The aim of the Active Value Trust Rating (Activv.net) system is to support all who wish to shape a better future with the actionable insights needed to make that future more likely. Hidden costs—which are not built into the price or a good, service, or financial instrument, or which come only later, and which fall on unsuspecting third parties—have created a multilayered global crisis affecting land, water, ecosystems, and climate stability.
Pollution in the form of plastic particles in the environment, neurotoxins, endocrine disruptors, radionuclides, and other industrial waste, now pervades the natural environment—not only in the immediate vicinity of polluting activities, but in faraway regions. Microplastics have been found in the Arctic, in the deep ocean, and in the bodies of newborn marine organisms and amphibians. They are also found in human blood and tissue, and are known to be causing negative effects which are still being studied and understood.
Global heating pollution—mostly carbon-based compounds emitted by the burning of fossil fuels for energy production, transport, and industry—is heating the atmosphere and ocean. This is changing the biochemical composition of ecosystems and organisms; it is also changing the geophysics of the planet, destabilizing major climate patterns and putting food production and fresh water availability at risk.
Global heating is also generating additional pollution, as wildfires now burn year-round in many regions, inclulding in some of the wettest and coldest places. Wildfire smoke can create otherworldly haze in cities far away from megafires that sometimes grow to be larger than local jurisdictions. The smoke also carries toxins, including pathogens like bacteria, viruses, and fungi, which can harm human health beyond the dangers of smoke inhalation.
All of these negative impacts of pollution and climate disruption carry both immediate and hidden costs. Costs from shock events and direct health impacts are compounded by longer-running, slower-moving, and harder-to-prevent ripple effects. Risk and resilience are becoming boundary measures for the prospect of safety and wellbeing in a given community, region, industry, or sector.
Activv aims to provide actionable risk reduction insights and guidance toward everyday actions that can help to build resilience and facilitate a transition to a world that works for everyone—a world where industries innovate and prosper by providing better value, through enhanced safety, health, and wellbeing, to more people.
Striving for a world that works doesn’t need to be a mystery, even if the challenge is great. We have the ability to gather and compile the information needed. We have the ability to synthesize and popularize that information. We have the ability to make better decisions through adaptive management, and to celebrate and reward those institutions that lead the way, for the benefit of all.
Let’s get started.
