Santa Monica Farmer’s Market: An Assessment of Food Waste and Green Packaging Strategies

The Santa Monica Farmers Markets (SMFMs) provide neighborhoods with sustainable agriculture, healthy living, and community engagement. Since not all of the markets have a formal zero waste program we decided to look into potential sustainability issues that could be affecting the markets’ business. Given the types of waste typically generated at food markets, we chose to focus our project on potential food and packaging waste. We developed an analysis of current environmental strategies based on S.W.O.T. (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats). Although the SMFMs already have environmentally sustainable practices in place, we found room for improvement. This includes contacting LA Compost to increase their environmental efficiency by keeping their composting local. Unfortunately plastic cannot be completely removed from a market because certain vegetables require plastic to prevent water from leaking and inconveniencing shoppers. Nonetheless, efforts can still be made to limit plastic use to a minimum. Overall, the SMFMs sustainability benefits will not be reflected in their business unless customers are made aware of their actions. Hence, we suggest they incorporate additional educational components regarding their sustainability efforts. By bundling the quality of organic produce with its environmental aspect the SMFMs will benefit from increased price margins.

A Case Study on Nestle’s Sustainability Management Practices

As the world’s leading food and drink company, Nestlé has historically encountered many reputational issues as a result of poor supply chain management. Beginning in 2009, Nestle enacted several sustainability strategies such as Nestlé’s Ecolaboration, Nespresso AAA Sustainable Quality Program, and 4C Code of Conduct in an attempt to address these issues. While these initiatives accomplished desired results, a close analysis of their policies shows gaping holes in data reporting, sourcing visibility, and certification standards. By analyzing case studies of Starbucks and Walmart, we describe benefits that can be enjoyed as a result of implementing industry-leading standards despite higher upfront costs. Our final recommendation is for Nestle to enact a company-wide policy to adopt the Smithsonian National Zoo’s Bird-Friendly Certification with the partnership of other NGOs to ensure implementation success. We strongly believe that this strategy will provide a secured, high-quality source of coffee beans for Nestle’s future consumption as well as establish a new industry standard for coffee bean certification.

Five Threads Brewing Company: A Great Local Craft Beer Experience

The Five Threads Brewing Company is a small brewery located in Westlake California. Breweries are inherently water and energy intensive, but many have adopted sustainable practices to reduce their ecological footprint. While Five Threads pursues various environmental initiatives like reusing water to clean kettles or make the next batch of beer, as well as sending spent grain to farmers for cattle feed, there is more that they can do. Currently, the brewery has little incentive to invest in long term green infrastructure like solar panels due to the short-term nature of their lease, and their current goal of raising revenue. This along with their small size makes it harder for them to adopt practices many sustainable breweries have implemented. However, we believe Five Threads may increase profitability while simultaneously reducing their environmental impact. This includes implementing a Bring Back Your Bottle program—giving a 10% discount to customers who bring back their own bottles and thus incentivizing customers to reuse while also reducing costs for new bottle purchases, partner with a local bakery as community outreach, or reuse their bottles in interior designs to create cool backdrops and an overall atmosphere that will generate a greater social media presence.

Shaping Sustainability: J7 Surfboards and the Impacts of Sustainable Business Strategies

Our project focuses on the feasibility of establishing custom order surfboards made

from materials with reduced environmental impacts in the business model of J7

Surfboards of Santa Barbara, California. Based on a culmination of life cycle

assessments of traditional surfboards and ecoboards, economic analysis of current

surfboards produced by J7, and cross comparisons of surfboards produced by competitors –both traditional and ecoboards–our project serves to assess the

ability of J7 to introduce a ecoboard option into their custom board productions.

Through establishing this option based on their current business model and

economics, we offer a way for this local-based surfboard company to be a leader

in surf industry environmentalism within the Santa Barbara community without reducing profit margins. Our report finds that the production of sustainable

surfboards is a viable option for J7 Surfboards currently as a custom order option,

and that future implementation of a permanent ecoboard line will be feasible

with more advanced economic analysis and the popularization of sustainable surfboards.

Group 8: Alexa Garcia, Allison Candell, Kathleen Knight, Manali McCarthy, Weilly Tong

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Red Bull: is the energy drink energy efficient?

Group 6 analyzed and evaluated the current environmental strategies and made further suggestions for the company Red Bull GmbH, the makers of the Red Bull energy drink. Currently, Red Bull does fairly well in being environmentally friendly and sustainable; for example, they use locally sourced water, recyclable materials, and wall-to-wall production (to reduce greenhouse gas emissions). However, they only have one production hub, which is in Austria, when they ship to 170 other countries, thereby increasing their emissions. Also, since the company is private, the only information available about their performance is information they choose to release, which could be potential greenwashing. Our group conducted a survey and found that out of the college students who responded, most preferred that the company be eco-friendly. Since college students are a target consumer (according to their can) and based on our other findings, we suggested that Red Bull greatly improve their transparency regarding their environmental practices, and that they further their strides in sustainability, emphasizing reducing their greenhouse gases. This will reflect better on their name and be better for the environment, and these will both be important in the coming years.
Group 6: Arman Tahmazyan, Taylor Ely, Mikyla Reta