Organizational Change
The latest creative strategies and tools helping organizations to engage their teams in building market-leading, purpose-driven brands.
10 Burning Questions: PMI on How It Will Create a Smoke-Free Future
Jennifer Motles and her colleagues at Philip Morris International (PMI) are on a crusade to end smoking. They know many of us probably won’t believe them. And they are OK with that; they just want the chance to prove it.
Caesars Begins Straw Phase-Out Plan; Sandals Resorts to Eliminate 21.5M by November
Hospitality giants Sandals Resorts International (SRI) and Caesars Entertainment have joined the growing, cross-sector fight against single-use plastics with ambitious phase-out plans for plastic straws and stirrers.
KPMG, Textile Exchange Develop SDG Roadmap for the Apparel, Retail and Textile Sector
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offer many business opportunities for companies while addressing critical operational risks, according to a new report produced by audit, tax and advisory firm KPMG LLP; in partnership with the non-profit organization, Textile Exchange: Threading the Needle: Weaving the Sustainable Development Goals into the Textile, Retail and Apparel Industry.
Missions Critical: How PayPal Rallied a Global Workforce Around Sustainability
“Break down the silos” has become a bit of a catchphrase for business in the last decade, as companies have come to realize the benefits of cross-departmental collaboration. Today's sustainability teams charged with boosting the impact of their initiatives could gain a lot by adopting this mantra, too. Whether the goal is to cut CO2 emissions, reduce waste, conserve resources or all of the above, more and more brands have sustainability strategies in place. But making them a meaningful part of your brand is another story.
Reimagining Organizations as Brand Ecosystems
Who are you and why should I care? Since the 1950s, companies have turned to externally focused branding methods to answer these questions that consumers have about their businesses. Today, companies face an increasingly hyperconnected, skeptical marketplace where customers are demanding more. They want to know the substance beyond the sizzle of advertising. For branding to remain the economic engine it has been over the past 70 years, we need to ask: What’s next?
Fashion for Good, Partnership for Sustainable Textiles Take Shape with Museum, Roadmaps
60 members of the Partnership for Sustainable Textiles have revealed concrete action plans to ensure humane working conditions, greater environmental protection and fair wages in their own companies and in their suppliers’ production facilities. The Partnership — a multi-stakeholder coalition made up of companies, associations, NGOs, trade unions, standards organisations and the Federal German Government, formed in 2014 with the aim of making improvements along the entire textile supply chain —considers this a major step forward, as it means that many members agree on revealing even sensible information for the first time.
Liverpool Using Blockchain to Become First Climate-Positive City by End of 2020
The Liverpool City Council is committed to becoming the first climate-positive authority in the world by the end of 2018, through a groundbreaking partnership with the nonprofit Poseidon Foundation, in a bid to make Liverpool the world’s first climate-positive city by the end of 2020.
The First Step to Efficient Sustainability: Define Shared Goals
Energy and sustainability are inherently linked. Energy efficiency pays dividends by trimming consumption and costs. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), implementing energy efficiency initiatives is the best way to act on climate change, as it can reduce CO2 emissions by 38 percent. However, becoming an efficient, sustainable business requires a collaborative effort from almost all parts of an organization.
Ford Reveals Vision for Michigan Central Station, Reimagining Future of Mobility in Detroit
After opening in 1913, Michigan Central Station quickly became where dreamers in search of new jobs and new opportunities first set foot in Detroit. Once the last train pulled out of the station 30 years ago, however, it became a place where hope left. The station became a symbol of Detroit’s hard times, a monument to the city’s struggles. As the new owner of the building, Ford is making a big bet on the future.
Employee Engagement 3.0: How Starbucks, Unilever Go the Extra Mile
Last week, over 2,000 representatives from our global community of sustainability practitioners, brand strategists, product and service innovators, thought leaders and other change-makers converged at SB’18 Vancouver to share their latest insights on a multitude of themes pertinent to all of those committed to improving business around the world. Here, we dig into brand and organizational efforts to recruit, retain and support an engaged workforce — and go the extra mile for employees in need.
Q&A: Nestlé's Work to Become a 'Nutrition, Health and Wellness Company'
Nestlé has been active on a lot of sustainability fronts lately, from water and climate policy to deforestation and workers’ rights, to plant-based
Hershey Releases 2017 CSR Report, Unveils SDG-Aligned CSR Strategy
Today, along with the release of its 2017 Shared Goodness Corporate Social Responsibility report, The Hershey Company unveiled Shared Goodness Promise, a new CSR strategy aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and centered around investments, collaborative programs and sustainable business practices aimed at making a positive difference in peoples’ lives.
Q&A: How TD Is Living Its Purpose, Driving SDGs with The Ready Commitment
TD Bank Group recently launched its corporate citizenship strategy to center on a new multi-year program, The Ready Commitment. Guided by the bank’s purpose, focus on creating shared value and desire to support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), TD is targeting CDN $1 billion (US $775 million) toward community giving by 2030 in The Ready Commitment’s four focus areas:
Can Transparency Alone Transform the Fashion Industry?
Transparency has become a bit of a buzzword in the fashion industry and judging by the number of times it was mentioned at this year’s Copenhagen Fashion Summit, it is a trend that we are not going to shake anytime soon. Quite the contrary, transparency is reshaping how brands and retailers interact with their suppliers and consumers. But can it really transform the entire fashion industry? C&A Foundation’s Leslie Johnston hosted a panel of experts to find out.
Q&A: A Cattle Rancher Shares Her Beef with Food Labeling
In the sustainability world, the conversation around beef mostly involves reducing the environmental impacts of its production (deforestation, methane emissions, etc). But Cassidy Johnston can offer a perspective we don’t often get to hear in the Sustainable Brands conversation — a New Mexico-based cattle rancher and newly appointed Sustainability Officer for the US Farmers and Ranchers Alliance (USFRA), Johnston is eager to share ranchers’ side of the story with the public and help dispel what she says are common misconceptions behind beef and its role in a sustainable food future.
South Africa Setting the Standard, Campaigning for #WaterWiseTourism
In response to a severe drought, citizens and businesses in Cape Town and the Western Cape have cut their water consumption by almost 60 percent over the past three years — a performance not yet matched by any other major city globally. Now the country’s tourism industry is sharing that for them, every drop counts, in a new campaign for #WaterWiseTourism.
Following the Paper Trail: APP’s Ongoing Quest to Restore Indonesia’s Rainforests
Since 1990, Indonesia has lost half of its rainforests. What’s worse, the rate of deforestation, currently at roughly two million hectares per year, is still accelerating. Heart of the issue being that ecological values remain difficult to measure in monetary terms. Such is the tragedy of the commons for a country with the world’s fourth-largest population: Its eagerness for economic development driven by the global market has made one of the planet’s most diverse natural habitats subject to exploitation for fast cash, rather than being protected as a crucial part of the global ecosystem.
SEKISUI: Building an Organization with Integrated Thinking to Balance Management, Environment
This post has been translated from Japanese — read the original interview here.
Your Organization’s Purpose Must Evolve
This is the eighth in a series of articles examining how business leaders and companies can transform their corporate culture in order to succeed in the midst of the impending Purpose Revolution. Find links to the full series below.
Safety First: NSF and the Quest for Global Food Sustainability
While weekly headlines tout the efforts of major food companies and NGOs working to increase the sustainability of the food industry through reducing waste, improving packaging and responding to consumer demand for healthier choices, organizations such as NSF: The Public Health and Safety Organization are working behind the scenes on an