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

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New Metrics
Integration Is Key – SAP’s Thomas Odenwald on Natural Capital Accounting (Part Two)
Integration Is Key – SAP’s Thomas Odenwald on Natural Capital Accounting (Part Two)
Published on May 13, 2014
About a 7 minute read

The prospects of Natural Capital Accounting (NCA) are capturing the attention of the sustainability community at large, and with good reason. In part one of our two-part interview with Thomas Odenwald, SAP's Senior Vice President of Sustainability, h... View More

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New Metrics
Let’s Make It More Relevant and Systemic: SAP’s Thomas Odenwald on Natural Capital Accounting (Part One)
Let’s Make It More Relevant and Systemic: SAP’s Thomas Odenwald on Natural Capital Accounting (Part One)
Published on May 9, 2014
About a 5 minute read

The prospects of Natural Capital Accounting are capturing the attention of the sustainability community at large, and with good reason. Keen to drill down into the topic with key players in the SB community, we sat down with Thomas Odenwald, SAP's Se... View More

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Measuring the Social Footprint of Products — Why Bother?
Measuring the Social Footprint of Products — Why Bother?
Published on May 9, 2014
About a 5 minute read

For over 20 years, PRé has been the metrics solutions partner for first-movers in a variety of industries aiming to create business value from sustainable products. Perhaps best known for their pioneering SimaPRO LCA software, PRé has recently shif... View More

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Ceres Conference and Report Ask: Is Corporate Sustainability Gaining Ground or Losing Pace?
Ceres Conference and Report Ask: Is Corporate Sustainability Gaining Ground or Losing Pace?
Published on May 6, 2014
About a 7 minute read

“We're screwed,” agreed authors Andrew Winston and Paul Gilding in the opening plenary of last week's Ceres Conference.“But we've got huge opportunities to solve mega-challenges profitably,” Winston added. ... View More

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PRé and SupplyShift Join Forces to Tackle Challenges of LCA, Supply Chain Sustainability
PRé and SupplyShift Join Forces to Tackle Challenges of LCA, Supply Chain Sustainability
Published on April 29, 2014
About a 2 minute read

Sustainability software and consulting firm PRé has announced a partnership with supply chain software company SupplyShift to tackle the challenges inherent in the twin fields of life cycle assessment (LCA) and supply chain sustainability, and to us... View More

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Social Impact Measurement: A Key Business Management Tool
Social Impact Measurement: A Key Business Management Tool
Published on April 27, 2014
About a 4 minute read

As companies obtain greater understanding of the social and environmental implications of their operations and products, the need to implement measurement methodologies to understand the impact of these business activities becomes more evident. Socia... View More

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RILA Seeking Industry Input on New Retail Energy Management Maturity Matrix
RILA Seeking Industry Input on New Retail Energy Management Maturity Matrix
Published on April 25, 2014
About a 1 minute read

Last week, the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) officially launched its Retail Energy Management Program by releasing the Retail Energy Management Maturity Matrix (REMMM), a new tool designed to help retailers optimize their energy manageme... View More

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Environmental Profit & Loss Accounting: Can We Make It Work?
Environmental Profit & Loss Accounting: Can We Make It Work?
Published on April 18, 2014
About a 7 minute read

In November 2013 the first World Forum on Natural Capital took place in Scotland, signaling that the concept of natural capital accounting (NCA) as pioneered through emerging tools such as the Environmental Profit & Loss (EP&L) account is sta... View More

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SAI Launches First Farmer Self-Assessment for Sustainable Agriculture
SAI Launches First Farmer Self-Assessment for Sustainable Agriculture
Published on April 11, 2014
About a 3 minute read

PepsiCo, Unilever, Heineken and more than 50 other members of the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (SAI) Platform have developed the world’s first industry-aligned Farmer Self-Assessment (FSA) of sustainable agriculture practices, launched earlie... View More

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Wanted: A Single, Unifying Metric for Quantifying Source Energy
Wanted: A Single, Unifying Metric for Quantifying Source Energy
Published on April 10, 2014
About a 6 minute read

Integrated reporting is the core of corporate sustainability. It is critical to organizations communicating their value creation over time and acts as a benchmark for future progress. Global brands including Walmart and Coca-Cola spend millions to co... View More

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New Study Illustrates Higher Natural Capital Value of Agrofrestry vs. Monoculture
New Study Illustrates Higher Natural Capital Value of Agrofrestry vs. Monoculture
Published on March 31, 2014
About a 2 minute read

Global natural capital consulting firm Trucost has released the results of a study comparing the environmental value of monoculture and agroforestry for producing palm oil and soybeans. ... View More

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Business Relevance of Natural Capital, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services: Assessing the Current State of Play
Business Relevance of Natural Capital, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services: Assessing the Current State of Play
Published on March 18, 2014
About a 6 minute read

As natural capital, biodiversity and ecosystem services are terms that are increasingly bandied about, a few questions are increasingly being whispered by corporate colleagues that are worth answering: ... View More

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Whether or Not We're 'Flourishing' Is a True Measure of Sustainability
Whether or Not We're 'Flourishing' Is a True Measure of Sustainability
Published on March 4, 2014
About a 3 minute read

John R. Ehrenfeld, author of Flourishing: A Frank Conversation About Sustainability, contends that the world is more unsustainable now than in 1972 in spite of the sustainability programs of firms worldwide.In his recent post, Ehrenfeld argues that s... View More

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#SustyGoals 7: How Biogen Uses Context-Based Sustainability to Set Environmental Goals
#SustyGoals 7: How Biogen Uses Context-Based Sustainability to Set Environmental Goals
Published on March 2, 2014
About a 11 minute read

In January 2014 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Corporate Knights unveiled its annual Global 100 Most Sustainable Companies rating, with biotechnology company Biogen Idec placing second. What's behind this strong showing? ... View More

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It Just Got Easier for Companies to Invest in Nature
It Just Got Easier for Companies to Invest in Nature
Published on February 25, 2014
About a 4 minute read

Nature is valuable. But figuring out how valuable has been challenging. By some measures, the services that nature provides business and society — clean water, food and metals, natural defense from storms and floods, and much more — are worth man... View More

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#SustyGoals 6: Setting Standards for Ambitious Carbon Targets – A Dialogue with GHG Protocol's Pankaj Bhatia
#SustyGoals 6: Setting Standards for Ambitious Carbon Targets – A Dialogue with GHG Protocol's Pankaj Bhatia
Published on February 10, 2014
About a 8 minute read

“Given that carbon footprinting is predicated on climate science, why doesn't the Greenhouse Gas Protocol include guidance on setting science-based emissions goals and targets?” That's the question I asked Janet Ranganathan, Vice President for Sc... View More

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#SustyGoals 5: The Hardcore Business Case for Setting Science-Based Goals – A Dialogue with Andrew Winston
#SustyGoals 5: The Hardcore Business Case for Setting Science-Based Goals – A Dialogue with Andrew Winston
Published on January 29, 2014
About a 8 minute read

One of the key messages in the upcoming book The Big Pivot: Radically Practical Strategies for a Hotter, Scarcer, More Open World is the “need to set goals in companies based on science, not on what we think we can do, not bottom-up,” says author... View More

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ThriveAbility — Waymaker for the Next Economic Paradigm: A Dialogue with Ralph Thurm
ThriveAbility — Waymaker for the Next Economic Paradigm: A Dialogue with Ralph Thurm
Published on January 25, 2014
About a 8 minute read

In December, Ralph Thurm delivered a captivating TEDx Talk introducing the notion of ThriveAbility, and its promise in bridging what he calls the “Sustainability Context Gap.” As former COO of the Global Reporting Initiative, to complement deep e... View More

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#SustyGoals 4: Math Not Myth – Energy Points’ Ory Zik on Normalized Energy Target Setting
#SustyGoals 4: Math Not Myth – Energy Points’ Ory Zik on Normalized Energy Target Setting
Published on January 16, 2014
About a 7 minute read

At SB's third annual #NewMetrics Conference at the University of Pennsylvania in September, the need for next-generation sustainability goals — which measure progress toward real-world goal-lines such as carbon budgets, water tables, and living wag... View More

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New Metrics
What Mandela's Life Story, Another Mixed-Bag UN Conference, & the GNP Critique Offer Your Business
What Mandela's Life Story, Another Mixed-Bag UN Conference, & the GNP Critique Offer Your Business
Published on December 19, 2013
About a 6 minute read

In eight earlier parts of this series, we discussed 18 pitfalls in the sustainable business metrics field. (Find the first 7 articles here and the last one here.)Two recent events — the passing of Nelson Mandela and the COP talks in Warsaw — and ... View More

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