The latest products, services, design approaches and business models that are helping organizations of all sizes deliver on their sustainability ambitions and establish a new business as usual
Collaborative consumption, also called the sharing economy, is expected to continue growing as a trend, particularly as digital technology makes sharing marketplaces more commonplace and accessible. This shift away from individual ownership of goods could really hurt manufacturers – or, as a recent study suggests, could deliver them profit-making benefits if they adjust their prices and product design.
Despite international efforts to curb climate change, communities and companies alike need to prepare for the impacts of a changing climate. With this in mind, The White House has launched a new public-private collaboration to improve the availability and usability of data and information for climate resilience. Companies including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, Microsoft and IBM’s The Weather Company are working alongside NGOs and four U.S. Federal agencies to execute the project.
Business must adopt a new mindset to move the world away from its collision course with the “Sixth Extinction" and onto a path of sustainability, acclaimed speaker and author John Elkington argues in a paper that shows how “Breakthrough Business Models” can deliver the technological advancements needed to achieve an inclusive, net-zero emissions economy. The paper, written for the Business and Sustainable Development Commission (BSDC), highlights critical pathways for developing a radical mindset that aligns sustainability with profit and transforms business and markets.
A data-driven modeling tool is helping cities – including San Francisco – reach their sustainability goals by outlining which technologies will provide the greatest impact. According to a study released last week, electric car sharing alone has the potential to reduce emissions by half a million tonnes by 2050 – representing a 13 percent reduction in GHGs from a single technology.
“The activist company” Patagonia is making donations, hosting events and stressing the importance of local- and state-level voting in a $1 million push to combat apathy and ‘get out the green vote.’
IKEA has been quietly piloting various initiatives across its European stores to see how it can build circularity into its service offering for customers. It’s a bold move, given that consumer-facing circular economy business models are still relatively embryonic, particularly in the retail market. “Over the coming years, we will support customers to care and repair, rent, share, bring back, and resell their IKEA products to prolong product life,” IKEA’s sustainability manager Jonas Engberg told me in a recent interview.
A new campaign is calling on investors and money managers everywhere to make their investments part of a “tremendous force for good in effecting positive change.” Launched by the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), the campaign asks investors and money managers to commit capital to impact investing efforts aimed at meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs, or Global Goals) agreed upon by the United Nations roughly one year ago.
Today at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) 2016 Annual Meeting in New York City, Thread - the Pittsburgh-based B Corp that transforms plastic bottle waste from Haiti and Honduras into ‘the most responsible fabric on the planet’ - announced a new Commitment to Action to address the problem of undignified and child labor in global supply chains, through a targeted effort in Haiti.
During Climate Week NYC 2016 this week, several companies made bold commitments through The Climate Group’s two leading corporate energy campaigns: RE100, which is focused on transitioning to 100 percent renewable power, and EP100, a new initiative focused on doubling energy productivity.
It’s no mystery why an energy company might explore applications for gaseous waste emitted from its power plants, but making shoes isn’t usually on the agenda. For NRG, shoes made from carbon dioxide emissions are just the beginning.
Climate change demands new ways of thinking and startups have been rising to the challenge. Among the latest, the winners of the Living Product Prize and the Postcode Lottery Green Challenge took home cash prizes to develop their soil filtration systems and energy-generating windows, and a Voom business award-winning entrepreneur has plans to build plastic roads in Scotland.
As Americans count down to Election Day, more than three-quarters (78 percent) believe the winner of the presidential race should prioritize the faster adoption of renewable energy, according to the seventh annual Sense & Sustainability® Study released by G&S Business Communications (G&S). The G&S Sense & Sustainability Study was conducted online by Harris Poll in August 2016 among 2,007 U.S. adults.
It’s been a good couple of years for the solar industry. In 2015, some 7.5 megawatts were added to the grid in the United States, according to the Solar Industries Association (SIA), which fueled 19 percent in the photovoltaic market over 2014.
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.
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 9th article in the series.
Meet two racers who share a need to push the envelope - whether the subject is figuring out how to go a few millimeters per second faster than before or preserving endangered species.
Have you heard the one about the fire extinguisher? An auditor was completing an onsite assessment of a production facility for a major apparel brand when he noticed that fire extinguishers were mounted on devices that allowed them to slide up and down the wall. The auditor asked about this. “Well,” the facility manager said, “you require that our fire extinguishers be 4 feet from the floor, but Brand X requires that they be 3 feet from the floor, and Brand Y requires 2 feet from the floor.”
Consumers are hungry for greater transparency - especially when it comes to fish. A recent study found that more than half of consumers are willing to pay more for certified sustainable seafood products. Yet, the industry’s complicated global supply chains have made traceability a challenge and have allowed forced labor to thrive.
William McDonough + Partners and GXN — an internal division of Danish architectural practice 3XN that works with applied architectural research in green materials and building technologies — have partnered to develop a master plan for the Agro Food Park (AFP) near Aarhus, Denmark. The project aims to create a geographic hub for agricultural innovation; AFP will incorporate the benefits of urban density with the proximity of agricultural test fields in an open campus where academic and commercial businesses can collaborate, grow and prosper.
Businesses of all sizes can realize opportunities presented by the shift from linear ‘take, make, waste’ models and systems to circular ones. As the originator of the circular economy concept Walter R. Stahel once said, “A circular economy will directly create numerous jobs with a broad diversity of skills at local and regional level, and give rise to new SMEs [small and medium enterprises] exploiting opportunities in the local loops.”