Doing Well by Doing Good

Walking around last weekend, I noticed the results of NYC’s “Mulch-Fest.” Hundreds of Christmas trees had been “discarded” in Tompkins Square Park (amongst other locations), where they were mulched and re-purposed to add nutrients to the land. What a win-win-win, I thought. These otherwise “worthless” trees have been conveniently disposed of by their “original” owners and taken to a nearby collection center. There, they are put back to use as a fertilizer of sorts — adding a fragrant and festive smell to the neighborhood to boot. They served well as decoration, now they serve well as mulch.

How elegant and simple. Where are the other simple social win-win-wins? Recycling, I suppose. People who need to make a few bucks (unemployed, homeless, whatever), are able to collect cans for the turn-in value. It puts a few dollars in their pocket, the streets are cleaned, the trash is somewhat sorted, and the earth benefits from the recycling of it’s resources. Win-win-win.

There are more such ideas out there — I’m sure of it. Low hanging fruit for social good; putting money into the pockets of people who need it — activating an otherwise unused labor market. Maybe no one has thought of them yet, maybe the technology infrastructure isn’t quiet yet in place. What are some of these ideas? Not sure, but here are a few (probably bad) ideas:

• “Support” Tablets — These tablets would need to be relatively low-cost and run a lean version of Android. They would be distributed to the chronically-entitlement-dependent for free, with baked-in credentials (so that there would be zero resale value). These tablets would have built-in 3G (there would be little functionality that could use data anyway — so the bulk rate for data here should be marginal), and would aggregate resources for social services. Maps for food and clothing distribution; resources detailing state and local processes for getting assistance with housing, medical services, job assistance training, etc.; the ability to track and manage EBT; etc. Further, these tablets would pave the way for ad-hoc, deployable labor, which I’ll discuss in the next few bullet points. There are obvious challenges: won’t these people be liable to break, lose, or try and sell these devices? Won’t it be difficult to charge? Isn’t there a (potentially) high learning curve, and how do you ensure the proper credentials to each end-user? I get it — this probably isn’t plausible right now (at least not without clever finagling and kick-ass distribution), but I feel like something resembling this idea isn’t far off.
• Deployable Labor — If the tablets I just described were indeed distributed, I think the infrastructure would be laid for some pretty powerful deployable labor. You’d have to skirt minimum wage laws (maybe the work is performed by “volunteers” who enjoy a “gift”? I don’t know anything about labor law; this is almost certainly not allowed, but let’s ignore that for now). These people, who are likely not working anyway, would have the opportunity to participate (for a marginal hourly rate) in social-good projects on an ad-hoc basis. Whether it’s tagging graffiti, cleaning a park, helping with simple manual labor, sorting a charity drive, or anything and everything in between, you’d have a deployable labor market that is likely sitting idle anyway, and is ready and willing to work. The “Will Work for Food” signs would hold no place in this imagined future: Want to work for food? Great, we have a system for that.
• Re-Purposing (with tax credits) — I’m struck by the mission of Shelter Partnership — a homeless organization in Los Angeles that uses a very clever and powerful model. Among other things, they support homeless shelters by donating consumer products: shampoo, clothing, toilet paper, etc. Where do they get these items? They solicit manufacturers that have perfectly usable products that cannot be sold in stores. Misprinted labels, improperly stitched cuts, etc., — if it’s still “good,” but isn’t “market-approved,” it’s probably a good candidate for donation. Again, I’m no expert (or even novice) in tax law, but the basic gist of it is this: the donating companies are given a tax-offset for the retail value of their merchandise at some coefficient that acknowledges the defect. So if they donate shampoo that would have retailed at $100,000, they might be able to write-off, say, $80,000 of otherwise “worthless” merchandise in the form of a tax credit. Under this model, Shelter Partnership is able to focus their efforts on maintaining warehouses and doing donation outreach instead of buying items in an inefficient manner. If memory serves, they’re able to translate a $1 donation into something like $25 of usable merchandise for the end-user. Why can’t this model be applied to other sectors? Why shouldn’t bakeries be allowed to donate their excess inventory to local organizations for a tax break? Why shouldn’t restaurants do the same? Maybe this arrangement already exists, but I can’t imagine it’s anywhere near critical mass. If people are still out there dumpster diving, then the pipeline for enjoying these tax breaks and adding to the social good is not explained clearly enough, has too many hoops, or is otherwise mis-managed and punching under its potential weight.

Already, we are seeing countless creative implementations of technology for social use. There are simply too many to note, but here’s one from a recent article that stood out to me. Organizations have begun implanting small devices into trees in the Amazon to track the shipments of illegal logging. No longer do they have to rely on slower and less-accurate satellite imaging (again, an obvious resource made possible by new technology). Installing these trackers at scale was simply impossible (or unfeasible) just a few years ago, but improved and lower-cost technology has allowed for a new arsenal of anti-logging resources. This one specific example underlines the broader shift of socially-enabling technologies — and I’m excited to see further implementations across myriad fields.

There simply must be more simple, elegant, powerful ideas. What are some of yours?