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 at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show, Whirlpool is helping attendees imagine the future of a fully connected home ecosystem — from smart products such as the first connected, donation-enabled laundry pair, to a socially networked kitchen environment concept with smarter surfaces.
Toyota has announced it will invite royalty-free use of approximately 5,680 hydrogen fuel cell related patents held globally, including critical technologies developed for the new Toyota Mirai.The list includes around 1,970 patents related to fuel cell stacks, 290 associated with high-pressure hydrogen tanks, 3,350 related to fuel cell system software control and 70 patents related to hydrogen production and supply.
The new buzzword among CEOs, entrepreneurs and ecologists is the idea of resilience: building the values, systems and behaviors within businesses and brands to cope with uncertainty and constant, disruptive change.From data breaches and hacked emails to information abundance and lightspeed digital evolution, uncertainty abounds.CMOs are at the center of these dynamics, balancing the complexities of brand reputation, consumer trust, instantaneous social media critiques, hyper-customization and, of course, business sales and growth.So, as we look to 2015, how can CMOs leverage these dynamics for competitive advantage and create enduring brands that deliver more value for consumers, employees, shareholders and society?
It's that time of year again — when thousands of Christmas trees go from being the resplendently ornamented focal point of a festive holiday scene to a sad heap on the sidewalk next to the trash bin, the perfect visual representation of that “day after Christmas” feeling.Luckily more and more cities have launched Christmas tree recycling programs, which usually turn them into mulch for reuse in gardens, but far too many still end up in landfills, which in some areas, creates a fire hazard.
Statistics and surveys make it clear that people want brands to do good in this world. According to the latest Cone/Echo Global Study, 93 percent of today’s shoppers would buy a product associated with a cause, and 65 percent have already purchased a cause-related product in the past 12 months.Accordingly, marketers and the ad agencies that serve them are viewing "cause" as a massive opportunity to sell us more stuff. After all, many of us, myself included, find ourselves regularly paying just a bit more for brands that support our favorite charities. (Shopper marketers call this behavior "cause-to-close.")
What’s the next food trend poised to sweep the nation? A recent conference showcasing roughly 60 recipients of Whole Foods local producer loans revealed some candidates: Maybe a half-fruit, half-vegetable roll-up that tastes like pure fruit (as a parent, I have to say, that’s genius)? Maybe goji raw biscotti? Definitely something with minimal but high-quality ingredients or exotic origins (from an American perspective).
The UK’s first “social supermarket” opened in London last week — the first in a project aimed at reducing food waste as well as supporting low-income households. Surplus food from some of Britain’s largest supermarkets (such as Asda, Tesco and M&S) is being resold at highly discounted prices to food-insecure locals at the country’s first Community Shop in Lambeth.
A start-up called BatteryVampire wants to give renewed life to your discarded batteries by taking advantage of a little known fact — when alkaline batteries appear to be dead, there is sometimes still up to half the energy left. BatteryVampire’s technology taps into that remaining energy and makes it available to the device until all that remaining usable energy is depleted.
Looking for something to hold you accountable on your New Year’s resolution to be more active? Changers — a German startup whose mission is to motivate behavior change by making sustainable actions measurable — has launched CO2 Fit, a new mobile app that measures the CO2 generated during various types of travel and rewards more active and lower-emitting options with Recoins, the world's first ‘green’ currency based on CO2 savings.
Tradeshift, which digitally connects enterprises with their suppliers via a cloud-based platform, announced on Tuesday that it will waive the 30 percent revenue share it receives, for organizations that use its platform to build apps that help to support the circular economy. Organizations that build apps supporting the circular economy will receive all profit from their app.
Cross-Posted from Business Case. This week, Procter & Gamble published its 16th annual sustainability report, which reveals how the CPG giant made far-reaching — and as it turns out, lucrative — improvements to its global operations years ahead of schedule.
Panera Bread today offered details regarding its progress on sourcing only responsibly raised livestock and poultry, following the introduction of its new Food Policy in June.As part of Panera’s commitment to have a positive impact on the food system and provide transparency, the company is sharing progress on further reduction of antibiotic usage and confinement for farm animals in its U.S. supply chain for Panera Bread and St. Louis Bread Company bakery-cafes.
Eastman Chemical Company today announced it will join chemical giants such as BASF, AkzoNobel, Henkel and Clariant as a member of Together for Sustainability (TfS), a European initiative dedicated to the sustainable procurement of chemicals. Eastman and TfS have confirmed acceptance of Eastman’s application to the consortium as the first U.S.-based company to join, with plans to finalize Eastman’s membership in early 2015.
A new initiative from Procter & Gamble’s Febreze air freshener and TerraCycle is challenging Canadians across the nation to recycle everything from used air fresheners to Swiffer packaging for $5,000 in prize money, to be donated to the school or charity of the winner’s choice. It's all part of Terracycle’s new Air and Home Care Brigade, the company's latest collection program that aims to divert from landfills all packaging waste associated with home cleaning, enabling consumers to recycle previously non-recyclable material for the first time.
Drones have already disintermediated the aerospace/defense industry and have crossed the threshold from commercial to consumer, delivering to the average person the world’s most powerful personal computer. The potential for good in industrial agriculture, wildlife conservation and animal poaching, monitoring of factory farms, and prevention and early detection of forest fires is unprecedented.Drones can make granular crop maps for farmers, monitor illegal logging, track sometimes elusive endangered species in their habitats, and even drill down to track the sounds of animals as small as bats.
On Wednesday, on behalf of the White House Rural Council, six federal agencies came together to announce the 26 communities selected to participate in Local Foods, Local Places (LFLP), a federal initiative providing technical support to integrate local food systems into community economic action plans. Under this effort, a team of agricultural, transportation, environmental, public health and regional economic experts will work directly with the communities to develop specifically identified local food projects.
While the fast-food business in the United States remains sluggish and roiled, eco-conscious burrito chain Chipotle has experienced rapid and relatively smooth growth through the recession and, especially, since then: Same-store sales rose by 20 percent last quarter. But lately the chain has demonstrated a few chinks in its tortilla wrap even while it also has stepped up its sustainability efforts.
Bob Stiller — long-time Fair Trade enthusiast and founder of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc. (now Keurig Green Mountain, Inc) — and his wife, Christine Stiller, recently awarded a monumental $10 million challenge grant to nonprofit organization and leading Fair Trade certifier Fair Trade USA. This investment will help fund three critical work streams aimed at increasing the reach and impact of Fair Trade certification for farmers and workers worldwide.The grant is particularly unique for Fair Trade USA, as it stipulates that an additional $10 million be raised in order to unlock the funds, for a total goal of $20 million.
A recent report from the London Sustainable Development Commission (LSDC) asserts that socially and environmentally responsible entrepreneurs are “critical” to London’s future as a world leader in the economy of the future, as the Commission unveils its picks for this year's crop of the City's most notable mission-driven startups.Green Means Business highlights why London is an ideal location for 'green' entrepreneurs to 'drive innovation, growth, and job creation'; estimating that London's low-carbon and environmental goods and services (LCEGS) sector has the potential to give an annual market value of £69bn by 2025.
In an effort to get back to a more meaningful sense of the “holiday spirit” after the over-hyped Black Friday (November 28) and Cyber Monday (December 1) spending binges that follow Thanksgiving, more than 10,000 organizations will give consumers more bang for their donated and charitable bucks on #GivingTuesday on December 2.