A More Benevolent Mousetrap

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Pura Vida is now served on more than 100 campuses. The company's branded "Sustainable CafŽs" are full-service campus espresso bars that showcase sustainability down to the last wood panel and coffee sleeve. To see where all those latte dollars go, students might visit coffee farmers and the social programs the company supports. Or they might take an economics lesson on Pura Vida, as Harvard Publishing now distributes a multi_media case study on the company's charitable model to business schools across the country.

greenKarat
Cleaning a dirty industry by recycling

When Matthew and Bonita White of Magnolia, Texas, were planning their nuptials three years ago, they shopped in vain for rings made with recycled gold. They married anyway, without the bands that bind, and then started their own company, greenKarat, an online retailer of recycled gold jewelry.

Gold mining is notorious for ravaging the environment and displacing indigenous people. The production of a single 18-karat gold ring, the poverty relief organization Oxfam estimates, generates at least 20 tons of mine waste. And 80 percent of new gold mined every year gets made into jewelry, even though untold tons sit unused in bank vaults and dresser drawers.

For the bejeweled with a social conscience, greenKarat offers some 40 products made from melted-down bracelets, watches, and computer parts at facilities that meet international environmental standards. Additionally, each piece of jewelry has a tracking number consumers can use to ascertain the product's ecological footprint: whether it was laboratory grown, for instance, ecologically minded, or fairly traded.

The Whites hope to both curb further extraction and raise the consciousness of fellow jewelers and consumers. Since March 2004 eight major retailers, including Tiffany & Co. and Cartier, have pledged to depart from "dirty gold" sales and urged mining corporations to clean up their act.

Kopali Organics
Honesty pays

Zak Zaidman and Stephen Brooks, who at the time had no experience in food retail, admit they were overmatched as they sat across a conference table from buyers at Whole Foods Market's headquarters in 2004. They did have a good story, though.

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