Community Updates

Experts Gather to Discuss ROI of Sustainable Business at New Metrics '18

The Sustainable Brands® community gathers today in Philadelphia, PA to kick off the 8th annual New Metrics conference. Over 300 global executives from brands like Nike, Salesforce, and Eileen Fisher are convening to unveil cutting-edge corporate practices that measure and quantify environmental and social impacts and tie them to financial and business value.

By Sustainable Brands | Published 6 years ago | About a 3 minute read

Conversations are focusing on 4 key areas: Value in Strategy & Operations, Value in Finance & Investing, Value in Product & Service Innovation and Value in Marketing & Communications.

Select event highlights include:

16 plenary sessions by thought-leaders such as Joey Bergstein, CEO of Seventh Generation; Tensie Whelan, Director of the Center for Sustainable Business at NYU Stern School of Business; and Matt West, CFO of Griffith Foods. A lunchtime plenary by William Theisen, CEO of EcoAct North America, shares the company’s new research on the reporting performance of the Dow Jones 30.
20 unique breakout sessions exploring emerging methodologies and metrics for incorporating social and environmental value, including a session led by the newly formed Social and Human Capital Coalition, a session examining the ROI of embedding social purpose into brand strategy, and many others.
8 attendee-led morning roundtable discussions will introduce key topics in a highly participatory format. Roundtables include a discussion on Integrating Natural Capital into Business Decisions, facilitated by leaders from The Nature Conservancy and The Dow Chemical Company; The Value of Gender Equality and Inclusion, facilitated by leaders from Sustainable Brands, and Approaches to Supply Network Mapping, facilitated by leaders from The Sustainability Consortium.
A Sunday night reception, sponsored by United by Blue at its store in Philadelphia, will discuss its nationwide DIY cleanup initiative, ‘Blue Friday.’ A Monday night reception hosted by Sustainable Brands at the Loews Philadelphia Hotel will welcome attendees to the New Metrics event. Finally, Rubicon Global hosts a Tuesday night reception, where it will announce the winners of its nationwide Waste Fit Championship.
A sustainability tour of the Philadelphia Eagles stadium, sponsored by NRG, will explore how the team is progressing along its commitment to become the greenest stadium in the country.
Several Birds of a Feather dinners for attendees to gather around specific, self-selected topic areas, including a special B Lab meetup around the B Corp Certification process, to be hosted at Luke’s Lobster.

“8 years ago, we launched our New Metrics initiative to ignite corporate action toward translating previously ignored environmental and social impacts into financial performance indicators,” states KoAnn Vikoren Skrzyniarz, founder and CEO of Sustainable Brands. “The leaders who have gathered for our annual New Metrics conference every year since are informing the next generation of goal setting and corporate strategy. We are proud to lead the charge toward helping companies realize the full benefit of sustainability-driven innovation in the 21st century.”

In addition to the regular programming at New Metrics, senior leaders from the** SB Corporate Member Network** will hold a separate meeting onsite at the conference. Dimitar Vlahov of Sustainable Brands and Kevin Hagen of Iron Mountain will disclose how organizations can move towards more sustainable business practices using the SB Brand Transformation Roadmap: a comprehensive process plan for continuous improvement in sustainability. Members from The Dow Chemical Company, Danone, Cisco, Stanley Black & Decker and others are in attendance.

Sustainable Brands is proud to recognize the many sponsors already committed to showcasing their brand leadership at New Metrics ‘18, including Rubicon Global and EcoAct as Premier Sponsors; Innate Motion, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and NRG as a Major Sponsors; and Flex, Numi Organic Tea, BASF, Metrio, Greengate Power, Ecovadis, United By Blue and Trucost, part of S&P Dow Jones Indices as Supporting Sponsors. Partner organizations include AICPA, CDP, Ceres, G&A Institute, SustainAbility, UN Global Compact, Navigant Research and Wharton IGEL. TerraCycle is the official waste diversion partner, BEF is the official water offset partner, and South Pole is the official carbon offset partner.

For a complete list of sponsors and speakers as well as the conference schedule, please visit the conference website at www.NewMetrics18.com. Tickets for New Metrics can be purchased onsite through Wednesday, October 31st at the Loews Philadelphia Hotel.

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