LEADERSHIP -
Pharmaceutical companies Biogen, SHIRE and Allergan led the Global 500 in the 2015 Newsweek Green Rankings, a popular assessment of corporate environmental performance.Reckitt Benckiser Group, Adobe Systems, Swisscom, Unilever, Broadcom Corporation, Roche Holding (another pharmaceutical firm) and BT Group rounded out the top 10.The rankings are done in partnership with Corporate Knights Capital, HIP (Human Impact + Profit) Investor, and leading sustainability minds from nongovernmental organizations and the academic and accounting communities.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Talk about big players making big changes; CVS Health’s SVP of CSR and Philanthropy, Eileen Howard Boone; BASF’s Sustainability Manager, Denise Peterson; and Panera Bread’s Director of Public Relations, Jonathan Yohannan had a lot to share on their remarkable pivots this past year.
PRESS RELEASE -
180 thousand children between the ages of six and ten will receive heart scans as part of the Little Hearts Project in nine cities in Southeastern Anatolia. The scans will be conducted in primary schools located in Adıyaman, Batman, Diyarbakır, Gaziantep, Kilis, Mardin, Şanlıurfa, Siirt, and Şırnak
PRESS RELEASE -
Program supported by $400,000 CVS Health Foundation Grant aimed at helping people lead tobacco-free lives
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
Every day seems to bring new uses for 3D printing – earlier this week, NASA announced a competition to design 3D printing settlements for deep space. Now, L’Oréal has revealed plans to 3D print human skin.
PRESS RELEASE -
UN FAO, Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Carbon War Room, KLM, Novozymes and the UN Foundation partner to scale up the development and deployment of sustainable bioenergy solutions.As part of the 2nd Annual Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL) Forum taking place at United Nations Headquarters this week, a new multi-stakeholder coalition, co-chaired by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB), announced its intention to speed up the development and deployment of sustainable bioenergy in order to contribute to meeting the SE4ALL goals of doubling the global use of renewable energy and ensuring universal energy access by 2030.
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
Today, the Responsible Sourcing Network (RSN) released a study measuring large cap company performance on a major human rights risk and ascertained the industries both leading and lagging when it comes to conflict minerals reporting.To conduct the pilot study for the report, Mining the Disclosures: An Investor Guide to Conflict Minerals Reporting, RSN worked with Sustainalytics, a leading provider of environmental, social and governance research, to develop a research tool that offers insights into the quality of corporate conflict minerals disclosures.
MARKETING AND COMMS -
Climate change is literally killing us, according to some of the nation’s leading medical practitioners, who have found direct and indirect links between it and an increase in respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular disease and heat-related deaths. Americans also face increased risks to their health and well-being from injuries and premature deaths related to extreme weather events.
BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
Employer-sponsored smoking cessation programs with financial incentives are associated with higher rates of quitting smoking and sustained abstinence, according to a new study by the CVS Health Research Institute and researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.Published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, the study helped shape a new smoking cessation program for CVS Health employees that will launch in June 2015.
MARKETING AND COMMS -
The International Alliance for Responsible Drinking (IARD), a not-for-profit organization dedicated to addressing the global public health issue of harmful drinking, today launched ResponsibleDrinking.org. The consumer-friendly website provides easily accessible information about key issues related to drinking and will be promoted on the packaging of alcoholic beverages of the dozen signatory brands — including Bacardi, Diageo, Heineken, Molson Coors and more.
LEADERSHIP -
CVS Health today released its eighth annual Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report, outlining the company's progress against its CSR strategy, Prescription for a Better World. President and CEO Larry Menlo stated that changing its name to CVS Health and no longer selling tobacco products reflect how the company is working to change the way health care is delivered. Menlo added that the company’s ultimate goal is to lower the cost, improve the quality of, and increase access to health care for patients and customers so they can live healthier lives.
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
Biome Bioplastics, one of the UK’s leading developers of bio-based alternatives to petroleum-based plastics, has begun a major development program to progress successful bio-based chemicals research through to industrial scale production. The project has the potential to significantly accelerate the global bioplastics market with the production of novel target materials, including a fully bio-based polyester.
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE -
The link between a healthy environment and public health outcomes has become increasingly evident. President Obama recently used his proclamation of Public Health Week to highlight the relationship between a changing climate and public health, citing increased cases of asthma and injuries from severe weather as examples. The President called out doctors, nurses and public health officials as key drivers in accelerating this understanding and mitigating future impact.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
If you doubt the mainstreaming of mindfulness, look no further than a key session at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, called Mindfulness Meditation.It’s a new era, where technology can directly measure and influence our moods, attitudes and behavior, which when woven together into a societal tapestry, could be a Trojan Horse for a more sustainable ethos.
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Bioplastics are not a single kind of plastic, but rather a family of materials that vary considerably from one another. There are three groups in the bioplastics family, each with its own individual characteristics: biobased, biodegradable, or both bio-based and biodegradable. Today, there is a bioplastic alternative to almost every conventional plastic material and application. Bioplastics have the same properties as conventional plastics and often offer additional advantages, such as compostability or natural breathability.
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A consortium of companies in the European process industry including biotechnology, renewable resources, chemistry, process engineering, equipment and research organizations launched project PRODIAS (PROcessing Diluted Aqueous Systems) this week. The project aims to decrease production costs for renewable-based products via increasing the efficiency of raw material use and production processes.
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
This week, Amerplast, one of Europe's largest flexo printers and bag converters, began a supply partnership with Braskem, a global leader in biopolymers, to market Green Polyethylene (Green PE) made from a renewable sugar cane ethanol, to tissue segment.
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PRODIAS (PROcessing Diluted Aqueous Systems) fosters competitiveness of the European process industryAim is to decrease production costs for renewable-based products via increasing the efficiency of raw material use and production processesProject funding by European Union with €10 million – total budget is about €14 millionLudwigshafen, Germany – March 18, 2015 – A consortium of companies in the European process industry from the areas of biotechnology, renewable resources, chemistry, process engineering, equipment supply as well as research organizations recently launched project PRODIAS (PROcessing Diluted Aque
PRESS RELEASE -
In 2013, United Airlines executed a definitive purchase agreement with AltAir Fuels for cost-competitive, sustainable, advanced biofuels at commercial scale, representing a historic milestone for aviation. With United's strategic partnership, AltAir Fuels retrofitted part of an existing petroleum refinery to become a 30 million gallon, advanced biofuel refinery near Los Angeles, California.
THE NEXT ECONOMY -
Environmental justice has been a small, but increasingly vocal, component of civil rights activism. After all, many organizations, including the NAACP, have documented the disproportionate health problems the United States’ 370-plus coal-fired power plants — which often happen to be located near neighborhoods in which the majority of residents are people of color — have had on minority communities.