An orange hue tints New York City on June 7 as smoke from more than 100 wildfires across Quebec, Canada, filters south. Wildfire seasons are starting earlier, lasting longer and causing more damage due to climate change, scientists say. (Image: Metropolitan Transportation Authority/Flickr)
By Mary Riddle from Triple Pundit • Reposted: June 21, 2023
The annual Non-Disclosure Campaign engages investors to directly request climate disclosures from top companies responsible for high levels of greenhouse gas emissions.
Organized by the nonprofit CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project), this year’s campaign includes nearly 300 global financial institutions with almost $29 trillion in assets under management. They’re calling for disclosure from over 1,600 high-impact companies — including Saudi Aramco, ExxonMobil, Tesla, Chevron, Caterpillar and Volvo. Together, these companies emit nearly the same amount of greenhouse gases as the United Kingdom, European Union and Canada combined, according to CDP. And they’ve all failed to respond to the nonprofit’s climate disclosure requests.
So, why are climate disclosures important, and how can investors and other stakeholders put the pressure on more companies to disclose? We sat down with Sebastian O’Connor, an associate director at CDP whose team has conducted the Non-Disclosure Campaign since 2017, to learn more.
Why are environmental and climate disclosures important?
“The theory of change behind CDP is quite simply what gets measured gets managed,” O’Connor said. “The end goal of all of our work on climate change is to get emissions down to zero. To get to that point, you need a target that is feasible but ambitious. And to get a target, you need to know where you start.”
While climate disclosures are the most common kind of disclosure reported to CDP, many companies also disclose their water and forest impacts, O’Connor said. “It is more than climate. The whole aspect of nature should be disclosed against — climate and nature are interlinked.”
Corporate climate disclosures encompass business activities that produce emissions, including in the company value chain. Because the world still lacks a global standardized reporting framework, CDP is one of the recognized industry leaders in evaluating climate and nature impacts.
“CDP is the best avenue for standardized, comparable disclosures that can be assessed and graded to see how well a company is doing,” O’Connor said. “We need to know how corporations are impacting the environment in order to create a sustainable economy.”
Why do companies fail to disclose?
Corporations give various reasons for refusing to disclose their climate, water or other nature-related impacts. Some companies cite the time and resources it takes to complete a CDP questionnaire, while others choose to publish their own sustainability reports instead of going through third parties. But self-published reports can be bias, O’Connor said.
“The devil is truly in the details, as companies can decide what to omit and what to publish,” he told us. “Will companies put out anything that goes against the narrative of them always making progress?”
CDP also allows the public to compare companies against others in their peer group in a standardized way that is assessed by an independent third party.
Putting on the pressure
O’Connor thinks chronic non-disclosing companies might not be getting enough pressure from regulators and their investors, but this is changing. “There is clear pressure from regulatory regimes in every part of the world,” he said. “Regulators are paying attention because climate and nature impact the financial security of the world economy. This year, our Non-Disclosure Campaign got 288 signatories to sign on, a quadruple increase from 2017.”
Supporters of this year’s campaign included investors, asset managers, asset owners, insurance companies and other financial institutions. The nonprofit typically sees success because of the direct, simple nature of the requests, O’Connor said.
“CDP acts as an effective bridge between financial institutions and the corporate world,” he said. “We facilitate meetings that often revolve around companies giving their reasons for not disclosing. Then, investors are able to show the benefits to disclosing. When this happens, we have a high rate of previously non-disclosing companies disclosing the following year.”
As governments around the world move toward standardized reporting frameworks, CDP is working to ensure that the regulations are rigorous and ambitious, O’Connor said.
“CDP came into play 20 years ago because regulation did not exist,” he explained. “We formed the foundation of the ESG [environmental, social and governance] universe that we see today.” While regulated disclosures are a welcome change, “we can also influence these regulations to make sure they do not just go to the lowest common denominator,” he said.
“It is about more than just disclosure. We want to help guide companies through every step that leads them to being truly sustainable.”
Left to right: Elana Knopp, Zachary Strauss, Avery Hammond, Jenna Patterson and Rashad Williams. Standing at the mic is Stacy Lentz, co-owner of the Stonewall Inn and CEO of the Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative (SIGBI).
Representation is an integral factor to bring about real change — especially as it affects marginalized communities. The power industry, which has historically employed an overly homogenous population of white men, could stand to learn a lot from an influx of diverse people and viewpoints. After all, equity of any type can only be achieved when everyone has a seat at the table and their voices are heeded, not just heard.
With this aim in mind, Edison Energy and its LGBTQ+ employee resource group hosted an all-LGBTQ+ panel at the historic Stonewall Inn last week that focused on how to promote queer representation in the energy sector and, by extension, improve outcomes related to climate change and environmental justice.
Continuing the fight
“The Stonewall is hallowed ground for many of us in the queer community,” said moderator Elana Knopp, the senior content writer at Edison Energy, at the beginning of the event. “It’s literally the epicenter of the gay pride movement.” The historic Greenwich Village gay bar was the site of the Stonewall uprising in 1969 that sparked the gay rights movement in New York City and nationwide.
Renewed efforts by the conservative right to force LGBTQ+, and especially transgender, people back into the closet have heightened the need for this recognition and employee resource groups like Pride in Power. Just as the community’s fight for equal rights faces a massive disinformation campaign from the right wing, so does the fight against climate change, said panelist Brandon Rothrock, an assistant program manager at TRC Companies and board member at OUT for Sustainability, which focuses on mobilizing the LGBTQ+ community for social and environmental action.
The parallel may appear uncanny, as the climate crisis reached emergency proportions in the same timeframe that the Human Rights Campaign declared a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. It’s the first time in 40 years that the campaign deemed an emergency necessary due to “discriminatory state laws that have created . . . dangerous environments for LGBTQ+ people across the country,” Knopp said.
Marginalized groups face the brunt of climate change
“One thing that’s been well-documented at this point is that the impacts of climate change have been disproportionately affecting marginalized communities, such as
and people of color (POC),” said panelist Rashad Williams, the director of subscriber services at Groundswell, which focuses on expanding equitable access to clean energy. “And when you combine the two, you start seeing a compounding effect of those impacts.”
Those who are both LGBTQ+ and POC have double the unemployment rate of people who are not in those categories, he said. That rate is triple if they are also transgender. Therefore, they’re more likely to live in low-income neighborhoods, which makes them more likely to experience the negative health effects of pollution and climate change, and less likely to have health insurance.
Perhaps the starkest portrayal of these compounding effects is found among the Guna people, an Indigenous group in Panama who are being forced from their island homes on Gardi Sugdub by rising seas. Guna culture is traditionally gender fluid and matrifocal — customs they could lose as they are absorbed and influenced by the majority Catholic and patriarchal social structure in mainland Panama.
Queer-centered action
It’s important to note that the environmental justice movement owes its inception to the BIPOC community, “the same folks that led the Stonewall uprising,” Knopp said. “The environmental justice movement was basically founded on the principle that everyone deserves to breathe clean air and drink clean water and have access to clean neighborhoods.”
Still, until recently the movement had not specifically focused on the queer community, she said.
The queer perspective is needed in the energy sector to ensure the switch to clean energy benefits everyone. Changes to infrastructure and access will only be as equitable as they are safe, said panelist Zachary Strauss, a policy analyst at Atlas Public Policy and the founder and president of Out in Energy, a community of LGBTQ+ people in the energy sector. Charging stations have to be in safe locations to be fully accessible, and electric buses won’t do the queer community any good if LGBTQ+ people have to risk their well-being to ride them.
The energy sector still has a long way to go. Workers in the field report the least confidence in their employer’s recruitment and hiring of members from the LGBTQ+ community compared to other marginalized groups, according to a report commissioned by the National Association of State Energy Officials. Panelists noted a few methods energy companies can utilize to better recruit and retain LGBTQ+ individuals, including mentorships, ERGs like Pride in Power, opportunities to socialize during work hours, inclusive language, and utilizing pronouns that make transgender and non-binary people feel safe as their authentic selves in the workplace.
Ultimately it starts from the top with a need for leadership to speak out and support the community by investing in the workforce, Strauss said. As well as “retention through affirmation” by ensuring people don’t have to hide who they are in the workplace.
Taking a stand when there are no guarantees
The clean energy sector does appear to be more conducive to LGBTQ+ employment, but the industry as a whole continues to struggle with anti-queer prejudice. Last year’s Pride in Energy survey found a 40 percent increase in discrimination over 2021.
While allies can, and must, do their part to support LGBTQ+ voices and action, there is no guarantee that power companies will do what’s needed going forward — especially under the current climate in which corporations that have historically presented themselves as allies are backtracking.
“It’s a little bit trickier making sure that your company takes a stand,” said Avery Hammond, Edison Energy’s senior clean energy analyst. “That’s a decision that’s not left up to most of us — none of us actually.”
This is why it’s more important than ever for allies and LGBTQ+ individuals to speak up, demand better, and reward companies that continue to fight the good fight. True environmental justice depends on it.
Environmental justice is, after all, a matter of civil rights.
By Sanskar Tiwari from newstracklive.com • Reposted: June 20, 2023
In recent years, a significant shift has taken place in the investment landscape. Investors are now not only concerned about financial returns but also the impact of their investments on the world. This has given rise to a new approach known as ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) investing. ESG factors are increasingly being considered by investors, focusing on the sustainability and societal impact of companies. The integration of environmental, social, and governance criteria in investment decision-making is a key trend in the share market.
Introduction: Understanding ESG Investing ESG investing is an approach that takes into account environmental, social, and governance factors alongside financial considerations when making investment decisions. It recognizes that companies with strong sustainability practices and positive societal impact are likely to perform well in the long run.
Environmental Factors In ESG investing, environmental factors focus on a company’s impact on the natural environment. This includes assessing a company’s carbon emissions, water usage, waste management practices, and renewable energy initiatives. Investors look for companies that are committed to reducing their environmental footprint and mitigating climate change risks.
Social Factors Social factors encompass a company’s impact on society, including its relationships with employees, customers, suppliers, and local communities. Investors evaluate aspects such as labor practices, diversity and inclusion, human rights, product safety, and community engagement. Companies that prioritize social responsibility and ethical practices are more likely to attract ESG-conscious investors.
Governance Factors Governance factors pertain to a company’s leadership, board structure, and policies that guide decision-making. Investors assess transparency, accountability, and the alignment of executive compensation with performance. Companies with strong governance frameworks and effective risk management practices are deemed more trustworthy and are favored by ESG investors.
The Benefits of ESG Investing ESG investing offers several benefits for both investors and society as a whole. By integrating ESG factors into investment decisions, investors can align their portfolios with their values, contributing to positive change. Additionally, companies that prioritize ESG practices tend to be better equipped to manage risks, enhance their reputation, attract top talent, and foster long-term shareholder value.
ESG Investing Strategies There are different approaches to ESG investing, including screening, integration, and impact investing. Screening involves excluding companies involved in controversial activities, such as tobacco or weapons. Integration incorporates ESG factors into traditional financial analysis to identify companies with superior ESG performance. Impact investing focuses on investing in companies or projects with the explicit goal of generating positive social or environmental outcomes.
ESG Metrics and Ratings To evaluate a company’s ESG performance, various metrics and ratings systems are available. These assessments provide investors with standardized information to compare companies based on their ESG practices. Examples include the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, MSCI ESG Ratings, and MSCI ESG Ratings and the Carbon Disclosure Project.
ESG Integration in Portfolio Construction ESG integration involves incorporating ESG factors into the construction and management of investment portfolios. It requires thorough analysis and engagement with companies to understand their ESG risks and opportunities. By integrating ESG considerations, investors can potentially enhance risk-adjusted returns and contribute to a more sustainable economy.
The Role of Investors in Driving Change ESG investing has the potential to drive positive change by incentivizing companies to adopt sustainable practices. Through engagement and active ownership, investors can influence companies to improve their ESG performance and transparency. Shareholder activism and proxy voting are some of the tools investors can use to advocate for positive change.
Overcoming Challenges in ESG Investing While ESG investing has gained momentum, it also faces certain challenges. Lack of standardized ESG data, greenwashing, and the subjective nature of ESG assessments can make it difficult for investors to navigate the ESG landscape. However, efforts are being made to address these challenges and enhance the credibility of ESG investing.
Case Studies: Successful ESG Investments Several case studies demonstrate the potential of ESG investing. Companies that have embraced sustainability practices and strong governance have seen improved financial performance and investor confidence. Examples include renewable energy companies, socially responsible consumer brands, and companies that prioritize employee well-being.
Future Trends in ESG Investing ESG investing is expected to continue growing in prominence as investors increasingly recognize its importance. The integration of artificial intelligence and big data analytics in ESG assessments, increased regulatory focus on ESG disclosures, and the emergence of green bonds are some of the trends shaping the future of ESG investing.
Conclusion ESG investing represents a paradigm shift in the investment landscape. Investors are now placing greater emphasis on the sustainability and societal impact of companies. By considering ESG factors alongside financial metrics, investors can align their portfolios with their values and contribute to a more sustainable and equitable future.
By Howie Griffiths from goodmenproject.org • Reposted: June 20, 2023
In an era marked by environmental concerns and a growing focus on social responsibility, individuals hold immense power to drive positive change through their everyday choices. By embracing ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) initiatives, we can help create a more sustainable future.
This article explores the ways in which individuals can make a meaningful impact by adopting eco-conscious purchasing habits, practicing responsible consumption, and supporting socially responsible companies. Through ESG learning and taking conscious actions, we can collectively create a world that prioritizes sustainability and addresses pressing global challenges.
The Power of Eco-Conscious Purchasing
One of the most impactful ways individuals can contribute to a sustainable future is through eco-conscious purchasing. By carefully considering the ethics and environmental impact of the products we buy, we can support companies that prioritize sustainable practices and reduce our ecological footprint. ESG courses play a vital role in helping individuals understand the importance of sustainable consumption and make informed choices.
Firstly, consider the materials and production processes involved in the products you purchase. Opt for goods made from sustainable materials, such as organic cotton or recycled plastics, which minimize the depletion of natural resources and reduce waste.
Secondly, look for products that are ethically sourced and produced. This includes supporting fair trade organizations that ensure workers receive fair wages and operate in safe conditions. By choosing products that prioritize social responsibility, you contribute to the well-being of communities worldwide.
Furthermore, consider the longevity and durability of the products. Investing in high-quality items that last longer reduces the need for frequent replacements and helps combat the issue of excessive consumption.
Practicing Responsible Consumption
Responsible consumption involves adopting mindful habits that minimize waste and prioritize sustainability. ESG learning equips individuals with knowledge of responsible consumption practices and empowers them to make conscious decisions.
One key aspect of responsible consumption is reducing single-use items. Start by reducing single-use items in your daily life. Replace disposable products with reusable alternatives, such as plastic cutlery and water bottles. By doing this, we greatly limit the quantity of trash that pollutes our oceans or ends up in landfills.
Another important consideration is food choices. Opting for locally sourced, organic, and sustainably produced food not only supports local farmers but also reduces the environmental impact associated with intensive farming practices and long-distance transportation.
In addition, minimizing food waste is crucial. Planning meals, storing leftovers properly, and composting organic waste can all contribute to reducing the amount of food that ends up in landfills, where it produces harmful greenhouse gases. Shop mindfully to avoid overbuying and throwing away excess food. Additionally, consider composting organic waste to minimize its impact on the environment.
Supporting Socially Responsible Companies
Supporting companies prioritizing social responsibility is a powerful way to make a positive impact. ESG learning equips individuals with the knowledge to identify and support businesses that align with their values.
Research companies and brands to ensure they operate ethically and are committed to sustainable practices. Look for certifications such as B Corp, which guarantee a company’s commitment to social and environmental standards.
Support businesses that actively contribute to social causes and community development. Some companies and businesses donate a portion of their profits to charitable organizations or engage in volunteer initiatives. By purchasing from these companies, individuals can support initiatives that make a tangible difference in society.
Additionally, consider a company’s approach to diversity and inclusion. Support companies that value diversity and actively promote an inclusive work culture. By doing so, you help foster equal opportunities and create a more equitable society.
Conclusion
Individuals possess the power to shape a more sustainable future through their everyday choices. We can collectively make a tremendous impact by embracing ESG initiatives, such as eco-conscious purchasing, responsible consumption, and supporting socially responsible companies. ESG learning empowers individuals to make informed decisions and uphold ethical standards. Our choices, no matter how insignificant they are, can create a ripple effect and inspire others to join in our efforts. We can build a future by prioritizing environmental preservation, social responsibility, and long-term sustainability.
A first-of-its-kind diagnostic tool is helping companies ensure their purpose supports outcomes including talent attraction and retention, employee engagement, and performance. From Carol Cone via Sustainablebrands.com • Reposted: June 17, 2023
If you spend any time on social media, you’ve probably seen the memes about companies offering their burned-out workers a pizza party. The employees feign joy — as if a few free slices and sodas will make up for long hours, muddled communication, disengaged leadership or having to commute to the office. What employees really want is good compensation; and then, work-life balance. And they also want to feel a sense of purpose at work — whether that’s a personal purpose or being able to say they work for a company that makes the world a better place.
This should come as no surprise to any C-suite or HR leader attuned to the latest research on corporate purpose. Only 7 percent ofFortune500 CEOs today believe their companies should “mainly focus on making profits and not be distracted by social goals.” Over the past several years, scores of companies have invested heavily in developing and activating a purpose beyond profits. We’ve proudly helped companies ranging from Campbell Soup Company to Quest Diagnostics do just that. Any wise investment needs to be measured and adjusted over time, though; and until recently, there has been no quantifiable way to measure the impact of purpose on a company’s workforce.
Meet EPiQ, or Employee Purpose iQ. We developed this diagnostic tool with our partners at The Harris Poll after releasing our Purpose Under Pressure report last year. From that research, we learned that 90 percent of employees say purpose helps them feel like they’re in the right place during turbulent times; and 84 percent said they will only work at a purpose-driven company. Purpose Under Pressure also showed that purpose is often implemented inconsistently and not deployed in key functional areas. EPiQ helps organizations identify such gaps, while illuminating areas of strength to build upon to ultimately ensure purpose produces returns across the enterprise.
To lay the groundwork for EPiQ — and set a foundation for companies to benchmark against — the Harris Poll team conducted The Harris Poll/Cone Employee Purpose Engagement Survey. We learned that 68 percent of US employees believe it is not enough for companies to just provide quality products and services; they have a responsibility to have a positive impact on society — including employees, customers, communities and the environment. Yet, of the 1,500 respondents, just half believe their employers care about anything more than making a profit.
This research highlights gaps in how employees experience their employers’ purpose initiatives, which should send a strong signal to business leaders that they are losing considerable value by not fully optimizing their purpose. For example, companies whose employees feel “a sense of purpose at work and believe their leaders set clear direction” outperform the stock market by nearly 7 percent, according to Great Place to Work. Further, purpose-driven companies see retention rates 40 percent higher than other companies, according to Deloitte.
EPiQ’s outputs include a detailed dashboard displaying where purpose is performing or falling short. Based on each company’s own segmentation, the dashboard can examine purpose by factors such as role, generation, hybrid/remote status, geography and more. Normative data shows companies how they perform compared to competitors or peers, as well as other industries. All this is delivered in a brief, C-suite-ready presentation, supplemented by high-level recommendations based on our team’s decades of experience in developing, activating and evolving purpose, ESG and employee initiatives.
Ultimately, EPiQ helps companies understand the impact of their investments in purpose related to leadership trust, talent attraction and retention, belonging, performance and influence on decision-making. With this critical baseline, HR and people leaders can understand opportunities for deeper education and behavior change. Wisely evolving purpose to meet the needs of employees can make employees happier, more engaged, and boost performance — all without a single slice of pizza.
When McKenzie Kerry graduated from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, a leadership position in a financial services company was very much on her mind. A business management major, Kerry had long sought out extra opportunities and activities, such as DECA, a leadership prep group for high schoolers and college students. “It was my thing in high school. I competed for three years and was president,” Kerry says. “I knew when I graduated, I wanted to find a leadership development program.”
Lots of familiar corporate names entered the post-college job search in her hometown of Charlotte. Then she happened upon a LinkedIn job posting for Principal Financial Group®. “I had never heard of Principal,” Kerry says. “But I did some research and liked what I saw.”
That feeling, along with insights from key people along the way, helped Kerry navigate the Principal® interview, job offer, and eventual relocation halfway across the country to Des Moines. “There was a connection I felt with people I had already met, and the culture felt different,” she says. “I knew I didn’t want to miss out on it.”
As Principal has discovered, nurturing those connections helps support diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, not just in communities and with customers, but also with employees. Those connections are multifaceted: support for Black-owned businesses, measurement of leadership representation, and celebrations old and new, such as the designation of Juneteenth as a Principal holiday.
DEI: From global to local
DEI isn’t a goal with an end point: It’s always on. Principal is continuing the work to increase diversity while making strides in areas such as gender. For example, women first received a seat on the board at Principal in 1980, and a Black woman joined the board two decades ago. Today, 46% of the management team are women.
At Principal, inclusion translates into a work environment that’s:
based on integrity, respect, trust, and belonging,
attracts and retains diverse talent, increases employee engagement, and develops the next generation of leaders, and
is flexible so employees can integrate life and work.
Lofty goals indeed, but how do we know we’re making progress? Measurements can help.
Inclusion: The Global People 2022 inclusion index, a measurement of authenticity and feeling valued among other factors, of 82% exceeds the goal of 80%.
Leadership: 62% of Board of Director members are diverse in their gender, race, or national origin.
Business support: In 2021, Principal committed to doubling the diverse small and midsize businesses it supports by 2025. In just its second year, we met 68% of the stated goal.
Global employment: Currently, women make up 54% of the Principal global workforce; 16% in the United States are people of color.
Outside recognitions: Principal was recognized as best place to work for LGBTQ+ Equality on the 2022 Corporate Equality Index by the Human Rights Commission Foundation.
Those high-level initiatives become actionable in a variety of ways, including engaging employees through employee resource groups. Internally, the Principal African American/Black employee resource group (AABERG) hosted a virtual discussion reflecting on the history of Juneteenth and sharing practical steps to commemorate the meaning of the day.
The origin of Juneteenth
When the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863,1 the Southern states still under control of successionists scoffed.
Over the next two years, state by state, however, Union forces had an opportunity to put force behind law— except in Texas. It wasn’t until June 19, 1865, that enslaved people in Texas would learn that they too, had gained their freedom.2
Since 1979, Texas has celebrated the anniversary of that momentous day as Juneteenth. In 2021, it became a federal holiday. That same year, Principal marked Juneteenth as an official corporate holiday, and to celebrate the occasion, the Juneteenth flag flew above the headquarters in Des Moines as employees and community members commemorated the day together.
Principal® Foundation also funds a number of external initiatives such a grant to the Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund, which helps entrepreneurs and small business owners improve personal finances, and 1863 Ventures, a national business development non-profit for entrepreneurs that have been historically marginalized.
Nationally, Black individuals3 and specifically Black women4 are becoming first-time entrepreneurs and business owners at one of the fastest rates in the country. Buying from these businesses on, before, and after Juneteenth helps.
Dannie Patrick, another transplant to Des Moines and global inclusion specialist, has volunteered at a past local Juneteenth event. “At Principal, we know that simply observing Juneteenth as a holiday is not enough for our employees. They want to be involved and actively volunteer to make an impact within the communities we serve,” Patrick says.
“Volunteering at Juneteenth Neighbor’s Day is so important to me because it gives me and others the opportunity to see ourselves reflected back in the mirror, which happens less frequently here in Iowa,” Patrick says. “It’s empowering and helps me keep going. Having an employer that acknowledges and supports that is why I am proud to say I’m a Principal employee.”
Candid conversations for a more inclusive future
During Kerry’s formal interviews, “the tone was much different than other companies—very conversational and friendly,” Kerry says. “Everyone gave me the impression they wanted what was best for me. Principal did a great job during the process of making sure I was interviewed by people of color who work here, so we were able to talk about diversity and leadership.”
Kerry started in April 2021 as a leadership development program associate. The early career program rotates associates in months-long assignments across Principal, helping them develop skills for an eventual placement as a leader with direct reports. Kerry relocated to Des Moines in September 2021, leaving behind family and her hometown. There have been challenges. There have been connections. There is still more work to be done.
Fellow employees have helped her acclimate to Des Moines—hard in any situation, harder still when moving to a state that isn’t as diverse as the community you’ve left behind. “It’s taken adjusting, but there are great things this time in my life has to offer,” Kerry says.
That includes competing in Miss Iowa and placing third; Kerry had never competed in a pageant before. It’s also taking advantage of the doors that the leadership development program opens—and working to open more doors for others. “I’ve had people advocate for me, and I want that for everyone,” Kerry says. “Hopefully some of the candid conversations we’ve had can make sure that we can continue to increase and then keep diversity in Iowa.”
Danish grocery giant Coop’s impactful partnership with Krukow Behavioral Design yielded insights for any retailer looking to enlist its customers’ help in reducing food-related carbon emissions.By Jeremy Osborn from Sustainablebrands.com • Reposted: June 16, 2023
Coop is a 1000+-store, member-owned grocery retailer founded and headquartered in Denmark. The popular national food chain has more than 2 million members (almost 1 in 2 Danes above the age of 18 are members!) and thousands of global suppliers, and provides in-store grocery experiences to more than 5 million customers every week. As such, it is uniquely positioned in Denmark to influence sustainable food-shopping behaviors as well as grocery supply chains worldwide.
The retailer is also hard at work addressing climate change — with an ambitious target of garnering 50 percent of its Scope 3 emissions reductions linked to the manufacturing of food via customer behavior change.
In May 2022, the company launched its “Climate Lab” — an initiative for testing innovative approaches to reducing emissions. The initiative was designed in phases, with the first phase being undertaken by Coop independently and the second in partnership with global behavioral science and nudge design experts Krukow Behavioral Design.
As Krukow founder and CEO Sille Krukow and Coop’s Head of Climate, Jonas Engberg, recently shared at SB Brand-Led Culture Change, the first phase of the initiative was a single-store experiment that, amongst other initiatives, involved a total rebranding of the store and introduction of a new core visual identity — as well as labeling 2,200 of the most climate-friendly products in the store to show customers the “most impactful” climate choice across a number of popular product categories. The idea was that presenting “choice-edited” options to customers would empower them to make more climate-friendly choices while shopping.
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While this initial experiment produced positive results, the Coop team learned that it needed a more holistic approach to behavior change — which led to the partnership with Krukow. This second phase — built on learning from the initial phase and expertise from Krukow — included store-wide interventions built on strengthening the single, visual vocabulary including vibrant, visual cues and many small, subtle nudges to guide customers towards more climate-friendly shopping choices and an overall climate-friendlier store visit.
“If you ask customers what they want, they will tell you they need better information in order to make better choices. But what they really need is for their environment to guide them towards these better choices holistically. Information is part of this, but it’s not enough on its own,” Krukow told Sustainable Brands®.
In phase two, the group created a “climate journey” through the store that guided and encouraged shoppers to purchase “more green and less red meat;” and with numerous small nudges towards climate-friendlier choices, Coop achieved a remarkable 14 percent reduction in the overall climate impact of shopping choices across all categories in a mere six months, as well as a 67 percent reduction in food waste. Remarkably, customer surveys showed a massive increase in awareness — from 7 percent to 65 percent of customers saying they felt they were being effectively guided to climate-friendly food choices.
Additionally, store data showed that the results did not skew to one demographic and that by creating a program that was, in Krukow’s words, “designed for the human brain” rather than for a specific demographic or target market, the interventions were effective in changing behavior across the board.
Coop found as well that its average shopper basket contains “less meat” on average than other stores.
A scalable success story
With a huge success in one store under their belt, Krukow and Engberg are now planning to scale their interventions to more stores. The phase-two program included 94 different, designed behavioral interventions; and the next step, according to Engberg, is to bring these to more stores.
“Scaling is not a huge cultural challenge for us, because 74 percent of customers have told us they wish to have more guidance towards climate-friendly shopping choices,” Engberg told SB. “And because we’ve shown in this initial pilot that encouraging climate-friendly food choices actually improves the bottom line, there is minimal resistance in the business.
“Staff at the store have been incredibly enthusiastic and have been essential co-creators and co-designers, as well,” he added. “They have the knowledge and the expertise of what works and doesn’t, and what customers want, in their individual stores. And we have a responsibility to make sure they can speak confidently to the initiative when customers ask questions like, for example, ‘why are bananas and avocados a climate-friendly choice? Don’t they have to travel very far?’”
Krukow agreed and emphasized the importance of holistic approaches:
“We’ve shown the power of using a holistic, in-store approach — leveraging employee expertise; and centered on the overall shopping experience that includes labeling, point-of-sale interventions, unified signage design and store layout. We’re excited to see Coop scale these successes across their operations.”
By designing these innovative behavior-led strategies, Coop has successfully engaged customers, improved its brand capital, reduced climate impact across all scopes, and increased profitability. The scalability of this initiative also provides a framework for other retailers to adopt — creating another opportunity to easily enlist consumers’ help to achieve company climate and sustainability goals.
An ornamental palm tree stands in an empty field where there were once houses in Houston. As climate change drives more extreme rain, FEMA says it expects demand for the program to grow in the coming years. Photo: Claire Harbage/NPR
By Rebecca Hersher from National Public Radio • Reposted: June 16, 2023
Most people who move because of climate change in the United States don’t go far, and they end up in homes that are less threatened by the effects of global warming, according to new research. The findings underscore the degree to which climate-related relocation is a hyperlocal phenomenon that can nonetheless protect people from disasters such as floods and hurricanes.
Sociologists at Rice University studied thousands of homeowners who sold their extremely flood-prone homes to the government through a special federal program, administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The program has moved about 50,000 families out of flood zones since the 1980s, and demand for such federal buyouts is growing.
The study is the first to examine where those families ended up living, and it found that most people stayed within a 20-minute drive of their original homes. Most families also moved to homes with lower flood risk, meaning the program successfully accomplished its primary goal.
It makes sense that people are moving only short distances, says A.R. Siders, a faculty member at the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware. Most Americans who move for any reason do so within the same county, Siders says. “It’s useful to see that, even when people are moving because of a flood-related program, they are staying close.”
The study casts doubt on the idea that climate change could cause mass migration to places in the U.S. that are less disaster-prone, like New Englandor the Upper Midwest, Siders says.
The findings could also be good news for local officials in places where climate change is already driving catastrophic flooding. The cost of flood damage each year in the U.S. has more than quadrupled since the 1980s, according to FEMA, and the dangers are only growing because of climate-driven extreme rain, more intense hurricanes and rising seas.
In recent years, many local governments have expressed concern that helping people relocate could decimate their tax bases. Knowing that most people stay nearby could help alleviate that concern.
“You can help your constituents reduce their future flood risk without necessarily losing their tax dollars,” says James Elliott, a sociologist at Rice University and one of the authors of the new study, which was published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
Asking homeowners to voluntarily sell their flood-prone homes to the government is a crucial tool for reducing damage from floods and protecting people. Through the federal buyout program, the government pays market value for homes at risk and then demolishes them, with the goal of preventing future families from moving into harm’s way.
Although demand for the program is growing, it has faced a slew of criticism for making homeowners wait years before their buyout is approved and for not making buyouts available to low-income households.
Relocating makes people much safer, the study found. On average families moved to homes with about 60% less flood risk, compared to where they used to live. That’s equivalent to leaving a home that’s likely to flood with a foot or more of water within the next 30 years, and instead moving somewhere with a small chance of a few inches of floodwater over that same time period.
Housing segregation persists as people move because of climate change
The researchers also considered how race affects where people move when they’re fleeing flooding. Race is an important factor in studies of housing in America, because of widespread, entrenched housing segregation.
That racial segregation shows up in government efforts to help people move away from flood zones. An NPR investigation in 2019 found that majority-white neighborhoods received a disproportionate share of federal funds for flood-related relocation.
The new study goes further, by tracing where residents of those majority-white neighborhoods moved. They found that an overwhelming majority, 96%, of people who started in a majority-white neighborhood also ended up in such a neighborhood after they moved, meaning housing segregation persisted despite migration.
“If you’re moving [away] from a majority-white neighborhood, you almost inevitably and exclusively will only relocate if you can find housing nearby in another majority-white neighborhood,” Elliott says.
The study wasn’t designed to tease apart the reasons for this, although it determined that people did not choose majority-white neighborhoods because those areas have less flood risk overall, or because property values there are higher. Follow-up studies will try to explore why homeowners chose the neighborhoods they did, and how race affected those decisions, Elliott says.
70% of consumers prefer eco-friendly brands as 64% of brands say they have an environmental responsibility program. From Optimove • Reposted: June 16, 2023
Two recent surveys conducted by Optimove shed light on consumer sentiments towards eco-friendly and sustainable brands. Out of 400 consumers surveyed, a significant 70% expressed the importance of buying from environmentally responsible companies. Notably, 38% of respondents said being environmentally responsible was “very important” to a purchase decision.
In line with consumer expectations, the survey also highlighted the efforts of B2C marketers. Among 233 senior executives, sixty-four percent (64%) acknowledged having an environmental responsibility program. Additionally, 62% of respondents reported actively promoting their company’s environmental initiatives in marketing campaigns.
Conducted in the first half of 2023, the Optimove B2C and Consumer surveys serve as a valuable resource for understanding the evolving landscape of consumer preferences and brand actions. Optimove is a Customer-Led Marketing platform used by hundreds of leading global consumer brands.
Optimove reported it observed at the 2023 CRMC Show on June 7-9 in Chicago that leading retailers are increasingly focused on representing themselves as sustainable and diverse to resonate with their customers.
Pini Yakuel, CEO of Optimove, said, “Today, being environmentally responsible is table stakes for companies. What truly matters is a brand’s ability to engage with each customer on a personal level. While 70% of consumers expect companies to prioritize the environment, 38% of consumers place high importance on this issue. This makes it crucial for brands to effectively communicate their commitment to environmental concerns to those individuals who deeply care. Companies need to infer from their consumer’s data which messages align with individual priorities to meet and exceed customer expectations.”
Yakuel added that meeting the expectations of environmentally conscious consumers is not only necessary but a fundamental aspect of effective customer communication.
About the surveys: The Optimove 2023 Survey of B2C Marketers queried 221 senior level marketing executives in the second quarter of 2022. The survey was designed by Optimove and fielded by Survey Monkey. Respondents included executives at companies with the following retail models: digital-first multi-brand, wholesale manufacturers, traditional multi-brands, digital-first direct to consumer, and traditional direct to consumer retailers with brick-and mortar outlets. Respondents included CEOs, CMOs and SVPs of marketing.
The Optimove Consumer Survey queried 400 U.S. citizens in March 2023. Respondents were 18-plus, 49% male/51% female (no respondents were non-binary or declined to answer), and household incomes were $75,000-plus.
Two legal scholars explain what the National Environmental Policy Act does and doesn’t do. By J.B. Ruhl,Professor of Law, Director, Program on Law and Innovation, and Co-director, Energy, Environment and Land Use Program, Vanderbilt University and James SalzmanProfessor of Environmental Law, University of California, Los Angeles via The Conversation • Reposted: June 15, 2023
The National Environmental Policy Act, enacted in 1970, is widely viewed as a keystone U.S. environmental law. For any major federal action that affects the environment, such as building an interstate highway or licensing a nuclear power plant, NEPA requires relevant agencies to analyze environmental impacts, consider reasonable alternatives and accept public input. It also allows citizens to sue if they believe government has not complied.
Critics argue that NEPA reviews delay projects and drive up costs. In May 2023 negotiations over raising the federal debt ceiling, President Joe Biden agreed to certain changes to NEPA reviews, which both the White House and congressional Republicans said would streamline permitting for infrastructure projects. Legal scholars J.B. Ruhl and James Salzman explain these changes and what they mean for protecting the environment and expanding clean energy production.
What kinds of projects typically require NEPA reviews?
The statutory text of NEPA is quite sparse and open-ended. When people speak of what NEPA requires, they really are talking about how the White House Council on Environmental Quality, or CEQ, federal agencies and the courts have implemented the law over the past 50 years.
The simple requirement is for agencies to create a detailed statement on the impacts of any major federal action that significantly affects the environment. A whole body of law and policy creates filters that sort projects into different NEPA buckets.
First, only projects that will be carried out, funded or authorized by a federal agency are subject to NEPA. That’s a pretty big universe, but it also excludes a lot. For example, a wind farm built on private land by a private utility might not require any federal funding or approval. That means it wouldn’t be subject to NEPA.
If a project is subject to NEPA, the federal agency that has primary oversight assesses its impacts to decide how much analysis is needed. Many agencies use a classification known as categorical exclusions to winnow out minor actions that they know have no significant impacts, either individually or cumulatively. For example, the Interior Department categorically excludes planned burns to clear brush on areas smaller than 4,500 acres.
If the expected impacts are more extensive, but it’s not clear by how much, the agency can prepare an environmental assessment. If that assessment finds the impacts to the human environment will not be significant, that’s the end of the NEPA process.
If the impacts are significant, the agency will prepare a full-blown environmental impact statement, or EIS, which is a far more intensive process. CEQ guidelines establish an elaborate template of topics agencies must evaluate, and the public has opportunities to comment on a draft version.
A CEQ review of EISs prepared by all federal agencies from 2010 through 2018 found that, on average, it took about four and a half years to issue an EIS, not including added time if someone sued. The lengths of these reviews ranged widely but averaged 575 pages.
If an agency conducts lots of the same actions under a particular program, such as timber leasing on federal land, it might conduct a high-level programmatic EIS to cover the large-scale issues and then follow up with individual NEPA analyses for specific projects.
Decisions not to issue an EIS can be challenged in court. So can the EIS itself if critics believe that it’s inadequate.
What are NEPA critics’ central arguments?
Critiques of NEPA come from many different interests. The law mainly affects land development, industry and resource extraction activities such as logging, mining and drilling for oil and gas, particularly on federal public lands.
NEPA requires an impact assessment, but it doesn’t prescribe any particular outcome. Still, it unquestionably can add substantial time and cost to any significant project. If a project is controversial, interested parties can submit public comments that get their views on the record. If opponents aren’t happy with the final EIS, they can sue the agency responsible for the decision in federal court.
Between agency review and litigation, NEPA can add many years to a project’s development timeline before it is “shovel ready.” For example, it takes roughly four to seven years to complete environmental reviews for prescribed burns that the U.S. Forest Service carries out to reduce wildfire risks.
Supporters argue that NEPA reviews have avoided many bad decisions. In our view, the NEPA process is an important feature of the country’s stewardship of its natural resources. But we also share the growing concern that it can be used to delay building renewable energy infrastructure that the U.S. urgently needs to mitigate climate change.
Did the debt ceiling agreement significantly change the NEPA process?
Many of the changes are little more than tweaks. Others codify long-standing practices based on how the Council on Environmental Quality, agencies and courts implement the law.
One notable change is requiring a single lead agency and a single environmental impact statement for projects, even when those projects require multiple agency approvals. There also are some new time and page limits. For example, environmental impact statements will be required to be completed within two years and be no more that 150 pages long for most projects, and 300 pages for the most complex projects.
There also are some changes to definitions, such as what constitutes a “major federal action,” that narrow NEPA’s scope to some degree, although it will take time to sort out their meaning. Overall, we do not see these changes as a major overhaul of NEPA.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers places crushed shells in Maryland’s Tred Avon River as part of efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay’s historic oyster reefs. After a 2009 NEPA review spotlighted risks associated with the proposed use of disease-resistant imported Chinese oysters, native oysters were used instead. Sean Fritzges, U.S. Army/Flickr
Will the changes speed up work on clean energy systems?
Maybe, but not nearly as much as needed. First, NEPA applies to projects that need federal funding or approval, such as under the Endangered Species Act. Getting that money or agency green light can also involve delays and litigation independent of the NEPA review.
Second, many state and local laws can affect large renewable energy projects, and those statutes can also be used to slow projects down. The bottom line is that to move the needle, politicians will have to do more to reform the project review process.
All of these involve incredibly complex permitting processes, and tweaking NEPA won’t change that. Other hot-button issues – including federal preemption of state and local laws, impacts on Native American cultural lands, and environmental justice – will make further permitting reforms politically difficult.
Even this first small measure was hotly contested, and happened now only because it was tied to the debt limit legislation. As the inclusion of federal approval for the Mountain Valley gas pipeline in the debt ceiling agreement shows, in politics you need a quid in exchange for a quo. We expect to see a lot more deal-making if Congress takes permitting reform seriously.
35% of global sustainability leaders report difficulty hiring talent and upskilling execs with climate-change skills as a barrier to making faster progress on climate-action strategies. From Sustainable Brands • Reposted: June 13, 2023
Sustainability leaders at some of the world’s largest companies have warned that the scarcity of talent trained around the challenges of climate change at both operations and board level will be one of the largest barriers to achieving their net-zero targets, according to recent research from EY.
EYsurveyed 506 global Chief Sustainability Officers or equivalents from businesses with at least $1 billion in annual revenues and analyzed the action companies are taking to address climate change.
When asked to name the biggest obstacles to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, more than a third (35 percent) of all companies surveyed say difficulty retaining or upskilling talent on climate change is a top internal barrier to doing more on climate change; and 28 percent say difficulty hiring talent with climate change skills is a key external barrier. Similarly, 31 percent believe that a lack of climate-change expertise at board and senior-management level is a ‘top three’ internal barrier preventing their organization from prioritizing and actioning their net-zero strategy.
Yet it does not appear to be a priority area for investment. Only 23 percent of survey respondents list human resources and talent as one of their top three climate investments (though the percentage rose to 50 percent in the UK); and just 27 percent have completed plans to hire or upskill talent to acquire climate change expertise.
“As our economy transitions towards net zero, demand for employees with sustainability expertise will only rise across industries — from engineers with the skillset to decarbonize heat, power and transport; to financial-services personnel who understand how to accurately assess and price risk for new forms of environmental assets,” saysRob Doepel, EY UK&I’s Managing Partner for Sustainability. “However, businesses are also recognizing that environmental expertise at a leadership level could make the difference to whether their company thrives or flounders in the new green economy. While many remain confident in reaching their targets, there is an underlying concern that a lack of sustainability expertise, particularly at a leadership level, could stall business net-zero ambitions.”
As EY points out, this presents a significant opportunity for companies to accelerate transformation from within. As organizations work to embed sustainability across all functions (for more on this front, Transform to Net Zero‘s new guides can be a great starting point), they will need education, capacity-building and knowledge-sharing; and a tailored strategy for developing the skillsets they need. EY cites AB InBev as an example: The brewing giant has reportedly begun building climate analytics and data-science capabilities internally to support its climate actions; it views social- and behavioral-science capabilities as the key to engaging suppliers, consumers, employees and communities more deeply on climate in the future; and the company continues to build a “team of teams” with training in the foundations of climate and sustainability.
Equipping a climate-smart workforce
As Business Insiderreported in 2021, demand from both students and employershas led business schools in the US, Canada, and Europe to expand core courses and flagship MBA programs to better include the issue of sustainability. But as the Financial Timespointed out in 2022, despite the increased attention and demand for graduates who understand and are equipped to help businesses tackle climate-related challenges, academia is still catching up — schools are still working out how to define and prioritize the disparate skills and values associated with sustainability- and climate-related work; how to integrate them into teaching, research and operations; and the extent to which a failure to do so will undermine the future of business education.
Though climate change and the work urgently needed to address it remain divisive issueshere in the US, young people recognize that climate change is going to shape their futures — and they need climate education in order to develop the skills to do anything about it. Thankfully, more and more intrepid educators are working to ensure the next generation of consumers, workers and business leaders begins understanding climate change and all its risks from an early age.
Demonstrators at the 2020 March for Science in New York City. (Image: Chris Boese/Unsplash)
By Amy Brown from Triple Pundit • Reposted: June 13, 2023
With growing evidence that nearly all companies will miss their net-zero targets unless they double emissions-reduction rates, some companies are biting the bullet and revising their targets. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, as long as the new goals are backed by action.
These companies are not outliers. More than 60 percent of the companies surveyed in a 2022 Accenture report have set targets far into the future or have no clear target date.
Coming clean on out-of-reach net-zero targets is a likely situation for many more companies as they get closer to 2030 or 2040 milestones on reducing their greenhouse gas emissions in line with global agreements to limit climate change. There are many reasons why companies might revise their targets — for example, a mismatch of ambition with the reality on the ground and slower-than-expected progress, or more accurate carbon accounting.
Ultimately, net-zero targets are only as good as their implementation plans.
Investors want transparency
The good news is that more companies are aiming for net-zero, even if they haven’t discovered the best path to get there. “Net-zero commitments now cover one-fifth of the world’s largest corporations and 68 percent of global GDP, compared to 16 percent in 2019,” according to the World Resources Institute.
Setting net-zero targets can be tricky, as Crocs and other companies have discovered. There is no standardized approach for setting a net-zero target, leading to a lack of transparency on the scope and boundary of the targets and how organizations will reach them. From that perspective, companies owning up to a target that can’t be met isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
“Many companies, even some of the leaders, are seeing gaps between where they can go with current strategies and initiatives and where they need to get to,” Meryl Richards, director of food and forest at the sustainability nonprofit Ceres, told TriplePundit.
Some companies have opted to set ambitious targets and figure out how to meet them as they go, while others prefer to know exactly how they will get there before making a commitment, Richards said. “I don’t think one is necessarily more valid than the other. We need companies that are comfortable getting out in front and being leaders and setting the standard and encourage that ambition.”
Given the need for ambition in the short term, she doesn’t think it’s a terrible thing for companies to adjust course as they go — as long as they stay on track to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. “What investors are looking for is transparency around why a company had to adjust its net-zero strategy,” she said.
What would cause concern is if a company had to continually readjust its targets because it was experiencing growth. “That’s where the forward-looking strategy is really needed to plan how you’re going to integrate your emissions reduction strategy with that growth,” she explained.
Why companies need a climate transition action plan
All of this trial and error is why investors want to see climate transition action plans, Richards said. “What investors are looking for [are] ambitious, science-based targets for companies to reduce their own emissions and an action-oriented plan for how to get there.”
Climate transition action plans, also known as transition plans, clearly define how companies will take action in the near-term to meet the long-term goals necessary to limit global warming. In 2022, Ceres, the We Mean Business Coalition, CDP, the Environmental Defense Fund and Ramboll Consulting created a framework to help companies create and implement these transition plans.
Defining a clear path forward with transition planning can help to avoid a “scenario as we had with 2020 deforestation targets, where a number of companies committed to zero deforestation by 2020 and none of them met that goal because they didn’t have implementation plans,” Richards said. “It was a target with no plan behind it.”
Yet a recent Ceres study indicates those lessons are not yet being applied to net-zero targets. In a March assessment of 50 large food companies, Ceres found only 27 had plans in place to reduce their Scope 3, or value chain, emissions. None of them hit all the marks for climate transition planning in their disclosures, according to the analysis.
How to ensure real net-zero progress
Along with setting science-based targets, companies need to integrate their climate strategy across every aspect of their operations to ensure realistic progress toward those targets, Richards said.
“For example, when we get on a call with a company to discuss a climate transition action plan, and they’ve got representation from procurement, [research and development] and sustainability, we know they’re serious about it,” she said. “The leading companies are getting granular about their sources of emissions,” and they’re transparent about gaps and how they will bridge them.
“Along the way, companies also discover opportunities like meeting consumer preferences for lower-emissions products,” she said. “Having the right plan in place is what will help companies avoid 2029 backpedaling.”
The complex issues facing business and society demand complex and collaborative solutions; disconnected, myopic management techniques are no longer effective.
Brands are adapting to a rapidly changing market in which customer demand for sustainable products and services continues to grow. In order to remain competitive, they must prioritize innovation while simultaneously juggling the multitude of tasks required to make it happen. Companies of all sizes are finding new ways to stay relevant in this ever-evolving landscape, and working hard to innovate and create sustainable solutions that will remain attractive to customers in the near and long term. It can be a difficult balancing act, but one that more and more companies are successfully managing.
Sustainable Brands (SB) Socio-Cultural Trends Research™ reveals that 70 percent of US consumers are looking for companies to provide sustainable products or services that will help them to live more sustainable lifestyles. Further, 78 percent say they will support companies that act sustainably by purchasing its products or services; and 73 percent report that, all else being equal, they would switch brands if a competitor offered a more sustainable version of the same product. The market is rewarding businesses that are acting on social and environmental challenges while simultaneously building brand trust in the process. It is imperative for today’s leading brands to implement industry tools that allow them to seamlessly embed sustainability across its organization.
As a health and wellness company, The Clorox Company recognizes the potential of its diverse portfolio of brands to touch people’s lives throughout every part of their day. Through its Sustainability Center, the company launched its 2030 strategy with the ambition to have every brand within its portfolio play a part in creating a more inclusive and sustainable world. To achieve these goals, Clorox needed to find a way to align its brand teams across the enterprise and engage consumers in storytelling strategies that would unlock higher brand performance and value.
To establish its baseline and create a common language, the company applied the SB Brand Transformation Roadmap® (SB Roadmap) at the brand level across the enterprise. The self-assessment revealed best practices and gaps across the SB Five Pillars of Brand Sustainability™ while also offering tangible targets to prioritize on its journey to becoming a sustainable enterprise. This tool allowed each of the brands to benchmark its current operational progress and then determine the actions each brand needed to take to advance its individual aspirations. Clorox says giving the technical teams the ability to own their individual Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) process was a huge win for garnering buy-in across the teams.
The process revealed that the Governance pillar was something that needed to be centrally managed, where subject-matter experts have the ability to standardize their overarching enterprise goals and business practices. The SB Roadmap process also motivated Clorox to identify specific emotional, functional and societal values to prioritize in its product development and marketing communications to take its brand influence with consumers and other stakeholders to the next level and beyond — including representation in public-policy positions and driving systemic change throughout the industry.
Implementing the SB Roadmap across the enterprise enabled The Clorox Company to:
Create cross-functional alignment on individual brand baselines and aspirations within the SB Roadmap framework
Streamline its process on how to benchmark and achieve its sustainability goals
Elevate the role and priority of sustainability messaging through both responsible ingredient sourcing and sustainable packaging choices
Receive increased earned media coverage for individual brands
“What we love about the SB Brand Transformation Roadmap® is it’s a self-assessment tool that helps a leadership team in our business units understand where the brand is on the journey and break down the steps to get from here to where they aspire to be.”
— Eric Schwartz, Chief Marketing Officer, The Clorox Company
Clorox’s central team has hosted 13 internal workshops to introduce the SB Roadmap into its business processes and to embed it into its annual strategic sustainability planning for every business unit across the portfolio. Through this transformative process, Clorox has fostered a culture of sustainability across its enterprise — allowing the teams to take a whole-systems approach to product design and innovation with an understanding of how they each contribute to the larger mission of the company.
In order to thrive in an increasingly challenged world, brands must quickly adjust their strategies away from the traditional ‘business as usual’ approach. Complex issues demand complex and collaborative solutions; disconnected, myopic management techniques are no longer effective.
The current narrative on climate action puts the world in a bind. On one side, present-day action is considered inadequate to achieve the global warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius determined by the U.N. On the other side, there is increasing debate over whether that limit is even attainable.
This narrative is dubbed the “doom loop” in a recent report from the U.K.-based think tanks Chatham House and the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). In the doom loop, the focus on crisis consequences and failure to reach targets takes away from the focus required to implement solutions.
In order to move forward, the narrative needs to quickly change to one that encourages action. TriplePundit spoke with Saskia Feast, managing director of global client solutions at Climate Impact Partners, about how collective private-sector action can help to catalyze that change — starting with Fortune Global 500 companies.
We don’t need large investments to create change
Fortune Global 500 companies made more than $2.2 trillion in annual profits over the last three years, according to a recent report by Climate Impact Partners. Investing only 1.5 percent of that — about $33.5 billion — to fund carbon reduction projects like forest conservation, reforestation and micro-renewables would be a massive step toward achieving the transformational change required to hit global climate action targets.
On average, each Global 500 company made $6.7 billion over the last year, according to the report. Committing 1.5 percent of those profits ($100 million) could cut 7.8 million tons of carbon emissions, plant 60,000 trees and protect 120,000 hectares of forest. If every company in the index did the same each year, it would amount to more than 2.6 billion tons in carbon reductions — even more than what scientists say is necessary to cap global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius.
To put this corporate expense into perspective, on average the world’s largest companies spend 12 percent of their annual profits on research and development, 27 percent on sales and administrative expenses, 8.7 percent on marketing and 8.2 percent on information technology, according to the report.
Offsets or no offsets?
For more than 20 years, Climate Impact Partners has worked with businesses to support over 600 carbon removal and reduction projects in 56 countries. But its work faces criticism around carbon offsets.
“There is a lot of criticism of the companies who are taking action around offsetting carbon emissions and this idea that it is greenwashing,” Feast said. “By not criticizing the companies that are not taking action, those companies are feeling safer.”
Saskia Feast, managing director of global client solutions at Climate Impact Partners. Photo courtesy of Climate Impact Partners.
Inaction on climate change could cost the global economy $178 trillion over the next 50 years, or a 7.6 percent cut to global gross domestic product (GDP) in the year 2070 alone, according to a recent report from the Deloitte Center for Sustainable Progress.
Carbon offsetting is a long-debated method for companies and other large emitters to get involved. Supporters claim it is effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions while conserving natural resources in sectors like transportation, energy and agriculture.
Some critics dismiss the practice as a flawed system that has negligible impact on reducing emissions. They argue offsets are generated by projects that enable polluting industries to continue their harmful practices.
When a company first starts its carbon-neutral journey, it might need to offset a higher proportion of emissions, Feast said. But putting a price on it forces emission reductions over time.
“Once you start putting a price on carbon, you start measuring it and looking for strategic ways to reduce it,” she said. “That helps you drive the internal reduction strategy or the adoption of renewable energy within your organization. The role of the offsetting market is just to help transition us to the low-carbon economy.”
The number of companies using, or planning to use, an internal carbon price increased by 80 percent over just five years, according to a 2021 report by the environmental disclosure management nonprofit CDP.
The return on sustainability investments
Today, financial success and sustainable practices are increasingly tied to each other. “The business of sustainability reporting has improved dramatically over the last 20 years,” Feast said. “What we’re seeing now is companies including those metrics in their annual reports, like a carbon footprint or water use risk. So, the metrics are merging, which is a great development in the market. We’re seeing sustainability leaders, who are our clients, now working directly with investor relations, their CFO and financial teams.”
The business case is stronger than before as company sustainability measures impact reputation, market value, and overall ability to attract and retain employees. And now there are many carbon footprint and ESG measurement tools that enable business leaders to truly consider how their operations impact people and the planet.
Smaller companies can fight climate change, too
Investing in carbon reduction and removal is for every company — small, medium or large. Smaller companies that want to act don’t need a grand plan, Feast said. They can start making decisions in incremental steps like measuring their footprint, supporting renewable energy, making climate-friendly products, and discussing the price of carbon on their business.
“We want to encourage companies to take action,” she said.”Get out there, start taking your steps and maybe one day run a marathon.”
COP28 Global Stocktake: Tracking progress to 1.5 degrees Celsius
As the baton moves from climate technicians to politicians at the COP28 Global Stocktake, which is also commented on with skepticism, policies driving increased financing of climate action could make a significant impact.
Emerging markets and developing economies must collectively invest at least $1 trillion in energy infrastructure by 2030 and $3 trillion to $6 trillion per year across all sectors by 2050 to mitigate climate change by substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions, according to the International Monetary Fund.
An additional $140 billion to $300 billion a year is needed by 2030 to adapt to the environmental consequences of climate change, such as rising sea levels and intensifying droughts. This could skyrocket to between $520 billion and $1.75 trillion annually after 2050 depending on how effective climate mitigation measures are.
“One of the most important things is to move away from talking about climate financing — and actually doing the financing,” Feast said. “The more money we can put to finance these projects, the more we will be reducing emissions going forward.”
By Mary Mazzoni from Triple Pundit • Reposted: June 8, 2023
Pride Month is meant to be a joyful celebration of the LGBTQ community and a rallying cry for justice and inclusion. But this year’s celebrations are dampened by a disturbing rise in anti-LGBTQ legislation and rhetoric across the United States. Considering a third of our lives are spent at work, employers have a significant role to play in creating safe and inclusive spaces for people in the community who feel increasingly under attack.
The explosion of anti-LGBTQ legislation runs counter to public opinion
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is tracking 491 pieces of anti-LGBTQ legislation making their way through statehouses across the country. The scope of these bills include weakening anti-discrimination laws, censoring discussion of LGBTQ issues and history in schools, restricting gender-affirming care for transgender people, and banning LGBTQ gatherings like drag shows.
As state lawmakers look to push this type of discriminatory legislation through, many have adopted increasingly extreme anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. Groups of their fans and followers have done the same, in person and online, including a coordinated campaign against brands promoting inclusion during Pride Month.
The surge in discriminatory legislation and rhetoric could lead people to believe the public’s attitudes have shifted when it comes to welcoming and including people in the community. But data indicates that’s far from true.
Recent polling from GLAAD and the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that support for equal rights is increasing, not decreasing. In the GLAAD survey, 91 percent of non-LGBTQ Americans agreed that LGBTQ people “should have the freedom to live their life and not be discriminated against,” and 84 percent support equal rights for the community. Similarly, 8 in 10 respondents to the PRRI survey are in favor of laws that shield people in the community from discrimination.
(Source: GLAAD)
The discriminatory climate is taking a toll on LGBTQ people at work
A study released last week by Indeed sheds light on how discriminatory policies and rhetoric are affecting LGBTQ people in the workplace. The majority of LGBTQ respondents (60 percent) report experiencing discrimination at work, ranging from being passed over for promotions and raises to outright harassment and violence. More than a quarter of LGBTQ people, including over 30 percent of trans people, say they are not out at work.
“This climate of fear and intimidation comes on the heels of hard-earned fights for employers to do better by LGTBQ+ communities,” journalist S. Mitra Kalita, CEO of URL Media, wrote on Charter this week. “That’s all at risk as literally hundreds of bills seek to obliterate the existence of our colleagues.”
She spoke with three LGBTQ and workplace experts about what brands can do to better support their employees. The results are insightful and well worth a read in full. “Work continues to be a major source of stress for LGBTQ+ professionals, especially with rising anti-LGBTQ+ legislation which has a direct impact on access to economic opportunity,” Andrew McCaskill, who works on LinkedIn’s communications team and authors The Black Guy in Marketing newsletter, told Kalita.
So, what are other leaders saying about what brands can do to support employees better?
How brands can step up to better support LGBTQ employees
Offer LGBTQ-specific benefits. Over half of LGBTQ employees want to see benefits that are specific to their community, but less than a quarter report having any in their current workplace, according to Indeed’s survey. Benefits employees are seeking include health insurance that covers LGBTQ-friendly providers and gender-affirming care, benefits that extend to domestic partners rather than solely spouses, mental health benefits, and paid caregiver leave.
In many cases, these are benefits employers already offer, but they haven’t modified them to be inclusive of all their employees. In its guidance for LGBTQ inclusion in the workplace, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) — which represents 325,000 HR professionals across 165 countries — recommends employers revisit their policies and practices to ensure they are equally available to all employees.
Check your culture. Creating inclusive benefits packages and corporate policies is an important baseline, but “having a written policy isn’t enough,” SHRM’s guide reminds employers. “Even if an employee is in a workplace with internal policies that protect LGBTQ+ workers, a company’s culture may inhibit employees from bringing their whole selves to work.”
LGBTQ-specific diversity training — another benefit highlighted by employees in Indeed’s survey — is a solid first step for educating your teams about how to avoid, spot, and stamp out microaggressions and discrimination against their colleagues. So is setting clear, values-based expectations for employees, such as respecting others. Even dress codes can set the tone for how people show up at work. “Make sure they are neutral without gender stereotypes,” SHRM recommends. “General Motors gained national attention when CEO Mary Barra replaced a 10-page dress code with two words: Dress appropriately.”
Lift up diverse leaders. “If employees are hearing from the same types of individuals, they’re seeing that a clear mark of success [to their employer] isn’t someone who looks or sounds like them,” Sabrina Kent of the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce told the Story Exchange.
When recruiting, make it clear that your company is an equal opportunity employer, and ensure you interview and consider diverse candidates rather than quickly deciding on someone who looks and lives like you. Do the same when choosing who will head up projects, present during meetings and lead teams. The more you lift up leaders from all backgrounds, including LGBTQ people and those from other historically marginalized communities, the more your employees get the message that you want every one of them to succeed.
Use your marketing to raise awareness. Your company’s voice matters in the fight for inclusion. In its recommendations for corporate allies, GLAAD calls on companies to use their marketing materials and social media to speak out against discriminatory legislation and support “Pride 365,” running inclusive campaigns throughout the year rather than solely during Pride Month. Even better, engage LGBTQ-owned media companies to help you get the message out.
Flex your political muscles. “Extend support to the political fight,” GLAAD challenges business leaders. “True corporate allies do not donate to candidates or elected officials who introduce, vote yes, or otherwise support anti-LGBTQ legislation or block passage of pro-LGBTQ legislation like the Equality Act.”
Beyond revisiting your political donations, GLAAD called out Apple as an example of how companies can step into the role of political ally. “Amidst an unprecedented wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation in 2022, Apple utilized multiple offices to take action. Apple lobbied against these harmful bills, filled court briefs in cases involving LGBTQ people, and encouraged other large companies to take public stands against this legislation,” GLAAD observed.
The bottom line
LGBTQ employees work day in and day out to make their companies successful, and with discrimination on the rise, employers have a responsibility to them.
Failing to live up to that responsibility tells employees — whether they’re part of the community or not — that your company ignores or tacitly approves of an increasingly hostile climate that threatens people’s well-being. Decision-makers at any company that claims to lead with values and purpose certainly wouldn’t want to send that message. And with leaders creating clear blueprints for inclusion, there’s really no excuse for companies not to do better.
Creatives for Climate’s ‘secret agents of change’ will be prowling the festival calling on individuals, agencies and brands to tackle greenwashing at the source. From Creatives for Climate • Reposted: June 7, 2029
At this year’s Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity (19th-23rd June), NGO Creatives for Climate will launch a new tool aimed at building a collective of change agents united in its mission to tackle greenwashing at the source.
Creatives for Climate ‘secret agents’ will be roaming the festival with the organization’s Greenwash Watch toolkit — interrupting the rosé-fueled conversations and business-as-usual meetings to firmly center the conversation on climate action within advertising.
The tool in question, the Greenwash Swatch, is based on a framework created by think tank Planet Tracker that identifies an increasingly complex greenwashing landscape — including new trends such as greencrowding, greenrinsing, and greenshifting.
Formatted into a handy paint swatch booklet that fits into handbags and pockets, the toolkit is designed to be a reference for attendees to identify examples of greenwashing at any moment — providing a simple and provocative way to fuel conversations about brand accountability. For the second year in a row, the #greenwashwatch will hijack conversation at Cannes Lions and online, and create a counternarrative from ordinary people back to brands — subverting power and driving conversation far and wide.
“Creativity for good means nothing if we do not rise as an industry to tackle creativity for bad,” says Creatives for Climate Initiator and Chairwoman Lucy von Sturmer. “Standing against greenwashing is standing against tactics of delay and increasingly illegal brand behavior. Unfortunately, as more agencies and brands jump on the ‘green wagon,’ we expect to see a tonne of criminal behavior on the Croisette this year.”
During the festival, to gather momentum and recruit more agents to join, Creatives for Climate is partnering with Clean Creatives to launch the Change Agent Happy Hour — Tuesday 20th June from 19:00-20:30 — where it will be issuing an additional 100 toolkits to attendees to inspire collective action within their professional organizations and across their broader networks.
Creatives for Climate has also partnered with the Clean Creatives Climate Summit at the Embassy of Dutch Creativity and will be hosting a panel titled “Tackling the climate crisis is tackling the talent crisis” on Tuesday 20th June. This panel will feature a broad range of actors from across the industry – brand representatives, agency leaders as well as grassroots activists and entrepreneurs on the ground, exploring questions such as:
Can solving the climate crisis solve the talent crisis?
Can upskilling for climate build better agencies and brands?
This year’s action at Cannes builds on the release of the Creatives for Climate’s landmark Greenwash Watch Course, launched at Cannes in 2022. The training is a cross-industry effort created in collaboration with industry experts such as professor Gill Wilson and Patagonia Head of Studio Alex Weller to rapidly scale the industry’s ability to challenge briefs, identify greenwashing and deliver projects with real impact.
The Greenwash Watch agents will reward those that use the Greenwash Swatch tool online during Cannes Lions week with free access to the Greenwash Watch training program. The aim is to bridge the gap between advertising and action — recruiting attendees and their businesses to become greenwashing ‘secret agents of change.’
Check out the many ways that sustainability can introduce opportunities to your business. By Stephen P. Ashkin from cmmonline.com • Reposted: June 6, 2023
Salespeople are often taught to see a customer’s or prospect’s problem as an opportunity, because solving the problem can lead to business growth. The professional cleaning industry can apply a similar attitude when considering problems related to sustainability.
Industry problems can be overwhelming, especially when considering that the global cleaning industry is composed of thousands of companies, including service providers, in-house cleaning operations, manufacturers, and distributors; tens of thousands of buildings, offices, and warehouses; hundreds of thousands of cars, service vehicles, and delivery trucks; and more than 100 million workers worldwide. However, by embracing sustainable practices in their own operations, investing in new technologies, and engaging with customers and building occupants to promote a more sustainable future, all facets of the industry can take full advantage of the opportunities sustainability presents.
Reap the benefits of reduction and conservation
One of the biggest sustainability opportunities is the ability to reduce waste and conserve resources. The industry can significantly reduce its environmental impact in several ways, such as utilizing green cleaning products and energy efficient equipment, reducing water usage, cleaning with cold water, turning off lights when leaving a room, and driving more fuel-efficient vehicles. These practices not only help reduce the amount of waste generated and conserve resources, but also save money on energy and water.
Seize opportunities for education
The industry can seize opportunities to educate others on sustainability and engage with them regarding its importance. By sharing information about sustainable practices and highlighting their benefits, the industry can help raise awareness and promote change. The industry can also work with customers and stakeholders to identify new opportunities for improvement and develop innovative solutions to sustainability challenges.
Create a path for others to follow
Perhaps the best way to educate is to lead by example. By embracing sustainable practices and demonstrating a commitment to reduce its environmental footprint, the industry can inspire others to do the same. These commitments include tracking one’s own use of energy, fuels, and water. These actions not only inspire others, but have a significant impact on the environment and can help promote a more sustainable future for the planet.
Stephen P. Ashkin is president of The Ashkin Group, a consulting firm specializing in green cleaning and sustainability. He can be reached at steve@ashkingroup.com.
In a world where climate change is increasingly apparent, we all encounter people who are changing their behavior to help protect the environment: People who cycle to work to avoid consuming fuel, carry their own cutlery to avoid using disposable plastic forks, or hang onto their recyclable waste, bypassing trash cans until they can find a proper place to recycle it.
These people have two things in common: On the one hand, they are concerned enough about the environment to change their everyday habits. On the other hand, on the surface this behavior change does not include buying products that are branded as environmentally friendly. Because their current route to sustainable living focuses on cutting down their consumption (of fuel, plastic, home energy, and the like), they are not making the connection between sustainability and the products they need to buy.
We call this group “Conscious Nonconsumers,” and they now represent about 32% of all U.S. consumers, according to recent Bain research. They have become something of a holy grail for large brands searching for new sources of growth.
There’s no question that consumers are becoming more concerned about environmental issues, if only because they are hitting people at home. A recent Pew Research poll found that 71% of Americans have experienced an extreme weather event in their community within the past year. Coming face-to-face with climate change has now led 52% of Americans to say they are “extremely or very concerned” about the impact of climate change, according to Bain Consumer Lab’s study of nearly 4,000 U.S. consumers in 2022 and confirmed with a follow-up survey of 1,000 consumers in 2023.
This rising interest in environmental issues has paved the way for a potential $365 billion market for “Conscious Nonconsumers” (on top of the $278 billion market for “Conscious Consumers”), according to Bain research, if companies remove barriers that are inhibiting purchases. It’s a market that spans everything from products with reduced packaging to shampoo requiring less water.
Fully capturing this opportunity, however, will be a challenge for consumer goods companies because consumers’ growing concerns are not uniformly reflected in their purchasing behavior. There is an undeniable “say-do” gap between what consumers say they want and what they are actually putting in their baskets. Yet the rewards for narrowing this gap are huge. When consumers try and like a sustainable product, they are more likely to become vocal advocates. For example, 44% of those recommending environmental, social, and governance (ESG) products are superpromoters, meaning they recommend the product to more than 10 people, compared with just 22% of people who recommend for any other reason, based on our research.
To understand the landscape and biggest opportunities for consumer goods companies and retailers, Bain’s recent survey of U.S. consumers looked at such factors as their concern about climate change and the number of lifestyle changes made for sustainability reasons. Our research enabled us to identify five well-defined segments, all of which span age and income levels:
Climate change deniers: These consumers don’t believe that the climate is changing. As such, they do not engage with ESG and do not intend to. They make up about 4% of the U.S. consumers.
Consumers of habit: These consumers tend to simplify their lives by buying products they know and love. They are not actively concerned about climate change, so sustainability is not on their minds when shopping. They make up about 30% of the U.S. consumers.
Curious consumers: These consumers buy eco-friendly products due to a curiosity about these products, which are often branded as premium. They are not actively concerned about the environment, but they like to try new premium products. They make up about 11% of the U.S. consumers.
Conscious nonconsumers: These are people who are actively concerned about climate change and have several environmentally friendly lifestyle habits, but do not buy eco-friendly-branded products. They make up about 32% of the U.S. consumers — the largest group.
Conscious consumers: These consumers are actively concerned about the planet and consider a product’s environmental credentials when shopping, as they see this as a route to more sustainable living. They make up about 24% of the U.S. consumers.
It is the Conscious Nonconsumers — a large group that has flown under the radar of many consumer products companies and retailers — who offer a large, untapped opportunity. We focused much of our follow-up research on this segment, attempting to discover what’s keeping them from buying and what consumer goods companies and retailers can do to capture this market.
There is no single demographic profile of the Conscious Nonconsumer. They span ages as well as income and education levels. They’re as likely to live in urban areas as small towns. What most have in common is a desire to match their current lifestyle changes — lowering thermostats, cycling to work, and obsessively recycling, for example. We also see that while many Conscious Nonconsumers are opting out of trying to shop sustainably, they do have positive intentions. An impressive 71% of Conscious Nonconsumers say they would pay more for sustainable products, in theory, if there is a direct benefit, if it doesn’t compromise other factors, and if they believe it is really better for the planet, employees, or suppliers. Among our survey respondents, 44% of Conscious Nonconsumers aspire to increase spending on such brands in the next three years.
Barriers to buying
But since Conscious Nonconsumers are not currently buying sustainable products, as part of our study, we asked additional questions to understand the barriers.
The first barrier — and probably the one most difficult to overcome — is that these consumers are not actively thinking about sustainability when they are shopping. This barrier, reported by 34% of Conscious Nonconsumers, highlights how this segment thinks about sustainability. They focus on reducing their consumption of fuel, home energy, and the like, with less concern about the products they buy.
The second barrier is one faced by Conscious Nonconsumers who are thinking about sustainability when shopping: 37% percent say there are difficult trade-offs preventing them from making informed purchasing decisions. They have trouble understanding and comparing the carbon footprint of competing products, for example, and often start with only a vague understanding of what makes a product sustainable or not. We saw this knowledge gap come to life when we asked consumers across segments to determine which of two items had a lower carbon footprint. On average, 75% of respondents in all consumer categories did not know or were incorrect in their answer. For example, only 11% correctly answered that single-use plastic bags have a lower carbon footprint than single-use cotton bags. Only 22% correctly answered that inorganic vegetables have a lower carbon footprint than organic meat. This knowledge gap is a barrier to making the right choices in sustainable purchases.
The final barriers to purchasing are tangible. Price was cited as an obstacle to purchasing by 34% of Conscious Nonconsumers; those higher prices mean that consumers need to work harder to justify purchasing. Another issue: It often is harder to find sustainable products. For example, consumers may need to go to a specialized store or a different department within a regular supermarket to find a wider range of sustainable goods.
How to reach Conscious Nonconsumers
Brands and retailers can acknowledge their own accountability in the say-do gap and take immediate action to remove barriers that consumers and shoppers face. In our 2022 survey, half of U.S. consumers believe brands and retailers are responsible for helping consumers shop sustainably — compared with 19% who feel it’s the government’s responsibility, for example. There are three basic actions for brands and retailers:
Simplify decision-making for consumers.
Brands can help boost awareness and close the knowledge gap by highlighting specific, measurable ESG features that educate consumers while guiding choice. Beauty company Natura clearly spells out the specific, positive effects of its fair-trade practices with communities in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest. On its website, it reports: “By buying Natura EKOS products you are helping to improve the income of 2,000 families in these Brazilian farming communities — a total of almost 8,500 people. And it is also thanks to Natura EKOS products and the work of these communities that 1.8 million hectares of forest have been conserved for sustainable resource use and a better future for generations to come.” Natura EKOS product packaging uses clear terms (such as vegan, Amazon rainforest ingredients, fair trade, and rainforest conservation), and quantifies the products’ benefits, such as the fact that purchasing refillable products results in a 25% reduction in plastic for EKOS products. It consciously avoids confusing consumers with multiple ESG symbols.
For retailers, simplifying consumer decisions means making sustainable products part of consumers’ purchase journey. That could involve helping consumers easily identify sustainable products. For example, Walmart offers an online collection of products by companies the retailer classifies as “Sustainability Leaders” and uses a “Great for You” icon to help consumers identify healthier food options on the shelf. Retailers can also benefit by making sustainable products more available at the moment when consumers are making their purchasing decision by keeping them on the same shelf as everything else.
Integrate ESG into existing reasons to choose.
Consumers already balance competing priorities of quality, price, health, and convenience. Adding a new ESG dimension creates additional complexity that may force consumers not to choose sustainable options. The most effective companies weave ESG into those existing considerations. For example, insurgents have proven that ESG can make a product more convenient to purchase (via plastic-free automated subscriptions like Smol), more affordable (via durable, reusable products like UpCircle’s makeup removal cotton pads), and simpler (via multibenefit and multifunctional products like Care Natural Beauty). Incumbent brands must follow their lead. Retailers can accelerate sustainability adoption by reinforcing the positive side of the cost-benefit equation through incentives. Iceland, for example, offers “reverse” vending machines where PET bottles are returned in exchange for store credit.
Evolve existing brands.
Our research found that Conscious Nonconsumers are likely to value same-but-better versionsof products they love as long as they do not come with a significantly higher price tag. There are two fundamental approaches brands take: innovating on packaging design and adapting product formats or ingredients. As an example of the former, consider Unilever’s TRESemmé brand, with shampoo bottles made of 100% recycled and recyclable plastic. For its part, retailer Sainsbury’s sells meat and chicken in trayless packaging and has eliminated single-use plastic across its own-brand dip pots. As an example of adapting ingredients, Mustela introduced plant-based baby towels as a plastic-free version of its original baby towel.
Converting Conscious Nonconsumers is a matter of providing viable and easy-to-find options — and making the value proposition clear. And with value-for-money a critical consideration for this segment, the brands and retailers that make the biggest inroads will be those that can also make their sustainable products affordable. For most companies, that requires balancing the delivery of sustainable products with cost savings. It’s a tricky balance, but one that will help companies achieve profitable growth by convincing consumers that, in addition to recycling, biking to work, and lowering the heat, they can change their buying habits, too.
Reusable grocery bags for sale at Whole Foods. David McNew via Getty Images
The majority of a company’s emissions stems from their suppliers. Here’s how to work with them toward a greener future. By Praveen Kumar Soni from supplychaindive.com • Reposted: June 5, 2023
With sustainability priorities becoming one of the biggest components of a company’s reputation, they can often be the competitive edge needed to become the brand of the choice.
Procurement plays a pivotal role in ensuring sustainability goals become reality, especially since a business’ environmental footprint is largely tied to their suppliers. But cost pressures and other risks can make it difficult for many teams to know where to start.
Below are five key steps to drive sustainability:
1. Make sustainable procurement compulsory
For existing products, it may take time to switch to sustainable options based on feasibility and cost impact. However, wherever possible and for any new product, make it mandatory to go for green options. It’ll help to steadily progress forward on the sustainability journey.
When green materials are harder to find, seek out partnerships with companies that are working toward new solutions. For instance, L’Oréalrecently partnered with biotechnology platform Geno to develop sustainable alternatives to ingredients.
2. Develop supplier sustainability scorecard
Management visionary Peter Drucker once said: “What gets measured gets improved.”
Procurement folks should take this to heart in all matters, including sustainability. Develop a dashboard to measure Scope 1, 2 & 3 emissionsto inform future decisions.
Additionally, organizations can start recognizing and rewarding the suppliers on an annual basis for their sustainability efforts to keep them motivated.
3. Share experiences and learn from others
Sustainability is an evolving field and procurement may not have all the answers. Meaningful engagement with suppliers or other industry experts can help you to find a fix for your problem.
For instance, I once noticed that my carton supplier had switched from plastic shrink wraps to reusable belts for pallet storage. I shared this practice with our manufacturing teams and it helped us, too, cut down on plastic.
Being connected to external world, procurement people can bring in lot of value through learning and sharing.
4. Invest in technology
Technology can help fine tune the processes and help make decisions around sustainability.
For instance, the use of digital twin technology in our manufacturing setup helped us to optimize the consumption of energy and water, leading to positive impact in sustainability KPIs.
Similarly, AI has the ability to assess millions of data sources and come up with the recommendations for sustainability alternatives. Procurement should invest in technology to get the benefit at scale.
A 3M manufacturing facility in Cottage Grove, Minnesota, in 2018. Photo: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images.
By Jacob Knutson from axis.com • Reposted: June 5, 2023
Major chemical producers have agreed to pay billions of dollars to settle claims from U.S. water providers over toxic “forever chemicals” pollution.
Why it matters: The settlements are a significant step forward in the effort to reduce potentially dangerous chemicals in water systems across the country.
The health effects of the chemicals are still being studied, but exposure to certain levels of PFAS has been linked to adverse health effects in humans and animals, including increased risk of kidney or testicular cancer.
Driving the news: Chemours, DuPont and Corteva said Friday they reached a $1.19 billion settlement with water providers around the country.
The water providers had alleged that the companies were responsible for environmental pollution from firefighting foams they manufactured that contained PFAS.
Though the companies denied the allegations, the settlement would resolve hundreds of lawsuits against them that were consolidated in the federal district court for South Carolina, which must finalize the settlement for it to take effect.
What they’re saying: John O’Connell, the board president of the National Rural Water Association, said in a statement that the settlement “is the beginning of helping our utility members in the fight against PFAS.”
The group works with 50 state associations representing more than 31,000 water and wastewater utility systems, and helped filed a lawsuit on behalf of its members.
Yes, but: Not included in the settlements are systems operated by states and the U.S. government, some smaller drinking water systems, and systems in the lower Cape Fear River Basin of North Carolina, which has been plagued by high levels of PFAS.
How it works: The durable synthetic chemicals, which resist degradation by repelling oil and water and withstanding high temperatures, have been used in hundreds of nonstick, water- and oil-repellent, and fire-resistant products.
If the chemicals enter the environment through production or waste streams, they can resist breaking down for hundreds of years while contaminating water sources and bioaccumulating in fish, wildlife, livestock, and people.
Research has shown that reducing levels of PFAS in drinking water or switching to other water distributors will likely require municipalities to invest millions of dollars into new infrastructure and incur ongoing maintenance costs.
For example, officials in Cape Fear allocated $46 million and a recurring annual operating cost of $2.9 million to upgrade a treatment plant designed to filter PFAS from drinking water.
Meanwhile, 3M — a major PFAS producer — has also reached a tentative settlement worth at least $10 billion with water providers, Bloomberg reported Friday.
News of a potential settlement came just days before the company’s first federal trial over PFAS pollution claims.
Facing extensive PFAS litigation — including a lawsuit from the Dutch government — 3M announced in December 2022 that it would stop manufacturing and using the chemicals by the end of 2025
By Mary Mazzoni from Triple Pundit • Reposted: June 2, 2023
We hear it time and time again: People aren’t ready, willing or interested in changing their lifestyles for the sake of sustainability. They’re too busy, too broke or too ambivalent to think about how their choices impact the world around them. And until they change their tune, there’s nothing brands can do about it — except sell them more stuff.
This prevailing narrative has been around for decades, but data continues to show that it isn’t representative of how people really feel. The public is increasingly aware of the environmental and social challenges we face — from climate change to wealth inequality — and they want to be part of the solution.
Over half of Americans say they’ve already made lifestyle changes like shopping secondhand, purchasing products in reusable or refillable packaging, and buying less overall in order to reduce their impact on people and the planet, according to a December survey conducted by TriplePundit and our parent company, 3BL Media, in partnership with the research technology firm Glow.
Let’s break down what U.S. consumers are really saying about sustainability, how it factors into their own lives, and how brands can respond differently than they have in the past.
Americans rank climate change and economic inequality among the top three challenges facing society today, only behind their anxiety about keeping food on the table. Download the report to learn more.
People are willing to change their behavior for the sake of sustainability
Shopping secondhand. Purchasing products made from, or packaged in, recycled materials. Choosing items in reusable or refillable containers. Shopping in the grocery bulk aisle to avoid packaging altogether. Some would have us believe these lifestyle shifts are too expensive or too cumbersome for Americans. But more than 60 percent of respondents to our survey said they’re already making these changes or intend to do so within the next six months.
Of course the say/do gap — which refers to the difference between what people say in surveys and what they actually do in their daly lives — is always a factor. Even so, the interest in these lifestyle changes is significant and runs counter to preconceived notions that consumers don’t really want — or aren’t really ready — to change their lifestyles for sustainability reasons.
People even expressed interest in behaviors that are commonplace in other countries but often dismissed as something that could “never work” in the U.S. For example, over half of respondents said they would be willing to take packaging like bottles back to a store for wash and refill.
More than 60 percent of U.S. consumers are willing to adopt lifestyle changes like shopping secondhand, opting for the bulk aisle, or choosing items in reusable or refillable packaging. Download the report to learn more.
Our findings support existing research on general readiness for behavior change: In another 2022 survey, for example, half of responding U.S. adults said they’re willing to accept 95 percent of the changes needed to avert the climate crisis and restore ecosystems. The survey also revealed the extent of climate anxiety among the public, with 1 out of 4 respondents worried they may have to give up long-term goals like starting a family.
When it comes to packaging in particular, our findings indicate that 75 percent of U.S. consumers are willing to choose reusable alternatives — echoing 2022 polling from Trivium Packaging which found the same. The trade publication Packaging World recently declared reusable and refillable packaging to be a “global opportunity,” with sales forecast to grow by 4.9 percent annually to $53.4 billion by 2027.
How brands can respond to shifting consumer preferences
Many advocates point to the calls for consumer behavior change as merely a delay tactic from large companies: If the narrative keeps people focused on their own behaviors — analyzing everything from cup preferences to clothing choice — they won’t have energy left to push for a shift in corporate practices or government regulations.
In the past, this may have been true, with consumers and brands pitted against each other in a cyclical blame-game while the poor get poorer and global temperatures rise. But findings like these indicate we’ve reached a critical moment when ideologies can align, and brands can show up as partners for consumers looking to play a role in the future they want to see.
Leveraging our nearly two decades of experience in communicating about sustainability, TriplePundit and 3BL Media’s Consumer Insights and Sustainability Benchmark report includes key action items for businesses looking to respond to consumer sentiment in a positive way.
“Understanding people’s uncertainties and anxieties about the future, and what they want to see from business, gives companies the opportunity to communicate and present themselves as part of the solution that consumers are looking for,” the report reads. “The next piece of the puzzle is to figure out how businesses can tailor their communications to appeal to consumer interests and bring them on board their journey to a more sustainable world.”
In particular, we highlight how brands can adopt a more meaningful role of partner and educator — rather than simply another purveyor of goods and services. “Since consumers want to be part of the solution, help them do that by sharing actionable information,” the report reads. “It may be as simple as telling them how to make your product last longer or how to lower their personal carbon footprint with a checklist on your website. You can celebrate your company’s successes by applauding theirs.”
A fire burns in a in Porto Velho, Brazil, 09 September 2019. Photo Credit: FERNANDO BIZERRA JR [Fernando Bizerra Jr (EPA-EFE)]
If businesses are to take corporate sustainability seriously, they will need to add relevant sustainability expertise to their boards, argue Nicolas Sauviat and Sanjini Jain.By Nicolas Sauviat and Sanjini Jain from euractiv.com • Reposted: June 2, 2023
On 1 June, the European Parliament is due to take a plenary vote on a Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), legislation which aims to foster sustainable and responsible corporate behaviour throughout global value chains. If it’s formally adopted, it will require companies to identify – and, where necessary, prevent, end or mitigate – the adverse impacts of their activities on human rights, in terms of issues like child labour and worker exploitation, as well as the environment, for problems like pollution and biodiversity loss.
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) was heralded internationally as the ‘Paris moment’ for nature to lead the world towards a more harmonious relationship between nature, people and the economy. If we have any hope of living up to this moment and fulfilling the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – the blueprint for how we achieve a better, fairer and greener world in the short time left – the private sector must take responsibility for its actions.
One key issue in this vote up for debate is whether now is the time to challenge boardroom’s traditional focus on generating wealth for its shareholders, and to reorientate their focus to provide value for all its stakeholders.
With scientists projecting that the crucial 1.5°C global average temperature threshold will be temporarily breached in just five years, we are running out of time to change direction. But do boards have the needed skills and expertise are required to meet this challenge, and should legislation be used to accelerate their action?
This could be a crucial moment to close the corporate accountability gap on sustainability. As things stand, business action remains largely voluntary. And yet, we cannot keep this planet viable for life without the private sector.
At the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA), we assess corporate progress against the SDGs. From our experience we know that company boards are key to action on sustainability. Only by ensuring that they have the right knowledge and expertise can the accountability gap be closed, and progress made.
As things stand, most big companies have set sustainability targets. Many have pledged to a net-zero carbon objective. However, very few actually provide the necessary details on how they will go about accomplishing these ambitions. The data reported by businesses often lacks substance. Knowingly or not, many companies oversell their sustainability credentials.
A major reason for this is a skill and knowledge gap, especially within companies’ top executive forces. This impacts the boardroom’s understanding and subsequent ability to address Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) risks. Indeed, a recent survey by the professional services experts at PwC found that only 27% of boards fully understand ESG risks.
Our own research delivered even worse findings. Assessing corporate progress on protecting the natural world, WBA’s Nature Benchmark examined the governance structures of 400 of the world’s largest companies. It looked into whether they have accountability systems in place for achieving their sustainable development goals – including governance bodies with the right expertise to understand the material pressures on nature created by their business activities.
While nearly 70% of companies assigned responsibility for their sustainability strategy to their board, just 2% of boards possessed the relevant sustainability expertise. This stark discrepancy highlights the fact that boards are accepting their sustainability responsibility without a clear understanding of what it actually entails.
Boards must rapidly adapt to their new sustainability role, lest they become an obstacle to their companies’ futures. In this context, we desperately need corporate board members with CVs beyond banking and accounting. Specialist scientific committees can also help provide boards with credible information.
Businesses should ensure that boards have the expertise to tackle their most relevant sustainability topics. This could be done by demonstrating that they have undertaken training by a certified organisation. Alternatively, they could have board members with previous experience in specialist organisations, like consulting firms or NGOs, or have authored academic studies.
As we hurtle towards irreversible environmental tipping points, we hope that European legislators pass the CSDDD with a legal mandate for boards to have a duty to oversee and sign off on their due diligence policies. This mandate should be accompanied by further guidance to ensure boards demonstrate relevant ESG expertise. That’s how to close the corporate accountability gap on sustainability and drive action.
Now is the time for boardrooms to shift from their traditional focus on generating wealth for their shareholders towards generating value for all stakeholders. After all, no company will profit from an uninhabitable planet.
Nicolas Sauviat and Sanjini Jain are researchers at the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA).
B Corp certification has become the gold standard of sustainability – we explore whether it’s a valuable credential or a glorified greenwashing tool. By Lucy Buchholz from Sustainability Magazine • Reposted: June 1, 2023
Sustainability has become a somewhat murky term. With businesses fighting it out to be the biggest, the richest and, nowadays, of course, the greenest, it can be hard to know which ones should actually be trusted.
Luckily, the business world has B Corp certifications, which puts businesses to the test to ensure their credentials have been earned honestly, rather than being artificially dyed green.
What is a B Corp?
B Corporations, informally known as B Corps, are businesses or organisations that have voluntarily met the highest standards for social and environmental performance; in other words, they’re doing everything they possibly can to create a better future for people and the planet.
To more accurately define them, B Lab – the nonprofit behind B Corps – explains: “Certified B Corporations are businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose. B Corps are accelerating a global culture shift to redefine success in business and build a more inclusive, sustainable economy.”
So, in other words, B Corp Certification is for businesses what Fair Trade is for products and goods.
What to expect from the process
It’s not easy to become a B Corp.
Certification is holistic, meaning it’s not exclusively focused on a single social or environmental issue, so businesses have to achieve rigorous standards that require engagement from every aspect of a company. And these standards don’t just relate to the businesses themselves, but to every company or organisation affiliated within the value and supply chain
Yvonne Filler, Marketing Manager at Good Innovation – a certified B Corp – shares that B Corp certification is a way to hold businesses accountable for their actions and statements. As a Social Impact Innovation Consultancy, Good Innovation finds creative, cutting-edge solutions to the world’s most difficult social problems by helping organisations that want to make a difference do it smarter, faster and, crucially, with greater impact.
“Becoming a B Corp is a fairly long process, with around 150 questions requiring lots of data – but it wouldn’t be a quality standard without it,” Yvonne shares. “You need a certain score to pass and be certified. Your score will then be published on the B Corp website, but there’s no ranking system.”
To become a certified B Corp, businesses must abide by stringent requirements, including completing a comprehensive assessment, which then must be verified by founding company B Lab. Any controversial operations must be disclosed to B Lab, and businesses must commit to the transparent public disclosure of their performance.
“It’s easier to apply for B Corp certification when your company is smaller or just starting out, because you can see all the areas upon which you need to focus,” says Heidi Schoeneck, Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Grounded. “This is largely because it can be costly and time consuming to ensure all ground is covered correctly.”
Yvonne supports this idea, stating that larger businesses will be required to provide more data. “For us, the process is really beneficial. It’s required us to hold ourselves accountable for our actions,” Yvonne adds.
Is B Corp right for your business?
Those considering applying for B Corp certification will most likely have sustainability and environmental impact at the forefront of their business model. But how can a business owner or CEO be sure that it’s the right step for them?
“Applying for B Corp certification can be costly and time consuming,” Laura Harnett, founder of sustainable cleaning tool brand Seep, explains. “But for business owners contemplating whether or not to make the commitment, I would urge them to consider why they want to achieve it and what they want to gain. Fundamentally, are you a business for good? Can your business improve the current situation with the climate or social inequality, for example?
“If you believe that your business does play these roles, the B Corp certification is a really great structure to guide you through that process. As a founder or CEO, you may not have the time to come up with your own framework, but with B Corp, it’s already been done for you and it’s constantly evolving to keep you on top of the game.”
“We thought we were a shoo-in to become a B Corp because we had built our whole business around sustainability,” Heidi says. “But once you get into the criteria, you see how much more can be done. It’s something you have to check in with every few months to make sure you’re on top of everything.”
Abiding by sustainability rules has become akin to a box-ticking exercise for many companies. As consumers have become increasingly concerned about the impact their purchases have on the environment – with 75% of US consumers reporting it’s a priority for them – more businesses are pledging eco-friendly standards, only to fall spectacularly short. In fact, 42% of companies have been said to exaggerate sustainability claims, according to research from The European Commission.
B Corps are, therefore, an avenue that businesses can venture down to prove they’re living up to their claims. But the crucial question surrounds whether B Corp really is the gold standard it’s claimed to be?
“As so many companies greenwash, it can be hard to know which ones are genuinely prioritising positive change,” Laura says. “B Corp certifications hold companies and founders to a standard that they need to adhere to across five key areas: environment, governance, people, communities, and customers. I’ve found that, as a business owner, B Corp has made me think more deeply about the decisions I am making and the impact Seep is having on society.”
Reaching B Corp status will therefore help to eradicate greenwashing, with Heidi stating there’s “no room for it” in the B Corp community. She continues to state that, although the certifications have sparked debate as to whether the growing number of companies achieving the status weakens its validity, Heidi believes that more companies should strive to reach the criteria.
“There has been some talk about whether the number of businesses joining the B Corp community dilutes the message; I think the more the merrier. It’s a great achievement to meet the 80-point benchmark, and we need more businesses to commit to making an impact.”
Good Innovation’s Yvonne supports this idea, suggesting that this is often where B Corps are “misunderstood”. “Some people might say the number of companies becoming a B Corp is weakening its impact,” Yvonne explains, “but if you look at it in terms of what it was set up to do, then more certified members can only be a good thing.”
For companies that go above and beyond, B Corp awards the ‘Best for the World B Corp’ status to the top 5% of B Corps. Seep was one business that achieved this status last year for their environmental impact.
“As a founder, you can easily beat yourself up thinking you’re not doing enough,” Laura says. “Although there’s a lot of discussion around B Corps, I truly believe that it is the most robust system to demonstrate that a company is sustainable.”
Sustainability, social impact and ethical business practices – this is an era where responsible brand representation dominates the conversation in the corporate terrain. With ethical consumers on one side and purpose-driven investors on another, organisations find themselves in a heightened realm of accountability like never before. But, how do organisations effectively communicate their environmental, social, and governmental (ESG) efforts to the world?
ESG is increasingly becoming a critical aspect of business strategy and reputation management. The convergence of PR and ESG offers organisations the opportunity to shape their reputation and secure a competitive edge, while also navigating the evolving expectations of stakeholders. According to a study by PwC, almost half of investors surveyed expressed willingness to divest from companies that aren’t taking sufficient action on ESG issues. This underscores the importance of understanding and tracking ESG initiatives, and integrating ESG concerns into PR strategies. Identifying key ESG metrics for your brand is the first step toward unlocking what lies at the intersection of responsible communication, sustainable practices and measurable impact.
Why should brands care about ESG?
In today’s business landscape, it is indispensable that brands pay close attention to ESG. These three critical components are significantly important for companies seeking to build a sustainable and successful brand. Each component is uniquely important for brands to take into their business considerations.
Firstly, the environmental component of ESG allows brands to showcase their commitment to sustainability and reduce their negative impact on the environment and helps brands differentiate themselves from each other and attract a growing market segment that prioritises sustainability. By actively addressing issues like climate change, waste management, and energy efficiency, companies can improve their reputation and appeal to environmentally conscious consumers and investors. Brands have different metrics at their disposal to measure the social aspect, such as tracking industry keywords and monitoring ESG developments in their industry to stay informed and establish thought leadership.
Incorporating ESG considerations into PR strategies is indispensable in the process of establishing a brand as responsible, credible and trustworthy.
Secondly, the social component of ESG allows brands to emphasise their dedication to social responsibility and ethical practices. By focusing on aspects such as diversity and equality, fair labour practices, and data protection, companies can foster a positive image and attract socially conscious consumers and investors.
Today’s consumers, especially millennials and Gen Z, are especially aware of their consumption patterns. In fact, they actively seek out brands that align with their values, thus demonstrating a genuine commitment to social responsibility can create a competitive advantage and foster long-term customer loyalty. A metric to measure this component is by monitoring consumer sentiments. Tracking customer sentiment allows brands to communicate ESG initiatives effectively, identify negative sentiment, and rectify concerns promptly, as timely responses shape positive public perception and maintain appeal to investors, stakeholders, and customers.
Thirdly, the governance component of ESG is crucial for brands as it demonstrates a commitment to ethical decision-making and transparency. By addressing issues like board composition, political contributions, stakeholder-focused business operations, and lobbying efforts, companies can build trust and credibility with stakeholders. Strong governance practices not only helps mitigate risks and potential legal or reputational issues, but also safeguards a company’s long-term success. Especially, investors prioritise companies with reliable governance structures as they signify stability, accountability, and responsible management.
Examples of potential metrics to use for measuring brand’s activity include looking at share of voice (SOV). By monitoring SOV, brands can compare PR efforts with ESG competitors, assess visibility against industry peers, and prioritise ESG initiatives based on stakeholder perception and expectations. Another avenue is by tracking brand and CEO mentions, staying on top of the discussion and addressing negative feedback promptly for improvement. Responsiveness fosters trust and loyalty, while positive mentions reinforce brand reputation.
Ultimately, integrating ESG considerations into brand strategies is paramount in today’s business landscape. By prioritising environmental sustainability, social responsibility, and ethical governance structures, brands can bolster their reputation, attract socially conscious consumers and investors, differentiate themselves from competitors, and mitigate risks. Nowadays, ESG is no longer merely a passing trend; it is a fundamental aspect of building a sustainable and successful brand in the modern business landscape. The metrics introduced above are possible measurement tools to analyse a brands performance in terms of ESG. These metrics are not mutually exclusive and can be used across all three components.
Broad vision, tailored approach
While it’s important to be mindful of the bigger picture, it’s equally important to tailor your approach to ESG according to the regional nuances applicable to your organisation. For instance, in the wake of new laws surrounding GDPR, third-party cookies and heightened awareness of data privacy, companies operating in Americas and European regions should be diligent about demonstrating their compliance and dedication to safeguarding customer’s privacy.
Another example of how ESG can inform PR strategies would be to look at how, in Asian countries, particularly China, pollution has emerged as a matter of concern both locally and globally. With this in consideration, enterprising businesses wanting to expand to Western markets could mindfully leverage their PR endeavours to demonstrate their commitment to minimising air pollution. This is a great way of showcasing prudence and conscious effort, which in turn helps gain respect from consumers and investors alike.
In closing, the importance of holistically understanding ESG and identifying the right metrics cannot be emphasised enough. Incorporating ESG considerations into PR strategies is indispensable in the process of establishing a brand as responsible, credible and trustworthy. Not only does this approach appeal to socially conscious consumers and investors who prioritise sustainability, ethical practices and social impact but a strong ESG proposition also enables organisations to tap new markets and expand in existing markets.
Read more about ESG measurement and how Meltwater can help your organisation with earning consumer trust through ESG PR in our Guide To Modern PR.
By Peter Evans, Chief Strategy Officer, McFadyen Digital; Co-Chair, MIT Platform Strategy Summit and Faculty, Fast Future Executive via Forbes • Reposted: May 31, 2023
The world is grappling with a sustainability crisis, but the emerging circular economy shows promise as a solution. Circular platforms, which combine digital marketplaces with circular models of production and consumption, can play a vital role in increasing the reuse, repair and recycling of valuable resources.
To date, platform marketplaces have largely supported linear consumption, with products and packaging becoming waste after use. Through the examples below, I hope to show how businesses can use circular platforms in consumer and B2B markets to help reduce waste, improve material security and drive innovation.
Consumer-Oriented Circular Platforms
There are several circular platforms emerging that are facilitating the sharing, leasing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling in consumer markets. The following are some lessons I think we can learn from them.
Building Community
One benefit of using a circular platform is the ability to build community. As an example, Poshmark, a popular online marketplace that connects users to buy and sell things like used clothing and beauty products, has a social media-like interface that helps foster a sense of community among its users. Including a community aspect in your platform can enhance the overall user experience, increase user loyalty and boost the visibility of users’ listings. Look for ways that users can connect with each other, share inspiration and receive feedback.
Giving Assurance
Platforms can also help provide quality assurance. Backmarket is an online marketplace for refurbished electronics that ensures the quality of products sold through its marketplace through rigorous testing and certification processes. This gives buyers confidence in the reliability and performance of refurbished electronics, overcoming concerns associated with second-hand purchases.
Providing Affordability
Too Good To Go offers a platform to purchase surplus food from local restaurants and grocery stores, reducing food waste and enhancing affordability. Any way that you can find to increase accessibility to sustainable options is a smart move in this economy.
Enabling B2B Transactions For The Circular Economy
Circular platforms also facilitate circular transactions between businesses. Like their consumer-facing counterparts, platforms in the B2B marketplace can showcase benefits.
Obtaining Data
One main thing you can take advantage of with platforms is the ability to gather otherwise hard-to-obtain data. For example, Scrap Monster connects buyers and sellers in the scrap metal trading industry and is able to provide unique data for scrap metal pricing that cannot be found elsewhere.
Enhance Discovery
Often the “waste” from one industry can be a valuable input into another industry. Platforms can provide discovery engines that help procurement teams in one industry find useful used materials from another industry. Rheaply, which enables buying and selling of construction waste, recently expanded to play this discovery role when it acquired Materials Marketplace and its network of 2,600 partners.
Allow Cross-Broder Transactions
Rebound Plastic Exchange is a trading platform for recycled plastic and is just one example of how you can significantly reduce friction associated with cross-border transactions. To illustrate, Rebound Plastic Exchange provides standardized processes and procedures for listing, communication, pricing and compliance with complex international rules governing the moment of waste materials. When it comes to complex processes like this, customers appreciate a platform that can streamline and simplify.
The Overall Power of Platforms
One of the strengths of platform business models is their ability to scale rapidly. As they facilitate user interactions, they can quickly grow to reach a large audience, creating a positive feedback loop where more users attract more users, leading to exponential growth.
You can also use platforms to leverage discovery engines to reach a wider audience. Discovery engines help users find new content and products, which can attract more visitors to the platform. Using data and algorithms can personalize recommendations to individual users based on their interests and behavior.
Circular platforms, specifically, can aid in responding to the growth of extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws. These laws assign responsibility for managing a product’s end-of-life environmental impacts to manufacturers or brand owners, reducing the burden on taxpayers. By joining a marketplace, industries can improve recycling rates, reduce resource consumption and prevent pollution.
Emerging Opportunities
In addition to participating in existing circular marketplaces, I see new emerging opportunities to establish circular markets. One area is around battery recycling. The shift to electric vehicles is creating significant demand for the materials for EV battery production. Ideally, circular platforms can orchestrate the collection and recycling of batteries, thereby reducing the pressure to expand mining capacity.
Another example involves recycling plastics used in the construction of new cars. BMW is already using recycled fishing nets to make headliners and floor mats for a few of their other models. Imagine if a marketplace was established in which all car manufacturers participated in a used plastics exchange. Given the size of the automotive sector, such a marketplace would create significant demand for waste plastics that are increasingly choking landfills and the world’s oceans.
Challenges
Creating and growing circular marketplaces is not without challenges. Like traditional platforms, circular platforms also must overcome the classic “chicken and egg” dilemma of attracting enough supply and demand to secure sufficient transactions.
Circular marketplaces often meet resistance as they can require changes to traditional procurement and supply chain management. Companies may need to rework business processes and align incentives with various stakeholders to create a closed-loop system.
Other barriers to acknowledge include the need for trust to ensure the quality and reliability of recycled materials. This requires things like testing and digital twin technology to capture, store and update critical information. Like other marketplaces, circular platforms must also ensure timely delivery, manage inventory and handle returns and refunds, which can all be complex, time-consuming and resource intensive.
Circular platforms offer a promising path toward a sustainable future by enhancing material security, reducing waste and driving innovation. While the transition to a fully circular economy may take time, I believe significant progress can be made by adopting circular platforms. These platforms can help incentivize companies to design products that are more durable, repairable and recyclable. By shifting from a linear “take-make-dispose” economy to circular models of production and consumption, we can pave the way for a more sustainable world.
What does it really mean to be a responsible marketer, and why is it important?
When you think about responsible marketing, concepts like corporate social responsibility (CSR), sustainability, cause-related marketing, inclusive marketing and many others might come to mind. But what does it really mean to be a responsible marketer, and why is it important?
We sat down with Lisa Loftis, Principal Product Marketing Manager at SAS, and presenter at Simpler Media Group’s CMSWire Connect conference, to learn more.
“I’m very proud to work for SAS because of what they’re doing in responsible marketing,” said Loftis. “For example, through our Data for Good program, we’ve committed to using data and analytics to solve humanitarian issues around poverty, health, human rights, education and the environment. We make our software available through a crowdsourcing app to help do this. Not only do we focus on how you can use AI to improve business, but also how you can use it to improve society.”
SAS is an analytics and marketing software and solutions provider based in Cary, NC, and a sponsor of the CMSWire Connect conference, held May 10-12, 2023. During the conference, Loftis presented the session, “CDP – Mr. Irrelevant or the G.O.A.T.” and hosted a roundtable discussion on responsible marketing. Here, she shares with us some of her insights around responsible marketing, including what it means, the benefits for both companies and society, and tips for implementing these practices in your own organization.
What Is Responsible Marketing?
CMSWire: From using AI responsibly to engaging in sustainable business practices, responsible marketing covers a lot of ground. What does responsible marketing mean to you?
Lisa Loftis: At SAS, we have a framework to talk about responsible marketing. Because it means a lot of things, we break it up into two categories. The first is responsible use of customer data and technology, which includes legal and ethical compliance, balancing personalization and privacy, and protecting vulnerable audiences. The second is the responsible use of resources such as optimizing marketing assets, measuring marketing value, and promoting corporate social responsibility. So, it’s a broad definition.
CMSWire: How is responsible marketing related to sustainable marketing and corporate social responsibility?
Loftis: There are two aspects to think about here. The first is using marketing’s platform to communicate that a brand’s business model is focused on acting responsibly to society. This includes economic responsibility (using funds and budgets responsibly, which is a big issue today), social responsibility (DEI: diversity, equity and inclusion) and environmental responsibility (the sustainability component). When communicated effectively, these help you develop a positive brand image, among other things.
The other important aspect is safeguarding vulnerable audiences and ensuring that your AI models are free from bias. For SAS, this is one of the most important tenets of responsible marketing. This ensures you have policies, criteria and governance in place across marketing activities to protect those with vulnerabilities based on age, gender, race, socioeconomic status, or some other characteristic. It could mean avoiding engagement with them — such as not marketing cigarettes or vapes to children — or making sure that marketing doesn’t incorporate bias that excludes audiences. For example, some social media platforms are under regulatory fire for using analytics and AI to build advertising audiences for jobs that leave out certain groups of people.
Why and How to Practice Responsible Marketing
CMSWire: What are the biggest benefits organizations realize from practicing responsible marketing?
Loftis: In addition to pure brand image, you can create competitive differentiation through data, with the right balance of privacy and personalization. In a world where customers can switch allegiances and loyalties very easily, communicating that customer data is used in a transparent manner creates trust and loyalty, which is a long-term benefit. According to a study we did with the CEO Council — Cracking Tomorrow’s CX Code — about 80% of consumers surveyed said they would provide personal data to a brand if they felt like they were getting something of value in return — even though most of them felt like they didn’t have control over their data. So, that exchange is critical, especially considering the deprecation of third-party data and the need to focus on first-party data. And it’s a huge differentiator. On the other side, if you’re optimizing your marketing resources, you can make better, more agile business decisions that help you speed time to market.
CMSWire: What are some of the major challenges for organizations that want to engage in responsible marketing practices, and how can these be overcome?
Loftis: I think the biggest challenge is prioritizing what they need to focus on. This means identifying what responsible marketing means to the organization first. It’s an organizational transformation that requires not only marketing, but legal, product development and human resources. You need an end-to-end corporate look at roles and responsibilities to do this.
Top Tips to Get Started
CMSWire: With increasing expectations around the impact organizations can have on society and the environment—as well as pending regulations—can businesses be successful if they don’t practice responsible marketing?
Loftis: Personally, I think that responsible marketing practices are going to become table stakes — if they’re not already — for three reasons. First, optimizing resources, providing value and empowering people is really Business School 101. We’ve labeled it responsible marketing, and it is, but that’s what they teach you in terms of how to run a company effectively and efficiently. Next, are privacy practices and transparency—these are non-negotiable. Finally, sustainability and DEI are no-brainers, if for no other reason that our employees and colleagues are human beings and deserve to be treated as such.
CMSWire: What are your top recommendations for organizations looking to adopt responsible marketing practices?
Loftis: This is a hard question to answer because things are moving so quickly. The more widely technology gets rolled out and the faster it gets rolled out, the more important it is to have that governance framework in place that we talked about earlier. This will help you better anticipate any issues that might come up and deal with them appropriately. On the other hand, if technology is rolled out and governed in the right way, there’s potential to do tremendous good. We’re already seeing this in programs like Data for Good, and with marketing organizations using technology like generative AI to promote creativity, expand their horizons and bring in additional points of view.
These days, business leaders are thinking about a lot more than generating revenue. They gauge success not only by profits but also by the culture within their business and its impact on the community.
This is where topics like inclusivity and sustainability take precedence. For many companies, inclusivity is about ensuring opportunity and empowerment are accessible to all employees. Meanwhile, sustainability efforts help ensure that what enables everyone to live well and succeed lasts for the long haul.
“Inclusivity and sustainability must be prioritized together when we want to create and sustain change for our employees, customers, and communities,” explains Kristy Lilas, Vice President of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at GoDaddy, the company that helps entrepreneurs thrive.
GoDaddy recently released its 2022 Sustainability Report, highlighting the progress the company made toward inclusivity, sustainability, and much more.
“Organizations have a responsibility to make their employees feel empowered and supported, which is not only paramount to creating an inclusive culture, but also a necessary ingredient to drive innovation and develop the best products and services for customers,” Lilas says. “For these reasons, at GoDaddy, we prioritize inclusivity and sustainability together as they are both at the core of our mission to make opportunity more inclusive for all, no matter a person’s identity, background or circumstance.”
Here are the three business pillars GoDaddy identified as most critical to creating an inclusive, sustainable future—and tips for how you can do the same at your organization or business.
1. Customers
GoDaddy aims to do more than just offer domain registry, website hosting, and commerce solutions. It positions itself as a company that “empowers entrepreneurs everywhere, making opportunity more inclusive for all.” In its 2022 Sustainability Report, GoDaddy says it believes that “inclusive entrepreneurship helps fuel local economies globally, increases generational wealth, decreases wealth gaps, and ultimately improves lives.”
Prioritizing inclusive entrepreneurship for GoDaddy means providing equitable resources that support and empower everyone, including entrepreneurs in and from underserved communities. Through its social impact program, Empower by GoDaddy, the company offers in-person and virtual educational workshops, technology tools, mentorship opportunities, and peer networks to thousands of small- and micro-business owners across the U.S., Europe, and Canada. In 2022, GoDaddy provided more than 9,700 learning engagements for entrepreneurs around the world through Empower by GoDaddy.
What you can do: Kami Hoskins, Director of Legal Operations and Training and Head of Corporate Sustainability & Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) at GoDaddy, recommends that businesses engage customers directly to find out what they need to succeed and offer meaningful solutions. For instance, GoDaddy launched Venture Forward, a multi-year research initiative that quantifies the impact of more than 20 million online U.S. microbusinesses on their local economies. Venture Forward research indicates that for every one microbusiness per 100 people in a community, two new jobs are created (not including the business owner). Further, for every additional microbusiness founded, the median household income in the immediate area rises $195 over a one-year period. GoDaddy uses insights like these to better serve its customers, including Empower by GoDaddy participants.
“When designing and building your offerings, it is particularly important to engage customers who are underserved and underrepresented,” Hoskins says. “Otherwise, they may not be adequately supported, and you may miss valuable opportunities.”
2. Employees
“Authentically serving a diverse customer base starts with cultivating a diverse, inclusive, and equitable workforce,” GoDaddy says in its 2022 Sustainability Report. To do this, the company says it made a deliberate effort to recognize and reduce unconscious bias in its recruitment and employee practices and systems, including performance reviews and promotions.
Last year, GoDaddy said it achieved gender pay parity (global) for the eighth year in a row and ethnicity (in the U.S.) pay parity for the sixth year in a row. These findings were also included in the release of GoDaddy’s 2022 Diversity and Pay Parity Annual Report.
GoDaddy additionally says that its employee resource groups (ERGs) play a critical part in fostering its culture of inclusivity. These are employee-led groups formed around common missions, identities, affinities, or interests. ERGs provide a space for employees to develop relationships, support professional development, engage in corporate projects and programs, learn from each other, and participate in fun activities, the company says.
What you can do: To get a fresh perspective and truly understand where your business can improve workplace culture, Lilas recommends partnering with and learning from a research-driven third party.
Through a partnership with Stanford University’s VMware Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab, GoDaddy learned in detail how traditional performance evaluations “often contain biases that hold women to a higher behavioral standard than men,” Lilas says. “This led to us creating processes to remove ambiguity from both recruitment practices and performance reviews and ensuring that we assess both the work that people complete and how they complete it in alignment with our inclusive values. It also includes focusing on action and outcomes as opposed to style and personality, ensuring consistency in feedback, and requiring equal evaluation time.”
3. Operations
How can we ensure the longevity of our business in the face of dynamic and shifting forces like climate change and social change?
That’s the question GoDaddy’s leadership team asks itself when setting its operational objectives and standards. The company takes a multi-pronged approach to accomplish goals related to corporate governance, social impact, and the environment.
“We know that global organizations like GoDaddy have a responsibility to protect the environment for future generations,” Hoskins says. “For this reason, we’re proud to have reduced GoDaddy’s scope 1 and 2 emissions by 35% from a 2019 baseline. To achieve this result, we focused on decreasing the impact of our data center operations, as well as our workspaces, on the environment.”
In 2022, the company also reduced its active global real estate footprint by approximately 105,000 square feet, thanks in part to a hybrid work model with reduced office requirements, according to the report.
What you can do: To achieve big environmental, social, and corporate goals, leadership needs a clear strategy, focused intention, and a plan for prioritization, Hoskins says. “This requires dialog and education among stakeholders across diverse aspects of the business,” she says.
“I like to think that everyday consumers want to do business with companies they believe in and that are making a positive impact on the world,” Hoskins adds. “We hope that part of the reason why our customers continue to come back to us and build businesses with us is because of our relentless commitment to sustainability and inclusivity.”
The ‘a-ha’ moments continued this week at Brand-Led Culture Change — where we heard how more brands, NGOs, retailers and more are nudging more sustainable purchasing decisions, measuring the efficacy of social-impact programs and pursuing partnerships that create shared value for both brands and communities.
How Walmart collaborates for sustainable innovation
Another Monday morning workshop kicked off with moderator Solitaire Townsend, co-founder of Futerra, asking attendees to reflect on which sustainable behavior they can begin implementing into their daily lives. Addressed as ‘eco sins’ stakeholders can confront to live more sustainably, the room went around and shared key examples from SB’s 9 Sustainable Behaviors that resonate across many stakeholders — including preventing food waste, switching to more renewable energy, and purchasing sustainably made consumer goods. Attendees quickly realized that while we all wish to live up to our values and stay committed to them, outside factors can often get in the way of this commitment — hence, the pesky intention-action gap when it comes to adoption of more sustainable behaviors.
The session then proceeded with insights from professionals across Walmart’s Marketing and Sustainability departments — Christopher Kreutzner (Senior Counsel of Sustainability & ESG), Marco Reyes (Senior Director of Sustainability), and Courtney Killingsworth(Marketing Planning & Strategy, Brand & Reputation). The three panelists shared how they work together across departments to ensure that business goals can be met while prioritizing people and planet.
For example, Reyes uses his subject matter expertise to identify where Walmart can make an impact and scale that impact across the value chain. Killingsworth uses her influence to advocate for the voice of the customer; and Kreutzner ensures that Walmart mitigates risk while being able to achieve its sustainability targets. More and more consumers report wanting to make sustainable choices in their purchasing habits, and Walmart can show them where to start. Recently, Walmart launched its Built for Better initiative — a collaboration across functional teams that allows customers to add three criteria to their purchase decisions: For you, For communities, For the planet.
The panelists highlighted the cost of inaction and how crucial it is to understand different perspectives to create buy-in amidst competing priorities. Reyes admitted that nobody has all the answers, for the solution is not binary; he pointed out that friction between goals is good as it sharpens each other with the right set of values. He went on to say we are all making each other sharper towards a common goal.
Workshop attendees then engaged in a speed round of making a pitch on sustainable behavior — encompassing the behavior itself, three barriers that may be in the way, and three benefits that will overcome these barriers. Pitches included examples from solar energyand sustainable packaging to prompting more thoughtful consumption by embedding nature images inside snack wrappers.
The session concluded with all three panelists highlighting the importance of everyone in an organization being able to be part of solutions. The Walmart team said the retailer aims to include everyone in the conversation, from all lived experiences; and through their collaboration on sustainability goals, hopes to become an example of how to effectively do so.
Elevating the ‘S’ in ESG: Building culture, measuring impact and how to get things done
Today’s brands are expected to be authentic and transparent, and must find ways to manifest these as KPIs to achieve business goals. A Monday afternoon panel discussed the challenges in successfully executing against social social-impact goals and highlighted what brands can do now to build internal buy-in, shape more impactful social initiatives, and measure the value for the company and external stakeholders.
Michelle Waring, Steward for Sustainability and Everyday Good at Tom’s of Maine, said the company approaches ‘S’ by grounding it in transparency and commitment. The company has recently looked at its role as a heritage environmental brand that was founded as a business for good. 50 years later, the space has changed: Now, putting people at the center is key to an effective sustainability strategy, and is necessary to transition environmentalism away from a predominantly white-centric pursuit to one that engages the most vulnerable and efficacious stakeholders — such as BIPOC communities, frontline and fenceline communities, etc.
Kevin Wilhelm of Point B pointed out that the sentiment behind movements such as Black Lives Matter, Me Too, etc have always existed; but recent highly publicized events have spurred brands to make grandiose statements. Three years later, though, most brands haven’t followed through — and consumers have noticed. They are demanding follow-through, and transformative brands are serving it up by evolving traditional “S” approaches (philanthropic initiatives, etc) to tying social-impact outcomes to the success of the brand.
Spoiler alert: This is good for business, because consumers reward companies that walk their talk on these issues.
“As you start expanding and adding in other social components and bringing in environmental components and climate justice, all of a sudden you’ll have new opportunities and new solutions,” Wilhelm said. “So, we can flip it from ‘I don’t know how I’m going to do that’ to ‘look at this amazing opportunity.’”
Empower Co as taken a whole new approach to climate action by rewarding women for their contributions. In trying to solve the climate crisis, “what I find is that one of the most important cogs in the wheel is the ‘S’ part, the social impact part — particularly, that of women,” said Rachel Vestergaard, CEO and founder of Empower Co — whose W+ Standard is the first globally recognized framework and metric for measuring and monetizing women’s empowerment.
Empower Co looks at empowerment as an ecosystem: Women are empowered when they have the tools, resources, access and agency to make their own choices. This ecosystem invites corporations, governments and investors to support womens’ work and recognize its value. And that value, said Vestergaard, will pay its own way.
“What you’ll notice here is that there’s no philanthropy. We don’t need donations; we need you to value the contributions of women” and understand the myriad positive ripple effects that result from working to level the playing field for women around the world.
The panelists agreed that finding tangible ways to value the contributions of all that fall under “S” will pay for itself in both the short and near term.
Shaping responsible consumption in a shifting landscape
Today’s savvier consumers expect transparency from brands. At the same time, brands are balancing complex global supply chains, where clarity on the origins and footprint of raw materials can become clouded. On Tuesday morning, Herbal Essences shared how is is evolving decades of hair care leadership amidst shifting consumer and business landscapes. Joining the session was Herbal Essences’ partner, Kew Royal Botanic Gardens — a global plant-science institution committed to protecting biodiversity.
As consumer expectations have evolved, their tolerance for tradeoffs has decreased — ex: they increasingly have high expectations for clean, responsible ingredients.
“As we evolve, the importance of ingredients will continue to be front and center,” said John Scarchilli, Director of Brand and Scientific Communications at Procter & Gamble, parent company of Herbal Essences.
Kew has been working for 20 years to develop quality plant essences and verify their origin and that the material will support its intended use. They also ensure they’re responsibly derived — that transparency and chain of custody are maintained from plant to bottle.
As more and more key plant ingredients become threatened, ensuring these essential inputs continue to thrive becomes a central business model.
“In the effort to do that, we’re increasing the use of biodiversity,” explained Monique Simmonds OBE, BSc, PhD, Deputy Director of Science at Kew. “If we can have a greater diversity of plants being used in products like Herbal Essences, that can support the local communities that are looking after those [plants and habitat].”
This in turn prevents biodiverse lands from being deforested to make way for ranching or farming while still providing a source of income for people stewarding the land. Simmonds foresees an increase in diversification of plants used in consumer products — and with it, deeper partnerships with governments, growers and other partners to help protect biodiversity.
“Ingredients are going to continue to be front and center,” Scarchilli said. “Where they’re from, what they’re for, and how they’re sourced responsibly is moving to protect biodiversity all over the world.”
And no one brand or company can achieve this alone — which is where partnerships such as Herbal Essences-Kew’s come in.
“These programs work because they create value for all partners,” Scarchilli said. “Investing back into those communities helps to sustain the supply.”
In another Tuesday morning session, Jose Gorbea — Global Head of Brands and Sustainability Innovation at HP Graphic Arts — detailed HP’s partnerships with German label-maker LABEL!STEN and climate-action platform One Tribe to advance digital printing practices that not only reduce the environmental impacts associated with conventional printing but also create shared value.
For HP’s part, Gorbea described how the company is now using water-based inks that contain no hazardous air pollutants and meet stringent requirements for human health and the environment, and how the company’s corrugated packaging has now achieved Ecologo Certification.
LABEL!STEN CEO Frank Plechschmidt explained how personalization of product packaging — such as printing the faces of a brand’s supply-chain partners (for example, the farmers who grow your coffee) directly onto packaging — helps customers make an emotional connection to the people producing their product, while seeing how their purchasing choices can have a direct positive impact on the lives of farmers in the supply chain. Plechschmidt detailed a collaboration with HP in which they digitally printed coffee farmers’ faces on packaging for an Australian brand with local suppliers — the products with people’s pictures far outsold other versions of the packaging.
One Tribe CEO Ric Porteus then explained how his company of “nature fanatics” is building a set of tools and restoration projects that allow companies including HP, and their employees, to take direct action to help regenerate ecosystems. Their projects are created through partnerships with local indigenous tribes throughout the world and are typically focused on helping companies offset their Scope 3 emissions while restoring critical biodiversity.
Corporations are more likely to embrace sustainability when it benefits the bottom line. That isn’t surprising considering they are ultimately in business to make a profit. For many, purpose may very well come in second — if at all. Still, there’s more than one way to encourage businesses to do better by people and the planet.
TriplePundit spoke with Dr. Steven Cohen, a professor of public affairs at Columbia University and author of the new book “Environmentally Sustainable Growth,” about how the profit motive can catalyze the desired effect where shame and guilt have failed.
Incentivizing sustainability can be easier than it sounds
The best way to make corporations behave is by creating an environment in which doing so will help them make more money, Cohen argues. “In some cases, you don’t have to do anything other than educate people and say, you know, this will be a profitable item,” he told TriplePundit.
Cohen advocates for a carrot instead of a stick approach. He’s hopeful that making good behavior profitable will hasten more wide-sweeping changes at the business level than punishing or charging companies for the negative impacts they have. And he’s not alone in that opinion.
“Sustainability is on the cusp of an evolutionary leap,” Georgia Makridou of the ESCP (École Supérieure de Commerce de Paris) Business School wrote in an impact paper on the challenges confronting sustainable energy companies and their resulting tactics. “Sustainable companies are becoming the new norm as those that have a well-rounded approach to sustainability can see wide-ranging growth opportunities.”
Further, employees want to work for companies that align with their values. “If I’m in a business that requires talented engineers, talented designers and and so forth, to attract those people, I have to be a company they want to work for,” Cohen said. “That’s also incentivizing companies to start behaving this way: If you want to attract the best brains out there, then companies are under internal pressure to behave and to start focusing on their energy use and their waste and pollution.”
Dr. Steven Cohen unpacks practical steps to push sustainable business forward in his new book “Environmentally Sustainable Growth: A Pragmatic Approach,” out this month from Columbia University Press. Image provided.
Major companies reap cost savings through sustainability, while creating measurable impact that matters
Cohen gave examples of major multinational companies that moved toward sustainable practices because they foresaw a financial benefit. For example, “Walmart discovered they have a lot of flat roofs,” he said. All that space adds up vast solar energy potential — and Walmart and its big-box competitor, Target, are on the job.
Together, they’re the top two business installers of onsite solar. “In their case, you don’t have to do anything. They just had to internally figure out this was going to help them make money,” Cohen said. If fully harnessed, Walmart’s available roof space at stores across the country could produce enough solar energy to power more than 842,000 homes, according to the nonprofit Environment America.
This month Walmart also teased new plans to roll out electric vehicle charging stations at thousands of stores across the U.S. The move will help bring in shoppers, while making EV charging more accessible to millions of people in towns large and small.
One of the country’s top agricultural producers, Land O’Lakes, also cut its footprint through cost reduction measures. The company uses satellite telemetry, artificial intelligence, and robotics to ensure it doesn’t waste inputs like water, pesticides and fertilizer — using only what’s needed and none of what’s not. “They’ve now created a much more efficient form of agriculture, which also just so happens to cost less and pollute less,” Cohen said.
Apple’s engagement in sustainability came out of a need to satisfy its customer base. “[Young people] started to make the demand that Apple reduce the pollution [associated with] their products, and Apple has done that dramatically over the last 10 years,” Cohen said. He cited the company’s buyback program and the fact that it hired a former Environmental Protection Agency administrator to manage its environmental endeavors as examples. “It’s not required by the government, but in order to meet their market, they have to do that,” he said.
Incentives and regulations work. Shame and guilt doesn’t, this expert says.
That’s not to say there isn’t room for regulations — there still needs to be rules of the road. The key is a good balance between government regulations and the incentives provided by an improved profit margin, Cohen said.
“What doesn’t work is trying to shame people, to shame companies,” he argued. “People want to live their lives, and companies want to make money. I think that green principles are most effective when they line up with the self interest of people and of corporations. And when that happens, you see a lot of activity.”
As for how to shift from a scapegoating and punishment approach to one that focuses on financial rewards: “Instead of thinking about the company as an enemy, you think about the company as a partner,” Cohen said. “And the only way they’re going to be a partner is if they see they’re gonna make money out of it.”
Jean Pierre Azañedo, CEO and co-founder of CoreZero, share the importance of achieving a sustainable food value chain. By Jean Pierre Azañedo from Sustainability Magazine • Reposted: May 29, 2023
The journey from farm to table is characterised by loss and waste – from overproduction to accidental damage and unmet quality standards – these are just some of the “opportunities” for waste that are encountered amid the farm-to-table process. In fact,almost 40% of the food in the United States is wasted.
Not only does food waste cause greenhouse gas emissions and environmental damage, but it also exacerbates food insecurity in many communities. Like a vicious cycle, food waste accounts for 10% of total global emissions, yet, at the same time, the climate crisis is one of the main factors exacerbating food insecurity.
Since methane, a greenhouse gas that is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over twenty years, is released into the atmosphere when food ends up in landfills, it’s safe to say that minimising food loss across the supply chain should be treated as a priority, not as an option.
Food waste across the supply chain
Besides the release of greenhouse gasses, when food goes to waste, so do all the resources that were utilised for its production, processing, transportation, preparation, and storage. Food waste in the United States, for example, results in the loss of water and energy equivalent to building more than 50 million homes.
Consequently, it’s important to not only acknowledge the environmental effects of food waste but also to assess where food is specifically wasted and lost in the supply chain.
For starters, while discussions about food waste usually refer to the household and retail sections, more than 15% of food is dissipated before leaving the farm. As an example, due to price volatility, farmers may not end up moving products into the market since the food prices may be lower than the costs of processing and shipping. From damaged crops due to environmental and biological factors to products that do not meet cosmetic market standards, these are a few of the reasons that lead to food loss and waste during the production stage.
Then, in the handling and storage stage,food waste and loss can occur due to numerous different factors, but it mainly boils down to improper handling and storage. In the case of vegetables, loss predominantly happens because of spillage and degradation during loading and unloading and improper transportation and storage. Then, when it comes to meat products, loss often occurs due to condemnation in the slaughterhouse while, for fish, spillage takes place during the icing, storing, and packing processes. Despite high-income countries having adequate storage facilities in the supply chain, food loss still happens during the storage stage due to technical malfunctions, overstocking, or inadequate temperature.
While some inevitable losses happen during the processing and packaging stage such as the loss of milk during the processing of yoghurt, most of the losses in this stage of the supply chain occur due to technical problems. Similarly, packaging materials can contribute to food loss if they are not designed to preserve the freshness of the products.
Subsequently, in the transportation and distribution stage, food is lost, as the name implies, amid its transportation. In developing countries, for example, products may not meet cosmetic standards since they acquire bumps and bruises along the journey. Then, if food is delivered after its prime freshness window, it gets rejected in most cases. In Japan, for example, “the rule of one-third” entails that food and beverages must be delivered within one-third of their shelf life.
Finally, in the consumption stage, food is either wasted or lost in households or other food service establishments. In truth, the largest amount of food waste occurs in households, with 76 billion pounds of food being wasted annually per person in the United States. Moreover, the food wasted at this stage also has the largest resource footprint in the supply chain because of the resources utilised for its transportation, storage, and cooking.
A sustainable food value chain
While acknowledging the effects of food waste as well as its causes is crucial, in order to move forward, innovation is necessary. In fact, according to ReFED’s 2030 roadmap, the United States could reduce food waste by 45mn tonnes a year, cut GHG emissions by 75 million metric tons, and save food equivalent to four billion meals for those in need with the right policy changes and investments.
Since food waste has both societal and environmental effects, a sustainable food value chain should produce and distribute food in a way that is environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable. Essentially, this means that the food chain should function in such a way that it has minimal impact on the environment while ensuring that people have access to nutritious food and supporting the livelihoods of farmers and other food system employees.
A sustainable food value chain presupposes that all resources are used efficiently and sustainably and that waste is minimised. For instance, the food that is wasted during the production stage could be used to produce biogas or fertiliser through anaerobic digestion. Similarly, the ‘ugly’ food that doesn’t meet cosmetic standards could be kept out of landfills by being upcycled. That being said, for this transition to be resilient and sustainable, change needs to happen across the entire food chain.
For instance, in the production stage, food loss could be minimised through precision agriculture and improved agricultural practices such as crop rotation. However, precision agriculture technology will only work with education regarding sustainable agricultural practices and technologies. Alternatively, ‘waste’ can be repurposed by identifying alternative markets that might be interested in ‘imperfect’ products. Similarly, since the vegetables and fruits that do not meet cosmetic standards are still nutritious, they could be donated to food-insecure communities.
On the other side of the food chain, awareness is key to reducing food waste at the consumption stage. The problem of food waste boils down, especially in developed countries, to cultural expectations and preconceptions regarding food and its transition to ‘waste’. From shopping locally and more responsibly to using leftovers and composting food scraps, these are just a few examples of how food waste can be reduced at the household level.
Food waste minimisation: a necessity
From consumers composting food scraps and restaurants collaborating with food banks to edible by-products being developed into ingredients and local food distribution being promoted, a sustainable food value chain is achievable through collaboration.
However, food waste and loss need to be halved per person for the 2030 SDGs to be met, hence these tweaks in the food supply chain need to be treated as priorities instead of options. Since the effects of food waste are visible not only from an environmental perspective but also from an economic and societal one, an equitable and sustainable food system should result in improved food security and economic savings in addition to lowering greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing biodiversity.
Over three-quarters of consumers responding to The Packer’s 2023 Sustainability Insights survey considered sustainability a priority when making purchasing decisions. Photo: billtster, Adobe Stock; Design: Wayne Hardy
By Kristin Leigh Lore from thepacker.com • Reposted: May 29, 2023
While over three-quarters of consumers consider sustainability a priority when making purchasing decisions, what the term sustainability signifies to a particular shopper — from food waste to carbon emissions — depends on many factors, such as age, according to The Packer’s 2023 Sustainability Insights survey.
Added to this, what consumers mean when they use the term sustainability varies widely. Top themes remain consistent from 2022’s survey responses and evoke words associated with the environment, recycling and long-lasting traits.
Despite multiple meanings, in 2023 consumers indicated they are shifting sustainable priorities down a notch, according to survey responses.
Consumers in the 2023 survey viewed sustainability as less important in shaping their buying decisions, compared with 2022. This year’s survey revealed a 9-percentage-point decrease in consumers reporting that sustainability was a “primary priority,” and responses that said sustainability was “not a priority” rose 4 percentage points compared with 2022 responses.
And while climate change is still rated as important overall by consumers, when asked how important addressing climate change is to their overall sustainability priorities, consumers reporting that it is “extremely important” fell by 12 percentage points.
The link between climate change and sustainability remains a close bond, however. Consumers that place a high value in sustainability are more likely to rate climate change as a key concern.
WHO STEERS THE DEMAND FOR SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTS?
Given the choice between farmers, policymakers, food retailers and consumers, 60% of consumers surveyed still believe that they drive demand for sustainably produced goods, up 8 percentage points from 2022.
Climate change remains the No. 1 reason consumers seek out sustainable products, but responses indicating this is a top motivation dropped from 35% in 2022 to 30% in the 2023 survey.
Other reasons consumers cited as driving purchase decisions of sustainable goods included:
Google Cloud & Harris Poll shared that 59% of executives overstate how they approach sustainable messaging. Here’s how companies can improve their efforts. By Lucy Buchholz from Sustainability Magazine • Reposted: May 29, 2023
Sustainability has become a popular topic as you hear climate change news daily. Ocean temperatures are rising, leading to melting glaciers and migrating ocean species. Storms have become more volatile, increasing the number of floods and torrential storms worldwide.
Research shows climate change has strengthened hurricanes and raised storm surges due to rising sea levels. In late 2022, you could see the planet’s wrath through Hurricane Ian. The Category 5 storm devastated the Southeast, especially Florida.
Tom Knutson, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), says rising sea levels exacerbate flooding from hurricanes. The problem will only worsen as rainfall rates rise this century.
Many have experienced the devastating effects, leading to a push for more sustainability efforts. You may have found ways to lower your carbon footprint by reducing your carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. What about the rest of the country?
Talking about sustainability efforts is easy — following through with actions is a different story. Many Americans say they incorporate sustainable practices only to impress their friends. Reality shows another picture.
A March 2023 survey finds 53% of Americans exaggerate their sustainable practices. The same poll reveals 54% will revert to unsustainable actions if they’re alone.
Jessica Hann, senior vice president of Avocado Green’s brand marketing and sustainability, says: “When it comes to sustainability, it matters less what people think and more that we all just do the best we can.”
The detrimental impact of greenwashing
Organisations that greenwash mislead customers about the environmental impact of their products and services. They may also use climate-friendly initiatives for PR to cover their environmental malpractice.
A 2023 survey finds more than half of companies admit to greenwashing. Google Cloud and Harris Poll asked executives how they approach sustainability messaging – 59% said they overstate or inaccurately represent sustainable practices.
For the planet’s sake, greenwashing needs to come to an end. Better knowledge and improved technology allow you to be friends with the environment instead of an enemy. These four strategies demonstrate how employers can help themselves and their employees improve their sustainability efforts:
1. Apply for sustainability certifications
A terrific way to prove your sustainability initiatives is to achieve certification. For example, you can receive Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) accreditation if your building complies with the requirements. Getting LEED requires passing an examination with the United States Green Building Council.
LEED is one of the most popular accreditation programs, but many others exist. For example, there’s the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (SAI). This program tracks organisations in the agricultural industry and scores sustainability efforts by awarding bronze, silver or gold status. Achieving SAI’s gold equivalence means your organization has high marks in biodiversity, soil management and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
2. Introduce renewable energy
Buildings have significantly contributed to current climate issues. Data from the International Energy Agency reveals they are responsible for approximately 35% of global energy use. These structures require burning fossil fuels, using steel and cement in construction, and generating electricity and heat. The current blueprint for energy use is less sustainable as demand grows with the world’s population.
One way to reduce your employees’ carbon footprint in the office is to introduce renewable energy. The easiest way to do that is with solar panels. These systems harness the sun’s power and convert it into electricity for your building. You’ll create energy instead of relying on the electrical grid.
Now is an excellent time to buy a solar panel for residential and commercial purposes. The federal government extended the solar tax credit through 2033. Purchasing solar panels allows you to get a 30% rebate on the panels, labour costs and various equipment required for installation.
Today’s businesses must be conscious of their environmental impact. It matters for their carbon footprint and environmental, social and governance (ESG) scores. Your ESG rating is vital because it demonstrates your social responsibility to investors and consumers.
One way to improve your ESG scores is to rethink your supply chain and make it more efficient.
For example, consider your suppliers. Are they domestic or international? International partners may have low costs, but the environmental impact is more significant due to the higher demand for fossil fuels.
You can shorten the supply chain by partnering with domestic companies – preferably in your state. These businesses shorten your lead times and reduce your business’s environmental impact.
4. Conserve water
Water is critical in industries like agriculture, construction, fashion and more. Even if you don’t work directly with it, you still need it for bathrooms and water fountains inside the office. The world’s freshwater supply has increasingly become concerning. Cities and states in the Southwest often implement water limits to conserve the resource in the summer.
Your office can become more sustainable by increasing water efficiency. Use low-flow faucets and toilets to minimize use and only consume what’s needed. These systems reduce water usage and lower the money spent on this utility. Nowadays, you can utilize smart technology to monitor use and see where to improve.
Help employees help the planet
Sustainability has become a vital topic of discussion lately. The conversation is necessary as the world faces the wrath of climate change. Most people agree it’s a problem but don’t always take the required actions.
Employees spend a large part of their day in the office, so you should help your colleagues reduce their carbon footprint at work. Incorporate renewable energy and obtain sustainability certifications. These actions demonstrate care for the environment and inspire employees to do more at home.
The complex issues facing business and society demand complex and collaborative solutions; disconnected, myopic management techniques are no longer effective.
Brands are adapting to a rapidly changing market in which customer demand for sustainable products and services continues to grow. In order to remain competitive, they must prioritize innovation while simultaneously juggling the multitude of tasks required to make it happen. Companies of all sizes are finding new ways to stay relevant in this ever-evolving landscape, and working hard to innovate and create sustainable solutions that will remain attractive to customers in the near and long term. It can be a difficult balancing act, but one that more and more companies are successfully managing.
Sustainable Brands (SB) Socio-Cultural Trends Research™ reveals that 70 percent of US consumers are looking for companies to provide sustainable products or services that will help them to live more sustainable lifestyles. Further, 78 percent say they will support companies that act sustainably by purchasing its products or services; and 73 percent report that, all else being equal, they would switch brands if a competitor offered a more sustainable version of the same product. The market is rewarding businesses that are acting on social and environmental challenges while simultaneously building brand trust in the process. It is imperative for today’s leading brands to implement industry tools that allow them to seamlessly embed sustainability across its organization.
As a health and wellness company, The Clorox Company recognizes the potential of its diverse portfolio of brands to touch people’s lives throughout every part of their day. Through its Sustainability Center, the company launched its 2030 strategy with the ambition to have every brand within its portfolio play a part in creating a more inclusive and sustainable world. To achieve these goals, Clorox needed to find a way to align its brand teams across the enterprise and engage consumers in storytelling strategies that would unlock higher brand performance and value.
To establish its baseline and create a common language, the company applied the SB Brand Transformation Roadmap® (SB Roadmap) at the brand level across the enterprise. The self-assessment revealed best practices and gaps across the SB Five Pillars of Brand Sustainability™ while also offering tangible targets to prioritize on its journey to becoming a sustainable enterprise. This tool allowed each of the brands to benchmark its current operational progress and then determine the actions each brand needed to take to advance its individual aspirations. Clorox says giving the technical teams the ability to own their individual Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) process was a huge win for garnering buy-in across the teams.
The process revealed that the Governance pillar was something that needed to be centrally managed, where subject-matter experts have the ability to standardize their overarching enterprise goals and business practices. The SB Roadmap process also motivated Clorox to identify specific emotional, functional and societal values to prioritize in its product development and marketing communications to take its brand influence with consumers and other stakeholders to the next level and beyond — including representation in public-policy positions and driving systemic change throughout the industry.
Implementing the SB Roadmap across the enterprise enabled The Clorox Company to:
Create cross-functional alignment on individual brand baselines and aspirations within the SB Roadmap framework
Streamline its process on how to benchmark and achieve its sustainability goals
Elevate the role and priority of sustainability messaging through both responsible ingredient sourcing and sustainable packaging choices
Receive increased earned media coverage for individual brands
“What we love about the SB Brand Transformation Roadmap® is it’s a self-assessment tool that helps a leadership team in our business units understand where the brand is on the journey and break down the steps to get from here to where they aspire to be.”
— Eric Schwartz, Chief Marketing Officer, The Clorox Company
Clorox’s central team has hosted 13 internal workshops to introduce the SB Roadmap into its business processes and to embed it into its annual strategic sustainability planning for every business unit across the portfolio. Through this transformative process, Clorox has fostered a culture of sustainability across its enterprise — allowing the teams to take a whole-systems approach to product design and innovation with an understanding of how they each contribute to the larger mission of the company.
In order to thrive in an increasingly challenged world, brands must quickly adjust their strategies away from the traditional ‘business as usual’ approach. Complex issues demand complex and collaborative solutions; disconnected, myopic management techniques are no longer effective.
By Romaine Seguin from Chain Store Age • Reposted: March 26, 2023
The retail industry is facing an excess inventory crisis. Whether it’s inflation, supply chain issues, or higher-than-anticipated returns, retailers are in a precarious position when it comes to a glut of merchandise that cannot be sold.
A 2022 report from AD Global Supply Chain Research estimates as much as 8% of stock, worth an astounding $163 billion, goes to waste every year. Not only is this bad for business, but it also creates an enormous environmental impact from the stock that gets discarded.
For retailers, the growing issue of product waste cannot be ignored. According to McKinsey, companies that are sustainability leaders consistently outperform the market in both the medium and long term. As a result, many retailers are putting greater focus on their ESG goals and becoming more thoughtful and strategic about product waste. What we’re seeing as a result is the opportunity to help people in need while solving a massive business challenge.
While excess inventory is a complex issue, there is a turnkey solution for retailers to transform the fate of these goods into a cost-effective, efficient and sustainable way to help people in need. With an in-kind donation program, companies can ensure that they are making the best use of inventory that cannot be sold for a variety of reasons (customer returns, out-of-season items, dead stock, etc.).
Whether it’s clothing, housewares, toiletries, school supplies, and even furniture and appliances, donating these goods to nonprofit organizations that serve those who are economically disadvantaged has a substantial impact on both the environment and the people who receive the items—a win/win/win all around.
To help solve their inventory problems, more than 400 of the world’s best-known companies (Amazon, Walmart, Gap Inc., and many more) work with Good360 for a turnkey solution from a single partner. Good360 distributes this donated product through our network of 100,000-plus pre-qualified and vetted nonprofit partners that serve a variety of causes, including homelessness, foster families, veterans’ services, natural disaster recovery and many more.
Good360’s stringent vetting process helps protect the brands we work with by ensuring that the donated items don’t end up on the secondary market. Once the product is sent to the nonprofits, it is then distributed within the communities they serve. For the donors, Good360 manages all the logistics and finds the appropriate nonprofit that has indicated a need for the items.
Once the nonprofit distributes the donated goods, we report back on the impact the donation has made so donors know exactly where it went and who it helped. So, whether it’s toys for a holiday drive, mattresses for a homeless shelter, or even automotive supplies for a nonprofit technical school in an underserved community, every donation has a unique and impactful story behind it, and we make sure that story is told.
To accommodate a wide range of both donor company and nonprofit needs, Good360 has developed a number of product philanthropy solutions. For example, Good360 matches individual store or distribution center locations with nearby nonprofits to help drive local impact with donated goods and build bonds with the community.
Additionally, Good360 brings large donations into our own distribution centers for sorting and reconfiguration in order to best meet nonprofit needs– from a single carton of personal hygiene items to full semi-truckloads of mattresses.
By making product donation placement and distribution seamless for donors, Good360 helps retailers, brands, and manufacturers solve the business challenges around unsellable inventory, demonstrate their leadership in responsible and sustainable business practices, and increase their social impact.
In many cases, donating product is a more economical decision than disposing of the goods. There may also be enhanced tax benefits, and we encourage companies to explore these options with their tax experts.
The bottom line: Retailers should consider donating excess inventory to help individuals facing challenging life circumstances get the goods they need. This way not only are they generating hope, but the products are given a new life, reducing waste, and helping build resilient communities for the future.
By Eric Linxwiler from mytotalretail.com • Reposted: May 25, 2023
The days when brands and retailers could turn a blind eye to where their products come from are over. Amid heightened awareness of social and environmental abuses throughout the supply chain, governments around the world are moving quickly to hold businesses accountable for the actions of their suppliers.
New supply chain due diligence laws are passing by the month across the globe, and the United States’ Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) is one of the strictest. Enacted last summer, the law forbids the importation of any goods produced or manufactured wholly or in part in the Xinjiang region of China on the presumption that were made with forced labor. It’s not sufficient for businesses to simply stop importing from Xinjiang, since U.S. Customs is authorized to stop shipments from any country of origin. Indeed, initial enforcement statistics for the UFLPA show that the majority of the 3,588 shipments detained during the first nine months of the law have originated from countries other than China.
The law’s scope covers all sectors and industries. When the law first went into effect, Customs singled out cotton, tomatoes and polysilicon as high priority commodities, but the agency has stressed that its enforcement priorities will evolve in response to changing data and intelligence about which products are most at risk. The agency has already started scrutinizing additional categories, including aluminum, steel, PVC and auto parts. Detainments under the law are likely to increase going forward, as Customs hires new agents and Congress continues to call for much tougher enforcement of the law.
To comply with the UFLPA and avoid potentially long and costly shipping detainments, brands and retailers need to implement two tactics in tandem: prevention and documentation. Retailers can drastically reduce the risk of forced labor in their supply chain by more closely vetting and monitoring their suppliers and strategically cutting high-risk vendors from their supplier base through supply chain mapping. This creates visibility into a company’s supplier base, allowing it to document all factories and suppliers involved in the transformation of raw materials into finished goods. Amid the growing complexity of the supply chain, this transparency is critically necessary for brands to make the most responsible procurement decisions.
Supply chain mapping alone isn’t enough to ensure compliance with the UFLPA, however. Retailers must also implement a system for tracking and documenting the complete chain of custody for all material components of every product they source. These records are key for rebutting the UFLPA’s presumption of forced labor.
In newly expanded guidance that Customs shared this past winter, the agency writes that importers must be able to provide documentation detailing “the order, purchase, manufacture and transportation of inputs throughout their supply chain.” Examples of that include records substantiating the parties involved in the sourcing and manufacturing of goods; documentation of the payments for and transportation of raw materials (including invoices, contracts, purchase orders, and other proofs of payment); and transaction and supply chain records (including packing lists, bills of lading, and manifests).
This poses a challenge for brands and retailers since most lack the proper systems to document the full provenance of their products and centralize supplier information, especially beyond the first and second tier. Even for businesses with vast supplier networks, however, the process can be made manageable by a multi-enterprise supply chain platform, which can help them easily collect and organize the documentation they need to adhere to the UFLPA and other global ESG regulations.
Eliminating Forced Labor, Preventing Detainments
In response to demand from our customers, TradeBeyond recently introduced a chain of custody tracking system as part of our platform’s order management module. It introduces a failproof process for tracking chain of custody and linking relevant documentation to purchase orders, including invoices, declarations and bills of lading, while creating safeguards to prevent orders with unfulfilled requirements from being shipped.
Our system lets retailers clearly define all their chain of custody requirements for each order to their suppliers, including optional and mandatory documentation. Vendors can then easily see a buyer’s requirements and attach all documentation. The system streamlines traceability processes for retailers while serving as a crucial safeguard by ensuring that all required documentation is centralized so it cannot get misplaced in lost emails with critical attachments.
In addition to introducing crucial visibility by centralizing documents in a readily accessible location, the system automatically flags any problems with chain of custody so merchandisers can correct them before shipments hit the water. As an additional safety measure, smart notifications alert retailers about orders that have unmet requirements. Visual dashboards conveniently show users at a glance how many orders have outstanding chain of custody issues, and whether key documentation has been requested, submitted, approved or rejected.
This technology will increasingly become standard as businesses continue to adjust to the UFLPA’s new normal, especially as reports mount about long and extremely costly detainment delays under the law. Of all the shipments detained so far under the UFLPA, more than half are still awaiting a decision from Customs, according to the agency’s latest data. Companies in violation of the law could face fines of up to $250,000, on top of the costs of wasted merchandise and missed retail windows.
Having an advanced platform to obtain, track and organize critical chain of custody documentation can help companies avoid these long detainments and, more importantly, it can prevent them from sourcing from high-risk suppliers in the first place. This is the kind of due diligence that’s necessary for businesses to permanently eliminate forced labor from their supply chains.
Eric Linxwiler is senior vice president of TradeBeyond, a company that connects retail supply chain operations from product development to delivery.
By Laureen Knudsen, Chief Transformation Officer, Agile Operations Division, Broadcom • Reposted: May 25, 2023
Across business types and industry sectors, sustainability initiatives have moved to the top of many leaders’ agendas. The topic continues to grow both more urgent and expansive. Within the sustainability rubric now fall efforts like reducing energy and resource consumption, meeting circular economy mandates, and reworking supply chains to address environmental and fair-trade principles.
The criticality and difficulty of sustainability initiatives
Demands in these arenas will only continue to intensify. These efforts are increasingly a priority for C-level executives, board members, shareholders, consumers, and regulators. And the stakes are high: When teams succeed with these efforts, stakeholders inside and outside the organization, not to mention future generations and the planet more broadly, stand to benefit.
While these sustainability imperatives are vital, many teams are struggling with execution. For too many teams, productivity continues to be stifled by manual chores, tedious status meetings, cumbersome roll-up reports, inefficient processes, and limited coordination across different stakeholder groups.
The either/or dynamic of legacy work approaches
When it comes to how work is managed in an enterprise, teams have essentially been left with two choices:
Registered. Some initiatives are registered. This means there’s a formal process associated with getting work done, including authorizing plans, establishing baselines, gaining approval, and monitoring and reporting on progress.
Unregistered. This category of work doesn’t follow any formally defined process—people just focus on getting things done. Teams use spreadsheets, slides, emails, post-it notes, and other manual tools to track work and collaborate.
Registered work is often employed for established work that falls within a particular domain. For example, a software development organization may have a formal, standardized process for how new products are developed. For most sustainability initiatives, however, no such registered options exist. Traditional domain-specific workflows aren’t applicable to many sustainability initiatives, which often require the participation of a number of different teams, departments, vendors, and more.
Plus, even if formal registered processes were established for sustainability initiatives, it would often introduce far too much overhead. This is especially true for smaller, ad hoc efforts. In these cases, the effort associated with managing registered activities may represent a bigger undertaking than the project itself.
The problem is that there traditionally haven’t been any enterprise tools for managing unregistered work. Simply winging it or building one-off spreadsheets or cloud-based checklists for each project means there’s disjointed efforts, silos, limited tracking, and many other negative implications. Ultimately, teams can’t quickly and efficiently deliver on their sustainability mandates.
A better alternative: Collaborative work management
The good news is that there is an alternative to the either/or dilemma many teams have been confronting. Collaborative work management offers a better way, giving teams the flexibility to work how they want, while providing capabilities that help maximize efficiency and productivity.
Teams simply create to-do lists, and, as initiatives grow, they can seamlessly share, automate, and report on these activities.
Anyone can start small by, say, identifying the first three steps of an effort. As the effort progresses, the to-do list is easily expanded to include new tasks and teams. The beauty of this approach is that when you start, you don’t have to know how big an effort will ultimately be, or how many people will be involved.
Collaborative work management enables you to:
Share to-do lists with people both inside and outside the organization, without any cumbersome onboarding or permission granting.
Alert stakeholders when tasks are completed, assigned, or delayed.
Automate manual tasks so teams can focus on delivering customer value.
With collaborative work management, you can take charge of your sustainability initiatives, ensuring they deliver maximum benefits for the business, stakeholders, and the environment.
To learn more about collaborative work management and how it can fuel the success of your sustainability initiatives, see our e-book, “Managing Sustainability with Clarity.”
Two-thirds of US adults surveyed want companies to continue environmental, social, governance action; more than half have positive view of the term. From Sustainable Brands • Reposted: May 24, 2023
New research released today from the Allison+Partners/Headstand Purpose Center of Excellence reveals more than half of US adults surveyed (56 percent) have positive views of the term “ESG” (environmental, social, governance); and nearly two-thirds (65 percent) want companies to continue their environmental, social and governance action. This mandate rings especially true for US Millennials, among whom 71 percent have positive viewpoints on ESG and 75 percent want companies to continue making progress.
Reconciling ESG: Rhetoric vs. Reality examines US sentiment toward ESG as the term and its application continue to come under fire. The study confirms that US consumers overwhelmingly want companies to continue working to create positive impacts around environmental, social and governance topics; and found that companies that authentically do so can expect myriad business and brand benefits.
Allison+Partners surveyed 1,001 US consumers aged 18 or older in April 2023. Further proving the consumer mandate, when respondents were asked if companies should continue progress against environmental, social and governance initiatives — and whether they wanted to hear what companies were doing in these areas — they were resolved in their response: An overwhelming majority of those surveyed want companies to communicate their action related to the environment (86 percent), society (85 percent) and governance (87 percent).
“In the many years I have been leading research and reporting on environmental, social and governance topics, the mandate from US stakeholders to address these areas has only grown,” says Whitney Dailey, EVP and co-lead of the Purpose Center of Excellence at Allison+Partners, who unveiled the research on Monday at Sustainable Brands®‘ Brand-Led Culture Change event. “While some may want to continue the debate to advance certain agendas, it’s clear that consumers want to continue seeing authentic action to protect their planet and communities.”
An Reconciling ESG: Rhetoric vs. Reality has emerged in response to what political conservatives perceive as anti-business and anti-growth ideas, as well as ‘woke’ policies and ideas that they find troubling from a societal standpoint; but the Biden Administration is taking a longer-term view in these areas and has vetoed proposed ‘anti-ESG’ legislation.
“The term ‘ESG’ has been intentionally conflated in certain conversations with all brand action related to minimizing negative impacts on society and the planet,” said Aaron Pickering, EVP and co-lead of the Purpose Center of Excellence at Headstand. “ESG has traditionally been used as a framework for investors to understand the financial risks associated with action or inaction on material business issues. The term was never intended to be a catch-all for corporate action and therefore, we need to do a better job as communicators.”
Despite respondents’ positive sentiment and conviction around ESG, the research points to continued confusion around the use and definition itself (which is also true of critics): Only 13 percent of respondents felt “extremely confident” they could define the term. Yet, confusing acronyms aside — when asked the specific issues they wanted to address, they prioritized the following top three issues: clean and safe drinking water (61 percent), reducing pollution/creating clean air (54 percent) and addressing human rights (52 percent).
Among US adults who believe companies should address these issues, when asked how important they think it is for companies to act in certain areas, they were near-unanimous:
99 percent — Clean and safe drinking water
98 percent — Reducing pollution/creating clean air
98 percent — Supporting communities
98 percent — Human rights
98 percent — Running an ethical company
97 percent — Anti-corruption
Further, many respondents believe companies should be steadfast in their commitments, even in the face of potential backlash (which companies including Bud Light and Disney are currently experiencing): More than half (53 percent) of US adults said they would stop buying from a brand if it stopped ESG action due to political pressure.
Clear and compelling communications even more critical in the face of greenwashing
The public mandate for companies to continue addressing these areas aligns with consumer considerations and shopping behaviors, as well. Around environment, 58 percent of US adults say they are more concerned about company’s environmental impact than they were in the past; and only a quarter (24 percent) said they do not actively look for information on a company’s sustainability initiatives when making a purchase.
Companies should be aware that this growing segment of US consumers is also increasingly skeptical of unsubstantiated environmental claims. In fact, only a quarter (25 percent) of respondents say they have not spotted greenwashing in their everyday shopping; and even more US consumers are likely to say the influx of greenwashing has made them question environmental claims (56 percent).
“The rise in greenwashing and confusion around terms and messages means thatcompanies must be more specific and exacting in their communications,” Pickering says. “Companies should tailor messages about their environmental and social impact efforts to individual stakeholder audiences — and when possible, talk about what has been changed in the short term as opposed to your plans far into the future.”
Understanding brand benefits and pitfalls
Strong ESG communications continue to be paramount — and the benefits (and pitfalls of not pursuing it) are clear: Two-thirds (66 percent) of US consumers feel better about companies that are addressing social and environmental issues; while on the flipside, nearly half (46 percent) said if they learned of a company addressing sustainability topics but not talking about it publicly, they would question that company’s authenticity.
“Smart communications around how environmental, social and governance topics help enhance the bottom line while benefiting stakeholders is how companies will ultimately win the anti-ESG debate,” Dailey asserts. “There is absolute certainty about growing stakeholder demands and the fact companies must continue protecting, rather than harming, people and the planet. We recommend avoiding distractions and staying laser-focused on the critical role companies play in building a sustainable future.”
Educators are looking at ways to tackle the ambiguity that exists around definitions and measurement. By Aruni Sunil from Sifted.com * Reposted: May 23, 2023
Researching and teaching sustainability is high on business schools’ strategic agendas. At the same time, startups are struggling with measurement, reporting, definitions, action and strategy — and the path to net zero.
We looked into how sustainability is currently taught at business schools, how it’s changing and what it should grow into so that Europe’s startups can achieve their sustainability goals.
Founders want more
For Laurence Lehmann-Ortega, professor of strategy and business policy at HEC Paris, companies struggle to measure environmental and social aspects because there’s a lack of standardisation.
“In finance, we’ve been building the standards for the past 70 years or so,” she says. “So there are no clear standards to measure ESG and I’m not sure we’ll get to very clear standards in the near future — the only common metric we’ve got now is measuring carbon emissions.”
It can be reductionist to measure just carbon emissions — metrics should be more industry and product-specific. For example, if your product is going to have a big impact on biodiversity because it’s in the agricultural space, it’s crucial to think about biodiversity first instead of carbon and the associated human rights challenges around agricultural commodities.
The only common metric we’ve got now is measuring carbon emissions That’s where business schools could come in.
For Prateek Mahalwar, founder of Bioweg — a startup producing bio-based ingredients to replace microplastics in personal care and food products — sustainability should be taught at business schools with one part focusing on what sustainability means in the broadest sense, and the second part focusing on quantification.
He says that discussing case studies tackling different aspects of sustainability such as energy or the use of raw materials is key for students to understand how sustainability works in the real world of business. It’s especially important to understand how startups can adhere to the new laws and regulations around sustainability such as the plastic packaging regulation, he adds.
Bioweg had MBA students working with its team through the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), a programme at HEC Paris that allows management students to work directly with companies, helping them develop financial models, evaluate potential markets and fine-tune their strategies.
“It’s a win-win — for the startup as well as for the student, not only in terms of exchanging knowledge or doing something practical, but also from the angle that there is a possibility for startup founders to hire them or get into the ESOP pool,” Mahalwar says.
A to ESG
As well as experiential learning through programmes like CDL, HEC Paris teaches sustainability as part of its strategy and entrepreneurship programmes.
Lehmann-Ortega says that there are two ways that sustainability is taught as part of strategy in theory. The first is how a business can adapt and rethink their business model to be more sustainable, and the second is advanced strategy which is about being “more proactive and coming up with a new business model”.
She says that there’s also differences in how different subjects address the topic of sustainability. “For an accounting professor, it’s about how carbon emissions can be measured and measuring the environmental and social impact of the organisation; for finance professors, it’s about how to finance it; and for marketing, it’s about how to educate your customer to think about it.”
Other business schools are also encouraging students to take part in environmentally and socially relevant initiatives.
Fabien Koutchekian was part of the CDL programme and is the cofounder of Genomines, a biotech that enhances the natural ability of plants to absorb metals. For him, teaching sustainability is primarily about tackling misinformation in the sector and for entrepreneurs to be more involved in the space of regulations and policy making.
“There’s this mentality now that we are doomed and nothing will save us from what the previous generation has done to the environment. But I don’t believe this — we have to fight, we have to create startups, create innovation and change the regulatory environment, to spur innovation and research in the field,” he says.
For Lehmann-Ortega, sustainability is here to stay in business schools.
“We don’t need standalone courses about sustainability — this doesn’t make any sense anymore. Every single course should have it — it’s about how you adapt the curriculum to the current shift that’s going on in the world,” she says.
“This reminds me of what happened 10 to 15 years ago with the shift to digital. We all had to integrate classes about digital marketing and so on, and now you can’t teach marketing anymore without digital.”
Mahalwar agrees, adding that sustainability isn’t dismissed as a passing fad anymore — it’s part of the core business in both startups and corporates. “Companies are paying attention to whole supply chains and committing at every level to look into carbon emissions, ESG goals and so on.
“This creates a need for future hires to have knowledge in that area, and not only people who go into businesses with impact at their core, but also in other areas such as finance, strategy, product and procurement.”
At any given time, there are about a million green startups exploring new energy solutions. As of 2023, there are also at least 13k large and medium-sized companies in Europe transitioning towards more sustainable operations.
This has to come from students, because they are the future of politics, the future of innovation and the future leaders
“There hasn’t been a single moment in the history of mankind where there were so many brains solving the same issue at the same time. It needs to keep going and we need to put in the work to find solutions,” says Koutchekian.
“More capital is needed and politicians have to create policies that stimulate the economy along with taxing polluting activity and so on — and this has to come from students, because they are the future of politics, the future of innovation and the future leaders.”
By Corporate Wellness Magazine * Reposted: May 23, 2023
In recent years, sustainability has become a hot topic in the corporate world, as businesses recognize the importance of minimizing their environmental impact. However, there is a hidden connection between sustainability and employee wellness that often goes unnoticed. By adopting sustainable practices, companies can positively influence the physical and mental well-being of their employees. In this article, we will delve into the various ways in which sustainability and employee wellness intersect, emphasizing the benefits that arise from aligning these two vital aspects of corporate culture.
Creating a Healthier Work Environment:
Sustainable initiatives such as improving indoor air quality, optimizing lighting, and implementing ergonomic workstations contribute to a healthier work environment. Studies have shown that these factors directly impact employee well-being, leading to increased job satisfaction, productivity, and reduced absenteeism. When employees are provided with clean air, adequate lighting, and ergonomic workstations, they experience fewer health issues such as eye strain, respiratory problems, and musculoskeletal disorders. By prioritizing sustainability, organizations demonstrate their commitment to providing a conducive workplace that enhances both physical and mental health.
Encouraging Active Transportation:
Promoting sustainable commuting options such as walking, cycling, or carpooling not only reduces carbon emissions but also encourages employees to engage in regular physical activity. Active transportation is known to improve cardiovascular health, lower stress levels, and boost overall fitness. By integrating sustainable transportation programs, companies can facilitate employee wellness while reducing their environmental footprint. Implementing bike-friendly facilities, offering incentives for carpooling, or providing shower facilities for employees who walk or cycle to work can contribute to a healthier workforce.
Access to Nature:
Sustainable workplaces often incorporate elements of nature, such as green spaces, rooftop gardens, or indoor plants. These features not only enhance aesthetics but also provide numerous mental health benefits. Exposure to nature has been linked to reduced stress, improved mood, increased creativity, and enhanced cognitive function. By incorporating sustainable design elements that bring nature into the workplace, organizations can create a more calming and nurturing environment for their employees. Additionally, employees can be encouraged to take breaks in outdoor areas or engage in nature-inspired activities to further promote their well-being.
Stress Reduction and Mindfulness:
Sustainability efforts often align with practices that promote stress reduction and mindfulness. Initiatives such as encouraging breaks, providing meditation spaces, or offering wellness programs help employees manage stress and improve mental well-being. The corporate world is often fast-paced and demanding, leading to high levels of stress and burnout. Sustainable companies understand the importance of addressing the holistic needs of their workforce, recognizing that employee wellness is key to long-term success. By incorporating mindfulness practices, such as meditation or yoga sessions, into the workday, companies can provide employees with tools to reduce stress, improve focus, and enhance overall well-being.
Engaging employees in sustainability initiatives can foster a sense of purpose and pride within the organization. When employees feel that their work contributes to a greater cause, it boosts their overall job satisfaction and motivation. Sustainability projects provide employees with an opportunity to make a positive impact on the environment and society, creating a sense of fulfillment beyond their everyday tasks. By involving employees in sustainability projects, companies can enhance their well-being by nurturing a sense of community, empowerment, and fulfillment.
Collaboration and Team Building:
Sustainability often requires cross-departmental collaboration and teamwork. Initiatives such as waste reduction, recycling programs, or energy-saving campaigns encourage employees to work together towards a common goal. These collaborative efforts not only promote a positive work culture but also strengthen team dynamics and relationships. Through sustainability practices, companies can create a supportive and cohesive work environment, fostering employee wellness through meaningful connections. When employees come together to achieve sustainability goals, they build trust, communication, and a shared sense of purpose. Team members learn to rely on each other’s strengths, fostering a collaborative spirit that extends beyond sustainability initiatives and positively impacts overall productivity.
Employee Recognition and Rewards:
Sustainable practices provide an opportunity for organizations to recognize and reward employees who actively contribute to sustainability efforts. By acknowledging their efforts, companies reinforce the value of employee engagement and foster a culture of appreciation. Recognizing employees’ contributions to sustainability not only boosts morale but also reinforces the connection between individual well-being and the organization’s mission. It encourages employees to continue their sustainable efforts, ultimately enhancing their overall wellness.
Educational and Skill Development Opportunities:
Incorporating sustainability into the workplace often requires learning new skills and staying updated on industry best practices. By offering educational opportunities and skill development programs related to sustainability, companies empower employees to enhance their professional growth and well-being. These programs can include workshops, webinars, or certifications that provide employees with the knowledge and tools to actively contribute to sustainability initiatives. Investing in employee development not only benefits the individual but also strengthens the organization as a whole.
Corporate Social Responsibility and Employee Pride:
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives often intersect with sustainability practices. When companies engage in socially responsible activities, such as community service or charitable partnerships, it fosters a sense of pride among employees. Employees who are proud of their organization’s commitment to sustainability and social responsibility experience higher job satisfaction and overall well-being. By aligning sustainability with CSR efforts, companies create a positive impact on both the environment and their workforce.
Work-Life Balance and Flexibility:
Sustainability initiatives can also contribute to improving work-life balance and flexibility for employees. Implementing measures like flexible work hours, remote work options, or compressed work weeks reduces commuting time and allows employees to better manage their personal responsibilities. This flexibility enables employees to achieve a healthier work-life balance, resulting in reduced stress levels and improved overall well-being.
Wellness Challenges and Competitions:
Sustainability and employee wellness can be further integrated through wellness challenges and competitions that focus on sustainable practices. For example, companies can organize competitions to encourage employees to reduce waste, conserve energy, or adopt sustainable lifestyle habits. These challenges not only promote sustainability but also foster a sense of camaraderie and friendly competition among employees. The combination of wellness and sustainability goals enhances employee engagement, boosts morale, and promotes a culture of well-being.
The hidden connection between sustainability and employee wellness is a powerful force that can transform the workplace and the lives of individuals. By adopting sustainable practices, organizations create healthier work environments, encourage physical activity, provide access to nature, reduce stress, and foster a sense of purpose and pride among employees. The positive impacts ripple beyond the workplace, contributing to the overall well-being of employees and society as a whole.
To further explore the importance of mental health in the workplace, we invite you to submit your inquiries through our contact form at https://www.corporatewellnessmagazine.com/contact-mental-health. Our team of experts is here to provide valuable insights and support. Together, let us embrace sustainability and employee wellness for a brighter, healthier future.
Alex Nicolaou, the Coca-Cola Co.’s senior manager for sustainability customer strategy. Photo: Ron Ruggless
Alex Nicolaou of Coca-Cola offers ideas for tapping into the growing consumer demand for restaurant commitments. By Ron Ruggless from Nation’s Restaurant News * Reposted: May 23, 2023
Sustainability is a restaurant trend that restaurant operators can capitalize on, an expert told a packed crowd at the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago on Saturday.
“It’s a trend that’s here to stay,” said Alex Nicolaou, the Coca-Cola Co.’s senior manager for sustainability customer strategy, on Saturday at an educational session entitled “Driving Growth with Sustainability.”
About 62% of U.S. consumers surveyed in 2022 said they would reward restaurants that showed a sustainability commitment, Nicolaou said.
In addition, the restaurant operator commitment has grown, he said. In 2019, for example, 58% of operators said sustainability activities were necessary to remain competitive in foodservice. In 2022, that number had grown to 65%, Nicolaou said.
However, he added, “Sustainability can’t be just a marketing slogan. It has to be lived.”
Nicolaou suggested restaurant operators partner with trusted organizations such as the Clean Conservency, the National Park Service or Shoreline Cleanup to give their sustainability programs legitimacy.
“Customers are looking for optimism,” he said. “There is so much lack of trust in this space.”
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