THE NEXT ECONOMY -
At Sustainable Brands ’14 San Diego next week (June 2-5), the circular economy will be a major topic as we search for ways to decouple economic growth from resource consumption.
In 2013, Philips committed to reimagining its products through the lens of a circular economy approach that focuses on customer access over ownership and business models for services and solutions, rather than transactions. The company also became a global partner of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a global nonprofit dedicated to advancing the concepts of the circular economy.
PRESS RELEASE -
The year aheadOver the past few years, we have seen increased interest in the biotechnology industry from large chemical companies, a reflection of its immense promise. We do not see this interest waning in 2014. Although it may increase competition, it also helps draw more resources and attention to the biotechnology sector, helping the sector gain momentum.
COLLABORATION -
H&M and WaterAid on Tuesday launched a new global partnership aimed at improving the health, education and future prospects of students by delivering safe water, sanitation and hygiene education programs in schools throughout the developing world.The initiative will not only transform the lives of students by delivering immediate and long-term improvements to health and education, but also influence national and international policies around the right to safe water and sanitation, H&M says.To make this happen H&M, through its philanthropic arm the H&M Conscious Foundation, will donate $9.3 million.
PRODUCTS AND DESIGN -
Organic milk comes with a dose of healthful omega-3 fatty acids, which help prevent heart disease and are linked to additional health benefits. Normally associated with seafood or dietary supplements, these valuable nutrients can also come from some dairy products, according to research published last month in PLOS ONE. The study included milk from Organic Valley, the nation’s largest farmer-owned cooperative, which has been on the path to understanding the fatty acid profile of its products since 2009.
BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
On Feb. 5, drugstore chain CVS Caremark announced that it will stop selling tobacco products.It’s a big deal. Here’s why.It signals a step towards more businesses saying, “It’s wrong. So we’re stopping.” Even when the financials — what the sustainability world calls “the business case” — don’t support it in the short term.I’d like to suggest that CVS’ announcement moves the ball downfield for more business decisions based on social and environmental impacts. It creates new, safe middle ground to operate more openly from the “morals” argument as a valued partner to the “money” business case argument.
BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
Experts in public health have struggled with enabling behaviour change for years. The sustainability sector should learn what it can from their experiences. Consumer behaviour change is the challenge of our time. As governments and brands are beginning to realise, upstream improvements are relatively easy to make compared with the herculean task of shifting consumer behaviours downstream. While the sustainability community is just beginning to get to grips with the gravity of this challenge, our colleagues in public health have been wrestling with it for decades. Great progress has been made, but hard lessons have been learned — costly, time-consuming lessons that we can all learn from.
BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
In a bold yet intuitive move for a pharmacy, CVS Caremark announced Wednesday that it will stop selling cigarettes and other tobacco products at its more than 7,600 stores across the US by October 1, 2014. It is the first action of its kind by a national pharmacy chain.With more than 480,000 deaths annually, smoking is the leading cause of premature disease and death in the United States, CVS says. While the prevalence of cigarette smoking has decreased from around 42 percent of adults in 1965 to 18 percent today, the rate of reduction in smoking prevalence has stalled in the past decade.
PRODUCTS AND DESIGN -
The International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) announced today that the following projects have been chosen as the three finalists for the World Design Impact Prize 2013-2014: A Behaviour Changing (ABC) Syringe, BioLite HomeStove and the Refugee Housing Unit.
CLEANTECH -
Kind Love, a state-licensed medical marijuana grower in Denver, Colorado, is improving the operational efficiency and environmental sustainability of its grow operations by installing a closed-circuit desalination (CCD) reverse osmosis (RO) system. The system, which will produce up to 22,000 gallons of purified water per day, is being supplied by Desalitech, a provider of high-efficiency water production and wastewater treatment solutions.
COLLABORATION -
The Nestlé Institute of Health Sciences (NIHS) has signed a long-term research agreement with Wisconsin-based Cellular Dynamics International (CDI), a leading developer of stem cell technologies for in vitro drug development, stem cell banking and in vivo cellular therapeutic research.The agreement gives Nestlé access to certain types of CDI’s cell products to support nutrition-research programs on maintaining health and helping to prevent conditions such as diabetes and obesity.
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE -
One in four small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in the UK consider sustainability one of their highest concerns for the coming year, according to a new survey by Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking (LBCB).While sustainability is becoming an integral part of the business landscape, it has traditionally been much more difficult for smaller firms, who may lack the resources to make changes to company administration practices, LBCB says.Encouragingly, the survey found that three out of ten SMEs plan to invest more in sustainable business practices over the next five years, although another 42 percent said that spending on sustainability is likely to remain flat.
BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
Last week, Public Health England unveiled its latest Change4Life campaign, which this year focuses on getting people throughout England and Wales to “Smart Swap” fatty or sugary foods for healthier alternatives.The campaign recognizes that it’s unrealistic to expect people to immediately switch from chocolate to fruit, for example, so it is hoping to incentivize making smarter food choices by offering participants money-saving vouchers for healthier foods and drinks and in-store offers from partner retailers such as Asda, Co-operative Food, Lidl and Aldi.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Unilever and the Cambridge Program for Sustainability Leadership (CPSL) have announced the seven finalists for the inaugural Unilever Sustainable Living Young Entrepreneurs Awards, an international awards program designed to inspire young people around the world to tackle environmental, social and health issues.The competition, open to anyone aged 30 years or under, looks for inspiring practical, tangible solutions to help make sustainable living commonplace.
ICT AND BIG DATA -
Today IBM unveiled its eighth annual "IBM 5 in 5" (#ibm5in5) — a list of innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and interact during the next five years, and the tech company’s role in making them a reality.
As part of its Plan A commitment to become carbon-neutral, Marks & Spencer (M&S) has become the first major company to sign on to UNICEF’s new carbon offset project, which aims to improve the health and lives of children, while drastically cutting carbon emissions, in developing areas.
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
Do you read the ingredient labels of your products? Here are some from a popular baby shampoo:“Purple paraben, quarternium-15, sorbitan laurate…,” rattles off Annie Leonard, co-director of The Story of Stuff Project, during the most recent episode of their “Good Stuff” podcast, which discussed green chemistry.Now, what do those ingredients mean? Where do they come from? If companies are allowed to sell them on the shelves, is that not an indication that they are safe to use? What about the ingredients that aren’t listed … and what does “fragrance” really mean?
BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
To mark Global Handwashing Day (GHD) — October 15th — Unilever’s Lifebuoy brand has announced a significant expansion of its Help a Child Reach 5 campaign. Launched in February in Thesgora, India, a rural village known to have one of the highest rates of diarrhoea in the country, the campaign aims to end preventable deaths of children under five by changing hand-washing behaviors, one village at a time. Today, Lifebuoy has confirmed it will extend this program to communities and villages across 17 countries globally.
COLLABORATION -
CVS recently announced a partnership with health and well-being company Humana to help customers make sense of their healthcare coverage options under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).Starting this month, Humana representatives will be present at CVS’s Project Health events, where individuals can receive free health screenings to check blood pressure, body mass index, glucose, total cholesterol and even receive oral or dental care. During October and November, Humana representatives will be available to answer questions about health coverage under ACA at 80 Project Health weekly events in Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan and Texas.
MARKETING AND COMMS -
While it might not win any Academy Awards, certainly the best title for a movie this year has to be the food industry critique, GMO OMG. On the surface, it is an attack on genetically modified seeds and what they are doing to our health. Underneath, it is an emotional play on a father’s frustration with the clarity of our food system. What is in our food and where does it come from?
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Chicago start-up F-Cubed, LLC (F3) is helping to stem the recurrence of infectious diseases across the food, health and environmental testing sectors with its disruptive invention — a portable diagnostic device that can analyze raw samples for pathogens in less than an hour.What does that mean?As an example of environmental testing, F3’s innovative analyzer can help swimmers avoid unforeseen illnesses by testing the bacteria levels within bodies of water.