COLLABORATION -
Recent climate change talks in Bonn drew to a close last week without major fanfare. However, despite no landmark announcements — such as that coming out of Paris after COP21 — it was nonetheless a critical meeting, with a key aim of better defining ‘how’ to make the ambitions set out in Paris in 2015 a reality and keep global warming to 1.5 degrees.
For those of us leading sustainability efforts for companies, the COP talks are a great opportunity to learn about what’s happening at a global level and reflect on how we, as just one actor, fit into the bigger picture.
PRESS RELEASE -
Crédit Agricole, Danone, Firmenich, Hermès, Michelin, SAP, Schneider Electric & Voyageurs du Monde accelerate their actions for climate & the most vulnerable populations
This new impact investment fund, with a target of 100 million euros, aims at improving the lives of 2 million people and avoiding the emissions of up to 25 million tons of CO2 over a 20-year span.
WASTE NOT -
Sustainable Surf, a nonprofit focused on protecting ocean health, has teamed up with Swiss designer Yves Béhar and MAFIA Bags, a Bay Area-based brand making bags and backpacks from upcycled sails, to create an urban adventure bag that supports the local community and diverts valuable resources from landfill.
PRESS RELEASE -
Everyone needs to do their part to conserve water. But what if entire communities could work together to eliminate the unnecessary waste of this valuable resource?
That’s the idea behind Green Plant Framework/Aquifer Systems, founded by Joshua Parde. The system allows users to compare the total volume of water delivered from a municipal source to the amount actually used in a home or other building. With this data, homeowners and property managers can identify water leaks and make critical repairs.
WASTE NOT -
While coffee cup recycling is just beginning to gather steam, previously hard-to-recycle products such as lead batteries and contacts are demonstrating surprisingly high recycling rates.
FINANCE & INVESTMENT -
A new report by CDP has revealed the extent to which deforestation threatens the global economy — and the numbers are staggering.
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE -
At COP23, the largest cocoa-producing countries, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, announced far-reaching frameworks for action with leading chocolate and cocoa companies, including Cargill, General Mills, Hershey, Mars, Mondelēz International and Nestlé, to end deforestation and restore forest areas.
NEW METRICS -
We need to make better decisions to avoid the potentially severe consequences for businesses operating in a deteriorated environment. The social and environmental megatrends will, over time, act as a drag on prosperity as the costs of basic inputs such as water, energy and land escalate in response to scarcity.
WASTE NOT -
Wastewater that’s worth the likes of gold? What would seem like a farfetched concept is reality in Switzerland, where 95 pounds of gold find their way into Swiss sewage each year — the equivalent of US$1,947,925.60. The build up is the result of the country’s iconic watch-making trade, which sees 70 percent of the world’s gold pass through Swiss gold-refining plants each year. So what to do with all this gold?
WALKING THE TALK -
From empowerment, optimism and sustainability in space to a whole strategy designed to ‘Make It Better,’ SB’17 Copenhagen rounded out with a host of speakers espousing positivity as a key component of the change that purpose-driven brands are aiming to create in the world.
Compensating for your environmental impact has never been easier
by Marius Cortsen
BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
October is Campus Sustainability Month (CSM), an international celebration of sustainability in higher education. One focus of this year’s CSM is the conservation of water, a natural resource that humans need to survive.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
Soy and beef production have played significant roles in the exploitation of the Amazonian rainforest, but the rollout of regulations to protect these precious natural resources have had unexpected consequences, driving these activities into regions that have largely been left untouched, such as Brazil’s Cerrado, a vast tropical savanna ecoregion of 2 million square kilometers.
NEW METRICS -
One of the hallmarks of context-based sustainability (CBS) as an approach to performance accounting in business is that it features the use of organization- or company-specific metrics. Indeed, a basic tenet of CBS is that no two organizations are exactly alike and it makes sense, therefore, for them to use different metrics to assess their performance, all in accordance with their own materiality determinations.
PRESS RELEASE -
An industrial flagship to support evian®’s constant innovation and its commitments to sustainability.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
Sustainability consulting group Quantis, in conjunction with a pre-competitive consortium of over 40 private companies, NGOs, governments and scientific institutions, has released the Land Use Change Guidance: Accounting for Emissions in the Supply Chain.
PRESS RELEASE -
Ford Motor Company today released its 18th annual Sustainability Report, including a short film, detailing its environmental progress across the world and commitment to continued sustainability actions in the future.
Since 2000, Ford has published its Sustainability Report to track its comprehensive approach to managing the issues related to climate change, air quality and conservation, and identifying opportunities that have significant impacts across the business, from water stewardship to supplier training and education.
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
Johnson & Johnson is on a mission to improve the sustainability of its products by sourcing solutions from within the company through its Earthwards® program. In June, the program became 100 products strong; J&J’s aim is for the Earthwards® portfolio to represent 20 percent of its revenue by 2020.
We spoke with Paulette Frank, J&J’s Worldwide VP of Environment, Health, Safety & Sustainability, to learn more about the internal and external benefits of designing in sustainability.
PRESS RELEASE -
Today, the 2nd of August, is Earth Overshoot Day – the day on which we have used up all natural resources on the planet for this year. The remainder of the year is overconsumption. If we would all consume just the resources the planet has available, the day would fall on Dec 31st.
Every year the date falls earlier. Surprisingly, in 1987, the day still fell in December – on Dec 19th to be precise. Since then, our consumption of natural resources has dramatically increased – bringing Earth Overshoot Day forward into August since 2010.
With EOD, delays and pushbacks are a good thing. So, what can we all do to push back this date and ‘Think Planet’? Here’s some of the best possible actions:
Diet: love your greenies
PRESS RELEASE -
Regionalized lifecycle inventory (LCI) modeling generates and links process datasets to the location in which they occur[i]. Given agricultural lifecycle assessments (LCA) are particularly spatially-sensitive, Quantis’s Rainer Zah was involved in developing a framework streamlining the generation of high-resolution crop production datasets in any region of the world. Our experience with applying the framework to the footprint assessment of food, feed, fiber or biofuel and material production shows that it allows decision-makers to consider micro-spatial variations otherwise overlooked in LCA.
NEW METRICS -
Natural capital underpins prosperous economies and thriving societies. Understanding the interconnectedness between business and nature well as the associated risks and opportunities, allows companies to better inform decision-making.