CLEANTECH -
Apple has announced plans to invest in a new Chinese solar power project and help preserve some 36,000 acres of forests in the eastern United States.The tech giant is partnering with solar company SunPower to build two solar power projects totaling 40 megawatts (MW) in China — more than the amount of energy consumed by Apple’s 19 corporate offices and 21 retail stores in China and Hong Kong.The projects are expected to provide up to 80 million kilowatt-hours per year while also protecting the ecosystem. They will feature SunPower's "light-on-land" approach to solar photovoltaic power plant design and construction, which allows pasture farming to continue while power is generated.
CLEANTECH -
Driven by consumer demands, and greater concern for resource scarcity and productivity, more companies are tracking and reporting performance in an effort to meet corporate sustainability goals. But once the low-hanging fruit is picked, further improvements can require sophisticated tools, such as emerging big data and geospatial analytics, to help companies make more informed decisions about sustainability goals, according to a new report from Lux Research.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
On April 24, the first annual Risk and Value Creation Forum, a finance innovation conference focused on evolving the concept of risk (as a key constraint in achieving sustainability goals), new risk frameworks, and biomimetic technology innovation as a sustainable value creation opportunity (at the startup and public company level), will take place in Mountain View, CA.
LEADERSHIP -
This week, JetBlue Airways announced it is once again partnering with the Carbonfund.org Foundation to offset the carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (CO2e) generated by all scheduled flights from April 1 to April 30, in honor of Earth Month. Now in its eighth year, this partnership has allowed travelers to offset part of the carbon footprint from their flights by making a donation to support carbon-reduction projects. To date, JetBlue says it has purchased offsets totaling more than 350 million pounds (158,000 metric tons) of CO2 and CO2e emissions.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Today, Wells Fargo announced its selection of four clean technology startups for the Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN2), a five-year, $10 million program to foster leading-edge environmental technologies. The program is funded by the Wells Fargo Foundation and co-administered by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). This marks the first philanthropy program of its kind within the financial services industry.
WASTE NOT -
A new report released today from Arizona State University indicates that the development of online education programs can be a significant component of an institution’s sustainability strategy, based on greater socioeconomic impact for a smaller environmental footprint per degree.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
New York City-based tech startup Project Exergy is one step closer to developing a technology capable of heating smart homes using computers, following a successful crowdfunding campaign.The concept involves transferring the computation done in data centers into millions of home and office computers and putting the normally wasted heat to use through a liquid cooling system that can efficiently extract and thermally store the high-temperature heat.
PRESS RELEASE -
By: Susan DiegelmanThe Second in a Series About Machine-to-Machine Technology and Water Management.Lake Mead provides up to 90 percent of Las Vegas’ water and experts estimate that since 2000, an ongoing drought robbed the lake of 4 trillion gallons of water. With 584,000 residents and millions of tourists each year, the Las Vegas Valley Water District brought its distribution system into the 21st century; it had to. A fragile combination of groundwater, water reuse systems, and desalination and banking systems make meeting the daily water needs of Las Vegas possible. For Las Vegas, every drop counts.
PRESS RELEASE -
Atlanta, March 26, 2015Program with UNHCR enables faster and more accurate distribution of supplies to refugee campsThe UPS Foundation, the philanthropic arm of UPS (NYSE: UPS), today announced the launch of the UPS Relief Link program to help improve the lives of displaced refugees around the world through optimized distribution and tracking of critical supplies in crisis-affected areas.
CLEANTECH -
A lightbulb with lower energy emissions, longer lifetime and lower manufacturing costs, and made with graphene — said to be the first commercially viable consumer product using the super-strong form of carbon — is poised to hit the market this year, thanks to a University of Manchester research and innovation partnership.The bulb’s developers — a Canadian-financed company called Graphene Lighting — expect the dimmable bulb to use 10 percent less energy than conventional bulbs, last longer and be priced lower than some LEDs, at roughly $20 each. It was designed at the University of Manchester, where the revolutionary material was discovered. The University’s National Graphene Institute was opened this month.
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.
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
A common misconception regarding fiber-reinforced plastics is that the material’s performance cannot be predicted, as with steel or aluminum. But BASF says its ULTRASIM® performance-prediction technology routinely delivers 90-95 percent accuracy when predicting the performance of parts molded using BASF materials, creating new opportunities for lightweighting products while minimizing design and development costs.Using sophisticated material characterization methods and analysis techniques, the company says the tool now enables designers and engineers to account for the influence of the injection molding process of a thermoplastic and study:
STAKEHOLDER TRENDS AND INSIGHTS -
On a crisp Wednesday morning last week, the 2015 Sedex Global Responsible Sourcing Conference kicked off in London’s Parliament Square, barely a stone’s throw from the seat of British government. The event saw 500 delegates from brands including Procter & Gamble, Nestlé, Bacardi and Sky come together to discuss the future of supply chains through a series of plenary sessions, breakouts and inspirational speakers.In his opening speech, Georg Kell, executive director of the UN Global Compact, laid out the case for global enterprise to take a united stand on sustainable development.
NEW METRICS -
Much of the valuable information that companies communicate to their shareholders about their ESG performance and the social and environmental risks facing the business lie not in the tagged financials nor even in the structured tables and graphs embedded in annual reports, but rather in the paragraphs that flow around the numbers and figures.
NEW METRICS -
Avaya, provider of customer and employee engagement communications technologies, has exceeded its carbon reduction goal two years early by adopting desktop and mobile videoconferencing systems, according to the company’s 2014 Corporate Social Responsibility Report (PDF).Avaya delivers technology solutions that enable organizations — from mid-market companies to large enterprises — to increase customer and team engagement. It serves some 300,000 customers around the world across a broad range of industries. More than 95 percent of the Fortune 500 companies are Avaya customers.
MARKETING AND COMMS -
Have you already failed your New Year’s resolution to live a healthier and happier life? We are own biggest enemy and the sooner we realize this, the sooner we can begin making real change. Everybody who’s been put in charge of creating change - whether it’s changing a country, business, organization, system, product, service or minds - knows that what most evidently stands in the way of change is not funds or ingenuity, it’s ourselves. We break New Year’s pledges almost as they’re outspoken, forget to switch off the lights, although risk-aware drive without a seatbelt, keep smoking although we know its deadly, repeat history’s atrocities again and again - raising the question if we at all are capable of taking care of ourselves?
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
It can be daunting to ramp up a sustainability program. This is especially the case when moving from an operations focus, where most programs start, to successfully leveraging the many opportunities associated with product materials and sourcing, design, and production. Yet companies that take aim at their products and measure, improve, and communicate the environmental and social attributes across the life cycle are able to achieve significant improvements that dwarf those they could realize otherwise.
CLEANTECH -
Global IT firm Hitachi Consulting has been selected to construct a first-of-its-kind Big Data platform for Denmark’s capital Copenhagen to help achieve its sustainability goals.To develop the platform, the firm will work with the City of Copenhagen, Capital Region, the Danish cluster organization, CLEAN and a consortium of partners.The Copenhagen Big Data project will enable advanced analytics to support city functions such as green infrastructure planning, traffic management and energy usage. It will integrate data from multiple sources, including demographics, crime statistics, sensor-based sources — such as energy consumption meters, air quality sensors and traffic sensors, among others — and information submitted by citizens and businesses.
CLEANTECH -
The world’s besieged forests have found friends in high places — in this case, very high. Remote-sensing satellites keep constant watch from hundreds of miles above the earth, collecting data that — when combined with information sharing and human networks around the world — can be used to preserve the world's forests, which are disappearing at an alarming net loss of 12.8 million acres each year (an area the size of Costa Rica).Although deforestation has slowed slightly since the 1990s thanks to conservation efforts, the situation remains dire.
NEW METRICS -
German software company SAP’s operating profit improves EUR35 million ($38 million) to EUR45 million ($49 million) when its employee engagement index rises one percentage point, according to the company’s 2014 integrated report.The financial impact of a higher employee engagement index results, among other things, from the fact that dedicated employees are more innovative and absent from work fewer days. Likewise, because they are more loyal to the company, there is less missed revenue and less recruiting and training costs traditionally associated with higher turnover rates.