Hannah Furlong
Editorial Assistant
Sustainable Brands
Clif Bar Raising Awareness, Calling for Congress to Address Shortage of New Farmers in US
Supply Chain / The average age of the American farmer is 58.3 years – it has been climbing for more than 30 years. Over the next 25 years, more than 700,000 new farmers will be needed to replace retirees. In part due to rising costs of education and land, the number of young farmers only increased by 1,220 in the five-year period between 2007 and 2012. Only 6 percent of farmers are under 35 years old. - 7 years ago
€3.6M WRAP Project Targets European Clothing Waste
Waste Not / UK waste-reduction charity Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) has announced a three-year commitment to reducing clothing waste through a new €3.6 million pilot project. Funded by EU LIFE, the European Clothing Action Plan (ECAP) aims to divert over 90,000 tonnes per year of clothing waste from landfill and incineration across Europe by March 2019. - 7 years ago
Trending: Barbie, 'Sesame Street' Encouraging Kids to Bust Social Stereotypes
Marketing and Comms / This might be the best recent trend in children’s brands. After years of being a less-than-progressive feminine role model, Barbie is on the verge of becoming the feminist icon she should be. Mattel’s latest ad features a college professor, a veterinarian, a soccer coach, a businesswoman, and a museum tour guide — all girls under the age of 10. It asks the audience, “What happens when girls are free to imagine they can be anything?” - 7 years ago
Fostering Social Enterprise: Minister Brad Duguid on the Buzz North of the Border
Collaboration / Canada’s most populous province has become a leader in the social enterprise sector in North America, with over 10,000 social enterprises in operation employing an estimated 160,000 people. Ontario’s government has leant considerable support to the sector, directly and indirectly, to make this happen.To learn more about how and why, I spoke with Minister Brad Duguid of the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development, Employment and Infrastructure. - 7 years ago
Spoiler Alert: Can This App Close the Food Waste Loop?
Product, Service & Design Innovation / Despite recent food-saving innovations such as FreshPaper, efforts to promote “ugly produce” and industry-wide commitments to reduce food waste, millions of tons of food are still discarded every year. - 7 years ago
Materiality Assessment Finds Materials, Transparency, GHGs Critical Issues for Cleaning Products Industry
Chemistry, Materials & Packaging / The American Cleaning Institute (ACI) released the first-ever industry materiality assessment in its 2015 Sustainability Report on Tuesday. Sustainability analytics firm Framework LLC conducted the assessment using data from across the sector’s value chain to map critical risks and opportunities, and found materials, transparency, and greenhouse gases among the top concerns for the $30 billion cleaning products industry. - 7 years ago
Ford, P&G Looking to Gecko for Adhesive Innovations
Chemistry, Materials & Packaging / Researchers at Ford Motor Company are looking to biomimicry in hopes of improving adhesives and increasing the recyclability of auto parts.Improving the recyclability of auto parts by replacing (or otherwise reducing or eliminating) the glue it uses to adhere foams to plastics and metals could give Ford’s sustainability performance a boost. The adhesives it currently uses make disassembling the parts for recycling nearly impossible. Ford is sharing its research findings in a partnership with Procter & Gamble (P&G) as their teams investigate potential biomimetic business solutions. - 7 years ago
Malala Fund Campaigning Globally for Girls’ Education in Tandem with Film Release
Leadership / Earlier this month, He Named Me Malala, the feature-length documentary on the inspiring story of Nobel Laureate and girls’ education activist Malala Yousafzai, opened in theatres across the U.S. and Canada. To accompany the release, her charity, the Malala Fund, launched a Stand #withMalala global campaign to encourage people to stand up and take action for education rights. - 7 years ago
Startup Exploring Multibillion-Dollar Opportunity for Coal Ash
Chemistry, Materials & Packaging / Coal ash is the United States’ second-largest waste stream, after household garbage. It needs to be stored safely to prevent arsenic, lead, mercury and other toxins from leaching into farmlands, rivers, lakes, and other public water sources. Coal-fired power plants in the United States generate 140 million tons of coal ash each year – leaving an estimated 3.5 billion tons which now must be managed. Now a startup from Charlotte, North Carolina thinks it might have a profitable solution to this toxic problem. - 7 years ago
Trending: Tricking People Into Making Healthier Choices
Behavior Change / A new cup will use aromas and a patented “sweet taste technology” to trick people who prefer sugary drinks into thinking they are drinking a fruit-flavored water. The Right Cup, designed to help people drink more water, will launch its crowdfunding campaign in a few weeks. - 7 years ago
6 Health, Energy, Infrastructure Solutions Shortlisted for World Design Impact Prize
The Next Economy / Earlier this week, the shortlist was announced for the World Design Impact Prize 2015-2016, a global competition hosted by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID). Six projects that address health, energy, and infrastructure challenges were selected from the 82 nominations. - 7 years ago
Courage Campaign Suing US Forest Service for Allowing Nestlé to Bottle Water in California
Behavior Change / The U.S. Forest Service is the latest organization to be targeted by environmental groups demanding action related to the California drought. On Tuesday, the Courage Campaign Institute, Story of Stuff Project, and Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service for allowing Nestlé to illegally bottle water from San Bernardino National Forest. - 7 years ago
WRAP to Lead €2.1M Raw Materials Recovery Project for Electronics
The Next Economy / UK waste-reduction charity Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) is launching a first-of-its-kind project to explore commercial opportunities for harvesting critical raw materials (CRMs) and precious metals from everyday end-of-life electronic products. The EU LIFE-funded project, Critical Raw Material Closed Loop Recovery (CRM Recovery), will link collection methods with recovery success. - 7 years ago
Trending: UK Grocers Turning Waste into Packaging
Chemistry, Materials & Packaging / British grocery chains Tesco and Waitrose have added a new facet to their waste-mitigation efforts by launching upcycled packaging.Beginning this month, Tesco shoppers could get their groceries in recycled plastic bags made from back-of-store waste plastic, such as pallet and multi-pack wrapping. Recycling firm Eurokey is collecting and sorting Tesco’s plastic waste, and plastics recycler Papier-Mettier is processing it and turning it into single-use carrier bags. - 7 years ago
H&M Accused of Dragging Feet on Worker Safety in Bangladesh
Supply Chain / Earlier this month, H&M was accused of being “dramatically behind schedule” in meeting the requirements of the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh in a joint report from the Clean Clothes Campaign, International Labor Rights Forum, Maquila Solidarity Network, and Worker Rights Consortium. - 7 years ago
‘The Best Ideas Might Not Be Ours’: DiCaprio Produces Film on Biomimicry
Product, Service & Design Innovation / As more and more organizations with sustainability missions are discovering, getting a celebrity to help spread your message could be the difference between creating a tiny ripple and engaging millions around the world (see recent examples around deforestation, the Sustainable Development Goals, clean drinking water, and eating more produce, to n - 7 years ago
Investors Gave This Sustainable Food Startup $108M to Do the 'Impossible'
Product, Service & Design Innovation / Sustainable food startup Impossible Foods recently raised $108 million in Series D funding, bringing their total funding to date to $183 million. The Redwood City, California-based company is creating meat and dairy alternatives from plant ingredients that are remarkably similar to the real thing. - 7 years ago
Skeleton Tech's Graphene-Based Ultracapacitors Could Revolutionize Long-Life Storage
Product, Service & Design Innovation / Out of 37 nominated startups, Skeleton Technologies won the Gold ECO15 London Award at the Ecosummit 2015 conference. The company manufactures high-performance, graphene-based ultracapacitors — energy storage devices with much higher power and longer life cycles than batteries. - 7 years ago
New App Aims to Disrupt Retail by Cutting Out Big Box Middlemen
Product, Service & Design Innovation / Flipping the business-to-consumer (B2C) model on its head, San Francisco-based startup WUSIC wants to disrupt the retail industry through a “consumer-to-business” (C2B) model where consumers go straight to manufacturers for the largest savings possible. Consumer demand would dictate supply quantity and price from online marketplace Alibaba’s network of global factories, effectively cutting out big box middlemen such as WalMart and Target. - 7 years ago
Trending: Whether or Not Insects Are Our Next Superfood, They Could Help Solve Our Styrofoam Problem
Waste Not / It seems increasingly likely that certain types of worms could be an amazing solution to our plastic problem — and that we may eat them and their cousins afterwards.Last week, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) published a risk profile to address the potential biological, chemical and environmental hazards as well as allergenicity associated with the use of farmed insects as food and feed. - 7 years ago