The work of organizations joining forces in win-win, pre-competitive ways to bring about massive, impactful shifts away from business as usual
News Deeply, in partnership with Sustainable Brands, has produced a series of profiles looking at how brands are tackling some of the world’s biggest challenges. The goal is to examine trends and gather insights from a new wave of corporate citizenship – in an era when the private sector is increasingly expected to play a positive role in improving our lives and societies. This is the 8th article in the series.
While the challenges of climate change are undeniably global, politics and measures to actually solve them remain largely local. Last year’s Paris Agreement was a landmark moment for this issue. Now comes the difficult task of putting words and treaties into action. The IUCN World Conservation Congress, set to begin in Honolulu this week, seeks to do just that. In order to be successful, it’s critical the delegates representing government, business, NGOs, the scientific community and indigenous people from more than 160 countries embrace not just the hard work ahead, but also the urgent need for meaningful collaboration.
At SB’16 Cape Town in May, Tetra Pak, South African Airways (SAA) and the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) came together to share their views on the importance of building market demand from environmentally conscious consumers to move sustainable commodities further into the mainstream.
When in hot water, take a bath. To many westerners, this Chinese saying is nonsensical. Yet it accords with a fundamental African way of thinking: when faced with something profoundly troubling, the solution lies in a deeper experience of that very state.
The industry group Sustainable Apparel Coalition has opened use of its Higg Index suite of tools for measuring and evaluating supply chain impact to non-member small and medium-sized (SME) brands and retailers. SMEs may now take advantage of a special licence for full access to the Higg Index.
When (Red) was founded by Bono and Bobby Shriver back in 2006, it was born out of necessity. The Global Fund — an organization dedicated to fighting diseases such as AIDS, TB, and malaria in the developing world — had launched in 2002, with a commitment to garner private sector engagement and raise funds from governments in an effort to accelerate the end of AIDS. But the private sector was not biting, contributing only $5 million in the Global Fund’s first four years. This low level of funding threatened to jeopardize ongoing commitment levels from the public sector.
News Deeply, in partnership with Sustainable Brands, is producing a series of profiles looking at how brands are tackling some of the world’s biggest challenges. The goal is to examine trends and gather insights from a new wave of corporate citizenship – in an era when the private sector is increasingly expected to play a positive role in improving our lives and societies. This is the 2nd article in the series.
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.
Accenture Development Partnerships (ADP) is a consortium featuring Accenture, the University of Notre Dame Initiative for Global Development (NDIGD) and The Rural Development Company, which have joined forces on a renewable energy initiative in Uganda and South Africa that leverages solar-powered microgrids to deliver clean, affordable electricity to local populations.
In the latest of a string of innovative partnerships in its quest for more sustainable materials (which so far have yielded CO2-based and tomato-based plastic, and guayule-based rubber, to name a few), Ford Motor Company and Jose Cuervo® are exploring the use of the tequila producer’s agave plant byproduct to develop more sustainable bioplastics to employ in Ford vehicles.
Last week, The Dow Chemical Company released its 2015 Sustainability Report, which examined the company’s journey toward reaching its 2015 goals and what it’s already achieved looking ahead to 2025. I caught up with corporate VP and Chief Sustainability Officer Neil Hawkins to learn more.
When Stan Avery founded Avery Dennison in 1935, he set out to create a values-based business admired as much for its ethics and integrity as for its innovation. Eight decades later, the company still strives to adhere to its value-based mandate and is working to ensure that its employees and business partners know, understand and live up to its high ethical standards, according to Helen Sahi, senior director of Sustainability at Avery Dennison. “Key to our progress has been treating sustainability not as something we do, but how we do everything,” Sahi told Sustainable Brands. “We’ve integrated sustainability into our underlying business strategy, from our people to our products to the communities we serve.”
As a first-time attendee at a Sustainable Brands conference, I expected SB’16 San Diego to be largely about environmental issues. It certainly was – from the conference’s commitment to producing zero waste, to Pratt & Whitney’s “green” jet engine on display in the parking lot. But as a purpose-driven professional with a commitment to the social impact side of corporate social responsibility, I was thrilled to hear panelists redefine sustainability through a human-focused lens.
Day three of SB’16 San Diego got underway with Mark Lee, Executive Director of SustainAbility, mapping the past decade since the start of Sustainable Brands — from Hurricane Katrina and General Electric’s launch of ecomagination in 2005, to Unilever’s launch of its Sustainable Living Plan in 2010 and the United Nations’ Rio+20 Conference in 2012.
In this Tuesday afternoon panel, representatives from Ford, MillerCoors and Hershey described how their companies are leveraging a variety of partnerships to innovate for sustainability across their global supply chains. In 2014, Ford launched its innovative Partnership for a Cleaner Environment (PACE) program, which focuses on collaborating with suppliers to reach the company’s aggressive environmental targets.
This dynamic Tuesday afternoon panel dissected Global Supply Chains, taking forward by The Sustainability Consortium's (TSC) newly released impact report, Greening Global Supply Chains: From Blind Spots To Hot Spots To Action. Robin Raj, founder and Executive Creative Director of Citizen Group, moderated the panel and framed the session with the question: "Why does greening global supply chains represent one of the most potent models for change for sustainability?”
Cacao beans grow best in the places where chocolate would melt in your hands, but over the next several decades, many of those environments may grow warmer, drier, and less suitable for its cultivation. While cacao can be grown in warmer places than coffee, cacao thrives in humid environments. As temperatures rise, so will evaporation, and projections suggest that there will not be enough increased rainfall to offset the moisture loss.
The motor vehicle industry in the United States spends about $3.6 billion on energy annually, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In the U.S., over 70 assembly plants currently produce 13 million cars and trucks each year. While energy expenditures are a relatively small cost factor in the total production process, energy-efficiency improvements are helping manufacturers gain an edge in an increasingly competitive environment.
Between gridlock on bridges, freeways and surface streets and a frustrating dearth of adequate (or affordable) parketing options, anyone who’s ever lived in or around San Francisco can vouch for the fact that having a car is often more of a pain than a plus.
Cotton is planted on 2.4 percent of the world’s crop land and yet it accounts for 24 percent and 11 percent of the global sales of insecticide and pesticides, respectively. Organic cotton represents less than 1 percent of the global total annual crop, but National Geographic, international clothing brand C&A, and activist and filmmaker Alexandra Cousteau believe that needs to change.