PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
The rise of natural health products and cosmetics has set off a flurry of research and development to discover the next great breakthrough for skin care or for specialized foods that provide an energy boost when you need it most. From shampoos and natural medicines to herbal teas and healthy spreadable fats, Earth’s biodiversity is providing the inspiration for a growing number of consumer goods. What began as luxury products for high-end shoppers have now gone more mainstream, as ingredient-savvy consumers look to natural alternatives in our chemically saturated stores.
LEADERSHIP -
Businesses that earned top scores on the B Impact Assessment are being celebrated today with the announcement of B Lab’s 2018 “Best for the World” lists. B Lab simultaneously released separate lists recognizing Certified B Corporations in the top 10 percent for overall score, as well as in the categories for environment, customers, governance, community and workers.
BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
Last week, over 2,000 representatives from our global community of sustainability practitioners, brand strategists, product and service innovators, thought leaders and other change-makers converged at SB’18 Vancouver to share their latest insights on a multitude of themes pertinent to all of those committed to improving business around the world. Here, we dig into brand and organizational efforts to get consumers to deliver their part of the equation, through responsible consumption.
P&G: The road to responsible consumption
By Marissa Rosen
WASTE NOT -
It’s a tough time to be a plastic straw producer. Over the past few months, it seems the message has broken through that plastic straws are harmful to the environment – and marine life in particular – that phase outs and bans are warranted.
WALKING THE TALK -
Interface has become the first global flooring manufacturer to declare that all of its products — including all carpet tile and luxury vinyl tile (LVT) – are carbon neutral across the entire product lifecycle. The company is now offering its Carbon Neutral Floors™ program as standard to every customer, at no extra cost, to help them meet their own sustainability goals while also allowing them to reduce the emissions impact of their projects or spaces.
BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
Recycle Now, a WRAP campaign that helps people in the UK recycle more things, more often, has launched a new communications toolkit for local authorities and partners, introducing a social norming messaging style designed to motivate citizen behavior change to improve recycling.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Throughout the week at SB’18 Vancouver, a host of organizations shared a range of strategies for making meaningful and lasting connections with customers and other stakeholders, while improving their contributions to society.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Startups that positively impact people, planet and profit often bring the most exciting innovations to the sustainability space. Once again, Sustainable Brands did its part this week at SB’18 Vancouver to highlight the latest emerging companies addressing intractable issues — inspiring audiences and building connections with established brands.
Shark Tank: Circular Economy Innovations for Retail
First, in a Tuesday afternoon “Shark Tank,” startups pitched their solutions to retailers.
WASTE NOT -
Today at SB’18 Vancouver, The North Face will announce the launch of The North Face Renewed — a collection of refurbished products for consumers who want to access affordable gear and reduce their environmental impact. All “Renewed” items — which are sourced from returned, defective or damaged apparel — have been thoroughly inspected, cleaned and refurbished to The North Face quality and performance standards.
PRESS RELEASE -
The Vancouver edition of the international event will be held on June 4-7
São Paulo, June 4, 2018 – During this first week of June, Braskem is participating in the Vancouver edition of Sustainable Brands, one of the most important events in the sustainability calendar, as a sponsor and key presenter and exhibitor at the Good Materials & Packaging Pavilion. The company will take the opportunity of the trade fair to showcase its latest concept in recycled plastic resins.
WASTE NOT -
Today, Savers® released its third annual State of Reuse Report, which reveals that while people consistently state they are donating or finding ways to extend the life of their items, there is still a long journey ahead to fully embrace reuse — as 60 percent of North Americans shop secondhand only once a year or less.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
L’Oréal USA announced today that five products in its Garnier SkinActive line have achieved Cradle to Cradle Certified™ SILVER recognition. The product line, manufactured at L’Oréal USA’s facility in Franklin, New Jersey, earned this certification based on an evaluation of material health, material reutilization, renewable energy and carbon management, water stewardship and social fairness practices. Garnier is the first mass market skincare brand to receive this certification for its products and is also one of the few skincare brands to have multiple products certified in a portfolio.
PRESS RELEASE -
Did you know recycling one glass bottle saves enough energy to power a computer for 30 minutes? And recycling 16 aluminum cans saves the energy equivalent of one gallon of gasoline. A series of small actions like these can turn into great things when they are brought together. And that’s what The Recycling Partnership is all about. The Recycling Partnership is a rapidly growing national nonprofit committed to improving curbside residential recycling and boosting recycling education in cities across America — one community at a time, family by family, bin by bin. They’ve already impacted 33 million households in just four years!
WALKING THE TALK -
This morning, from the main stage at SB’18 Vancouver, Max Burgers’ Chief Sustainability Officer, Kaj Török, announced that the Swedish burger chain is set to offer the world’s first climate-positive burgers. Török said that customers will soon be able to “take a bite that’s good for the planet as well as their taste-buds” when eating at the quick-serve burger chain, and urged other companies to join Max in going climate positive.
NEW METRICS -
More and more clothing brands are taking it upon themselves to dive deeper into the impacts of their garments, increasing transparency around and improving their materials, processes and operations as a whole.
BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
Consumers want simple solutions. They need simple messages. And yet when it comes to truly sustainable products and packaging, the reality is quite complex and often requires consumer behaviour change. Leading brands are increasingly investing significant resources to develop and implement innovative solutions that ensure a sustainable lifecycle for products and packaging. The same brands then face a communication challenge: How should they effectively tell their story of progress and innovation in a simple and compelling way that both informs and leads to behaviour change?
PRESS RELEASE -
The 100% recyclable biopolymer will be used in the packaging of the new line of loaves with germinated grains that follow the Clean Label movement
Braskem, the largest producer of biopolymers in the world, is now supplying the Green Plastic I'm greenTM to Nutrella, a brand of special loaves from the Bimbo Group - a world leader in bread making. The raw material is used in the Nutrella Viva loaves line, produced with germinated grain flours and following the Clean Label concept.
CLEANTECH -
Striving to be the world’s greenest city by 2020, Vancouver has adopted several ambitious action plans and goals. The Vancouver Economic Commission (VEC) set to work in 2010 to define what a “green job” was at the city level in order to meet the City’s economic goals to double the number of green jobs and the number of businesses engaged in greening their operations within a decade. Since then, VEC has been building relationships with investors, helping local cleantech firms increase their exports, and using city infrastructure projects to lead by example.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
The buyer-supplier relationship is changing in more ways than you might imagine. Consumers and retailers are increasingly demanding that suppliers demonstrate their sustainability: How are buyers and suppliers collectively adapting to changes in the market, as well as labor and environmental pressures?
My conversation with Kelley Bell, VP of social and environmental impact at Driscoll’s, provided insight into how large food brands are approaching these challenges and what the conversation is like among leading businesses as they work to create shared value with and for their suppliers.
MARKETING AND COMMS -
The idea of the Deep Time Walk is simple but incredibly powerful: When dealing with the vast dimensions of time and space, we are often unable to grasp the magnitude quantitatively, just through studying the numbers. A Deep Time Walk allows us to walk the timeline of the history of the Earth and also universe, and thus for example, on a walk of 4.6km, if we start with the birth of Earth, each one-metre step represents one million years.