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.
This week, Domtar Corporation released its 2015 Sustainability Report, highlighting its environmental leadership in fiber-based product production and its support of sustainable harvesting.Among its most notable accomplishments, the company self-generated 74 percent of the electricity used in its pulp and paper mills through cogeneration technologies and hydropower, outpacing the US pulp and paper industry average of 59 percent. Nearly two-thirds of this self-generated energy came from renewable fuel derived from its pulping chemical recovery process and from wood residuals left over from log debarking.
Today, Asia Pulp & Paper Group (APP) announced it is committing to retire roughly 7,000 hectares (~17,300 acres) of commercial plantation areas to protect threatened carbon-rich peatlands — the first time that plantations on tropical peatland have been retired for conservation purposes worldwide.Peatland development in Indonesia represents one of the single largest terrestrial sources of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in the world1. Retiring these plantation areas will help support the Government of Indonesia’s target of a 26 percent reduction in emissions by 2020.
NYC/London-based production company Casual Films believes we have entered “a new era in branded communications.” As Managing Director Barnaby Cook asserts in a video on the company’s website: “In the future, all successful businesses will have to be sustainable.” Not only does the award-winning company help organizations tell their sustainability stories, Casual’s got one of its own, and Cook recently told us more about how his company aims to use the power of video to help responsible companies influence society and change the world.
Not to be confused with the Fruit Rollups many of us probably grew up with here in the States — we’re talking about a solution to one of South Holland's (not to mention the rest of the Western world’s) biggest social issues (food waste), developed by a group of undergraduates from Willem de Kooning Academie in Rotterdam.
Ahead of the COP21 meeting in December, diverse groups are taking action in support of action on global climate change. From business coalitions and CEO pledges to ambitious city-wide emissions reduction goals, pressure is mounting on national governments to deliver a substantive agreement.
Agriculture consumes close to 70 percent of water demand, but a significant 10 percent goes to domestic applications, such as maintaining lawns and other landscaping.Arguably, the best and most sustainable course of action is to let your lawn die and plant indigenous landscapes but, realistically, not everyone is going to do that. The next-best thing, however, would be to find a way to maintain non-native landscaping using as little water as possible.A company called Blue Marble hopes to help people do just that by leveraging Internet of Things technology to conserve water during domestic irrigation.
Many business leaders today are trying to step up their game and do more than create profitable businesses; they are attempting to use their skills to better the world. Yet in the current business culture, return on capital and financial profit are the sole metric of success. But we can apply tools from cultural evolution to “redesign” business culture — beginning with startups — so that businesses are better equipped to solve social problems.
San Francisco Bay Area startup ECOlunchbox has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $30,000 to bring to market its Blue Water Bento collection, a new line of lunch containers that combine no-leak silicone lids with non-toxic stainless steel bottoms.
Knowing how conventional cotton is grown and denim is made, always-a-better-way outdoor apparel brand Patagonia has set out to change the industry. The company has partnered with chemical company Archroma on a new denim collection, launched this week — which is Fair Trade certified and said to use 84 percent less water, 30 percent less energy and 25 percent less CO2 compared to conventional denim dyeing processes — as well as a campaign telling us all about it.
Today, President Obama hosted the first-ever White House Demo Day focused on inclusive entrepreneurship, welcoming startup founders from diverse walks of life and from across the country to showcase their innovations. The President also announced new public- and private-sector commitments that promise to provide more Americans with the opportunity to pursue their bold, game-changing ideas.
Capping a decade of success employing people with criminal backgrounds and upending expectations in the bread category, Dave’s Killer Bread (DKB) this week launched the newly formed Dave’s Killer Bread Foundation. Powering what it calls “Second Chance Employment,” the Foundation will work to expand employment opportunities for people with criminal backgrounds, which make up 1 in 3 of Dave’s Killer Bread’s more than 300 employee partners.
Two major American automakers have formed innovative partnerships aimed at producing vehicles with lighter and more sustainable materials.First, Ford is in search of a sustainable alternative to rubber. Due to the extreme price fluctuations of natural rubber and the desire to lower the per vehicle environmental footprint, the company is testing several domestically sourced alternatives.
We live in an era of such dramatic, technology-enabled change that it’s hard, sometimes, to get a real handle on just how important the latest new platform or digital business trend will be.When it comes to 3D printing there is no longer any doubt. After all this is a technology that has been employed, on a specialist scale, within industry for decades. But, much like the way the modern personal computer grew out of, and disrupted, the mainframe computing industry, the advent of personal and portable 3D printers is set to radically change the world of manufacturing, fashion and even medicine.
This week, Bank of America (BoA) pledged to expand its $50 billion investment in low-carbon business to $125 billion by 2025, signaling its leadership in environmental finance.BoA’s environmental commitment focuses on addressing energy efficiency, renewable energy and transportation, and other critical areas including water conservation, land use and waste.Over the next 10 years, the bank’s environmental business initiative will support lending, investing, capital raising, advisory services and client financing solutions.
A new technology from a Bangalore-based scientist promises a cost-effective way to deliver clean drinking water by harnessing moisture from the atmosphere. The patented ‘Rain Tunnel Technology’ has been integrated into a household plug-in machine that will be available for commercial use in the next two months, according to inventor Dr. Rajah Vijay Kumar, Chief Scientific Officer at the De Scalene Research Organization.
Sustainability reporting isn’t easy, and it’s rarely cheap. Large companies may have the finances and dedicated staffs to develop custom sustainability software, but small businesses often must make do without — relying on “old-school” technologies such as Excel spreadsheets.As one might imagine, this makes it difficult for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to practically track their sustainability performance.That’s why a company called Rapport created a cloud-based software platform that allows SMBs to more easily collect and track their own sustainability metrics, such as water usage or the number of commuter miles their employees drive each day.
This is the latest in a series of posts in which we will poll our global community of business leaders and practitioners — the “SB Vanguard” — on a variety of issues pertinent to the evolving sustainable business landscape.
On Thursday, Sunny Delight Beverages Co. (SDBC) released its fifth annual Sustainability Report, detailing its sustainability goals and progress — including an $85 million investment in new production equipment to improve efficiency, a significant reduction in the calorie count for its beverages, and sustaining zero waste to landfill for the fifth consecutive year.
The Third International Conference on Financing for Development was held in Ethiopia this week, gathering top government officials to discuss initial implementation plans for the UN’s post-2015 development agenda.
A new partnership between Ford, automaker FCA US LLC and the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory could lead to more efficient engines on the road. Announced this week, the research collaboration will explore technical concepts and development of engines that will simultaneously use natural gas and traditional gasoline.“The fact that two major players in the auto industry are partnering with Argonne on this project really shows the promise of this approach,” said project director Thomas Wallner. “The assumption here is that if you blend the fuels properly, you can make substantial gains in efficiency.”