Mike Hower
Managing Director, Sustainability & Social Impact
Deutsche Bank
Mike Hower is tagged in 1051 stories.
Page 14 of 53.
Behavior Change /
Walmart has announced it will give pay raises to approximately 500,000 full-time and part-time associates at Walmart U.S. stores and Sam's Clubs in the first half of the current fiscal year.Starting in April, current and future hourly associates will make $9.00 per hour, or $1.75 above the federal minimum wage. By February 2016, current associates will earn at least $10.00 per hour.The compensation announcement came as part of $1 billion worth of comprehensive changes to the company’s hiring, training and scheduling programs, as well as to store management structure. The retailer says these changes will give its associates the opportunity to earn higher pay and advance in their careers.
- 9 years ago
Product, Service & Design Innovation /
New strategies for reuse and remanufacturing of mobile devices can cut the carbon footprint of each device by up to half while expanding sales, according to a new report from the Green Alliance.A circular economy for smart devices identifies how laptops, tablets and smartphones up to five years old can be profitably recovered and resold in the UK, US and India. It describes six business models that companies can use to adapt to consumer preferences for lower cost, longer-lasting electronics and how reuse can bring the benefits of internet connected devices to new consumers in the developing world.
- 9 years ago
Cleantech /
General Motors for the first time is procuring wind to power its manufacturing operations, enabling one of its Mexico facilities’ electricity needs to be run mostly on renewable energy. This addition of 34 megawatts of wind power allows GM to achieve its corporate goal of renewable energy use four years early.GM says construction of the wind farm will begin in the second quarter of this year. When complete, more than 12 percent of the company’s North American energy consumption will come from renewable energy sources, up from 9 percent. GM’s current renewable energy use — comprised of solar, landfill gas and waste to energy — totals 104 megawatts against a goal of 125 megawatts by 2020.
- 9 years ago
Supply Chain /
Apple has terminated its relationships with 18 suppliers to date due to sustainability code violations, according to a new report from the technology company.
- 9 years ago
Supply Chain /
Only six major companies and one investor — Danone, Unilever, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, Kao Corp., Reckitt Benckiser Group, and financial services giant HSBC — have comprehensive policies in place to protect tropical forests, according to a new ranking by Global Canopy Programme (GCP).
- 9 years ago
New Metrics /
Whirlpool has announced that nine of its cooking appliances are among the industry’s first certified under the Association for Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM) Sustainability Standard for Cooking Products — the first voluntary sustainability standard for household cooking products, developed by AHAM, UL Environment and the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) Group.
- 9 years ago
Leadership /
CVS Health achieved record sales in 2014 — increasing net revenues by 9.9 percent to $139.4 billion — even after a major rebrand and the removal of lucrative tobacco products from its stores’ shelves.
- 9 years ago
Waste Not /
The most effective technologies for addressing growing global water and energy interdependence — known as the water-energy nexus — are based on reduce, recycle, and recovery and zero-water/zero-energy, according to new research from analyst firm Frost & Sullivan.The report, Technology Convergence Resolving Water-Energy Challenges, identifies six types of technology that contribute to solving the water-energy challenge: renewables-based desalination, wastewater treatment and recovery, hydraulic fracturing, thermal power, water efficiency and energy efficiency.
- 9 years ago
Cleantech /
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has approved the "Green Tariff Shared Renewables Program," a measure that will give millions of California residents and businesses the chance to participate in a utility clean energy program for the first time.The decision, which benefits the majority of the state's businesses and over 38 million residents, directs the three largest investor-owned utilities—Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Southern California Edison Company and San Diego Gas and Electric Company, which together cover nearly 80 percent of the state—to offer a Green-e Energy certified 100 percent renewable energy option to their customers.
- 9 years ago
Cleantech /
Carbon-capture technology holds much promise for helping the world to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere and mitigate the effects of global warming. It works by trapping the carbon dioxide at its emission source, transporting it to a storage location — often deep underground — and isolating it. However, most carbon-capture techniques developed to date are uneconomic because they consume too much energy to sequester the carbon.
- 9 years ago
Supply Chain /
The availability of Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certified fish is better than ever with a million tons of MSC certified cod caught last year, but there is a growing gap between supermarkets that offer their customers ecolabelled sustainable seafood choices and protecting ocean environments, according to new figures released by MSC.Since 2010, Sainsbury’s has led the pack in terms of numbers of products stocked, with 163 MSC-certified seafood products for the last financial year, MSC says. The retailer’s product numbers are almost twice its closest competitor, Waitrose, which is in second place with 79 certified seafood products and more than three times the number of products stocked by M&S.
- 9 years ago
Cleantech /
AT&T and GE have announced a collaboration to create the next generation of smart energy solutions for the industrial Internet of Things (IoT), helping to improve the way the energy industry works.The companies say they are jointly working on proof of concepts at the AT&T IoT Foundry in Plano, Texas.
- 9 years ago
Collaboration /
A growing number of companies are turning to collaborations — with suppliers, NGOs, industry alliances, governments and even competitors — to become more sustainable, according to new research by MIT Sloan Management Review, The Boston Consulting Group and the UN Global Compact.The study, Joining Forces: Collaboration and Leadership for Sustainability, found that, as sustainability issues become increasingly complex, global in nature and pivotal to success, companies are realizing that they can’t make the necessary impact acting alone.
- 9 years ago
Supply Chain /
Eighty organizations with more than $100 billion in purchasing power have signed up to pilot a multi-sector program designed to help organizations reduce their risks and contribute to a more sustainable future.The Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council’s (SPLC) Guidance for Leadership in Sustainable Purchasing v1.0 offers purchasers detailed advice for promoting market innovation and optimizing the environmental, social and economic performance of their supply chains.
- 9 years ago
Cleantech /
Scientists from IBM Research and Mars have established a new collaborative food safety platform aimed at leveraging advances in genomics to further the understanding of what makes food safe.The Consortium for Sequencing the Food Supply Chain will conduct the largest-ever metagenomics study to categorize and understand microorganisms and the factors that influence their activity in a normal, safe factory environment. IBM and Mars say this work could be extended into the larger context of the food supply chain — from farm to fork — and lead to new insights into how microorganisms interact within a factory ecology and be better-controlled by new data and science-driven practices.
- 9 years ago
Supply Chain /
Walmart, Target and Forum for the Future (FFTF) have established three working groups to take forward actions agreed at last year’s beauty and personal care (BPC) product sustainability summit, according to ChemicalWatch. The groups will focus on aspects of chemicals in products.Working Group 1 — Supply Chain Information Sharing
- 9 years ago
Product, Service & Design Innovation /
Daniel Yu, founder of Reliefwatch — which makes software to help medical clinics in the developing world to digitize and manage inventory records for better patient outcomes — has won the Prince of Wales Young Sustainability Entrepreneurs Prize.As part of the prize, Yu has been awarded €50,000 ($56,500) and will be supported with a tailored mentoring program delivered by the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and Unilever experts over the course of 2015. The six runners up each will receive a cash prize of €10,000 ($11,300) in addition to mentoring and support.
- 9 years ago
Leadership /
IKEA sold more than €1 billion ($1.13 billion) of sustainable products in 2014, a 58 percent increase over the previous year, according to the company’s new sustainability report.These products enable people to save or generate energy, reduce water use, cut waste and live healthier lives, the company says.
- 9 years ago
Cleantech /
The United Kingdom government has launched a new tool to help businesses and governments understand the environmental impacts of energy and emissions policies.The Global Calculator — produced with input from more than 150 experts worldwide — is a model of the world's energy, land and food systems that allows users to design their own version of the future up to 2050 and see the implications for the climate.Soft launched in 2010, the online tool has previously only been used exclusively by governments such as China and India. China has been using the calculator to support the development of its economic and energy strategy, and to train officials on the energy challenges it faces.
- 9 years ago
Product, Service & Design Innovation /
In this new age of mobile phones, many of us suffer from “Shiny Object” syndrome — where we always want the latest and greatest toy Apple, Samsung or one of the other multitude of manufacturers can think up. Most of the more than 1.8 billion mobile phones sold worldwide in 2013 replaced devices that were less than two years old. Nearly a billion of these devices were smartphones.
- 9 years ago