A Gringo Fantasy

This recent Rainforest Alliance video follows the satirical journey of an Average Joe who quit his 9 to 5 job to move to Nicaragua and “live the clichéd gringo fantasy of becoming an honorary native and leading the resistant forces” against deforesters and their multinational employers.

With more than 4 million hits on YouTube, this viral video promoting Rainforest Alliance certified products shows how technology, especially social media, has transformed the way environmental organizations share their message and reach new audiences.

The spread of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other mainstream social networks has created a glut of information, but also a cost-effective way for organizations to build awareness about important societal and environmental issues. For example, Water Is Life’s video featuring Haitians reading #firstworldproblems tweets earned more than 1 million views in just 4 days, spread awareness of the problem of lack of clean water, and was featured as one of the Top 10 Social Media Marketing Campaigns of 2013 by Adhere Creative.

Crowd sourced BP logo

Social networks also allow consumers to interact directly with brands. Greenpeace has been especially effective in mobilizing people to fight back against polluters; for example, an online contest to redesign the BP logo was flooded with submissions featuring oil spills and devastated wildlife.

It will behoove both companies and nonprofit organizations to focus on the role social media plays in disseminating messages to a large audience as this can work both in favor and against their objectives.

Boost Your Crops’ Performance Through Mobile Tech

Can you imagine that the person sitting next to you on a terrace in Madrid is currently controlling the irrigation system of their farms in Brazil and Argentina to maximize the efficiency of their water consumption? Nowadays this is possible through drop-by-drop irrigation systems controlled by mobile phones or tablets.

Drip irrigation systems for farming purposes have been in the scene since the 60’s and allow farmers to save water by controlling their water usage. These systems are highly efficient in terms of water utilization (around 90%) compared with other systems that waste much more water.

In the 90’s these irrigation systems were controlled from a small console located in the farm near the source of the irrigation system. The farmer would program the console for the desired irrigation rate and could change it as desired.

In 2000, these irrigation systems started to be controlled from a PC connected to internet or GMS, which enabled the farmer to control the system from home. Nowadays, with the evolution in the communications sector, these same systems are managed by an application on your mobile phone or tablet.

The result of this technological innovation has been increased efficiency in farming, particularly regarding water savings. When used together with applications that forecast the weather, this represents a significant improvement for the farming sector.

Tech + Food is Hot!

While sitting at your local Chipotle eating guacamole, you are completely focused on its wonderful green color, smooth texture, and how well it complements the salsa. It is so good, in fact, it may never occur to you to start thinking about the global impact of food production on your life.

This may sound too philosophical for lunchtime. But trust me, such deep philosophical questions can come up, especially if you read in the news that sooner or later you might not be able to eat your guacamole anymore. One pressing question that pops up is how can we produce food more efficiently and sustainably while combatting the negative impacts of climate change?

The opportunities for innovation in the food sector are huge, especially in the context of changing climate conditions, greater awareness of customers about sustainability issues, and increasing demand for high quality food. Not surprisingly, tech start-ups are at the forefront of this quest for greater productivity and healthier food. Here are some of the most interesting startups on the market today: 

Image via Bright Farms

BrightFarms tries to address the problem of land and water conservation, greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, and agricultural runoff by launching state-of the-art tech farms in your neighborhood. Some examples of their recent hi-tech greenhouses include the rooftop greenhouse at The Manhattan School for Children, and the rooftop greenhouse at Forest Houses, an affordable housing project in the Bronx.

Blue River Technology uses computer vision and robotics to precisely measure each salad you would consume in the future in order to avoid agricultural waste and reduce the amount of fertilizers used. They developed the LettuceBot, a precision thinning system delivered by cutting-edge robotics and machine-learning algorithms that make plant-by-plant decisions to increase yield with a goal to earn more value from the exact same acre.



Granular designs business software and analysis platforms that allow producers to improve efficiency, yields and profits in their fields. Their goal is critical–to address the growing demand for food, especially proteins, to support the increasing global population, which will reach 3 billion by 2050. Pressure will be on the farmers who will need to double their production, manage their environmental footprint, and adapt to changing climate in order to feed this growing population. 

Hampton Creek Foods is an egg replacing start-up with a very interesting business preposition. They try to disrupt the egg market by using highly tech and data-driven processes to produce egg-free food alternatives for products like mayonnaise and cookie dough, which, according to them, provide a cheaper, healthier and more humane alternative to using eggs.

Technology’s entrance into the food sector gives us hope that in the future we can not only produce more effectively and pollute less, but also be more healthy and have a less severe impact on our environment.

E-Waste: What YOU can do!

While you have a look at your mobile phone to check the recent post on Facebook, read current Whatsapp messages or even look at this blog—imagine how long you will have this mobile phone for. Two years? One year? Maybe less. And what about your laptop? Your TV? iPad or iPod? The pace of development of technical innovation and more performance and features has increased within the last years, leading us to renew our electronic devices more frequently.

And now just imagine how this happens not only in your household but also in a $175 billion market like the US consumer electronics industry. The central question is: What can you do with your old devices? What did you do in the past to save guacamole?

Often e-waste is discarded at landfills as part of the normal garbage. It does not require an Einstein-like brain to figure out that this is not the preferred solution. Harmful chemicals such as lead, mercury and cadmium that are included in most (all) electronic devices may leach from landfills and eventually contaminate the environment and finally harm nature and humans. If the devices do not end up in domestic landfills, they might reach China, India or Nigeria. Have a look at this very interesting short video that shows how this unacceptable process works:

But enough about the dark side of the electronic device you hold in your hand. There are several options for how you can change this situation!

The easiest one is to give your old device to a friend or family member. This is a win-win situation. Your family member / friend is happy about the device (maybe a student who can’t afford a new mobile phone / laptop, etc.) and you are glad you did not support the increasing amount of electronic waste on landfills or in developing countries.

Image via Cell Phones for Soldiers

Another option is donating your (functional) e-waste. There is an interesting website that collects cell phones for soldiers. Their mission is to enable soldiers calling home from the battle field. Sounds like a great deal, doesn’t it?

The third option is the so-called e-cycling (recycling for electronics, see here for more information), which has to be seen as controversial. Why? Because it is a market and where there is a market there is also a black market. There are lots of e-cycle offers out there, promising to recycle your electronics in an environment-friendly way. One guess where the devices might end up to boost profits? Exactly: Developing countries. So if you want to e-cycle, try to figure out if the original supplier or retailer takes back the device. A good example is DELL computers that launched a free e-cycling program in 2006.

While companies can contribute to e-cycling, they still need YOUR help. It seems like there are no incentives for e-cycling as it is more convenient to throw the mobile devices into the garbage—but as seen in the above video: is that what you want to support? Lets make a step to reduce our footprint on this earth by taking care where our e-waste ends up!