LEADERSHIP -
The host of food and drink company members of the United Kingdom’s (UK’s) Food and Drink Federation (FDF) have developed a series of new sustainability commitments. The newly-released “Ambition 2025” document builds on the group’s previous “Five-Fold Environmental Ambition” and includes goals related to climate change, food waste, packaging, water, transport, supply chains and natural capital, as well as case studies highlighting some of their members’ best practices.
PRESS RELEASE -
SAN FRANCISCO, October 7, 2016 – Sustainable Brands® recently announced the full program for New Metrics’16, scheduled for November 14-16 in Boston, MA. Drawing together over 400 global business leaders, the conference will focus on the emerging methods for identifying, measuring, and quantifying new forms of business risk and value, as well as include strategies for communicating the impact of that value to stakeholders.
NEW METRICS -
One year after the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs, or Global Goals), the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) proudly announced that nearly a third of its members are communicating on the SDGs, just as United Nations (UN) officials called for more integration of the Goals into corporate sustainability reporting at an annual meeting in Geneva.
PRESS RELEASE -
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) announced a new five-year commitment to help advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to help improve the health and well-being of men, women and children around the world. Johnson & Johnson is dedicating its expertise and innovations to ignite global partnerships and catalyze efforts through a variety of new implementation plans, targets and metrics. The announcement comes along with an expanded commitment by Johnson & Johnson to further strengthen the resilience of refugee and displaced children and their families in Syria and its neighboring countries where the need is greatest.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
"What's your favorite sustainable development goal?" joked John Elkington, the writer, thinker and serial entrepreneur who coined the triple bottom line concept in 1997, who moderated a Tuesday panel on aligning the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with strategy, goal-setting and innovation at SB’16 Copenhagen.
COLLABORATION -
The United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) has announced a new digital ‘Global Solutions Platform’ to engage business students to support the advancement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs, or Global Goals). The platform consists of two parallel projects through which business students will analyze and evaluate the quality of company activities as they relate to responsible and sustainable business operations, and highlight the most notable achievements of companies in each major industry.
STAKEHOLDER TRENDS AND INSIGHTS -
On 21 September, Alliance 8.7 was launched during the UN General Assembly to end forced labour, modern slavery, human trafficking and child labour. The aim is to galvanize political support and strengthen multi-stakeholder action on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8.7.
Taco Terheijden, Director of Cocoa Sustainability at Cargill Cocoa & Chocolate, reflects on the importance of SDG 8.7 and how the new Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation System within the Cargill Cocoa Promise will strengthen its efforts to tackle child labour and forced labour in the cocoa supply chain.
LEADERSHIP -
A new forecast by DNV GL concludes that while progress will be made towards many of the United Nations’ (UN’s) 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs, or Global Goals), there is a very real risk that they will not be met by 2030. The report predicts that action will not be fast nor fair enough, and will come at an unacceptable environmental cost — but reminds us that there is still time to reset the course of our “Spaceship Earth.”
COLLABORATION -
Today, 37 leading agri-business companies have today launched the Global Agri-Business Alliance (GAA) in Singapore. Their aim is to collectively tackle the major environmental and social challenges facing agricultural supply chains and rural communities across the world.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Declaring intent is oh-so-easy. CEOs and other business leaders do it all the time. But delivering against declared pledges can be a very different matter. In recent years, for example, thousands of companies have signed up to various international charters and business-to-business platforms pursuing sustainable development — and rolled up at the growing number of events celebrating incremental progress. Then, last year, somebody sat on the fast-forward button.
PRESS RELEASE -
SustainRWorld Day, which launches September 8th at the United Nations, is an initiative intended to rally the private sector to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by inspiring a movement to make every day SustainRWorld Day and celebrate our measurable progress each year.
THE NEXT ECONOMY -
A new report from relief and development charity Tearfund and the Institute of Development Studies suggests that businesses and governments could help save lives and create jobs by adopting a circular economy approach to waste management.
MARKETING AND COMMS -
With about one-fifth of the world’s population, China has the ability to significantly contribute to the success of the United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The country made impressive strides in pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals, particularly in poverty alleviation, and is well-positioned to build on that progress in the post-2015 development agenda despite the challenges it will undoubtedly face.
STAKEHOLDER TRENDS AND INSIGHTS -
Like few times in our history, we are navigating a moment of profound cultural, political and economic transformation.
On one hand, we’ve seen nearly every nation on the planet come together behind new Sustainable Development Goals and an historic Climate Accord that offers a bold and inspiring vision for the promise and possibilities of business and society.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
When you set out on your purpose journey, what steps can you take to ensure that your purpose will be genuinely transformational for your business?
In the ten years that we’ve been championing purpose and helping organisations to craft purpose-led visions, we’ve learned lessons about how to ensure that purpose sticks. Above all, we’ve seen how vital it is for purpose to be grounded in reality.
Right from the start, you must root your purpose in the political, economic, social and technological context in which you operate. We call this the ‘dig’ phase: a period of intensive research and analysis of the current environment and future trends that affect your business.
STAKEHOLDER TRENDS AND INSIGHTS -
New research commissioned by environmental non-profit Hubbub and consumer goods giant Unilever reveals that in the first week of the summer break, £12 million worth of food will be thrown away as UK families head off on holiday; more than half of people surveyed admitted to throwing away perfectly edible food before they went on holiday. This unfortunate statistic is in keeping with 2015 research from the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), which found the UK to be among the top food wasters in Europe.
COLLABORATION -
Companies including SABMiller, Dow, Novozymes, and many others have begun to align their corporate responsibility targets with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) since the United Nations (UN) launched them in September.
PRESS RELEASE -
CHICAGO (July 18, 2016) – MillerCoors released its 2016 Sustainability Report, which provides a comprehensive review of the company’s 2015 efforts in the areas of alcohol responsibility, environmental stewardship and community investment. The nation’s second largest brewer continues to help prevent drunk driving and underage consumption, reduce water use and brewery waste, and create equal opportunities for women in beer.
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
Increased environmental awareness will lead to completely new demands being placed on the packaging industry. BillerudKorsnäs, a Swedish provider of sustainable paper packaging materials and solutions, sees this challenge as a business opportunity. When BillerudKorsnäs’ partner, the French research platform Tara Expeditions, recently made a stopover in Miami on the way to the Pacific Ocean for an 18-month expedition, BillerudKorsnäs invited stakeholders in its U.S. market to discuss how the packaging industry can contribute in this regard.