Category: Business

Upcoming Clean Tech event:

Looking forward to attend on Tuesday:

Energizing Our Cities: Battery and Energy Storage Technologies for Urban Settings

NY-BEST/NYIT Conference

“Energy storage technologies are at the forefront of the next wave of the cleantech revolution, with new products and applications for clean transport, energy efficient buildings and the smart grid. Strategic investments are needed to accelerate the development and full commercialization of these technologies. What is the current state of these technology advancements, what products are being introduced into the marketplace, what are the real world experiences with these products to date and how will their applications shape urban life in the future?”

PharmaJet’s Global Return on Health

Q&A: Following UN Women NYC’s “3 Pillars of Sustainability,” May 8, 2012, Ann talks with Pharmajet’s Heather Potters, Founder and Chair, about the role of business in global health.

PharmaJet’s Heather Potters with her mother

1. Ann: PharmaJet is a new medical device company, and your mother developed the technology. What’s the company’s role in furthering sustainable development?

Heather: The company’ mission is to make a positive contribution to reducing the global disease burden through injection delivery of vaccines with its devices, safely and effectively.

2. Ann: How do you do that?

Heather: We’ve developed a simple, innovative needle-free jet injection technology—focused on delivery of vaccines into the body. “Needle-free” is not new, but the way in which PharmaJet has approached it is. A variety of care givers, customers, patients, governments, and NGO’s have used the technology and confirmed it to be very useful and desirable in a variety of healthcare environments, as an alternative to needle-syringe and the resulting disposal, needle-stick, needle re-use and liability issues they face.

3. Ann: Is the traditional vaccination process potentially a global health issue?

Heather: The aim of vaccination is to help the body generate immunity to disease. Continue reading “PharmaJet’s Global Return on Health” →

Water Sanitation & Sustainability

Q&A: Following UN Women NYC’s “3 Pillars of Sustainability,” May 8, 2012, Ann talks with charity:water’s head of programming, Christy Scazzero, on how awareness of water sanitation affects global sustainability—and the impact it’s had in the developing world.

christy.scazzero.pic.download.5.20.12 — Christy Scazzero of charity:water

1. Ann: What does charity:water do to advance sustainability?

Christy: charity: water is a non-profit organization that helps bring clean, safe drinking water to people in developing countries via an online donor platform. We do this through raising awareness about the water crisis and funding non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to implement water programs across sub-saharan Africa, Asia and Haiti.

2. Ann: How do you define sustainability?

Christy: We’re committed to ensuring that communities benefiting from water systems continue to have uninterrupted access to clean water. For the purposes of charity: water, water, sanitation, and hygiene services are considered “sustained” when systems and procedures Continue reading “Water Sanitation & Sustainability” →

Speaking of Rio+20: A Conversation with UN Assistant Secretary General Liz Thompson

Imagine: You’ve been a practicing lawyer for 20 years. You’ve been elected to Parliament. You’ve run the environment Ministry for a whole country. You’ve been a Cabinet member. You own a successful business, including the building from which it operates. You have an impeccable financial record.

Then imagine: You go to ask for a loan for a larger building to support your expanding energy and environmental consulting practice, and the bank clerk asks you to bring in your husband — to sign the loan papers.

“No mature man with a successful business and a track record with the bank walks in and hears the desk officer say ‘you must bring your wife in to sign, or you can’t get a loan,'” explains H. Elizabeth (Liz) Thompson, now U.N. Assistant Secretary General and co-Executive Coordinator for the June Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development.

Her personal experience at the bank in her native Barbados, where she was the first graduate of the University of the West Indies to be appointed to the Cabinet and served as an elected Parliamentarian for 14 years, 12 of them as Minister of Environment, is among the many graphic indignities women face that have made Thompson an ardent supporter of women’s development, access to jobs and investment in the ‘green economy’ that is a central theme and objective of the upcoming international meetings in Rio.

Recruited by the U.N. in 2010, Ms. Thompson’s role “is to support the objectives and themes of the conference, build consensus around the objectives and themes, work with stakeholders at the political level, as well as non-state actors internationally, including the NGO community, business leaders and multilateral development world,” she explains.

As if that weren’t enough, she and a miniscule staff also support the negotiations and the U.N. Millennium goals and process, providing strategic messaging and producing papers and articles for U.N. agencies like U.N.EP and U.N.CTAD, as the Summit approaches.

A big role for big business

Thompson’s vision for the Rio summit outcomes includes a bigger role for business in sustainability — and a better role for women. Continue reading “Speaking of Rio+20: A Conversation with UN Assistant Secretary General Liz Thompson” →