BUSINESS CASE -
Following the release last month of its groundbreaking guide to help financial institutions understand and assess their reliance on natural capital, this week the Natural Capital Finance Alliance (NCFA) launched the world’s first comprehensive tool linking environmental change with its consequences for the economy.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
This year’s holiday feasts will feature a bounty of meats, vegetables and other foods, many that people don’t know are big contributors to global warming.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Along with a wave of plant-based meat innovations from startups such as Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods and Right Treat, which are giving the meat industry a run for its resource-intensive money, a new plant protein solution could further revolutionize the food industry.
PRESS RELEASE -
Next week Americans across the country will sit down with their friends and families to celebrate Thanksgiving. Collectively, those families will also throw away an estimated 200 million pounds of turkey during the holiday, costing us $293 million as a nation. And that’s just one day!
But most food waste comes from supermarkets, restaurants, hotels, hospitals and arenas. Inedible turkey parts such as bones, and skins as well as vegetable stalks and stems, surplus ingredients, and extra pies never make it to a pot or plate.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
This week, Land O’Lakes SUSTAIN (LOLS) has launched two new partnerships aimed at helping farmers scale their sustainability efforts.
PRESS RELEASE -
Braskem, the Americas’ largest resin producer and the world’s leading biopolymer producer, has defined a series of global initiatives to boost the Circular Economy in the production chain of manufactured plastic goods.
“We are firmly committed to the goal of helping to transform the linear economy into a Circular Economy, effectively demonstrating our commitment to sustainable development,” said Fernando Musa, Braskem’s CEO. “By establishing a series of global initiatives, engaging in voluntary commitments and expressing publicly its global positioning for the Circular Economy, Braskem is inviting clients, its partners in the value chain, its Team Members and society in general to intensify their joint quest for innovative and sustainable solutions using plastic.”
FINANCE & INVESTMENT -
Last week at Sustainable Brands’ New Metrics ’18 conference in Philadelphia, PA, over 300 delegates from brands, NGOs, strategists and practitioners across sectors gathered to share the newest credible tools and solutions for assessing the ROI of Sustainable Business.
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE -
Every day, millions of Americans drink, on average, 2.1 cups of coffee; each cup takes about a hundred beans to brew1. Each bean must go through harvesting, wet milling, drying, dry milling, storing, shipping, trucking, roasting, grinding and packaging before it is available for us to pick off a store shelf and bring home to brew. Coffee may be simple to prepare in the home — especially if you have a Keurig machine on your counter — but the work behind such a ubiquitous beverage is incredibly complex and starts, as with most things we love, with people.
FINANCE & INVESTMENT -
The Hispanic Federation, together with actor Lin-Manuel Miranda and his family, today announced the launch of a five-year initiative to revitalize Puerto Rico’s coffee sector. The founding partners include Hispanic Federation, Nespresso, The Rockefeller Foundation, Starbucks, TechnoServe and World Coffee Research, all of which are committed to supporting smallholder coffee farmers on the island.
BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
Meat-heavy diets have been under increased scrutiny of late, spawning a host of research and campaigns linking them to the accelerating impacts of climate change around the world.
Now, a new report from the Changing Markets Foundation, Mighty Earth and Compassion in World Farming points the finger at governments, which they say are failing to tackle meat over-consumption to meet climate targets.
PRESS RELEASE -
Brazilian chemicals company Braskem, producers of I’m green™ – a bio-based polyethylene made from sugarcane – has had its negative carbon footprint credentials strengthened thanks to an independent review by the Carbon Trust.
In a new report comparing I’m green™ with fossil-based equivalents, the Carbon Trust has endorsed the methodology used by Braskem to support claims that for every tonne of I’m green™ produced, the equivalent of around 3 tonnes of CO2 are locked away by the sugarcane, which provides the main raw material for its manufacture. This means Braskem’s bio-based plastic is effectively carbon-negative.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
Nespresso has partnered with Blue Marble Microinsurance — a startup with the mission of providing socially impactful, commercially viable insurance protection to the underserved and incorporated by nine insurance entities — to launch a pilot weather index insurance program for smallholder coffee farmers in Colombia.
THE NEXT ECONOMY -
Last year, the Sustainable Brands community gathered around the world throughout the year to share insights on how they – and their customers – were “redefining the good life.” This year, the conversation has progressed from the ‘what’ to the ‘how’ of designing the sustainable future in which we all want to live.
COLLABORATION -
The past few weeks have seen a flurry of big announcements and commitments regarding increasing sustainability in a variety of areas, including overhauling our broken food system: Two weeks ago, at the Global Climate Action Summit, FoodShot Global launched a new investment platform aimed at accelerating food system transformation through a “Moonshots for Better Food” challenge to startups working to create a healthier, more sustainable and more equitable food system worldwide; while earlier this week at Climate Week NYC,
SUPPLY CHAIN -
This summer, whilst working in Barbados, I got my hands on an old drum set and learnt how to play the classic four-on-the-floor disco beat. It felt great to (just about) crack something so quickly, partly because it makes a nice change from the day job — building ethical brands, which takes a lot longer than a couple of weeks.
WASTE NOT -
At the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in 2015, countries committed to Sustainable Development Goal Target 12.3, calling for the world to cut food loss and waste in half by 2030. Now three years on, Champions 12.3 — a global coalition of sustainable food champions — is tracking progress toward this fast-approaching target and finding that the private sector has seized the opportunity to tackle food loss and waste.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Today at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Sustainable Development Impact Summit, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and WEF committed to help solve world hunger by 2030 through the innovative application of technology. HPE and WEF are calling on public and private organizations to join them in an open collaboration to find solutions that will eliminate food insecurity; and sustainably, nutritiously and inclusively feed a growing population.
PRESS RELEASE -
Novozymes, world leader in biological solutions, and DSM, world leader in animal nutrition, announce the launch of BalanciusTM, a new feed additive for broiler chickens.
“Balancius is the first and only feed additive that works by improving gut health for chickens. It allows broilers to better take up nutrients from feed, thus helping them to grow better and farmers to use less feed. No other technology works like this,” says Susanne Palsten Buchardt, Vice President at Novozymes.
PRESS RELEASE -
Note: This article originally appeared in the 3BL Media Walmart newsroom on September 13, 2018.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Chipotle Mexican Grill announced this week that the Chipotle Cultivate Foundation will sponsor the first Chipotle Aluminaries Project, a seven-month-long accelerator program designed to help growth-stage ventures with a shared vision to cultivate a better world take their businesses to the next level.