7 Oct 2021
Top 10 Ways to Slim Personal Consumption
When all of our personal consumption is added up, that segment may well be the largest single part of our personal carbon footprint. [In A Personal Carbon Reduction Plan, I tried to help individuals segment to ease the path to reducing personal carbon footprint.]. While there are many other components of personal consumption, especially our dietary choices, this focus are all areas where individuals can take action.
The old adage “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” is still potent, and in that order. Our society has become so obsessed with creeping consumerism that it often obscures the cost to our planet. Reducing consumption is often about:
- prioritizing needs over wants
- buying durable items that can be repaired
- eschewing as much as possible the fast fashion trend
- moving toward lower carbon food consumption, including more vegetarian or plant-based choices and finding more sustainable food sources.
It is important to remember that excess packaging, which almost always involves huge amounts of single use plastics,
1. Bottled Water
A 21st Century paradox, is that people feel compelled to choose bottled water when ordinary tap water is almost always safer and healthier. Bottled water often has additives like fluoride and sodium. Even worse, a litre of bottled water contains over 10 particles of microplastic on average.
Polyethylene terephthalate (PET or PETE), the plastic used in drinks bottles makes up over 10% of all plastic production and represents a huge consumption of fossil fuels. And, we are unsustainably extracting water from finite aquifers setting the stage for future water shortages. If that weren’t bad enough, we are causing this plastic waste to pollute the farthest reaches of earth and the deepest oceans.
So, skip the purchase of that wasteful water, and drink from the tap whether at home or dining out. Nothing could be simpler. To do otherwise is an assault on the earth we call home.
2. Disposable Shopping Bags
In the US, consumers use 100 billion single use plastic bags, that require 12 million barrels of oil to manufacture, each and every year. A mere 14 bags consume the same oil required to drive one mile. Couple that with the toxic chemicals in the bags, and that they take 1000 years to break down, make them a wasteful indulgence we must curtail.
Although paper bags might seem the right alternative, they take 4 times as much energy per bag to produce.
Thus, the answer is reusable bags or ‘green bins’ for shopping. I’ve been using such reusable bags, since I bought my first cotton bag from Greenpeace in San Francisco in the 1980s.
3. Disposable Coffee Cups
Consider the 50 billion single use coffee cups thrown away in the US alone, and the 5 billion in Canada. Often described as a mountain of waste, that perhaps understates the scale.
What is more, almost all cannot be recycled, involve single use plastics (both the lid and embedded in the cup) and hence use loads of fossil fuels as part of our carbon footprint.
The solution is simple. No one is asking consumers to Reduce, or drink less coffee! However, the Reuse options are simple:
- savour your coffee in the cafe with their re-usable mug,
- bring your own portable, re-usable (often thermos) coffee or tea mug for take-away, or
- consider making your own coffee at home [See Coffee Pods]
4. Disposable Coffee Pods
‘K-cups’ are expensive and bad for the Earth and your health. How did such expensive items become so popular? We are all susceptible to clever marketing, coupled with perceived convenience.
Earlier, I suggested one remedy to all those Disposable Take Out Coffee Cups was to make coffee at home. K-cups have made home coffee production wasteful as well.
There are many alternatives, from the timeless way people have been making coffee for decades without all the excess packaging, to biodegradable pods. A little research will find a way to lower this part of your personal footprint.
5. Overpackaged Take Out Food
Big Bang Theory made take out food cool for the Millennials. Personally, the lifestyle has always seemed unduly wasteful, with the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly accelerating this takeout and delivery trend. In terms of personal carbon footprint, take out meals consume 4.5 times the carbon of the alternatives.
This footprint comes from the extra transportation and the fossil fuel carbon embedded in all that excess packaging, primarily plastic.
Take time to consider the alternatives:
- plan more meals at home, which also if prepared from quality ingredients, are almost certainly overall healthier,
- slow down and dine inside or on the patio of your favourite restaurant, or
- Consider re-use through circular economy companies. I am a particular fan of A Friendlier Company, that serves a growing service area including Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Guelph, Fergus-Elora and London.
6. Drinking Straws
Plastic drinking straws are particularly problematic. Beyond being wasteful, and non-recyclable, and their use of fossil fuels in manufacture, these straws easily make their way to oceans, and are particularly harmful to wildlife.
You can obviously carry re-usable straws, often metal, for take out and also encourage any food establishments still using plastic to consider alternatives including wood, paper and even pasta.
7. Bar Soap
We can reduce our footprint from personal hygiene products. Liquid soap doesn’t last as long as good old fashioned bar soap, and involves lots of plastic made from fossil fuels for the container.
Bar soap comes in many forms, but generally has natural ingredients and is equally or more effective without the plastic waste. An added bonus: you can support smaller local businesses as you try out the many choices.
8. Bar Shampoo
Hair care products are over-packaged in lots of fossil fuel based single use plastic. We are ‘conditioned’ to believe that shampoo and conditioner comes as a liquid in a plastic bottle. Because the original shampoos were, in fact, bars, we are simply returning to a more sustainable model, coupled with well formulated products that are even better for your hair than the liquid kind.
Do your own research. Above is just one Canadian-made line of zero packaging products from a BC based startup. There are many more options. Give them a try and find the perfect choice for you.
9. Dishwasher Pods
Like the dreaded coffee pods, plastic pods for your dishwasher are an environmentally bad choice. Beyond the plastic packaging, they contain all sorts of chemicals that damage the marine environment and more
Finding the most eco-friendly dishwasher tablets, powder, pods, and liquids. We also look at animal testing, microplastics, toxic chemicals, and highlight the ethics of Bide and Finish and give our recommended buys.
What to do? The old fashioned powdered dishwasher detergent has a way lower footprint. And, if you are diligent, ‘tablets’ are an even better choice with lower weight and the convenience of pods, but at a somewhat higher price.
10. Diapers
There is much debate about the over 50 billion diapers disposed each year in the US. The environmental footprint may include toxic chemicals, use of fossil fuel-based plastics, but perhaps the biggest is that disposing of diapers in landfills itself contributes significantly to our overall Greenhouse Gas emissions, from the methane produced.
Evaluate the pros and cons of alternatives, from reusable cloth diapers to biodegradable diapers. Do your research and find the lowest environmental footprint that will work for you.
This top 10 list, contains a fulsome menu of ways to start lowering your personal footprint by reducing packaging, particularly fossil fuel intense single use plastic.
You can start by selecting just one from the above list, or go all in. The most important thing is that there is no better time to start reducing your carbon impact than today.
3 Jan 2022
Adrenaline Fund Pumps a High Energy First Year into Early Stage Investing
2021 marks the first full investment year for Adrenaline Fund which uniquely applies a passive model, fuelled by our startup and angel ecosystem, to early stage investing. Adrenaline Fund was founded in 2020 in cooperation with 2 other sub-funds in the Archangel Network of Funds. Through the vagaries of. the COVID-19 pandemic, 2021. was our first full year of investing fuelled by a remarkable group of Limited Partners who are accredited investors interested in our Purpose.
PURPOSE
The entire team at Archangel Network of Funds, and the Adrenaline Fund, is driven by a core Purpose, developed over years of building and supporting early-stage companies. In a nutshell, we want to directly impact Canada’s economic prosperity into the future by:
In this post, I’ll further explore our unique model, an exceptional team, what we’ve done so far, and propose a future where this impact can grow many times larger than our results to date.
TEAM
The Adrenaline Fund team has unparallelled experience in building companies, mentoring startups and selecting and investing in the next generation of Canada’s tech leaders but at the early stages. In addition to myself, our team includes Benton Leong and Amber French, and is ably complemented by Venture Partner Danielle Graham and the large Archangel Network of Funds team, many of whom are pictured above. Years of strategic business leadership, coupled with some of the most sophisticated selection and investment savvy, are a big part of what makes Adrenaline unique.
MODEL AND WHY IT WORKS
As mentioned, we believe that the Adrenaline Fund model and thesis is unique, at least in Canada, by fusing the power of a passive approach (like an ETF in the public markets) to the early-stage Angel investment ecosystem.
First of all, the investment decision is designed to support the existing Angel ecosystem through a set of rules to govern the investment process. At a high level, the Rules, shared with LPs, stay largely the same but are tuned in response to changes in. the ecosystem. Thus, rather than active decisions, the focus is on tuning the rules and working to ensure that the angel and startup ecosystem remain of high value.
In case some of you think, like a colleague initially did, that such a “blind investment process” is a bit crazy and perhaps akin to wagering on slot machines, nothing could be further from the truth. The secret sauce of Adrenaline is the collective value-add of the ‘qualified lead investors’ who mentor and provide ongoing strategic oversight (e.g. as a board member or board observer).
In fact, research by Brian Smith, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at Wilfrid Laurier University along with global tech investment trends studied by BDC Ventures, shows an almost 25 times multiplier of success for such angel-backed companies. In summary, in generating larger ‘Scale Up’ companies (with valuations reaching US$250M), Canada has a dismal 0.3% track record (or 1 in 300) compared to the 2.5% number for the us (or 1 in 40). Within the Angel ecosystem, specifically GTAN where the study was conducted, an amazing 8% of investee companies reached the $250M threshold. Unpacking the reasons for this incredible out-performance would include factors like: the GTAN selection process, the ongoing value-adds of experienced ‘deal leads’, the strength of the ecosystem support in the Toronto-Waterloo Tech Corridor where GTAN focuses, and syndication with other capable seed/angel stage investment funds.
The bottom line is that, while adding the energy of investment to an existing process that works, Adrenaline Fund is set up for success.
Further, he model is structured to be open and accessible to the greatest number of Accredited Investors by having the aggregate investment staged over 5 equal annual cash instalments (say $250,000 at $50,000 per year). Since the fund is structured to segregate ‘Vintage Years’, and each Vintage aims to invest in 8-10 companies per year, this ensures a diversified portfolio of 40-50 companies at an extremely affordable entry point. The Vintage structure allows new LPs to join once at the beginning of each year, thus growing the maximum amount of each Adrenaline investment and helping startups even more.
Most importantly, the fund attracts investments from individuals who had never been angel investors since it provides deal flow and deal structure for new investors. In other words, we are unlocking new capital to support Canadian innovation.
PORTFOLIO
The portfolio reflects the diversity of innovation in 2021, transcending the software and consumer focus of a decade ago, with more and more patentable intellectual property and deep tech. The 2021 vintage portfolio comprises:
We are excited to welcome the following companies as our first Adrenaline Fund vintage, reflecting the powerful value-adds of the Angel Ecosystem we support:
Amber, Benton and I are pleased with the successful validation of our passive, rules-based model for Adrenaline Fund and are excited for how this will grow in 2022 and beyond.
Feel free to reach out to any of us to learn more and get involved. We’d love to have you on board.