August Saw Record Jump in U.S. Clean Diesel, Hybrid Car Sales

September 11, 2013, 2:25 pm

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While August was a robust month for passenger vehicle sales in the U.S. — registering a 17 percent increase compared to August 2012 — there were remarkable jumps in sales of clean diesel and hybrid cars, with diesels showing a 41.8 percent increase and hybrids experiencing a 38.1 percent increase compared to this time last year, according to data compiled by Hybrid Cars.com and Baum and Associates.

For clean diesels, August’s 41.8 percent increase was preceded by a 38.1 percent in July 2013 over July 2012. It was the 32nd monthly increase in diesel car sales in the past 36 months, with 27 of those months registering double-digit increases.

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Project Recover Exploring Viability, Options for Eliminating Paint Waste

September 11, 2013, 3:38 pm

≫ Next: SBIO Winner Fenugreen Poised to Change the World - Could Your Startup Do the Same?

≪ Previous: August Saw Record Jump in U.S. Clean Diesel, Hybrid Car Sales

Global design and innovation firm Seymourpowell today announced a collaboration with leading global paint company AkzoNobel Decorative Paints to explore and improve the process of recycling used paint — thus closing the loop of paint production.

As part of a project jointly funded by the UK’s innovation agency, the Technology Strategy Board, Seymourpowell has made an educational video highlighting the possibilities and benefits of paint recycling, and has also identified a completely new technology to help scale and speed up the paint-recycling process for greater business viability.

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SBIO Winner Fenugreen Poised to Change the World - Could Your Startup Do the Same?

September 11, 2013, 5:01 pm

≫ Next: California Startup Creates Self-Filtering Water Bottle

≪ Previous: Project Recover Exploring Viability, Options for Eliminating Paint Waste

It’s been only a few months since Fenugreen won the Innovation Open at the Sustainable Brands ’13 conference, but you wouldn’t know it based on their momentum and accomplishments since. Since winning SBIO, the company’s brilliantly simple product, FreshPaper, has been featured on NBC’s Today Show, Bloomberg, CNN, Dr. Oz and on Oprah’s Wow List.

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California Startup Creates Self-Filtering Water Bottle

September 11, 2013, 11:26 pm

≫ Next: NASCAR Green Recognizes Achievements of Seven Motorsports Facilities

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A Southern California-based start-up called Evo Eau says it has created a reusable water bottle that filters up to 99 percent of contaminants from municipally supplied tap water.

The bottle is engineered for everyday use and does more than many of its mainstream competitors in terms of filtering out contaminants and harmful carcinogens such as Chromium 6 in tap water, Evo Eau claims.

The start-up says that many filtering water bottles only conform to NSF42 standards, which only asks for filters to remove 50 percent of chlorine from water. Many do not even conform to these standards and bottled water companies are held to even fewer.

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NASCAR Green Recognizes Achievements of Seven Motorsports Facilities

September 12, 2013, 12:04 am

≫ Next: Nestlé, Volkswagen, SAP, Air France Named Industry Leaders in 2013 Dow Jones Sustainability Indices

≪ Previous: California Startup Creates Self-Filtering Water Bottle

Seven motorsports facilities operated by the International Speedway Corporation (ISC) received the NASCAR Green track operator award during the recent 2013 NASCAR Green Summit.

The award recognizes motorsports facilities for ongoing contributions to developing effective and sustainable green policies and practices. Now in its fifth consecutive year, the 2013 NASCAR Green Summit examined the substantive initiatives that have helped NASCAR make notable strides toward reducing the impacts of its sporting events nationwide.

These facilities were recognized for their individual efforts:

Auto Club Speedway of Southern California

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Nestlé, Volkswagen, SAP, Air France Named Industry Leaders in 2013 Dow Jones Sustainability Indices

September 12, 2013, 1:55 pm

≫ Next: Ecosystem Services & Corporate Sustainability: Integrating the Value of Forests Into Business with REDD+

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S&P Dow Jones Indices, one of the world’s largest providers of financial market indices, and RobecoSAM, an investment specialist focused on sustainability investing, today announced the results of the annual Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) review. Launched in 1999, the DJSI were the first global indices to track the financial performance of the leading sustainability-driven companies worldwide.

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Ecosystem Services & Corporate Sustainability: Integrating the Value of Forests Into Business with REDD+

September 12, 2013, 3:05 pm

≫ Next: 10% of World's Largest Companies Produce 73% of GHG

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Ecosystem services— or the flows of natural capital from the environment into human economies and societies – have traditionally been thought of and treated as ‘free,’ resulting in their mismanagement and degradation. Emerging research is beginning to change this paradigm by quantifying the values of ecosystem service flows — and the implications are becoming especially relevant for corporations.

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10% of World's Largest Companies Produce 73% of GHG

September 12, 2013, 11:55 pm

≫ Next: Sustainable Restaurant Association Inaugurates Accreditation Program for Food Destinations

≪ Previous: Ecosystem Services & Corporate Sustainability: Integrating the Value of Forests Into Business with REDD+

Fifty of the world’s 500 largest companies are responsible for nearly three quarters of the group’s 3.6 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, according to the CDP Global 500 Climate Change Report 2013.

Most of the top 50 carbon-polluting companies operate in the energy, materials and utilities sectors, the report says. The carbon dioxide emitted by these companies has risen by 1.65 percent to 2.54 billion metric tons over the past four years — equivalent to adding more than 8.5 million pickup trucks to the streets.

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Sustainable Restaurant Association Inaugurates Accreditation Program for Food Destinations

September 13, 2013, 12:46 am

≫ Next: Flint and Tinder on a Mission to Revive the American Cut-and-Sew Industry

≪ Previous: 10% of World's Largest Companies Produce 73% of GHG

The Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA) has launched its first sustainability accreditation for food destinations, developed with retail landlord Hammerson.

The first initiative of its kind, SRA says the new rating will be rolled out to a variety of destinations, including shopping centers, airports, stadiums and stations.

Hammerson’s WestQuay shopping center in Southampton, UK was the first location to achieve the new Sustainable Restaurant Association Food Destination rating, which now allows its 17 million annual shoppers to select from a range of restaurants that source ingredients more responsibly and manage food, water, energy and waste more efficiently.

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Flint and Tinder on a Mission to Revive the American Cut-and-Sew Industry

September 14, 2013, 1:30 pm

≫ Next: Walmart Shares Its Sustainability Success Stories at Milestone Meeting

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It seems that starting a successful business can happen at any time and to anyone. All it took for Jake Bronstein was a look at where all his underwear was manufactured. Once he realized that 99% of all men’s underwear sold in the U.S. was produced in developing nations, he organized a Kickstarter campaign in April 2012 with a mission to change that, build a better product, and help revive the American cut-and-sew industry (a mission shared by like-minded clothing manufacturer SustainU).

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Walmart Shares Its Sustainability Success Stories at Milestone Meeting

September 13, 2013, 2:58 pm

≫ Next: Do One Thing: Lessons in Driving Employee Engagement

≪ Previous: Flint and Tinder on a Mission to Revive the American Cut-and-Sew Industry

Yesterday, Walmart broadcast its Global Sustainability Milestone Meeting through its online portal The Green Room. The meeting celebrated the global retailer’s progress since the launch of its Sustainability Index in August 2012, a collaborative measurement tool that monitors product environmental impact. The essential role of partnerships in achieving progress, alongside the benefits of Walmart’s size and scale in influencing positive change, were key undertones.

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Do One Thing: Lessons in Driving Employee Engagement

September 14, 2013, 2:00 pm

≫ Next: Move Over Eco-Efficiency, Here Comes Eco-Immunity - Part One

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At Saatchi & Saatchi S we believe that employees are not only the heart and soul of a company, they are a company’s greatest asset in propelling and achieving its sustainability vision. At its most inspirational, employee engagement is also about magnifying the power of individual actions to effect large-scale change.

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Move Over Eco-Efficiency, Here Comes Eco-Immunity - Part One

September 14, 2013, 12:46 pm

≫ Next: 10 Finalists in Cradle to Cradle Product Innovation Challenge Show What’s Next in Green Building

≪ Previous: Do One Thing: Lessons in Driving Employee Engagement

For most of what passes for mainstream business today, it is still lamentably the case that profits trump sustainability, and thereby put natural resources and human well-being at risk. The only incentive for managers to do anything that even remotely resembles sustainability in business is to either lower costs or comply with the law — or so the prevailing zeitgeist tells us.

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10 Finalists in Cradle to Cradle Product Innovation Challenge Show What’s Next in Green Building

September 15, 2013, 4:26 pm

≫ Next: General Mills Joins Dow Jones Sustainability Index

≪ Previous: Move Over Eco-Efficiency, Here Comes Eco-Immunity - Part One

Products from ten companies have been selected as finalists for the Cradle to Cradle (C2C) Product Innovation Challenge, sponsored by the Schmidt Family Foundation and the Dutch Postcode Lottery. Three winners will be selected from this group and will share a cash prize of $250,000.

The Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute, in partnership with Make It Right, launched its first-ever Product Innovation Challenge in November 2012. By June, over 100 products had been entered for consideration.

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General Mills Joins Dow Jones Sustainability Index

September 15, 2013, 12:43 pm

≫ Next: GM Facility Among 5% of Data Centers to Earn LEED Gold Certification

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General Mills has been named to the Dow Jones Sustainability North America Index (DJSI) by S&P Dow Jones Indices and investment specialist RobecoSAM after demonstrating best-in-class performance against numerous sustainability metrics, according to a recent announcement.

The DJSI provides analysis of financially material economic, environmental and social practices, including innovation or supply chain management, climate strategy and stakeholder engagement, with a special focus on industry-specific risks and opportunities.

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GM Facility Among 5% of Data Centers to Earn LEED Gold Certification

September 15, 2013, 2:23 pm

≫ Next: Chipotle Launches Assault on Big Food with Short Film, and There's More to Come

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The General Motors Enterprise Data Center in Warren, Michigan recently received Gold certification by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program, putting it among the fewer than 5 percent of data centers in the U.S. to achieve such certification. This marks the company’s fifth LEED-certified facility.

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Chipotle Launches Assault on Big Food with Short Film, and There's More to Come

September 16, 2013, 11:30 am

≫ Next: The Evolution of Social Impact Metrics: Where Math and Computer Science Meet the Humanities

≪ Previous: GM Facility Among 5% of Data Centers to Earn LEED Gold Certification

Chipotle keeps sticking its neck out for "sustainable," locally produced food — now with an animated short-film attack on "Big Food" and with the promise of more expansive and aggressive efforts to come.

"The Scarecrow" is a 3-1/2-minute film that Chipotle Mexican Grill released online last week that depicts what the brand calls "a dystopian fantasy world" in which "all food production is controlled by fictional industrial giant Crow Foods. Scarecrows have been displaced from their traditional role of protecting food, and are now servants to the crows and their evil plans to dominate the food system."

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The Evolution of Social Impact Metrics: Where Math and Computer Science Meet the Humanities

September 16, 2013, 3:19 pm

≫ Next: AdAge Releasing New Report on Navigating FTC Green Guides

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The usefulness of advanced data analytics — Big Data, small data and everything in between — is converging with the needs of corporate sustainability, and this is creating new opportunities for companies pursuing ambitious sustainability goals.

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AdAge Releasing New Report on Navigating FTC Green Guides

September 16, 2013, 12:54 pm

≫ Next: The Emerging, Not-for-Profit Economy

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Advertising Age is releasing a report today entitled “How to Make Credible Green Marketing Claims: What Marketers Need to Know about the Updated FTC Green Guides.” Co-authored by Jacquelyn Ottman of J. Ottman Consulting and David Mallen from the National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau, the report comes just in time for the one-year anniversary of the most recent update of the Guides.

The FTC published the first edition of the Green Guides in 1992, to help advertisers avoid deceptive or misleading environmental marketing claims. These Guides are now the go-to standards for green marketing claims and have counterparts in Canada, UK and Australia.

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The Emerging, Not-for-Profit Economy

September 16, 2013, 4:21 pm

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Across numerous countries, the economic contribution of the not-for-profit sector has been on the rise since the late 1990s. In Canada, for example, not-for-profit institutions now contribute 8% of the country’s gross domestic product. I believe that, in the coming 30 years, this trend will accelerate to the point that not-for-profit business replaces private enterprise at the center of all domestic economies.

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