Meet the SustainPHL Nominees: Impact Business Leader 2022
These businesses are making an impact in our community, by employing community members as well as positively affecting our environment. Impact businesses are proof that for-profit enterprises can be stewards of social and environmental change, creating that triple-bottom line.
In October, Philadelphia’s SustainPHL Awards will highlight and celebrate these community changemakers. Join us to honor them and announce the recipient at the SustainPHL Awards on October 20 at the Academy of Natural Sciences.
ECHO Systems
ECHO Systems is a member-based, localized network of businesses, organizations, and private citizens in the Philadelphia area intent upon eliminating single-use waste. ECHO is impacting local sustainability by working with various organizations, small businesses and individuals to teach them about waste management and offer solutions to becoming zero waste. ECHO has circulated more than 15K containers in 2022, keeping single-use plastic out of the waste stream. ECHO is also a member of the Conference for Food Safety, which advises the FDA for the model food code. They have worked with Circular Philadelphia to get restrictions around reuse removed locally and made a training video with the DOH for their Sanitarians. ECHO also helped produce Philly Talks Trash, a local series on waste reduction. They are committed to education, hosting seminars regarding plastic reduction and participating in numerous speaking engagements on the subject.
GRANT Blvd
Founded in 2017, Grant Blvd is a Black women-owned, Philadelphia-based apparel brand & B Corp on a mission to construct truly stylish, sustainably sourced fashion, while also supporting women who have faced cultural barriers to living wage employment in fashion design. This work is all completed by a local design team, all of whom are paid a living wage. In addition to designing directly for consumers, Grant Blvd designs textiles for the hospitality sector.
In a word, Grant Blvd is a response to slavery, to leased labor, to Jim Crow, to persistent economic injustice and marginalization. Grant Blvd believes we need to completely reimagine our response to poverty and the criminalization of it, and we also have to radically change how we create pathways to self-sufficient living for black & brown people who’ve been incarcerated. Grant Blvd focuses on designing radically inclusive pathways that pursue the long-term plan of progressing our collective good and the good of our planet. Grant Blvd believes that if we demand more, if we think differently about not only what we buy, but who we buy from- we have the power to challenge not only the social issues exacerbated by mass incarceration, but to more meaningfully address climate change. We also believe deeply in our futurist vision of Philadelphia.
LUHV Food
LUHV believes we can change the world through how we eat and creates delicious food to make it happen. Built on the concept that a low-process vegan diet is the most impactful and ethical action we can take to change the direction of the climate crisis, LUHV makes affordable vegan foods using sustainable practices that reduce greenhouse emissions. At the same time, LUHV is focused on making a vegan diet affordable, acknowledging that the poor are often disenfranchised from accessing healthier diets. LUHV is its own manufacturer, controlling every sustainable aspect of production. LUHV’s retail stores aim to bring veganism into these communities (center city, Point Breeze, Hatboro, Ambler).
LUHV earned its Plastic Negative Certification by funding rePurpose Global to remove and recover 2x as much plastic waste from the environment as its products create. They partner with GFD (GetFreshDaily.org non-profit organization) by providing free burgers for their community events like Juneteenth, which feeds more than 500 participants each year. LUHV believes that education is the social equalizer tool. Its employees–all local to the area– are trained on the benefits of veganism, so they are a resource for their communities.
Reveal Avocado Seed Brew
Hidden Gems is a food tech company that uses proprietary technology to extract nutrients out of food waste and create innovative food and beverage products and ingredients. Their first product is Reveal – the world’s only avocado seed brew – a healthy beverage with 3x more antioxidants than green tea and prebiotics for gut health made from upcycled avocado seeds.
In the US, avocado consumption has increased by 5x since 2000 reaching 50M pounds of avocados per week in 2019. However, the seeds and peels which constitute 18-30% of the dry weight of the fruit remain unutilized. These seeds end up in the landfill, adding 15M pounds of waste each week. Reveal is changing that! In 2022, Reveal saved over 5000 lbs of avocado seeds from going to the landfill – saving 1.92 tons of CO2eq, equivalent to: 2,137 pounds of coal burned just by making avocado seed brew and composting the seeds!
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