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ESG at a Crossroads: Down, But Not Out

11 09 2023

Image credit: Justin Luebke/Unsplash

By Tina Casey from Triple Pundit • Reposted: September 11, 2023

With the 2023 proxy season in the rear-view mirror, financial analysts noted a sharp decline in shareholder support for environmental, social and governance proposals. However, anti-ESG proposals also failed to stick, and signs of an ESG resurgence are already beginning to emerge.

Mixed support in the 2023 proxy season

Most U.S. companies hold proxy sessions between April and June, enabling shareholders to vote on issues without being present.

Based on the outcome of the 2023 season, shareholders seem to be losing interest in ESG issues. In a June analysis, the firm FTI Consulting noted that “2023 has seen investors support significantly less environmental and social proposals than in past years.”

The question is whether or not the drop-off marks a permanent trend or a temporary reaction to current events. FTI attributed much of the decline to the “anti-ESG” agenda, explaining: “The scrutiny on institutional investor vote behavior…by the anti-ESG activists has caused institutional investors to support less environmental and social proposals in 2023.”

At the same time, anti-ESG proposals also failed to garner much support from shareholders over the past five years, the analysis found. FTI advised that other factors can also have a significant influence on ESG support. Analysts cited the 2022 proxy season, which also saw a drop in ESG support after a rules change by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The change fostered a spike in the number of prescriptive proposals to come up for a vote, and prescriptive proposals generally receive low support from shareholders regardless of their subject matter.

We don’t talk about ESG, but we do it

One area where the anti-ESG movement has clearly had an impact is in the way in which bankers, money managers and other financial stakeholders communicate. Many continue to put the principles into action while avoiding specific references to ESG, as shown by a recent Bloomberg survey.

“About two-thirds of respondents in a survey of roughly 300 Bloomberg terminal users said the anti-ESG movement that started in the U.S. last year will force firms to stop using those three letters in conversations with clients,” Alastair Marsh and Lisa Pham of Bloomberg observed last month. “However, they’ll continue to incorporate environmental, social and governance metrics in their business.”

Financiers under fire

The Bloomberg analysis is among those attributing ESG avoidance to an aggressive, partisan political environment of legislative and legal attacks on ESG investing.

Though the issue seems to have failed to gain traction among voters, fossil energy stakeholdershave been credited with motivating Republican office holders to act. Their efforts reportedly include model bills created by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which has established a right-wing reputation with an emphasis on protecting fossil fuels.

“The finance industry is now grappling with a second year of attacks on ESG by key members of the Republican Party, including threats of litigation from state attorneys general, as well as outright bans on the strategy in some U.S. states,” Marsh and Pham of Bloomberg noted.

The attacks prompted one of the highest-profile proponents of the ESG investing movement, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, to stop using the acronym altogether.

“I don’t use the word ESG any more, because it’s been entirely weaponized … by the far left and weaponized by the far right,” Fink told a gathering at the Aspen Ideas Festival last summer, as reported by Reuters. In the same speech, he reaffirmed BlackRock’s commitment to discussing decarbonization, corporate governance and social issues with the companies in its portfolio.

Financiers fight back

Despite the political headwinds, financial stakeholders continue to act in support of social and environmental principles. Part of the effort is happening behind the scenes, as financial stakeholders seek to convince legislators that anti-ESG bills will result in financial harm to their states.

In a recent analysis, S&P Global identified 12 states in which Republican legislators “successfully pushed anti-environmental, social and governance legislation across the finish line.” In all, 19 states now have one or more anti-ESG laws on the books.

That may seem like a substantial gain, but the legislative failures outweighed the successes. “Many anti-ESG bills introduced in 2023 … failed after chambers of commerce, banking associations and public pension officials raised concern over costs or free market principles,” S&P observed.

In addition, only four of the 25 new anti-ESG laws to pass this year remained intact by the time of the August analysis. The other 21 were substantially revised to protect state pension funds. S&P cited Indiana and Texas as examples, both of which would have faced billions in losses over 10 years without the revisions.

Taking it to the courts

Financial stakeholders are also taking their case to court. For example, last month the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) — an industry group that counts BlackRock among its members — moved to challenge new Missouri rules on ESG documentation.

The rules went into effect on July 30. As described by SIFMA, they stipulate burdensome documentation that no other state requires. SIFMA argues that the new rules put Missouri in direct conflict with the 1996 National Securities Markets Improvements Act, under which states cannot preempt standard federal record-keeping rules.

“Under existing federal securities laws, broker-dealers and investment advisers are already required to provide investment advice that is in the best interest of their customers,” the group argued as it announced the suit. “The Missouri rules are thus unnecessary and create confusion.”

The climate factor

New reporting rules established by the European Union may also motivate U.S. companies to continue making progress on ESG principles, regardless of what’s happening at home.

The new EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive became effective last January. “This new directive modernizes and strengthens the rules concerning the social and environmental information that companies have to report,” the European Commission’s website reads. The new rules cover large companies as well as small and midsized companies.

In June, the Republican-led ESG Working Group in the U.S. House of Representatives released an interim report that recommended protecting U.S. companies from “burdensome EU regulations.” However, Republican leadership will have a hard time reconciling protectionism with their party’s longtime support for free market principles.

The anti-ESG movement is also floundering on the national stage. Surveys routinely reflect public support for ESG principles. Moreover, high-profile Republicans aren’t helping the case.

The hapless presidential campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is one example. Among other issues, the Republican governor has cultivated a reputation for opposing ESG investing, highlighted by a high-stakes legal feud with Florida’s top employer, Disney, over LGBTQ rights.

Another example is the looming impeachment of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a prominent anti-ESG Republican, on charges of corruption and bribery. His wife’s reported involvement with a shell company has raised additional questions about allegiance to the principles of fiduciary duty.

Looming over all this is climate change, a factor from which Florida, Texas and other anti-ESG states are hardly immune. With the exception of fossil energy stakeholders, the rising threat of climate risks will continue to influence and motivate corporate behavior regardless of the outcome of the upcoming 2024 proxy season.

Tina writes frequently for TriplePundit and other websites, with a focus on military, government and corporate sustainability, clean tech research and emerging energy technologies. She is a former Deputy Director of Public Affairs of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, and author of books and articles on recycling and other conservation themes. To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2023/esg-down-not-out/782776

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Tags: accountability, ALEC, Anti-ESG, Bloomberg, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, ESG, green marketing, responsible brands, S&P Global, SIFMA, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, DEI, ESG, social responsibility

Fairtrade: US consumers prioritise supply chain transparency

9 09 2023

By Lucy Buchholz from Sustainability Magazine • Reposted: September 09, 2023

The 2023 Fairtrade America Consumer Insights report reveals that 61% of Americans now identify the Fairtrade label, marking a 20% increase since 2021

The world’s most recognised label for social justice and sustainability, Fairtrade America, shared that recognition for the mark has more than doubled in the last four years – marking monumental progress.

According to the 2023 Fairtrade America Consumer Insights, 61% of American consumers now recognise the Fairtrade Mark, an increase of 20% from 2021.

The online study – which surveyed 2,000 American consumers and 11,000 from across 12 countries – disclosed that four in five consumers are willing to pay more for ethical and sustainability-sourced products, despite the cost of living crisis. Additionally, these findings demonstrate that shoppers are prioritising transparency amongst supply chains.

“Shoppers in the US are driving change with their purchasing power,” said Amanda Archila, executive director of Fairtrade America. “We are energised by these results and remain focused on increasing the US market for Fairtrade-certified products by meeting consumers where they are in their sustainable shopping journey and building strength with farming communities around the world.

Consumers demonstrate a growing trust in the Fairtrade mark

As trust in the Fairtrade label has steadily grown, 85% of US shoppers believe that featuring the label positively influences their perception of a brand.

In fact, two out of every three shoppers familiar with Fairtrade prefer retailers that stock certified products and globally, the Fairtrade mark remains the world’s most recognised ethical label, with 71% of shoppers having encountered it.

Among Fairtrade-certified products, coffee takes the lead with 48% recognition, and consumers are willing to pay up to 35% more for a bag of Fairtrade-certified coffee. Fairtrade chocolate closely follows with 43% visibility, and shoppers are ready to pay a premium of up to 55% for a Fairtrade-certified chocolate bar.

“We firmly believe that businesses can grow responsibly while ensuring that farmers and workers who grow our favourite foods including cocoa, coffee and bananas get a fairer deal,” Archila, adds. “And it’s clear that consumers are demanding the same.”

To see the original post, follow this link: https://sustainabilitymag.com/articles/fairtrade-us-consumers-prioritise-supply-chain-transparency

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Tags: accountability, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, ESG, Fairtrade, Fairtrade America, green marketing, responsible brands, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, ESG, reputation management, social responsibility, sustainability, sustainable brands

U.S. teachers are struggling to teach sustainability in schools

8 09 2023

A recent poll by the Smithsonian Science Education Center and Gallup finds that while a majority of U.S. teachers say they want to teach lessons in sustainable development, they do not have the supports in place to do so. Stock Photo via Getty Images

Topics like climate action and clean energy are some of the least likely topics to be found within sustainability school lessons, according to a Smithsonian-Gallup poll. By Anna Merod from K-12dive.com • Reposted: September 8, 2023

U.S. teachers feel they have far fewer supports to teach topics on sustainable development compared to those instructing in countries like Brazil, Canada, France and India, according to a poll released Tuesday by the Smithsonian Science Education Center and Gallup.
Educators in those four countries were three times more likely on average than U.S. teachers to say they have enough support to instruct on sustainability — a stark difference of 60% versus 17%.
Despite the lack of resources, the poll found a majority of U.S. teachers see value in teaching sustainability: 83% say such curriculum can have a positive global impact, while 79% say it can benefit local communities.

Insight:

Socio-scientific topics within sustainability curriculum are especially nonexistent in U.S. classrooms, as teachers shared that this type of content was the least likely to be found in their lessons, according to the Smithsonian-Gallup poll.

For instance, 32% of U.S. educators said climate action, as well as clean water and sanitation, are dedicated parts of their curriculum. While 31% cited clean energy and responsible consumption, and 26% said information about sustainable communities was included in lessons.

“We were shocked to see that the topics we would define as socio-scientific like climate action, sustainable communities, clean water, clean energy were at the bottom of that list” in regard to U.S. curriculum standards, said Carol O’Donnell, director of the Smithsonian Science Education Center.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization defines sustainable development as “a resolution to meet the needs of the present without compromising the future.” Specifically, the United Nations created 17 goals tied to sustainability that fall under a “shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.”

The Smithsonian-Gallup poll, which surveyed over 2,500 teachers and administrators in spring 2023, explored 11 of those 17 goals, including climate action, clean energy, clean water and sanitation, innovation, justice, reducing inequality, and good health and wellbeing.

U.S. teachers also said they have a lack of expertise (74%) and instructional materials (76%) to teach sustainability.

“It’s just a reality that STEAM standards or STEM standards don’t exist in large scale across the board in schools and districts,” said Monique Chism, undersecretary for education at the Smithsonian. “So when you think about curriculum resources, professional development, time for teaching this content — it’s not surprising, because it’s not something that’s been a priority that’s been placed on standards and curriculum in the system.”

While climate education pushback has surfaced in recent years, Chism said she prefers to believe the gap in resources to teach sustainable development is likely unintentional. Based on the survey, Chism said it’s hard to exactly pinpoint why K-12 schools often lack these supports.

But as schools continue to face teacher shortages, brace for budget shortfalls, and address much-needed maintenance repairs, administrators and teachers are really trying to do the “best they can” while trying to solve these broader challenges, Chism said.

Chism added it’s clear from the poll that teachers have a desire to teach sustainability intertwined with other subjects beyond science. More than 70% of U.S. teachers each said instructing on this topic can make science more accessible to students and increase their interest in current events.

State curriculum standards are beginning to shift toward sustainable development topics, O’Donnell added. For instance, she said, environmental science standards are integrated into science lessons throughout California schools. New Jersey and Connecticut now require lessons on climate change and climate education, respectively.

“We are starting to see states start to come up with this idea that sustainability matters,” O’Donnell said.

To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.k12dive.com/news/smithsonian-poll-us-teachers-sustainability-curriculum/692983/

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Tags: Climate Education, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, ESG, responsible brands, Scientific and Cultural Organization, STEAM, STEM, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands, United Nations Educational
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, DEI, ESG, social responsibility, sustainability

Emerging tech will empower conscious consumers

8 09 2023

Image: Maskot/Getty Images

By Ken Moore from Fast Company • Reposted: September 8, 2023

Most consumers today want to buy from brands that align with their values—it’s more important to them than cost and convenience, brand loyalty, or product functionality. They will pay more for products and services that tangibly support their social, ethical, and environmental objectives—and abandon those that don’t. This sentiment has strong roots in the youngest consumers: An extraordinary 84% of teens told researchers they strive to buy based on their beliefs.

There is mounting evidence that companies benefit when they heed this message: A study from South Korea, published in January, found that food and beverage companies with strong reputations for their environmental and social initiatives generate more consumer trust and positive word-of-mouth. Unilever’s purpose-led Sustainable Living brands have grown more than the rest of its business. And new research from McKinsey found that products that made claims about their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance outsold products that did not.

This seems like a simple equation: Consumers will reward companies with convincing ESG stories, and those brands thrive. There is a problem, however. Only 4 in 10 consumers say they have adequate data to make sound sustainable purchasing decisions. This may explain the complaint that customers say they support green, ethical, socially responsible companies with their wallets—but often don’t. They lack the information they need to follow through.

In fact, most businesses struggle to present a thorough, compelling story detailing their environmental impact: Only 13% can map their end-to-end supply chain and four out of five have no visibility beyond their immediate suppliers. Executives surveyed by IBM acknowledged that inadequate data is the biggest obstacle to their ESG efforts.

DATA-DRIVEN INSIGHTS

This will change over the next 5 to 10 years as companies deploy emerging technologies that unlock data to enable smarter supply chains and measure their end-to-end carbon footprint, organic production, recycling track record, and other outcomes. These include:

Connected supply chains that link fragmented systems, technologies, and networks
Visibility technologies that provide a complete picture of supply chain operations, from procurement of raw materials to shipment and use of end products
Blockchains to create an immutable audit trail that tracks the provenance and the movement of goods and include verified information regarding suppliers
Internet-of-things networks that improve supply chain transparency, and collect data supporting ESG compliance
AI, machine learning, and predictive analytics to extract insights from supply chain data. Generative AI has the potential to do the same with unstructured ESG data.
AI, blockchains and open data frameworks to enable Scope 3 emissions reporting

DELIVERING THE MESSAGE

Companies with stellar sustainability results will presumably be the first to leverage these technologies to establish their credibility with consumers and other stakeholders including regulators, shareholders, and current and potential employees. If the population of value-driven consumers is as large and committed as it appears to be—particularly millennials and Gen Z—other companies will follow suit and new ESG reporting expectations will be set. Conscious consumers will be empowered to vote with their wallets.

Enterprises will also turn to emerging technologies to share this information with consumers precisely when, where, and how they want it—online, in the store, via QR codes printed on product packaging, through smart glasses and virtual reality (VR) goggles, or at the point of sale (digital or physical.) “With AR (augmented reality), brands can turn products, packaging, and places into digital discovery channels, surfacing their sustainability efforts through a humble QR code,” notes Zappar, an AR studio in Scotland.

Indeed, there is evidence this is an effective way to engage customers. Using AR to inform purchase decisions increases consumer confidence in the product, increases sales, and reduces returns.

CLOSING THE PERCEPTION GAP

Three-fourths of executives surveyed by IBM said their stakeholders understand their companies’ ESG objectives and performance, but there is a disconnect. Only about 40% of consumers said they have enough information about corporate sustainability to make purposeful decisions about what to buy and where to work.

That’s a problem. It’s no time for business leaders to assume their value-driven customers are on board, because consumers have made it clear they will jump ship for a competitor that can demonstrate strong ESG credentials. As we approach an era in which all companies will have the means to do that, leaders can seize a competitive advantage by providing conscious consumers with information that empowers them to do what they find difficult today—make purchase decisions that reward companies that align with their values.

Ken Moore is the chief innovation officer at Mastercard and expert-in-residence at Harvard Innovation Labs. To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.fastcompany.com/90948629/emerging-tech-will-empower-conscious-consumers

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Tags: accountability, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, ESG, green marketing, responsible brands, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands
Categories : Climate Change, DEI, ESG, social responsibility, sustainability, sustainable branding

The Wisdom Of Failure On The Path To Better Business

6 09 2023

Photo: Getty

By Tara Milburn, Forbes Councils Member via Forbes • Reposted: September 6, 2023

Failure stings, and when we feel we’ve done something wrong, we respond accordingly in order to diminish the chances of repeating the error. Nothing stings more than making the same mistake twice; we know this and usually do anything to avoid it.

Failure in our corporate system works in the same way. When things go wrong, the collective recruits resources to reduce the risk of a repeat. As it stands, 69% of consumersare actively concerned about climate change. Only 50% of executives feel their organizations’ strategies are reflective of their purpose, according to a study by Harvard Business Review and EY. The health of our planet and the purpose of our work are too important to get wrong twice; somewhere, our collective brain is recruiting some serious resources.

The impact of those resources is already taking effect. The twin crises of meaning and climate have quickly changed how we do business, and stakeholders are rewarding the effort. Companies that have established that clear, shared purpose within their organizations are seeing success—a 10% increase in growth in three years, according to the same HBR and EY report.

Similarly, consumers, investors and employees have all turned climate anxiety into action. According to findings from Gartner, 85% of investors prioritize ESG factors in their due diligence. Moreover, 66% of consumers pay more for responsible and sustainable products. Sixty-six percent of Gen Z employees opt for lower-paying jobs at more ethically and environmentally responsible companies.

Failure motivates us, and our societal shortcomings motivate profound and meaningful change in our businesses. Failure is a painful education, but finding these solutions could be worth every second. Here are a few ways business owners can follow the wisdom of failure toward a better way of doing business.

P&L&G: A New Kind Of Corporate Accounting

As business owners, we’ve learned to let the numbers do much of the talking. Profit and loss statements guide most of our decisions from hiring to business development to pricing. But stakeholders are making it clear that our “giving” is just as consequential to our corporate accounting, and it’s no longer just the thought that counts.

Before they make a purchase or an investment, individuals and institutions evaluate the social efforts of organizations. They’re looking for transparent ESG metrics, developed reporting, evidence of social impact and substantial long-term goals. Internally and externally, stakeholders hold organizations to higher sustainability standards, ESG transparency and social responsibility. They’re expanding the old definition of success as shareholder value; it makes good business sense for companies to take these fundamentals as seriously as they take their profit and loss (P&L).

Stronger internal cultures, heightened purchase motivation and improved long-term loyalty are proven outcomes of well-developed corporate impact programs. We can add better profit to that list; 82% of consumers“prefer a brand’s values to align with their own.” The support and the cause can take different forms. Many giants—Patagonia and TOMS come to mind—have made corporate responsibility famous with campaigns like 1% for the planet and “buy one, give one.”

Giving can also mean improving compensation and benefit structures, donating time to your immediate community, and supporting sustainability efforts across your supply chain.

Thoughtful Products Can Speak Louder Than Pledges

As companies put more resources into corporate responsibility, the impact will come from their actions. Stakeholders know it’s not what we say but what we do that matters. Small and actionable fixes reflect the larger aims of the corporation.

Employee gifts, customer outreach, and promotional products embody a company’s values. Opt for sustainable products, support small businesses and partner with thoughtful suppliers to walk the walk.

Sharing The Sharing: How Busy Teams Find Meaning

With a plan for giving and gifting, it’s time to delegate. Sharing the lift reduces the chances that a campaign is sidetracked. More importantly, delegation empowers your team to make the difference they want to see.

Choice-based gifting—offering your team ahead-of-time selection for their onboarding or holiday packages—can decrease waste and extend the chance to have a hand in supporting sustainable suppliers, small businesses and ESG leaders. Similarly, a recent study shows 86% of employees want to weigh in on their company’s corporate giving strategy by self-selecting charities or collectively deciding on the focus of a more extensive campaign.

When we make a mistake, we mobilize; we naturally make every effort we can to do things differently next time. In the same way, the failures of our societal and corporate structures are directing our next steps, showing us the improvements we can make. If we pay attention, the natural selection of our stakeholders could reduce our chances of committing the same collective errors and put us all on the path to a better kind of business.

Tara Milburn is the founder of Ethical Swag, a B Corp that helps brands source sustainable swag for employee and client gifting. To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2023/09/05/the-wisdom-of-failure-on-the-path-to-better-business/?sh=161ed9e77ed6

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Tags: accountability, corporate social reponsibility, CSR, ESG, green marketing, responsible brands, sustainability, sustainable branding
Categories : Climate Change, ESG, reputation management, sustainable branding, sustainable brands

Creating a Greener Future: The Role of Strategic Partners in Sustainability

6 09 2023

Graphic: accelerationeconomy.com

By Janet Schijns from accelerationeconomy.com • Reposted: September 6, 2023

The U.S. recently pledged to cut agriculture sector emissions by 50% by 2030. The sector accounts for over 10% of the overall emissions, making it a great first target. Once thought of as a “nice-to-have,” sustainability has now become a must-have not only for agriculture but also for businesses across every sector due to consumer expectations, climate change pressures, and numerous policy changes. This shift to the main stage underscores the importance of technological collaboration in formulating and executing responsible strategies that emphasize energy efficiency, carbon reduction, and waste management. This is where great partnerships can ease the burden for firms by helping them make sustainability matter.

Model Sustainability Partnerships

The Accenture Technology Ecosystem is an example of an ecosystem play in this arena. With more than 350 partners and suppliers, each selected for its exceptional, market-relevant offerings, Accenture leverages comprehensive industry insights and data-driven analytics to determine potential strategies to future technological needs. The Accenture Technology Ecosystem strives to lead in sustainability through its integrated approach.

Another example is how Microsoft, in partnership with Accenture and Avanade, is making significant strides towards a more sustainable future. This partnership is proving its worth as it embraces green software development principles, sustainable cloud migrations, and digital twin technology adoption. These efforts drive stronger performance, competitiveness, and progress toward their decarbonization goals and the journey to net zero emissions. Its joint sustainability efforts, particularly its pivotal role in the Green Software Foundation, showcase a collective commitment to constructing a trusted ecosystem that supports environmentally responsible software development.

Finally, Chrome OS demonstrates an exemplary commitment to sustainable computing. Through its cloud-first platform, which prioritizes energy efficiency, Chrome OS has created a progressive method for more sustainable computing. Collaborations with partners, including Insight Enterprises and CDW, further the goal of systemic change, enhancing efficiency across various operational areas.

Sustainability Across Industries

Sustainability extends across diverse industries, each with distinct applications and benefits that can be brought to the market by a variety of partners:

Automotive Industry: Manufacturers can utilize advanced tracking mechanisms to monitor their sustainability efforts. By setting and continually evaluating targets, they can enhance their performance in reducing environmental impact, focusing on energy consumption, waste production, and water usage. IoT partners are helping those in this industry adapt their processes and systems to utilize their technologies for sustainability gains.

Banking Industry: Green bonds and loans symbolize the integration of sustainability into financial practices. Data analytics enable banks to identify and invest in environmentally friendly projects and reduce their carbon footprints. Fintech-friendly tools from independent software vendors (ISVs) are helping to make this banking industry future a reality today.

Energy Sector: Embracing renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power, energy companies are utilizing data analytics to optimize operations and decrease environmental impact. But these efforts require a multitude of partnerships to develop software and equipment as well as do installations and service.

These are just a few examples — the widespread adoption of sustainability across various sectors reveals a transformation in corporate values and operations. Companies are not merely adopting sustainability as a trend but are integrating it into core business practices. They are guided and supported by technology partners who drive innovation and efficiency.

Finding the Right Partner

So, just how do you understand what will make a great partner for your business? Let’s explore that a little more here:

Identify the Right Partner

In the quest for sustainability, choosing the right partner is akin to finding the perfect piece in a complex puzzle. An ideal partner should have a shared vision and commitment to sustainability, backed by tangible actions and track record. Assessing a potential partner’s corporate values, technological capabilities, industry expertise, and alignment with the specific sustainability goals is essential. Conducting a thorough due diligence that includes their previous sustainability initiatives, compliance with environmental regulations, and cultural fit with your organization ensures that the collaboration rests on a foundation of common purpose and integrity.

Structure a Clear, Comprehensive Agreement

A partnership for sustainability requires a clear and comprehensive agreement, a legal tapestry weaving together shared goals, responsibilities, and performance metrics. Defining specific roles and responsibilities for each party, along with setting measurable objectives, timelines, and key performance indicators (KPIs), is essential. The agreement should also encompass financial arrangements, resource allocation, governance structures, and conflict resolution mechanisms. Furthermore, incorporating flexibility to adapt to changing regulations, market conditions, or technological advancements ensures that the partnership remains resilient and responsive to evolving sustainability landscapes.

Ensure Collaboration and Continuous Improvement

An effective sustainability partnership transcends contractual obligations and enters the realm of true collaboration and innovation. Regular communication, transparency, and joint decision-making fortify the partnership, making it more than a mere transaction. Implementing a robust monitoring and evaluation system to track progress, coupled with a commitment to continuous improvement and innovation, cultivates a dynamic collaboration. Encouraging creativity and fostering an environment where both partners can contribute ideas, insights, and strategies ensures that the partnership thrives, continually advancing towards sustainability goals with mutual respect and shared success.

Final Thoughts

By carefully selecting a partner with shared values, meticulously crafting a well-structured agreement, and fostering a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement, organizations can set the stage for a successful and enduring partnership for sustainability. It’s more than a business transaction; it’s a collective journey towards a greener and more responsible future.

Sustainability represents a complex, multifaceted challenge for modern enterprises. The collaboration between technology ecosystem partners and various industries is forging a path toward a more responsible and sustainable future. This movement is no longer confined to isolated initiatives but is manifesting as a comprehensive approach to business, reflecting a profound shift in corporate responsibility and ethical governance.

To see the original post, follow this link: https://accelerationeconomy.com/cxo/creating-a-greener-future-the-role-of-strategic-partners-in-sustainability/

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Tags: accountability, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, ESG, green marketing, responsible brands, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, DEI, ESG, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands

We Can Eat Our Way Out of the Climate Crisis

4 09 2023

Image: UCLA

By Antony Yousefian via Sustainable Brands • Reposted: September 4, 2023

Applied to food supply chains, ambient IoT allows farmers, distributors, grocers, regulators and consumers to know where food came from, how far it traveled, how it was transported and stored, and what condition it’s in — in real time.

The world can’t count on carbon offsets to deliver us from the climate crisis. As helpful as it may be for corporations to offset some of their emissions, the greatest force for good is the everyday citizen. Specifically, it’s the well-informed, carbon-savvy grocery shoppers who buy sustainably grown produce — not just because they know the carbon footprint of bananas, zucchini, or beef; but because it’s also clear which farmers are regenerating the land to support a healthy planet.

How on earth can shoppers know? By tracking everything, everywhere, all the time.

My time in the financial markets drew me to climate tech startups and the importance of impact investing. Indicators from our planet were signaling code red. At the same time, the increased frequency of supply chain disruptions from biodiversity decline and climate change was hitting corporate profitability.

Investment funds focused on environmental, social and governance (ESG) commitments were ballooning; but I struggled to quantify or have visibility into exactly which corporations, or their products, were actually “doing good.” Quantification of the E in ESG was a real problem; and it was a multitrillion-dollar opportunity that made sense on all levels.

Since then, I’ve been involved with various innovative companies committed to tackling the issue head on — from carbon removal in supply chains to restoring biodiversity in soils. The latter led me to agriculture technology (AgTech) and the cutting-edge field of the Ambient Internet of Things(IoT) — a system of ubiquitous Bluetooth tags and cloud-based software that makes anything traceable and intelligent.

One of my first ventures into AgTech was to leverage IoT to measure leaf temperatures, soil conditions and root health — all key to driving sustainable farming decisions. It gave food producers the tools to see or digitize their risks in real-time, make improvements, and share the results with the supply chain. But the cost to acquire the data was high, which hindered scalability.

Ambient IoT changes the whole calculus because it’s based on ultra-low-cost, battery-free, stamp-sized computer sensors that can go anywhere and communicate wirelessly with existing systems or off-the-shelf, standardized network devices. Applied to food supply chains, ambient IoT allows farmers, distributors, grocers and even regulators to know where food came from, how far it traveled, how it was transported and stored, and what condition it’s in — and not only back when the food was harvested, packed or put on a truck; but in real time.

Taken together, ambient IoT data — location, time-in-transit, temperature, humidity and more — provides crucial primary data to calculate the carbon footprint not just of the food companies involved but of every individual product on a supermarket’s shelves. It’s a chief sustainability officer’s dream. Armed with this information, we as citizens can be given a choice to select food products that make the planet healthier — to do our part by eating sustainably.

Carbon visibility and trust

In a recent study by the Boston Consulting Group, 77 percent of consumers said they were concerned about the sustainability of the food they buy; 63 percent said they were trying to shop more sustainably. Their challenge? Acting on their concern.

There are a couple of reasons it’s hard for consumers to shop for sustainable food (or for that matter, sustainable clothes, cosmetics or household supplies). First is that they don’t always know which groceries are, in fact, sustainable. Second is that they’re not sure who they can trust.

In stores, consumers are bombarded by signs and food labels touting “local,” “organic” or “sustainable.” But when it comes to climate impact, such messaging can be confusing, if not misleading. Locally grown vegetables may have been stored in carbon-hungry refrigeration or cultivated in greenhouses that emit more carbon than a slow boat from another continent. And those organic fruits may have been grown with regenerative practices on a different continent and flown (then, driven miles) to the store. Yet each product does, indeed, have an individual carbon footprint that can be traced.

But in the absence of product-level carbon data, consumers look to brands for guidance, seeking those committed to “net zero” or other pledges to protect the climate. These are laudable efforts but susceptible to what the public and regulators have come to identify asgreenwashing — an act of climate fraud best combatted with credible, real-time data.

Not to mention, even responsible companies can only report on their sustainability commitments annually or quarterly — whenever a report is finished. Even monthly reporting falls short of what should be the standard for carbon tracing in the food chain: real-time, product-level carbon visibility. And only the ambient IoT can achieve that.

Real-time carbon data

Consumers have become skeptical, with some justification. Recently, a Dutch environmental foundation — in association with other food groups — reported on the pervasiveness of greenwashing in the food supply chain, which experts say contributes one-third of global emissions.

In response, regulators have taken it upon themselves to require producers of all kinds to prove sustainability claims through data. The best way to do it reliably and consistently is through meaningful, real-time metrics delivered through a credible medium.

Consumers live in a real-time world of social media feeds, fitness trackers and generative AI. Carbon visibility should be the next killer app — not only as it relates to what people eat but what they wear, where they vacation, and more.

Whether on people’s smartphones or via smart, digital shelf signage, supermarkets can use ambient IoT data to deliver carbon visibility the same way they engage shoppers in points clubs, digital coupons, and other social media-style promotions. Yes, gamification can help save the planet when it leads to more sustainable food consumption.

Unlocking the benefits of ambient IoT

Real-time carbon visibility is just part of the ambient IoT equation. Companies that deploy an ambient IoT infrastructure can solve other challenges, some that further support their climate goals and others that align the planet with profitability.

In addition to tracking the carbon footprint of products in their supply chain, companies can use ambient IoT data to capture missed revenues and reduce food waste. Ambient IoT can collect environmental data on elements such as temperature and humidity, even in stores and trucks, which determine freshness and shelf life. And it produces data to comply with new supply chain regulations and ensure food safety. Until now, most compliance checks have been manual, expensive and ad hoc. Ambient IoT automates compliance and cuts costs because now every product effectively shouts its status (i.e., sends data packets) on the way to supermarket shelves.

But ambient IoT is capable of even more. In the long run, to combat climate change, we must use it to restore biodiversity and put carbon back into the ground. The food system can achieve these goals through regenerative agriculture, which improves the health of soil and creates healthy plants and nutrient-rich food. There is already an ecosystem of innovative solutions to help measure the process of regenerative agriculture and accelerate its adoption. Ambient IoT has a role in that measurement.

Ultimately, ambient IoT will help mobilize data about the land and nature’s status. It can determine whether that next meal is traceable to a healthy, sustainable, regenerative source. Already, major initiatives like the EU’s regulation on deforestation-free products and the USgovernment’s Food Safety Modernization Act will require companies to prove they know where food comes from. This is a game-changer because it requires visibility into the flow of goods and materials and the ability to identify who is contributing to regenerating the land.

I’m confident that when citizens are turned onto this level of visibility, we’ll see them over-consume delicious, healthy meals. That’s how we eat our way out of climate change.

To see the original post, follow this link: https://sustainablebrands.com/read/defining-the-next-economy/eat-our-way-out-climate-crisis

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Tags: accountability, AgTech, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, ESG, green marketing, l0T, loT, responsible brands, sustainability, sustainable branding
Categories : Climate Change, DEI, ESG, responsible brands, social responsibility, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands

Beyond Buzzwords: A Concrete Model For Driving Business Sustainability

4 09 2023

Image: Getty

By Kumar Vijayendra, Forbes Business Council via Forbes • Reposted: September 4, 2023

In today’s business landscape, sustainability has emerged as a core component of successful strategies. With growing concerns about climate change, social responsibility and environmental impact, organizations are increasingly integrating sustainable practices into their operations.

However, despite the abundance of sustainability strategies and environmental, social and governance (ESG) reports, there remains a lack of comprehensive assessment criteria. This gap makes it challenging for businesses to develop and formulate functional sustainability strategies that can adapt to new problems or prompt innovative solutions to existing problems.

In order to address this issue, the following is a proposed assessment model for driving business sustainability and measuring impact and effectiveness.

1. Identify the key performance indicators.

The first step in developing an effective assessment model is to identify the KPIs specific to sustainability. These KPIs will serve as measurable metrics to provide insights into the success of sustainability initiatives. By defining and monitoring these indicators, organizations can assess their performance and progress towards sustainability goals.

KPIs may include energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, waste reduction, water usage, employee engagement and social impact. Sustainability Magazineactually listed five widely utilized KPIs: carbon footprint, consumption of energy, supply chain miles, waste reduction and recycling rates and social impact.

The bottom line when it comes to KPIs for sustainability strategies continues to be the ESG impact that an organization has. So, in addition to the suggested KPIs, it is essential that as a business owner, you draw up your own parameters that help you assess the environmental and social impact your business has.

2. Establish baseline data.

Before implementing sustainability strategies, it’s crucial to establish baseline data. This represents the starting point against which progress can be measured. It provides a reference for organizations to assess the impact of their initiatives and determine the extent of improvement achieved.

Baseline data can include historical records of energy consumption, waste generation, carbon footprint and other relevant parameters. This data serves as a benchmark and enables organizations to track their progress over time.

A broader set of baseline data could contribute to more effective goal-setting in terms of sustainable planning and a more actionable strategy since you have the silhouette of a goal in sight. Baseline data can also be different for different sectors.

3. Set targets.

Setting clear and ambitious targets is a key component of any effective sustainability strategy. Targets provide a sense of direction and purpose, helping organizations focus their efforts towards achieving specific environmental and social objectives.

Align your targets with global sustainability goals, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). You should aso ensure your goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). By setting targets, your organization can strive for continuous improvement and drive meaningful change.

4. Implement sustainability initiatives.

Once the KPIs, baseline data, and targets are established, it’s time to implement sustainability initiatives. These initiatives can range from energy-efficient practices and waste reduction programs to social impact projects and supply chain optimization.

The implementation phase requires collaboration and coordination across various departments within your organization. Effective communication, training and engaging employees are essential to ensure the successful execution of sustainability initiatives.

Your implementation should not mirror that of a competitor—or any other company—but should be unique to the way your organization will reap the maximum benefits.

5. Monitor and evaluate progress.

Continuous monitoring and evaluation are vital to assess the progress of sustainability strategies. Organizations need to track identified KPIs regularly and compare them against the established baseline and targets. This monitoring process provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of implemented initiatives, identifies areas for improvement and enables data-driven decision-making.

Regular evaluations help your organization identify potential challenges, address gaps and make adjustments to strategies to ensure long-term sustainability success.

Evaluating sustainability performance is a challenging task, but researching organizations in your industry and geography can help as you study the trajectory of their strategies and achievements, or lack thereof.

6. Strive to continuously improve.

Sustainability is an ongoing journey, and organizations must strive for continuous improvement. The assessment model should promote a culture of learning and innovation, encouraging organizations to constantly seek new opportunities and approaches to enhance their sustainability strategies.

Feedback loops, stakeholder engagement and external benchmarking can help organizations identify emerging trends, best practices and areas where they can push the boundaries of sustainability. By embracing a mindset of continuous improvement, organizations can remain adaptable and resilient in the face of evolving sustainability challenges.

It’s essential to recognize that this assessment model is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Organizations should customize it based on their unique circumstances, objectives and stakeholders. The model serves as a starting point, providing a structured approach to evaluate sustainability strategies.

By leveraging the core components of this model, organizations can identify gaps, measure successes and continually refine their strategies and policies. Creating a sustainable culture in this way allows them to drive meaningful change and contribute to a more sustainable future.

Kumar Vijayendra is an author and speaker in small business transformation. He is also the President at Footsteps LLC. To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2023/09/01/beyond-buzzwords-a-concrete-model-for-driving-business-sustainability/?sh=6076f414369e

Commons App Informing, Facilitating Mass Shifts in Climate-Influenced Consumer Living & Spending

1 09 2023

Image: Commons

Highlighting the impact of individual purchases and their associated emissions output, the app — fresh off a large funding round — is evolving to meet the daily spending directives of its users. By Geoff Nudelman from Sustainable Brands • Reposted: September 1, 2023

There’s a lot of emphasis being placed on consumer spending as a real way to drive measurable impact in the fight against climate change; but for many everyday consumers, it remains one of the most confusing avenues of action. There are dozens of standards and certifications to understand, along with a never-ending stream of data connected to purchases (both good and bad).

That’s where the potential of consumer spending/emissions measurement app Commons comes in. The app — which was launched in 2019 as Joro and relaunched this March under its current name — allows consumers to connect credit cards, bank accounts and other financial information to a system that measures the emissions output of every purchase; and it offers multiple ways to reduce impacts — whether through simple switches, more involved spending transitions or via the purchase of verified offsets.

“We learned a lot about what people were actually looking for,” Commons founder Sanchali Pal told Sustainable Brands®, noting that the app began primarily as a carbon tracking and offsetting platform. “It’s more about the spending choices we make — and that this is not one person’s responsibility, but the collective’s.”

The app is only a few years old; and while the company doesn’t share full user data, Pal said users are in the “tens of thousands.” Commons is currently available in the US and Canada(with most users in the former), and mostly used in large cities by the 25-55 demographic. So far, the app has raised $13.5 million — the company says investors include Sequoia Capital, Norrsken, entrepreneurial platform Incite, climate investors Amasia; and the founders of Headspace, Fitbit, Candy Crush and Nest; as well as public figures including actor Maisie Williams, Incubus’ Mike Einziger and Arrive, (the VC arm of Jay-Z’s Roc Nation empire).

Like a lot of tech companies and apps, the leverage is in the collected data — and the trends and spending shifts that the data show. Commons’ demographic, which is likely somewhat affluent (Pal shared that most users have a credit or debit card), offers a small snapshot of how these changes can drive impact in large, urban areas in the US and Canada. It also helps users understand the realistic impact of their purchases.

“Something that people don’t realize is that the goods and services we buy also have a footprint,” Pal says. “People are quite surprised by something like a t-shirt and how that compares to the footprint of eating a burger, for example — or how driving can have a similar footprint to buying makeup. Products and services having that footprint is a novel idea for many people.”

Pal notes that one area where the app is noticing a larger shift is in buying secondhand. The number of Commons users shopping secondhand grew 48 percent between 2021 and 2022; and Pal says content on the app and website associated with shopping “more sustainably” for apparel is some of its most popular.

There are also broader shifts happening in the ways Commons users get around. According to its 2022 Impact Report, 40 percent more Commons users took public transit in 2022, compared to 2021; and users already taking public transportation did so 75 percent more often. App users also bought 63 percent less gas than the average US consumer in 2022 and 36 percent less gas than in 2021. Lastly, it’s no surprise that Commons users also use EV stations at a high clip.

According to Pal, in 2022 the average user reduced their emissions by 20 percent and saved $200 a month via all the app has to offer.

To provide realistic updates on the impact of a particular purchase, Commons updates its data daily, monthly, quarterly or annually — depending on the specific metric. Pal notes the example of gas prices, which the company analyzes daily since the price per gallon regularly fluctuates; and the numbers Commons uses also needs to reflect inflation and other economic movers. In other cases, the movement isn’t enough to measure more than once every few months (for something such as more expensive durable goods).

Education a key component

Almost anywhere you move inside the Commons app, there’s an opportunity to learn. Whether it’s about the impact of taking one less flight or comparing your footprint to those of other users; there’s no shortage of measurable, comparable and, most importantly, actionable advice.

“Users may be looking for the kind of thing they didn’t know how to act on before using our products,” Pal says. “They may have been interested in what could have the most impact in their lives but didn’t know where to start. We have found that folks who are quite educated (on sustainability) still find the product useful.”

I was rather impressed by this once I linked up my own credit card and saw my spending data populate through the app. The home page shows a graph estimating the emissions output of all my purchases on that card in the current month and compared to prior months of my choosing.

One of the app’s newest features is breaking down purchases under a “sustainable purchases” category — which singles out specific purchasing categories such as public transit, rideshare, renewable energy and more. Under Commons’ classifications, I make few “sustainable purchases” — which I’m not particularly sure I agree with, but I would assume that category will continue to be refined.

I also appreciated a level of transparency and discussion around Commons’ choices of offsets. The company’s Offset Portfolio operates under four pillars, and users can take a rather deep dive into understanding the value and impact of each offset under each pillar. Inside the app, I was prompted to pay a certain amount each month to support these offerings (somewhat commensurate with my estimated emissions output) — which, if I took the time to sift through all of the information, I’d likely find a compelling way to reduce my personal impact.

Of course, only having “tens of thousands” of users as the sample population is ultimately a small slice of the entire consumer pool — but certainly enough to potentially influence some changes within a certain, finally comfortable section of the spending public. I could see myself making some small changes based on seeing the data there in plain sight. Once you have the graphs and metrics nicely laid out in front of you, it becomes clearer to see how the collective impact in how and where we spend could make a big difference.

“One of the advantages of what we’ve built so far is that we can connect with you no matter where you spend money,” Pal says. “Ultimately, we’re trying to shift spending behavior and show how money matters.”

To see the original post, follow this link: https://sustainablebrands.com/read/behavior-change/commons-app-shifts-climate-influenced-consumer-living-spendinghttps://sustainablebrands.com/read/behavior-change/commons-app-shifts-climate-influenced-consumer-living-spending

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Tags: accountability, Commons, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, ESG, green marketing, Joro, responsible brands, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, DEI, ESG, social responsibility, sustainability

Human Resources most influential’s top priorities: sustainability, ESG and achieving net zero

1 09 2023

By Matt Gitsham from Human Resources Magazine UK • Reposted: September 1, 2023

This year’s HR Most Influential (HRMI) survey found that there was a strong view that responsibility for environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) sits with everyone in the business – but that HR has a vital role to play, alongside leadership as supporter, partner and educator.

Approximately 65% of survey respondents said their organisation had a formal strategy for improving performance on ESG/sustainability.

In most cases, it appeared that this strategy was being driven either by the board or some kind of central ESG function.

HR practitioners were, however, playing a key role in supporting the strategy from a people perspective, with a particular focus on inclusion and diversity, working conditions, fair pay, wellbeing and ethical business practice.

“Sustainability, ESG and helping businesses go net zero are now crucial components of business and people strategies,” said one respondent.

“HR needs to be at the decision-making table and influence from there,” said another.

“To make HR the ‘owner’ would run the risk of these important topics being ‘HR projects’. ESG/sustainability needs to be a belief system and not just a process.”

Educating the workforce

Survey respondents also felt HR had an important role to play in educating the workforce, with 52% saying leadership development on ESG/sustainability was being offered across the business.

“HR can help people unlock their understanding of how to embed this in day-to-day work”, and “HR has a key role in the education of the workforce, to ensure they understand ESG/sustainability and the impact of their decisions,” were among the comments.

There was a recognition among HR professionals that a focus on ESG could be a competitive advantage when it comes to recruitment, retention and brand reputation.

Employees were increasingly looking for organisations that support this agenda, and were voicing a desire to work for companies with strong values and a proactive commitment to fighting issues such as climate change and inequality.

“Ultimately, people are voting with their feet and basing consumer and employment decisions on the sustainability actions of companies,” said one respondent.

Developing sustainable leaders

It is good to see this growing recognition among HR professionals of the important role they have to play in both championing and supporting ESG efforts.

At Hult International Business School, we have been conducting research specifically into how leadership roles need to change in response to the critical environmental, social and human rights challenges facing us all.

Our findings underline the need for innovative learning and development interventions to help leaders, managers and future talent navigate the sustainability transitions that are happening right now.

Building literacy on sustainability and ESG issues is of course an important starting point, but our research suggests that first hand experiences are at the heart of what it takes for leaders to build the emotional connection and commitment to put the sustainability agenda front and centre in their work.

For the leaders interviewed in our study, this might have meant experiences such as engaging with people living in poverty, personal experience of the impact of climate change, or experience of the changing interests of key partners and stakeholders.

Influential mentors and participation in professional networks focused on ESG had also been formative experiences for many of our interviewees.

This has implications for the design of learning and development, as well as for the way HR approaches the wider task of managing talent and succession planning programmes.

Leadership development activities need to be structured to create opportunities for current and future senior leaders to have precisely these kinds of personal, first-hand experiences, through powerful experiential learning.

HR professionals also need to value these kinds of life experiences when making decisions about recruitment, career development and succession planning, and make sure they are embedded in the HR processes that underpin these.

As one survey respondent said: “It’s time for HR to contribute and view this as an opportunity to strengthen a purpose-led EVP just as much as an opportunity to help save our planet.”

The next stage of our research will look at the evolving role of HR in sustainability, surveying what kinds of activities HR departments are increasingly engaging in in relation to sustainability and ESG, and what they are learning about what works.

Matt Gitsham is director of the sustainability research lab at Hult International Business School. To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/content/features/hr-most-influential-s-top-priorities-sustainability-esg-and-achieving-net-zero/

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Tags: accountability, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, ESG, green marketing, Human Resources, responsible brands, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, DEI, ESG, social responsibility, sustainability

The Global Rise of Healthy Building Policy

30 08 2023

From the International Well-being Institute via CSR Newswire • Reposted: August 30, 2023

The past few years in the United States have seen remarkable progress in the adoption and implementation of healthy building policies. The U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) has issued two unanimous policy resolutions, one in 2020 and another in 2022, endorsing healthy buildings as a powerful tool to advance public health and an essential defense against future health threats. Heeding the call, cities like Miami, Jersey City and Oklahoma City are now leading by example, scaling the WELL Health-Safety Rating across a portfolio of municipal buildings. The Biden Administration too has shined a bright light on healthy buildings with the first ever White House Summit on Indoor Air Quality and the launch of the Clean Air in Buildings Challenge, not to mention CDC’s recent guidance on ventilation and GSA’s efforts to drive healthy building research and promote the Health in Buildings roundtable.

It’s clear that, increasingly, governments at all levels are stepping up to help create spaces that support health and well-being. And just as the momentum continues to build in the U.S., a similar trend is unfolding in other parts of the world, reflecting a universal demand for healthier spaces.

In the United Kingdom, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) in July announced efforts to increase uptake of occupational health services in the workplace. The policy effort encourages employers to ramp up these services to help employees access vital mental and physical health support at work, particularly for those working in small and medium-sized enterprises.
In the United Arab Emirates, The Dubai Land Department (DLD)’s Real Estate Regulatory Agency (RERA) has officially adopted the WELL Health-Safety Rating and is encouraging organizations to align with the program in jointly owned properties (JOPs) and enhance investor confidence.
In the European Union this past spring, the EU Parliament passed its Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), a key legislative tool to set and implement building decarbonization goals. The approved EPBD included an important healthy building provision, Article 11a, titled, “Indoor Environmental Quality,” which says, “Member States shall set requirements for the implementation of adequate indoor environmental quality standards in buildings in order to maintain a healthy indoor climate.”
In Australia, the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee, the national government’s top health protection committee, announced that it was making indoor air quality a national priority. “Today is about putting this on the agenda, on the map,” said Member of Parliament Dr. Michelle Ananda-Rajah, a longtime advocate of prioritizing IAQ and who, earlier this year, also hosted a Clean Air Forum earlier this year.
In Singapore, the National Environmental Agency recently issued updated guidance on improving ventilation and indoor air quality in buildings to better support an healthy indoor environment.

Globally, healthy building policies are shaping more than just urban landscapes, they’re transforming how our indoor spaces protect and enhance our health. As the global understanding deepens about the pivotal role healthy buildings can play in improving public health, there’s a mounting urgency to utilize policy to accelerate spaces that advance human health and well-being. Together, these global policy efforts will help accelerate the healthy buildings movement, enabling their benefits to reach more and more people around the world.

To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/782271-global-rise-healthy-building-policy

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Tags: accountability, Clean Air in Buildings Challenge, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, ESG, green marketing, GSA, Healthy Buildings, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands, USCM
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, ESG, reputation management, social responsibility, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands

What social change movements can learn from fly fishing: The value of a care-focused message

30 08 2023

Fly-fishing in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. Image: Joseph/Flickr, CC BY-SA

By Brett Crawford, Associate Professor of Management, Grand Valley State University; Erica Coslor, Senior Lecturer in Management, The University of Melbourne and Madeline Toubiana, Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship and Organization, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa via The Conversation • Reposted: August 30, 2023

Summer and fall are prime times for getting outdoors across the U.S. According to an annual survey produced by the outdoor industry, 55% of Americans age 6 and up participated in some kind of outdoor recreation in 2022, and that number is on the rise.

However, the activities they choose are shifting. Over the past century, participation has declined in some activities, such as hunting, and increased in others, like bird-watching.

These shifts reflect many factors, including demographic trends and urbanization. But outdoor activities also have their own cultures, which can powerfully affect how participants think about nature.

As scholars who think about organizational theory, managementand entrepreneurship, we are interested in understanding effective ways to promote social change. In a recent study, we analyzed the work of the nonprofit group Trout Unlimited, which centers on protecting rivers and streams across the U.S. that harbor wild and native trout and salmon.

We found that since its founding in 1959, Trout Unlimited has pursued a unique type of social change. Historically, people fished to obtain food – but Trout Unlimited has reframed the sport as a vehicle for environmental conservation. It did this by gradually shifting members from catch and keep practices to catch and release, with fish carefully returned to the water. In our view, this strategy offers a powerful example of energizing social change through care, rather than disruptive strategies that emphasize power, anger and fearmongering.

A sport that inspires devotion

Fishing is very popular in the U.S.: As of 2016, more then 35 million Americans fished, mainly in fresh water. Trout Unlimited was founded in 1959 on the banks of Michigan’s Au Sable River with the aim of building a strong conservation ethic among anglers. Today, the group has more than 300,000 members spanning hundreds of local chapters across the U.S.

Many Trout Unlimited members prefer fly fishing, a technique that uses a rod, reel, specialized weighted fishing line and artificial flies designed to mimic trout’s natural food sources. Trout generally thrive in beautiful, fast-flowing, cold-water streams and rivers; to catch them, fly fishers repeatedly cast a line so that their lure moves like a flying insect landing and floating on the water. It’s a sport that combines deep knowledge of a specific location with time-honored techniques.

In the 1653 classic “The Compleat Angler,” English writer Izaak Walton called fly fishing “an art worthy the knowledge and practice of a wise man.” Norman Maclean’s 1976 book “A River Runs Through It,” which recounts the author’s childhood experiences fishing Montana’s Big Blackfoot River, declares, “In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.” Changing the practices of devoted anglers is no small feat.

Fly-fishing and stewardship

The first stage of change that Trout Unlimited pursued in its interactions with members was what we call mending – fixing aspects of a practice that are seen as problematic or damaging. For Trout Unlimited, that meant subtly removing harvesting practice from images of fly fishing, while simultaneously reinforcing anglers’ deep connections to rivers.

This reframing began in the late 1960s and continues today, as we learned by analyzing cover images and editorials from “Trout,” the organization’s member magazine, and interviewing staffers at Trout Unlimited and others throughout the fly fishing industry. Editors of “Trout” scrubbed away images of harvesting gear, such as creels, stringers and spears. Instead, they featured photos of trout being safely released and of caught fish remaining underwater in their environment.

These changes did not directly speak to or challenge anglers’ practices. Instead, they worked more subtly. “Trout” editors also began to describe old harvesting artifacts like creels as “something of a curio” and “relics of the past.”

In another editorial shift, the magazine increasingly featured images of vast river landscapes rather than close-up photos of people fishing. This approach elevated the experience of being in nature above that of catching fish.

Editors included poetry and sermonettes in the magazine that modeled normative values of conservation and catch and release practices. Here’s one example:

Carefully I reach out, and lift him in my net,

But I make sure not to touch him, until my hands are wet.

For not doing so would damage him, and that would not be right,

For this indeed I owe him, for such a noble fight.

As gently as I can, I remove the hook and set him free …

Using words and images, the magazine sought to trigger positive emotions and a sense of deep connection and love for trout.

Caring for fishing grounds

As Trout Unlimited built momentum in the 1960s and ’70s, the organization made river and stream restoration a major priority. This period marked the birth of the modern environmental movement. Americans were recognizing that industrial development was harming precious natural resources, including fishing grounds.

Logging had ravaged wetlands and stream banks along river corridors. Dam construction, particularly in Western states, was blocking fish passage, preventing trout and salmon from swimming upstream to their spawning grounds. Acid drainage from mining operations was contaminating waterways. And recreational and commercial fishers were over-harvesting many important species.

Trout Unlimited chapters organized events that ranged from local river cleanups to advocating for federal Wild and Scenic designation for free-flowing rivers and streams. This status protects them from overuse and in-stream development, such as dams and irrigation diversions.

Members also campaigned for dam removal to open up fish spawning habitat and for creating “no-kill” zones along stretches of rivers, where catch and release was required. Trout Unlimited framed these efforts as supporting fly fishing through positive change.

An inclusive message

Today, Trout Unlimited centers conservation in its mission of protecting, reconnecting, restoring and sustaining coldwater fisheries. We see the organization as an important model in a world driven by social media algorithms that amplify negative emotions. In our view, driving change through actions that represent love and care, rather than anger and shame, could engage more people in tackling major social challenges.

This approach does have limitations. It is useful when a practice can be altered to be more sustainable, as was the case with catch and release. However, as recent research shows, recreational fishing still has major environmental impacts, especially on marine species. And sometimes social change requires ending widespread practices altogether. Nonetheless, the key takeaway for us from Trout Unlimited’s work is that social change doesn’t have to vilify in order to succeed.

To see the original post, follow this link: https://theconversation.com/what-social-change-movements-can-learn-from-fly-fishing-the-value-of-a-care-focused-message-207284

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Tags: accountability, Conservation, corporate social responsibility, sustainability, sustainable branding, Trout Unlimited
Categories : Climate Change, ESG, sustainability, sustainable branding

Introducing Resilience Science: A Visionary Shift for Corporate Strategy and Reporting

29 08 2023

By Luke Heilbuth via Sustainable Brands • Reposted: August 29, 2023

Climate resilience is the ‘resilience of a company’s strategy and business model to climate-related changes, developments and uncertainties.’ This language is worth reflecting on, as it brings the concept of resilience science into mainstream business thinking.

Background

In June, the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) issued its inaugural standards — IFRS S1 and IFRS S2. The Standards create a common language for companies to report on how sustainability and climate-related risks and opportunities affect their prospects. They reflect what investors want, and will form the basis of mandatory climate-related reporting requirements in many advanced jurisdictions (aside from the United States).

This article explores the most interesting part of IFRS S2: the climate-resilience assessment. Building on the TCFD — which IFRS S2 has now supplanted — climate resilience is defined as the “resilience of a company’s strategy and business model to climate-related changes, developments and uncertainties” [emphasis added]. This language is worth reflecting on, as it brings the concept of resilience science into mainstream business thinking.

Tipping points and ignorance

Invented by Canadian ecologist C.S. “Buzz” Holling in 1973, resilience science explains how human-natural systems (the interconnected relationship between humans and the environment) do not exist in a fixed state — but are instead characterized by constant change and tipping points.

This is not how businesspeople usually think. Instead, they assume that a complex system — like an organisation — is stable, isolated, measurable and linear. Take COVID: Most of us thought things would be disrupted for a time before ‘bouncing back’ to normal. The mistake is right there in the language. Post pandemic, we didn’t go back. The way we live and work changed.

A better understanding of the world acknowledges that systems go through adaptive cycles of growth, decay, restructuring and renewal. As business leaders, we must acknowledge our lack of certainty and control. We should reimagine our actions, plans and strategies as experiments that, as in science, must be constantly re-evaluated.

As author Nassim Taleb says in Fooled by Randomness, probability is “the acceptance of the lack of certainty in our knowledge and the development of methods for dealing with our ignorance.”

That’s why IFRS S2 is not the dry reporting standard it appears at first view, but something quite visionary — it embraces uncertainty and consents to our ignorance. It asks us to see through the ‘illusion’ of the pristine, perfectly self-contained balance sheet — where the ledger is always squared, and all things are known.

Focus on the process

To explain the “changes, developments and uncertainties” that arise from the physical and transition risks and opportunities of climate change, a company is required to use scenario analysis. This is not meant to predict what might happen in the future — but to offer up ‘what if’ scenarios to help your business better think through its options and plan accordingly.

IFRS S2 says you must disclose the “inputs and key assumptions” used in your scenarios — not just the result. In other words, your explanation of the process is essential. This is because investors want to test the quality of your thinking, rather than simply reading a claim that your business is resilient.

Staying practical

The method of scenario analysis you employ is up to you, and should be “commensurate with your circumstances.” For most businesses, an expensive, quantitative-modelling exercise is not required or even the best option. The authors of IFRS S2 recognize the burden that companies face in complying with a science-based approach to climate change.

As a result, they have sought to navigate a practical approach that requires the use of “all reasonable and supportable information” (the floor of the effort required) available at the reporting date without “undue cost or effort” (the ceiling). The concept is explained by ISSB Vice Chair Sue Lloyd in this webinar. The IPCC, IEA and PRI all provide publicly available scenarios which provide the basis for a useful, cost-effective and strategic approach.

Finally, your company is not required to perform a scenario analysis as part of the reporting effort each year. The minimum requirement for updating your scenarios is whenever you review your corporate strategy as part of the strategic planning cycle. That said, each year you must revisit the assumptions that underpinned your analysis and consider whether any changes affect the assessment of your company’s climate resilience. The IFRS refers to this annual update as a “resilience assessment.”

Scenario analysis done well will ultimately help you fine-tune your overall strategy and business model — enhancing your business’s prospects and resilience against the vagaries of an uncertain future.

In recent years, investor portfolios have grown too big to avoid systemic risks such as climate change. Recognizing their vulnerability to black swans, institutional investors have pushed investee companies to prioritize resilience over short-term cost optimisation; the IFRS Standards reflect the trend. As Taleb says, the defining characteristic of change is that it cannot be predicted: “This is the central illusion in life — that randomness is a risk — that it is a bad thing.”

To see the original post, follow this link: https://sustainablebrands.com/read/new-metrics/resilience-science-shift-corporate-strategy-reporting

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Tags: accountability, climate resilence, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, ESG, green marketing, IFRS s2, ISSB, responsible brands, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, DEI, ESG, green marketing, reputation management, social responsibility, sustainable branding

Climate Finance Must Combat Climate Prisoners

29 08 2023

A demonstrator shows support for climate justice at an Earth Day rally in Washington, D.C. earlier this year. Image credits: Victoria Pickering/Flickr and Markus Spiske/Unsplash

By David Hunter from Triple Pundit • Reposted: August 29, 2023

Early next month, representatives from more than 500 banks from around the world will gather to explore how to promote sustainable development and “align financial flows” with the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Participants in the upcoming Finance in Common Summit account for 12 percent of global investment annually with $23 trillion in assets combined, allowing for enormous potential impact.

Not surprisingly, financing energy transitions will be central to the discussions, including Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs), or creative financing packages to support developing countries’ transitions away from coal. Four JETPs have been announced so far with South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam and Senegal. India is next in line. G7 countries and development banks are instrumental to financing these initiatives.

But like anything that requires a massive infrastructure shift, transparency and accountability are essential to ensure that the billions of allocated dollars are actually used for their intended purpose. In the case of the JETPs, this means moving toward renewable energy to benefit all communities. Such transparency and accountability is only possible where local NGOs and civil society experts can participate freely and fully in public discussions, provide independent monitoring of social and environmental impacts, and support communities to advocate for their rights.

This is what the “just” aspect of the just transition is all about — which is why financial institutions should be paying very close attention to the situation of civil society voices in the countries they are prioritizing.

Take Vietnam as an example.

Two development banks — the International Finance Corp. and the Asian Development Bank — joined forces with the U.S., U.K. and other G7 nations to finance a $15.5 billion JETP with Vietnam. Meanwhile, in the last couple of years, the Vietnamese government has arrested and detained five of the country’s most prominent climate leaders who should be at the forefront of this process. The charges all relate to “tax evasion,” but ample evidence, including multiple declarations from U.N. experts and treaty bodies, point to these vague laws being used to silence environmental defenders in Vietnam.

One of the climate justice heroes currently serving a five-year prison sentence in Vietnam is Mr. Dang Dinh Bach (“Bach”), whom I know personally both as a former student and as a partner in a U.S.-funded law reform project. His work centered around protecting vulnerable communities from pollution, including plastic waste, asbestos and coal-fired power plants. I was impressed with his strong sense of values, always respecting the Vietnamese legal system and speaking highly of the government. He’s still in jail despite numerous high-level calls for his release and a U.N. opinion that found his imprisonment a “violation of international law” in the context of a “systemic problem with arbitrary detention” of environmental defenders in Vietnam.

Just a few months ago, another climate champion in Vietnam, Obama Foundation ScholarHoang Thi Minh Hong, was detained on similar charges, continuing this highly concerning trend. The U.N. and several governments, including the U.S. and the U.K., have all released statements calling for her release, but to no avail.

Internationally-renowned climate leader and Goldman Environmental Prize Winner Ms. Nguy Thi Khanh was recently released after serving 16 months in prison on similar tax-evasion charges. Environmental groups continue to face threats, and many have shut down in reaction to this chilling situation.

For all banks that will be participating in the upcoming Finance in Common Summit, these arrests should be a red flag. Even more so for the International Finance Corp. and the Asian Development Bank, as they have recognized the link between dissent and sustainable financing, having adopted specific policies protecting those who voice opinions about the projects they fund.

The World Bank, of which the International Finance Corp. is a part, has a zero-tolerance policyaround reprisals and retaliation against those who openly share their views about projects it funds, stating: “Any form of intimidation against people who comment on Bank projects, research, activities and their impact, goes against our core values of respecting the people we work for and acting with utmost integrity.” The Asian Development Bank’s policy similarly says that civil society participation in its projects “fundamentally supports good governance, citizenship and accountability of the state.”

Both development banks must know that funding a JETP in Vietnam while the government is punishing those who argued for this precise transition violates the spirit of their policies and undermines the ultimate effectiveness of their JETP investments.

Banks should not be supporting JETPs in any country where advocating for clean energy is treated as a crime under the guise of tax fraud. If Bach, Hoang and Khanh can be arrested for taking reasoned positions against coal-fired power plants or other projects that exacerbate climate change, then anybody is at risk of being arbitrarily imprisoned in Vietnam for supporting the goals of the JETP in the future. Each of these individuals worked within the system and was eager to help monitor and implement the JETP on behalf of impacted communities.

To achieve a truly just energy transition in Vietnam, financing of the JETP must be contingent upon the urgent release of Bach, Hoang, and the other environmental defenders serving harsh and unjust sentences. In addition, civil society must be able to safely and freely contribute to the work needed for Vietnam to meet its net-zero emission target by 2050 and the JETP commitments without retaliation or threat of imprisonment. The same should be true for all countries receiving billions of dollars to meet the Paris Agreement goals.

At this year’s Finance in Common Summit, I urge the participating banks that finance JETPs or any other type of climate-forward initiatives to do their due diligence and make sure their money will actually be used to fund truly just energy transitions.

To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2023/climate-finance-climate-justice/782171

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Tags: accountability, Climate Justice, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, ESG, green marketing, JETPs, responsible brands, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands, World Bank
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, social responsibility, sustainable branding, sustainable brands

Looking for a US ‘climate haven’ away from heat and disaster risks? Good luck finding one

25 08 2023

Burlington, Vt., is often named as a ‘climate haven,’ but surrounding areas flooded during extreme storms in July 2023. Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

By Julie Arbit. Researcher at the Center for Social Solutions, University of Michigan; Brad Bottoms, Data Scientist at the Center for Social Solutions, University of Michigan and Earl Lewis, Director and Founder, Center for Social Solutions, Professor of History, Afroamerican and African Studies, and public policy, University of Michigan via The Conversation • Reposted: August 25, 2023

Southeast Michigan seemed like the perfect “climate haven.”

“My family has owned my home since the ‘60s. … Even when my dad was a kid and lived there, no floods, no floods, no floods, no floods. Until [2021],” one southeast Michigan resident told us. That June, a storm dumped more than 6 inches of rain on the region, overloading stormwater systems and flooding homes.

That sense of living through unexpected and unprecedented disasters resonates with more Americans each year, we have found in our research into the past, present and future of risk and resilience.

An analysis of federal disaster declarations for weather-related events puts more data behind the fears – the average number of disaster declarations has skyrocketed since 2000 to nearly twicethat of the preceding 20-year period.

A man and woman sit on a park bench with water up to the man's knees. The woman is sitting on the chair back. A car in the street is flooded up to the roof. — *A powerful storm system in 2023 flooded communities across Vermont and left large parts of the capital, Montpelier, underwater. John Tully for The Washington Post via Getty Images*

As people question how livable the world will be in a warming future, a narrative around climate migration and “climate havens” has emerged.

These “climate havens” are areas touted by researchers, public officials and city planners as natural refuges from extreme climate conditions. Some climate havens are already welcomingpeople escaping the effects of climate change elsewhere. Many have affordable housing and legacy infrastructure from their larger populations before the mid-20th century, when people began to leave as industries disappeared.

But they aren’t disaster-proof – or necessarily ready for the changing climate.

Six climate havens

Some of the most cited “havens” in research by national organizations and in news media are older cities in the Great Lakes region, upper Midwest and Northeast. They include Ann Arbor, Michigan; Duluth, Minnesota; Minneapolis; Buffalo, New York; Burlington, Vermont; and Madison, Wisconsin.

Yet each of these cities will likely have to contend with some of the greatest temperature increases in the country in the coming years. Warmer air also has a higher capacity to hold water vapor, causing more frequent, intense and longer duration storms.

These cities are already feeling the impacts of climate change. In 2023 alone, “haven” regions in Wisconsin, Vermont and Michigan suffered significant damage from powerful storms and flooding.

The previous winter was also catastrophic: Lake-effect snow fueled by moisture from the still-open water of Lake Erie dumped over 4 feet of snow on Buffalo, leaving nearly 50 people dead and thousands of households without power or heat. Duluth reached near-record snowfall and faced significant flooding as unseasonably high temperatures caused rapid snowmelt in April.

Two people shovel knee-deep snow off a roof. — A lake-effect snowstorm in November 2014 buried Buffalo, N.Y., under more than 5 feet of snow and caused hundreds of roofs to collapse. A similar storm hit in December 2022. Patrick McPartland/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Heavy rainfall and extreme winter storms can cause widespread damage to the energy grid and significant flooding, and heighten the risk of waterborne disease outbreaks. These effects are particularly notable in legacy Great Lakes cities with aging energy and water infrastructure.

Older infrastructure wasn’t built for this

Older cities tend to have older infrastructure that likely wasn’t built to withstand more extreme weather events. They are now scrambling to shore up their systems.

Many cities are investing in infrastructure upgrades, but these upgrades tend to be fragmented, are not permanent fixes and often lack long-term funding. Typically, they also are not broad enough to protect entire cities from the effects of climate change and can exacerbate existing vulnerabilities.

Workers in a rock cavern underground look up at a giant hole in the ceiling and pipe. — *Crews in Minneapolis work on a new stormwater tunnel underneath downtown. It’s designed to help protect part of the city, but not all of it. Alex Kormann/Star Tribune via Getty Images*

Electricity grids are extremely vulnerable to the mounting effects of severe thunderstorms and winter storms on power lines. Vermont and Michigan are ranked 45th and 46th among the states, respectively, in electricity reliability, which incorporates the frequency of outages and the time it takes utilities to restore power.

Stormwater systems in the Great Lakes region also regularly fail to keep pace with the heavy rainfall and rapid snowmelt caused by climate change. Stormwater systems are routinely designed in accordance with precipitation analyses from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration called Atlas 14, which don’t account for climate change. A new version won’t be available until 2026 at the earliest.

At the confluence of these infrastructure challenges is more frequent and extensive urban flooding in and around haven cities. An analysis by the First Street Foundation, which incorporates future climate projections into precipitation modeling, reveals that five of these six haven cities face moderate or major flood risk.

Disaster declaration data shows that the counties housing these six cities have experienced an average of six declarations for severe storms and flooding since 2000, about one every 3.9 years, and these are on the rise.

An aerial photo shows the shoreline of Lake Mendota and the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. — *Madison, Wis., has seen warmer summers and more precipitation in the past decade. Jeff Miller/UW-Madison, CC BY*

Intensified precipitation can further stress stormwater infrastructure, resulting in basement flooding, contamination of drinking water sources in cities with legacy sewage systems, and hazardous road and highway flooding. Transportation systemsare also contending with hotter temperatures and pavement not designed for extreme heat.

As these trends ramp up, cities everywhere will also have to pay attention to systemic inequalities in vulnerability that often fall along lines of race, wealth and mobility. Urban heat island effects, energy insecurity and heightened flood risk are just a few of the issues intensified by climate change that tend to hit poor residents harder.

What can cities do to prepare?

So, what is a haven city to do in the face of pressing climate changes and population influx?

Decision-makers can hope for the best, but must plan for the worst. That means working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change, but also assessing the community’s physical infrastructure and social safety nets for vulnerabilities that become more likely in a warming climate.

Collaborating across sectors is also essential. For example, a community may rely on the same water resources for energy, drinking water and recreation. Climate change can affect all three. Working across sectors and including community input in planning for climate change can help highlight concerns early.

There are a number of innovative ways that cities can fund infrastructure projects, such as public-private partnerships and green banks that help support sustainability projects. DC Green Bank in Washington, D.C., for example, works with private companies to mobilize funding for natural stormwater management projects and energy efficiency.

Cities will have to remain vigilant about reducing emissions that contribute to climate change, and at the same time prepare for the climate risks creeping toward even the “climate havens” of the globe.

To see the original post, follow this link: https://theconversation.com/looking-for-a-us-climate-haven-away-from-heat-and-disaster-risks-good-luck-finding-one-211990

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Tags: Climate Change, Climate Havens, corporate social responsibility, ESG, sustainability, sustainable branding
Categories : Climate Change, responsible brands, social responsibility, sustainable brands

Brands Would Do Well to Join the ‘Resale Revolution’

22 08 2023

Image: floorfound.com

Younger consumers are pushing resale into mainstream retail; and it’s changing how brands, platforms and other services that support commerce support and strategize around it. By Geoff Nudelman via Sustainable Brands • Reposted: August 22, 2023

We’re experiencing a “resale revolution;” and it’s fundamentally changing the way many of us in the US shop, according to the 2023 Reuse Report by global ecommerce marketplace Mercari.

According to the report, the US secondhand market is expected to reach $325 billion by 2031. What’s even more striking are the ways in which resale is slowly but surely becoming an integral part of the broader retail landscape; according to the report, Mercari has had more than 50 million downloads and gets 350,000 new listings every day in the US alone.

“Well over half of people surveyed for the report said buying secondhand is a lifestyle choice; and there’s a definite bias to younger consumers,” Neil Saunders, managing director ofGlobalData (which worked with Mercari to compile the report), told Sustainable Brands®.

From July 2022 – July 2023, the report notes almost 82 percent of US consumers purchased a secondhand item — 89 percent of millennials and 83 percent of Gen Z shopped resale. That shows the tilt towards resale is there with younger shoppers in ways that are erasing any prior, dated stigmas or stereotypes of buying used.

Falling right in line with the broader trend of climate-driven purchasing behaviors by younger consumers, the report stated that well above 20 percent of Millennial and Gen Z buyers placed “reducing environmental impact” as a factor in choosing to buy something secondhand. Those numbers also track on the opposite side — as younger consumers are also looking for more ways to extend the life of unused items through resale.

“We’ve seen a notable shift in the conversation around resale within the retail industry; and it’s clear that resale will play an important role in the wider industry’s move towards a more circular economy,” Visa chief sustainability officer Douglas Sabo told SB.

Embracing the powerful potential of resale

The shift is so notable that retail-adjacent players such as Visa are reshaping portions of their business as more shoppers turn to recommerce.

For Visa, this innovation comes in the form of initiatives such as its recently launched Recommerce Behavioral Insights Lab — which is facilitating several real-world experiments to better understand how to integrate circular practices into everyday retail.

According to Sabo, resale businesses are still working on that consumer connection — with only 23 percent of UK-based small businesses, for example, offering a resale option.

For a company such as eBay — arguably a resale pioneer long before it was ever a burgeoning trend — it requires a redefinition of what the platform could be for a new generation of buyers and sellers.

“Our platform has transformed into a hub for recommerce in many categories, driven by the sustainability-conscious preferences of younger generations like Gen Z,” says Renee Morin, the online auction company’s chief sustainability officer.

Despite the emergence of rival platforms such as Mercari, eBay remains a go-to, global marketplace for verified and authenticated goods through various self-run programs — especially with small appliances and electronics, which stand to have a greater positive environmental impact the longer they’re kept in service and out of the trash.

“Growth in eBay Refurbished GMV (gross merchandise volume) accelerated during Q1 2023, posting double-digit year-over-year growth with the addition of new categories — including computing and video game peripherals — as well as more brands and OEMs in existing categories,” Morin adds.

Apparel has the most potential and movement

One of the more interesting findings to come out of Mercari’s Reuse Report was the growth in male-identifying buyers exploring resale. 90 percent of male-identified consumers surveyed said they plan to purchase at least one secondhand item in the next year — and that’s supported by a 14.5 percent year-over-year growth in the “menswear” category on Mercari. Clearly, men’s-focused clothing is growing; and men are looking for more access to expensive items (sneakers, watches, etc) through verified resale channels. (GlobalData expects the “menswear” category to grow by 152 percent by 2031, according to the report. This is second only to “footwear,” which arguably could be partially incorporated into the “menswear” category, but remains separate for Mercari’s purposes.)

Over the last three years, apparel has easily been the largest growth category for recommerce — driven by streetwear, luxury and outdoor apparel brands alike looking to tap into new channels with current and new buyers. Whether by letting current customers buy and sell old pieces or offering a company’s own deadstock, flawed items or limited finds, apparel appears to be the most agile area for resale.

Recommerce is sure to continue evolving as consumers continue to explore it. Any entity with a stake in retail should adopt new messaging and offer more education to grow the segment, which is already making impact both in terms of the environment and the corporate bottom line: As Recurate asserted in its inaugural Resale Report, recommerce will be key for brands to unlock the next level of growth, engagement and consumer loyalty.

To see the original post, follow this link: https://sustainablebrands.com/read/defining-the-next-economy/mercari-brands-join-resale-revolution

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Tags: accountability, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, ESG, Gen Z, Recommerce, Recurate, Resale Report, responsible brands, Reuse Report', Secondhand, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, responsible brands, social responsibility, sustainability

What does it take to be a Chief Sustainability Officer?

22 08 2023

Image: Odgers Berndtson

By Lucy Buchholz from Sustainability Magazine • Reposted: August 22, 2023

Sarah Gould discusses the crucial aspects needed for Chief Sustainability Officer

Shirley Parsons’ Sarah Gould discusses the crucial aspects needed for Chief Sustainability Officer to succeed in their businesses, to make lasting change

The pressure is on businesses, governments and other enterprises to deliver on commitments to hit decarbonisation targets. An organisation’s Chief Sustainability Officer or Head of Sustainability can lead that fight, but how do you get the right person for the job?

In an ever-changing economic landscape, the one thing that continues to grow is the demand for sustainability professionals, which makes it imperative to choose the right individual to take the lead in implementing vital policies.

Sustainability Magazine speaks exclusively to Sarah Gould, Principal Sustainability & ESG Consultant at Shirley Parsons, who is an expert in recruiting sustainability leaders and was recently placed as Head of Sustainability for a global logistics organisation.

What are the critical sustainability challenges for organisations?

The critical challenge for any organisation is recruiting a skilled, proactive and effective sustainability leader to drive its strategy forward. Without the right person at the helm, any sustainability drive can quickly end up on the rocks or going around in circles.

“We are seeing specialists in carbon, social values, waste, biodiversity, circular economy, energy and many other skills,” Sarah says. “Considering what an organisation wants to achieve from a senior hire helps set a clear direction and helps us effectively partner with our clients to make that match.”

Sarah continues to explain that it’s a collaboration to scope out the role and understand the purpose of the hire, as well as how it feeds into the goals and vision of the company. “It’s important to look at things from the candidate’s perspective when hiring,” she adds. “A candidate will not move just because it is a good name on their CV – they want to know what you will offer them, and they aren’t just talking about finances.”

How to attract and retain candidates

Retention and attraction are key challenges for a lot of organisations in a tight labour market. More individuals now want to know about an organisation’s mission – including their values, culture, diversity, social responsibility and career development opportunities, to name a few. That’s why it’s important to be prepared to answer their questions and provide a real sense of what it is like to work at your company.

“A candidate going for a Chief Sustainability Officer, Head of Sustainability or ESG position will want to know how much freedom they have to drive sustainability, who they report to – which gives them an idea of the influence they will have – and whether the organisation wants to make a positive change or if they are just greenwashing,” Sarah shares.

“It’s important to always be honest with candidates about your organisation’s commitment because if something is promised and not delivered, you will likely need to start hiring again quickly. Thinking about a candidate’s aspirations and how you can help them achieve their goals will prove beneficial.”

Assessing the suitability of candidates for sustainable careers

To identify critical personality traits and aspirations, Shirley Parsons uses MAPP (motivations, aspirations, personality and progression), a bespoke personality profiling system which is used both as part of the interview process and to assess teams ahead of future hires, determine what is missing and what is needed.

“Most suitable candidates have several options to choose from and will judge how efficient an organisation is from how you deal with them,” Sarah says. “Companies are losing candidates due to a lack of speed so consider how you can quicken your interview process. Make sure you have all the details sorted – development opportunities, training, benefits, location, and flexible working are all questions suitable candidates will ask.”

Sarah continues to explain that many organisations expect a Head of Sustainability to have several years of experience in their sector. However, sustainability is a growing skill area and doesn’t have the candidate pool of other technical industries, such as health and safety. Therefore, sector experience can be learned.

Finally, organisations should consider what can be gained by hiring someone outside of the sector. “You are hiring the Head of Sustainability for their expertise in sustainability, leadership, commercial awareness, and personality skills,” Sarah says, “and not for their 10 years of working in the sector.”

To see the original post, follow this link: https://sustainabilitymag.com/articles/what-does-it-take-to-be-a-chief-sustainability-officer

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Tags: accountability, Chief Sustainability Officer, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, ESG, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, responsible brands, social responsibility, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands

Rethinking Growth: Is Degrowth The Answer To A Sustainable Future?

22 08 2023

Is continuous growth compatible with our sustainable development goals? Photo: GETTY

By Nils Rokke, Contributor via Forbes • Reposted: August 22, 2023

The word “degrowth” might be unfamiliar to many ears, but its meaning has never been more critical to understand. Our current economic model’s foundation lies in a presumptive flaw—the continuous belief in infinite growth. But what happens when the pillars of this belief crumble?

For years, experts warned of the impending limitations of continuous growth. The groundbreaking 1972 book, “Limits to Growth,” spotlighted our planet’s sustainable boundaries. This work evaluated how population, living standards, and resource utilization converge and affect sustainability.

Almost four decades later, Professor Jorgen Randers, one of the book’s authors, published an update titled “2052.” Here, he highlighted a critical turning point: our economic model becomes flawed when equity becomes central, and justice prevails.

Consumption and wealth continue to define strategy

Western countries often equate a happy life with high resource consumption and wealth. However, Bhutan offers a contrasting model. It introduced the “happiness economy,” where the nation prioritizes citizens’ happiness over economic growth, suggesting that happiness can be decoupled from resource-intensive activities.

Yet, the growth principle continues to dominate global strategies, evident in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Target number 8, for instance, emphasizes “decent work and economic growth.” Recent Holberg Prize awardee, Professor Joan Martinez-Alier, has openly criticized this, arguing that such a goal might be incompatible with other SDGs.

Introducing degrowth and demand reduction

“Degrowth” is a term that advocates for a deliberate, socially just, and equitable reduction in the scale of production and consumption. The goal of degrowth is to achieve better well-being and improved ecological conditions, reducing the size of the global economy to fit within the planet’s biophysical limits.

There are several key principles to degrowth, including sustainability, social well-being, equity, direct democracy, and localized economies.

Understanding degrowth also requires us to examine the concept of demand reduction. This can be categorized into three intertwined yet distinct components:

Efficiency: Maximizing output while minimizing resource use. It’s about doing more with less.

Sufficiency: Re-evaluating the amount of production and consumption truly necessary for human well-being.

Behavioral Change: Shifting societal habits towards sustainability, wherein society collectively and willingly opts for less consumption.

Demand reduction is usually only discussed in policy debates regarding a short-term response to the energy crisis, and rarely as a prerequisite to reaching net zero.

Sometimes the term degrowth is confused with post-growth, a common designation of the various paths we can take when growth has stopped or declined. This gives more freedom to choose paths that allow a continuation of some practices at a smaller scale, whereas degrowth is a clear strategy to decrease growth. Degrowth is therefore one specific pathway in the post growth concept.

Degrowth requires a mindset shift

Jason Hickel, an economic anthropologist from the University of Barcelona, is a staunch advocate for degrowth. At a recent Brussels conference attended by top EU officials, Hickel emphasized the urgent need to reconsider GDP growth as our benchmark for societal success.

He critiqued the western world’s continued exploitation of global resources, effectively maintaining a colonial economy. His take: the real focus should be on meeting human needs, not just growth. However, this suggests a more dominant role for state governance, a model reminiscent of eco-communism, which has been criticized in the past.

Timothy Parrique from Lund University echoed these sentiments. He refuted the idea of producing more while using fewer resources, highlighting the necessity of a complete decoupling to stay within planetary boundaries.

Challengers to degrowth

However, the degrowth principle isn’t without its challengers. How, they argue, can we meet the energy and food demands of a growing population without growth? How can we simultaneously tackle climate change, poverty, and other pressing challenges without the momentum that growth provides?

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz raises an essential consideration: while sacrifices may be necessary, ensuring they’re fairly distributed is crucial. The core challenge with degrowth lies in this equity—how can we ensure everyone gets a fair share?

We must also consider if degrowth is genuinely a viable economic model. It could be argued that if our growth-centric model continues unchecked, it may simply stagnate and consequently ‘degrow’ on its own. But what repercussions would such organic degrowth have on our socio-economic structures?

The heart of the matter isn’t just about stopping growth but ensuring that any model adopted, whether growth or degrowth-oriented, satisfies people’s real needs in a manner that is considered fair and transparent.

Exceeded sustainable limits

Professor Johan Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, introduced and spent years analyzing the “planetary boundaries” principle. The findings are alarming: we’ve exceeded sustainable limits in various critical areas, from nitrogen cycles to extinction rates.

Moreover, while technological advances push for efficiency, there’s no evidence to suggest that increased efficiency results in decreased resource use. Instead, it seems to enable more people to use these resources, which again poses the question: how can we truly embrace degrowth?

Looking at unsustainable economic activities brings the issue into sharp focus. For instance, the sight of massive cruise ships and leisure boats at picturesque sites serves as a reminder of our high-resource consumption habits.

Infinite growth in a finite world is, by definition, unsustainable. Yet, as a society, we seem trapped in this growth mindset because we haven’t found an alternative. More research, discussions, and debates on these concepts are crucial.

The UN’s latest review on SDGs called for a “wholesale reform of our morally bankrupt financial system.” While such an acknowledgment is a step forward, the commitment to GDP growth as a primary measure persists. It’s high time for a global debate on the sustainability and equity of our growth principles.

Nils Rokke is Executive Vice President in SINTEF, Norway’s largest research institute. To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nilsrokke/2023/08/21/rethinking-growth-is-degrowth-the-answer-to-a-sustainable-future/?sh=23fda7203ba5

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Tags: accountability, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, De-Growth, ESG, green marketing, Limits to Growth, responsible brands, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, DEI, ESG, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands

Sustainability Drives Consumer Choice For Travelers

19 08 2023

Photo: Getty

By Richard Razgaitis, Forbes Councils Member via Forbes • Reposted: August 19, 2023

Travel contributes a disproportionate amount of greenhouse gas emissions into our atmosphere, and a powerful and growing movement has emerged within the travel and hospitality industry to show a commitment to environmentally friendly practices.

Consider that the 2,000-room New York Hilton Midtown now runs on a cogeneration plant that reduces its carbon footprint by over 30%, or that Royal Caribbean cruise ships use purification systems that remove 97% of sulfur dioxide emissions from their exhaust. Not satisfied with incremental steps, the Hotel Marcel in Connecticut is the country’s first net-zero energy hotel and generates all of its power needs through solar panels.

While it would be nice to believe that brands were making these choices for purely altruistic reasons, the reality is that these businesses are responding to consumer demand. For example, a survey commissioned by my company found that nearly 6 out of 10 travelers would prefer to stay at hotels that prioritized eco-friendly practices such as eliminating single-use plastics. That same study found that 30% of travelers would be willing to pay more to stay at hotels with green amenities, including available EV charging stations.

And while it’s true that this survey represents just one data point, it is consistent with the numbers we’ve seen in other research. A 2021 sustainability survey by Virtuoso found that 78% of luxury travelers prefer doing business with companies with strong sustainability policies, while a 2022 survey found that 75% of travelers would pay more for eco-friendly options if they knew how those funds were being used. And in the U.K., 61% of electric vehicle drivers consider EV charging stations a key factor when booking a hotel.

Whatever study you look at, one trend is abundantly clear: Demand for sustainable options and policies from the travel industry is not only strong but continuing to grow year after year.

It’s also worth noting that while many of these travel operators are making changes based on consumer preference, some are also responding to a growing number of laws meant to accelerate the trend. California and New York have both passed bills banning single-use toiletry bottles in hotels. To get ahead of this trend, mega-hotel chains such as Marriott and Hyatt enacted policies to remove all single-use toiletries from their properties.

Meanwhile, hotel chains and resorts as diverse as the Four Seasons, Hyatt and Disneyland have all launched initiatives to include water refill stations throughout their properties. In an interview with the New York Times (subscription required), Janet Redman, the climate and energy director for Green Peace, stated: “The travel world isn’t ignoring the severity of climate change. Many are even trying to find a way to slow it down so that tourism can keep thriving.”

How Hospitality Leaders Can Take Action

So what can hospitality leaders do to bring their businesses up to this new standard of sustainability that consumers expect? Here are a few options to consider.

• Decarbonize. Embracing energy efficiency and lowering your carbon footprint is appealing to guests and can also serve as a potential cost-savings where renewable energy sources, such as solar panels, are available and affordable.

• Reduce single-use plastics. Instead of offering guests single-use plastic water bottles, provide them with purified water through refill stations (full disclosure: my company offers these services, as do others.) Likewise, single-use plastic toiletries can be replaced with refillable bottles or recyclable packaging. Replacing plastic utensils with biodegradable bamboo ones can also give your guests a positive impression of your sustainability efforts.

• Reduce water usage. Installing water-efficient fixtures, such as flow regulators on showerheads or self-closing faucets that can shut off if inadvertently left on, can provide significant water savings. Even forgoing the use of pressure washers for cleaning can reduce the amount of water your property uses.

• Go car-free. Provide your guests with alternatives to driving their cars. Bikes and electric golf carts are excellent transportation in isolated areas. If you’re in an urban location with mass transit, provide guests with maps, schedules and guides to help them navigate your city’s trains and buses.

Remember that while many sustainability practices require an upfront investment, they can quickly pay for themselves by reducing waste and energy usage. In travel, good for the Earth is also good for business. If your hospitality brand isn’t prepared to adapt to this new reality, you could be increasingly out of step with your customers’ needs.

Rich ‘Raz’ Razgaitis co-founded FloWater in 2013 with a singular mission to put an end to single-use plastic water bottles. To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2023/08/18/sustainability-drives-consumer-choice-for-travelers/?sh=f90b27c273f5

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Tags: accountability, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, ESG, green marketing, Green Peace, responsible brands, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, social responsibility, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands

Why Sustainability Is A Strategic Imperative, Not An Option

19 08 2023

Graphic: Getty

By Shane Price, Forbes Councils Member via Forbes • Reposted August 19, 2023

So much of business goes on behind the scenes. A million and one factors go into building a company, selling a product and marketing a brand. But increasingly, there’s one issue that’s been at the crux of consumer behavior: Not how good the product or service is but how good it is for the planet.

Sustainability is more than just a buzzword, it’s the backbone of decision making for many consumers, particularly the up-and-coming generation. Comprising roughly a quarter of the world’s population, Gen-Z are expected to account for 40% of U.S. consumers once they come of age. Their motivations are drastically different from previous generations—they’re less brand loyal, they’re the first digitally-immersed cohort in history and they currently command a whopping $360 billion in purchasing power.

Beyond those dramatic differentiations, they’re also the driving force behind a tectonic shift in consumer priorities. Approximately three-quarters of them make their buying decisions based on sustainability, not brand name.

Let that sink in. No matter how good your product or reputation is, a huge subset of consumers will put that on the backburner if your company isn’t doing its part to lessen its environmental impact. From reducing your carbon footprint to implementing sustainable packaging to CSR strategies that contribute to global change, there are a lot of ways companies across all industries and verticals can make a difference. So, why aren’t more doing it?

Going green hasn’t always been a big part of the national identity, let alone consumer drive. In the 1960s, only 7% of all waste in the United States was recycled or diverted from landfills. Today, that number is closer to 35%, a 5x increase. That seems like great news until you look at that figure alongside the amount of waste produced. In the 1960s, the U.S. generated approximately 88 million tons of garbage. Today, that amount has more than tripled to 292 million tons.

More sustainable solutions are critical to the health of the planet. Gen-Z’s focus on environmentalism is a welcome change from the previous “waste not, want everything”ethos. But sustainability solutions are also critical to the health of your business. According to a joint study from McKinsey and NielsenIQ, products making environmental-, social- and corporate-governance-related claims averaged 28% cumulative growth over a five-year period, versus 20% for products that made no such claims.

The need is evident, but action isn’t universal. Although 90% of business leaders think sustainability is important, only 60% of companies have a sustainability strategy. For some, defining and measuring sustainability is a challenge. Others may be duped by an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality. But for many, fitting eco-friendly practices into their business case is simply too daunting a prospect and the benefits too far a reach. Being sustainable does often come with a significant cost, whether in materials, packaging or practices, but the long-range benefits are clear.

The McKinsey NielsenIQ study found that 60% of respondents of any age would pay more for a product with sustainable packaging. And they’ll keep coming back for it. A recent report found that 77% of consumer products and retail organizations saw that sustainability leads to a significant uptick in customer loyalty.

What’s more, sustainability can actually help make your business run better—companies with strong sustainability programs have higher employee morale (55% higher in companies with strong sustainability programs) and increased employee loyalty (38% higher). Increased motivation and morale, in turn, can help reduce absenteeism and boost productivity.

To recap: Sustainability can attract new customers, boost your bottom line, create a loyal customer base, foster a better employee culture and, last but certainly not least, help the planet thrive.

If you’re at the helm of a business and haven’t implemented sustainability into your organization, the time is now. Here are a few ways you can get started:

• Find your champions: In your business, who cares deeply about sustainability in their own lives? Who can help you lead the charge? Sharing the buy-in can help shepherd initiatives from the idea stage through the implementation process.

• Pick one big goal: Although there are many ways to become sustainable, focusing on one big, bold goal can help define your efforts and keep you from getting overwhelmed in the process.

• Be transparent: There will be challenges along the way, but sharing successes, failures, roadblocks and big wins internally and externally is a great way to be both accountable and authentic (two of Gen-Z’s favorite things).

• Partner up: You don’t have to do this alone. No matter your industry, chances are someone has a service, product or approach that can help you start and sustain these practices.

• Brag for the brand: Adopting sustainable solutions is a huge positive step, and people deserve to know. Make your team and customers a part of your success by celebrating your wins.

Being sustainable isn’t always easy, but it is worth it. We now know that without a healthy ecology, we will not have a healthy economy. By marrying the two, you can make sure your business doesn’t get left behind.

Shane Price is the Founder & CEO of Green Circle Salons. To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2023/08/18/why-sustainability-is-a-strategic-imperative-not-an-option/?sh=67c9ddee74ab

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Tags: accountability, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, ESG, green marketing, responsible brands, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, social responsibility, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands

Plant-Based Plastics Gain Favor as Companies Pursue Sustainability Goals

18 08 2023

Eastman Chemical has more than $1 billion in sales annually from bioplastics made from cellulose acetate. PHOTO: EASTMAN CHEMICAL/REUTERS

Bioplastic production is growing at a record clip amid strong demand from fashion and food-packaging companies, in particular. By Dieter Holger from the Wall Street Journal • Reposted: August 18, 2023

The future is more plastic. Plant-based plastic, that is.

Plant-based plastics, or bioplastics, have accounted for just 1% of the world’s plastic production for well over a decade, according to a review of more than 100 companies by research organization nova-Institute. Bioplastics haven’t taken off largely because they are typically 50% to 80% more expensive than traditional fossil-fuel-based plastics, but their production is now growing 14% a year, putting them on track to reach up to 3% of the plastics market in the next five years.

Bioplastics are expanding faster than recycled plastic in some cases, such as in Asian countries like China and Japan that are mandating more ecologically friendly materials, nova-Institute founder Michael Carus said. Even if global plastic recycling rates someday reach 70% compared with around 9% today, bioplastics alongside materials made from captured carbon dioxide will have a big role to play as the world transitions away from fossil-fuel-based materials, he said.

“Not one of them can do it alone,” Carus said, referring to the sustainable materials that will drive the green transition. Regional share of biobased polymerproduction, usually for plastics, in 2022Source: nova-InstituteAsiaEuropeNorthAmericaSouthAmerica0%1020304050

Bioplastics’ benefits

Bioplastics are usually derived from plants rich in starch, sugar or pulp, such as corn, wheat, sugar cane, wood and cotton, which makes them costlier than plastics made from fossil fuels because crops need fertilizer and other resources such as water. However, the environmental benefits of plant-based plastics are increasingly appealing to companies promising to use more sustainable materials by the end of the decade.

Plants absorb the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide, which cuts the greenhouse-gas emissions from making bioplastics to at least half that of fossil-fuel-based plastics. Bioplastics can also sometimes cause less pollution when they degrade in the environment.

Broadly, there are two types of bioplastics: Materials that have similar performance to plastic, such as pulp-derived cellulose acetate found in eyeglasses and textiles, and bioplastics that are chemically identical to conventional plastics, such as a polyethylene, polyester and nylon. Around half of today’s bioplastics are biodegradable, according to nova-Institute, meaning they break down more naturally and are less harmful to habitats. Still, many of these bioplastics require industrial composting facilities to degrade and aren’t designed to be thrown away in a home garden.

*A Lululemon shirt containing plant-based nylon. PHOTO: LULULEMON ATHLETICA INC.*

Some of the earliest adopters of bioplastics are fashion companies, including Lululemon, which has a goal to replace the majority of oil-based nylon with plant-based nylon by 2030. A big selling point for the sportswear company is using plants to make chemically identical nylon that can be easily switched in, but still cuts emissions by nearly half.

The strongest demand for bioplastics is currently from fashion and food-packaging companies, but interest is also rising from companies in cosmetics, electronics and more durable goods such as tools, Eastman Chemical’s Chief Technology Officer Chris Killian said.

Eastman, formerly a division of Kodak, earns more than $1 billion of its $10 billion or so in yearly sales from bioplastics made from cellulose acetate, a material it has produced for more than 70 years. Cellulose acetate, which Eastman makes from cotton linters and wood pulp, was first used in Kodak film in the company’s early days, but it is now expanding into packaging, textiles and other applications. In 2022, Eastman signed an agreement withWarby Parker for the material to be used in eyewear. Share of produced biobased polymers byproduct type, in 2022Source: nova-InstituteFibersPackagingAutomotiveandtransportBuilding andconstruction0%102030

“It has a great deal of legs,” he said of the cellulose acetate-derived plastics.

Challenges ahead

Plant-based plastics remain a tough sell because fossil-fuel-based plastics are much cheaper, but prices could fall if companies continue to buy more bioplastics and governments encourage their use. This year, the Biden administration called on the federal government to assess the potential for biomaterials, including for plastics, fuels and medicines. And last year, the U.S. Defense Department said it would invest $1.2 billion in biomanufacturing. The European Union is also considering mandating bioplastics under packaging rules that are being discussed.

In the U.S., there is government support at the state and federal level to convert biological raw materials into fuels such as ethanol, but that level of support doesn’t yet exist for plant-based plastics, said Manav Lahoti, chemical giant Dow’s global sustainability director, olefins, aromatics and alternatives.

“The market is ready to take off on the demand side,” he said. “But to make the economics work, there is some regulatory support that is required.”Global biobased polymer production, whichusually is for plasticsSource: nova-Institute2018’19’20’21’220123456million metric tons

Another hurdle to scaling up bioplastics is what happens at their end of life. Only plant-based plastics that are chemically identical to fossil-fuel–based versions can enter the existing and growing recycling infrastructure. The world’s limited amount of feedstock, which often goes to feeding cattle and other livestock, also presents challenges to using more bioplastics.

One answer: turning agricultural waste into recyclable plastics.

This year, Dow struck an agreement with biomass refinery startup New Energy Blue to buy bioethylene made from the stalks and leaves of corn grown in Iowa. Dow will then make conventional and recyclable plastics from the material and sell to companies in transportation, footwear, and packaging.

Dow is already providing bioplastics for Crocs shoes and LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton’s perfume packaging, and sees demand outstripping supply, said Haley Lowry, Dow’s global sustainability director for packaging and specialty plastics.

“We are trying to find more sources,” she said. “The demand from our customers is there; it’s really finding the sources of biofeed that makes sense.”

Write to Dieter Holger at dieter.holger@wsj.com. To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/plant-based-plastics-gain-favor-as-companies-pursue-sustainability-goals-b0ea7dd8

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Tags: accountability, Bioplastics, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, ESG, green marketing, responsible brands, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, social responsibility, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands

Just in time for back-to-school shopping: How retailers can alter customer behavior to encourage more sustainable returns

17 08 2023

Retail returns have become big business for UPS. AP Photo/Toby Talbot

By Christopher Faires, Postdoctoral Researcher in Supply Chain Management, Iowa State University and Robert Overstreet,Assistant Professor of Supply Chain Management, Iowa State University via The Conversation Reposted: August 17, 2023

Back-to-school sales are underway, and people across the country will be shopping online to fill up backpacks, lockers and closets – and they’ll be taking advantage of free returns.

Making it easy for customers to return items at no cost started as a retail strategy to entice more people to shop online. But it’s getting expensive, for both retailers and the planet.

In 2022, retail returns added up to more than US $800 billion in lost sales. The transportation, labor, and logistics involved raised retailers’ costs even higher. Product returns also increase pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and waste in landfills, where many returned products now end up.

So how can retailers fix this problem and still provide quality customer service?

We conduct research in reverse logistics, focusing primarily on the intersection of retail returns and customer behavior. Here are some insights that can help reduce the abuse of free returns and lower costs without losing quality.

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/V7yOA/1/

Nudging: In-store vs. shipped returns

Where a product is returned makes a difference. Items returned to the store can be restocked an average of 12 to 16 days faster than those that are mailed. Mailed returns also cost companies more: The difference between the most expensive shipped returns and least expensive in-store returns is $5 to $6 per item. That adds up quickly.

Studies show that customers may be willing to change their return behavior – with a little help.

Behavioral nudges are a technique used in decision-making to steer a person toward a specific behavior. Putting candy at eye-level at the grocery store checkout counter to encourage impulse purchases is an example, or making employee participation in a 401(k) savings program the default option. Another type of nudge involves providing more information.

If you’ve ever shopped online and seen statements like “10 out of 10 customers recommend this product” or “Only 2 items left in stock,” you have experienced the use of information to influence your decision. Nudges emphasizing sustainability may also appeal to customers and have a positive impact on return behavior.

A man hands a slip of paper to a woman a returns desk at Saks Fifth Avenue. — *Returning items to a store can avoid extra transportation, shipping and packaging, saving money and avoiding waste and emissions. AP Photo/Mark Lennihan*

In a recent survey, 94% of merchants said customers were concerned about sustainability, according to a report from Happy Returns, a logistics firm that works with retailers.

However, a much lower percentage of customers actually make sustainable return decisions. That suggests that customers do not fully understand the environmental impact of their return choices – and it offers a way for retailers to help.

Our research found that when customers were given information about the environmental impact of the different return options, they were nearly 17 times more likely to choose an in-store return rather than returning an item by mail. Nudges like this offer a simple and inexpensive way for retailers to alter customer behavior in favor of sustainability.

Picking up returns to speed up the process

Some customers request to return an item but then wait weeks before mailing it. It’s known as customer procrastination, and it also has a cost. The longer these products remain unprocessed, the more value they can lose.

High-priced electronics, such as laptops and tablets, have short product life cycles and lose value quickly, sometimes at a rate of 1% per week. Seasonal items, such as back-to-school supplies or winter coats, become more difficult to resell if retailers get them back on shelves after demand has bottomed out. A returned item’s resale value determines its destination: It can end up back on store shelves, sold to liquidators for pennies on the dollar or sent to a landfill.

A worker carries an Amazon box as another checks over a box and address. — *Transportation is a large expense for retail returns, for both companies and the planet. AP Photo/Mark Lennihan*

A home pickup service for time-sensitive returns could reduce delays in a way that is also useful to the customer. A small number of pickup vehicles collecting returns from customers could avoid multiple shipments, reducing total miles traveledand cutting vehicle emissions, while also avoiding the need for each return to be individually packaged.

Our research found that a pickup service could help retailers collect returns faster and reduce product value loss, particularly for high-priced products and products that lose value quickly, such as consumer electronics.

How to change policies without losing customers

While several retailers have stopped offering free returns or changed their return policies over the past year, our research suggests that changes affecting all customers might not be the best choice.

Broad policy changes that affect everyone might involve limiting the number of returns per customer, charging a fee for returns or shortening the window for returns. An alternative is a targeted return policy that applies only to people who abuse the system. For example, retailers can restrict free returns for people who repeatedly buy more items than they intend to keep, knowing they can return the rest.

A woman standing a computer terminal checks boxes on an assembly line. — *Offering free returns carries a cost for retailers, but ending return policies can also turn off customers.Johannes Eisele / AFP via Getty Images*

We conducted two studies to explore how customers would view changes to a retailer’s return policies.

In the first study, 460 participants were significantly more likely to speak negatively about the retailer – a fictitious company, in this case – when the retailer’s returns policy change applied to everyone and affected everyone equally.

Our follow-up study asked 100 online customers about their thoughts regarding generalized versus targeted policy changes. When the return policy change targeted customers who abused returns, 44% of the participants expressed positive emotions, and only 13% expressed negative emotions.

Those positive emotions included comments like, “I would feel proud of the company for taking action against people who try to cheat the system.” Such responses indicated that participants understood that cheaters were increasing the price paid by everyone.

But when the return policy change applied to everyone, 64% of the participants expressed negative emotions. Nearly half indicated they would speak negatively about the policy change to family and friends, and 42% said they would shop at another store.

Other ways to help customers make better decisions

Retailers can also change the online shopping experience before the customer makes a purchase to avoid the need for returns.

One way is to obtain detailed customer feedback on returns and use that to provide better product descriptions to customers. Another is to avoid incentivizing the wrong behavior. Well-intentioned free shipping on orders over a set dollar amountcould encourage customers to overpurchase and later return products.

Posting videos of items for sale can help buyers spot problems that photos might hide. Virtual fitting rooms that use an avatar of the customer to try on clothes virtually can help customers choose the right size the first time.

There is no doubt that managing retail returns is a difficult task. To make the process more sustainable, retailers need to help customers make choices that limit the need for a return or that minimize the impact of a return on the environment and, of course, the retailer’s bottom line.

To see the original post, follow this link: https://theconversation.com/just-in-time-for-back-to-school-shopping-how-retailers-can-alter-customer-behavior-to-encourage-more-sustainable-returns-206164

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Tags: accountability, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, ESG, green marketing, Happy Returns, responsible brands, Retail Returns, Shipping returns, Supply chain Management, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, ESG, green marketing, social responsibility, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands

Busting Myths About ESG and Sustainable Investing

17 08 2023

The Manhattan Skyline: Photo: Patrick Tomasso/Unsplash

By Mary Mazzoni from Triple Pundit • August 17, 2023

“Anti-ESG” rhetoric on political campaign trails and cable news breeds misinformation and creates misunderstanding about the use of environmental, social and governance factors in business. This week we’re breaking down some of the most common myths we see out there about ESG and what it means for businesses and investors, with insight from Andrew Behar, CEO of the shareholder advocacy organization As You Sow.

Myth: ESG is just a big greenwash. Companies aren’t really improving.

Back in 2019, the CEO-led Business Roundtable — which represents executives at some of the largest U.S. companies — issued a statement revising the “purpose of a corporation.” After decades of saying companies should make all of their decisions based on maximizing short-term shareholder profit, the executive group proclaimed the private sector has a duty to all of its stakeholders, including employees, customers and communities. That means considering things like environmental sustainability and social equity alongside profit — in other words, adopting ESG principles.

Those are big words from a lobbyist group that includes executives from major financial companies like BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase, and many onlookers weren’t convinced. Environmental and social advocates said businesses weren’t living up to what they put on paper, and — particularly as the anti-ESG narrative took hold — politicians, pundits and social media warriors took aim at companies for the mere mention of considerations beyond the bottom line. The result? Companies got quieter about their work in ESG, a trend known in sustainability circles as “greenhushing.”

“Five years ago, companies were doing nothing and taking a victory lap,” Behar said. “Right now we have companies doing stuff — and I can tell you, it’s with greater intensity, with greater depth — but they do not want to take the victory lap. It’s a better situation, because they’re actually changing their policies and practices, but it’s the greenhushing. They want to be quiet, because there are too many trolls out there.”

Behind the scenes, companies are spending more on new programming tied to sustainability and social impact. They’ve also agreed to gather more information about things like diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in their workforces and the ways climate change impacts their supply chains — and disclose that information to investors and shareholder groups like As You Sow.

“When the declarations were made in 2019 about the new purpose of a corporation, that was really the moment where all of the companies said, ‘Okay, if we want to outperform, if we want to succeed, we’re going to be shifting our fundamental philosophy,'” Behar told us.

In this sense, anti-ESG critics are about four years “late to the party,” he said. “There’s no question in my mind that we are well along this implementation phase of a new purpose of a corporation and this transformation to a regenerative economy based on justice and sustainability. The extractive economy is winding down. And it’s just a question of how fast and how much pain they’re going to cause everybody else in the process.”

Myth: ESG and sustainable investing are anti-business.

Many far-right critics characterize ESG as something brand new, a symptom of the “wokeness” and “cancel culture” they say grip modern society. But ESG isn’t new. The term was coined back in 2005. And even before the Business Roundtable’s 2019 statement, thousands of professionalswere working as “ESG analysts” across the mainstream financial sector.

For investors, ESG is primarily a risk management and long-term growth mechanism. By understanding how companies manage their supply chains, source their ingredients and treat their workers, investors can better understand which companies are prepared for the future. Likewise, companies leverage ESG principles to manage and mitigate the risks they face.

“Overall, what we’re seeing here is just basic good business practices being demonized for political ends and people spending a lot of money to do it. And a lot of that is trying to stop what we see as market forces that have already happened — this is way over,” Behar said. “The companies that have adopted justice and sustainability are the ones that people want to put their money in, because they know those companies are going to succeed over the next five, 10, 20 years.”

Myth: If companies embrace ESG, goods and services will become more expensive.

Many individual products that are marketed as “sustainable” do come at higher prices. Critics often use this point to argue that the more companies consider ESG principles, the more expensive goods and services will become across the board.

But this misses critical context around the state of modern global supply chains. Social inequality and environmental crises already make it more difficult — and more expensive — to do business. ESG principles offer a way to manage and reduce that risk, which stabilizes prices over the long term.

Take climate change as an example and what Behar refers to as “climate inflation.” His team at As You Sow aggregates news articles that cover increasing commodity prices tied to climate change. They’ve noted a clear upward pattern over recent years, with the spring heatwaves in Europe that all but decimated Spain’s olive industry among recent examples.

“They had no olives, so olives are more expensive,” Behar explained. “Coffee‘s more expensive, chocolate‘s more expensive, cotton‘s more expensive. Cereal‘s more expensive. The boiling of the planet is really having some impacts on global commodity prices.”

Myth: You can’t invest sustainably unless you’re rich.

Indeed, institutional investors like asset managers, endowments and foundations increasingly use ESG factors to decide where to invest their money. ESG-focused institutional investment is projected to increase by 84 percent by 2026, making up around a fifth of all assets under management.

But you don’t have to be rich to invest sustainably, or to leverage your voting power as a shareholder in support of ESG. Last month, we outlined some simple ways for any and everyone to get involved with sustainable investing if they have the interest — from voting their proxies on individual stocks, to voicing their support for ESG in their 401(k) plans.

“We know we’ve got this vast majority of folks who actually want to vote to get corporations to provide a livable planet,” Behar said. “It’s a matter now of just getting people to talk about it.”

To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2023/busting-myths-esg/781471

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Tags: accountability, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, ESG, ESG Investing, green marketing, responsible brands, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, DEI, ESG, reputation management

The Role of Corporate Social Responsibility in Executive Decision-Making

15 08 2023

Photo: DEEMERWHA STUDIO/STOCK.ADOBE.COM

Is your organization ready to implement a corporate social responsibility strategy? Discover the impact of CSR on executive decision-making. By Tim Madden via Newsweek • Reposted: August 15, 2023

Here’s a reality that can’t be denied: the notion of corporate success is being radically reshaped. The financial bottom line is no longer seen as the sole measure of a company’s achievement.

In today’s connected, hyper-transparent world, there’s a growing call on CEOs and leaders to create sustainable, measurable value for shareholders and society.

This shift in mindset has led to the emergence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a significant factor in executive decision-making. CSR encompasses activities aimed at achieving social, environmental, and economic benefits while encouraging ethical behavior.

Executives who fail to integrate CSR into their decision-making fabric run the risk of alienating stakeholders, damaging their brands, and eroding their competitive positions.

What Is Corporate Social Responsibility?

Here’s a question: who does your company truly serve, and how?

The answer to this question is at the core of CSR — and may be a bit eye-opening when you consider your own organization. It’s no longer enough for a company to focus solely on generating profits and shareholder value; they must also consider their actions’ social, environmental, and economic impacts.

Corporate responsibility encompasses the idea that companies have a duty to their stakeholders — including shareholders, customers, suppliers, employees, and society — to operate ethically and transparently.

CSR encompasses various initiatives, each of which is anchored by four key tenants:

1. Ethical functioning: Upholding ethical standards across all business operations, ensuring stakeholder fairness, integrity, and respect.

2. Social equity: Fostering social inclusivity and development via diversity programs, support for disadvantaged communities, and human rights advocacy.

3. Environmental stewardship: Adopting sustainable practices to lessen the company’s environmental impact through waste reduction, carbon emission control, and investment in green energy.

4. Community engagement: Participating in community betterment through philanthropy, volunteering, and local event sponsorship, contributing to a company’s external social responsibility profile.

4 Reasons Why Your Leadership Must Adopt a CSR Mindset

While being viewed as a socially responsible business is an excellent growth strategy, there’s more to it than just a good PR move. Here are four reasons why every leader should emphasize corporate social responsibility within their organization:

1. Attracting and Retaining Talent

Potential employees are looking beyond attractive salaries and traditional benefits. They’re interested in their company’s values, seeking employers who share their commitment to positively impacting society.

Recent studies show that three-quarters of millennials are looking into a potential workplace’s environmental commitments when in the market for a job. And once on board, employees proud of their company’s CSR commitments tend to have higher engagement and loyalty, reducing turnover rates and boosting productivity.

2. Building a Positive Corporate Culture

CSR initiatives foster a positive corporate culture. Employees feel valued when companies commit to ethical practices, invest in their well-being, and engage in initiatives for society.

When your internal team is united and inspired by the same values, a positive company culture radiates to external stakeholders — customers, suppliers, partners, etc. This can lead to increased trust in your brand and stronger relationships with all those involved.

3. Strengthening Community Relations

Companies don’t exist in a vacuum — they’re part of broader communities. By investing in CSR initiatives, you also invest in the health, welfare, and prosperity of the community around you.

This mutually beneficial relationship with the community can build trust and goodwill between your organization and its stakeholders, inspiring a more potent connection while helping create economic opportunity in the region you serve.

4. Enhancing Investor Attraction

Here’s another reality: CSR is a growing investor concern. Demonstrating a commitment can attract more investment, improve stock performance, and increase market value. Rather than viewing CSR as an expense, it’s more effective to think of it as an investment in your organization’s future.

Practical Steps to Develop and Implement CSR Strategy From the Top

Developing and implementing a CSR strategy isn’t just a matter of well-intentioned ideas. It requires a structured approach, starting from the very top of the organization:

1. Align CSR with your company’s vision and values: Before diving into specific CSR initiatives, take a step back and look at your current values. Can you easily align your CSR strategy with your company’s vision, mission, and values to create an authentic message?

2. Conduct a stakeholder analysis: Identify and analyze the needs and expectations of your key stakeholders, including employees, customers, investors, and the community. This can help you identify the CSR areas that are most relevant to your business and stakeholders.

3. Set clear and measurable goals: Set clear, measurable goals for your CSR strategy, just like any other business initiative. Track progress, adjust, and aim for targets like environmental impact, employee diversity, or community contributions.

4. Create a CSR team: Appoint a dedicated team or CSR officer to drive your CSR strategy. They’ll coordinate activities, monitor progress, and maintain stakeholder dialogue — with the resources and authority to execute effectively.

5. Communicate and engage: Keeping communication channels open is critical to ace CSR. Keep stakeholders informed about CSR goals, initiatives, and how far you’ve come. Engage them by inviting employees to volunteer, consulting customers on sustainability, and including investors in ethical business discussions.

6. Evaluate and adjust: Assess and adjust CSR strategy by soliciting stakeholder feedback and gauging impact. Continuous improvement is key to a successful, long-term commitment.

Guide Your Company Into a CSR Future

As a leader, developing and maintaining a corporate social responsibility strategy is crucial to propel your company’s success. The more you know about the ups and downs of CSR — including the challenges and opportunities — the better equipped you are to spearhead CSR initiatives.

The goal is to make a sustainable, long-term CSR strategy that lives up to your stakeholders’ expectations and delivers measurable results, now and in the future. Don’t take any risks that could hinder your corporate success — instead, improve your initial strategy, evaluate, and remain flexible.

To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.newsweek.com/role-corporate-social-responsibility-executive-decision-making-1819230

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Tags: accountability, Community Relations, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, DEI, ESG, Reputation, responsible brands, sustainability, sustainable brands
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, DEI, ESG

How To Make Sustainability Everybody’s Responsibility

15 08 2023

Image: Oracle

By Jon Chorley, Contributor via FORBES • August 15, 2023

Organizations today understand the need for comprehensive environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) strategies, and many have set aggressive goals for the coming decades. While it’s great to see so many lofty ESG pledges, we are seeing many organizations finding the journey to reduce environmental impact more difficult than expected.

For ESG programs to be successful, there needs to be organization-wide engagement. It can’t just be driven from the top. Creating a sense of responsibility for ESG throughout the business is needed to plan, execute, and track progress effectively. This often requires deep organizational change that can be quite challenging.

With the right education, planning, communication, and technology assistance, engagement flourishes and efficiencies follow. Here are some ways to create more buy-in and a sense of shared responsibility at all levels of the business:

Top executives should create a north star for the rest of the organization to follow. This often starts by clearly articulating the company’s mission and high-level ESG goals, which can then be used to outline priorities for all employees and partners. This guidance and direction must then be operationalized by delegating responsibilities and translating goals into simple, actionable steps for everyone involved.

Proper planning is the connective tissue that enables a company to meet its sustainability goals and drive engagement. These plans start with high-level ESG goals and provide the necessary detail for teams to activate. This will provide the clarity needed for everyone to see the big picture and understand their role within it. Having well thought out and comprehensive plans will also help avoid rash decision making and potential mishaps due to a lack of strong direction.

The supply chain is also an area where lack of planning can lead to significant inefficiency and increased environmental impact. For example, if a company forecasts accurately and plans for spikes in demand, it can work with enough lead time to source from the most sustainable suppliers and use the most efficient forms of transportation. Without strong forecasting and planning, organizations spend more money and create more environmental impact scrambling to get product on air freight.

A powerful example of optimizing transportation and logistics can be found in the multi-national consumer packaged goods company, Unilever. Using intelligent transportation management, Unilever was able to reduce the distance its fleet of trucks drive by 29 million kilometers annually, and reduce carbon emissions by 9 percent.

Operationalize Technology

The right tools and technology play a significant role in executing and tracking sustainability initiatives. Supply chain management solutions and platforms powered by AI and machine learning can be valuable resources in empowering teams of all levels to contribute to ESG initiatives and holding them accountable to the goals. Automating the measurement of ESG initiatives takes tedious work off employees’ to-do lists and ensures accuracy and transparency. For example, a $40 billion insurance company is already tracking and reporting greenhouse gas (GHG) Protocol Scope 1 and 2 emissions and estimating and reporting upstream and downstream (GHG Protocol Scope 3) emissions using an integrated suite of applications that helps automate emissions reporting.

These technologies also enable real-time tracking to help guide the company in the right direction with each important decision. This allows organizations to align on financial and operational goals for ESG initiatives, gaining buy-in from leadership, employees, and business partners to work towards a common goal.

While emerging technology is a critical piece of the puzzle, it’s important to remember that the tools and new processes must be operationalized and integrated into the organization’s systems to ensure optimal efficiency. With new tools, business leaders can empower people at multiple levels throughout the supply chain, HR, finance, and customer experience to play an active role in achieving ESG goals.

While the challenge ahead of us may seem daunting, the potential upside of truly embracing ESG as a core tenant of a company’s mission is huge. Research has shown that people are more likely to buy from, work for, and invest in companies that can clearly demonstrate the progress on ESG initiatives. Helping employees to become more engaged in these initiatives can help the planet and the bottom line.

I am Oracle’s chief sustainability officer and group vice president of product strategy for Oracle’s supply chain. To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonchorley/2023/08/14/how-to-make-sustainability-everybodys-responsibility/?sh=22662417627d

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Tags: accountability, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, ESG, Oracle, responsible brands, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, ESG, green marketing, social responsibility, sustainability, sustainable branding

Can Sustainable Practices Generate Business?

12 08 2023

Photo: Getty

By Yusuf Amdani, Forbes Books Author via Forbes.com • Reposted: August 12, 2023

While 90% of executives state that sustainability is important, not as many are acting on green policies, according to the report “Investing For a Sustainable Future” which appeared in the MIT Sloan Management Review. Only 60% of companies have sustainability strategies in place. Without a green vision at the top, operational levels run the risk of using more resources than needed in everyday practices.

It may be a question of time: the world’s population grew from 2.3 billion in 1937 to 7.8 billion in 2020, per the Green Business Bureau. With more people, the carbon in the atmosphere has increased from 280 parts per million to 415 parts per million during that same timeframe. Globally, organizations are recognizing the need and searching for a solution to become more earth conscious.

Those interested in funding businesses are just as interested in sustainable solutions, with 85% of investors considering environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) factors as they make decisions, according to Gartner research. Among banks, 91% monitor ESG performance of investments. These groups see that consumers are asking for green strategies and that sustainability can lead to long-term profitability and performance.

Setting the tone for both current and future generations begins with effective, ongoing efforts that coincide with the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals. These outline actions for all countries—both developed and developing—to carry out in a global partnership. When businesses step up and implement changes, others will take notice and be ready to join in.

Here are some of the proven sustainable practices that can generate business:

1. Opting for Renewable Energy

In developing countries, the infrastructure may not support 24/7 electricity in every town and village. For companies that depend on uninterrupted processes and timely deliveries, putting in a solar-powered system could be the answer. Drawing from the sun’s rays to produce and circulate energy, operations can continue while simultaneously lowering electricity costs. Companies that lean into renewable energy will also benefit from the opportunity to show shareholders and customers that they are actively working to reduce their carbon emissions.

2. Sourcing Recycled Materials

Switching from ready-made supplies to recycled fibers in a textile plant can have a significant impact. Waste is reduced, products are manufactured with repurposed materials, and customers can join the cause by purchasing finished items. Among Gen Z shoppers, the up-and-coming consumer demographic, 73% are willing to pay more for sustainable products, per a report from FirstInsight. Looking for ways to recycle materials within a plant can lower manufacturing expenses and enable companies to prepare for upcoming regulations.

3. Promoting Plants and Nutrients

By 2030, the Amazon rainforest is predicted to be downsized to such an extent that it will not provide enough water to support its plant life, as reported by the Green Business Bureau. While companies can certainly fund reforestation campaigns, they can also start their own—right in their backyard. Industrial parks may have spaces where they can plant new trees and house a nursery. New flowers and trees could be distributed among the community. Organizations can also look for an area to carry out composting efforts like the Bocashi method, which yields organic fertilizers that can be used on plants.

4. Measuring Sustainable Metrics

Tracking sustainability programs and efforts can help staff members see progress and allows investors to gain insight into a company’s long-term objectives. This starts with choosing metrics to measure and certifications to obtain. From LEED to ISO 14001, TRUE (Zero Waste), and Great Place to Work®, there are many paths to pursue to implement sustainable processes and systems. Issuing a report every year creates a synergy that the company can build on and helps further share ESG objectives and achievements with interested parties.

Sustainable practices that deliver results, including reduced costs, greater efficiencies, and higher levels of well-being among workers, will be the drivers of tomorrow’s companies. To be prepared for heightened awareness and regulations surrounding ESG, organizations will do well to start today. Looking at what can be done and taking small steps can lead to long-term results and a lasting presence.

To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbooksauthors/2023/08/11/can-sustainable-practices-generate-business/?sh=33bffd205879

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Tags: accountability, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, ESG, green marketing, LEED, responsible brands, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, DEI, ESG, green marketing, reputation management, responsible brands, social responsibility, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands

Powerful Ways Everyday People Can Counter ‘Anti-ESG’ Campaigns That Target Sustainable Investing

4 08 2023

An estimated 7.6 million young people have taken part in Fridays for Future protests in support of climate action, like this 2019 demonstration in Zürich, Switzerland. But protesting isn’t the only way for people to make their voices heard. Photo: Tom Seger – Upsplash

By Mary Mazzoni from Triple Pundit • Reposted: August 4, 2023

The anti-ESG movement, led primarily by a small set of right-wing politicians and pundits, continues to target the use of environmental, social and governance factors in investing. The pushback against ESG and “woke capitalism” is set to be central in the next U.S. presidential election cycle, with critics ramping up the discourse in advance.

Still, the public appears uninspired by the far-right’s latest bogeyman, with only about 35 percent of U.S. voters viewing “woke ideologies as a ‘major threat’ or a ‘very important’ issue when thinking about their 2024 vote,” according to July polling from Morning Consult.

Those growing tired of the anti-ESG discourse don’t have to resign to simply tuning it out. We spoke with Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow, a nonprofit foundation that promotes shareholder advocacy, about powerful ways everyday people can voice what they really think about ESG and the shift toward more sustainable and socially responsible ways of doing business.

Take action: Counter anti-ESG narratives by learning and sharing

The much ado about anti-ESG may not have the effect critics intended. While the majority of the public remains ambivalent, anti-ESG criticism has also sparked new conversations where there were none before. “The good news is there are tens of millions of people who’d never heard of ESG who now have heard of it. They’d never heard of sustainable investing — they didn’t know you could invest sustainably,” Behar said. “Now they’re aware their investing has an impact. And actually a lot more people are coming to ESG investing because of it. I think it’s really backfiring.”

Still, anti-ESG narratives can create confusion about what ESG criteria are actually meant to do. Last year, As You Sow launched the AmplifyESG content library to counter the misinformation about ESG online. It’s curated by an editorial review board that includes representatives from business and both U.S. political parties, Behar said.

Hosted on Hootsuite, the library is updated at least a few times a week with articles, quotes, videos and other resources about ESG, which users can easily share across their social media platforms as they choose. Shares from AmplifyESG have reached nearly 3 million people over the past year, and anyone can get involved in driving more evidence-based conversations about ESG in business.

Take action: Leverage your right to vote

No, we don’t mean at the ballot box. Of course that’s important, too, but in this case we’re talking about the proxy voting rights afforded to everyone who owns shares in a publicly-traded company. “If you’re an individual who has bought shares on E-Trade or Schwab or Robinhood or whatever, you have the right to vote — even if you own just one share,” Behar said. “And that vote is very, very important.”

An estimated 25 percent of all shareholders do not exercise their proxy votes, he explained. “If those 25 percent decided to get off the bleachers and get on the playing field, that makes a big difference. That makes the difference between a majority vote or one that’s just under the majority line.”

But exercising the right to vote by proxy is traditionally not a user-friendly process for individual shareholders. “It’s always been difficult,” Behar said. “Generally you get an email that says, ‘Time to vote.’ But when you look at the ballot, there’s 20 or 30 decisions to make. Who’s on the board? How much do the executives get paid? Who’s the auditor? What about all these shareholder resolutions? It’s very complex.”

As You Sow has published annual proxy guidelines for decades, outlining votes they deem to be aligned with ESG principles. Three years ago, it automated the process by embedding its guidelines into Broadridge Financial Solutions’ ProxyEdge platform for institutional investors. The paid service allows institutions like asset managers, endowments and foundations to vote in an ESG-aligned way in only a few clicks. They can also customize their votes from As You Sow’s defaults as they choose.

This year, As You Sow went a step further with a free service for individual investors at AsYouVote.org. “You can now redirect that email so we will automatically fill in the ballot,” Behar said. “It’ll all be filled out in an ESG-aligned way, and you can make adjustments.”

This simple shift allows individual shareholders to move from being overwhelmed by proxy voting emails to automating the process of voting with their values, with the option to customize if they’d like. “I think a lot of people feel guilty. They see all these proxy statements piling up in their inbox and they think, ‘I just can’t deal with it.’ What you’ll get instead is, ‘Thanks for voting.’ You’ll feel great about yourself, and it takes literally two minutes to set up.”

Take action: How mutual fund and 401(k) investors can make their voices heard

Traditionally, people who invest in funds rather than individual stocks have a much harder time making their voices heard come proxy season, but this is beginning to change thanks to new technology.

“If you own shares in a mutual fund, you have the right to vote. Right now, you have abdicated that right to Vanguard or BlackRock or State Street or whoever, and they’re voting on your behalf. They’re probably not voting the way you like,” Behar said. “You might want to vote for a livable planet. You can demand that. You can say, ‘I want that vote,’ and they will give it to you. It’s very new. The technology is just unfolding.”

Technology advancements mean that individual mutual fund investors can vote their own proxies, with the fund manager voting in alignment with the aggregated results at a company’s annual shareholders meeting. This is known as pass-through voting.

In April, As You Sow linked up with the cloud management company Iconik to make this option available to investors in an S&P 500 mutual fund. Hundreds of investors have already taken advantage of it, Behar said, with more funds on the horizon. “We’re now in conversations with every other proxy voting service,” he said. Broadridge Financial Solutions, a major tech provider for institutional investors, is among those working with fund managers to make this option available to their customers. Get in touch with your fund manager to see what options you have.

Similarly, those who invest in 401(k) plans through their employers also have the right to vote by proxy, but they need to reclaim it from the fund managers associated with their plans. “If you’re in a 401(k) plan — where you probably own a target date fund, which is a fund of funds — you’re going to need to go to your plan administrator and say, ‘I want to vote.'”

If employees band together to ask for their vote, the employer can decide to work with the fund manager to make the option available. As You Sow is in talks with employee-organized groups at companies including Google and Microsoft, who want to leverage the voting power associated with their 401(k)s.

The bottom line: You have more power than you think

Counter to the anti-ESG narrative, most people want to see business operate sustainably, with 99 percent of millennial investors, 82 percent of women and 72 percent of people overall saying they would choose to vote their proxies with sustainability in mind, according to polling from As You Sow.

Where market forces are already driving business closer to ESG principles, everyday people realizing and claiming the power they hold could open the floodgates.

“People abdicate their power. The way people give away their private personal information to Facebook, they abdicate the power of their money to Vanguard, State Street and BlackRock. It’s amazing. People give away all their power and all their information for nothing,” Behar said. “We have a culture where people look at things like climate change and think, ‘There’s nothing I can do.’ No. You have so much power. You just choose not to use it.”

To see the original post, follow tis link: https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2023/counter-anti-esg-campaigns/780366

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Tags: accountability, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, DEI, ESG, green marketing, responsible brands, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, DEI, ESG, lack of trust, social responsibility, sustainable branding, sustainable brands

Three Ways Eco-Conscious Brands Can Transform Sustainability Into An Advantage

4 08 2023

Image: Getty

By Sai Koppala, Forbes Councils Member from the Forbes Communications Council • Reposted: August 4, 2023

Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard captured headlines and received accolades last year when he announced that the outdoor retailer would begin donating nearly the entirety of its profits to fighting climate change. In that same vein, an October 2022 IBM study found that 73% of respondents considered sustainability when shopping.

Both of these speak to broader trends in the way consumers are viewing corporate responsibility, particularly when it comes to environmental concerns.

How can companies respond to shifting consumer values to get ahead of both competitors and economic headwinds? Based on the 3 P’s of sustainable businesses(planet, people and profit), brands need to demonstrate transparency around ongoing sustainability efforts, engage customers in genuine conversations about what matters to them and craft engagement-based loyalty programs that recognize and reward shared social values. Here are three ways brands can accomplish this.

Communicate Tangible Impact On The Planet

Consumers don’t just want to hear “sustainability” as a buzzword. They want to see the concrete actions companies are taking to achieve it.

Brands like Cotopaxi provide a template to follow. Rather than hiding behind the vague “greenwashing” language media-savvy consumers know all too well, the company provides transparency into its sourcing partners and factories globally as well as the sustainability efforts at these factories and carbon offsetting for bulk shipping.

Brands still in the midst of their own sustainable transformation can also highlight the actions they’re taking to achieve the environmental objectives consumers value. Athletic wear brand Allbirds, for example, notes on its website the sustainability goals the company aims to meet by 2025, how Allbirds falls short of them now and the steps the brand is taking to meet them by its own self-imposed deadline.

Much like many companies themselves, consumers are going through their own green transformations and understand that such efforts take time. Rather than penalizing brands with less-than-ideal carbon footprints, consumers will likely reward transparent companies making an earnest effort to attain sustainability—even if they’re not there just yet.

Engage Customers In Sustainability Conversations

Rather than waiting for consumers to come to them, brands should attract the sustainably minded with content that speaks to their needs and goals.

Proactive sustainability brands can create informative and entertaining content that educates and engages consumers by leveraging the full power of their digital marketing channels. Patagonia uses an interactive webpage to illustrate the negative impact the clothing industry has on the environment and showcase the actions it’s taking to remedy it—including recycling materials, growing its own organic cotton and selling used gear at a discount to keep it out of landfills. As a result, consumers gain a clear understanding of how the company aligns with their values and what Patagonia is doing to achieve its sustainability goals.

Brands that engage their customers in conversations about sustainability are able to clarify the ecological topics consumers care about while also proactively guiding them toward products that align with their values. By taking an active role in their sustainability education, companies can establish trust with consumers and reinforce their own sustainable value proposition as they work to change old purchasing habits for good.

Reward Customers For Shared Values

As consumers set their sights on companies and products that share their environmental values, brands that reward them for their sustainable purchases have the chance to attract—and retain—both new and old customers.

One of our customers, Back Market, has developed a business model that not only drives sustainability and circular economy but also drives profits with the Gen Z audience that cares about reuse.

With the constant emergence of new technologies and the consumer desire to always have the latest and greatest device comes many gadgets that end up in a landfill. Back Market was created to help reduce all this e-waste. Sellers can quickly and easily get rid of the “old” gadgets they don’t want anymore, and buyers can grab gently used, high-quality gadgets for a great price.

Loyalty programs tied to sustainable purchases encourage consumers to make the shift toward eco-friendly products and provide an incentive to keep doing so in the future. Customers also develop a greater sense of commitment to the brand, which they see as a reliable vehicle for attaining their own sustainability goals. By rewarding customers for making purchases that align with their shared values today, companies become trusted partners they’ll turn to when making more in the future.

Through marketing efforts that reflect consumers’ identities and reward them for acting on their values, brands can form meaningful bonds with customers and turn them into lifelong patrons. As consumers continue to positively interact with the brand, they encourage others in their network to do so as well and foster new customer relationships—creating a virtuous cycle.

Through targeted rewards programs, brands can ensure the health of not only their bottom line but the planet as well.

To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2023/08/03/three-ways-eco-conscious-brands-can-transform-sustainability-into-an-advantage/?sh=5e5903185e0c

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Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, DEI, ESG, green marketing, social responsibility, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands

The space industry has a sustainability problem

2 08 2023

Image via Shutterstock/Blue Planet Studio

Privatizing space could bring immense benefits to humanity, but is the industry thoughtfully considering the impact of emissions, space debris and employee well-being? By Vartan Badalian via Greenbiz.com • Reposted: August 2, 2023

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy gave one of his most historic speeches as he catapulted the U.S. into the space race against Russia. His words still hold immense passion and foresight today: “We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained and new rights to be won… We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

In the short time humans have focused on space, we have landed humans on the moon, studied the deepest parts of the galaxy and privatized the industry. Right now, you can even pay as low as $257,000 on SpaceX’s website to ship your cargo to space.

Putting aside futuristic plans of space tourism, traveling to Mars and mining for minerals on asteroids, space exploration has practical benefits for humans today. The ability to track humanitarian issues and the impacts of climate change from space are just two reasons humans must keep looking to the stars.

At the same time, however, this great desire for space exploration is driving concern over short-term environmental and social impacts.

The problem with space

The sustainability challenges associated with space exploration and other commercial activities fall into three categories:

The emissions produced from launching spaceships;
The space junk that is quickly increasing and floating in Earth’s orbit; and
Potential harm to known or unknown species, along with human/employee rights concerns.

The space industry is truly different when it comes to measuring or assessing issues such as these, according to Paul Holdredge, director of industrials and transport at consultancy BSR.

“The industry is talking about sustainability, but they’re not yet using the same language that you and I might use,” Holdredge told me. “Many of the ESG rating systems, questionnaires, methods of evaluating companies — they frankly don’t apply to the space industry.”

The launch emissions

Consider the process of sending rockets into orbit. “There are a great number of launches forecasted, and the impact of those emissions in the upper atmosphere from various rocket chemistries is still not well understood,” Holdredge said.

While the percentage of fossil fuels burned by the space industry is 1 percent of what is burned by aviation, the fear among experts is that the emissions impacts of launches on the upper atmosphere and ozone layer are still widely unknown, especially as the frequency of launches increases. Also concerning is the fact that emissions have a tendency to linger longer.

Commercial space companies are driving a $500 billion industry right now, growing about 9 percent per year. That puts the sector on a path for about $1 trillion by 2040, according to Holdredge. This growth will bring an increase in spaceship launches, across both the private and government sectors. In 2022, 180 successful rocket launches happened, 44 more than in 2021. Much of this growth is led by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX, which launched a rocket once every six days on average. That doesn’t account for the impact of launches by two other high-profile private space companies, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic.

Emissions reductions could come in the form of less carbon-intensive fuel chemistries — but that will take ongoing research and development. Other solutions that could help decarbonize the industry include a carbon nanotube space elevator that stretches into space, allowing for a more cost efficient and less energy intensive way to travel. Almost like a transit system but into space. But as this article points out, by the time we are able to build a space elevator, it might not be necessary given how quickly commercial space exploration is evolving.

Littering in space is the status quo, for now

A big concern beyond emissions is orbital litter. More than 25,000 pieces of space junk and debris larger than 10 centimeters are floating in Earth’s orbit, according to the World Economic Forum.

This junk includes anything from components left behind during launches to decommissioned satellites to other objects and chunks of material caused by asteroids hitting satellites or satellites hitting each other. Over time, this debris builds and floats in orbit, a concept known as the Kessler Syndrome. The fear is that this growing cloud of stuff could pose a danger to launches over time. Last year, SpaceX had to issue a statement amid concern by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration that SpaceX’s Starlink satellites might cause a collision with the International Space Station.

The solution to space waste? Several companies and early-stage startups such as OrbitGuardians and ClearSpace focus on debris retrieval and removal. The work of the Space Sustainability Rating, launched by the World Economic Forum and developed by a group of industry players including the European Space Agency and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is also a source of potential solutions.

The system offers recommendations for how aerospace companies can improve the long-term sustainability and longevity of their launches and satellite design, as well as address debris mitigation. The rating is based on a four-badge system from bronze, silver, gold and platinum.

Other aspects of sustainability

Aside from environmental factors, Holdredge said companies must increasingly consider the human impacts of space exploration. Among the concerns they’ll need to consider: how to take care of employees working in space; how to feed them; howto care for their waste; how to protect them from radiation; and more. These issues fall under the umbrella of human and employee rights.

As we colonize other planets, what rights must we consider for other potential life — known or unknown?

Human-driven climate change is causing the extinction of species on Earth that we have little knowledge about. We should strive to avoid bringing about the same harm to other planets.

To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.greenbiz.com/article/space-industry-has-sustainability-problem

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Tags: accountability, BSR, ClearSpace, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, ESG, green marketing, OrbitGuardians, responsible brands, space tourism, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands, World Economic Forum
Categories : Climate Change, ESG, reputation management, social responsibility, sustainability

How To Make E-Commerce Sustainability Commercially Viable

2 08 2023

Photo: Getty

By Zohar Gilad, Forbes Councils Member, Forbes Technology Council via Forbes • Reposted: August 2, 2023

According to Forrester, most U.S. consumers place the responsibility of protecting the environment on companies. Two-thirds want more transparency on business practices. And study after study shows that consumers want to be more environmentally responsiblein their buying habits.

Why, then do most e-commerce sustainability efforts fail to put a dent in the problem?

Decades of rapid e-commerce growth have taught us that consumers want to consume, and merchants are more than happy to feed them goods for revenue and profit. There’s a lot of lip service around sustainability, but at the end of the day, the desire to get more things faster often overcomes many of the best sustainability intentions of both shoppers and merchants.

Why? Because e-commerce sustainability is impossible unless it is commercially viable.

For sustainability to work, it must be good for the business, desired by the consumer and good for the planet. Here are some practical—and commercially viable—ways for e-commerce brands to improve their environmental footprint.

Start with packaging.

More than 40% of consumers get one to two packages a week—just from Amazon. Today, businesses can choose from many sustainable packaging alternatives to reduce weight, make customers feel good and create an immediate environmental impact.

That said, research shows that most consumers are misinformed about what is actually recyclable and misunderstand recycling practices. Merchants need to educate consumers on how to recycle or compost packaging to make sure it happens. There’s also an opportunity to promote programs and practices with branding and clever marketing on the packaging itself.

Improve data analytics to stop overproducing.

According to the United Nations, the fashion industry alone accounts for 2% to 8% of global carbon emissions, and textile dyeing is the second largest polluter of water. Tastes and desires are fickle, and so much of what is produced (clothing, food, etc.) is ultimately wasted or sold for pennies on the dollar. Industries like fashion have long over-produced in efforts to have “everything they might need” to meet this fickle demand.

The fashion industry is just one example of how quick it is to manufacture goods but how hard it is to understand and meet demand. With more advanced AI, analytics and personalization technologies, however, it’s possible to better understand consumption. Accurate demand forecasting is one of the best things you can do to improve every aspect of your business (scale, cost, lower returns, etc.) and reduce environmental waste.

Ensure the price is right.

For years, data has shown that consumers are “willing” to pay more for sustainable products. But dig a little deeper, and you’ll see just how powerful decades-old commercial forces can be in hindering sustainability.

With the arrival of the recession, the number of consumers willing to pay more for sustainable products shrunk by 16%. Quality and price still lead consumers’ considerationswhen making purchasing decisions in good times and bad. Both are twice as influential as sustainability in making purchases. The price has to be right for the quality of the goods provided, regardless of operational practices.

Elevate the product with sustainability.

If price and quality are more than twice as influential as sustainability in buying decisions, then use your sustainability practices to elevate the quality of your goods and the brand behind them.

Outstanding goods capture a premium price, attract new shoppers and build brand loyalty. Patagonia is a great example here. It’s a “gold standard” in outdoor clothing and quality and also happens to be environmentally sound.

Tesla is another great example, with a premium-priced electric car that has excellent range, has better performance than the average gas vehicle and is supported by a great charging network. Remember that Tesla launched a luxury sports car, which set the tone for the brand. Consumers expect Teslas to provide a superior driving experience that they can feel good about.

Share your sustainability story.

Online searches for sustainable goods have increased by 71% between 2016 and 2021, and influencer mentions of sustainable fashion have boomed in recent years. Sustainability is now a critical ingredient of a good brand story, especially for younger buyers. Integrate this into your marketing and build it into your brand story.

But if you’re not actually doing some of the things I’ve outlined above, then you’re just greenwashing, and that storytelling goes from a strategic advantage to a liability. Buyers won’t hesitate to post your bad practices across their channels.

Create a personal and frictionless experience for shoppers.

Far too often, companies dedicate a lot of resources to sustainable practices, only to mess up the last mile. Getting traffic and buyers is the first step, but you have to make it easy for consumers to find what they’re looking for, especially with a younger, more environmentally aware audience.

I’ve written about removing friction from e-commerce in the past, and that applies to all aspects of buyer intent, including sustainability. Promote the products clearly. More importantly, incorporate sustainability with all the other data points (geography, referral site, device, time, weather, etc.) for a full, accurate and personalized journey.

So many environmental efforts come to the table with the best intentions, only to be tripped up by the realities of commercial operations. By adding a commercial lens to your sustainability endeavors, you do what’s good for the planet and what’s good for your pocket. And that’s good for everyone.

To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2023/08/01/how-to-make-e-commerce-sustainability-commercially-viable/?sh=560642fbff81

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Tags: accountability, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, e-commerce, ESG, Forrester, green marketing, responsible brands, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, DEI, ESG, green marketing, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands

Sustainability report shows importance of affordability and convenience

1 08 2023

A new study finds three-quarters of consumers wish to live more sustainably, with convenience and affordability the main impediments. By Tom Joyce from fruitnet.com • Reposted: August 1, 2023

Nearly three-quarters of consumers want to live more sustainably, according to a new report commissioned by Alibaba Group, but inconvenience and high costs were seen by shoppers as the biggest barriers.

NL CREDIT Albert Heijn TAGS plastic bags sustainability net reusable recycling

The Sustainability Trends Report 2023, which polled more than 14,000 consumers from 14 countries across Asia, Europe and the Middle East, found that convenience (53 per cent) and affordability (33 per cent) were “critical for driving behavioural changes on consumer sustainability”.

Businesses, the report concluded, could make it easier for consumers to make sustainably conscious choices.

“Making sustainable products more affordable (61 per cent), making fewer products using single-use plastics and packaging (55 per cent) and a wider selection of sustainable products and services (47 per cent) are the top three ways consumers say businesses can promote consumer sustainability,” it stated.

However, it showed that businesses faced a challenge in earning consumers’ trust concerning sustainability claims, especially in Europe, where 23 per cent of respondents said they did “not trust very much” the sustainability claims made by businesses.

A lack of information on how products are sustainable (48 per cent) and the high price of sustainable products (45 per cent) were cited as the main barriers for consumers to make more sustainable purchases.

The research found 76 per cent would welcome more advice on how to be more sustainable, with the proportion highest in the Philippines (93 per cent), Indonesia (91 per cent) and the UAE (90 per cent).

However, over half of those surveyed said that they would only make sustainable choices if they were convenient, with a third saying that living sustainably was unaffordable.

To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.fruitnet.com/eurofruit/sustainability-report-shows-importance-of-affordability-and-convenience/255269.article

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Tags: accountability, Alibaba Group, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, ESG, green marketing, responsible brands, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, ESG

To reclaim downtowns from traffic, require developers to offer strategies for cutting car use

29 07 2023

Parking consumes 20% or more of prime locations in many U.S. downtowns. Photo: George Rose/Getty Images
By Chris McCahill, Managing Director, State Smart Transportation Initiative, University of Wisconsin-Madison via The Conversation • Reposted: July 29, 2023

The U.S. has a car-centric culture that is inseparable from the way its communities are built. One striking example is the presence of parking lots and garages. Across the country, parking takes up an estimated 30% of space in cities. Nationwide, there are eight parking spots for every car.

The dominance of parking has devastated once-vibrant downtowns by turning large areas into uninviting paved spaces that contribute to urban heating and stormwater runoff. It has driven up housing costs, since developers pass on the cost of providing parking to tenants and homebuyers. And it has perpetuated people’s reliance on driving by making walking, biking and public transit far less attractive, even for the shortest trips.

Why, then, does the U.S. have so much of it?

For decades, cities have required developers to provide a set number of parking spaces for their tenants or customers. And while many people still rely on parking, the amount required is typically far more than most buildings need.

Columbus, Ohio, pioneered this strategy 100 years ago, and by the middle of the 20th century minimum parking requirements were the norm nationwide. The thinking was straightforward: As driving became more common, buildings without enough parking would clog up the streets and wreak havoc on surrounding communities.

Today, however, more urban planners and policymakers acknowledge that this policy is narrowly focused and shortsighted. As a data scientist who studies urban transportation, I focused my earliest research on this topic, and it shaped how I think about cities and towns today.

It’s encouraging to see cities rethinking minimum parking requirements – but while this is an important reform, urban leaders can do even more to loosen parking’s grip on our downtowns.

Eliminating parking requirements

Despite research and guidance from the Institute of Transportation Engineers, it is extremely difficult to predict parking demand, especially in downtown areas. As a result, for years many cities set the highest possible targets. This led to excess parking that is vastly underused, even in areas with perceived shortages.

In 2017, Buffalo, New York, became the first large U.S. city to eliminate its minimum parking requirement as part of its first major overhaul of zoning laws in more than 60 years. This shift has breathed new life into downtown Buffalo by spurring redevelopment of vacant lots and storefronts. Researchers estimate that more than two-thirds of newly built homes there would have been illegal before the policy change because they would not have met the earlier standards.

In the same year, Hartford, Connecticut, followed Buffalo’s lead and eliminated mandatory parking minimums citywide. Communities including Minneapolis; Raleigh, North Carolina; and San Jose, California, have since taken similar steps.

Tony Jordan, president of the nonprofit Parking Reform Network, has argued that once cities stop mandating specific levels of private parking, leaders need to be more thoughtful about how they manage public curbside parking and spend the revenues that it generates. Some communities have implemented maximum parking allowances to ensure that developers and their investors don’t add to the glut.

Map with areas used for parking colored — *In Tampa, Fla., 30% of the city’s central business district is devoted to parking (shown in red). As of July 2023, the city had not implemented parking reforms. Graphic: Parking Reform Network,* CC BY-ND

Reducing reliance on cars

Parking mandates aren’t the only lever that city officials can use to make their downtowns less car-centric. Some local governments are now asking developers to help reduce overall traffic levels by investing in improvements like sidewalks, bike storage and transit passes.

This approach is typically called transportation demand management, or modern mitigation. It still leverages private investment to serve the public good but without a singular focus on parking.

And unlike parking requirements, this strategy helps connect buildings to their surrounding communities. As urban planning scholar Kristina Currans explained to me in an interview, traditional parking requirements ask developers to fend for themselves. In contrast, transportation demand management policies require them to consider the surrounding context, integrate their projects into it and help cities function more efficiently.

Graphic showing that traditional development consumes more land to accommodate drivers, while transportation demand management reduces the need for parking and space for cars. — Traditional development leads to more parking and more traffic, which consumes more space, while transportation demand management encourages less traffic and has a smaller footprint. Graphic: City of Madison, adapted by Chris McCahill, CC BY-ND

This approach dates back at least to 1998, when Cambridge, Massachusetts, introduced a policy requiring developers to produce a transportation demand management plan whenever they add new parking. That policy has now outlived the city’s minimum parking requirements, which Cambridge eliminated for all residential uses in 2022.

Newer policies tend to incorporate point systems or calculators that link different strategies directly to their potential impact on car use. These tools are common in cities across California, where state law now requires city planners to evaluate how much new car use each new development will generate and take steps to limit the impact. Policies such as charging users directly for parking spots or offering employees cash in exchange for giving up their spot are among the most effective.

A woman enters metal enclosure to lock her bicycle. — Denver offers 10 Bike-n-Ride shelters where commuters can store bikes and connect to the city’s mass transit system. Users access the shelters with key cards. Photo: Denver Regional Transportation District

Lessons from Madison

The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s State Smart Transportation Initiative, which I direct, along with UW’s Mayors Innovation Project, has outlined policies like these in a guidebased on our earlier work with the city of Los Angeles. We recently collaborated on a new transportation demand management program in Madison.

This program initially faced some pushback from developers, but their input ultimately made it better. It passed the city’s Common Council unanimously in December 2022.

For their projects to be approved, developers now must earn a certain number of traffic mitigation points based on how large their project is and how many parking stalls they propose to include with it. For example, providing information to visitors and tenants about different travel options earns one point; providing secure bike storage earns two points; offering on-site child care earns four points; and charging market-rate parking fees is worth 10 points. Scaling back planned parking can reduce the number of points they need to earn in the first place.

While parking is no longer required in many parts of Madison, this new policy adds a layer of accountability to ensure that developers provide access to multiple transportation options in environmentally responsible ways. As urban leaders look for meaningful opportunities to reduce their cities’ contributions to climate change, we may soon see other cities following suit.

To see the original post, follow this link: https://theconversation.com/to-reclaim-downtowns-from-traffic-require-developers-to-offer-strategies-for-cutting-car-use-206921

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Tags: accountability, corporate social reponsibility, ESG, Institute of Transportation Engineer, Parking, Parking Reform Network, responsible brands, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands, tate Smart Transportation Initiative
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands

Why Corporate Social Responsibility is critical for Companies

29 07 2023

Companies have to legally comply to investments in CSR initiatives, based on annual profits. The management is accountable for this compliance and it includes all the stakeholders in the process. By Bineesh Mathew via Enterprisetalk.com • Reposted: July 29, 2023

Corporate social responsibility is an ongoing process. Companies need to be ethical about ensuring they comply to this regulation.

CSR is very important for enterprise today. It includes initiatives such as supporting diversity, inclusivity, underprivileged empowerment and rights, protection of the environment, energy initiatives and poverty eradication.

Through the corporate social responsibility, companies can contribute to:

Economic growth of the country
Enhancing the well-being of employees and their families
Development of local communities and society as a whole

Through the practices of ethical values, CSR aims to share prosperity with the society that enables their profits. CSR activities can support individuals, societies, and the environment. This may include different policies, educational efforts, and charitable activities. With these, companies can help develop or sustain communities in which they operate.

CSR is about the dedication of businesses to maintain ethical commitment to the society they work in. As CSR activities need collaboration with various stakeholders, it brings economic growth to society. It also enhances the well-being of all the stakeholders. Clearly both businesses and the communities benefit from it.

Companies are giving attention to local, national, and global CSR opportunities, today. With commitments to socially beneficial activities, they can showcase a good brand image. This will help to attract clients and shareholders. Thus, it impacts the financial performance of the companies as well.

Need for Corporate Social Responsibility

Firms need to have a more extensive customer base to recruit the best resources, and also boost profits. For this, they need an excellent public image. The best way to show commitment to social causes is by investing into a CSR commitment. This can transform the public perception of the company.

Long-Term Business Interest

CSR serve the interests of both the society and the company. A developed society will create a better atmosphere for businesses. So strong CSR enables businesses to achieve long-term business growth and profits as well.

On the other hand, an open-minded and socially responsible company will show concern for the society’s needs. So, investment into developing a better community, indirectly also helps businesses grow. Investing in social welfare programs can be a strategy to accomplish this goal.

Avoiding Government Intervention

Regulations and controls from the government bring financial and other risks for businesses. To avoid some of these interventions, companies can invest in CSR activities. This will keep them safe to an extent and also allow the leaders to take decisions favorable for the business.

If the government finds negligence in social investment, it will impose penalties and regulatory clauses on a company. To avoid these, companies need to identify projects that show the change they want to make to the society. They can select a CSR initiative that is suitable for their area. With this small investment, they can also save themselves from government intervention.

Benefits of CSR

Productivity and Quality

Since CSR is about giving back to the society, it usually encourages employee participation. employees can feel the commitment to the project and be a part of the decision-making process. Thus, it increases productivity and reduces the challenges that leaders face in running a company

Improved Financial Performance

Socially responsible businesses can improve their financial outcomes. This improvement can happen due to many factors. They can include:

Stable socio-political legal environment
An enhanced competitive advantage resulting
Superior corporate reputation and brand image
Better recruitment
Retention and motivation of employees, and
A more secure operational environment
Brand Image and Reputation

A socially responsible company can strengthen its brand reputation in the industry. It will also enhance its position in the business community. So the company can boost its capacity to attract potential customers.

Increases Employee Motivation

Companies showing interest in social responsibility improve their employee engagement. It enables companies to attract resources with a motivation to create an impact. this kind of employees boost the company’s efficiency and market growth.

A collective employee’s effort is critical to accomplish CSR initiatives. Employees working together for a cause will improve workplace morale and will lead to better productivity. Thus, CSR activities in a company increase employee engagement and motivation levels. In this manner, it will contribute to the profits of the company.

Community Support and Customer Loyalty

Social responsibility is a common ground for both companies and consumers. CSR can support the betterment of both local and global societies. thus it can be a bridge that benefits both.

Social responsibility programs should align with the core values of a firm. It opens doors to enhance customer retention and foster a sense of loyalty.

Bolstered Public Trust

After establishing a reputation for CSR, it is imperative not to become complacent. With a visible initiative, the industry watches for developments. A successful CSR initiative also helps to fight the common skepticism towards capitalist brands. Enterprise often believed to be profit-seekers, can show a different focus with a successful CSR project.

Continuous support to the project is necessary to maintain the trust gained as a responsible brand. Companies can maintain it through sustainable financial backing. They also can provide transparent evidence of equal organizational principles to achieve this.

Greater Sustainability

Environmentally friendly initiatives derive a lot of value for the enterprise.

Adopting environmental CSR practices aligns with preserving the environment. Moreover, it holds economic value for businesses.
Damaging the environment can have negative effects on business. Incorporating sustainable initiatives makes logical business sense.
Transitioning to sustainable alternatives may involve significant initial investments. These systems are more cost-effective in the long term.
The prices of fuel and other inputs are rising. So, companies that adopt less expensive technologies will gain financial benefits.
Encourage professional and personal growth

A CSR culture within companies encourages the culture of volunteering. It also encourages employees to be charitable in many other ways.

Encouraging such behavior aligns individuals with philanthropic values. Further, it fosters a commitment to improving local and global communities. So, it makes employees more productive and creative. Thus, corporate social responsibility in companies enables employees to grow personally and professionally.

Summing Up

Even a small initiative can make a significant impact on society. Smaller companies will have limitations in contributing funds or resources for CSR. But since the CSR compliance varies according to the size of the company, they can start with whatever suits their pockets.

These could include:

Organizing modest fundraising events
Fostering a culture of volunteering
Implementing a social mission and well-defined objectives
Providing educational programs for employees
Aligning with like-minded businesses to pool efforts.

Adopting corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities improves customer loyalty and retention. Moreover, it:

Boosts employee commitment
Enhances brand perception
Attracts investment prospects
Fosters recruitment of exceptional talent
Impacts financial performance

Socially responsible businesses make a good brand reputation and attract more clients. Moreover, it will help in attracting exceptional employees to the company. These are crucial factors in getting the desired results, profit, and better financial outcomes.

To see the original post, follow this link: https://enterprisetalk.com/featured/why-corporate-social-responsibility-is-critical-for-companies/

How Corporate Partnerships Scale Health and Wellness Around the World

28 07 2023

Images courtesy of Feed the Children and Herbalife Nutrition

By Ellen R. Delisio from Triple Pundit • Reposted: July 28, 2023

The U.S. has had a child hunger problem for decades. The COVID-19 pandemic turned that problem into a crisis.

Before the pandemic, 1 in 7 American children experienced food insecurity. The pandemic narrowed that ratio to 1 in 4 by the end of 2020, and nearly 1 in 6 families with children have struggled with food insecurity in the past year.

Hunger, clearly, is not just a U.S. problem. The U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call for an accelerated response to end hunger in all its forms by 2030. But the pandemic’s impact on economies and supply chains led to global hunger increasing for the first time in nearly a decade.

While many people are back to work and the economy is slowly growing again, agencies that support at-risk families are still trying to make up ground.

“Though we’ve seen improvement since the pandemic, too many are still struggling to keep food on the table as inflation wreaks havoc on families who are most vulnerable,” said Travis Arnold, president and CEO of Feed the Children, a 40-year-old anti-hunger organization that provides aid to children in the U.S. and abroad. In 2022, the agency distributed about 92.6 million pounds of food and essential items worldwide, benefiting more than 11.5 million people globally.

Corporate partnerships can help nonprofits and communities fight hunger

Nearly 10 percent of the global population, up to 811 million people, faced hunger, food insecurity and malnourishment in 2020, according to the Food and Agriculture Association of the United Nations.

More corporations have had to step up with supplies, service and partnerships. One successful pairing is the ongoing collaboration between Feed the Children, Herbalife and the Herbalife Nutrition Foundation. These organizations have partnered since 2019 through Herbalife’s global health and wellness initiative. According to Feed the Children, this collaboration focuses on expanding access to healthy food, identifying sustainable food resources and improving nutrition education, as well as raising awareness about the global hunger crisis.

Worldwide, Herbalife provides nutritional supplements to support thousands of children and families in the countries where Feed the Children works, Arnold said. “In the U.S., we have partnered for multiple community events, most recently in the Los Angeles area,” he told us. “Through our partnership, we have been able to provide both food and resources to thousands of families without life’s essentials across the country. These products help to supplement meals to thousands of families who are struggling to make ends meet.”

As important as the money and supplies Herbalife contributes is the educational material it produces and presents. “Herbalife not only provides a generous means for Feed the Children to scale our impact, but also meaningful ways to talk about the power of our work with new audiences,” Arnold said. The company’s registered dietitians and nutrition experts regularly provide educational materials, including meal and snack recipes, to pack into food donation boxes. The company has printed and delivered 48,000 recipe cards for Feed the Children food boxes.

In preparing recipes, Herbalife experts focus on creating meals that are accessible, affordable, nutritious and can be fun to prepare, according to the company. Recipes adhere to guidelines including the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s low-cost ingredients index and utilize foods often found in boxes that Feed the Children distributes. Bilingual recipe cards, in English and Spanish, also are available.

feed the children - child with nutrition boxes that fight hunger

Scaling nutrition education worldwide

Herbalife and Feed the Children are looking to create additional joint education programs, including resources for teachers, teacher stores and nutrition education seminars for community partners.

In terms of Feed the Children’s own direct education efforts, it sponsors a support program for new mothers and pregnant women. Called Care Group, the program utilizes a peer-to-peer behavior change methodology: Facilitators work with pregnant women and new mothers directly to educate them about prenatal and postnatal nutrition, the benefits of breastfeeding exclusively for the baby’s first six months, and the types of supplemental foods to use until the child is 2 years old. “We help mothers learn how to select and prepare meals that provide the diversity of vitamins and nutrients growing bodies need,” Arnold explained.

Feed the Children also manages child-focused community development programs that focus on reducing hunger and malnutrition, teaching health, and promoting self-reliance in eight countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

And thanks to increased monetary and product contributions from corporate partners, Feed the Children expects to reach even more families in the U.S. and around the world this year, Arnold said.

The extra aid from Herbalife alone will supplement 300,000 meals and beverages for families in the U.S. The company has also increased its financial commitment to Feed the Children’s international program by $500,000 over two years. Globally, Feed the Children expects to expand programs designed to improve the health and nutritional profile of women and children. These resources include supplementary feeding supplies, deworming medicine and vitamin A supplements for children.

Partnerships are key to success

Corporate collaborations and other pairings are critical to the ongoing mission and success of Feed the Children and its fellow aid organizations, Arnold said.

“Partnerships are vital to success in every aspect of our work. Whether here in the U.S. or in communities around the globe, we cannot do this work alone,” he told us. “We are providing access to food and reducing the stigma around food insecurity through community events and resource rooms across the country. We are engaging communities in developing countries with education and empowerment. Our work with Herbalife is one example of how companies can make a significant contribution to a global issue through collaboration and true partnership.”

This work is needed now more than ever. With the price of basic necessities including food, energy and housing continuing to rise, the number of families straining to meet expenses are expected to increase in the coming months, Arnold observed.

“During the pandemic, we learned to be innovative in order to get food and essentials to families in their own communities,” he continued. “Many of these efforts continue today through our network of community partners, as well as through the generosity of our donors and corporate supporters. It takes all of us working together in order for these efforts to be successful.”

This article series is sponsored by Herbalife Nutrition and produced by the TriplePundit editorial team. To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2023/corporate-partnerships-hunger-health/779896

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Tags: accountability, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, ESG, green marketing, Hunger, responsible brands, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands, The U.N. Sustainable Development Goals
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, ESG, sustainable branding, sustainable brands

What to Expect From the SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rule

26 07 2023

Image credit: Ale Alvarez/Unsplash

By Mary Riddle from Triple Pundit • Reposted: July 26, 2023

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is expected to release its long-awaited climate disclosure rule this fall, and businesses are preparing for change. The intent is to create a framework for companies to make climate-related disclosures in a way that is standardized and allows for comparison.

“I think it is helpful to frame the SEC proposal not as a climate proposal, but rather as a proposal to enhance and standardize climate-related financial disclosures,” said Emily Pierce, chief global policy officer at the carbon accounting firm Persefoni and a former SEC lawyer involved in developing the proposed rule.

What’s different about the SEC climate disclosure rule?

The SEC’s forthcoming climate disclosure rule has been over a decade in the making. In 2010, SEC staff issued guidance stating that climate change could impact business operations as it carries material risks that affect financial performance, Pierce said. And anything that could impact financial performance should be communicated to investors.

Five years later, the investor demand for information was growing steadily. “By 2015, there was a collective concern about investor demand for sustainability information,” she said. “Investors were not getting the information they were asking for, and the marketplace was inefficient.”

The Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) rose up to meet that demand shortly after the Paris climate agreement was adopted in 2015. “TCFD developed helpful disclosure frameworks for governance, strategy and risk management processes,” as well as metrics and targets to measure a company’s greenhouse gas footprint, Pierce said.

“TCFD is a market norm, but it wasn’t always complete and comprehensive, and it didn’t allow for comparison,” she explained. “The SEC was inspired by the TCFD framework that investors and companies have found useful.”

What do we know about the new rule?

The SEC’s proposed rule covers how companies communicate their climate-related risks. Companies will be required to disclose material risks, including physical risks and transition risks, related to climate change. These may include sea-level rise, more frequent extreme weather events and wildfires, or changes in government regulation and consumer demand.

Importantly, the rule will not initially apply to all companies, but will be phased in over time. “Phasing is an important part of the proposal, because it’s our way of managing implementation,” Pierce said. “We have to strike the balance between investor protection and creating a rule that is feasible for companies to implement. I think the most likely scenario is that, if it is finalized this year, companies will need to gather data next year for fiscal year 2025.”

The rule will also hold companies’ feet to the fire for claims made about net-zero and emissions reductions. If a company has a public target related to cutting emissions, the SEC will require additional disclosures and obligations related to that target.

“A lot of companies calculate their greenhouse gas emissions today,” Pierce said. “But they do it in a way that does not have as much control over their data, calculations, and outputs compared to what they would have in their financial calculation reporting. When you’re making information investor-grade and compliance-ready, you should bring lessons you have learned from the financial space into the carbon accounting space.”

Emissions created by a company’s direct operations — Scope 1 emissions — and emissions associated with the company’s purchase of energy — Scope 2 emissions — will need to be externally assured, Pierce said. But smaller companies will not need to disclose value chain emissions from assets the company does not own — Scope 3 emissions — unless they set an emissions target for Scope 3, she predicted.

What’s next?

The climate disclosure rule should not contain any surprises compared to the SEC’s current proposal, Pierce said. But the timing of release will be later than anticipated, due to the unprecedented number of public comments and feedback. Many analysts agree it will be released this fall.

“To be ready for climate disclosure, companies need to bring discipline and processes to their broader corporate thinking about governance, strategy and risk management,” Pierce said. “Additional discipline and processes will help them communicate about what they’re doing.”

A lot of companies are already thinking about these issues, calculating their emissions and gathering the necessary information, Pierce said. “There are market rewards to decarbonizing, and they see the value in that. We will see an increase in the market rewarding sustainable behavior, whether it is in access to capital, customer preference, more business-to-business relationships or consumer demand.”

To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2023/sec-climate-disclosure-rule-explained/779646

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Tags: accountability, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, ESG, green marketing, Greenhouse gas emissions, net-zero, responsible brands, Scope 2 Emissions, SEC, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands, Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, TCFD
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, ESG, social responsibility, sustainable branding, sustainable brands

How can we reimagine sustainability in the supply chain?

26 07 2023

Sustainable supply chains are vital and attainable. Image: Photo by Lenny Kuhne on Unsplash

Sustainability is not an elusive concept that competes with traditional metrics of profitability and efficiency, but one that can be measured and achieved by using what you have more intelligently. By Saar Yoskovitz, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Augury via the World Economic Forum • Reposted: July 26, 2023

Supply chain disruptions and inventory concerns continue to trouble governments, businesses and consumers worldwide. Even as supply chain bottlenecks begin to clear up, severe sustainability and supply problems remain due to the amount of waste traditionally produced by retail and manufacturing sectors and the increasingly stringent metrics by which they are judged by investors and consumers.

Moreover, with ongoing geopolitical contention in Europe and Asia, inflationary challenges and increased consumer spending, the manufacturing and supply chain industries are under pressure to navigate constant obstacles.

The interconnectedness of the supply chain

To find solutions, we need to look at the interconnectedness of the supply chain. Factories, for example, play a prominent role in mitigating a host of supply-chain problems and can help lower the impact of inflationary pricing by working more efficiently in several ways. Worn down and inefficient machinery, for instance, slows production, causing bottlenecks and wasting energy and materials.

Furthermore, labour costs increase as more people are brought in to address broken machinery and even more money is lost when the factory line pauses production.

Where does sustainability come in?

Often, efficiency and sustainability are seen as competing interests, but what if there was a way that companies can establish both in their manufacturing processes and support supply-chain efficiencies?

A focus on sustainability on the factory floor can reduce waste (most obviously by lowering costs and increasing yields) while alleviating pressures across the supply chain. How so? When fewer materials are needed to create a product, less mining, harvesting and sourcing of these materials is required, thus involving less processing, trucking and warehousing and minimizing potential pain points in other areas of the supply chain.

And, when machines operate efficiently while producing quality goods, there is also a chance of fewer recalls around issues in the manufacturing process. This, in turn, diminishes the inventory volume of goods travelling back through the supply chain, alleviating another host of problems. These benefits compound; improvements in quality issues boost sustainability and customer service scores.

Running manufacturing assets better and more efficiently can help organizations realize their sustainability goals and serve customers better, while easing supply-chain pressures ahead of the holiday bloat.

To do so, we must consider machine and process health through a predictive lens.

Machine health

There are three key components to machine health: mechanical problems, design problems and operational problems. Every industrial leader must understand how the factory level is performing across these three measurements to ensure production runs smoothly.

Monitoring for mechanical problems includes monitoring temperature, vibration and magnetic data to identify changes ahead of complete machine failure.

Design problems come to the forefront when individual machines undergo extra amounts of stress due to an inefficiently designed production facility. By getting ahead of these issues, facilities can avoid unplanned downtime, delays, bottlenecks and inconsistent product quality, tying back to the efficiencies detailed above.

Operational problems come into play with the human element. Even with a perfectly designed machine, people make modifications and unknowingly create additional issues.

Continuously monitoring machine health can curtail unplanned downtime and boost productivity to new heights that will be felt throughout the supply chain. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, running assets more efficiently can also save US manufacturers $3.3 billion in waste caused by downtime, reduce energy consumption by 12% to 15% and avoid up to 6,500 workplace accidents annually.

But machine health is only half of the equation for solving industry concerns. Process health offers a look into the interconnected inputs and elements of a full production system and other contributing factors, which, when misaligned, become part of the industry’s sustainability problems.

Process health

Manufacturing and supply chain leaders are aware of profits left on the table, but that does not have to be an accepted standard. There is a critical measurement that can combat inefficiencies and losses. Enter process health.

According to a report by ARC Strategies, there is an estimated $1 trillion lost due to unplanned downtime in the process industries. To bridge the trillion-dollar gap, organizations can unlock productivity by honing their machine health and optimizing production by 40% and improving energy use by up to 30%. Those are significant markers.

Process health helps leadership prevent losses from occurring in the future by analysing data at every step and level of production. It can also identify optimal process settings and establish connections between dynamic and complex variables. It is a no-brainer for industry leaders who want to see significant improvements in quality, throughput, energy and reductions in CO2 emissions and waste.

Big picture vision

The supply chain is a complex structure that is the backbone of our economy. While there may not be a one-size-fits-all solution to address the dilemmas of late, repositioning our understanding of the interconnectedness – starting at the factory floor – can illuminate opportunities that may not have been as apparent.

Continuously monitoring machine and process health can reveal untapped potential. In fact, it is estimated that 10% to 20% of manufacturing capacity is shadow capacity or production capabilities that exist within current manufacturing lines, but are going unused. Embracing shadow capacity has positive implications for onshoring, productivity and efficiency.

As supply chain obstacles continue amid ongoing geopolitical turmoil, fluctuations in consumer spending and a possible recession, it is high time we rethink the relationship between sustainability, manufacturing and the supply chain. Sustainability is no longer an elusive concept that competes with traditional metrics of profitability and efficiency, but one that can be measured and achieved by using what you have far more intelligently.

To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/07/how-and-why-we-must-create-sustainable-supply-chains/

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Tags: accountability, ARC Strategies, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, ESG, green marketing, responsible brands, Supply chains, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands, World Economic Forum
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, ESG

Decades of public messages about recycling in the US have crowded out more sustainable ways to manage waste

25 07 2023

A worker sorts cardboard at a recycling center in Newark, N.J. Photo: Jeff Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

By Michaela Barnett, Founder, KnoxFill, University of Virginia, Leidy Klotz, Associate Professor of Engineering and Co-Director, Convergent Behavioral Science Initiative, University of Virginia, Patrick I. Hancock, Postdoctoral fellow, University of Virgini and Shahzeen Attari, Associate Professor of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University via The Conversation • Reposted: July 25, 2023

You’ve just finished a cup of coffee at your favorite cafe. Now you’re facing a trash bin, a recycling bin and a compost bin. What’s the most planet-friendly thing to do with your cup?

Many of us would opt for the recycling bin – but that’s often the wrong choice. In order to hold liquids, most paper coffee cups are made with a thin plastic lining, which makes separating these materials and recycling them difficult.

In fact, the most sustainable option isn’t available at the trash bin. It happens earlier, before you’re handed a disposable cup in the first place.

In our research on waste behavior, sustainability, engineering design and decision making, we examine what U.S. residents understand about the efficacy of different waste management strategies and which of those strategies they prefer. In two nationwide surveys in the U.S. that we conducted in October 2019 and March 2022, we found that people overlook waste reduction and reuse in favor of recycling. We call this tendency recycling bias and reduction neglect.

Our results show that a decadeslong effort to educate the U.S. public about recycling has succeeded in some ways but failed in others. These efforts have made recycling an option that consumers see as important – but to the detriment of more sustainable options. And it has not made people more effective recyclers.

A global waste crisis

Experts and advocates widely agree that humans are generating waste worldwide at levels that are unmanageable and unsustainable. Microplastics are polluting the Earth’s most remote regions and amassing in the bodies of humans and animals.

Producing and disposing of goods is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions and a public health threat, especially for vulnerable communities that receive large quantities of waste. New research suggests that even when plastic does get recycled, it produces staggering amounts of microplastic pollution.

Given the scope and urgency of this problem, in June 2023 the United Nations convened talks with government representatives from around the globe to begin drafting a legally binding pactaimed at stemming harmful plastic waste. Meanwhile, many U.S. cities and states are banning single-use plastic products or restricting their use.

Upstream and downstream solutions

Experts have long recommended tackling the waste problem by prioritizing source reduction strategies that prevent the creation of waste in the first place, rather than seeking to manage and mitigate its impact later. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other prominent environmental organizations like the U.N. Environment Programme use a framework called the waste management hierarchy that ranks strategies from most to least environmentally preferred.

Graphics showing options for managing waste, moving from upstream (production) to downstream (disposal). — The U.S. EPA’s current waste management hierarchy (left, with parenthetical explanations by Michaela Barnett, et al.), and a visual depiction of the three R’s framework (right). Michaela Barnett, et al., CC BY-ND

The familiar waste management hierarchy urges people to “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,” in that order. Creating items that can be recycled is better from a sustainability perspective than burning them in an incinerator or burying them in a landfill, but it still consumes energy and resources. In contrast, reducing waste generation conserves natural resources and avoids other negative environmental impacts throughout a product’s life.

R’s out of place

In our surveys, participants completed a series of questions and tasks that elicited their views of different waste strategies. In response to open-ended questions about the most effective way to reduce landfill waste or solve environmental issues associated with waste, participants overwhelmingly cited recycling and other downstream strategies.

We also asked people to rank the four strategies of the Environmental Protection Agency’s waste management hierarchy from most to least environmentally preferred. In that order, they include source reduction and reuse; recycling and composting; energy recovery, such as burning trash to generate energy; and treatment and disposal, typically in a landfill. More than three out of four participants (78%) ordered the strategies incorrectly.

When they were asked to rank the reduce/reuse/recycle options in the same way, participants fared somewhat better, but nearly half (46%) still misordered the popular phrase.

Finally, we asked participants to choose between just two options – waste prevention and recycling. This time, over 80% of participants understood that preventing waste was much better than recycling.

Recycling badly

While our participants defaulted to recycling as a waste management strategy, they did not execute it very well.

This isn’t surprising, since the current U.S. recycling system puts the onus on consumers to separate recyclable materials and keep contaminants out of the bin. There is a lot of variation in what can be recycled from community to community, and this standard can change frequently as new products are introduced and markets for recycled materials shift.

Our second study asked participants to sort common consumer goods into virtual recycling, compost and trash bins and then say how confident they were in their choices. Many people placed common recycling contaminants, including plastic bags (58%), disposable coffee cups (46%) and light bulbs (26%), erroneously – and often confidently – in the virtual recycling bins.

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/U6pVA/3/

This is known as wishcycling – placing nonrecyclable items in the recycling stream in the hope or belief that they will be recycled. Wishcycling creates additional costs and problems for recyclers, who have to sort the materials, and sometimes results in otherwise recyclable materials being landfilled or incinerated instead.

Although our participants were strongly biased toward recycling, they weren’t confident that it would work. Participants in our first survey were asked to estimate what fraction of plastic has been recycled since plastic production began. According to a widely cited estimate, the answer is just 9%. Our respondents thought that 25% of plastic had been recycled – more than expert estimates but still a low amount. And they correctly reasoned that a majority of it has ended up in landfills and the environment.

Empowering consumers to cut waste

Post-consumer waste is the result of a long supply chain with environmental impacts at every stage. However, U.S. policy and corporate discourse focuses on consumers as the main source of waste, as implied by the term “post-consumer waste.”

Other approaches put more responsibility on producers by requiring them to take back their products for disposal, cover recycling costs and design and produce goods that are easy to recycle effectively. These approaches are used in some sectors in the U.S., including lead-acid car batteries and consumer electronics, but they are largely voluntary or mandated at the state and local level.

When we asked participants in our second study where change could have the most impact and where they felt they could have the most impact as individuals, they correctly focused on upstream interventions. But they felt they could only affect the system through what they chose to purchase and how they subsequently disposed of it – in other words, acting as consumers, not as citizens.

As waste-related pollution accumulates worldwide, corporations continue to shame and blame consumers rather than reducing the amount of disposable products they create. In our view, recycling is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for overproducing and consuming goods, and it is time that the U.S. stopped treating it as such.

To see the original post, follow this link: https://theconversation.com/decades-of-public-messages-about-recycling-in-the-us-have-crowded-out-more-sustainable-ways-to-manage-waste-208924

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Tags: accountability, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, EPA, ESG, green marketing, post-consumer waste, recycling, responsible brands, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands, waste reduction
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, ESG, sustainable brands

We Need ‘Solutionist’ Entrepreneurship: Problem-Solvers Focused on Purpose and Long-Term Impact

25 07 2023

Featured image: Pixabay/Pexels

By Rasha Rehman via Triple Pundit • Reposted: July 25, 2023

To solve society’s most pressing problems, we need a new type of entrepreneur.

Solitaire Townsend, co-founder of the consultancy Futerra, describes these changemakers in her new book, “The Solutionists: How Business Can Fix the Future.” Townsend defines a “Solutionist” as part-entrepreneur and part-activist who is exclusively focused on solving problems. This type of mindset is needed to tackle a wide range of societal problems such as biodiversity loss, social division, racism and exclusion, she argues.

Townsend said she coined the term to help like-minded people find and identify each other.

What distinguishes a Solutionist from a traditional entrepreneur is that their purpose lies in solving problems. “They don’t approach social or eco-entrepreneurism and sustainable business as the latest fad for an additional value-add for business,” Townsend wrote. “Their companies, inventions, strategies and solutions are designed explicitly to confront problems — that’s the Solutionist way.”

And these problem-solvers are focused on action. “A traditional entrepreneur is driven probably by excitement, by their product and vision, [and] financially where they can be front page of Fortune, front page of Forbes,” Townsend told TriplePundit. “But a Solutionist is driven by [the fact that] their product, their service, their business is going to solve the world’s problems.”

In her book, Townsend outlines energy, infrastructure, transport, food, materials, finance, biodiversity, digitization, culture and the creative industry as key areas in which Solutionists can solve problems.

For example, Solutionists in the food industry might work on the research and development of foods that can help people reach optimal nutritional levels — and that they actually want to eat. Or they might work on developing marketing campaigns that encourage consumers to participate in the industry’s transition to net-zero emissions.

It’s time to communicate about solutions

The urgency of many of the world’s problems, like climate change, is already clearly communicated, Townsend said. Now, it’s crucial to engage with the entertainment and culture sector to tell stories about solutions.

“We’ve got so many of the technological solutions that we need. We know what policies we need, they’re just really difficult to get signed off,” Townsend said. “We have got so much of that infrastructure [of] solutions already worked out, it just needs to be implemented. The thing which we don’t have yet is the story.”

That means engaging with creative industry professionals like scriptwriters, musicians, artists and social media creators to tell creative and impactful stories.

“We’re in a dystopia,” she said. ”We don’t need any more dystopia stories. And we don’t need utopias either because that would be comforting but not very helpful. What we need is adventure stories of how we’re going to get from where we are to the solutions.”

Compelling narratives not only kickstart conversations about challenges like climate change, but they also educate consumers about the solutions required to tackle them — especially in niche, complicated areas. Right now, funding and resources should be put toward telling stories about these solutions, Townsend said.

Solitaire Townsend — proponent of Solutionist entrepreneurship — *Solitaire Townsend, author and co-founder of the consultancy Futerra.*

How aspiring Solutionists can overcome challenges

Being a Solutionist comes with its own set of challenges, like traditional entrepreneurship. However, there are some key differences. Entrepreneurs require funding to kickstart their projects. But Solutionists should ensure their investors are as interested in their business impact as they are in income, Townsend told 3p.

This path is a long-term pursuit that does not come with immediate rewards. “You tend not to save the world in the first two years of trying to do it,” Townsend said. Having grit, tenacity and flexibility in adapting your plans is important. She encourages balancing a determined mindset to accomplish your goals, while being relaxed and flexible in how you achieve them.

Solutionists, especially young people, can benefit from managing expectations of themselves and their impact realistically, Townsend said. This means taking breaks, making mistakes, and alleviating themselves from the pressures of perfection and failure. And instead, focusing on the big picture — that they are working on solutions that they know are impactful, notwithstanding external validation.

To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2023/solitaire-townsend-solutionist-solutionists/779471

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Tags: accountability, “The Solutionists: How Business Can Fix the Future.”, corporate social reponsibility, CSR, green marketing, responsible brands, Solitaire Townsend, Solutionists, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, social responsibility, sustainability, sustainable branding

Majority of Global Companies Increasing Investment in Sustainability

25 07 2023

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Seven in 10 surveyed companies said the political and regulatory environment has had a positive impact on their sustainability initiatives in the past 12 months. By Marina Mayer from Honeywell International from Supply Chain Executive • Reposted; July 25, 2023

A sizable majority of global companies surveyed are planning increased investments in support of their sustainability targets, despite economic uncertainty, according to data released by Honeywell in partnership with The Futurum Group.

“The latest Environmental Sustainability Index confirms that large global companies are continuing to stay on pace and invest in technology and staff to achieve their environmental sustainability goals,” says Evan van Hook, chief sustainability officer at Honeywell. “Sustainability is top of mind for leadership, and they are activating top-level staff to increase involvement and traction toward goals. At Honeywell, we are well on our way to delivering on our commitment to reaching our 2035 goals, and we are helping our customers to do the same with our ready-now solutions.”

From PR Newswire:

86% of the 751 global companies surveyed indicated that they plan to increase their sustainability budgets.
Seven in 10 surveyed companies said the political and regulatory environment has had a positive impact on their sustainability initiatives in the past 12 months.
74% of respondents said they were optimistic about attaining sustainability goals, particularly with respect to 2030 energy goals – a strong number but 3 percentage points lower than the last index.
Budget increases are slated across four sustainability categories: energy evolution and efficiency, emissions reduction, pollution prevention and circularity/recycling.
Improving energy evolution and efficiency is the top sustainability commitment across all geographies, with 87% of respondents citing it as a priority.
Some 25% and 20% of organizations in Latin America and Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), respectively, plan to boost their investment in energy evolution and efficiency by at least 50% in the coming 12 months – outpacing the budgetary commitments being made in North America and the Asia-Pacific.
For manufacturing and energy companies, sustainability has become their top priority, with roughly eight in 10 organizations in both sectors citing sustainability goals as their most important initiative for the coming six months. These companies indicate that sustainability is far outpacing their other corporate priorities, including financial performance, market growth and workforce development.
82% of these organizations are optimistic that their reporting methods will meet disclosure requirements that may emerge in the next year. Managing the reporting process is a bit trickier, however, as only 38% say they have a centralized person on staff to track sustainability efforts.

“The fourth release of Honeywell’s Environmental Sustainability Index provides new insight into how organizations are reporting and tracking their previously set commitments toward sustainability,” says Daniel Newman, principal analyst and founding partner of The Futurum Group. “This quarter, we are seeing increases in investment and transparency of efforts along with a balanced approach to technology versus process when it comes to reaching goals. As we move into 2024, we look forward to sharing data about our year-over-year comparison.”

To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.sdcexec.com/sustainability/carbon-footprint/news/22868115/honeywell-international-majority-of-global-companies-increasing-investment-in-sustainability

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Tags: accountability, corporate social reponsibility, corporate social responsibility, CSR, ESG, green marketing, responsible brands, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, social responsibility

Should You Outsource Your Chief Sustainability Officer?

23 07 2023

Image: Getty

By Shashi Menon, Member, Forbes Business Council via Forbes • Reposted:July 23, 2023

In today’s business world, many functions are outsourced. For example, at my company, we outsource payroll, IT, legal services and taxes because of the highly specialized knowledge required to do the tasks and the economies of scale achieved by the vendors. It doesn’t make sense for us to hire a full-time, in-house attorney with expertise in contracts, employment law, litigation, etc., when there is a buffet of highly specialized lawyers I can access through one relationship with a law firm—and I can rely on them as needed.

A similar theme is emerging in sustainability services. As an expert in providing outsourced CSO services, my company and others in the space help firms achieve their sustainability goals.

One of the biggest challenges faced by businesses today is finding people to assimilate all the knowledge needed to maneuver the energy transition, which places increasing pressure on businesses to reduce emissions, promote circularity and track sustainability. According to LinkedIn’s Global Green Skills Report 2022, demand for “green skills” is outpacing supply, and the specialization of “green skills” is proliferating—from climate and renewable energy to environmental awareness and corporate social responsibility.

Companies are responding to this need by appointing a chief sustainability officer, or CSO, who is expected to lead the response to the energy transition. The skills required to do this are complex, technical and often beyond the abilities of one person. It requires engineers, legal experts, market analysts, investment bankers and project managers.

Outsourcing CSO services, like outsourcing legal and accounting, allows businesses to access specialized sustainability experts. Outsourced CSOs can provide sustainability, business strategy and operational guidance related to the energy transition.

Making The Decision To Outsource

Whether you are leading a small startup or a large publicly traded firm, here are several instances where outsourcing CSO services can be an effective way to address some of today’s carbon challenges:

• New climate startups: You have launched a successful business model and are fortunate enough to be juggling multiple balls—hiring and training, sales and business development, investor relations and more. Your leadership team may not have time to keep up with global climate policies, emerging incentive programs, new competing technologies, evolving carbon markets, data standards and carbon accounting rules.

• Small or midsized privately held businesses: You have loyal customers who like your products or services, and you are growing steadily in a stable environment. Recently, these customers have been asking casual questions about the company’s sustainability efforts. The leadership team doesn’t have the time or the baseline knowledge to analyze the company’s sustainability.

• CEOs or CFOs: It’s time to update investors and shareholders about profit margins, strategic plans and key performance indicators, and they also want to see an analysis of energy transition risks and climate risks. As a believer in risk-averse governance, you know you should include this in your quarterly report, but you are not clear where to start.

• One-person sustainability departments: Pressure from the board and upper management has forced one person to research and respond to a variety of questions over the years, and their role has evolved to include “sustainability expert.” But the questions are becoming more complex and overwhelming. A climate scientist, a policy analyst and a process engineer are needed on the team to fully respond to the situation, but the budget doesn’t allow this.

Of course, outsourcing a task core to a business’ strategic direction is not always a good idea. A CSO is a part of the leadership team and has access to confidential information that is key to a company’s success and competitive advantage, which are not things that can be shared with an outside firm before establishing a high level of trust. In these cases, it is better to plan to have an in-house CSO who can incorporate these business secrets into a long-term sustainability strategy.

Getting Started With An Outsourced CSO

The CSO is usually key to building the company’s “green team” that has the passion for facilitating the energy transition and the specialized skills needed to perform the critical analysis needed. If you are outsourcing a CSO, make sure you have established an internal team with diverse skill sets; these include climate scientists, market analysts, process engineers, policy advisors, etc.

The energy transition requires a business to rethink how it’s doing business, and a CSO must frequently interact with purchasing, marketing, legal, accounting and operations, and talk their language.

A key CSO function is communicating complex technical concepts in simple language. Ask your CSO to conduct an analysis of the risks and opportunities your business faces, so when a customer or an investor casually asks what you are doing on the sustainability front, you can give a clear and confident response.

CSOs lead a company’s response to the energy transition: Look for someone who is unbiased, data-driven, aspirational in their approach, has a strong grasp of internal and external stakeholder needs, and a peer network that includes policy analysts, engineers, auditors, carbon life cycle experts, etc.

The biggest challenge in deciding whether to outsource the CSO function is how to integrate someone external into the day-to-day details of your team’s workflow. Should you give them a company email? How much confidential information should you share? Who should be the main point of contact internally for the outsourced service? Each company has to develop its own processes to govern the level of outsourcing it wishes to put in place.

Some companies starting fresh on the energy transition journey need a temporary leader with a full team of external technical resources that they can use as needed. Others, further down the path, may have an internal CSO on the team, but they need to outsource technical expertise and receive policy briefings and technical analyses, as needed.

Outsourcing the CSO function can make it easier for businesses to make sustainability and strategic decisions. An outsourced CSO can analyze the risks and opportunities a business faces due to climate policy, carbon pricing, consumer preferences or even severe weather events, so when a customer or an investor asks what you are doing on the sustainability front, you can give a clear and confident response.

To see the original post, follow this link. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2023/07/21/should-you-outsource-your-chief-sustainability-officer/?sh=786f96cc777e

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Tags: accountability, corporate social responsibility, CSO, CSR, ESG, green marketing, Green Skills, responsible brands, Should You Outsource Your Chief Sustainability Officer, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, ESG, responsible brands, social responsibility, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands

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