Latest News
Great Expectations: Evaluating ESG Initiatives to Reach Target Consumers
MARKETING AND COMMS - When it comes to ESG initiatives and their relationship to consumer behavior, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach; but leveraging ongoing research into consumer attitudes can help align corporate ESG initiatives that can help steer your brand through uncharted waters and changing sentiments.
Give Greater: The 2022 SB Holiday Gift Guide
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION - As always, the goal of our gift guide is to encourage a more conscious approach to gift-giving by highlighting products, services and experiences that create value and benefits beyond short-term gratification for the recipient. Here’s this year’s list of some of the many companies, platforms and products that we’d be happy to support anytime.
Opinion: Why Some Big Brands ‘Aren’t Convinced’ by Plastic Credits
THE NEXT ECONOMY - 80M tons of plastic waste will end up in the environment just in the next 10 years. Without voluntary, global producer responsibility programs to unlock capital towards infrastructure and bridge the policy vacuum, how else do polluters suggest for us to tackle this massive financing gap in the meantime?
COP15 Must Mark a Turning Point for Meat and Dairy Investors
FINANCE & INVESTMENT - Meat and dairy companies need to go further and faster to protect our natural world — before politicians, regulators and investors make the decision for them. The latest FAIRR Index shows what’s possible and shines a spotlight on the investment risks of maintaining the status quo.
Creating Life from Death: Transcend Attempts to Reverse the Environmental Impacts of Burial
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION - The new startup offers a regenerative ‘tree burial’ service that reimagines cemeteries as forests — enabling the dearly departed to truly give back to the land and encouraging younger generations to think about death in new ways.
A Completely Different Definition of ‘Waste’: 5 Key Takeaways from the Sustainability Next Summit
FROM PURPOSE TO ACTION: BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE TOGETHER - Last month, Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics and Fast Company co-hosted the virtual summit to convene policy experts, industry leaders and innovators with the expertise and resources to drive real progress toward a circular economy.
Vinyl Sustainability Council Delivers Annual Sustainability Report, Outlines Ongoing Adoption of Council’s Verification Process
PRESS RELEASE - +Vantage Vinyl® Verified Gaining Traction as Industry Standard
New Marketplace Matches Tesco Suppliers to Swap Surplus Stock to Cut Costs, Reduce Waste
SUPPLY CHAIN - Tesco Exchange, aka ‘Tesco Tinder,’ matches suppliers who have too much of a product — for example, crops, byproducts, ingredients or packaging — with other Tesco suppliers that can put it to use.
Meet 2 Biomaterial Startups Cultivating a Circular, Climate-Friendlier Fashion Industry
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING - Orange Fiber and Keel Labs are platforms for exploration and innovation that can reverberate across the fashion industry and prove that sustainable feedstocks and production processes can can create both financial and planetary prosperity.
Energy Startup’s Biomimetic Solar Trees Planting Roots for a Net-Zero Future
CLEANTECH - Inspired by nature, SolarBotanic’s solar trees use leaf-shaped, thin-film, photovoltaic nanotechnology to harness both sun and eventually wind energy to power houses, charge EVs or be stored for future use.
6 Principles for Building a Pathway to Circularity for Plastics
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING - Developing and optimizing a fully circular plastics value chain is a complex challenge that can’t be achieved with any single solution. We challenge our peers and other key stakeholders to be courageous and take risks, to explore new possibilities and partnerships, and persist until we have solutions.
L'Oréal USA Product Labeling System Aims to Educate Consumers About the Environmental Impact of Products
MARKETING AND COMMS - New survey finds 83% of US consumers value brand product transparency, but only 47% feel they have the information to make sustainability-based purchasing decisions. Impact labeling will begin with Garnier products and roll out progressively across L'Oréal's brand portfolio.
Small Gains, Big Wins: Net Zero Is About More Than Just Carbon Offsetting
SUPPLY CHAIN - Offsetting initiatives are becoming increasingly popular among businesses looking to be seen as leaders in sustainability. However — while the approach can be an interim solution for operations that can’t be fully decarbonized — companies must focus first on working with their supply chain to identify where immediate changes can be made.
Sépaq, the Quebec crown corporation that manages the province’s national parks, is at the front line of a revolution in sustainable development strategy
PRESS RELEASE - In a conversation with Rolland President Philip Rundle, Sépaq’s manager of sustainable development Hugues Sansregret discussed the importance of recycled paper and how it drives awareness for visitors
Company Shareholders Vote to Examine More Climate-Beneficial Retirement Plans
FINANCE & INVESTMENT - Campbell's — and many other companies’ — current 401(k) options have employees investing millions in fossil fuels and deforestation through Vanguard, which has just announced it has left the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative.
COP15: ‘Environmental DNA’ Technology Enables World-First Nature Performance-Monitoring Service
NEW METRICS - NatureMetrics says new platform represents breakthrough in understanding and managing our impact on nature — providing simple, standardized metrics to track and report on site-based nature impacts.
Why Activism, Advocacy and Allyship Are Essential to Corporate Diversity
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE - If a corporation really wants diversity and its benefits, the only way to get it is to regularly hire and promote people who don’t look like the current leadership. The task is to create not just the appearance of change, but a genuine commitment to creating equitable organizations and systems.
COP27: Holding Both Hope and Despair as We Fight For Every 0.1°C
COLLABORATION - The first COP took place in 1995 — 27 years later, and it’s easy to understand the scepticism. We’re still quite a long way from universal adoption by all nations and private sector actors of net-zero strategies that align with the urgent timescales science tells us are needed. But no other issue brings 198 nation states together in this way.
Closing the Loop: Rethinking Operations, the Economy to Save the Planet
WASTE NOT - Whether making a widget or a culinary treat, prioritizing a circular life cycle for products helps keep them out of waste streams until they are negligible — or better yet, they never land there.
Record Number of Companies Recognize Biodiversity Risks, But Struggling to Turn Commitments Into Action
FINANCE & INVESTMENT - Self-reported data from over 7,700 companies that responded to questions on biodiversity through CDP’s climate change questionnaire shows they are ready to disclose on biodiversity, sending a powerful signal to negotiators ahead of COP15.
