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.”
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.
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.
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.
By Robert Brown from Global Trade Daily • Reposted: August 18, 2023
Franchise owners can make a significant impact on the world. Their collective teams and resources kickstart movements to help people and the environment, depending on which industry the owner enters.
These are some of the best franchise concepts because they’re socially responsible, impactful and profitable.
Sustainable Seafood Companies
Many consumers assume seafood is a better industry for future franchise owners because it doesn’t use the same business processes as beef farms. Although sustainable fishing supplies are readily available, corporations sometimes rely on methods like trawling to keep up with high demand.
Trawling drags large nets across the ocean floor. They pull up thriving coral communities and plant life without guaranteeing a full catch of the intended fish species. Trawlers also create significant amounts of carbon dioxide, contributing to the issue of global warming.
Entrepreneurs can mitigate this issue by opening sustainable seafood companies, like a franchise with Shuckin’ Shack. The brand works with a sustainable seafood supplier, recycles its oyster shells and has multiple approvals from ocean-focused environmental groups like the Plastic Ocean Project. By working with a brand such as Shuckin Shack, the franchise owner’s corresponding eco-friendly business models would rely on similar production methods to avoid harming endangered plant and marine animal species.
Plant-Based Meat Brands
Cultures transform meats with widespread arrays of recipes, but it’s not the best ingredient for the environment. Livestock industries contribute 12–18% of greenhouse gas emissions globally. Becoming part of a franchise that tries to reduce that statistic is a significant way to create positive change for the planet.
Home Care Businesses
While mainstream companies focus on catering to younger generations, entrepreneurs can enter the socially responsible home care industry. The demand for in-home assistance is projected to rise by 29% through 2024, leading to a higher demand for more home care service providers throughout the U.S.
There are numerous reasons why people prefer to age at home. They may not be able to afford an assisted living facility. Some people live in rural areas that don’t have those facilities or have health conditions that require specialized care.
It’s especially beneficial if the prices for those home care services match the economic abilities of older adults in the surrounding area. When patients and their loved ones don’t have to go into additional medical debt to access health care, franchise services become humanitarian efforts.
Junk Removal Trucks
Municipal solid waste is a challenge wherever people live. Based on the most updated research, it contributes an average of 35 million tons of garbage to landfills, but it doesn’t all belong there. People often throw out reusable or recyclable goods, not realizing those options are available or have them nearby.
Junk removal franchises are a socially responsible way to fight this ongoing issue. Gone for Good is one brand to consider that donates whatever goods it can while recycling leftover materials from client pickup sites. It’s a convenience consumers appreciate because it makes their lives easier while keeping landfill waste from polluting the environment.
Learning Center Brands
Daycares help parents return to work, but only if they can afford it. The average parent pays between $5,357–17,171 annually for childcare. It’s a significant financial burden, but learning center franchises can solve this systemic challenge.
Learning centers provide daycare for young kids while combining their daytime activities with learning opportunities. Each parent’s monthly payment becomes an investment in their child’s academic success. Kids can learn custom curriculum lessons that help them later in life and prepare them for grade school.
The key is matching the daily, weekly and monthly care costs with the economic abilities of families in the surrounding area. Discounts also make learning centers more affordable by merging socially responsible business models with what people can comfortably manage.
Solar Panel Franchise
Social and environmental responsibility merge with solar panel installation franchises. They allow homeowners to reduce their monthly utility bills by harvesting solar energy from their rooftops. Saving money is why 92% of homeowners who installed solar panels went through with the purchase or seriously considered it.
Using less electricity from power plants also helps the environment. The plants don’t have to produce as much electricity for surrounding areas, leading to fewer carbon emissions per plant.
Entrepreneurs with green values can open a business with franchise brands like Solar Grids. The company provides the training and management resources a new business owner needs to launch a successful enterprise. Solar Grids also assists with training installation specialists so every newly installed panel works at peak efficiency.
Green Landscaping Companies
Landscaping is a foundational part of many neighborhoods, but it’s not always helpful for the planet. Sprinklers use excessive water to keep plants alive, while chemical-based products kill insects and leak into surrounding habitats.
Nearby clients would ensure the environment benefits from organic fertilizers, chemical-free pesticides and recommended plant choices to reduce water usage. Expert team members could also provide landscape design appointments to pitch ideas like hardscaping. Utilizing rock formations, fire pits and patios would make any yard better for the environment while making the homeowner’s yard-care routine more manageable.
Urgent Care Clinics
Prioritizing the health of a community through a franchise is one of the most socially responsible and impactful business models. Research shows over 100 rural hospitals shut down between 2013 and 2020, forcing people to travel an average of 20 miles farther for essential services.
Urgent care franchise locations can assist with this issue. Entrepreneurs often reach out to companies like American Family Care to open clinics in medically underserved areas like rural communities.
The brand helps new owners navigate the legal steps of providing new medical services while streamlining the location’s success with tailored marketing and developmental plans. The centers become crucial to the region’s medical infrastructure, guaranteeing long-term success and positive social impact.
Franchise owners can also look into providing services for affordable rates based on the average wage in the surrounding city or zip code. Gallup polling shows 38% of Americans skipped medical care in 2022 due to the rising costs of essential services. Meeting a community’s needs with affordable medical treatments at an urgent care venue would merge humanitarian and franchising opportunities.
Open a Franchise With a Purpose
Humanitarian needs range from a healthy planet that provides a long-term home to affordable medical services. Franchise owners can fill those gaps, depending on the type of franchise they open. Entrepreneurs must consider these impactful business opportunities to start the career they desire while making lasting positive changes in their communities.
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 asthe 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.
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.”
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.
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 conductresearch 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It’s been a bad year for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Budget cuts and layoffs hit corporate and academic DEI departments hard in 2022. The trend backward comes on the heels of rapid growth in the years prior. And while cuts may be one way for companies to tighten their belts as post-pandemic sales drop, future repercussions will likely bring regret.
Short-term gains, long-term losses
Cuts to DEI may lower overhead in the short term, said Ritu Bhasin, a DEI and leadership expert and the author of “We’ve Got This,” a book about finding belonging. “The problem is that the price tag is greater in the long term.”
Companies face a number of consequences when they focus on immediate cuts to the bottom line instead of valuing diversity and creating environments that are inclusive and supportive of all people. “Creativity and innovation will suffer,” she said. “And they’ll be less able to capture market share.”
Bhasin breaks this down to a matter of talent, explaining that the companies making cuts to their DEI programs will be less able to attract and retain skilled workers. With employees feeling less psychological safety in these spaces, attrition will increase, and those that remain may be more cautious about sharing creative solutions.
Diversity’s positive effects on profitability are well-established. And yet, in addition to slashing DEI departments and programming, quite a few companies are unsurprisingly showing a reduction in new hire diversity since the middle of last year.
Bucking the trend
Fortunately, not all businesses forget the importance of recruiting people from a variety of backgrounds and aligning workplaces accordingly. In particular, consumer-facing businesses are less likely to cut DEI programming, Bhasin said, because they recognize the need to reflect the diversity of their customers.
“Banking isn’t seeing the elimination of DEI either, or it is minimal [in comparison],” she said. This also makes sense, considering that financial institutions serve consumers directly and may have a better understanding of the need to reflect their customer base.
But for industries making the biggest cuts, choosing short-term monetary profit over long-term effects “reflects an overarching underestimate of the importance of DEI,” Bhasin said. “And it demonstrates that it was a performative commitment to begin with.”
What are the solutions to widespread cuts in DEI?
So, what can be done about it? “It’s a tricky, challenging problem,” she said. “The DEI leaders who helped to grow understanding of the need are being cut. Those who raised awareness are being let go.”
DEI and leadership expert, Ritu Bhasin. Images courtesy of Ritu Bhasin
Bhasin doubts employers can be counted on to see the light. “They’re the decision-makers. Who is going to convince them?” she said, noting that perhaps the DEI team or other executives can try. Additionally, employees could choose to leave or become increasingly vocal. “But that’s deeply problematic,” Bhasin said. “It puts the responsibility for change on the community that is being affected.”
She recommends a multi-pronged approach, in which shareholders, clients and consumers hold companies accountable. Depending on the type of business, some groups may have more power than others. With companies that don’t deal directly with the public, it may be up to shareholders, clients and contractors to speak up.
For those that provide consumer products and services, “we can vote by where we spend our money,” Bhasin said. “Stop consuming.” One example of this is Twitter, which has notoriously lost both users and advertisers since billionaire Elon Musk took over at the end of October 2022.
Twitter’s DEI team was decimated upon Musk’s acquisition — reportedly shrinking from 30 positions to just two. And while that is not the only reason for the drastic drop in Twitter advertising, it certainly has a huge impact. The social media site lost nearly half of its marketing revenue as it became a bastion for brazen biases and vehement hatred.
But for all the talk of waning sales and falling profits, overall, corporations are still raking in the dough. While corporate windfalls have not continued at the rate they did in 2021, they remain astronomical when taken into long-term historical context. As such, cuts to DEI program budgets and staff are not only unnecessary, but they are also incredibly unwise. It will ultimately take all of us to set things right.
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.
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.
By Kirstie McDermott from Nature World News • Reposted: August 5, 2023
In an inspiring initiative to protect the environment and promote sustainable practices, leading brands have teamed up to make a significant difference in nature protection. This collaborative effort, named Bravo for Oceans, aims to hire local fishermen to clean up local bodies of water from debris and waste, and consumers can actively support this cause simply by making a purchase from one of the participating brands. Through this innovative approach, these brands are demonstrating their commitment to corporate social responsibility and fostering positive change in their communities.
Empowering local fishermen for cleaner waters
As concerns about environmental pollution and its impact on ecosystems continue to rise, businesses are increasingly recognizing their role in making a positive impact on nature protection. In a joint effort, several brands have come together to support local fishermen in their mission to clean up water bodies, such as lakes, rivers and coastal areas, from accumulated debris and waste.
By collaborating with local fishermen, who possess a deep understanding of their surrounding ecosystems, the initiative harnesses their expertise and knowledge to restore the health of these vital water sources. The fishermen are empowered to carry out clean-up activities in a responsible and sustainable manner, ensuring that aquatic life and habitats are protected throughout the process.
Consumer support through responsible purchasing
Consumers now have a unique opportunity to contribute to this meaningful initiative simply by making a purchase from the brands participating in this nature protection project. Each transaction made with these brands will directly support the hiring of local fishermen and enable them to take effective action in cleaning up water bodies, preserving natural beauty and conserving marine life.
By choosing to support these brands, conscious consumers can actively play a role in environmental conservation and invest in a greener future. Each purchase becomes a powerful statement in favor of sustainable practices and the protection of our planet’s invaluable water resources.
Bravodeal.com’s role in the initiative
Among the prominent brands actively participating in this noble initiative is Bravodeal.com. Founded in 2018, Bravodeal.com is a renowned coupon site that specializes in providing discount codes for users looking to save money on online purchases. The platform offers a wide selection of coupon codes, deals and promotions that can be used across major online retailers.
With an extensive network of partner brands, Bravodeal.com is committed to supporting sustainable initiatives and driving positive change. By initiating the idea and partnering up with an organization to carry out the hiring and cleaning, they are leveraging their platform to encourage responsible shopping choices that positively impact the environment.
It’s no secret that the past few years have created seismic changes in the retail industry.
Economic and supply chain issues have made it harder for consumers to shop. In fact, 88% of global consumers experienced availability, pricing and shipping issues. Retailers have responded by adding serious muscle to their e-commerce capabilities and expanding their BOPIS (buy online, pick up in store) capabilities.
To boost the productivity of associates and make their jobs easier, retailers have turned to handheld digital devices. This technology changes everything, from how employees conduct inventory and re-stock to having more information available.
Even with this additional technology, the retail industry continues to suffer from a chronic worker shortage. Retailers have far more unfilled job openings than the availability of unemployed workers with retail experience.
Unfortunately, 2.6 million tons of e-commerce returns end up in landfills since it is cheaper to dump returns than process and resell them. In the U.S. in 2020 alone, shipping returns from online orders pumped 16 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions into the atmosphere—equivalent to the emissions generated by powering 2 million homes for a year.
Moreover, the handheld devices retailers rely on are prematurely ending up in landfills, too. According to the Global E-Waste Monitor 2020, the U.S. produced roughly 6.9 million metric tons of e-waste in 2019. A U.K. government report says, “New software updates are often not supported on older hardware, meaning it becomes necessary to replace the hardware despite the physical product still working.”
Our research report found that enterprises are aggressively chasing new upgrades and fresh hardware rather than maintaining, updating, diagnosing and fixing devices they already have. For example, 60% of IT decision makers said their ruggedized devices, tablets, laptops and wearables are being discarded unnecessarily.
How To Get To A More Sustainable Retail Future
Retailers can encourage their IT departments to use an enterprise mobility management (EMM) solution that can extend the lifecycle of handheld devices. So, instead of investing in new hardware prematurely, an investment in an EMM solution will allow the IT department to remotely monitor, diagnose and repair devices to expand their lifecycles.
Modern retailers leverage rugged devices that enable smarter supply chains, logistics, warehousing, distribution and inventory management. But handheld devices are powered by batteries, and batteries can begin to fail after a number of charging and discharging cycles. As a result, IT teams routinely discard entire sets of batteries to avoid the downtime that unexpected battery failures can cause.
Monitoring of battery life needs to be a core component of the e-waste conversation. Retailers need to predict battery failures before they occur and replace only those batteries that are predicted to fail. With an EMM that provides intelligent battery analytics, the lifespan of batteries can be prolonged, keeping them out of landfill sites as well as reducing costs by avoiding unnecessary battery replacement.
A more sustainable approach is vital, especially as retailers augment their capabilities with drones and autonomous vehicles. A reduce-reuse-and-recycle mentality will enable retailers to make better, more sustainable choices that make the most out of every investment.
Retailers have the potential to shrink their overall carbon footprint and provide better real-time data to consumers—but getting the best results will require changes.
Sustainability is what consumers want, and investors are taking note, too. As BlackRock CEO Larry Fink put it in a recent letter to CEOs, “Sustainable investments have now reached $4 trillion. Actions and ambitions toward decarbonization have also increased. This is just the beginning—the tectonic shift towards sustainable investing is still accelerating.”
Getting to a more sustainable future means thinking more about the long term. Retailers should whiteboard out their use cases and think about where they can gain efficiency. With the right technology in place, retailers can easily manage their fleet of mobile devices across multiple locations and employees under a single pane of glass.
Retailers need to begin thinking about their businesses as a set of data flows. They need to optimize how they use data all the way from the retail floor back into the extended supply chain, considering how and where data is collected and making sure all those connections are rock-solid.
We take a look at the top 10 startups demonstrating dedicated action to mitigate their climate impact, including Aurora Solar, AMP Robotics, and more. By Lucy Buchholz from Sustainability Magazine • Reposted: August 4, 2023
The path to sustainable operations is a tricky one, laden with unexpected pitfalls, significant sacrifices and lacking a unifying expectation of what ‘sustainable’ actually looks like in practice. Yet, getting a grip on emissions, waste and renewable resources among other elements – not to mention all the associated policy and process changes – is of vital importance in the coming years.
Enter the startup world. Often renowned for their ingenuity, scalability and passionate problem-solving, startups are perfectly poised to take on the mantle of sustainable practice and generate innovative solutions. Uninhibited by legacy tech and embedded processes, startups are free to assess sustainability in more efficient, effective ways.
Here, we take a look at the top 10 sustainable startups of 2023 to see which are prioritising the planet over personal gain and devising sustainable solutions.
Headquarters: California, US – CEO: Christie Obiaya – Total funding: US$332.6m
Renewable energy technology company Heliogen is focused on eliminating the need for fossil fuels in heavy industry and powering a sustainable future. The company’s AI-enabled, modular concentrated solar technology aims to cost-effectively deliver near 24/7 carbon-free energy in the form of heat, power or green hydrogen fuel at scale – for the first time in history.
The company’s HelioHeat technology was recognised by TIME on its prestigious Best Inventions of 2020 list and Fast Company honoured Heliogen with a 2020 World Changing Ideas Award.
Headquarters: San Francisco, US –CEO: Stuart Landesberg – Total funding: US$606.5m
Certified B Corp, Grove Collaborative, is a one-stop shop for brands that love the planet. Offering over 200 brands, from cleaning products to wellness items, each item has been carefully selected having undergone thorough evaluation to meet stringent criteria for guaranteed sustainability.
The company also proudly holds the distinction of being the world’s first plastic-neutral retailer. When consumers buy plastic packaging from the business, it takes responsibility by collecting an equivalent amount of nature-bound plastic pollution through our partnership with rePurpose Global.
Headquarters: Paris, France –CEO: Guillaume Fourdinier – Total funding: US$40.6m
In 35 m2, Agricool can produce the same amount of food as 4,000 m2, with no pesticides, no transportation and with 100% renewable energy. To achieve this, the business has created a paradise for fruits and vegetables in recycled shipping containers, to provide the best lighting, temperature, irrigation and air quality. Through these innovative containers, usually seasonal fruit and vegetables can be grown all year round, while water use and carbon emissions are reduced.
Headquarters: London, UK – CEO: Mauro Cozzi – Total funding: US$16.6m
Emitwise takes the creativity out of carbon accountancy by providing an easy-to-use platform that accurately measures, tracks, reports targets and reduces emissions across the supply chain.
The journey to reduce a company’s carbon emissions begins within its owned operations – but extends much further beyond. Emitwise’s platform ensures that clients have access to the same level of detail, accuracy and insights throughout your entire supply chain. In fact, 1 in 4 Emitwise customers have set a net-zero target and 85% of the emissions the business tracks are Scope 3.
Headquarters: New South Wales, Australia – CEO: Guy Hudson – Total funding: US$105m
To help solve the climate crisis, Loam works with 4.5bn years of evolution. As microbes have changed the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere, Loam is ensuring they can do it again. By gaining a better understanding of how microbes influence the carbon cycle, Loam is creating new planetary-scale opportunities for carbon sequestration and improving agricultural productivity.
The business delivers high-quality CO2 removal with environmental co-benefits, by providing growers with unique tools and connecting them to business leaders who are driving the global path to net-zero.
Headquarters: Colorado, US – CEO: Dr. Matanya Horowitz – Number of employees: X – Total funding: US$324mn
By applying AI and automation, AMP Robotics is modernising and scaling the world’s recycling infrastructure to increase rates and recover recyclables reclaimed as raw materials for the global supply chain.
AMP’s technology is widely deployed across North America, Asia and Europe to recover various valuable materials from different sources. This includes the retrieval of plastics, paper and metals from municipal waste, precious commodities from electronic scrap, high-value materials from construction and demolition debris and valuable feedstocks from organic materials.
Headquarters: Boston, Massachusetts – CEO: Bob Mumgaard –Total funding: US$2bn
With the fastest, lowest cost paths to commercial fusion energy, Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) is collaborating with MIT to utilise decades of research combined with new groundbreaking high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnet technology.
CFS is also constructing SPARC, the world’s first commercially relevant, net energy fusion demonstration device – a significant stepping stone towards ARC, the first fusion power plant that will provide power on the grid. Ultimately, CFS’s mission is to deploy fusion power plants to meet global decarbonisation goals as fast as possible.
Headquarters: California, US – CEO: Adrián Ferrero –Total funding: US$25m
Silicon Valley-based Biome Makers has become a global AgTech leader, setting a high standard in soil health with BeCrop® technology – the largest global taxonomic database of 14mn microorganisms.
Built on industry-leading AgTech expertise and driven by data and science, Biome Makers connect soil biology to agricultural decision-making to optimise farming practices and reverse the degradation of arable soils.
With a global team passion about preserving, restoring, and improving soil health, Biome Makers have impacted over one million acres of land across the globe.
Pure Harvest Smart Farms is a pioneering, technology-enabled agribusiness headquartered in the United Arab Emirates, focused on sustainable year-round production of premium-quality fresh fruits and vegetables. The business is committed to delivering on their mission of farming extraordinarily flavourful, affordable and fresh produce. They achieve this by innovating across the full value chain of controlled-environment agriculture (CEA), including technology design, procurement, construction and farm operations.
Pure Harvest Smart Farms’ world-leading yields are the result of their inventive approach to farming. They introduced the Middle East’s first semi-automated, high-tech hybrid growing system and incorporated horticultural best practices to address significant regional challenges, such as food security, water conservation, economic diversification and sustainability demands.
Pure Harvest Smart Farms has secured over US$334.4m in capital commitments from a global investor base that spans from California, USA to Seoul, Korea. These investors recognise the value of the company’s mission and their unwavering commitment to sustainable agriculture.
Headquarters: California, US – CEO: Christopher Hopper –Total funding: US$523.5mn
Aurora’s cloud-based software revolutionises solar design, sales and delivery. By simply providing an address and electric bill, Aurora enables individuals to generate comprehensive, precise and customisable designs for each client – ultimately, securing immediate agreements.
The company contributes to the advancement of renewable energy by supporting numerous solar projects every week, aiming to make solar power accessible to all. Aurora calls for a departure from outdated power grids and the adoption of the solar future, simplifying tasks, discarding obsolete technology and accelerating business growth.
Now, more than 7,000 of the industry’s top organisations rely on Aurora and over ten million solar projects have been designed with the platform globally. The San Francisco-based company was the only climate tech business named to the 2022 Forbes AI 50 and was voted the best solar software by Solar Power World in 2021.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
By Kathryn Unger from Triple Pundit • Reposted: August 1, 2023
As Earth’s temperatures continue to rise, it has become evident that protecting the planet will require global cooperation and direct action across every single industry. The healthcare industry is no exception. Indeed, the connection between environmental health and human health underscores the importance of the medical community’s role in reaching net zero carbon emissions.
The healthcare sector contributes an estimated 4.5 percent of global emissions. Some of these greenhouse gases are produced from healthcare facilities; others are the result of the industry’s supply chain of goods and services. Yet when it comes to climate change, the healthcare industry must go beyond focusing on treating the health conditions resulting from environmental degradation — and increasingly, we’re seeing industry starting to shift toward helping to prevent those health conditions by addressing climate change itself.
Boston Scientific is among those medical technology companies working to reduce emissions. Our ambitious effort will involve reevaluating every aspect of business and making changes to support achieving net-zero emissions along the company’s entire value chain. This work represents a considerable challenge, and one whose time has come.
“Climate change will affect almost every human disease in some way,” says Dr. Kenneth Stein, chief medical officer. “For those of us in the healthcare industry, who are dedicated to improving health and patient outcomes, that’s a worrisome thought. But we can apply our considerable innovative skills toward becoming part of the solution.”
Fortunately, we have a couple of important factors working in our favor. They are ingredients which, I would suggest, every company needs to succeed in meeting its ESG goals: A thoughtful, realistic, and science-based sustainability plan in development, along with full-throated support for our initiative at every level of our organization.
Making the business case for sustainability in healthcare
Within the medtech sector, some sustainability changes involve tracing products back through the supply chain to reimagine the way those products are sourced, manufactured, packaged and shipped. Doing so is a significant undertaking – so much so, that if an organization doesn’t have a clear understanding that its sustainability goals are in line with a clear mission to improve health outcomes, it might shy away from the challenge.
Paudie O’Connor, senior vice president in charge of Boston Scientific global supply chain, points out that for that reason, it’s important to dispel myths that there is tension between the two goals. “There is no reason why we can’t further healthcare to help decrease the plight of human suffering, and work to improve the environment at the same time,” he told me.
In fact, Boston Scientific was the first medical device company to commit to carbon neutrality within its manufacturing network, as well as to receive approval for its net zero target by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), an international organization that provides clear guidance for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in line with the latest climate science.
Already, we’ve made progress toward carbon neutrality goals by shifting our electricity sources in the U.S. and Europe to 100% renewable electricity – contributing to 76% renewable electricity across our global manufacturing and key distribution sites – putting us on track for 100% renewable electricity worldwide by 2024 in our manufacturing and key distribution sites. All are important milestones on the path to achieving the company’s net zero emissions target across the entire value chain by 2050.
However, some sustainability goals are more complicated. For instance, physicians and patients need medical products that are sterile, safe and reliable – and those standards are highly regulated. Now, teams must consider the environmental footprint of products at every life cycle stage, from design, sourcing, production and distribution to waste disposal and recycling.
“We spend a great deal of time thinking about how we can structure our supply chain to support growth and environmental sustainability,” O’Connor says. “For example, thinking of ways to reduce packaging, digitize instructions for use, target sterilization practices and use strategic modes of distribution.”
Shipping is a good example. Medical device manufacturers have long shipped products to their destinations by air as a matter of convenience and, importantly, speed, so that devices are always available for patients who require immediate intervention. “Our supply chain has a purpose statement: ‘delivering for patients,’” says O’Connor. “Getting high-quality products to patients when they need them.”
Rail and maritime transport are far more carbon-efficient than air transport, but take longer; for example, a product that takes four days to get from Costa Rica to Boston by air may take 14 days by boat and rail. Thus, in switching to moving products by land or sea to key distribution hubs, a company must carefully reexamine the timetables by which products are sent and adjust them accordingly. Mapping out such thoughtful, deliberate changes can result in meaningful carbon reduction, making the effort well worthwhile.
Tackling environmental challenges for better health
This is one of the biggest challenges that the global population has faced, let alone the healthcare industry. But by viewing environmental sustainability as a step toward improving human health, the goals of both the medical community and those of global supply chain teams can come together as one. I believe that such a holistic view is precisely the way to frame the important sustainability work ahead of the healthcare industry. Dr. Stein agrees: “To reduce healthcare disparities, we can’t ignore how environmental and climate changes will affect health, especially for society’s most vulnerable.”
There is so much more work to do to continue to advance our collective efforts to contribute to a healthier planet. Regulations are increasing and evolving. Customer expectations are evolving. Science is constantly evolving and changing the things that we can accomplish for our customers and patients. But the industry is making meaningful changes — and by holding ourselves and each other accountable, we can accelerate progress and achieve more together.
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.
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 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.
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.
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
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.
By Mary K. Pratt from Techtarget.com • Reposted: July 28, 2023
Just as with any journey, a sustainability journey requires understanding some keys to success.
Many organizations are struggling to build sustainability programs and implement more environmentally friendly practices. Furthermore, some companies have exaggerated their sustainability records, a practice known as greenwashing.
“Sustainability maturity ranges quite a bit,” said Michelle Benavides, executive director of the International Society of Sustainability Professionals, a professional association of sustainability practitioners. “There are leaders who have been working on this for a long time. But many others are in the early stages of setting commitments and trying to figure out how to hit those commitments.”
More companies are starting on their journey toward environmental sustainability as top leadership prioritizes the issue.
Environmental sustainability ranked as the number eighth strategic issues for CEOs heading into 2023, according to the “2022 Gartner CEO and Senior Business Executive Survey.”
In addition, consumers have become more interested in the environmental records of those they buy from and engage with. Employees are seeking more action from their employers on this front. Many governments around the world have added environmental regulations and reporting requirements.
Organizations looking to meet those demands can consider 10 actions to help enable sustainability success.
1. Understand the environmental impact
Cutting greenhouse gas emissions to limit further global warming is at the core of ensuring a livable world, and business leaders can have major impact.
Working to understand the direct and indirect carbon footprint is key, both in terms of direct and indirect emissions.
The Greenhouse Gas Protocol, a widely used classification system for emissions reporting, has laid out three scopes of direct and indirect emissions:
Scope 1 includes direct greenhouse emissions.
Scope 2 includes indirect greenhouse gas emissions from energy a company purchases.
Scope 3 includes a wide range of indirect greenhouse emissions across the value chain, from sourcing through disposal.
Carbon emissions are not the only environmental impact a company has. Leaders should also understand their effect in other areas, from the physical waste they produce to their organization’s use of natural resources, and how their company’s actions affect water, air and land quality.
Moreover, sustainability includes environmental impacts besides climate change as well as broader social and business issues.
“The sustainability journey is so much more than taking emissions out of the business,” said Vinay Shandal, managing director and senior partner at Boston Consulting Group.
2. Create a sustainability roadmap
Once company leaders understand how and where the organization affects the environment, they can start to analyze and measure those impacts as well as benchmark themselves against other organizations — determining if they’re laggards or leaders in sustainability work.
That information helps each organization create a strategy for improving their sustainability, Benavides said. “It’s always critical to understand your baseline so you understand where you can go and can break down how to get there.”
Executives can start with areas that they can directly control — such as creating more energy efficient buildings and operations — and then focus on how to improve sustainability in other areas such as their supply chains, Benavides said.
Looking to the biggest potential wins can also be fruitful.
Executives should identify areas where changes could yield the biggest improvements in sustainability and prioritize those, Shandal said.
3. Go after easy sustainability wins
Some organizations have yet to implement the fundamentals of an environmental sustainability journey. In these cases, leaders can look to what can be achieved with little effort, Benavides said.
Lower energy consumption by powering down lights, devices and other electronics when not in use.
Install smart fixtures that automatically shut off and energy-efficient equipment, such as LED lighting.
Create sustainability awareness programs that encourage a reduce-reuse-recycle mentality in the workplace and support it through corporate actions by, for example, replacing bottled water vending machines with water dispensers designed to fill reusable water bottles.
Digitalizing business processes to reduce environmental impacts such as paper waste, excess business travel and commutes to the office.
Switching to renewable energy sources, where possible.
Executives should aim to encourage, empower and train their teams to do their part, Benavides said.
“This truly is a mission and commitment that everyone has to get involved in, so build foundational knowledge across the entirety of your staff,” she said. “You want to make sure staff across the board can deeply understand the commitments being made by the sustainability managers, why it’s so critical, how they fit into the puzzle and how they can act to meet those goals.” Communication about sustainability is key. “Make sure everyone is equipped and then go forward from there with a solid action plan.”
5. Get top-level buy-in
As with any important initiative, support from the top is key.
Creating a more sustainable organization requires support from senior leaders and the board, Benavides said. To build sustainability into the fabric of the company, top-level buy-in is necessary. When that buy-in is absent, the results are unlikely to be successful.
“[Sustainability] becomes a more siloed effort and it becomes harder to reach any sustainability commitments the company might have set,” she said.
6. Bring sustainability to the supply chain
Most organizations are part of complex networks. This means business and IT leaders need to consider the sustainability of their supply chain, their suppliers and their business partners. The criteria for evaluating these varies by industry as well as by each organization’s own objectives.
Many organizations consider the carbon footprints of those with whom they do business, said Abhijit Sunil, an analyst at Forrester Research whose research focuses on environmental reporting and sustainability strategies.
As part of that carbon footprint evaluation and as part of other sustainability considerations, organizations also may consider what materials their suppliers use, how they source those materials, how they produce their materials or products, and how they ship their products, he said.
Some organizations also consider their suppliers’ product designs and packaging and whether materials and products can be repaired, recycled or reused. These are key principles for reducing environmental impacts and cutting back on waste and encouraging a more environmentally friendly circular economy.
7. Measure and track
A slew of companies, nonprofit entities and government agencies have been announcing their plans to become carbon-neutral and less environmentally impactful. But many may lack the ability to measure their existing environmental impact, track progress toward their stated goals and accurately report their sustainability metrics.
Think about where value is shifting and, ‘How do I position my business to play and win in this new economy?’Vinay ShandalManaging director and senior partner, Boston Consulting Group
To address that, sustainability chiefs should work with their executive colleagues to create processes for quantifying their environmental impacts and tracking their improvements in those areas, Sunil said. Organizations also should create KPIs based on the objectives they have for their sustainability programs.
CIOs can play a leading role by helping select software for capturing, quantifying, analyzing and reporting sustainability-related metrics. For example, governance, risk and compliance software as well as environmental health and safety management software often have modules for carbon accounting, Sunil said.
CIOs could bring other technologies to bear here too, Sunil said. IoT, for example, can help companies track and analyze information and provide more visibility into their environmental impact.
8. Understand how technology impacts the environment
They should be evaluating their own department’s environmental impact as well as how and where they can bring improvements, Sunil said.
IT equipment consumes significant amounts of energy, with some technologies — such as generative AI — requiring more power than other types of digital solutions.
Data centers — whether on premise or with cloud providers — use not only large amounts of power but also use significant amounts of water for cooling and often require large tracks of land.
However, CIOs can opt to consider their technology suppliers’ sustainability records along with performance criteria when selecting vendors, Sunil said. They can also work with hardware providers to ensure they have solid take-back programs so end-of-life devices can be reused or recycled. They can promote the use of software designed for sustainability.
In the near future, CIOs may have no choice but to become more sustainability minded.
Seventy percent of leaders in the area of technology sourcing, procuring and vendor management will have performance objectives for their functions that focus on environmental sustainability, according to Gartner’s “Predicts 2023: Environmental Sustainability Is Now an IT Sourcing Imperative.”
9. Take a holistic approach
Enterprise executives should remember that environmental sustainability is one part of environmental, social and governance ESG efforts. They should consider their sustainability initiatives through the environmental lens as well as the social and governance lenses.
Leaders should think end to end, Shandal said. For example, electric vehicle makers should be considering how and where the materials to create the batteries are sourced; how they’re handled at end-of-life; the environmental and social impact of that work; and how all those pieces will be monitored and governed according to the policies, standards and objectives established by the vehicle maker.
10. Look for opportunities in a sustainability-focused economy
Going on a sustainability journey can unlock new sources of revenue.
Companies should identify what opportunities they may have as they and others increasingly embrace sustainable practices, Shandal said.
For example, as companies turn away from using chemicals that harm the environment, they’ll be looking for environmentally friendly alternatives — a shift that opens up a market opportunity for those ready to meet the changing market demands, Shandal said.
“Think about where value is shifting and, ‘How do I position my business to play and win in this new economy?'” he said.
What costs $1.2 TRILLION and continues to get more and more expensive? The answer: Americans’ summer travel. In line with the increasingly prominent green trends sweeping the nation, it’s important that we approach our summer adventures with a mindful consideration of their environmental impact. By EREF Staff • Reposted: July 27, 2023
What costs $1.2 TRILLION and continues to get more and more expensive? The answer: Americans’ summer travel[1]!
Now that it’s officially summer, many Americans are headed out of town. Whether weekends at the beach or months abroad, this summer is set to witness the strongest air travel since the pre-pandemic era, possibly making it the most robust ever. Over a quarter of Americans (26%), an increase from 19% in the first quarter, are preparing to embark on leisure travel in the coming three months[2]. This increase in travelers will translate into an approximate 12% growth in passengers for the three biggest U.S. airlines, expected to ferry 8.6 million people during the summer season[3]. While this mass mobilization symbolizes an exciting era of discovery and relaxation, it’s crucial to remember that our travel plans, while invigorating for us, can impose a heavy toll on the environment. In line with the increasingly prominent green trends sweeping the nation, it’s important that we approach our summer adventures with a mindful consideration of their environmental impact.
This summer’s surge in travel activity can unfortunately translate into increased waste production, with potential negative implications for our environment and lifestyle. Moreover, maintaining the allure and accessibility of our favorite scenic spots and lakes depends significantly on how well we protect them from pollution and trash accumulation. In a world where single-use plastic is commonplace, the path to sustainability can seem daunting. But a little planning can go a long way in fostering eco-friendly travel.
Unfortunately, it’s rare to see recycling bins at rest stops and gas stations, which makes it difficult for travelers to responsibly dispose of recyclables like plastic bottles or cans. As a result, these items often end up in general trash bins, destined for landfills. By including more visible and accessible recycling facilities at these high-traffic areas, we could make a substantial contribution to reducing travel-related waste.
As you plan your travel, consider these tips. When driving, pack snacks from home, carrying reusable beverage containers, and maintaining separate trash bags for recyclables and other waste in your car. Make a game out of minimizing waste – it not only teaches sustainability but can add a fun twist to the journey. When traveling by plane, one could manage waste by having a meal before a short flight to avoid single-use packaged snacks. For longer flights, taking advantage of in-flight meals helps reduce waste as these meals would otherwise be discarded. Train travel, in addition to being an efficient mode of transportation, also offers a refreshing respite from the bustling city traffic. If your travel requires documentation or tickets, digital documents on your phone or tablet help save paper and are less likely to be lost.
Choosing larger, shareable items, using snack cups for family members, and reducing hotel service to only when needed are effective ways to cut down waste. Don’t fall for the convenience of disposable utensils. Carrying reusable utensils, dishes, straws, and cloth napkins might seem like a chore, but such small steps can significantly lessen the landfill load.
Whether you’re headed to the beach, mountains, cities, or abroad, there are specific steps you can take to reduce waste. For beach or lake visits, the use of items that could be swept away by the wind or tide should be minimized. In the mountains, a pack it in, pack it out mindset goes a long way in preserving the natural beauty. City travelers can cut down waste by enjoying meals in local restaurants instead of opting for takeaway. When traveling abroad, especially to European countries known for their waste minimization efforts, be sure to pay attention when you have items to discard as most offer a more diverse suite of options for disposal than the average American city and in many cases have separate recycling bins for plastic, glass, metal, paper and food.
These small steps may seem minor, but collectively, they can significantly impact our environment, potentially steering the future of the tourism industry towards a more sustainable path. As you make summer travel plans, and add to that $1.2 trillion price tag, consider a pledge to travel responsibly and sustainably.
We’ve all been there, right? The mountain of reusable bags we forget to take to the store. The burger that should have been plant-based. The over-packaged product you just splurged on. These gaps between intention and action manifest when we start to diet, to start a hobby, go to the gym and especially when we try to live sustainably. We are all a hot mess of un-met intentions.
Because rather than gap, consumers face giant barriers. Reframing from gaps (which imply something missing in consumer morality), to barriers (which aren’t consumers fault) is empowering for business. The barriers range from price, availability, and structural factors that require infrastructure change, to myths, awareness, and availability, that can marketers can tackle.
To bust these barriers, we need to ask ourselves a crucial question when promoting a product, service, or action: Are we effectively selling the benefits? Because only benefits can bust through barriers. Let’s break it down into three key categories of benefits – functional, emotional, and social:
Functional benefits play a crucial role in selling sustainable products. Consider how sustainability can add value for money, enhance performance and efficacy, improve quality, save time, or contribute to safety. Understanding and emphasising these functional benefits can make sustainable choices more appealing to consumers.
Emotional benefits are equally important. As retailers, it’s essential to acknowledge that the consumer is the hero, not us. The feel-good factor associated with buying sustainable products can be a significant motivator. Does sustainability strengthen sensory enjoyment, provide physical comfort, offer an exciting experience, boost self-worth, or offer a sense of personalisation? These emotional benefits can truly make a difference in consumers’ decision-making.
Finally, let’s not forget about social benefits. How does sustainability impact family dynamics, desirability in the eyes of others, the perception of being cool, smart, or part of a community? Highlighting these social benefits can create a sense of belonging and encourage individuals to embrace sustainable choices.
Spain, Barcelona, Mercat de Sant Antoni Market, canned seafood display. (Photo by: Rosie Irene Betancourt/Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Companies should make their voices heard by participating in critical stakeholder events. By Jamie Gibbon & Katy Hladki from Pew Trusts • Reposted: July 26, 2023
With catch worth more than US $40 billion dollars per year, tuna is one of the most important species for supermarkets and other companies in the global seafood industry. So it is critical that its catch is closely monitored to help protect the sustainability of the species.
But that isn’t the case. Of the over 20,000 registered vessels catching and transporting tuna throughout the world’s ocean, only a small portion are independently monitored.
However, that may soon change. Retailers are hearing from their customers that the sustainability of the fish they buy is more important than ever. To ensure greater transparency, which can lead to more sustainable management of tuna species, retailers can—and should—become more active in calls for increased oversight and data collection on the vessels bringing tuna to the market.
In June, Walmart, one of the world’s largest global retailers, committed to improving transparency in the data collection of its tuna supply chain and will soon source exclusively from vessels with 100% observer coverage, through either human observers or electronic monitoring (EM), which uses cameras and sensors to collect information on fishing activity. This level of commitment to transparent, well-managed tuna fisheries is commendable, and while some retailers have made similar calls for transparency, more should do the same.
Making a commitment to 100% observer coverage in tuna supply chains is an important first step. But to ensure that there is sufficient product to meet consumers’ needs while also fulfilling this transparency pledge, retailers should get more involved in the policy process, letting government officials and fishing companies know that sustainability is a priority for the buyers.
Direct engagement with regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) is one way for retailers to do that. RFMOs govern most of the world’s shared commercial fisheries and regulate both the amount of fish caught and how they are caught. By advocating for region-wide EM programs, market members can help ensure that all vessels fishing for tuna will have the tools and rules available to easily collect data on their catch and operations and share that information with government regulators and the companies that buy their fish. That can help retailers meet their commitments to consumers.
Public pressure is already starting to pay off. In the Indian Ocean, where retailers have warned that continued overfishing of yellowfin tuna could affect their buying decisions, governments recently agreed to the world’s first EM standards, which will allow fishing vessels to use cameras and sensors to collect data required by regulators. Similar discussions are underway among Atlantic and Pacific ocean fishery managers, and retailers should advocate for RFMOs in those regions to adopt and implement EM programs that include standards and pathways for improving and increasing observer coverage.
Companies buying and selling seafood directly benefit from healthy tuna stocks. As such, they bear responsibility for ensuring that fisheries are well managed and that vessels are capturing and reporting accurate and transparent data. Through their purchasing practices, sourcing commitments and advocacy actions at RFMOs, businesses can help protect the long-term health and stability of global tuna stocks and ocean ecosystems.
Major retailers committing to increased transparency and data collection can help profoundly improve practices throughout the seafood supply chain, which in turn will promote the health of the ocean and fisheries globally. This will pay dividends to those companies—and seafood consumers worldwide—for a long time to come.
Jamie Gibbon is a manager and Katy Hladki is a senior officer working on Pew’s international fisheries project.
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, 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.
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.
The RMA aims to fill a crucial gap by offering brands, agencies and publishers a range of services to accelerate their competitive advantage through a sustainability lens. From Sustainable Brands • Reposted: July 23, 2023
As the media world grapples with its role in the climate crisis, the Responsible Marketing Agency (RMA) launched this week as a new breed of specialist with a mission to help media, digital and marketing clients to realize sustainable growth through responsible and progressive practices.
The RMA’s team of ethically minded media and marketing professionals will help brands, agencies and publishers to accelerate competitive advantage, shaping capabilities and enabling delivery of credible environmental, social and governance (ESG) roadmaps and KPIs in line with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
As outlined in the World Federation of Advertisers’ (WFA) and Kantar’s Sustainable Marketing 2030 report, 39 percent of client-side marketers say their companies are only now taking their first steps towards sustainable practices, citing a lack of resources, knowledge and skills — while 15 percent haven’t yet started.
To address this, the Responsible Marketing Agency aims to fill a crucial gap by offering flexible service models to cover advisory, enablement, strategy and partnerships through a sustainability lens.
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The RMA’s experts are passionate about helping clients plan for what’s next, whilst striving to ensure positive societal impact synchronized with business growth. Its inaugural clients include spirits giantDiageo and the WFA, with which it collaborated recently to create a groundbreaking report covering ten ways advertisers can reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the media supply chain.
As of press time, it’s unclear whether the RMA will focus more on the tactical or the creative side of marketing (or both); but regardless, its launch comes at an inflection point for marketers and advertisers — who are now working to balance market and consumer pressure to deliver impactful, engaging creative that authentically conveys brands’ values; and increasing scrutiny from regulators on the validity of brand claims; as well as increased attention to advertising as an overlooked but addressable carbon hotspot — thanks to significant supply chain emissions during both production and the massive amounts of energy used in their distribution and viewing.
The company says it will offer consultative services to create and shape programs that will drive responsible, sustainable and progressive marketing solutions. The team also helps clients to source and manage third-party relationships to advance progressive marketing programs.
“The Responsible Marketing Agency’s Manifesto states that when brands act responsibly in the media and marketing environment, their success deepens. From brand safety to sustainability, inclusion and ethical marketing practices, the modern marketer’s success hinges on making media and creative fit for progress,” says Hannah Mirza, founder of the RMA and VP of the Bloom Network, who has over 20 years’ experience — including agency, publisher and client-side roles. “However, all too frequently, ESG market solutions are immature and not fit for purpose. So, our team of plug-and-play expert advisors is determined to help in this mission, guiding clients through the ESG maze, navigating new solutions and integrated strategies.
“I love to help clients thrive in uncharted, complex situations — driving opportunities for business growth. As authentic, performance-orientated and trusted independent advisors; we are now offering a full-service capacity — including expertise on supply path optimization in programmatic, through independent analysis, to media decarbonization strategies and DEI programs.”
Investors, customers and regulators have clued in to greenwashing and are stepping up enforcement. By Stephan Liozu from Industry Week • Reposted: July 21, 2023
The era of making fake and false sustainability claims is over. Consumers, NGOs, investors, and regulators are watching closely and are holding businesses accountable. Think twice before making sustainability claims. Do what you say and say what you do. The number of greenwashing lawsuits have exploded for the past five years. A 2020 report by Foley and Lardner reported a doubling of greenwashing lawsuits in the oil and gas industry in just 5 years.
Lawsuits are public and at times very costly. They touch all sectors across all geographies. Let us look at some examples.
Delta Airlines is facing a class action lawsuit over claims that it misrepresented its environmental impact by presenting itself in advertising and promotional activities as being “carbon neutral.”
Nike is being sued by a consumerbecause they “deceive consumers into believing that they are receiving products that are ‘sustainable,’ ‘made with recycled fibers,” and can reduce one’s carbon footprint in a move to “zero carbon and zero waste.
Hyundai Motor UK was fined for claiming that if 10,000 of their hydrogen-powered Nexo cars were on the road, the carbon emission reduction would be the equivalent of planting 60,000 trees
Deutsche Bank is under investigation by regulators in U.S. and Europe because the bank’s asset management arm allegedly sold investment products worth $1 trillion as more environmentally friendly and “sustainable” than they actually were.
Walmart was fined $3 million for making deceptive green claims” about some textile products.
Shell’s 11 board directors were sued for breach of their legal duties under the Companies Act when for adopting and implementing a so-called “Energy Transition Strategy” that fails to align with the Paris Agreement.
Let us start by defining what greenwashing means. It is a practice used by businesses to represent themselves as more sustainable than they truly are. It includes providing misleading information regarding a product’s sustainability or labeling an offer as “green” when it is not.
Greenwashing is not a static concept. It occurs on a spectrum, ranging from wishful thinking to outright deceit. Greenwashing can also be unintentional, as rules and regulations change over time. Finally, it now extends to broader sustainability concepts such as social good and human rights. Government enforcement actions and civil suits alleging greenwashing are on the rise through a myriad of different laws, including securities regulations, consumer protection laws, fraud and misrepresentation statutes and advertising standards. Bottom line, it is serious business!
I propose five steps to avoid greenwashing-related litigation.
1. Review the claims you are making across your business: Conduct an internal inventory of what claims are made and communicated to the market through all the formal and informal channels. That includes written and verbal claims. You might be surprised by the lack of governance and the variability of claims made at the divisional and regional level.
2. Review the exposure related to claims and the quality of the back-up data: Based on this inventory, evaluate the level of risks associated with the most definitive sustainability claims: The above-mentioned lawsuit examples provide a good illustration of how companies might potentially be exposed to greenwashing claims. One of the lessons to be taken from recent legal filings is that companies should avoid sweeping statements about their sustainability efforts. If a company can support concrete statements with concrete data, they are better able to neutralize and defend the greenwashing claims that are now flooding the litigation landscape.
3. Provide training on ESG, green marketing and the associated risks: Part of the sustainability and ESG capability building program should include training on greenwashing and about making sustainability claims in sales and marketing. Teams should be aware of the risks of making unfounded or exaggerated claims. In addition, the same teams should understand the need for solid and concrete data to support claims (including customer data, research data and technical data).
4. Establish a dynamic review of changes in the regulatory landscape and update the governance model: If you pay attention to sustainability reporting requirements, you realize the level of dynamism. Rules and regulations are changing by industry and by country. If you work across many industrial verticals, regulatory changes might happen without your realizing it. Dynamism therefore relates to the speed and complex nature of changes in your regulatory landscape. A review combines the use of the right regulatory benchmark software as well as the involvement of internal experts who scan the landscape. It is really hard to keep up. You might be compliant today but miss an important update in reporting requirements that could impact your sustainability, marketing and communication strategies.
5. If in doubt, bring in the experts. experts include suppliers, consultants, and your internal risk management teams. Do not improvise. It could be costly. Establish regular reviews of your marketing and sales materials by these experts as part of the governance process. Quickly take action if your claims are overstated or non-complaint.
If you are an industrial organization, you do not want to be on the naughty list of greenwashers. That is a given. You must have an internal discussion about the claims you are making to avoid potential risks of litigation. Remember that your customers, investors and regulators might be more sophisticated that you are, and they might reverse-engineer your claims. So, do what you say and say what you do.
Stephan Liozu is founder of Value Innoruption Advisors, a consulting boutique specializing in industrial pricing, XaaS pricing and value-based pricing. He is also the co-founder of Pricing for the Planet, which specializes in pricing for sustainability. Stephan has 30 years of experience in the industrial sector with companies like Owens Corning, Saint-Gobain, Freudenberg and Thales.
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: July 20, 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.
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 conductresearch 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.
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.
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.
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 traveled and 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.
Offering free returns carries a cost for retailers, but ending return policies can also turn off customers. Photo: 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 amount could 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.
By Eleftheria Kontou, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign via The Conversation • Reposted: July 20, 2023
More than 3.6 million electric cars are driving around the U.S., but if you live in an apartment, finding an available charger isn’t always easy. Grocery stores and shopping centers might have a few, but charging takes time and the spaces may be taken or inconvenient.
Several states and cities, aiming to expand EV use, are now trying to lift that barrier to ownership with “right to charge” laws.
Illinois’ governor signed the latest right-to-charge law in June 2023, requiring that all parking spots at new homes and multiunit dwellings be wired so they’re ready for EV chargers to be installed. Colorado, Florida, New York and other states have passed similar laws in recent years.
But having wiring in place for charging is only the first step to expanding EV use. Apartment building managers, condo associations and residents are now trying to figure out how to make charging efficient, affordable and available to everyone who needs it when they need it.
Electric cars can benefit urban dwellers
As a civil engineer who focuses on transportation, I study ways to make the shift to electric vehicles equitable, and I believe that planning for multiunit dwelling charging and accessibility is smart policy for cities.
Transitioning away from fossil-fueled vehicles to electric vehicles has benefits for the environment and the health of urban residents. It reduces tailpipe emissions, which can cause respiratory problems and warm the climate; it mitigates noise; and it improves urban air quality and quality of life.
Yet almost a quarter of all U.S. housing structures have more than one dwelling unit, according to the 2019 American Housing Survey. In California, 32.5% of urban dwellings have multiple units, and only a third of those units include access to a personal garage where a charger could be installed.
Even if installing a personal charger is an option, it can be expensive in a multiunit dwelling if wiring isn’t already in place. And it often comes with other obstacles, including the potential need for electrical upgrades or challenges from homeowner association rules and restrictions. Installing chargers can involve numerous stakeholders who can impede the process – lot owners, tenants, homeowners associations, property managers, electric utilities and local governments.
Right-to-charge laws aims for ubiquitous home charging
Right-to-charge laws aim to streamline home charging access as new buildings go up.
Illinois’ new Electric Vehicle Charging Act requires that 100% of parking spaces at new homes and multiunit dwellings be ready for electric car charging, with a conduit and reserved capacity to easily install charging infrastructure. The new law also gives renters and condominium owners in new buildings a right to install chargers without unreasonable restriction from landlords and homeowner associations.
Public chargers typically aren’t as convenient as charging at home, and chargers aren’t always available. Photo: martin-dm/E+ via Getty Images
California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Virginia also have right-to-charge lawsdesigned to make residential community charging deployment easier, as do several U.S. cities including Seattle and Washington, D.C. Most apply only to owner-occupied buildings, but a few, including California’s and Colorado’s, also apply to rental buildings.
Chicago officials have considered an ordinance that wouldinclude existing buildings, too.
Sharing chargers can reduce the cost
There are several steps communities can take to increase access to chargers and reduce the cost to residents.
In a new study, colleagues and I looked at how to design shared charging for an apartment building with scheduling that works for everyone. By sharing chargers, residential communities can reduce the costs associated with charger installation and use.
The biggest challenge to shared charging is often scheduling. We found that a centralized charging management system that suggests charging times for each electric car owner that aligns with the owner’s travel schedule and the amount of charge needed can work – with enough chargers.
Apartments in a tower in China look down on an EV charging station covered in solar panels. Photo: Zhihao/Moment via Getty Images
In a typical multiunit dwelling in Chicago – with an average of 14 cars in the parking lot – a small community charging hub with two level 2 chargers, the type common in homes and office buildings, can cover daily residential recharging demand at a cost of about 15 cents per kilowatt-hour. But having only two chargers means residents are waiting on average 2.2 hours to charge.
A larger charging hub with eight level 2 chargers in the same city avoids the delay but increases the cost of charging to 21 cents per kWh because of upfront cost of purchasing and installing the chargers. To put that into context, the average electricity cost for Chicago residents is 16 cents per kWh.
The future of charging management at multiunit dwellings will be automated for efficiency, with a computer or artificial intelligence determining the most efficient schedule for charging. Optimized scheduling can be responsive to the times renewable electricity generation sources are producing the most power – midday for solar energy, for example – and to dynamic electricity pricing. Automation can also eliminate delays for drivers while saving money and reducing the burden on the electric grid.
The current limited access to home charging in many cities constrains electric vehicle adoption, slows down the decarbonization of U.S. transportation and exacerbates inequitiesin electric vehicle ownership. I believe efforts to expand charging in multidwelling buildings can help lift some of the biggest barriers and help reduce noise and pollution in urban cores at the same time.
CNH Industrial worked with Monarch Tractor to create the New Holland T4 Electric Power, an all-electric utility tractor with zero tailpipe emissions. Photo: CNH Industrial
By Tina Casey from Triple Pundit • Reposted: July 19, 2023
With their reliance on massive combines and other large pieces of diesel-powered equipment, the agriculture and construction industries present a major challenge for electrification. Nevertheless, suppliers are beginning to offer electric options, and the global firm CNH Industrial illustrates how careful strategizing can yield rapid results.
A head start on electrification
The Electrification Portfolio Management team is a relatively new addition to CNH Industrial as the electrification industry picked up steam over recent years. The sector’s rapid rise has enabled CNH Industrial to recruit talent from a deep pool of accomplished electrification experts.
“Now that the technology is known, there is a well-defined supply chain and expertise in the market, we decided to look at the market and bring in that expertise,” said Mario de Amicis, head of the CNH Industrial electrification team.
Knowing both the customer and the technology is another foundation of the company’s strategy. While some firms have gained publicity by electrifying massive pieces of machinery, CNH Industrial assessed the demand for relatively small, lightweight utility tractors, taking particular note of the specific benefits that electrification would bring to customers.
Collaborating to accelerate electrification
Another leg of the strategy involves forming partnerships with experienced electrification companies, helping to accelerate the timeline from concept to market. For its inaugural electric tractor project, CNH Industrial enlisted the U.S. firm Monarch Tractor as a strategic partner.
The result was a prototype version of the T4 Electric Power, an all-electric utility tractor for CNH Industrial’s New Holland Agriculture brand. The prototype was produced in record time and unveiled at the company’s tech day event in Phoenix, Arizona, in December 2022.
A production model will extend to CNH Industrial’s Case IH brand as well, where the company has also introduced an all-electric mini-excavator.
Electric vs. diesel vehicles: Compare and contrast
Around 70 percent of the CNH Industrial’s electrification team comes from the automotive industry, de Amicis said. That experience shows up in T4 features that have become standard fare in electric vehicles, including battery range that can last up to a day depending on the type of work. Another key element is fast-charging capability: a bi-directional charging system enables the tractor to provide power to electric tools (such as welding machines and drills) and function as a generator for emergency or daily use.
The commercial version of the T4 will launch with remote and autonomous features. Similar to those in other electric vehicles, these elements are expected to result in significant productivity improvements.
“Farmers can remotely activate the tractor via a smartphone app,” the company detailed in a recent announcement. “Shadow Follow Me mode lets operators sync machines to work together. A 360-degree perception system detects and avoids obstacles. Telematics and auto guidance keep all functions in check for operators.”
CNH Industrial also took care to incorporate a power take-off feature and other standard elements for attaching implements to a tractor, with a high-tech twist. The T4 comes with a fleet management controller that recognizes and links the attachments, enabling farmers to run the tractor remotely through all stages of use.
All the benefits of electrification
As with all electric vehicles, the T4 eliminates tailpipe emissions and offers a significant savings on operating costs. CNH Industrial estimates a savings up to 90 percent over the cost of fueling and maintaining a diesel engine. The electric drive also delivers improvements in responsiveness, traction control and all-around handling, according to the company.
In terms of agricultural use, the electric tractor eliminates the risk of soil contamination from spills or accidents, de Amicis said. That’s an especially important consideration for regenerative agriculture, which prioritizes soil health.
On a more holistic basis, regenerative practices also prioritize worker health, making a zero-emission tractor all the more attractive.
The T4 reduces noise by up to 90 percent, according to company estimates, and tamps down on vibrations, too. That’s a significant improvement in the well-being of both workers and farm animals, while lessening disturbance for nearby neighbors.
Similar benefits are at work in CNH Industrial’s electric mini-excavator. It is sized to enable it to pass through doorways and conduct work indoors, free of the diesel fumes and noise of conventional equipment.
Next steps for decarbonization
CNH Industrial also offers farmers a methane biofuel option for New Holland’s T7 and T6 tractors. These models are a particularly good fit for livestock farms with digester equipment, which extract biogas from manure.
“Farmers grow crops and use waste products to generate biomethane, which powers the tractor, which, in turn, helps to grow those very crops,” New Holland’s website reads.
Electrifying combines and larger pieces of equipment involves another set of challenges. Here, CNH Industrial is focusing on a hybrid strategy to satisfy customer demand for both performance and efficiency, while also achieving a sharp reduction in carbon emissions, de Amicis said.
“Battery-electric, with no combustion, is a really good application for small machines,” he explained. “But when we move up, we know that — due to the limit of the power density and cost of the battery — we need to talk about hybridization for medium to large machines.
Much of the equipment attached to farm and construction vehicles is driven by hydraulic systems, which lend themselves to electrification.
“Electrification is an opportunity for efficiency,” de Amicis said. “A tractor is pointless alone. It is intended to pull and provide energy for something else — for implements. There is a lot of opportunity because of the hydraulics in implements, and if we move to electrification, we can improve controllability.”
Beyond EV batteries
As much as CNH Industrial and other firms have been helped along their electrification journey by the size and maturity of the on-road electric vehicle market, further progress in the off-road area will require a tailored approach.
The next step involves forming new supply chain partnerships to develop a battery designed specifically for high-voltage systems, de Amicis said. “We can’t simply copy and paste what the automotive industry is doing. Due to the specific requirements linked with our environment, a customized solution is required.”
The decarbonization of the agriculture and construction industries is only just beginning. But equipment suppliers such as CNH Industrial are poised to overcome the technology challenges and accelerate the transition away from fossil energy.
Hot Bread Kitchen is a New York City-based nonprofit organization that creates economic opportunity for immigrant women and people of color with training and job placement in the food industry. (Image courtesy of Hot Bread Kitchen)
When we look at what it takes to be successful in the workplace — and what makes a workplace successful — it becomes immediately apparent that workers need agency over their choices, goals and actions. It’s also clear that women and people who identify beyond the gender binary are systematically denied agency in the workplace — as in, the opportunity to make decisions, take purposeful action and pursue goals.
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted myriad barriers to women’s agency in the workplace, attributable to outdated societal gender norms. In the first months of the pandemic in the United States, women’s employment fell precipitously in comparison to men. The reason? Women still tend to be more likely than men to leave their jobs or downsize their positions to take care of children and/or elderly family members when the need arises.
For those that remain in the workforce, factors limiting the agency of women and gender-expansive people abound. Women’s agency is hindered because they are more likely to fill service-industry jobs that tend to offer limited flexibility or benefits, and women with lower educational attainment are hit the hardest.
Transgender and gender-expansive people face workplace barriers due to being generally underrepresented in the U.S. workforce, and consistently enduring threats of violence, discrimination and stigma. Lack of guaranteed healthcare or paid leave, limited access to childcare, inflexible schedules, fewer opportunities to build knowledge and skills, and much more intersect to limit women and trans people’s freedom to pursue their professional goals.
This shift toward lower workforce participation among women and trans people — and the increased gender inequality that follows — has lasting implications for the future options and decision-making of workers, not to mention for younger generations. Further, lack of workforce diversity is both a result of, and leads to, lack of leadership diversity, further entrenching these conditions.
Mindful of lessons learned from the pandemic, and with the knowledge that women and gender-expansive people are critical to business’ success, we are more aware than ever that organizations and workers excel when they are led with wisdom and compassion. When ranked by their employees, 55 percent of women leaders were perceived to have these two critical traits, versus 27 percent of men. The point is not that women are necessarily better leaders, but rather that they tend to embrace leadership practices that foster more inclusive work environments for everyone, which in turn creates a bulwark against the trends listed above.
The existing gender gap in workplace leadership has real ramifications for the bottom line and for our culture. When various industries’ current leaders (who, generally speaking, tend to be men) continue to take a “traditional” approach to leadership and company policies — one that favors business-as-usual over humanity and equity — it further entrenches norms that exclude women and gender-nonconforming people from leadership positions, diminishes overall productivity, and has larger implications for generational wealth. And, as we saw in the early days of the pandemic, these approaches can push women out of the workforce entirely and limit agency for the longer term.
By embracing an approach focused on wisdom and compassion, employers — from major corporations to local nonprofit organizations — can play an important role in advocating for women’s and gender-expansive people’s agency and success in the workforce and beyond, ensuring all workers have the resources they need to excel at work and at home.
Hot Bread Kitchen provides immigrant women and people of color with culinary skills training and professional readiness programs, job placement, food business entrepreneurship assistance, social services support, bridge training, an extensive employer network, and more. (Image: Wini Lao for Hot Bread Kitchen)
How Hot Bread Kitchen supports empowered workers
This is where Hot Bread Kitchen comes in. Hot Bread Kitchen is a New York City-based nonprofit organization that creates economic opportunity for immigrant women and people of color using the vibrant food industry as a catalyst for personal and professional growth.
We support our program members — who are disproportionately affected by social and economic barriers to wealth generation and long-term stability — as they pursue their career ambitions. We support women and gender-expansive people by providing culinary skills training and professional readiness programs, job placement, food business entrepreneurship assistance, social services support, bridge training, an extensive employer network, and more.
In the years since our founding, it has become clear that these strategies are critical tools for advancing women’s ability to find and sustain employment, grow in their careers, make choices for their families, and achieve their goals.
This holistic approach has been an evolving aspect of Hot Bread Kitchen’s model. When our organization started in 2008, we were a bakery with a simple, but important, mission: teach women bakery skills and connect them with food industry employers to secure jobs. Many other workforce development programs still drive toward a similar goal today: get people who are looking for work in the door, give them relevant skills training, and connect them with a job.
While there’s no arguing that this is an important objective, working side-by-side with our participants over the years has evolved our understanding of what it means to ensure women’s agency, a thriving career, or a meaningful public life. At Hot Bread Kitchen, we learned that for our members to be successful in the long run, we needed to do more — to take an approach that supports the whole person, not just the worker.
Empowering women to succeed in the workplace demands a comprehensive approach to overcoming obstacles, both at work and beyond. But what exactly does this look like, and what can you do to help?
By Amy Brown from Triple Pundit • Reposted: July 18, 2023
The world needs to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by almost half this decade to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius as recommended by climate scientists, the United Nation warns. As companies wrestle with how best to meet their net-zero targets, technology presents an important and powerful tool to determine which approaches will make the greatest impact.
“Technology plays a key role in untangling some of those challenges and helping organizations achieve net-zero,” says Salma Bakr, product lead at the sustainability software company FigBytes.
Several mitigation options costing less than $100 per ton of carbon dioxide equivalent could reduce global emissions by at least half by 2030 compared to 2019, according to the sixth assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Examples include using more renewable power generated from sources like solar and wind, transitioning to more fuel-efficient vehicles, and using more energy-efficient technologies.
That’s good news for the more than 90 percent of business leaders who say they prioritize long-term decarbonization. “Companies play a crucial role in tackling climate change and benefit from decarbonization by reducing risks like extreme weather events and policy changes,” Bakr says. “In the long run, and as more low-carbon solutions are adopted and become more affordable, decarbonizing a business saves operational costs and enhances efficiency, for example, where you pay lower bills for your energy and waste.”
Why technology is key to unlocking solutions for climate action
In the context of decarbonizing businesses, technology comes under two categories, Bakr explains: digital technologies that enable a net-zero future, and physical technologies for climate mitigation or adaptation.
These technologies complement each other in support of net-zero targets. For example, digital technologies enable efficient and scalable processing of climate data, allowing for more informed problem detection and decision-making. They also allow companies to evaluate multiple decarbonization solutions virtually and chart the best path forward, Bakr says. Together, digital technologies have the potential to reduce emissions by up to 20 percent by 2050 if scaled and adopted in high-emitting sectors like energy, materials and mobility, according to the World Economic Forum.
Physical technologies, on the other hand, enable climate mitigation and adaptation. The IPCC’s sixth assessment report shows that several of these technologies have high potential for GHG reduction at scale. For climate mitigation, this includes solar and wind power, energy-efficient appliances and lighting, and fuel-efficient vehicles. For climate adaptation, a key example is building resilient power systems which provide a diverse and stable energy supply.
How digital technologies can accelerate progress to net-zero
Digital technologies enhance decarbonization efforts in multiple ways, Bakr says. Even more good news: Organizations of all sizes across every industry already use many of these digital tools to ease their progress toward strategic goals — making it fairly seamless to digitize their approach to climate action as well.
For example, most businesses use foundational technologies to support daily tasks of measurement, reporting, and basic analytics for data-driven insights. Examples include enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and supply chain tracking systems.
“This means organizations don’t have to start from scratch,” Bakr says. “For example, they can add sustainability solutions ‘on top’ of their existing systems.”
Organizations can also use decision-making technologies as part of the daily course of doing business, where machine learning can be leveraged, for example, to imitate how humans learn and ingest new data, which can improve decision-making accuracy, Bakr says. Such technologies also allow organizations to use historical data to forecast future events, or provide actionable recommendations to inform actions around decarbonization.
Another group of digital technologies increasingly embraced on the decarbonization journey are sensing and control technologies. These range from automation, robotics and drones to enhanced connectivity through the Internet of Things. By deploying these technologies, companies can more easily collect data from physical systems and more accurately control things like office temperature, humidity and lighting based on occupancy.
Yet another category are enabling technologies that support organizations to operate more efficiently. Examples include cloud computing and mobile communication, which allow organizations to scale their resources on-demand.
Technology advances ease climate accounting
“Tracking progress is crucial,” in pursuit of climate goals, “as net-zero is all about beating the clock and making progress,” Bakr says. “That’s why climate action needs climate accounting first, including a comprehensive emissions inventory. And the main challenge in establishing an emissions inventory is a data problem: data collection, consolidation, validation, verification and so on.”
This is where technology is an asset, she explains. A climate accounting solution collects, validates and verifies activity data, and conducts basic emissions modeling, reporting and analytics. Making that solution cloud-hosted “helps scale data collection, cross-collaboration across teams and geographies, and stakeholder engagement, where you can collect data from anywhere in the world and scale your computations as needed,” Bakr says.
Climate accounting systems can be integrated with decision-making technologies such as machine learning to augment the intelligence of an organization’s analytics, for example, to ensure the right emission factors are applied to calculate emissions data, she adds.
Companies and organizations that have set science-based targets should also keep watch on the “Progress Framework” under development by the Science Based Targets initiative, Bakr advises. It aims to advance the measurement, reporting and verification of science-based targets, providing clear and standardized expectations and guidance on how to measure, report and verify climate action progress against those targets.
This framework will support transparency and integrity by holding companies and financial institutions accountable for their climate targets. Development is expected to be completed at the 2023 U.N. Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC COP28) in Dubai in December.
Overcoming the challenge of future scenario planning
After the initial steps of streamlining a baseline emissions inventory and setting net-zero targets, an important but often challenging part of the decarbonization journey is the ability to forecast future emissions scenarios and understand associated risks and opportunities. “Many organizations find challenges in defining and analyzing net-zero scenarios,” Bakr says. “It’s a tricky and complicated process.”
But organizations can overcome that challenge by better understanding what is involved in a future climate scenario, she advises. “Scenarios should challenge business-as-usual assumptions about the future, but also illustrate a credible story comprising possible and consistent future events. Scenarios should also be relevant, meaning they explore future insights relating to the various implications of climate-related risks and opportunities. They should also be distinctive by exploring different permutations and combinations of key factors impacting future developments to generate multiple decarbonization alternatives for the organization to select from.”
Again, an organization can turn to technology to do this. “A solid climate accounting solution, coupled with decision-making capabilities, can help an organization forecast and visualize the future emissions associated with various scenarios based on the various data inputs considered,” Bakr says.
At the same time, technology isn’t a panacea, and it also has its own footprint to consider. “As we consider various technologies in the transition to net-zero, we need to also understand that those digital and physical technologies do produce emissions in one way or another,” she adds. “We need to take a systemic approach to tackling emissions reduction and stay on top of the latest research and development efforts.”
Inaction is not a possibility
Taking action is the only option, Bakr points out. “The journey to net-zero is bumpy but inevitable,” she says. Organizations can set themselves up for success with a solid climate action strategy that aligns net-zero targets with the latest climate science, and leverages technology to speed up the transition.
“This will make the net-zero journey as efficient, effective and consistent as possible,” she says. Crucially, the goal should be to invest in net-zero innovation that extends beyond any single organization’s value chain: “Focus on bold reductions, first and foremost. And if your progress strays, make sure you realign by identifying more reduction potentials.”
This article series is sponsored by FigBytes and produced by the TriplePundit editorial team.
In 2018, Everlane made an environmental commitment to eliminate all virgin plastic from its supply chain. For Earth Month in 2023, the brand celebrated its progress with a limited-edition collection of “ReTrack” styles. Photo: Courtesy of Everlane
By Maura Brannigan from Fashionista via Yahoo Life • Reposted: July 18, 2023
As the fashion industry becomes more and more implicated in the climate crisis, brands and retailers are beginning to take more and more responsibility for their roles in it.
“Responsibility” takes many forms, of course: There’s true accountability and transparency, and then there’s greenwashing, in which companies of all makes and models invest more in marketing themselves as being sustainable than in tangibly tackling their environmental impact. It’s no surprise that the former is easier — and, often, more appealing — than the latter. That’s because in fashion, the climate crisis is an issue of systemic proportions. But a growing number of businesses are making key C-suite hires to rebuild those systems from the inside.
Enter the chief sustainability officer, a role tasked with addressing an organization’s approach to climate responsibility and, theoretically, minimizing the company’s environmental impact. And the job description is being written in real time.
“One of the toughest challenges in my career was creating a job for myself that hadn’t existed before,” says Reformation‘s Chief Sustainability Officer and VP of Operations Kathleen Talbot, who first joined the brand in 2014. “Sustainability was a brand-new field. When I reached out to Reformation, I had no background in fashion or business, but I was committed to learning and passionate about helping define what sustainability would look like at Reformation in the long term.”
Now a decade in, Talbot has worked to define Reformation’s environmental practices, from investing in green building infrastructure to publishing the brand’s quarterly Sustainability Report. But every retailer is venturing into this work from its own unique starting block, which makes this position a particularly challenging one.
Ahead, we spoke with folks at companies like Everlane and Depop about what a chief sustainability officer (or an equivalent title) actually does, why their job matters and how to break into the field for yourself.
How to get your big break in sustainability
Full-time roles in the intersection of fashion and sustainability are few and far between, which means that the people who currently hold them are at the top of their proverbial game — and have the experience to show for it.
While this often takes the form of a stacked resume, those in the field have an innate fascination with and appreciation of this planet, as well as knowledge of how to do better by it.
“I joke that I fulfill every stereotype you may have of a Seattleite,” says Reformation’s Talbot. “I’ve been interested in sustainability my whole life and have been aware from an early age that our future is dependent on changing our relationship with the environment.”
Talbot began her career in academia, having gotten a master’s degree in sustainability before looking to find ways to bridge the concepts she was teaching with action. Consumer products presented a new challenge: “There’s such an enormous opportunity to make things differently.”
Like Talbot, Kirsten Blackburn entered the apparel space from the outside, having previously worked in the policymaking and nonprofit sectors. While building out the advocacy program at The Conservation Alliance, which funds and partners with grassroots organizations working to protect wild places across North America, she began to explore the ways in which consumer structures, like fashion brands, can most efficiently move policy.
“When businesses pool resources and advocate for causes they care about, it makes a difference, more so than other actors in the policymaking space,” says Blackburn, director of Keen‘s environmental and social justice program, Keen Effect. “Brands — particularly privately-held, family-run brands like Keen — have a really huge opportunity to affect change.”
Justine Porterie, Depop‘s director of sustainability and DEI, entered sustainability from the corporate side, supporting large investors and fast-moving consumer-goods companies, like Unilever and PwC, with their responsible investment and sustainability strategies. After nearly a decade, Porterie joined a social incubator that investigated business opportunities to turn waste into resources.
“I stumbled upon fashion and was shocked by how wasteful the industry is,” she says. “One truckload of clothes ending up in the landfill every second — that’s mad, and what triggered the idea for my own company.”
Called Outstand, Porterie’s business specialized in curating secondhand fashion as an answer to curbing apparel’s waste crisis. She connected with Maria Raga, Depop’s former CEO, not long after, and began consulting with the peer-to-peer social e-commerce platform to help create its first sustainability strategy. Porterie officially joined the team in February 2020, and the rest, as they say, is history.
What your day-to-day might look like
At the highest level, a director of sustainability is responsible for identifying new ways to incorporate a climate focus across a brand’s operations. It’s a broad and seemingly ambitious set of obligations, but experts explain that typically, their job descriptions can be broken down into various subsets, including (but not limited to) supply chain management, political advocacy and PR and marketing.
To execute this position effectively, these folks need to touch every part of the business. At Reformation, for example, Talbot leads a team of six sustainability professionals to rally the brand’s 1,000-person employee base around a high-level vision.
“I consider us to be catalysts,” she says. “How do you actually adopt material innovations and key transitions? Identify and build relationships with strategic suppliers for decarbonization programs? Reduce transportation emissions? This work happens through daily decisions and doing ‘business per usual’ in a different way, so we’re constantly facilitating and pushing the team forward.”
The role extends beyond internal communications, of course: To functionally move the needle, those actually consuming the product need to “buy in” to the mission, too. This is where annual “sustainability reports” come in: They have different names from brand to brand, but serve a similar purpose of outlining goals and, more crucially, holding themselves — and their progress — accountable as they work toward those goals.
Everlane’s Impact Report, for example, outlines a short- and long-term strategy around its sustainability objectives by establishing three pillars: 1) Keep Earth clean, 2) Keep Earth cool and 3) Do right by people. Katina Boutis, the brand’s director of sustainability, isn’t only responsible for defining these intentions —she’s also tasked with bringing them to life.
“Our success hinges on our customers being brought along this journey with us,” says Boutis. “A really big part of what we’re doing is translating the work we do behind the scenes, not just to our own internal teams, but also to our broader community that we’re trying to foster.”
The skills you’ll want to hone
There are a number of opportunities in sustainable fashion, and Depop’s Porterie finds they all require a slightly different skillset. Working in the sustainability team at a fashion company is different than in, say, business development at a circular fashion company, or in the field at a regenerative cotton farm. But all three positions contribute to advancing the sustainability agenda in the industry. For the wider team at Depop, stakeholder management is particularly essential — after all, Porterie says, their aim is to make their agenda everyone’s agenda, so influence is critical.
“I always recommend that people keen to break into sustainable fashion start by interrogating what they’re good at and what excites them first,” she says. “Is it data, reporting, policy, technology, agriculture, marketing, design?”
Beyond individual interests, these positions also require a profound and technical understanding of sustainability and the wider fashion industry. For Kenneth Loo, co-founder and CEO of communications agency Chapter 2, this includes knowledge of the reengineering of production processes, recycling, certifications and various sustainable materials and chemicals.
“The narrative has shifted,” says Loo, whose Sustainability division at Chapter 2 supports clients in the clean-fashion spaces. “We no longer discuss mere factories, but technology platforms striving for innovation and ‘future-proofing’ that seek recognition from industry leaders.”
Finally, experts recommend a quality slightly less quantifiable, and that’s work ethic, fueled by an unrelenting growth mindset. At Keen, Blackburn describes this as a “fail-fast and fail-forward mentality,” to take the challenging, largely systemic problems you’ve been handed and come up with creative solutions to fix them.
“How can you take learnings from something that didn’t go well and celebrate it? Every day we’re uncovering something we don’t know, and that’s not unique to KEEN — that’s sustainability and climate writ large,” says Blackburn. “We’re hoping that we’re collectively doing more of the right things so that we’ll collectively make an impact in the future.”
What you’re working toward
“Sustainability is now non-negotiable in fashion, thankfully,” says Reformation’s Talbot. “Given our industry’s outsized environmental impact, there’s more customer demand to integrate sustainability into brand and product than ever. It follows that we’re seeing more career opportunities in the field open up, even compared to just five years ago.”
In short: We’re at a tipping point because people — and regulators — are no longer having it. Depop research shows that 60% of the platform’s users would rather buy from a company with environmental and social standards, and they’re not afraid to walk away or even publicly boycott those who do not meet their standards.
“Navigating increasing stakeholder expectations and changing legislative landscapes alongside business priorities is not an easy task,” says Porterie. “Until sustainability is entirely embedded in the DNA and ways of working of fashion companies, there will be space for sustainability professionals to keep on driving the agenda from within.”
These professionals have their work cut out for them, to be sure, but progress is afoot: Just last month, EU parliament voted to support a set of anti-fast-fashion recommendationsthat force the fashion industry to operate more sustainably. Then there’s New York’s Fashion Act, which aims to hold major clothing labels (i.e., those with over $100 million in global revenue) accountable for their environmental and social impacts.
“These policies are not something that I think anyone would’ve necessarily thought would be possible,” says Everlane’s Boutis. “Sustainability professionals are critical at any level in any organization, but I think there’s a special place in certain industries, like fashion, that have this ability to cut through cultural movements and spaces in that way.”
Underwater view of the ocean surface. Image via Shutterstock/Dudarev Mikhail
What’s coming next for sustainability: Mining, oceans, artificial intelligence and justice. By Dylan Siegler from Greenbiz.com • July 18, 2023
Every July, a portal into the future opens. The near future. Say, one to three years out.
During this time of year, we look into that near-future-portal — the database of more than 500 proposed speakers to our February GreenBiz conference — and patterns, distinct from prior years, emerge. We see what the corporate sustainability ecosystem will be talking more and more about next.
I don’t mean decarbonization, data or climate tech, and I don’t mean supply chain issues, nature, Scope 3 emissions or DEI. Those make up the current canon of corporate sustainability priorities, whether your company has a sophisticated sustainability strategy or is just getting started. Combined, they were mentioned more than 1,500 times throughout proposed session descriptions — I ran the write-ups through an online word-frequency counter.
Those topics will certainly be covered at GreenBiz in February, but they were likely once first glimpsed through this proposal season wrinkle-in-time trick in prior years.
Here is a look at what’s just now hitting the Top 40 charts for the first time. It’s a non-exhaustive selection of topics that represent a view to the future of rising risks and opportunities that senior sustainability executives and rising stars are starting to grapple with and want to present or talk about with peers.
What you should have on your radar
Mining and critical minerals Our applicants have tuned in to the challenges around achieving global decarbonization, particularly the energy transition, given it requires critical minerals such as cobalt, lithium, copper and other materials often mined in geopolitically iffy regions.
A sustainability head at Oracle proposes to tease out how the auto industry is achieving traceability of some critical minerals (as well as human rights, carbon and other metrics) at scale using a blockchain platform. Consultancy ERM proposes to bring together reps from mining companies with stakes in critical minerals to talk successes and failures so far in sourcing these materials in response to “customer demand and government incentives like the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).” Others propose more potentially contentious dialogue: Positive takes on the controversial prospect of deep sea mining, and a celebration of a Nevada lithium mine project in an Endangered Species Act conflict.
Oceans The proposals we received this season were not only about protecting oceans, but using them. Multiple proposals promote seaweed as a solution. Seaweed-based yarn startup Keel Labs proposes to spotlight the “potential of the ocean to accelerate our planet’s development towards a more sustainable future,” while World Wildlife Fund proposes to “explore whether accelerating a market for seaweed could be a climate change solution.” Another swath of ideas from entrepreneurs position oceans as central to carbon removal.
A wave of ocean plastic-related proposals and other upstream-pollution-related content include a pitch from Dell and HP on “advancing commercially viable and socially-responsible ocean-bound plastics.”
Artificial intelligence The applications of AI proposed have gone from grand and theoretical to remarkably tactical. UL Solutions proposes a session on “how to write for AI and machine learning readers of ESG reports and communications, as these are the most ‘influential’ readers of ESG reports, parsing and mining company data for raters and rankers.” An SAP proposal promises to show how generative AI can help companies “achieve immediate transparency into their suppliers’ ESG profiles,” and Autocase offered to introduce an AI-assisted online decarbonization planning tool for real estate portfolios.
Justice This year social justice showed up in more intersectional, and specific, contexts than before, and from more innovators building justice into their business models. Supplements company Ritual pitched a session on identifying and tracking PFAS through the supply chain that would make “explicit intersections between sustainability, human rights, justice and traceability.”
Biomaterials startup erthos proposed to discuss how “the intersections of race, gender, social and economic status, and age influence how we view, engage, and protect our planet.” Startup GreenWealth Energy connected environmental justice and workforce development to public EV charging infrastructure funding by highlighting state and local government programs supporting under-resourced “community involvement in the electrification space.”
Is this everything you should be watching? No chance. Is there a good chance these topics will gain traction in the coming year? I’d bet on it. And if it’s something you should start to pay more attention to to help you do your job, we’ll include it in the GreenBiz 24 program. Speakers and sessions will start to be announced next month.
Over two-thirds of consumers between the ages of 18 and 34 are likely to purchase from companies committed to Sustainability. From Viant • Reposted: July 17, 2023
IRVINE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Jun. 6, 2023– Viant Technology Inc.(NASDAQ: DSP), a leading people-based advertising technology company, today released the findings from its new Consumer Sustainability Study, revealing that over two-thirds of consumers between the ages of 18 and 34 are likely to purchase from companies committed to sustainability. Furthermore, of the more than 1,000 consumers surveyed, 69 percent agreed that businesses have a responsibility to reduce their environmental impact. As sustainability priorities continue to grow among brands, Viant’s new report underscores the importance of sustainability for consumers and how sustainability is a key driver of consumer purchasing decisions.
Key takeaways from Viant’s Consumer Sustainability Study:
When it comes to sustainability, consumers prefer action over words: When asked how important it was for brands to take action towards reducing their carbon footprint, versus just talking about their commitment to sustainability, 65 percent of consumers cited that action was important.
Gen Z and Millennials hold businesses accountable for sustainability: Consumers 18-34 years old feel most strongly that businesses have a responsibility to reduce their environmental impact, more so than those 35 and older.
Renewable energy can positively impact brand perception, especially among younger consumers: Almost three-quarters (74%) of consumers between the ages of 18 and 34 expressed that they would view a brand positively if they are utilizing renewable energy sources. When analyzing all age groups (18+) surveyed, 67 percent of consumers cited that they would view a brand positively if they are utilizing renewable energy sources.
“Our latest research demonstrates that consumers are increasingly looking for brands to not only talk about sustainability and about reducing their carbon footprint, but to take real action,” said Jon Schulz, Chief Marketing Officer, Viant. “As sustainability remains top of mind for both brands and their customers, we are pleased to offer our clients a number of leading-edge solutions, including our Adtricity program, which help brands take real action to achieve their sustainability goals.”
To further support brands and agencies in understanding their carbon footprint from advertising, this week Viant launched its new Carbon Emissions Calculator to help advertisers assess the carbon impact of their digital campaigns.
To learn more about the findings from Viant’s Consumer Sustainability Study, please click here.
About Viant’s Consumer Sustainability Study
This survey was fielded online and reached a total of n=1,197 respondents. Respondents were consumers in the US (18+) who were representative of the national population. The survey was fielded between May, 1st, 2023 – May, 2nd, 2023.
A growing industry solution to plastic packaging pollution is to create food products that are more stable and compatible with more minimal and sustainable packaging materials. By Marty Kolewe from Sustainable Brands • Reposted: July 15, 2023
Addressing this issue requires a shift in how we develop and package our products — and compostable packaging plays a significant role in enabling a sustainable future. By increasing awareness and educating consumers on the benefits of viable, compostable alternatives, individuals can make more informed purchasing decisions and drive positive change.
But the bottom line is that the only path to sustainability is for industry to break its dependence on plastic. One widespread belief fueling our habit is that the functionality of sustainable packaging materials needs to match that of traditional plastic. This isn’t necessarily true; there are many applications where the functionality of plastic is just not needed. Take, for instance, all the baggies of screws and parts that come with an item that needs to be assembled — several more sustainable packaging options could get that job done.
Food packaging, on the other hand, does require certain functionalities. It protects the food from the environment, aids in preservation, and helps maintain the integrity and safety of the product. However, foods have varying packaging needs; so, there’s no quick fix. It’s important that we work together and think creatively to develop and support food packaging solutions that are both functional and sustainable.
Admittedly, adopting sustainable packaging is not without its challenges. Governments and regulatory bodies play a crucial role. While it appears highly unlikely that any domestic regulatory body will tax — or really, in any way discourage — the manufacturing of something as prevalent and lucrative as plastic packaging, they can incentivize the use of sustainable materials through credits or offsets for the incremental costs. Creating a favorable regulatory environment encourages companies to prioritize sustainable packaging, which would lead to more widespread adoption and a corresponding reduction in negative environmental impacts.
Valid concerns over product integrity and compatibility also pose technical hurdles. Finding materials that meet a product’s unique requirements can be particularly difficult, especially for foods with a high moisture content — such as yogurt or hummus — that do not have an inherent barrier like that of fresh fruit. While environmentally unsustainable, the water barrier functionality that plastic packaging provides is critical.
Overcoming these challenges requires innovation and long-term investment. Brands and manufacturers have the opportunity to lead the change by integrating compostable packaging options and supporting the development of new materials. Inertia within established supply chains can be overcome through the adoption of long-term impact innovation and support from well-established companies or ESG-focused investors.
But what does this innovation look like? What should these brands and manufacturers be investing in? It’s time to reevaluate how we’re approaching the solution to our packaging problem: Change the product, not just the packaging.
It is possible to create food products that are more stable and compatible with more minimal and sustainable packaging solutions. Modifying a food itself, so that it requires less functionality (e.g. barrier protection) from its packaging, allows for compatibility with a broader set of materials that include more sustainable and bio-based solutions. Integrating barrier materials in the form of coatings or outer layers is an underutilized but growing solution in sustainable packaging. Companies such as Mori and Apeel make edible barriers that are designed to be applied to fresh foods’ existing peels and to extend shelf life. Foodberry uses biomimicry to replicate the properties of fruit skins and peels — creating coatings made of fibers, phytonutrients and minerals that manufacturers can use to create self-contained, bite-size versions of their signature products. The coatings create a functional, edible barrier — just like fruit skins found in nature — meaning that even hydrated foods can be distributed in bulk, or sold in compostable or biodegradable packaging.
The benefits of sustainable packaging extend to businesses, consumers, the environment and the entire economy. It stimulates innovation and product differentiation, appealing to consumer preferences for sustainability. By bringing new solutions to the market, businesses can leverage sustainability as an innovation catalyst — reducing environmental harm, improving human health, and fostering a healthier and more sustainable future.
TH Herbert is the CEO of Semarchy, a data software company that enables organizations to leverage their data to create business value.
Giving back to those in need via your time, money or resources can be an incredibly rewarding experience. For businesses, giving back is a chance to use your status as a force for positive change and build a stronger teamwork culture in the process.
More people than ever are paying attention to brands that are taking a stance on something they care about, and employees are increasingly looking for more than just a paycheck. Aligning yourself with charitable work not only sets a great example but allows you and your team to play an active role in community improvement. With more conscious consumers and added corporate pressure to maximize short-term profits, however, many businesses need help understanding how to prioritize philanthropy.
While you don’t have to be a philanthropy-focused business to help your community, I believe that you do need to install some philanthropic spirit into your workplace. While philanthropy is essential in building a reputation for your company as a form of corporate social responsibility (CSR), it shouldn’t be exclusively a tactic to promote your brand image and profit through advertising or cause-related marketing. It’s much more than bolstering your reputation in the media—consider how your business can significantly impact the lives of others, including those within your own company.
Showing that your business is committed to positively impacting society beyond recognition and core business activities, which naturally helps build trust and goodwill among consumers, employees and other stakeholders, is what will ultimately lead to increased brand loyalty and support as a by-product.
According to America’s Charities, employee participation increases when a business decides to make a charitable choice. The company culture notably shapes how employees see their profession, so philanthropic acts, no matter how often, allow employees to use their knowledge and experience while doing good within a community. According to America’s Charities, workplace giving (donating directly from a paycheck) is the most common type of employee engagement. Approximately $5 billion is raised through workplace giving annually, according to America’s Charities.
But there are many more ways to act. Through a philanthropic culture, businesses can differentiate themselves and create a unique selling proposition that appeals to clients looking for socially responsible companies and dedicated to making a change in the world.
Philanthropy In Practice
As an example of how to put this in practice, my company celebrates an annual “Day of Giving.” Even as a highly virtual company, our team finds creative ways to make a positive impact, banding together to raise awareness and money for things like medical research, planting trees or volunteering at local charities.
It’s up to the organization to set an example. For example, during our annual day of giving, my company supplies software and services at huge discounts to nonprofits like Cancer Research U.K. I’ve found that these types of efforts can significantly raise your employer net promoter score(eNPS).
How To Incorporate Philanthropy Into Your Workplace
There are many ways to establish a culture of giving within your workplace. First off, your company itself must make giving a priority. Whether by donations, matching programs or allowing employees time away for charitable endeavors, taking steps to create a culture of generosity adds value to your business, meaning to your employees and instills why giving back is necessary.
Once people start getting involved, I’ve found that it becomes a domino effect. More employees will continue participating, and healthy, friendly competition will often develop between offices. Eventually, volunteer opportunities can expand into much larger endeavors, allowing your company to adopt a philanthropic culture on its own. Employees will feel encouraged to think outside the box, looking for ways to make a difference.
Value Your People
Before encouraging your employees to donate or volunteer for any cause with the company, you must show them that you value them. A business that treats its workers poorly won’t be able to promote a culture of giving back. If employees are unhappy, why would they want to spend more time volunteering with co-workers or contributing to company-wide charity events?
You must listen, support and properly acknowledge your employees for their work if you want to inspire them to share that value with those in need. An organizational health assessment is a good starting point. Ensure that time is taken to understand the feedback and make it actionable is key.
Volunteer As A Team
Establishing camaraderie creates a community within your work environment, allowing people to know one another more deeply. Seeing one member do something wholesome tends to encourage others to participate. Good deeds and kindness can be highly contagious.
I also recommend that you utilize suggestions from employees on charities they may have a connection with—making them a part of the decision making. You can rotate through ideas and make it a time your company looks forward to multiple times a year. It shouldn’t just be a one-time thing.
Donate More Than Money
Donating money is not the only option for charitable giving. Organizations need supplies, volunteers and resources right away, not the money to buy them later. Collecting items or organizing a volunteer day are often much better alternatives. This can also help everyone play a personal role in helping others, knowing that their items will improve other lives.
Giving back can be a great challenge for an organization; it takes time, planning and commitment. But I think you’ll be surprised about the benefits that come along with it. Creating a work environment with opportunities for community initiatives and charitable giving incites motivation for your team to succeed. Incorporating philanthropy into your business model can make your employees more responsible, inspired and satisfied with their jobs.
Claire Simier is the founder and managing principal of Simier Partners.
Within enterprises today, there is an increasing focus on sustainability, with both internal and external stakeholders demanding sustainable initiatives and culture. Within the context of organizational leadership, sustainability refers to both environmental and social outcomes.
This includes everything from minimizing an organization’s negative impact on the environment to being ecologically responsible and reducing or reversing the effects of pollution and climate change. It also involves supporting the well-being of a company’s employees and stakeholders and implementing programs to reduce economic and social inequality in the various communities in which the business operates.
Given the impact of business on people and on the planet, organizations need leaders with a clear sustainability leadership commitment. These leaders must be able to effectively integrate sustainability into organizational strategy and operations, leveraging a sustainable mindset with the skills and initiative to drive the transformation needed to achieve sustainability and commercial profitability.
Adopting A Sustainable Mindset
To implement meaningful sustainable transformation, leaders must develop a sustainable mindset. Plainly stated, a sustainable leader puts sustainability at the core of the business model and is committed to the belief that the commercial success and performance of a business is directly linked with the social and environmental framework in which it operates. A leader with this mindset recognizes sustainability as a source of competitive advantage and is driven by implementing and incorporating changes with the greatest ecological and social impact—for both the short and long term. (This sometimes means taking actions at some short-term cost to profit margins, or operating in a more logistically complex way to keep sustainability at the forefront, understanding the long-term effects will result in environmental, social and economic profitability.)
Sustainable leaders consistently reflect on sustainable values and are able to respond in the most effective way to social and environmental complexities, sometimes challenging traditional approaches to business if necessary. This means promoting sustainable practices in their organizations and surrounding communities, as well as encouraging others to do the same. They both have the intention and the commitment to truly be purpose-driven, with sustainability and long-term profitability as their guiding principles.
Communicating And Relationship-Building
Conveying the mindset of sustainability relies on effective communication to create a shared vision among individuals and organizations, cultivating an environment for collective progress with similar goals. As with any good communicator, sustainable leaders are clear and direct about their sustainable goals and values, which allows them to inspire others to join in the work ahead. These leaders have a knack for breaking down complex information and data about sustainable strategy into understandable message points that are accessible for a range of different audiences. They are skilled at active listening and storytelling and are able to pivot and adapt to the shifting and growing challenges that the environment is facing.
Moreover, these individuals use their skills to build bridges between sometimes disparate groups. They understand the need to build relationships in order to broaden knowledge on numerous topics with one or two strong pillars of expertise and to convey knowledge across sectors to achieve long-term sustainability goals. They know when it’s time to engage ecosystems with specialties beyond those of their organization and can effectively collaborate with leaders in different roles to integrate action plans and key strategies.
Inspiring Others To Look Ahead
Sustainable leaders understand that they must lead by example—by living an authentic and sustainable lifestyle themselves. To get alignment on sustainability goals, they must establish their own credibility, by their passion and personal values, to inspire others. These leaders generate trust which, in turn, increases others’ willingness to work collaboratively towards shared sustainability goals.
Aligning their words with actions, they demonstrate what leading with authenticity looks like, which allows them to inspire others and shift the culture around them. They aren’t intimidated by doing the hard work of reexamining a company’s core values to ensure that the way it operates reflects their commitment to sustainability.
Moreover, these leaders have the courage to look toward an uncertain future, organizationally, ecologically and globally. The complexity of sustainability initiatives can sometimes be financially daunting to reexamine in the short-term; taking a long-term perspective requires patience and perspicacity, but can help leaders make decisions while carefully considering their far-reaching impact on the organization and its stakeholders. Sustainability leaders must recognize the long-term impacts of both climate change and social changes, and provide resources that have the potential to deliver long-lasting results. Those who can embrace and lead with purpose-driven objectives, as well as accountability and progress check-points to keep them from resorting to outdated ways of operating, will be more successful in the long term.
Bringing Everyone Together
A key component of relationship-building is involving a range of stakeholders in decision-making and taking action about sustainable approaches. Sustainable leaders who implement long-term strategies that cast a wider net of goals can better engage stakeholders. They are keenly aware and able to illustrate how integration of sustainability in businesses is both environmentally and socially responsible. Doing so will, in turn, create a competitive distinction, allowing businesses to retain investor support and attract top talent.
When employees, clients and other stakeholders encounter truly sustainable leadership—evidenced by a stated intention, practice and implementation of initiatives that meaningfully support social and environmental goals—it fosters an unusual and enduring relationship of trust and transparency. As organizations all over the world continue to shift their priorities, seek to reduce their environmental impact, save costs, engage employees, enhance their reputation and comply with regulations, leaders who embody a sustainable mindset will be at a strategic and competitive advantage.
IMAGE: ELENA REYGADAS’ ROSETTA RESTAURANT IN MEXICO CITY
The Food Made Good Sustainability Standard is the only certification designed to measure restaurants’ social and environmental impacts, wherever they are in the world. It also highlights areas for improvement and provides credibility in communicating sustainability practices to customers. From Sustainable Brands * Reposted: July 12, 2023
After 15 years of operating in the UK, the Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA) has launched a globally accessible platform to allow hospitality businesses everywhere to take 360-degree accountability for sustainability to a standard that is recognized by industry and consumers alike.
In response to the universal scale of food-system issues within hospitality, juxtaposed by a genuine desire from chefs and industry workers to contribute to a solution, the SRA has developed the holistic, functional and global Food Made Good Sustainability Standard— which aims to level the playing field by providing businesses with trustworthy, expert-led and up-to-date accreditation, as well as guidance on continued improvement in their commitment to sustainability and credibility in communicating sustainable business practices to customers.
Developed with input from leading food businesses and international experts — including the Ellen McArthur Foundation, WRAP and the Ethical Trade Initiative — the newly global Standard is the only certification specifically designed to measure a restaurant’s social and environmental impact, wherever they are in the world.
The Food Made Good Sustainability Standard builds on The SRA’s signature Food Made Good assessment — which has been the sustainability accreditation of choice for UK foodservice businesses – covering more than 12,000 sites – since its launch in 2010, and has been used as the basis for judging the sustainability award for The World’s 50 Best Restaurants and Bars and all of its regional offshoots since 2013. Used by world-renowned chefs — including France’s Raymond Blanc OBE, Mexico’s Elena Reygadas, The Netherlands’ Richard Ekkebus and Spain’s Ángel León, all of whom embrace sustainability as a cornerstone of their cuisine — the new Standard is designed to measure a business’s social and environmental impact and is built on a 10-point framework, organised across three pillars: Sourcing, Society and Environment. In order to be both effective and globally applicable, the Food Made Good Standard is closely aligned with international norms — including the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
“In an environment in which chefs and restaurant operators understand the need to act urgently and decisively, we recognized the need for a holistic framework defining what ‘good’ looks like across both environmental and social issues,” explains Juliane Caillouette Noble, Managing Director of The SRA. “Issues like food waste, treating staff fairly and animal welfare are universal. Now’s the moment for a global conversation about what it means to be a good restaurant in every sense — with a certification that is digestible for every business, supplier, owner and guest. We are setting the Standard by which a restaurant in Buenos Aires, Beijing or Birminghamcan accurately compare its sustainability achievements and join the Food Made Good movement to build a better industry for our planet.”
Since 2010, The SRA has worked to advance sustainability in hospitality across the UK. Now, with the global Food Made Good Standard, it aims to connect businesses around the world to accelerate change towards a hospitality sector that is socially progressive and environmentally restorative. Areas of focus within each of the three pillars include:
Sourcing 1. Celebrate provenance 2. Support farmers and fishers 3. Serve more plants, better meat 4. Source seafood sustainably
Society 5. Treat staff fairly 6. Feed people well 7. Support the community
Environment 8. Reduce your footprint 9. Waste no food 10. Reduce, reuse and recycle
To achieve the Food Made Good Standard, restaurants must submit answers and evidence on the Food Made Good digital platform and must score at least 50% in the evaluation across the three pillars. Each submission is evaluated, evidence-checked and subjected to a final enquiry from SRA experts, before a final report is completed with a score and an action plan for improvement. Those that score 50-59% will be awarded a 1-Star rating; those scoring 60-69%, 2 Stars; and 70%+, 3 Stars.
“The work The SRA is doing through globally standardizing sustainability in our industry is not only inspired but essential,” Chef Blanc says. “We, as restaurateurs and business operators, need to understand where we are today to work out where we’re going tomorrow. By creating the tools needed to turn the individual’s commitment to sustainability into measurable, reportable action, the Standard is offering accountability and transparency, which are fundamental to the future of our livelihoods and indeed our lives.”
The SRA invites any restaurant, anywhere in the world to start its journey at standard.foodmadegood.org. Its ambition is to help 100,000 restaurants to transform what we eat, how we eat and the impact this has on the world by 2030.
Reframe your reaction to the new reporting regimen. Here’s how it can benefit you — and your company. By Dylan Siegler, SVP, Sustainability, GreenBiz Group • Reposted: July 11, 2023
At our GreenFin 23 conference last month, disclosure was on the lips of everyone from Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse to Shirley Lu, assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, to Brendan Morrissey, Walmart’s vice president, ESG. But while many speakers at GreenFin proclaimed a reassuring “you got this” from the stage, practitioners in the audience weren’t so sure.
Some of the top worries I heard included:
New compliance structures and frameworks raise the stakes significantly in a field where voluntary (ergo, occasionally squishy) reporting has been the norm. Consequences of not complying with CSRD, for example, will be up to EU member states, and will range from public shaming to cease-and-desist orders to fines.
While simplification and harmonization may happen in the medium term, for now the disparate standards add complexity and uncertainty for disclosers.
Human and technological resources to learn, execute on and adapt to this new paradigm are scarce — and as a result, projects that deliver tangible climate, nature and community benefits will suffer (and so will sustainability staff).
Further, in many companies, these new disclosure rules hit a nerve not because there is anything much to hide, but because they call for cooperation and lock-step alignment in precisely the areas where there is most often dysfunction: Misalignment between sustainability and other key business functions such as finance, legal and risk. Disarray behind the shiny, corporate-comms-approved veneer of the typical annual sustainability or ESG report. Shallow commitments where a deep sustainability strategy with buy-in from the Board on down should be.
That doesn’t even include the many companies without an existing materiality assessment; accounting for GHG emissions in homespun spreadsheets or not yet accounting for them at all; not engaging in third-party verification or attestation of their disclosures; inexperience with Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures reporting; or lacking budget for a consultant or a data platform.
The new disclosure paradigm may force companies to clean up the house the way I do when surprise guests call from down the block to say they’re dropping by — that is, quickly, but not thoroughly.
But the new sustainability reporting rules can be a strategic opportunity, too
An ESG professional I spoke with who didn’t have corporate sign-off to be quoted on the record offered a positive and useful way to reframe that disclosure panic.
In essence, he said, take a page from companies that have reported ESG data en route to an IPO, and make disclosure serve you. Recent studies demonstrate that solid voluntary ESG disclosures of environmental and social issues material to the business (such as emissions, human rights, and supply chain considerations) can help fledgling public companies’ valuations — even if you’re not Allbirds.
I found the redirect inspiring. Rather than a test you cram for, it’s possible to consider disclosure a talent show, and start rehearsing. You typically can’t pick and choose which metrics you respond to, but you can choose what you focus your limited energy and time on in the run-up, and make it count.
Don’t just fill in the blanks. Develop insights you can draw on outside the disclosure context: what’s material, what risks are relevant and what your stakeholders care about. All of these elements will be unique to your business.
Filling in the blanks does, of course, matter. Lean on your voluntary disclosures — if you’ve reported to CDP, you are at least part way there.
Get cozy with Comms, Legal, Finance, Risk, etc., and build a playbook together so none of what you learn is lost. It may be your company’s first rodeo, but it won’t be your last.
This much is clear: Disclosure will bring more attention to your work, especially internally. Focus on what matters, and the result could almost make it worth the pain.
From the Conference Board • Reposted: July 11, 2023
Just 13 percent of executives say sustainability is deeply embedded into their firm’s cultural DNA. Most companies are generally at the early to middle stages of building a sustainability culture, with 49 percent saying it is moderately embedded and 37 percent saying it is slightly embedded.
That is according to a new report by The Conference Board in collaboration with Baker Tilly. The report, Building a Sustainability Culture, is the culmination of a series of Working Group sessions, at which executives from companies in various sectors discussed how to develop and maintain a corporate culture that embraces sustainability.
“To take advantage of the transition to a sustainable economy, companies need to build a sustainability culture that becomes an indelible part of their organization’s character,” said Paul Washington, Executive Director of The Conference Board ESG Center and co-author of the report. “The Building a Sustainability Culture Working Group served as a valuable step in helping leaders equip their workforces with the behaviors, training, resources, and capabilities necessary to meet the unprecedented challenges and opportunities in the areas of corporate governance, sustainability, and citizenship.”
“The findings of our report underscore the need for embedding sustainability into business as usual, in addition to highlighting the distance still left to travel on the journey to a sustainable economy,” said Srinand Yalamanchili, Baker Tilly Director−ESG and sustainability. “Embedding sustainability into culture and business strategy can only be achieved by prioritizing the ‘why’–the positive return on investment and risks of inaction–and taking ownership at both an organizational and individual level.”
The Working Group convened more than 250 executives from 160 companies who met over the span of eight months to focus on how to develop and maintain a culture in which those at the organization think and act with sustainability in mind. The report provides insights into five areas: 1) what is a sustainability culture?; 2) why does it matter?; 3) how do companies build a sustainability culture?; 4) who is responsible?; and 5) how do companies measure success?
Key insights from the report include:
Companies are in the early stages of building sustainability into their culture.
Just 13 percent of executives say sustainability is deeply embedded into their company culture, with 49 percent saying it is moderately embedded and 37 percent saying it is slightly embedded.
Sustainability and cultural change need to be closely linked to the execution of the company’s business strategy.
30 percent of the respondents cite the CEO as best suited to lead the cultural transformation of the organization, followed by 28 percent who cite those responsible for the company’s business strategy and operations.
Both the positive ROI (return on investment) and the negative ROI (risk of inaction) are driving the case for building a sustainability culture.
An initial motivator: Explaining the “Risk of Inaction”—the negative consequences of failing to change.
A constant motivator: Explaining the positive case for how increasing the organization’s focus on sustainability will improve the company’s performance in the marketplace, including the markets for products and services, talent, and capital.
Employees need to feel a sense of ownership when it comes to building a sustainability culture.
75 percent of participants cite a “sense of ownership” as the most important aspect of a sustainability culture, followed by a clear mission, purpose, and values.
Companies may need to move beyond traditional training and compensation to motivate progress.
Only half (50 percent) of participants cite compensation as the most effective way of recognizing and rewarding behavioral change. By contrast, 61 percent cite internal recognition from senior management as the most effective, and 54 percent cite promotions and career opportunities.
About The Conference Board ESG Center
The Conference Board ESG Center serves as a resource, platform, and partner to help Member companies address their priorities in corporate governance, sustainability, and citizenship. ConferenceBoard.org/ESG
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