Here’s what shifting 20% to local food ($1 out of $5) could mean to Detroit, which is in line for a state-managed-takeover. Detroit needs every penny to survive after its population went from 2 million to 500,000 and the car industry crashed taking its tax base with it. While Michigan hopes for GM and Ford to jump start the economy, in his recent book Fair Food, Oran Hestermann, a former Michigan State University Agronomy professor, offers a more pragmatic solution:

“In 2006, Fair Food Foundation commissioned a study to find out. [the effects of shifting 20%] The reults: if shoppers within the city of Detroit shifted 20 percent of food spending to food that is grown, processed, and distributed by locally owned companies, the estimated annual impact on the economy would be a boost of half a billion dollars. More than 4,700 jobs would be created, and the city would receive nearly $20 million more in business taxes each year. Were this spending shift to occur in the five counties surrounding Detroit, the increase in the regional economy would be roughly $3.5 billion, nearly 36,000 jobs would be created, and government entities in the region would receive $155 million more in business taxes.”  Oran B. Hesterman, PhD author of FAIR FOOD and founder of the FAIR FOOD NETWORK.org 

Other impacts

We buy cars once every 5-10 years, but we buy groceries every weekend. Cars create green house gases and health problems, while growing food takes carbon dioxide out of the air. Big business sends its cash and jobs out of state, but local, small business keeps the cash and taxes inside the state. For those in Detroit, it could be the difference between public schools or not;  small business thriving or big business taking over; plus a return to stores filled with real food instead of over-sugared  convenience food.  That’s not a bad deal considering that the population of Michigan pays no more,  just shifts 20% of it’s spending to locally produced food. 

For another point of view on the impact of buying local, jump over to Green-talk with Anna Hackman and Jenn Savedge, Jenn provides practical breakdown on how to get the buy-local buzz in your own community. She discovered that when you spend money with the locals (on everything, not just food) $68 out of $100 stay in the community. When you buy from a big business, only $43 out of $100 stay with the community.  Clearly, buying local is the best FIRST option.

If you think buying real food is too expensive, then grow some yourself. Diane MacEachern profiled her friend Carol growing her own in a self-made hoop house. This year I planted 16 lettuce plants which have produced about $80 in “free food” so far.

Shift your habits. Last year Lori Alper did a piece on Flame Retardants in Your Soda. Ish! How about making your own soda that takes less time than recycling the cans, costs less, and tastes better? Beth Terry wrote about using a Soda Stream which carbonates water for about 15 cents a glass. If you add a shot glass of local, fresh juice, and maybe a sprig of mint, you have a refreshing beverage that helps you shed pounds while it’s adding nutrition to your diet. That’s what we did at our house and my husband lost 12 pounds.

Teacher, author, blogger, and full time Mom, Katy Farber addresses the “no time” issue in her book, Non-Toxic Kids. Time should never be a factor in whether you can make the shift or not; in fact buying and cooking fresh food takes less time than shopping for boxes of stuff. And, a big pot of back-burner vegetable soup goes a long way on a cold day.

If you need more what-to-eat ideas, tap Taiha Wagner over on Just One Bite or Karen Hanrahan on The Best of Mother Earth, both are veteran moms and professionals who know the value of fresh and how to stretch your 20% with the goal that maybe next week, you’ll go for 30% of fresh and local.

You don’t have to stop at your family table, either, you can also go out to dinner at a restaurant that caters to locally grown produce. It all counts. Check out the American Farm to Table site. The next time I’m in  Ann Arbor, MI I’m going to try out EVE. 

It’s hard to stay motivated to do the right thing when so many wrong things are right in front of us. Seeing the impact in dollars and percentages helps. Does anyone else have the numbers to keep us inspired? Please let us know in comment below or contact me. 

Today’s the day. It’s time to join forces with  Women’s Voices for the Earth, MomsRising and Healthy Child Healthy World, to demand that Procter & Gamble (makers of Tide) strip a harmful cancer-causing chemical out of Tide Free & Gentle®.

What is wrong with this picture?  Get the facts and speak up now - sign the petition at MomsRising. 

How did we go so backwards in such a short time? Seriously, if you have the answer, I want to know.

Part of it could be in how we see ourselves in society. Just when we think we’ve made strides with the marketing to women thing, the lack of female “corporate” culture creators (ad agency creative directors) stagnates the progress.

According to an upcoming conference to address this problem, only 3% of Creative Directors are women.  For those not in the biz, Creative Directors are the judge and sometimes jury for what copy is approved and what visuals are chosen. Considering that we are smacked with thousands of ads a day, advertising becomes a dominate cultural creation tool.

Imagine if the above jury of men were all women deciding whether men should have access to Viagra… With that thought in mind now watch the Mad Women Video as reposted on the 3% conference.  Gender balance is a good thing for everyone when making decisions for a court or the court of public opinion.

“This is Proof positive that humanity is good.
People are fundamentally good.
Given the chance, they will do the right thing…
Not everybody — there are bad people out there that will take advantage of it — but most people are fundamentally good…
And the key to what we need to do, is build our society, build our environment for the people who are fundamentally good, and not be driven down by those who aren’t.”

                            Ron Shaich, CEO Panera Brea

Ron Shaich, Panera’s CEO, took corporate social responsibility a step further and created a new corporate giving structure in the process. For the past year he’s been testing Panera Cares cafe which he describes as a cafe of shared responsibility. The cafe is just like the Panera Bread store you know, but it allows you to pay what you can. After a year trial he reports that  60% of customers pay the suggested amount, 20% pay more, and 20% pay less. The model works and is self-sustaining.

He’s hoping that this structure for corporate giving is duplicated in other chain stores — thrift stores from the GAP or home improvement from Home Depot for example.  Catch his earnest talk below and tell me if you agree, is this a working model that you would support?

Thank you Sustainable Brands for posting the original presentation, and thank you Ron Shaich for believing that humanity will behave in an ethical fashion when given the right atmosphere.

In this case McDonalds took it to a new level by using the California poppy, which as California’s state flower is illegal to dig up. No worries for those who hate the idea, poppies only bloom for 1-2 months and then their seeds will spread on the wind — next year the golden arches will be a golden blob of yellow that will spread and spread some more.  I’d like see more seed money put to use like this wouldn’t you?  It’s far more sustainable than those monster billboards.  Thanks for the tip, Marianne.

Women are the majority volunteers at almost every non-profit, when the social is matched with other sustainability practices companies will earn loyalty while saving money in their overall operations. It’s why even the biggest retail giants are changing their ways.

Social Responsibility + Sustainable Practices = Trust

Below are some of the top findings on what creates trust according to the 2012 survey. The green represents social attributes, the blue operational attributes. Notice how many of the attributes sound like they came off a sustainability index such as Good Guide or a ULE standard. Compare the needs to the non-profit work found on the National Council of Women’s Organizations to the social list. Full slide here.

In other Barometer findings:

People didn’t trust their governments, but they did want them to regulate business — they want someone or something to watch out for them. Oddly enough, that’s good news as it’s paving the way for sustainable standards, indexes, and certifications which are moving ahead far faster than regulations coming from governments. Those standards all have social attributes embedded in them.

Trust in CEOs has decreased, while trust in peers, through the help of social media, has gone up.

Think about the implications of that power shift from top down directives to bottom up or grassroots influence. The will and social influence of a neighbor or blogger carries more trust factor than the words of a CEO.  That shouldn’t surprise anyone during this time of Occupy Everything… people are hungry for real change, not more rhetoric.

The new bottom line clearly must contain corporate social responsibility AND citizen engagement — trust factors work both ways…

Last December we raised the issue in “Are We Giving Away Our Economic Future.”  In that post we questioned the practice of giving away professional media time to companies who have advertising budgets. Soon after, Ladies Home Journal took bloggers out of the bargain basement and offered to not only pay professional writing levels to Mommy Bloggers, but to have their content become the base for the magazine going forward.

Holly takes this evolution of payment one step further and begins the process of establishing professional blogging expectations in her summary. Soon something like this will be part of Standard Rates and Data type information and no one will have to guess at what to charge for fair payment of time.   The guidelines are to be used by companies and bloggers looking for work and cover:

• Provide detail
• Work hard to gain your bloggers trust
• Be honest. Transparent
• Treat Moms as business people
• Pay per post
• Ads on her site
• Video
• Keyword Links
• Hashtags
• Consulting
• Giveaways
• Product Reviews
• Facebook Likes and Twitter Followings
• Twitter parties
• Disclosures

Karen uses the burger to make a point during her talks on health and wellness, “Just pause and think about what you’re eating…”

Congratulations Karen, (I think…) for being weird enough to make it into Ripley’s Believe it or Not!

Thank you, thank you, thank you International Monetary Fund Chair Christine Lagarde for being a leader and not a politician. (Thank you Christopher Dickey for the story.)

“I don’t know if it’s male versus female, but I am told my management style is more inclusive,” says Lagarde. It has to do with forming a team’s view, having a consensual approach, “‘wasting time’ on occasion” to build consensus so that “you will not need to waste it in convincing people to implement.”

“Even if it means not appearing as decisive—you know, ‘This is my way or the highway’—I don’t work that way,” says Lagarde. “At the end of the day we have to reach a compromise and a common platform, but I think it has to include as many people as possible.” She pauses for a second. “I leave aside the bastards, because that’s one thing that I don’t compromise with: people who lie, people who cheat, people who are not with the group and behave like parasites. That, I can’t stand.”

Wow! Go figure, someone who actually expects honesty and integrity from her team.   What a nice benchmark to set on such a high stage as the IMF which is out to save the world from a global depression. Do yourself and your portfolio a favor and read the whole article that summarizes just how big our global monetary problem has become.

This morning my financial planner told me that the annuity I was looking at which pays 10% will be going down to 7% in March. Even the biggest companies are questioning the return on their own investments, that should send a bigger red flag through your portfolio than what’s happening in Europe. My financial planner also mentioned that the risk is so great that some companies (AXA) are pulling back on their annuity programs.

Keep your eyes on Ms. Lagarde as she tries to bring our global monetary problems back from the brink by employing honesty as her best policy. “She was the one who opened their eyes to the magnitude of the problem,” says the IMF old-timer.

The word Lagarde keeps coming back to is “confidence.” Without it, nothing works. And confidence comes from leadership. In her no-nonsense way, that is precisely what she aims to deliver—not only for her institution, but for the world. (Full story.)