NEW METRICS -
Live Well San Diego: A visionary partnership to define and measure 10 quality-of-life metrics
By Anna Shugoll
PRESS RELEASE -
A businesslike look at America Recycles Day
America recycles one-third of municipal solid waste, and more would be better
PRESS RELEASE -
Despite the growing attention that brands with purpose have received, industry adoption of social benefits is lagging behind other critical transformations such as digital or analytics. The integration of social benefits in the marketing of brands remains on the periphery of many leaders.
What’s more, among many brand and business managers the pursuit of a social purpose is sometimes perceived as a distraction or an unwanted constraint to their ability to achieve their business goals. As a result, the potential of social benefits is often trapped by the perception of uncertain outcomes, unclear methods, and unwanted risks.
THE NEXT ECONOMY -
At some point in the future — and in some ways, we are already seeing this — the amount of physical stuff moving around the world will peak and begin to decline. By “stuff,” I am referring to liquid fuels, coal, containers on ships, food, raw materials, products, etc.
New technologies are moving us toward “production-at-the-point-of-consumption” of energy, food and products with reduced reliance on a global supply chain.
The trade of physical stuff has been central to globalization as we’ve known it. So, this declining movement of stuff may signal we are approaching “peak globalization.”
MARKETING AND COMMS -
When I was a kid, after a certain point I stopped wanting to do the things my parents forced me to do. You may have had a similar experience. The harder your parents tried to make you stay away from candy and obey curfew, the more you wanted to eat a ton of candy and break curfew.
PRESS RELEASE -
BASF, Danone, SC Johnson, UPS and others share research, tools and insights at SB’17 Copenhagen
LEADERSHIP -
Trust. It can sound a lot like a buzzword or business jargon, a word or phrase thrown around by leaders when trying to identify, define or solve a problem. Sometimes it’s not even a consideration until it’s lost.
According to the 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer, only about half of the general population trusts business, government, media and nongovernmental organizations to do the right thing. Trust in business fell to 52 percent, and CEO credibility also fell globally.
WALKING THE TALK -
The vinyl industry recently marked its first “sustainability community anniversary” — that moment where industry leaders came together to pledge to embark on our sustainability journey. In the year since, we’ve adopted common sustainability positioning focused on doing more with less, agreed on a purpose-driven continuous improvement path forward, formed the Vinyl Business and Sustainability Council (VBSC), and initiated an industry-wide materiality assessment.
There’s still much work to do.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
The genius physicist Albert Einstein once said, “If you can't explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.” This philosophy acts as a backbone of Pauline Dawes’ idea to truly revolutionise the trucking industry. It is very simple: By using the empty space between the wheels on trailers, the sector can cut down on the amount of journeys being made, saving money, fuel and carbon in the process.
It was while working as a director in the logistics sector, and doing an MBA at Manchester Business School, that Dawes was struck by the idea for SOMI Trailers.
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
It’s Waste Reduction Week in Canada, and to celebrate, I spoke to some superstar companies reducing waste through product design that are featured in the National Zero Waste Council’s Design Portfolio. For the first article in this three-part series, I spoke to Abeego founder Toni Desrosiers about her company’s reusable beeswax wraps.
PRESS RELEASE -
Corporations are increasingly attuned to the influence of human activity on land use, land use changes and forestry (see LUC Guidance). With systemic thinking, businesses are aware of their supply chain’s impact and they seek additional guidance to fully integrate biodiversity gains and losses in their environmental decision-making. Forestry in particular exerts pressures on biodiversity, which are not fully accounted for in current life cycle inventories and impact assessment methodologies. As a result, life cycle assessments (LCA) strive to appropriately differentiate sustainably managed forests from the rest in terms of their impact on biodiversity.
WALKING THE TALK -
‘Purpose’ is not a buzzword, a strapline, a communications campaign, or repackaged CSR – nor is it a recruitment tool for millennials or only suited for worthy businesses, asserts independent marketing and communications agency Radley Yeldar (RY), which has released qualitative research on how purpose has transformed some of the world’s largest brands, from the people who work there and make it happen.
PRESS RELEASE -
As the global population continues to grow and put unprecedented strains on resources, infrastructure and the environment, it has never been more important for businesses to collaborate on finding solutions to the sustainability challenges facing the world. On October 11, 3M Canada is bringing together some of the leading thinkers on sustainability issues from business, government and academia for a day-long Sustainability Summit that will examine the business imperative for acting sustainably.
MEMBER SPOTLIGHT -
We recently sat down with Crystal Lassiter, Senior Director, Global Sustainability and Environmental Affairs at UPS to discuss the challenges she’s excited to tackle in her new role.
Read more to discover the innovative solutions UPS is developing to drastically reduce carbon emissions, why community service is so deeply embedded in the company, and which two states Crystal has yet to visit.
FINANCE & INVESTMENT -
This summer came to a calamitous end with the rapid succession of hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Jose, Maria and Nate, two earthquakes in Mexico, rampant wildfires currently raging across Northern and Southern California, and countless other natural and man-made disasters across the globe.
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
With Sustainable September now underway, an opportunity to elevate the importance of sustainability on a global scale, and the release of our 2014-2016 sustainability report, All of Us, Every Day; we caught up with our own Michael Colarossi, VP of Innovation, Product Line Management and Sustainability.
WALKING THE TALK -
Last week, at the third and final SB Buenos Aires event of 2017, perspectives from the worlds of arts, finance, education, big business, healthcare, urban planning, consumers, activist brands and more provided a 360-degree look at how organizations around the world are working to manifest our changing vision of “The Good Life” – and highlighted the amount of work yet to be done.
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE -
This is an excerpt from Rise Up: How to Build a Socially Conscious Business, released this week from Elevate Publishing.
Purpose-driven companies regard employees as their most critical resource, one to be nurtured and sustained rather than exhausted and played out like a mine with a short-term life expectancy.
LEADERSHIP -
I recently visited Tokyo on a business trip and had the chance to meet with a number of Japanese companies. At the end of a three-hour meeting with sustainability professionals from a dozen or so multinationals, the host asked me for my impressions of Japanese organizations and their sustainability efforts. My honest answer: “I’m confused.”
CLEANTECH -
In the northwestern city where I live, when you walk out the door, the first thing you see is smoke. It blankets trees and houses, it hangs thick in the air, it covers the foothills, it seeps out from between buildings; it hangs, illuminated by streetlights at night. The shroud of smoke over the sun means less people are enjoying the great outdoors, but there’s one thing that hasn’t changed: People are still driving to work. Regardless of how much air pollution we have to contend with, the economy must go on. Yet this same economy is contributing to climate change.