waste? Having zero waste in the first place. 

Individuals and organizations are “circling” back on the circular economy, a game-changing model of production and consumption that is newly entering the mainstream – and Sparx has curated some of these incredible stories to spark inspiration.  

As a purpose-driven marketing agency, everything we do is driven by our mission to make the world better. That’s why we created Make The World Better Magazine: to start conversations and ignite positive change. 

Make the World Better Magazine: A Publication to Amplify Good

Make the World Better (MTWB) Magazine amplifies good by sharing the stories of individuals and organizations making impactful differences in their communities. 

In our first issue of MTWB Magazine, we showcased a wide range of amazing organizations dedicated to “better.” And in our second issue, we looked at how regenerative agriculture can improve the world. 

Now, in our third issue, we’ve set our focus on the circular economy and will be featuring circular economy organizations in Canada and worldwide who are running circles around those slow to adapt. 

Sneak Peek of the Circular Economy Issue of Make The World Better Magazine

In our upcoming issue of Make the World Better Magazine, we take a look at 10 circular economy organizations and share their incredible initiatives to help locals eat more sustainably, unite changemakers, cultivate the next generation of conservationists, reduce and reuse waste, and accelerate Canada’s transition to a circular economy:

Be the First to Access Make The World Better Magazine: the Circular Economy Issue

The third issue of Make the World Better Magazine is coming soon! We can hardly wait to share it with you. In the meantime, you can learn more about impact-driven efforts by reading our previous issues. And if the game-changing circular economy won’t stop circling your thoughts, you can subscribe to get notifications to be updated when the next MTWB magazine is published:

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Ecosystem Services Market Consortium: Improving Soil Health

When thinking about ecosystems, it can sometimes be easy to forget about the “systems” part. Plants, animals and humans are all connected, starting with soil. Soil health should be everyone’s first priority when it comes to agriculture. Luckily, there’s a movement that’s aiming to ensure that happens. 

Ecosystem Services Market Consortium is a non-profit that’s working to improve soil health across the US. We spoke with Thayer Tomlinson, Communications Director, about Ecosystem Services Market Consortium (ESMC), including why they started, their upcoming projects, and how you can get involved. 

Tell us about Ecosystem Services Market Consortium’s mission.

The Ecosystem Services Market Consortium’s mission is to advance ecosystem service markets that incentivize farmers and ranchers to improve soil health systems, which benefits society. More specifically, we are creating a program that pays agricultural producers for the measurable climate and water benefits resulting from practice changes in their agricultural operations.

What inspired your founders to start Ecosystem Services Market Consortium?

ESMC was officially formed in 2019 after two years of multi-stakeholder discussions on how to best create carbon markets tailored to agriculture, and their ability to scale beneficial soil health outcomes. Our work is driven by the potential we see in agriculture’s ability to improve soil health and combat climate change. Our approach creates a win-win-win for farmers and ranchers, consumers, and the environment. 

While we do not believe ecosystem services markets are a “silver bullet” climate solution, we do believe our market program can complement other global efforts and provide near-term opportunities to reduce greenhouse emissions at the lowest possible cost, while other, more costly tools and technologies are brought online. 

What were some of the challenges they encountered?

Building a market program that encompasses multiple crop types, production systems, and regions in the US is not easy. Ensuring that ESMC’s market program has the highest level of scientific rigor is even harder. Making our work even more complex is creating an ecosystem services market that includes credits for reduced greenhouse gases, soil carbon sequestration, improved water quality and quantity, and increased biodiversity. 

Many of the tools, technologies, and program design aspects for our program have had to be built while we are building our program. While this process has allowed us to create new types of credits for carbon markets as a whole, it also takes a lot of time, effort, thought, and financial support.

What do you consider Ecosystem Services Market Consortium’s biggest success?

To tackle the challenges of building this market, our wide and diverse membership is one of our greatest resources. Our 80+ membership represents the entire spectrum of the agricultural value chain, including agricultural producer groups and co-ops, major corporate food and beverage companies, agribusiness, conservation NGOs, agtech companies, land grant universities, and others. With our members, we are collectively investing in ESMC’s market program.

An example of this collaboration is our pilot projects around the country, which use nationwide member organizations and producers as pilot partners. Through our pilots, we work with an extensive network of partners and collaborators to test and refine our market program and other new technologies for every major farm commodity across the nation. These pilots are key to our success – the dedication and time our partners have put into the pilots is a full measure of our success to date.

What makes your organization unique?

Carbon market programs for agriculture are becoming more common, and farmers have lots of questions about why they should work with one program over another. ESMC is unique in that our organization is a not-for-profit organization operating a market program, while many of the other carbon market programs are for-profit organizations. 

We’ve created a member-led consortium that can maximize environmental impact and producer income by delivering as much of the value back to farmers and ranchers as possible. Producers who work with us have the flexibility to choose among the practices that can generate credits, so producers can manage their operations to work best for them.       

Additionally, our program pays producers for a suite of quantifiable impacts: carbon credits and water quality, water use conservation, and habitat and biodiversity enhancement and protection. So instead of focusing on just one type of environmental improvement, we “stack” multiple ecosystem services to go beyond simply improving soil carbon and reducing greenhouse gases. This approach to generating multiple environmental credits from the same land improves our producers’ return on investment per acre.

How do you feel Ecosystem Services Market Consortium makes the world better?

Ecosystem markets represent one of humanity’s best chances to mitigate the worst consequences of climate change. Our ecosystem market program rewards agricultural producers for measured environmental impacts based on practice changes. But these benefits to farmers and ranchers don’t stop with our payments. 

Regenerative and sustainable agricultural practices that increase soil organic carbon and reduce greenhouse gases have beneficial climate impacts, but they also improve overall soil health, structure, fertility, and productivity. This can create more resilient production systems that are less impacted by extreme weather. 

Better soil health, in turn, means reduced soil erosion from wind and water, keeping valuable soil in the field. Improved soil water holding capacity can reduce nutrient losses and lower irrigation requirements. Improved practices can also positively impact biodiversity and habitat. 

Tell us about your organization’s goals.

While ESMC has many goals, one key goal is to enable the success of the agricultural value chain to enroll tens of millions of acres in our market program. This work will help reduce the agricultural sector’s supply chain emissions to align with public commitments and science-based targets.

Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects you’d like to share?

Starting soon, our program will be operating in all 12 US agricultural regions, allowing producers across the country to enroll with ESMC and begin generating saleable ecosystem service credits. In May 2022, our market program will launch, which allows those producers currently enrolled in ESMC pilot projects to participate in our full market program.

As the market continues to scale and demand for ecosystem services increases, the value/price of credits will continue to rise, further incentivizing producers to adopt more regenerative practices, which will produce additional beneficial environmental outcomes and provide additional revenue to producers.

What do you most want people to know about Ecosystem Services Market Consortium?

As we expand our market program, it is important for the producers who create credits, the buyers of those credits, and the wider public to understand how much science and verification underpins these credits. We base our work on science, widely accepted standards, and outcomes. 

Our market protocols have the strongest possible scientific basis to provide confidence and trust to sellers and buyers, as well as the public. Our protocols, projects, and ecosystem service assets are verified and certified by global certification bodies, Gold Standard and SustainCERT, so buyers of our credits have confidence that their investment is truly having an impact.  

How can people help or contribute to Ecosystem Services Market Consortium’s mission?

One way people can help ESMC’s mission is to learn more about where their food comes from and how it is produced. Farmers, ranchers, and the agricultural sector can play a key role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing soil carbon, and be part of the solution to climate change. Supporting agricultural producers as they transition to more regenerative practices is part of that solution. 

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