Soul Economy

I picked up a postcard at the council recently that was promoting “Help Green Our Parks”. The Rozelle Bay Community Native Nursery, a volunteer community group reintroducing local plant species to the area, was seeking new volunteers.

In turning over the card there was the usual part about “made using 100% recycled paper” but then [...]

Sydney 2008: Advertisements for British Petroleum (BP) in proud green and gold, boast the company’s investment in renewable energy. Apparently, Talk stopped long ago. A banner above a watering-hole on George Street makes it known that the establishment has now become ‘carbon-neutral’: a phrase that seems to have edged its way into the vernacular. In [...]

In checking out the dates for Clean Up Australia this year, which by the way is 2 March, I came across these statistics:

Australians are among the highest producers of waste, per person, in the world.
An estimated 7 billion cigarette butts end up in Australian waterways, streets and parklands each year.
80 million plastic bags are dumped [...]

In my recent readings I came across the following statistics about America which I find frightening when you consider that they are regarded as THE leading world power:
“Giving: How Each of us Can Change the World”
(Bill Clinton, 2007)

In 2004, the US Department of Agriculture said that almost 12% of American households – 13.5 million – [...]

I recently read about Bono’s new (RED)™ campaign and thought it was worth noting and discussing on Soul Economy. The background is that Bono has teamed up with Bobby Shriver, Chairman of DATA (debt, AIDS, trade Africa) to create the (RED)™ concept and campaign. They have secured big business to participate in what they consider [...]

Being Anti-Poverty Week, I thought it pertinent to highlight further shocking facts published in the Make Poverty History booklet:

Each year, 17 million people die of diseases that we know how to cure.
It is estimated that if the price of the 10 most important tropical commodities such cocoa, sugar and cotton, had risen with real inflation, [...]

I can understand the concern that Bono has about the situation with AIDS in Africa. Some of the statistics in the Make Poverty History booklet, that I have outlined below, are frightening!

Over 3 million people died from AIDS in 2004 of which almost 80% were in sub-Saharan Africa. That amounts to 8,493 people dying from [...]

Thank you to everyone who has contacted us via the Contact Us form on Soul Economy. We greatly appreciate your readership and support! Unfortunately, we have experienced a slight technical hitch and have not received your emails sent to us via the Contact Us form. If you have sent us emails and we have not [...]

I came across this video on Jessica’s Shortall’s blog recently and thought it was definitely worth highlighting on Soul Economy. It was aired at the Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship held earlier this year. It shows what social entrepreneurship could achieve.

I came across the following appalling statistics in the recent McKinsey & Company report “Shaping the New Rules of Competition: UN Global Compact Participant Mirror” in July 2007:

In the Asia-Pacific region almost 1 child out of 5 between the ages of 5 and 14 is in the workforce. In the Sub-Saharan Africa that figure is [...]