UK Brewers Meet 2020 Carbon Target Eight Years Early

December 26, 2013, 3:48 pm

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The UK brewing sector says it has met its 2020 carbon emissions target eight years early, is on track to achieve its 2020 target for improved water efficiency and is making significant progress in reducing excess packaging and waste, as detailed in Brewing Green 2013, a new report published by the British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA).

“The brewing industry has been working hard to minimise its environmental impact for decades,” said BBPA Chief Executive Brigid Simmonds. “These latest figures demonstrate that the sector is taking its environmental commitment seriously and delivering results.”

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Fashion Revolution Day: A Global Movement to Clean Up an Industry

December 26, 2013, 7:05 pm

≫ Next: Enough with the Semantics! Let's Get Down to Business

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For those within the fashion industry who have been working for many years to highlight the need for more transparent, traceable and accountable supply chains, the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh was a metaphorical call to arms. The days following the tragedy saw a plethora of articles calling for a more ethical fashion industry and we looked for ways to channel this energy and momentum into lasting change.

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Enough with the Semantics! Let's Get Down to Business

December 27, 2013, 6:33 pm

≫ Next: Cheese Brine Helping De-Ice Milwaukee Roads, Make Them 'Smell Like Wisconsin'

≪ Previous: Fashion Revolution Day: A Global Movement to Clean Up an Industry

I have a bit of a bone to pick. Over the past couple of years, numerous well-intended articles have attempted to crystallize a moniker and definition for the work that we do. Universal language might help guide our efforts, but I don’t think we’re far enough down that road to worry about arriving at a consensus.

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Cheese Brine Helping De-Ice Milwaukee Roads, Make Them 'Smell Like Wisconsin'

December 27, 2013, 7:22 pm

≫ Next: 10 Sustainable Business Stories Too Important to Miss

≪ Previous: Enough with the Semantics! Let's Get Down to Business

Turns out there’s a use for the often-stinky liquid used to brine cheese — de-icing roads. Milwaukee is using cheese brine, usually a waste by-product of the cheese-making process, to de-ice the city’s dangerously slick roads this winter, according to the New York Times. The city says the brine is a cheaper and more environmentally friendly alternative to rock salt, which can end up polluting waterways.

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10 Sustainable Business Stories Too Important to Miss

December 30, 2013, 12:15 pm

≫ Next: McDonald's Pulls Employee McResource Site After Scrutiny Over Misguided Lifestyle Advice

≪ Previous: Cheese Brine Helping De-Ice Milwaukee Roads, Make Them 'Smell Like Wisconsin'

Somehow it’s already year-end, a time to look back and try to make sense of what’s happened. Creating any “top” list of stories from 12 months is nearly impossible. But as I’ve done for the last 4 years, I’ll attempt to summarize some of the latest stories about the big environmental and social pressures on business, and how some innovative companies are dealing with them.

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McDonald's Pulls Employee McResource Site After Scrutiny Over Misguided Lifestyle Advice

December 30, 2013, 11:32 am

≫ Next: Stopping Global Deforestation: How to Turn Around a Giant (Part 2 of 2)

≪ Previous: 10 Sustainable Business Stories Too Important to Miss

As you may remember, McDonald's announced in September a partnership with the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, to increase customers' access to fruit and vegetables and promote these healthier options to help families and children to make informed dining choices. In keeping with this commitment, the fast-food giant attempted to do the same for its employees earlier this month by pointing out the difference between items such as a burger and fries and “healthier options,” apparently missing the irony of the situation.

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Stopping Global Deforestation: How to Turn Around a Giant (Part 2 of 2)

December 31, 2013, 8:21 am

≫ Next: Brands, Palm Oil and the Ugly Face of Beauty

≪ Previous: McDonald's Pulls Employee McResource Site After Scrutiny Over Misguided Lifestyle Advice

This is the fourth in a series of excerpts from Engaging Outraged Stakeholders: A How-To Guide for Uniting the Left, Right, Capitalists and Activists (Affinity Press, 2013), the new book from Future 500. Earlier this month, we posted the beginning of Chapter Two: The Power of Engagement, and learned six reasons to engage your activist stakeholders.

Nick Rowley

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Brands, Palm Oil and the Ugly Face of Beauty

December 30, 2013, 10:09 pm

≫ Next: Top 10 Ways Brands Used Their Power to Create a More Sustainable World in 2013

≪ Previous: Stopping Global Deforestation: How to Turn Around a Giant (Part 2 of 2)

After the recent piece regarding palm oil and the depredations its industrial cultivation rains on the heads of one of our most wonderful simian cousins, if there is anyone in the beauty industry or from one of its agencies that read it and didn’t end up feeling anything other than a creeping, yawing shame climb up their neck I would be staggered.

Sadly, whether they give enough of a flying arse to do or say anything about it has more to do with income, career, the unassailable truth of an utterly disinterested management structure and the luxury of distance.

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Top 10 Ways Brands Used Their Power to Create a More Sustainable World in 2013

December 31, 2013, 12:38 pm

≫ Next: Natura Asks: Why Do You Need What You Don't Need?

≪ Previous: Brands, Palm Oil and the Ugly Face of Beauty

2013 was a banner year for companies using their muscle to drive transformative change, both internally and globally. Without further ado, here is just a taste of some of the progress we found most inspiring.

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Natura Asks: Why Do You Need What You Don't Need?

December 31, 2013, 2:35 pm

≫ Next: Sustainability as an Emergent Property: What Can We Learn from the Super-Organisms?

≪ Previous: Top 10 Ways Brands Used Their Power to Create a More Sustainable World in 2013

In December 2011, Patagonia called US consumers to make more considered purchases with its famous “Don’t buy this jacket” ad and this year encouraged customers to value what they already have with its “Worn Wear” campaign. Along the same lines, Brazilian cosmetics company Natura launched in May 2013 a new flagship brand called SOU (meaning “I am”), reconciling low environmental impacts and low costs with high sensorial impacts and inviting users to a new kind of consumption.

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Sustainability as an Emergent Property: What Can We Learn from the Super-Organisms?

January 2, 2014, 11:37 am

≫ Next: Ford C-Max Solar Energi Concept Provides Sunny Glimpse of Future for Clean Vehicles

≪ Previous: Natura Asks: Why Do You Need What You Don't Need?

In the ongoing drive to create and communicate about sustainability in the emerging economy, it can be useful to conceive of sustainability not as a quantifiable end goal, but as an emergent property. An emergent property arises when individual components or actions, combined together, collectively generate a higher-level aggregate experience. Think democracy. Or plague. Or community. One does not "do" sustainability anymore than one "does" community. One co-creates community through all of the little deeds — hosting the potluck, planning the carpool, sharing the tool shed. Like community, sustainability — or any emergent property — arises out of the contributions made and conditions created in service of a shared reality.

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Ford C-Max Solar Energi Concept Provides Sunny Glimpse of Future for Clean Vehicles

January 2, 2014, 1:40 pm

≫ Next: IBM's Plastic 'Ninja Polymers' Could Be MRSA Bacteria's First Worthy Opponents

≪ Previous: Sustainability as an Emergent Property: What Can We Learn from the Super-Organisms?

Ford Motor Company announced today the C-MAX Solar Energi Concept, a first-of-its-kind sun-powered vehicle with the potential to deliver the best features of a plug-in hybrid without relying on the electric grid for fuel. The concept car will be exhibited at the 2014 International CES in Las Vegas next week.

Instead of powering its battery from an electrical outlet, the C-MAX Solar Energi Concept harnesses the power of the sun by using a special concentrator that acts as a magnifying glass, directing rays to solar panels on the vehicle roof.

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IBM's Plastic 'Ninja Polymers' Could Be MRSA Bacteria's First Worthy Opponents

January 2, 2014, 4:15 pm

≫ Next: Divine Obsolescence, Sustainability & the Silent 'S' in Business Transformation

≪ Previous: Ford C-Max Solar Energi Concept Provides Sunny Glimpse of Future for Clean Vehicles

A team of research scientists at IBM and Singapore’s Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) have drawn upon years of expertise in semiconductor technology and material discovery to crack the code for safely destroying the antibiotic-resistant and sometimes-deadly superbug MRSA.

IBM says the researchers have made a nanomedicine breakthrough by converting common plastic materials such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET) into non-toxic and biocompatible materials designed to specifically target and attack fungal infections.

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Divine Obsolescence, Sustainability & the Silent 'S' in Business Transformation

January 2, 2014, 4:54 pm

≫ Next: Consumers, Activists Declare Victory as General Mills Commits to Non-GMO Cheerios

≪ Previous: IBM's Plastic 'Ninja Polymers' Could Be MRSA Bacteria's First Worthy Opponents

Mention to a sustainability person that their career trajectory should be hurtling them towards some form of divine obsolescence and the reactions are, suffice to say, mixed.

The idea of them passing through some blissful reinvention to rise phoenix-like, only stronger and wiser, in some new primary function at the heart of the business doesn’t always ring everyone’s career bell.

The fact that they should wish to render their current position and the status they derive from it obsolete — a planned professional obsolescence — seems confusing to some, demeaning to others and otherwise simply, quietly terrifying to those who have been on the 'S' mission for so long.

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Consumers, Activists Declare Victory as General Mills Commits to Non-GMO Cheerios

January 3, 2014, 10:43 am

≫ Next: Listen to Your Critics: They Could Be Your Biggest Allies

≪ Previous: Divine Obsolescence, Sustainability & the Silent 'S' in Business Transformation

GMO Inside, a campaign of national non-profit organization Green America, celebrated a victory yesterday after target General Mills announced that its original Cheerios cereal would now be produced without the use of GMOs.

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Listen to Your Critics: They Could Be Your Biggest Allies

January 3, 2014, 1:02 pm

≫ Next: Disruptive Conservation: A New Thread to Connect Multi-Sector Values

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It was every retailer’s worst nightmare: Days after the Rana Plaza factory collapsed in one of the worst industrial disasters in recorded history, activists began plastering the Internet with pictures of clothing labels uncovered amongst the rubble of concrete and human remains. Amongst these, some of the world’s most recognized brands, including Mango, H&M and Walmart.

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Disruptive Conservation: A New Thread to Connect Multi-Sector Values

January 3, 2014, 3:16 pm

≫ Next: Not Magic, Science: Startup Creating Plastic Out of Thin Air

≪ Previous: Listen to Your Critics: They Could Be Your Biggest Allies

A Minnesota watershed project is using an ecocommerce framework, a fundamentally different approach to bringing shared value to natural resource management.

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Not Magic, Science: Startup Creating Plastic Out of Thin Air

January 4, 2014, 2:51 am

≫ Next: Whole Foods' Brooklyn Flagship Store to Use 60% Less Energy Than Typical U.S. Grocery

≪ Previous: Disruptive Conservation: A New Thread to Connect Multi-Sector Values

We’re hearing more and more often about inventive new ways companies are turning waste into valuable resources — from turning everything from CO2 and methane gases to human and food waste into fuels, and plastic into bacteria-battling “read more

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Whole Foods' Brooklyn Flagship Store to Use 60% Less Energy Than Typical U.S. Grocery

January 6, 2014, 2:50 pm

≫ Next: Bosch Connected Devices and Solutions to Broaden Possibilities for Internet of Things and Services

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The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) has announced the completion of Whole Foods Market’s flagship Brooklyn store, which it is heralding as a model of energy efficiency and the company’s commitment to protecting the environment. The 56,000-square-foot supermarket was constructed on a former brownfield site restored for the purpose by Whole Foods.

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Bosch Connected Devices and Solutions to Broaden Possibilities for Internet of Things and Services

January 6, 2014, 3:46 pm

≫ Next: New Campaign Encouraging Brits to 'Smart Swap' Healthier Food Criticized for Shortsightedness

≪ Previous: Whole Foods' Brooklyn Flagship Store to Use 60% Less Energy Than Typical U.S. Grocery

Bosch has expanded its offering beyond the design of home appliances to form a new company, Bosch Connected Devices and Solutions GmbH, for the Internet of things and services: The company will supply compact electronic products and software expertise designed to make devices and objects intelligent and web-enabled across a broad range of applications. It will initially focus on sensor-based applications for intelligently networked homes, or “smart homes,” as well as for activities in the fields of traffic, transportation and logistics.

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