Good Morning
Tough week for the climate politically speaking as Senator Manchin batted away hopes of an ambitious clean energy bill passing before the end of the year. Cue puns about Manchin putting coal in America’s stockings. We retain faith that social- and business-minded climate innovators will continue to forge ahead. (More)
Short issue this week due to the holiday!
Top Deals of the Week
![How Full Harvest and Misfits Market Are Saving Ugly Produce – The Manual | The Manual How Full Harvest and Misfits Market Are Saving Ugly Produce – The Manual | The Manual](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F88470fe4-560b-486c-b60e-3dcecd4a8185_416x277.jpeg)
Cove.tool, a five-year-old, Atlanta, Ga.-based startup that wants to make sure buildings are sustainable by design from the moment of inception, has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Coatue Management. (TC)
Full Harvest, a 6.5-year-old, San Francisco-based B2B marketplace for “ugly” fruit, has raised $23 million in Series B funding led by TELUS Ventures. (TC)
Runwise, a startup helping buildings produce less greenhouse gasses, raised $11M in funding led by Initialized Capital, Susa Ventures, and Notation Capital (TC)
GreenSpark Software, a metal recycling software platform, raised a $5M Series A led by Tiger Global (TC)
Green Theory
(Ec)O Christmas Tree
Christmas trees will feature in 75% of American households tomorrow, or 90 million homes. Whether you cherish the fresh pine scent or stand by the reusability and convenience of an artificial tree, there are sustainability arguments for both. If selecting an artificial tree, reusing it is essential to reduce its annual footprint and cost. Some boast recycled materials as a less carbon-intensive starting point for your faux tree, which conventionally otherwise each drive 40kg of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions in manufacturing. On the other hand, real tree growers, forestry experts, and conservancy groups all promote the “natural” monocropped alternative. As they explain, each year, the overwhelming majority of groves are left untouched to keep growing, and people compost or re-use harvested trees for a variety of ecological and public purposes, which is carbon neutral or negative. Further, the cultivation of the trees provides local land-based jobs and promotes forestation.
Where’s the US market headed for this forest-entangled holiday product? 3 out of 4 trees tomorrow, or about 70 million, will be artificial. Even though 3 out of 4 shoppers choose real each year, the addition of 10 million new fake trees continues to drive the shift from real to faux, exacerbated by the 2008 financial crisis. Fake tree supporters assert the cost-effectiveness of a one-time payment, especially since fake and real tree prices are getting closer and closer. Also, not every household has its own woodchipper or access to a municipal composting program, elevating emissions above 0.
To the latter point, putting a real tree in a landfill will lead to roughly 16kg of emissions (2.5x less than an artificial tree), and burning it (fun) comes in as 10x less polluting than purchasing its faux cousin. And why pay each year for the real thing? Shoppers taking home real trees are funding the hundreds of millions of trees growing and supporting local jobs (often on marginal land not suitable for agriculture). Real tree purveyors feel threatened by falling demand, their livelihoods and the local landscape both at stake. A grower in the above-linked NYT article warned that tree farm closures would lead to rich, out-of-town interests replacing the timberlands with condos.
In conclusion, the tree decision doesn’t matter terribly on an emissions basis, especially compared to other holiday choices. One ticket on an 80-minute flight from SFO to LAX emits the equivalent of about 4 artificial trees. The food for 5 seats at an average Christmas dinner table equates to 1 new faux tree’s emissions. And yet, there’s more to care about than emissions. When it comes to picking a tree, supporting the real-tree economy likely helps local ecology more than a condo complex. At the same time, we ought to imagine a world beyond the ‘condo vs. privatized tree farm paradigm’--that monocropped orchard land could be restored with native flora and dedicated as wildland, among many other choices.
In every wreath, tree, or other nature-simulating decoration, we hope you can reflect on the wonder of the natural world, even on a cold December day. Happy Holidays!
The Closer
Another #cool #waves #video