Mike Hower
Founder & Principal Consultant, Hower Impact
Walmart Raises Hourly Pay for 500,000 Store Employees
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... View More
Report: Reusing and Remanufacturing Mobile Devices Can Cut CO2 by 50% While Increasing Sales
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 lapt... View More
GM Set to Achieve Renewable Energy Goals 4 Years Early
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 achie... View More
Apple Cuts Ties to 18 Suppliers After Sustainability Code Violations
Apple has terminated its relationships with 18 suppliers to date due to sustainability code violations, according to a new report from the technology company. ... View More
Danone, Unilever Among 6 Major Companies With Comprehensive Deforestation Policies
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 ... View More
Industry Partners Publish First Sustainability Standard for Household Cooking Appliances
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 s... View More
CVS Health Hits Record Sales After Knocking Out Tobacco
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. ... View More
Report: Reduction, Recycling and Recovery Key to Resolving Water-Energy Crisis
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 ... View More
California Utilities to Offer Clean Energy Options to Residents and Businesses
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 progra... View More
Global Thermostat Turning Carbon Pollution Into Cash
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... View More
As Stocks of MSC-Certified Fish Rise, Some UK Retailers Falling Behind
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 seaf... View More
AT&T, GE Developing Next-Gen Smart Energy Solutions for ‘Internet of Things”
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 pro... View More
Study: Businesses Strengthening Sustainability Through Collaborations
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... View More
80 Organizations with $100 Billion in Purchasing Power to Pilot Sustainable Purchasing Program
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 Co... View More
IBM, Mars Launch New Data-Driven Effort to Advance Global Food Safety
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 con... View More
Walmart, Target Advance Joint Supply Chain Initiative
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 a... View More
Unilever, Cambridge Name Winner of Top Young Sustainability Entrepreneur Prize
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.A... View More
IKEA Sales of Sustainable Products Exceed $1 Billion in 2014
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 wat... View More
UK Tool Shows Long-Term Climate Impacts on Energy, Land and Food Systems
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... View More
These Companies Want to Make Your Smartphone Truly Smart
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 mo... View More