New Metrics
The new and evolving metrics that are helping expand the way businesses create, quantify, manage and report their impacts, and the value they deliver.
The Most Critical Sustainability Metric of the Year, and the Decade
I hope that by now we are more than clear on what we can and need to do about our dwindling carbon budget. If you are not thinking ‘science-based targets’, you really need to catch up — keep reading.
Sustainable Apparel Coalition Launches Tech Venture to Scale Higg Index
Higg Co. will provide the trusted technology industry needs to be able to implement the Higg Index at scale; while the SAC will continue to focus on driving sustainability measurement and improvements in the apparel, footwear and textile industry.
JetBlue, Nature Conservancy Using AI to Evaluate Impact of Ecosystems on Tourism
With 65% of the Caribbean’s reefs generating tourism dollars, the study reveals an opportunity for tourism-associated businesses to work together to protect the region’s environmental health.
Goals with Impact: How to Set the Next Generation of Sustainability Goals
With scores of companies embracing science-based climate targets, we look at what it takes to set these goals and apply the approach to the biggest environmental and social risks across the business.
A New Approach to Materiality: Backcasting to Prioritize What Really Matters
It's time for a reverse materiality assessment — rather than trying to divine what matters most by forecasting from the unsustainable present, we must prioritize by back-casting from the sustainable future.
The World’s First Data Visualization of Product Carbon Footprints
By generating carbon-intensity data for each product, CoClear was able to identify industry trends, as well as track product performance improvements along value chains.
The Future-Fit Business Benchmark: How Do I Start?
Look at it as a tool with which to solve the underlying puzzles posed by the sustainability challenge.
#NewMetrics18: The ROI of Sustainability Strategy — and 6 Ways to Get There
Last week at Sustainable Brands’ New Metrics ’18 conference in Philadelphia, PA, over 300 delegates from brands, NGOs, strategists and practitioners across sectors gathered to share their latest tools and findings regarding measuring the risks and impacts of previously unmeasured forms of value, the newest credible tools and solutions for assessing the ROI of Sustainable Business.
#NewMetrics18: Dos, Don'ts, Tools and Topics Critical to Sustainability Communication
Last week at Sustainable Brands’ New Metrics ’18 conference in Philadelphia, PA, over 300 delegates from brands, NGOs, strategists and practitioners across sectors gathered to share the newest credible tools and solutions for assessing the ROI of Sustainable Business.
Righting Wrong Metrics: Lessons on Future-Fitness and Fixing Materiality
This week at Sustainable Brands’ New Metrics ’18 conference in Philadelphia, PA, over 300 delegates from brands, NGOs, strategists and practitioners across sectors gathered to share their latest tools and findings regarding measuring the risks and impacts of previously unmeasured forms of value, the newest credible tools and solutions for assessing the ROI of Sustainable Business.
Future-Fit Business Benchmark Shows Novo Nordisk What 'Good' Looks Like
Novo Nordisk is the first global company to have completed a Future-Fit self-assessment and to have the results independently assured. In advance of Sustainable Brands’ New Metrics ’18 event next week in Philadelphia, I sat down with Cora Olsen, Global Lead on Integrated Reporting at Novo Nordisk, to discuss what the company learned from this process.
Addressing SDG 14: 3 Steps to a Sustainable Ocean Supply Chain
Oceans cover more than 70 percent of our planet’s surface and are home to 80 percent of life on earth. Fish, which provide 20 percent of daily protein intake to about 3.1 billion people, is among the most widely traded food commodities — at a value of US$145 billion annually.
New Guide Helps Banks, Investors, Insurers Assess Their Natural Capital Impacts
The Natural Capital Finance Alliance (NCFA), together with the Natural Capital Coalition and VBDO, has launched a groundbreaking guide to help financial institutions understand and assess their reliance on natural capital — i.e. the clean air, oceans, ecosystems and minerals that most of our goods and services depend on.
`Materiality Is Broken. But It Doesn’t Have to Be.
In formulating strategy, shaping communications and improving their impact in the world, companies, and their sustainability teams, must answer two big questions: "What is important to our business?” and "What is important to our stakeholders?” (Sometimes as a proxy for the larger question: “What is important to the world?")
8 Timely Topics Shaping the 8th Year of #NewMetrics
At its core, the #NewMetrics series of events has always been about quantifying previously ignored risks, costs and revenue potential associated with sustainability impacts. Over the years, we have explored important new metrics related to the whole range of vital capitals — natural, human, social, relationship, intellectual and financial — with the same end goal of helping businesses understand the full picture of their presence in the world, so they can then improve it in informed, holistic ways.
GCAS: 1/8 of Global Market Cap Now Committed to Science-Based Targets
Companies representing roughly one-eighth of total global market capitalization are now using climate science to define their future direction. Nearly three years on from the Paris Agreement and with time running out before greenhouse gas emissions must peak, 2018 has seen an unprecedented rise in the number of companies committing to reduce their emissions in line with the levels required to prevent dangerous global warming.
3 #NewMetrics Trends Every Business Should Follow
What we at Sustainable Brands call “New Metrics” allow businesses to quantify previously ignored risks, costs and revenue potential associated with sustainability impacts. Smart executives use #NewMetrics to understand the full picture of their companies’ interactions with the rest of the world, improve stakeholder relationships, and steer innovation toward the products and services of the future. The field has evolved steadily and produced many significant milestones over the past decade. Below are three big trends businesses need to be on top of if they want to gain early-mover advantages and maximize the respective upside that awaits.
Q&A: How Wrangler, MyFarms Plan to Leverage Field-Level Sustainability Data
From remote sensors to digital field mapping, information technology (IT) is rapidly becoming a part of day-to-day farm management. When a state-of-the-art cotton picker, for example, records crop yield and moisture every few seconds, along with the GPS coordinates of the machine, that data can be analyzed against water and fertilizer applications — or other farm practices — to determine optimal growing conditions. Technology also can enable reporting up and down the agricultural value chain of all farm practices and conservation metrics associated with a particular field.
Better Data and Metrics: Next Steps in Powering a Circular Economy?
Scotland remains one of the world’s leading nations on circular economy thinking — this year Glasgow will host the Circular Economy Hotspot, an international event and trade mission that will showcase the country’s progressive approach to materials and resource use.
Addressing Corporate Scope 3 Value Chain GHG Emissions: Part 1
To keep the global temperature increase to well below 2⁰C and meet the goals laid out in the Paris Agreement, everyone must take bold action to reduce their share of emissions as soon as possible. Companies are responsible for the majority of global emissions and therefore play an integral role in meeting these goals.