PRESS RELEASE -
From world-leading rankings to sustainable product innovations, here are some of HPE’s biggest accomplishments in sustainability over the last year.
Today, we released our annual Living Progress Report, showcasing how HPE is driving sustainable innovation and embedding corporate citizenship within our culture. From garnering investor confidence with leading environmental and social governance (ESG) performance, to developing the world’s most efficient and secure products, here are a few of the highlights from the FY 2017 report.
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE -
After opening in 1913, Michigan Central Station quickly became where dreamers in search of new jobs and new opportunities first set foot in Detroit. Once the last train pulled out of the station 30 years ago, however, it became a place where hope left. The station became a symbol of Detroit’s hard times, a monument to the city’s struggles. As the new owner of the building, Ford is making a big bet on the future.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
KnowTheChain has released its second ranking of the top 40 global information and communications technology (ICT) companies on their efforts and disclosure related to eradicating forced labor.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Launched today in the UK, an app called Almond digitizes fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) products aims to revolutionize how consumers interact with the food and drink they consume. By scanning the unique hidden codes printed directly onto product packaging, consumers can use the Almond app to learn more about what they’re consuming, including where each ingredient has come from, the journey the product has taken and its carbon footprint.
PRESS RELEASE -
SB’18 Vancouver, June 7, 2018 – Last week at SB18 Vancouver Living X Elements announced the launch of Oyster X SmartSink a carbon in the soil solution platform as a tool to normalize biomass reduction at human scale. The platform is designed to create a transparent full chain of custody for clean biomass waste sources such as forestry, agriculture and specific urban sources and return them to the landscape as a Smart X Char bio carbon. The platform is underpinned by a soon to be released carbon standard by Living X Elements and its partners in the project.
MARKETING AND COMMS -
For some, blockchain is the disruptive technology that promises to solve transparency problems by creating one version of the truth; for others, it is all hype with no great real-world application other than cryptocurrency. I attended an SB’18 Vancouver workshop on “How Blockchain Technology Can Power Superior Supply Chain Innovation and Understanding” to move closer to understanding blockchain and its applications.
PRESS RELEASE -
Unique biotechnological procedure for using gaseous waste as a source for raw materials
Technology with potential for applications in the chemical industry
BASF Venture Capital GmbH is to invest in LanzaTech, a biotech company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Using special microbes, LanzaTech has developed a technology for gas fermentation that first enables ethanol to be produced from residual gases containing carbon monoxide and hydrogen. By re-using waste streams instead of incinerating them, industrial companies can reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
PRESS RELEASE -
Today Procter & Gamble (P&G) announced presentations given on new research into sustainability innovations for its Tide® laundry detergent. The presentations discussed the potential for improved cleaning performance in cold water conditions with detergents containing a patented branched surfactant. While machine washing in cold water can reduce a household’s energy footprint, detergents may not perform as well on this setting, which can compel consumers to use more energy and water to compensate.
Tide Research Fellow Phillip Vinson, PhD, and Tide Senior Scientist Patrick Stenger, PhD, gave presentations at the 2018 American Oil Chemists Society Annual Meeting and the 22nd International Symposium on Surfactants in Solution, respectively.
BUSINESS CASE -
The Dow Chemical Company’s newly released 2017 Sustainability Report details its progress against its goals for 2025, including surpassing the year’s target for savings and revenue from projects that are “better for ecosystems.” Such projects generated $120 million in cost savings and new cash flow in 2017 against the goal to reach $1 billion by 2025.
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.
THE NEXT ECONOMY -
This week at Sustainable Brands’ flagship event, SB’18 Vancouver, over 2,000 attendees are sharing and exploring the many ways organizations are helping to “redesign the good life.” One aspect of the good life is cross-sector collaboration, such as brand-city-organization partnerships to build resilient communities, technologies and systems that focus on social inclusion.
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.
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.
PRESS RELEASE -
Water is the most precious resource on earth — just ask the 844 million people globally that do not have regular access to a safe water supply.
Knowing this shortage, it’s almost inconceivable that 25 to 50 percent of the water that gets treated is wasted. And yet that’s the painful truth according to the International Water Association.
And it’s not just water. We’re also incredibly inefficient in how we produce and use gas and electricity; too much is wasted. It’s a situation that SAP partner Itron, a Liberty Lake, Washington-based company, is looking to change.
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.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Makersite is an all-in-one, open-source data platform for product design, costing and stewardship that product teams can use to analyze and collaborate on how things are made and improve the impacts of making them.
The platform includes dozens of apps tailored to various business, compliance, health and environmental evaluations that developers and designers can use to quickly explore the effects of different product configurations, such as climate change, eutrophication, carcinogenicity, RoHS and REACH compliance and production costs.
We caught up with CEO and co-founder Christoph Wilfert to find out more about this one-stop shop for sustainable product design.
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
As we get ready to judge our semi-finalists next week in the 2018 Sustainable Brands Innovation Open, we wanted to check in with last year’s competitors to learn about the impacts they continue to have on the business world. Here, we catch up with Toxnot.
COLLABORATION -
Farmers are faced with constant pricing pressures, water limitations and labor shortages, leading many to seek solutions to help them be more innovative and efficient in growing their crops. Technology and food companies alike are turning to the Internet of Things (IoT) to help.
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
This year, the world’s largest event on sustainability in fashion, the Copenhagen Fashion Summit, included an Innovation Competition that saw 12 finalists pitch their technologies onstage in front of a panel of expert judges and Summit attendees. After a series of presentations and judging sessions over the two day event, the winner was announced: ColorZen.