In Mexico, the use of electric cars is just starting to become a reality. Only a very few percentage of the population have access to this vehicles and use them. As part of their commitment with the environment, BMW Group Mexico, CFE (Federal Electricity Commission), Schneider Electric, and Walmart Mexico, established a strategic alliance to install the first public electric vehicle charging stations in 4 Walmart stores located in Mexico’s Valley with the objective of providing commodity and accessibility to low ecological impact car owners while they visit such shopping centers.

Almost everything in this alliance makes sense to me. BMW is promoting its BMW i sub-brand focused on electric and hybrid cars with the highest technology. They’re the “fairy godmother” in this project because they strongly stand for this cause, are totally committed, have the knowledge, and are making whatever it’s needed to make people take care of the environment by using their cars.  Schneider Electric, the experts in energy management are contributing to make sure the charging stations work and are sourced from renewable sources. Not only they’re helping but they’re benefiting by positioning themselves as the knowledge leaders and pioneers of this huge change in Mexico and will be looked up to by other companies when they decide to install this stations on their own parking lots. CFE is playing the regulator role and making sure that the project meets the government requirements and matches the rest of the efforts being done for the whole country. And then there’s Walmart. Why Walmart? According to the news article, “contributing to improve Mexicans’ life quality through actions supporting sustainability” is one of Walmart Mexico’s main objectives. Even though I don’t 100% believe in the genuineness of this statement, let’s suppose it is true. But then, even though Walmart would fit this alliance because of its values and objective, I don’t see how the campaign and efforts are targeted correctly. BMW cars are highly priced because of their technology. People who buy this kind of cars don’t match the profile of people who shop at Walmart, which is considered a low quality supermarket chain in Mexico. I don’t see how this electric vehicle car owners will decide to make this huge switch in supermarket preferences just because of the gas stations, unless they have an emergency. I think It would have been better to partner with a high-end brand (for example HEB, Costco, Palacio de Hierro) because otherwise, people who can’t really afford this kind of vehicles will be aware but won’t be able to really take action and join the cause.

Rain is a free resource of which we have not made the best use of. According to a research done by Drexel University, cities such as Seattle, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago might be able to reduce 100% of their municipal water consumption thanks to the heavy amount of rain they receive each year.

How can this be?

According to the study, toilet flushing is the biggest use of water in households in the United States, accounting for nearly 1/3rd of potable water use. Today, we are using this clean, treated, municipal water to flush our toilets and there’s no reason why this should be done when rainwater could do the exact same job.

There has been plenty of people developing systems to catch rain for multiple uses but not for toilet flushing, and today, researchers are finding a way to make this water catching process systematically in urban areas in order to ease stresses on watersheds, drainage infrastructure, distribution systems and potable water treatment. They will be testing in the 4 previously mentioned main  cities to see if the project is feasible and also to forecast what effects this could have on the water supply and demand, on business environment and also if it will cause stormwater runoff in those cities. “Taking into consideration the cities’ annual rainfall patterns, residential population and roof areas, the team calculated that, with enough water storage capacity — a little more than a standard 1,000-gallon home storage tank — a three person family in a home with the city’s average roof size would have enough water to cover over 80 percent of its flushes throughout the year simply by diverting their downspouts to collect stormwater.”

I believe this is a great initiative, specially because it involves the government’s support and when this happens, the model could be more easily implemented in other countries in the world. It is great that people are finding this huge gaps where we can reuse water in a convenient but also massive way so it creates a bigger and faster positive impact. What I’m skeptical about is the fact that in order to make this huge change, every household toilet system will need to be changed and I wonder how much pipe waste this will generate and also how much material will be used to create the new systems to be implemented for this to work. Hopefully, researchers will find a way in which actual pipes don’t need to be switched, but just modified, and also production of materials needed to make this systems won’t damage the environment and are will be made of recyclable materials as well.

Finding unethical and unsustainable business’ practices may be hard sometimes because some companies are located in remote areas that are not very accessible. Today, different technologies facilitate this, and one specific tool to do it are the DRONES.

This video shows a footage of a pig’s farm, where their waste is being flashed into an open air pit, which is not only environmentally damaging, but also, that pit needs to be emptied every time it’s filled up. To achieve this, what the fabric does is that it sprays the liquid waste! This means that all this waste is drifted down with the wind that reaches the neighbours around it. The whole process is not only damaging for neighbours, but also for employees and pigs being captivated there, which will eventually provide food products that people will eat. This has caused asthma and diseases in children and has also affected people’s blood pressure. Not only waste is causing damage, but also pigs are being abused by having them clustered in very small spaces.

According to the video, Smithfield Foods is the largest pork producer in the entire world. If we have allowed such a huge company to cause all this damage, how can we ask smaller companies to incur in socially responsible practices and sustainable processes when they might not even have the capital to develop technologies that allow it? Thanks to this video, we can now demand for this industry leader to make a change that hopefully, smaller factories will copy, for their business’ sake and also for people. If it had not been for this drone video footage, concern might not have been raised to make society, other companies, or even the government, aware about this. It’s great that somebody took the decision to do research on this issue in order to provide real evidence and make us conscious that this kind of practices exist.

I guess my point here is that, thanks to technology, it’s becoming harder for companies to hide this kind of unsustainable practices and we should make use of these tools to show them we are now aware of it and we are willing to demand a change. Not even the biggest company will be able to ignore a massive claim from society and this massiveness can now be easily achieved through technology and social media.