The Ripple Effect: Cleaner Energy, Cleaner Environment

As the morning light flickers off the Pearl River in Guangdong, China, two men in a small blue and orange boat chug downstream. One man steers while the other leans over the bow with a large net. He is scooping up garbage from the brownish water. Factories line the banks, stretching farther than the eye can see through the polluted haze.

The grey city of Guangdong, known as Factory to the World, produces electronics parts, textiles, toys, plastic products, and thousands of other manufactured goods that circle the globe.

But along with more than 11 percent of China's GDP, and five percent of the world's goods, the Greater Pearl River Delta produces environmental toxins that pollute the air, water, and earth, and threaten the health of Guangdong's 90 million inhabitants. Particulate levels there are more than seven times World Health Organization standards and twice China's own mandates.

When ISC began to work in China in 2006, we talked widely with national and local officials, business people, and community members. Building on 15 years of experience in some of the world's most polluted areas, we chose to focus in the province of Guangdong, where we are working with a wide range of stakeholders to design projects that address local needs and resources, and respect cultural values.

We've started out by training a core group of 12 people who will identify environmental problems that the community can address together. The trainers will also work with small groups of government officials and small and medium-sized businesses (fewer than 1,000 employees) to realize their five goals : environmental enforcement, economic incentives for switching to environmentally sound practices, management systems that protect worker and community health and safety, clean production, and energy efficiency.

"We are working with Guangdong factory owners who are open to change, but have very little incentive, and even less information on how to start," said ISC program officer Susan Stitely. "We visited a small factory that made plastic film like the kind you peel off a cell phone screen. The director wants to capture the fumes and make things better for workers who now labor, masks propped on foreheads, in a terribly toxic environment."

We are helping businesses like this figure out strategies for implementing sound environmental policies that raise profits, efficiency, worker retention, and the ability to secure foreign contracts that increasingly require environmental compliance.

ISC's program is designed to have a ripple effect: each project will produce concrete results and steadily build on success, expanding exponentially, until they make a substantial contribution and act as a pragmatic, inspiring model. The bank of knowledge and skill spreads from person to person, school to school, factory to factory, community to community.

We like to think that the two men in the boat would appreciate that.