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Shaw Floors announces its Life Happens with LifeGuard carpet, Floorté enhanced vinyl plank, and Tuftex area rugs along with turf tile from Shaw Contract’s The Park collection will be showcased in the Greenbuild KB Home ProjeKt demonstration home at the 2016 Greenbuild International Conference and Expo in Los Angeles, and will be available for in-person discovery tours for conference attendees on October 5 and October 6. The home will also be available nationwide via the online virtual tour beginning October 5.
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Interface, the world's largest manufacturer of modular carpet and a leader in sustainable business, will debut a new third-party certification from GreenCircle Certified, LLC and spotlight its Climate Take Back™ mission at the 2016 Greenbuild International Conference and Expo taking place Oct. 5-6 in Los Angeles.
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REI, the specialty outdoor co-op, has designed its new distribution center to be Net Zero Energy and is pursuing LEED Platinum—the highest level in the U.S. Green Building Council's (USGBC) rating system. Situated in the Arizona desert, the facility is intended to be one of the world's most sustainable distribution centers. To encourage further innovation, REI is taking an unusual approach and will make the design information of this facility available to the public, so that others can advance the parameters of sustainable design.
REI is driving sustainability and efficiency at its new distribution center in several new ways:
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Procter & Gamble global chief executive David Taylor met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday to discuss the company's manufacturing initiatives in the country and partnership opportunities in education and the government's cleanliness drive.
In line with P&G's global sustainability goals, the company said it has offered to help the country's Clean India Initiative (Swachh Bharat Abhiyan) by using technology to reduce waste to landfill that will up-cycle sanitary waste.
The maker of Ariel and Pampers appointed Taylor as its chief a year ago amid falling global sales and restructuring of its products portfolio. Internationally, Taylor has been reorganising P&G's brand portfolio, focusing on the core ones and selling dozens of unprofitable brands.
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE -
“What comes to mind when you think of millennials in the workplace?” Bethan Harris, strategist and collaborator at Collectively and the League of Intrapreneurs (LI), asked during her Tuesday afternoon session at SB’16 Copenhagen.
MARKETING AND COMMS -
Consumers are expecting a new dynamic in the relationship they build with brands. The team from Edelman gathered a full room at Wednesday’s lunch time session to unveil the breakthrough ‘2016 Earned Brand’ research study for the first time. The purpose-centric data surveyed 13,000 consumers in 13 countries about their interaction with their favorite brands.
THE NEXT ECONOMY -
In the midst of talks on “marketing,” “driving business forward” and “creating competitive advantages” this week at SB’16 Copenhagen, Sirikul “Nui” Laukaikul - founder of the Brandbeing Consultant and representing the Thailand Sustainable Development Foundation (TSDF) - started her talk with a simple ask: “Smile.”
NEW METRICS -
There’s a new wave of research that is measuring whether companies’ purpose matches their actions. What it’s found my not be surprising: Globally, there is a purpose-action gap among corporate brands.
“It’s time to move from thought leadership to action leadership,” said Charlotte West, director at Business in the Community, a responsible business network in the UK. “We can genuinely make the world a better place by practically embedding purpose in our brands. And a good, resilient purpose should have sustainability at its heart.”
MARKETING AND COMMS -
“Purpose is like Pokémon - everybody is chasing it and nobody knows why,” “Mr. Goodvertising,” Thomas Kolster, mused at the start of the Tuesday morning plenary session at SB’16 Copenhagen.
Articulating purpose is central to modern branding. And in a world where the majority of market value is drawn from intangible assets, “brand is king,” Kolster said.
LEADERSHIP -
In this volatile time of unceasing change, the opening night plenary presentations at SB’16 Copenhagen explored the characteristics an organisation needs to not just be resilient, but be ‘fit’ for the future. They unravelled the challenges and successes of their journeys through activating the purpose that moved them to more sustainable, future-fit organisations.
NEW METRICS -
“For many organizations, the largest challenge is to implement sustainable initiatives.”
So stated Daniela Pigosso, co-founder of management consultant firm Essensus, as we began one of the first round of workshops at SB’16 Copenhagen. For the next three hours we learned and discussed how to develop a structured approach to sustainability. It’s Monday morning, and the crowd is smiling. Everyone seemed ready for some serious learning.
BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
In a rich and fascinating afternoon workshop on Monday, behavioural design experts Sille Krukow and Teis Andres of Krukow Behavioural Consulting explored their theory and tools on how conscientious companies can design the right environments in which consumers can achieve their sustainability aspirations.
PRESS RELEASE -
Hydrogen fuel cell cars could help solve the global warming crisis, but nobody wants to buy them. Yoshikazu Tanaka, chief engineer of the Toyota Mirai, Toyota’s hydrogen fuel cell car, calls it a “chicken or the egg” problem: no one wants to purchase hydrogen cars because there are no hydrogen fuel stations, and nobody wants to build hydrogen fuel stations because there are no hydrogen cars.
But Toyota thinks it may have found a solution. For unlimited clean energy, it’s turning to one of the dirtiest places there is: the toilet.
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Unilever announced today that it has signed an agreement to acquire Seventh Generation, Inc., the North American home and personal care products company.
Based in Vermont, Seventh Generation is a pioneer in corporate responsibility and sustainable product innovations, including plant-based detergents and household cleaners. The company’s turnover exceeded US $200m in 2015 and it has seen double digit compounded annual growth over the last 10 years.
Seventh Generation has a comprehensive product portfolio and a distribution network covering the ‘natural’ category in grocery, mass merchandise and e-commerce channels.
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Lara Birkes, CSO at HPE, talks about HPE's bold new goals:
Today Hewlett Packard Enterprise marked an important milestone on our Living Progress journey. We joined RE100 with a commitment to reach 100 percent renewable energy, while setting an interim goal to source 50 percent of our total energy consumption from renewable sources by 2025.
RE100 is led by The Climate Group in partnership with CDP, as part of the We Mean Business coalition.
NEW METRICS -
“I think we have to be challenging to each other. If we look at the state of the planet, and we look at the performance of business, there’s something not working there.”
Chris Davis, The Body Shop’s international CSR and campaigns director, isn’t afraid to cut to the chase. The company’s Enrich not Exploit commitment, launched earlier this year, is a quest to deliver what Davis calls “true sustainability” – in simple terms, it means putting the needs of the planet before corporate interests.
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
JetBlue today announced a ten-year renewable jet fuel purchase agreement with bioenergy company SG Preston, for jet fuel made from rapidly renewable, bio-based feedstocks that do not compete with food production. This marks one of the largest renewable jet fuel purchase agreements in aviation history, and the largest, long-term, binding commitment by any airline globally for HEFA (hydro-processed esters and fatty acids)-based renewable jet fuel.
PRESS RELEASE -
Corporate sustainability is no longer a niche subject important only in the minds of a handful of regulators and environmentalists. As our collective understanding of the value of sustainability has grown, new audiences have joined the conversation. For sustainability professionals, catering to this growing and diverse audience can be challenging.
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The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE: DOW) announced on September 16, 2016 that it has committed to spend $2.8 million over the next two years to drive solutions that address global marine debris and litter. The company made the announcement on Friday, September 16th at the inaugural Our Ocean Conference in Washington, D.C., hosted by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.
Dow, in alignment with the global plastics industry and key association partners, recognizes marine debris and litter as a critical issue and is committed to collaborating to address this global challenge with effective science-based solutions.