Cascade Alliance

Five Headline Friday (2/16/18)

Happy Friday! Here’s our sixth installment of “Five Headline Friday.” Each week we pull together our top five articles, news stories, and reports and share them here. This week we touch on two efforts to improve measurement of outcomes in social impact programs, Uber-like technology for on-demand recycling pickups, rewards for innovation in plastic pollution solutions, and a mattress recycling program with a social and environmental mission.

Investing for social impact: new signs of promise

Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) require metrics of success to determine whether investors should be paid. They are causing governments, social-service providers, and social-minded investors to change their focus from the number of people they’re serving to the effectiveness of those programs.

Chasing the Holy Grail of Outcomes

Philanthropists need to acknowledge the challenges nonprofits face in reporting succinct and compelling outcomes, and to avoid celebrating simplistic claims.

Recycle Track Systems Wants To Be The Next Uber For Garbage

Recycle Track Systems uses a software platform and mobile app, which allow customers to schedule on-demand recyclable and trash pick-ups. For example, they might get a request to pick up a half-dozen dented desks from a WeWork location, or a pile of broken stationary bikes from a Soul Cycle. It contracts with local haulers, providing them with tablets that run RTS software.

Ellen MacArthur Foundation awards $1 million in grants for plastics solutions

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, through the foundation’s New Plastics Economy Initiative, has awarded $1 million to five recyclable and compostable packaging solutions designed to reduce or eliminate the amount of plastic ending up in oceans.

ASK Wellness mattress program a huge success

ASK Wellness is a mattress recycling and employment program in Kamloops, BC, and is running net-neutral.  “We wanted to do something that would create opportunities for employment, but also be something that would be environmentally sustainable and contribute to the overall well-being of the community.”