SB Brand-Led Culture Change 2024 - Discount ends April 7th!

Mike Hower

Managing Director, Sustainability & Social Impact
Deutsche Bank

Mike Hower is tagged in 1051 stories. Page 2 of 53.
Wilhelms: Cultural Change Starts With Conversation
Wilhelms: Cultural Change Starts With Conversation

Organizational Change / “Our goal is to make the intangible tangible, which is what we have to do with culture,” said Pamela Wilhelms, founder of Wilhelms Consulting Group, during a Monday workshop at SB'16 San Diego. The workshop, “Understanding and Measuring Cultural and Systems-Change Dimensions within Companies,” focused on how forward-thinking companies can initiate cultural shifts toward sustainability — and how to measure success. As the world moves toward a more sustainable economy, leading brands will be those capable of identifying and measuring healthy cultural dynamics. But culture often is too subjective and intangible to measure. - 7 years ago

How the Power of Partnerships Is Helping Volvo Cut Energy Use Across North America
How the Power of Partnerships Is Helping Volvo Cut Energy Use Across North America

Collaboration / The motor vehicle industry in the United States spends about $3.6 billion on energy annually, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In the U.S., over 70 assembly plants currently produce 13 million cars and trucks each year. While energy expenditures are a relatively small cost factor in the total production process, energy-efficiency improvements are helping manufacturers gain an edge in an increasingly competitive environment. - 7 years ago

How Cisco Is Using Its Unique Capabilities to Drive Breakthroughs in Supply Chain Sustainability
How Cisco Is Using Its Unique Capabilities to Drive Breakthroughs in Supply Chain Sustainability

Cleantech / As the world’s largest designer, manufacturer and seller of networking equipment, Cisco Systems faces many supply chain sustainability issues, including energy, waste and climate change impacts, among others. To address these challenges, Cisco has worked to improve energy efficiency, implemented circular economic methods to turn waste into resources and recently announced a new goal to avoid one million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions from its supply chain operations by 2020. - 7 years ago

Smart Partnerships, IoT, Certifications Helping Brands Meet Consumer Demand for Better Products
Smart Partnerships, IoT, Certifications Helping Brands Meet Consumer Demand for Better Products

Cleantech / Since the introduction of the first ecolabels and standards for organic products in the late 1980s and '90s, sustainability standards and certifications have proliferated across myriad industries. From food to manufactured goods, standards and certifications are helping consumers and businesses alike make better purchasing decisions to ensure they respect the triple bottom line. - 7 years ago

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4 Challenges Shaping Tomorrow’s Cities — and How Brands Can Help
4 Challenges Shaping Tomorrow’s Cities — and How Brands Can Help

Collaboration / More than half of the world’s population currently lives in cities and this is expected to reach 66 percent by 2050, according to the United Nations, when 2.5 billion people will be added to urban populations — with close to 90 percent of the increase concentrated in Asia and Africa. In the fight against climate change, cities represent the greatest challenge and opportunity — while they generate a vast majority (70 percent) of global greenhouse gas emissions, those who live in them actually have smaller carbon footprints than the national averages. - 7 years ago

Scientists Turn Florida's Rotten Tomatoes Into Clean Energy
Scientists Turn Florida's Rotten Tomatoes Into Clean Energy

Waste Not / Tomatoes are useful for a lot of things — mixing into salads, adding nutritional value to cheeseburgers, lobbing at struggling standup comics, and even making plastic for car parts. But a team of scientists at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology has come up with a powerful new application for the flushed fruit: electricity. At the recent 251st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the team presented their pilot project, which involves a bio-based fuel cell that uses tomato waste left over from harvests in Florida. - 7 years ago

Saving the Playing Field: A Tale of Two Professional Sports and Sustainability
Saving the Playing Field: A Tale of Two Professional Sports and Sustainability

Leadership / Sports and corporate sustainability are two fields not always thought of as playing on the same court. But the two have more in common than one might initially expect — both are about winning through fair competition and the display of excellence. In recent years, the line between the sports business and sustainable business have begun to blur as the the industry embraces triple bottom line principles. - 7 years ago

Chris Hale: The Future of Impact Investing is About Measuring Impact
Chris Hale: The Future of Impact Investing is About Measuring Impact

New Metrics / That investing to make a positive impact as well as a dime has evolved considerably over the past few years has turned on its head a long-standing worldview that the sole purpose of business and investing is to make money, while solving social and environmental challenges is the domain of government and charity. While some may remain skeptical that for-profit investment can be both a morally legitimate and economically effective way to address social and environmental problems, impact investing is moving swiftly from concept to convention. - 7 years ago

Can Diamond-based Semiconductors Solve the Electronic Industry’s CSR Problems?
Can Diamond-based Semiconductors Solve the Electronic Industry’s CSR Problems?

Chemistry, Materials & Packaging / Diamonds may be forever, but they soon could change the way we power electronics by cutting e-waste, conserving water and fighting climate change. Today, semiconductors usually are made of silicon, which, when disposed of as e-waste, poisons children, pollutes water and releases substances like lead and methane into the jetstream. - 7 years ago

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South Pole Group: Why Companies Should Care About Renewable Energy
South Pole Group: Why Companies Should Care About Renewable Energy

Cleantech / The landmark international climate change nearly 195-nation agreement that came out of COP21 late last year sent a message to the world that a low-carbon future is imminent. The Paris Agreement, for the first time, brings all nations into a common cause based on their historic, current and future responsibilities. Its main aim is to keep a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius and to drive efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The 1.5 degree Celsius limit is a significantly safer defense line against the worst impacts of a changing climate. - 7 years ago

Avery Dennison RFID Labels Improve Efficiency, Cut Waste in Apparel Industry
Avery Dennison RFID Labels Improve Efficiency, Cut Waste in Apparel Industry

Waste Not / Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is transforming both consumers’ shopping carts and companies’ supply chains by allowing intelligent barcodes to talk to a networked system that tracks products from Point A to Point Z. A technology once limited to tracking cattle, RFID tags are now tracking consumer products worldwide. Many manufacturers use the tags to monitor the location of each product they make from the time it's made until it's pulled off the shelf and tossed in a shopping cart. - 8 years ago

Tim Greiner: Everything You Need to Know About Corporate Carbon Pricing
Tim Greiner: Everything You Need to Know About Corporate Carbon Pricing

Cleantech / Advances in renewable energy, energy efficiency and energy storage are pushing us toward a more sustainable, low-carbon future, but an outright energy revolution is being held back by the fact that the market prices of coal, oil and gas include almost none of the costs of carbon pollution. At the national level, putting a price on carbon will transform energy investment, re-shape consumption, and sharply reduce the carbon emissions that are driving global warming, according to the Carbon Tax Center. This “upstream” tax would target the carbon contents of fossil fuels, including coal, oil and natural gas, as well as biofuels. - 8 years ago

FloWater Nixes the Need For Plastic Water Bottles
FloWater Nixes the Need For Plastic Water Bottles

Product, Service & Design Innovation / The negative environmental impacts of our rampant plastic water bottle use have been well-documented, and despite a growing number of efforts to discourage their use or develop alternatives such as boxed water and edible bottles, Americans alone use about around 50 billion each year, of which less than a quarter get recycled. According to the Pacific Institute, producing all of these bottles uses more than 17 million barrels of oil annually, or enough to fuel 1.3 million cars for a year. - 8 years ago

Q&A: How the YK Center Is Pushing Forward the ‘New Economy’
Q&A: How the YK Center Is Pushing Forward the ‘New Economy’

New Metrics / That the future of profit is purpose is the modus operandi of the YK Center, a self-proclaimed “for-benefit organization” striving to push the needle on a more sustainable economy. - 8 years ago

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Singapore Strives to Become World’s First ‘Smart Nation’
Singapore Strives to Become World’s First ‘Smart Nation’

Cleantech / There’s plenty of talk about “smart cities” as the surest route to building strong and resilient urban environments in the face of mounting climate impacts, but what about a “smart country”? While Singapore technically is a city-state — being both a city and sovereign nation — it is embracing many of the same smart city techniques as cities across the world.Globally, cities are experimenting with smart city technologies to tackle issues such as waste collection and traffic light management, but Singapore is focused on two core global challenges: urban density and an aging population. - 8 years ago

Here’s What It Takes to Land Your Sustainability Dream Job
Here’s What It Takes to Land Your Sustainability Dream Job

Cleantech / As sustainable business enters the mainstream, there is a growing need for a skilled labor force that can meet the needs of socially and environmentally focused firms. The rate of growth for jobs with “environmental compliance” as a keyword has increased by 24 percent since 2010, while jobs focusing on “energy efficiency” have grown by 500 percent since 2009, according to data from job search engine SimplyHired.com, compiled by Coyne College. - 8 years ago

Obama Administration Declares Moratorium on New Federal Coal Leases
Obama Administration Declares Moratorium on New Federal Coal Leases

Leadership / The Obama administration has announced a moratorium on new coal leases on federal lands, citing concerns regarding pricing and pollution. This followed on the heels of the president’s final State of the Union address, in which he said the United States must improve the way it manages its fossil fuel resources and move towards a clean energy economy. - 8 years ago

California Methane Leak Exposes Risks of Oil and Gas Operations
California Methane Leak Exposes Risks of Oil and Gas Operations

Chemistry, Materials & Packaging / Methane is a greenhouse gas even more potent than carbon dioxide, and some 1,000 tons of it has been leaking into the air each day at the Southern California Gas Company's (SoCal Gas) Aliso Canyon storage field since October 23. So far, more than 80 thousand tons of methane has poured into the atmosphere, which has forced evacuations of nearby neighborhoods, and could have long-term impacts far beyond the hills above Los Angeles. Around 1,700 homes and two schools were evacuated because of the leak, as noxious odors settled over Porter Ranch, about 20 miles from downtown Los Angeles. California officials have helped the company in a series of efforts to stop the leak, but it could be weeks or months before the gas flow is halted. - 8 years ago

UPS to Power Alternative Fuel Fleet With Natural Gas From Landfills
UPS to Power Alternative Fuel Fleet With Natural Gas From Landfills

Product, Service & Design Innovation / UPS has announced it will supply its fleet in Memphis, Tenn., and Jackson, Miss., with an estimated 15 million diesel gallon gas equivalents of renewable natural gas (RNG) as part of a multi-year agreement with Memphis Light, Gas and Water and Atmos Energy Marketing. - 8 years ago

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Report: EVs Will Make Up Half of Luxury Car Market by 2020
Report: EVs Will Make Up Half of Luxury Car Market by 2020

Cleantech / Luxury vehicle manufacturers today make up about 23 percent of the plug-in electric vehicle (EV) market, and this is expected to climb to about 50 percent by the early 2020s, according to a new report from Navigant Research. - 8 years ago