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
Sustainability software and consulting company PE International, creators of the industry-leading GaBi life cycle assessment software and providers of a vast array of tools for sustainability performance management, unveiled its new name – thinkstep - today at its annual customer and partner symposium. The company says the new name reflects its long history of connecting data and knowledge to make sustainability advances, or ‘thinksteps,’ for the world’s leading brands and organizations.
Researchers at Queen Mary University of London have for the first time successfully created electricity-generating solar cells with chemicals found in the shells of shrimps and other crustaceans.The materials chitin and chitosan found in the shells are abundant and significantly cheaper to produce than the metals currently used in making nanostructured solar-cells, the researchers say.The researchers used a process called hydrothermal carbonization to create the carbon quantum dots (CQDs) from the widely and cheaply available chemicals found in crustacean shells. They then coated standard zinc oxide nanorods with the CQDs to make the solar cells.
Is your favorite beer helping to fight climate change? The chances just improved as, in the lead-up to Saint Patrick's Day — one of America's favorite excuses to drink beer — New Belgium Brewery, Guinness, Smuttynose Brewing Company and Deschutes Brewery join dozens of brewers in announcing today they’ve signed the Climate Declaration, a business call to action that urges policymakers to seize the economic opportunity of tackling climate change.
Ford Motor Company is expanding its global Ford Smart Mobility plan with a new experiment to study how electric bicycles can work seamlessly with cars and public transport to deliver faster and easier daily commutes and help businesses operating in urban centers.
In the lead-up to this year’s Sustainable Brands Innovation Open — our competition for startups poised to make scalable, sustainable impacts — we’re catching up with some of our favorite game-changing solutions from past years. This week, we have an update from SBIO 2013 finalist Blue Box.
Tesla founder Elon Musk has announced a new project that could get millions of people off the grid.Musk’s increased interest in the emerging energy storage market has led to plans for a giant lithium-ion battery factory. Home and businesses owners could buy these battery systems for backup power or for managing solar electricity generation and use.
Los Angeles-based fashion brand Reformation is helping to challenge the paradigm of wasteful “fast fashion.” Designed and produced in its factory in downtown LA, Reformation’s limited-edition collections of everything from ready-to-wear staples to bridesmaids dresses, all made with a cheeky attitude and sustainable or reclaimed textiles, are filling the wardrobes of celebrities and fashionistas across the country.
The Washington Post’s Rajiv Chandrasekaran is reportedly leaving his longtime post at the Post to form a new venture — a media company that will produce longform “social-impact" documentaries, with an initial focus on veterans’ issues, in partnership with Starbucks.
The energy shift in the world is now inevitable. To sustain life and livelihoods for 9 billion people by 2050, even if we didn’t count on living well (which we do, of course), we have 35 years to transform the global economy in order to decouple economic growth from high-emissions energy use. Phasing out emissions, especially those from carbon (CO2) - the primary cause of warming today - has to be a priority for business, as well as governments. There is growing evidence that a pathway to rapidly decarbonising the value chain goes well beyond ESG and reporting – it’s also a pathway to long-term growth, innovation, jobs and value creation.
“It was pretty basic. We self-financed. Five workers plus myself working inside a workshop situated on my grandmother’s plot of land inside our village of Zenabwork,” recalls Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu, now CEO and managing director of soleRebels, one of the first global footwear brands to emerge from a developing country.“Right from the start of 2004, we aimed to create, grow and control a world class footwear brand that would bring even more jobs and prosperity for the workers by leveraging the artisan skills of our community.”
This week, the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC), a nonprofit coalition of many of the world’s largest leading electronics companies — including Apple, Cisco, Dell, Eastman Kodak, HP, Microsoft and many more — dedicated to supply chain responsibility, and CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) announced a new partnership to help expand greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting and reductions in the electronics supply chain.
On Tuesday, Sustainable Brands joined a couple hundred Walmart team members and industry influencers at Walmart’s eCommerce headquarters in San Bruno, CA to learn about an important milestone on the journey shared by those attending. What drew these players together was a shared interest in helping shift the world toward a sustainable economy — and an awareness of the key role Walmart has, and is playing, in spurring this shift along.
Once companies tackle the low-hanging fruit of operational improvement — carbon footprints, energy-efficiency retrofits and waste reduction — they are ready to address deeper sustainability challenges.
L-R: Mart and Rob Drake-Knight | Image credit: RapanuiAs more and more brands begin to tout their sustainability credentials, increasingly savvy and conscientious shoppers are looking for companies that are walking their talk, with products and practices that reflect an authentic commitment to doing better business.
A startup called Soundlazer claims to have developed the world’s thinnest speaker, made from a new class of plastic polymer. With the ability to reproduce a large range of audio frequencies, the company says it can be used to deliver audio in tight or unique spaces.
Back in the late 1980s, Harvard professor Joseph Nye coined the term “soft power” to describe the US’s ability to influence the world through the marketing power of its global consumer brands and Hollywood’s razzle dazzle rather than the US military’s big stick.Today, as companies begin to shape a narrative that makes sense to the public, Nye’s language could well be applied to sustainability.Welcome to the era of Soft Sustainability.The term could be used to describe the approach of some of the world’s biggest companies as they seek to communicate their own sustainability work while also providing their consumers and greater community a roadmap to sustainable living.
The Dow Chemical Company recently completed a pilot program aimed at showing how certain plastics such as juice pouches, candy wrappers and plastic dinnerware — which are not easily recyclable under traditional models — can be converted into synthetic crude oil for fuel.As part of the Energy Bag Pilot Program, Dow partnered with the Flexible Packaging Association, Republic Services, Agilyx, Reynolds Consumer Products and the city of Citrus Heights, Calif. to drive a collection pilot program meant to divert non-recycled plastics from landfills and to optimize their resource efficiency across the lifecycle.
In Fall of 2013, Dell launched what it called its Legacy of Good plan — a set of 21 ambitious sustainability goals covering everything from its packaging and production materials to reducing the energy intensity of its entire product portfolio by 80 percent.
The term “super food” has become trite in today’s health-crazed dietary marketplace — used to describe everything from kale to blueberries. The word is rarely used by dietitians or nutrition scientists because few foods pack enough of a nutritional punch to merit “super” status.But there still are a few deserving of the title — and a plant called moringa is one of them. The moringa tree is a plant native to parts of Africa and Asia renowned for its nutritional value — each leaf contains seven times the vitamin C of oranges, four times the vitamin A of carrots, four times the calcium of milk, three times the potassium of bananas and twice the protein of yogurt.
This week, Nestlé USA boldly committed to removing all artificial flavors and FDA-certified colors from all of its chocolate candy products by the end of 2015. The change will affect the food giant’s current portfolio of more than 10 chocolate brands and 250 products, including Nestlé Crunch, Butterfinger, Baby Ruth, Skinny Cow, Raisinets, Goobers, Sno Caps, 100 Grand, Oh Henry and Chunky. New versions of the products will begin appearing on store shelves by mid-2015, and will be identified by a “No Artificial Flavors or Colors” claim featured on-pack.