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.
Houdini Sportswear Launches Industry-First Planetary Boundaries Assessment
More and more clothing brands are taking it upon themselves to dive deeper into the impacts of their garments, increasing transparency around and improving their materials, processes and operations as a whole.
Trucost’s New Evaluation Tool Will Help Companies Align Strategy with the SDGs
The private sector has been mobilizing to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. But corporations are also in constant pursuit of returning shareholder value, and as such, need to look for ways that SDG-aligned strategies can give a true measure of shareholder value.
AkzoNobel Puts ‘True Price’ on Natural, Social Capital; Increases Business Value
“Organizations rely on a diverse set of ‘capitals’ to function effectively,” says Emma Ringström, Sustainability Manager, Pulp and Performance Chemicals at AkzoNobel. By measuring these, she says, “We can find ways to make the most impactful improvements and ultimately increase business value.”
Q&A: Pure Strategies on 20 Years in the Sustainability Trenches
This month, Pure Strategies celebrates 20 years of providing sustainability consulting to companies such as Stonyfield Farms, Ben & Jerry’s, Seventh Generation and Walmart. Its team has been helping to build leading strategies, improve products and packaging, and shift supply chains toward better environmental and social performance for well over 100 organizations over their years of work.
New Approaches, Tools for Ethical Sourcing of Conflict Minerals
A multi-industry initiative has introduced new protocols and tools for the responsible sourcing of tin, tungsten, tantalum, gold, and cobalt, as well as social, environmental and governance impacts of the extraction and processing of raw materials in international supply chains.
First-of-Its-Kind Report Examines Global Environmental Impacts of Fashion Industry
The global apparel and footwear industries are worth an estimated $1.7 trillion, a number that is projected to grow as more and more people around the world enter the global middle class — and alongside it, the industries’ environmental impacts. To secure the future of fashion in the face of shifting consumer attitudes, resource scarcity and climate change, brands will need to develop effective solutions to enhance their environmental performance. Doing so, however, requires a thorough understanding of the current landscape.
GoodWell ‘Mind the Gap’ Initiative to Create Common Methodology to Measure Pay Inequality
Without a uniform, universally accepted and publicly available measurement methodology, companies large and small wanting to eradicate the pay gap are often left wondering where to start.
Counting What Counts: The Evolution of New Metrics
We've come a long way since the first New Metrics conference seven years ago.
How to Try Context-Based Sustainability in 3 Easy Steps
At the closing of the New Metrics ‘17 conference in Philadelphia last month, attendees were asked: “What ‘New Metric’ will you go back and implement in 2017/2018?”
The Future of Brand Impact and How It’s Measured
The new wave of conscious consumption, driven largely by millennials and Gen Z, is pushing companies to innovate around social causes.
#NewMetrics, Day 3: Digging Even Deeper Into Next-Generation Impact Metrics
Live Well San Diego: A visionary partnership to define and measure 10 quality-of-life metrics By Anna Shugoll
AT&T, BASF, Cabot, HPE and More Show #NewMetrics in Action
While measurement, disclosure and other forms of engagement were the dominant themes yesterday, day two of New Metrics ’17 saw brands, NGOs and solution providers digging deeper to reveal practical applications and concrete findings from where the rubber meets the road in the world of sustainability metrics. The design and implementation of a Sustainable Product Optimization Tool By Anna Shugoll
Evolution of Disclosure, CEO Engagement, Measuring What Matters Take Center Stage at #NewMetrics
As Sustainable Brands' New Metrics '17 conference kicked off in Philadelphia on Monday, speakers from SASB, CSRLab, WRI, the World Happiness Summit and more presented a range of topics revolving around a few common themes: Correctly measuring what matters, disclosing material data and knowing your audience when you do. From disclosure to performance: Building a virtuous loop By Jessica Bast
State, Regional Governments Outshine National Counterparts on Climate Action
Corresponding with the kick off of the 23rd UN Climate Change Conference (COP23), CDP has released a new report finding that over 100 of the world’s state and regional governments are taking action to address climate change, particularly in the short-term.
By Not Accounting for Nature, Business Is Reporting Fake Profits
We need to make better decisions to avoid the potentially severe consequences for businesses operating in a deteriorated environment. The social and environmental megatrends will, over time, act as a drag on prosperity as the costs of basic inputs such as water, energy and land escalate in response to scarcity.
Is It Possible That GRI Has Never Really Been About Sustainability Reporting at All?
September marked the fifth anniversary of a public comment that I and 65 other members of the Sustainability Context Group submitted to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) in the run-up to G4.
QuadReal Property Group Navigates the ‘Road to Context’
Our corporate partners were increasingly being asked to contextualize their sustainability goals and performance. They wanted to understand what tools were available and how to approach the issue of context. The Embedding Project’s Road to Context guide was written to help support this process.
Commons or Uncommons? A Dialogue on Allocating Responsibility for Meeting Thresholds
Sustainability requires contextualization within thresholds. That’s what sustainability is all about. Allen White, co-founder, Global Reporting Initiative The part can never be well unless the whole is well. Plato, Charmides, 380 BCE
TSC, Cool Farm Alliance Helping Food Companies Better Manage Farm-Level Sustainability Data
The Sustainability Consortium (TSC) and the Cool Farm Alliance (CFA) — a nonprofit industry platform and creator of the Cool Farm Tool sustainable agriculture calculator — have signed a memorandum of understanding to improve alignment and reporting of farm-level metrics data. Through the partnership, TSC aims to make the process of reporting on farm-level metrics easier for farmers and food manufacturers.
Can Performance Reporting for Different Companies Be Both Context-Based and Comparable?
One of the hallmarks of context-based sustainability (CBS) as an approach to performance accounting in business is that it features the use of organization- or company-specific metrics. Indeed, a basic tenet of CBS is that no two organizations are exactly alike and it makes sense, therefore, for them to use different metrics to assess their performance, all in accordance with their own materiality determinations.