ODP Environmental Anxiety Index: Millennials Increasingly Vote With Their Dollars
As we close out our Millennials week we wanted to end with how this generation is choosing to vote with their dollars. The results of our Environmental Anxiety Index showed that Millennials are significantly more likely to buy products from companies who are committed to sustainability. They're feeling more compelled to make these purchasing decisions than ever before with 70% of them saying that they are more likely than they were 5 years ago to buy/lease fuel-efficient vehicles and buy products from companies that avoid harsh chemicals and excessive plastics and those that sell sustainably sourced or grown food.
Retailers are taking note as Millennials have surpassed Baby Boomers as the generation with the largest spending power--in 2018 their spending power is expected to reach $3.39 trillion. Couple this spending power with their concern for the state of the environment and this generation has an unparalleled ability to push companies to be better stewards of our planet.
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 Sustainability
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UK's Ekoplaza’s plastic-free aisle. Photo: Ewout Huibers
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Ways Millennials Are Voting With Their Dollars
Food: As we wrote above Millennials want to purchase products from brands and retailers that are committed to the environment. A new crop of zero-waste grocery stores are attracting Millennials and other consumers concerned about their footprint, encouraging them to buy more items in bulk and bring their own containers--or pay a deposit for a reusable container at the store. US stores like in.gredients in Austin and The Zero Market in Denver are hoping to change consumer behavior so that Americans are more comfortable shopping in bulk only stores.
Diamonds: As Millennials begin to move into the phase of life where they consider marriage, an increasing number of them are open to the idea of purchasing lab-created diamonds as opposed to mined diamonds or conflict diamonds (stones that have a high human cost to mine). As Marty Hurwitz, CEO of MVI Marketing says, “Millennials want to know that the products they buy aren’t harming anybody in their production. This is across all consumer products. That’s why companies are tracing chain of custody and providing transparency of supply chain. There isn’t a product in Whole Foods, Nordstrom or Walmart, for that matter, that isn’t being traced in case someone asks. Millennials are driving this trend.”
Recycling: Millennials shop online a lot and find it to be the most convenient way to do their shopping, choosing companies (like Amazon) that can get them their stuff quickly and cheaply. Unfortunately, all that 2-day shipping, while convenient for the customer, isn't great for the planet. It doesn't allow retailers to bundle shipments and creates wasteful emissions from diesel-powered delivery trucks. All the boxes also add up, and while the amount of cardboard shipments has gone down in America since 1995, Millennials are also a generation that doesn't like to recycle which is problematic. (h/t to Tom Snitch for encouraging us to discuss Amazon packaging in ODP!)
Why This Matters: Miro here, speaking as a Millennial I think it's great that my generation is thinking about how to support sustainable companies but we have to also examine our own consumption habits as well by being aware of how much waste we generate as a result of convenience. It's also not enough to just buy from sustainable companies, we have to push them to keep doing more, reducing their waste, recycling and upcycling their products, using renewable energy in their operations etc. We're too big and influential of a generation to get complacent.
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 People
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Today's Exclusive ODP Millennial Interview is with Whitney Tome, the Executive Director of Green 2.0, an initiative dedicated to increasing racial diversity across mainstream environmental NGOs, foundations and government agencies.
ODP: What is the goal of the organization you lead, Green 2.0 and how did it begin?
WT: Green 2.0 works to increase diversity in the mainstream environmental movement, including NGOs, foundations, and federal agencies. Research we have commissioned has found a stunning lack of diversity in those organizations, especially at the leadership and board levels. We are committed to changing that. Green 2.0 began after our Founder, Robert Raben, attended a green group gala in which he couldn’t visibly see a person of color in the room who wasn’t part of the catering staff.
ODP: What is the current state of diversity within environmental nonprofits and their leadership?
WT: In our Transparency Card, Green 2.0 found that the environmental movement—from boards, to executive leadership, to staff—is still overwhelmingly white. However, environmental organizations have committed to improving diversity among their staff and board since we started this work. It’s evidenced by the number of diversity committees, managers, and plans that have sprung up since 2014. Across the top 40 NGOs, people of color represent 27%,15% 24% of staff, leadership and board positions respectively in 2017. But there’s still much more work to be done. More than 70% of those working in the space are white. Diversity is still seriously lacking at the senior leadership level.
ODP: What is the biggest challenge in trying to match talented diversity candidates and environmental organizations? What should we all try to change to improve the numbers?
WT: The biggest challenge is that so many environmental leaders say that they are committed to diversity, but are too slow in taking real action and forcing change at their organizations. The organization needs to be ready to support that person and also be ready to systematically tackle issues for communities of color. What often happens is that the person of color becomes a champion for these issues, whether they always want to be or not. In order to address this problem, organizations must first be very clear about what equity, justice, and inclusion mean for their organization. How will this affect every aspect of the organization from the staff and board, to the programmatic focus, to the vendors that you use?
As a specific example, make sure your interview panel, and the slate of candidates you get, is diverse from the outset. If it’s not, are you willing to expend the time, energy, and resources to get a diverse slate of candidates? And if not, why not? In the end, you might find the superstar that you have been looking for.
For far too long, people of color have been left out of the mainstream environmental movement and it’s time that we own our mistakes and get real about our shortcomings. We need to start intentionally counting how many people of color are staffing and leading the professional environmental sector and then committing to ways to improve our diversity numbers.
ODP: What does success look like in 5 years for Green 2.0?
WT: Success in 5 years would be all nonprofits, foundations and government agencies within the environmental movement committed to reporting their demographic data, taking actionable steps, and measuring their progress publicly on equity, inclusion, and justice within their respective organizations.
ODP: Since we are spotlighting the work of the millennial generation, we wonder what makes the millennial stereotype do you defy, and which one(s) fit you?
Since I'm just on the border of being a millennial, I haven’t fully embraced social media as much as other millennials. I still place an extremely high value on in-person communication, getting to know people’s stories and to enjoying moments when I’m in them, instead of making sure I capture it for social media. As for the part that fits me best, it is the desire to change the world around me through my actions and behaviors.
We know you will, Whitney! Thanks for what you and Green 2.0 are doing to diversify the movement!
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Environmental Justice
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Must See TV - ICYMI
On Wednesday night Samantha Bee (at her "rescue" farm for abandoned government workers) interviewed Mustafa Santiago Ali, the former director of the Office of Environmental Justice at the Environmental Protection Agency. They made a serious subject funny. This matters. Nuf said.
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 Oceans
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Over 100 New Ocean Species Discovered
Oxford University scientists, in partnership with the company Nekton, confirmed Wednesday their discovery of a completely new "zone" of the ocean in Bermuda, known as the Rariphotic Zone. This zone (or layer of ocean depth), which ranges from 226 to 984 feet in depth below the surface, contains 100 completely new species, including exceedingly small crustaceans known as tanaids, a coral that is shaped like black coils of wire that shoot up to nearly seven feet in height (pictured above).
As reported in the London Telegraph, the announcement came at the Ocean Risk Summit organized by Richard Branson's Oceans Unite to highlight the many challenges -- from climate change to overfishing -- facing the oceans. Oliver Steeds, chief executive of Nekton, said: “We now have the technology available to us to discover the deep ocean, to discover more of our planet in the next 10 years than we have in the last 100,000. We have been looking up and when we should have been looking down.”
Why This Matters: We know more about the moon than we do about the large swath of our planet that is water. There is so much yet to be discovered in the deep blue. There are more than 100,000 underwater mountains spread out across the globe but fewer than 50 of them have been biologically sampled. We need to understand our oceans better so that we can care for them and use their resources more sustainably going forward. Life on earth depends on it.
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 Hero
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Heros of The Week: Logan High School Students of Logan, Utah
Utah isn't a state that celebrates climate change legislation. As Eco Watch reported, their Republican governor said in 2015 that man-made climate change is "a little debatable." In 2010, the state legislature overwhelmingly passed a resolution that implied global warming is a conspiracy and urged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to stop all carbon dioxide reduction policies and programs.
A group of students from Logan High School banned together in 2016 to reverse the 2010 resolution. For two years the teenagers worked to educate legislators and push Gov. Gary Herbert until he reversed the 2010 measure this past March, with the support of 75 percent of Republican legislators. “My generation and generations to come will inherit the many threats that climate change poses,” said Piper Christian, one of these students.
Way to go Logan High School, we salute you!
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 Air
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#MothersDay2018
It is not lost on us that many of our heroes are Moms who have become active on conservation issues out of concern for their children. So first we want to give a tip of the ODP hat to all Moms out there who are making a difference for conservation. And if you are a Mom looking for a place to be active, here is a good one: Moms Clean Air Force. They are a million moms strong, and have chapters all over the country. If you would like to find out more, click here. To sign up and join the force, click here.
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 Animals
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Fiona the hippo from the Cincinnati Zoo.
Don't forget to kiss your Mom on Mother's Day!
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One Cool Thing: Animal Mothers and Babies Bonding!
Why This Matters: These photos remind us that animals are amazing. And its good to have a mother!
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Mom Calaya and baby Moke of the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. are Western Lowland Gorillas. Moke is 3 weeks old now. Photo: Smithsonian National Zoo
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African penguin mother and chick at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago.
Photo: Lincoln Park Zoo
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We hope all the moms out there have a very happy Mother's Day this Sunday. H/T to our own Moms! We love you! And we want to sign off for the week with a heartfelt thanks to the Case Foundation for their sponsorship of this week's spotlight on Millennials. Thanks to you too for reading and sharing us with your friends and your moms! See you on Monday!
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