Steven's Thoughts

Quality of NYC Public Schools

Just in the last week two parents asked me about the quality of education Sebastian is received in the New York public school system. I am positively surprised how good the experience is.

When Sebastian was in Pre-school I agonized about where to send him. I knew that there were great private schools in the city, but I strongly believed in supporting the public school system.

But I was still concerned whether a public school could provide more than an adequate education. I wanted and still want Sebastian to have a great education. 

Well, I have to say Sebastian is definitely learning. He loves reading and enjoys writing stories. And he is getting his math basics down. But more importantly he is surrounded by teachers who care about his individualized educational growth. 

One of the latest initiatives that impressed me about his school are his individualized goals. Sebastian, together with his teacher, have created specific objectives for him. So now he, his teacher and his parents are all on the same page of what he should be accomplishing in the next month. 

My verdict after one and a half years of NYC public schooling is that kids can get a very good education. My six year old son is proof.

Stuff is Cheap, is it?

When we go shopping, most of us, try to get the "best deal" that we can get. Intrinsically there is nothing wrong with that. Why should we pay more for a product if we can get it cheaper somewhere else? We typically don't take the time to think why products are so inexpensive. We don't consider the ramifications of how a company can offer a product for so little money.

The Story of Stuff is a video that talks in simple terms about how "stuff" is made. The piece draws a connection between the environmental and social issues that are the fruits of "stuff" being so cheap. 

I find this video very effective, but am not as excited about the tone of it. I don't believe in the idea of "Big Business" as an entity. I agree that we need to change the way we produce products, but I think individual businesses are actually the answer to this problem.  The book "Cradle to Cradle", that I blogged about before, talks about how we can re-conceive the way we make "stuff". We are intelligent enough to make products in a way that don't  negatively affect our planet. Some of us are making products that actually have a positive impact on the environment and our society at large. There are a number of companies that have started to move in this direction: Herman Miller, Patagonia and Cliff Bar, to just mention a few.

Once we become conscious about the consequences of how "stuff" is made it becomes harder and harder to justify buying whatever is the cheapest.         

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

I just finished reading "Cradle to Cradle", a  book that is one of the most important environment and business books of our time. McDonough and Braungart redefine how we should develop products and run companies at large. The book is a must read for anyone who is interested in ensuring that our planet stays a place where humans want to live.   

Consumers want to be educated

I am a new fan of the magazine called "Good"(see previous blog). I've been reading some great articles.

• Metal is making a comeback in Egypt after a crackdown on "Satanic music."


• The Ashland Media Exchange and the Espresso Book Machine seek to put books back in people's hands


• Michael A. M. Lerner talks with the man who is putting the “science” back in political science.                           

While I was reading I came across what looked like an article which listed several facts about the dangers of pesticides.

• "six times greater the incidence of children born with autism to mothers living within 500 meters of California fields sprayed with pesticides than the rate of autism births nationwide"

• "10,400 Number of people who die in the U.S. each year from cancer related to pesticide exposure."

• "250 Number of people in the U.S. killed each year by assault rifles"

• "245,000 Number of fish killed in 1995 when a heavy rainstorm caused runoff from Alabama cotton fields into a nearby creek"

• "4,000,000 Number of people in the U.S. who routinely drink water contaminated with carcinogenic herbicides"

• "90 Percentage of municipal water treatment facilities lacking equipment to remove these chemicals from the drinking water"

• "5 Number of the nine most common pesticides used on cotton that are classified as “known carcinogens” by the EPA"

• "75 Estimated percentage of pesticides sprayed from crop dusters that blow away rather than reach the ground"
  

The article was sponsored by what I thought was a not-for-profit organization called Loomstate. I was intrigued and went right to my mac to enter www.loomstate.org. Lo and behold Loomstate is actually a organic jeans company, not an environmental not-for-profit.

What a great marketing campaign! If they would have created a typical jeans ad featuring a sexy model showing off a nice butt,  I probably would have flipped right to the next page. Well, maybe I would have looked for a little bit, but I would have quickly forgotten the brand and I definitely wouldn't have gone to their website. Rather than using sex to sell their jeans, Loomstate chooses to educate their consumers about the environment and in turn piques some interest in their product that goes beyond the surface.

Asset managers tend to show the equivalent of what are sexy models in their ads, by touting 1, 3, 5 year results. Why doesn't the industry educate advisers who are interested in investments and provide insights to portfolio mangers? Asset Mangers could present statistics or analysis, that reveals something new to advisers, which would ultimately drive traffic to their site.

I hope the financial industry catches on and the next time I open Financial Planning Magazine I will get inspired by the information presented to me. And who knows perhaps I'll  gain a new perspective that will compel me to hop on the computer and find out more.

Great business idea - give all subscription $ to charity

I was on my way to Tokyo when I stopped at one of the newsstands in the airport.  Because I was getting ready for a 14 hour flight I bought a bunch of magazines. One of them was this magazine I had never seen before called "Good".

On the plane I got completely sucked into the content.  I barely skipped any of the articles, which is very uncommon for me. But this what makes this magazine a great business ideas is not only the excellent targeted content, but also their subscription model.

First, this magazine is targeted as they call it at people who give a damm:

"We see a growing number of people tied together not by age, career, background, or circumstance, but by a shared interest. This revolves around a passion for potential mixed with fierce pragmatism and creative engagement. We sum all this up as the sensibility of giving a damn. But to shorten it, let's call it GOOD. We're here to push this movement and cover its realization."

Second, the subscription money goes to a charity that the subscriber choses. This is why they say they do this:

"We're doing this because

1) it's smart business and 2) we believe in this.

Let the secret be known—most magazines do not make money on subscriptions or newsstand sales. Traditionally, the best way to get a bunch of new subscribers is to send millions of pieces of unsolicited mail—junk mail—to people who might have some interest. We don't like junk mail, and we don't like the thought of spending millions of dollars on it. So we came up with the idea of giving away all subscription fees and allowing subscribers to choose which organization they would like to support.

This whole thing is an experiment. If it works, we'll actually spend less than half of what it traditionally costs to acquire subscribers. The success of this campaign will allow us to:

a) meet a self-selecting group of quality subscribers who find us through word of mouth, internet links, media coverage, our partner organizations, or the other crazy schemes we like to come up with; b) raise significant money for organizations that will do something important with it; and c) save resources and prove that you can do well by doing good.

Our goal for our launch year is to create 6 amazing issues of GOOD, sign up 50,000 subscribers and donate $1 million to their favorite organizations.

If you like what we're doing, please help us make it happen. Choose GOOD. Thank you".

The magazine didn't bridge the majority of my flight, but was a great read and got me to subscribe to it.

Yvon Chouinard my hero

When I applied to colleges I had to write essays on people who inspired me. I wrote about historical figures such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King because I genuinely admired their principles, however, I didn't really feel such a personal connection with these great men because they are almost like gods in our society -- not real human beings.

Yvon Chouinard's book "Let my people go surfing" finally changed that.  He is an entrepreneur that has high aspirations and sees business as a means to change the world.

Chouinard began his life as a young climber whose sole goal in life was to surf in the winter and and spend his summers in Yosemite. His goal was to work as little as he could at a "real job" so he could focus on his true passion -- climbing. Out of this work/life philosophy, he ended up starting a clothing company for outdoor sports that grew into a multi-million dollar organization. His company, Patagonia,  believes that work needs to be fun in order to be successful and should be conducted in a way that is beneficial to his employees and the environment.

He believes that in order for an individual to claim a love of wild and beautiful places, then one must participate in the fight to save them, as well as help reverse the steep decline in the overall environmental health of the planet. Patagonia donates time, services and at least 1% of their sales to hundreds of grassroots environmental groups all over the world.

Patagonians have been pioneers in designing products with the least possible environmental impact.  The company uses recycled polyester in many of their clothes and only organic, rather than pesticide-intensive, cotton.

He treats his employees with respect and recognizes that they have lives that need flexibility. Patagonia has 300 employees at its headquarters, in Ventura, and one hundred children in their on site development center.  They provide at least sixty days' paid maternity/paternity leave. He believes that work/family balance is essential. The company is consistently one of the top 100 firms to work for and Chouinard questions why anyone would run a company that is "hard" to work for.

Chouinard, demonstrates to corporate America that profit is not the goal. He puts it "the Zen master would say that profit happens when you do the right thing."

I have been out of college for many years now, but it took me several years now to find a person that I aspire to be like -- a hero if you will. Yvon Chouinard understands what is "right" and has made it his mission to run his company that way and that's what I aim to do for kasina.

DC plans still don't offer SRI options

Increasingly investors are putting their money towards socially responsible investment (SRI) funds. A survey by Mercer Investing Consulting, prepared for the Social Investment Forum (SIF), show that less than a 20% of defined contribution (DC) plans, such as 401(k)s and 403(b)s, at work, are currently offering one or more SRI funds. DC plans are starting to listen to investors and an additional 41% are planning to offer SRI options within three years.

Why would a DC plan not offer a SRI option when increasingly investors are demanding this as an investment option?

Green Train

Billionaire Richard Branson's commitment to combat global warming got on track Thursday as Europe's first scheduled passenger train fueled by vegetable oil left London for North Wales.

Branson's Virgin Trains is running one of its trains on a 20 percent biodiesel blend for a six-month trial, and the British entrepreneur said his whole fleet might eventually be converted to run on biofuels.

The environment is going to survive

"The environment is going to survive, we are the ones that may not survive or we may  survive in a world that we don't particularly want to live in"   

Kenny Ausubel

The lazy environmentalist

I am always worried that being environmentally friendly may seem like too much work for the average person in today's hectic world. Who is going to remember to unplug their cell phone charge after every use?

I just came across a brilliant blog and book by self-proclaimed lazy environmentalist, Josh Dorfman.

He suggests a few very easy things that anyone can do to reduce their negative impact on the environment without a lot of continued effort to do so. 

1. Just about everyone can switch to clean green energy. These days it only takes a few mouse clicks on your power utility's website and then it's done. I have switch just through the ConEd Web site.

2. Greening your transportation. Whether it's hybrid cars, hybrid SUVs, or clean diesel sedans, there are plenty of performance-driven options that will save you money at the pump and reduce your car's carbon emissions. Or consider opting for a design-driven alternative to cars like Vespa motor scooters that get close to 70 miles per gallon -- better fuel mileage than even the most fuel efficient hybrid cars.


3. Take care of your toilet. We use more water to flush our toilets than anything else we do. You can have a dual flush toilet or hooking up an Aqus Toilet System from Water Saver Technologies that channels the used water from your bathroom sink to your toilet tank so you can flush your toilet with recycled water instead of fresh water. These kinds of systems can save close to 7,000 gallons of water per year per bathroom, are very affordable, and even pay for themselves in just a few years through savings on utility bills.
 
4. Leaving our lights on is pretty lame. It costs us money and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. That's why I like lighting motion sensors. Lazy environmentalists can benefit from this kind automated eco assistance, and you can find them at just about any local hardware store.

I thought these four tips would make it quite easy to be environmentally friendly every day, without having to think about the cell phone charger.