A Roadmap to Reduce U.S. Food Waste by 20 Percent

The magnitude of the food waste problem is difficult to comprehend. The U.S. spends $218 billion a year -- 1.3% of GDP -- growing, processing, transporting, and disposing of food that is never eaten. The causes of food waste are diverse, ranging from crops that never get harvested, to food left on overfilled plates, to near-expired milk and stale bread. ReFED is a coalition of over 30 business, nonprofit, foundation, and government leaders committed to building a different future, where food waste prevention, recovery, and recycling are recognized as an untapped opportunity to create jobs, alleviate hunger, and protect the environment -- all while stimulating a new multi-billion dollar market opportunity. ReFED developed A Roadmap to Reduce U.S. Food Waste as a data-driven guide to collectively take action to reduce food waste at scale nationwide.This Roadmap report is a guide and a call to action for us to work together to solve this problem. Businesses can save money for themselves and their customers. Policymakers can unleash a new wave of local job creation. Foundations can take a major step in addressing environmental issues and hunger. And innovators across all sectors can launch new products, services, and business models. There will be no losers, only winners, as food finds its way to its highest and best use

End-stage Renal Disease and Economic Incentives: The International Study of Health Care Organization and Financing

End-stage renal disease (ESRD), or kidney failure, is a debilitating, costly, and increasingly common medical condition. Little is known about how different financing approaches affect ESRD outcomes and delivery of care. This paper presents results from a comparative review of 12 countries with alternative models of incentives and benefits, collected under the International Study of Health Care Organization and Financing, a substudy within the Dialysis Outcomes and Practice Patterns Study. Variation in spending per ESRD patient is relatively small and is correlated with overall per capita health care spending. Between-country variations in spending are reduced using an input price parity index constructed for this study. Remaining differences in costs and outcomes do not seem strongly linked to differences in incentives embedded in national programs.

Forecast Model for Return Quality in Reverse Logistics Networks

Giving rise to the field of reverse logistics are the governmental legislations mandating used electronics take-backs and sustainable recovery, which often burden manufacturers with the challenge of high implementation costs but no guaranteed profitability. One way to tackle this challenge is to demystify the multi-faceted uncertainties of product returns, namely timing, quantity and quality, that currently inhibit optimal design and operations of reverse logistics networks (RLN). In recognition of the limitations particularly caused by uncertainty of returns’ quality in the strategic, tactical and operational planning of the RLN, this research seeks to develop a forecast model for the prediction of the returns’ quality of future electronics returns. The proposed forecast model comprehensively incorporates three major factors that affect quality decisions which are usage, technological age and remaining economic value of expected product returns to predict its quality grade. While technological age and economic trends can readily be established, the main complexity lies in modeling of usage-dependent reliability distribution of returned electronics. The novelty of the proposed forecast model lies in deducing usage distributions through segmentation of the consumer base by socioeconomic factors such as age, income, educational status and location. These usage distributions are then used to estimate remaining useful life of returned products and their components, the associated repair costs and the subsequent profitability of reprocessing based on economic value in the market. This research develops analytical models of expected return quality based on empirical usage distributions and pricing trends. The analytical models are then applied in Monte Carlo simulations to forecast expected returns’ quality from different regions, including large and small population centers, in Canada

Enhancing New Markets Tax Credit pipeline flow: Maintaining a continuous deal flow in spite of funding gaps and market volatility

Kevin Leichner examines New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) performance during the Great Recession and provides recommendations for maintaining deal flow to support the NMTC project pipeline and overcome financing gaps. Between 2002 and 2009, the Federal government allocated $26 billion worth of NMTC to support community development projects. Based on new data from the respondents to a Winter 2010 Center for Community Development Investments survey as well as three case studies, NMTC stakeholders are finding their NMTC portfolios are outperforming other investments. At the same time, however, their responses also indicate that the Congressional expansion of the program, with larger annual allocations, may exceed the ability of the NMTC industry to provide high-quality investor-backed projects. As a consequence, investor demand for the tax credits has been falling, resulting in lower investor pay-ins and reduced impact in low-income communities. Based on survey responses, case studies, and industry literature, the paper concludes with recommendations for strengthening the program and stimulating demand.Community development

Development and Marketing of a Repurposed Textile Product for Homeless Individuals in Northwest Arkansas

Growing concerns over waste disposal methods have led to a greater focus on recycling efforts in the textile industry. Second only to the oil industry, the textile industry continues to be one of the most wasteful among leading businesses around the world and determining ways to repurpose fashion materials could be a reasonable solution to this growing problem (Dobilaite, V., Mileriene, G., Juciene, M., & Sacevičienė, 2017). In addition to alleviating disposal issues, repurposed materials could serve the humanitarian needs of local communities, and even more importantly, could specifically benefit homeless populations. The purpose of this project was to design, execute, analyze, critique and report on the development of a sleeping bag prototype using repurposed materials created to benefit homeless populations in Northwest Arkansas. The product logo for the sleeping bag, identified by the name, “HIP”, was established to represent the slogan, “Homelessness Is Personal.” Using the design methodology established, the HIP prototype could be distributed to individuals living in homeless communities in Northwest Arkansas. By using repurposed materials for the end product, waste reduction of textile products may result. Further, engagement of the community could be accomplished by using the design methodology to establish work groups for production of the sleeping bags. Ultimately, this design methodology was designed so that distribution to other communities outside of the Northwest Arkansas region could be a foreseeable future goal of the committee. Materials collected from Goodwill in Fayetteville, Arkansas were used in creating the prototype and production was completed at the University of Arkansas Apparel Merchandising and Product Development (AMPD) design and development labs. Projections indicate that the design, development, and marketing efforts surrounding the HIP prototype are potentially conducive to the creation of a lasting and sustainable project, which might continue to creatively engage students for many years to come

Unleashing the Potential of US Foundation Endowments: Using Responsible Investment to Strengthen Endowment Oversight and Enhance Impact

A small but growing number of US foundations are investigating or pursuing sustainable and responsible investing approaches -- often employing such terms as mission-related investing or impact investing. They are embracing the notion that in addition to making grants, they can employ investment and shareowner strategies across their assets to help achieve positive societal outcomes and targeted financial returns. This report is designed for foundation staff and trustees who are interested in encouraging their institutions to align a broader portion of their assets under management with their programmatic goals or to factor environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) issues into their investment decisions to help fulfill fiduciary duties. Practitioners in the sustainable and responsible investment industry who serve foundations, including consultants, research providers, financial advisors, and investment managers, can also benefit from the information and resources in this paper.Using extensive data from primary and secondary resources, this paper presents the current range and state of involvement by foundations in sustainable and responsible investing (SRI) and profiles a number of foundations whose approaches to SRI have resulted in meaningful environmental, social or corporate governance outcomes. It demonstrates that it is feasible for foundations to invest their endowments in alignment with their mission and ESG issues of concern, while at the same time achieving their overall financial goals. This report also details a range of resources, including many that have emerged just in the past few years, available to foundations in their efforts to explore SRI. Last, the report offers recommendations and ideas for foundation officers and trustees to enable them to guide their institutions into this space

Intitatives for a Smart Economy 2.0

Just like its predecessor, I4SE 2.0 is organized in a manner that focuses on those sectors of the local economy identified by WNYREDC as growth sectors. It identifies initiatives within those sectors where Erie County can make a meaningful contribution. These sectors include: advanced manufacturing, smart growth implementation, workforce development, agriculture, bi-national logistics, energy, and tourism. The report also identifies specific initiatives that Erie County will undertake in other important areas, beyond the WNYREDC growth sectors, that contribute to a thriving and inclusive local economy. These include quality of life initiatives, as well as those focused on the “blue” economy and enhancement of the Erie County Industrial Development Agency (“ECIDA”)

Case studies in disassembly process planning

The rapid advancement in technology started in last century and still continuing resulted in decreased life cycle of electronic products. It also resulted in increased product disposal rate and filling land fill space faster causing shortage of such space and consequently creates major environmental problems. So, since couple of decade environmental concern has focused on production process and environmental regulations imposed by government has watched industrial pollution. With government regulations to control environmental problems; consumers are also aware of adverse effects of product disposal forcing manufacturer to become more responsible for safe product disposal and recycling of used product. A necessary condition to disassemble any product more efficiently is the availability of a disassembly process plan. In this thesis we represent set of intelligent disassembly rules that are able to automatically generate a disassembly plan. Few electronic equipments have been used to carry out experiments of disassembly process plans generation. So, based on established disassembly rules disassembly process plans have been generated having several steps in each plan. Each step describes action to be taken on particular part of assembly, disassembly time and effort we need to put to carry out that operation. Final economic analysis is carried out to show economic gain achieved though disassembly process

Discontinuous Technological Change and Relaxations of Regulatory Restrictions to Achieve Societal Objectives for the Environment, with Focus on IP Protections

We address cases where improvements in information technology for measurement and monitoring should result in regulatory relaxation, in contrast with much recent research, which focuses on situations where these improvements should result in increased regulatory restrictions on the actions permitted by large platform operators. We focus specifically on the problem of reducing environmental degradation, and we explore how regulatory restrictions associated with intellectual property (IP) rights should be relaxed in the presence of demonstrable reductions in environmental impact that result from improvements made by parties other than the owners of the IP. We explore how Environmental Impact Merit should be used to compel the owner of the IP to adopt improvements and to compel compensation to the improver. Future research will develop additional examples where regulatory relaxation is appropriate