The Rainforest Alliance (RA) announced this week it has lifted the suspension of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certificate of Swedwood Karelia LLC, a subsidiary of IKEA, following an independent appeals committee evaluation of the company’s 2013 annual audit.

Swedwood’s certificate, related to nearly 300,000 hectares (700,000 acres) in the Karelia Forest in northwestern Russia, was recently suspended as a result of a series of non-conformances with the FSC standards identified during Swedwood’s last annual audit. Karelia is one of the last remaining old-growth forests in Europe.

FSC certification rules require suspension when five or more major non-conformances are identified during an audit process. Swedwood’s certificate was suspended in January after six major non-conformances were identified following the annual audit conducted by RA, the world's leading FSC Forest Management certifier, in October 2013. As RA explains — in the FSC certification system, major non-conformances are issues that are systemic and occur over a long period of time, or those that cover a wide area and/or cause significant damage, whereas minor non-conformances are issues that indicate a temporary lapse, are unusual/non-systematic, or the impacts of which are limited in their temporal and spatial scale.

The six major non-conformances were related to facilities and equipment issues, forestry management and the training of forestry workers. Swedwood filed an appeal of the suspension arguing that four of the six non-conformances should have been graded as minor rather than major and that two of the six major non-conformances were not justified.

RA appointed an independent appeals committee to investigate whether the grading of the non-conformances was in line with FSC standards, which downgraded one of the six major non-conformances to minor and the withdrawal of two other major non-conformances. 

“The strength of the FSC system results from the various checks and balances, and therefore the scrutiny, it provides to forest management the world over,” said Richard Donovan, Rainforest Alliance SVP and VP of Forestry. “In this case the right balance has now been struck and the certificate holder is working to improve its forestry practices.”

IKEA is one of the biggest purchasers and producers of FSC-certified wood in the retail sector; Swedwood was the first company to be FSC certified in Karelia in 2006 and is annually inspected for compliance with the FSC standard.

“We are pleased to get the suspension of our FSC certificate withdrawn since it is important for us to demonstrate a responsible forest management. Our focus is now to continue our work with good forest management and make sure that the outstanding deviations are closed,” says Anders Hildeman, Forestry Manager at IKEA Group. “We continue to stand firmly behind the FSC principles. We believe it is the most credible forest certification system available as its foundation is to strike a balance between economically viable forest management, safeguarding environmental values and the rights and needs of people who work and live in the forests.”

In July, paper giant Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (APRIL) withdrew from the FSC, which Greenpeace, the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and WWF claimed was an attempt to dodge an independent inquiry into the paper company’s deforestation practices in Indonesia. Prior to APRIL’s withdrawal, the three NGOs had lodged a complaint that the company was in violation of FSC’s Policy for Association through its continued large-scale conversion of natural forests in Indonesia to plantations, including the destruction of high conservation value (HCV) forests. Fast-forward to January, when APRIL re-emerged with a Sustainable Forest Management Policy— WWF noted that the company's commitment to support conservation areas equal in size to its plantations sets a new standard for the pulp and paper industry in Indonesia, but but the NGO was concerned about certain loopholes in the policy, which Greenpeace said was "essentially a license to continue forest clearance."

Because sustainability impacts occur in the hands of decision makers and front-line employees across an organization, a successful approach to sustainability requires that managing or acting sustainably be a job function for every employee, every day. This means everyone is responsible and no one is exempt from managing and acting with sustainability in mind. 

But many organizations are missing the point when trying to engage employees to reach sustainability goals. Effective employee engagement requires much more than flashy messaging campaigns and feel-good events. Instead, to align employees with a sustainability mission, organizations need a comprehensive and strategic approach that integrates key objectives into employees’ day-to-day actions and decision making through careful, cross-functional employee-engagement planning and implementation.

Red Lion Hotel Corp, a hospitality management company with more than 50 hotels across ten states, used this kind of thinking when creating a strategic resource-management plan that centered on operational changes dependent on employee engagement. The hotel was able to save six figures and reduce energy consumption by 6.5 percent in just two years after implementing the plan. Yet it was more than just the numbers and figures. With this strategic and holistic approach, which involved everyone from executives to frontline employees, Red Lion managed to achieve a true cultural shift that was instrumental in reaching their sustainability goals.

In order to achieve results like Red Lion and make sustainability a part of the company culture, an organization’s employee engagement program must be designed to maintain action and results. This can be done through a simple, continual improvement process that involves four steps:

1. Establish Commitment and Accountability: The first step is to ensure buy-in and support from key stakeholders on the overall sustainability plan. Securing commitment from the leadership team is essential to the success of the plan, otherwise your efforts will never get off the ground.

   Commitment needs to equal accountability: Who is responsible and accountable to the overall success of the plan? What are the performance metrics that need to be agreed upon to ensure all are defining success by the same measure? These are all questions that need to be addressed in the first stage of designing the program.

2. Conduct an Initial Assessment: With commitment and accountability in place it’s time to assess the company’s needs and opportunities for putting a successful engagement program in place. These can be evaluated and mapped by identifying the following:
   • Highest-impact employee groups: Identify which employees have the biggest impact on sustainability efforts and resource consumption; these groups should get the most focus.
   • What these employees need to know and do differently: This can include informing executive leadership on the value and progress of your initiatives, training facility managers to incorporate utility cost savings into capital improvement budgets, and ensuring frontline employees are turning off lights and doing their part to optimize recycling and composting services.
   • How to reach those employees, how often and by whom: Every organization has accountability structures, communications, training, and engagement habits and standards. Work with internal communications staff to identify the most impactful and actionable methods to reach employees.
   • How will progress and success be reported: Ensure there are functions in place to measure against the pre-defined goals of the employee engagement plan. Identify how these will be reported in order to maximize efforts.
3. Plan and Implement: Ad-hoc communications, trainings and events don’t lead to a comprehensive or strategic initiative. Map out how to meet the needs of your identified high-impact groups using the information gathered from the initial assessment, and then roll out the plan to the individual groups and overall employee population with well-timed and compelling outreach. It’s important to note that the information should come from a trusted and respected voice in your organization that makes the case and provides a clear and concise ask.
4. Evaluate and Modify: To drive continual improvement, organizations need to consistently measure and evaluate the impact of employee engagement programs. This requires a multi-level approach, mapping back to what was outlined in the initial assessment phase. Progress must be consistently measured from a starting point, which is why it’s so important to establish a baseline and metrics in the beginning. Consistently measuring against these metrics will help ensure continual improvement.

Employee Engagement in Focus with Red Lion

In order to reach the Red Lion’s sustainability goals, which included reducing energy consumption by 10 percent in five years, the hotel realized employee engagement was integral.

Establishing Commitment and Accountability: Engagement at Red Lion started with the executive team. We leveraged Ecova’s Strategic Planning service and met with each executive team member for input and buy-in to a long-term plan. In these meetings, Ecova delivered an engagement plan that was based on the business case and aligned to a long-term sustainability plan. Through this process, Red Lion leadership clearly recognized the need to get every employee on board and assign relevant responsibility to key groups in the organization. 

Assess, Plan and Implement: Red Lion was able to identify key groups within the organization in optimal positions to address sustainability impacts. They worked with their communications and training teams and department leads to find opportunities to integrate guidance into existing efforts and delivery channels. Along with development of a larger plan to cut energy, water and waste impacts, they included a plan to reach all employee groups with the sustainability message, and to reach key impact groups such as their facility managers and housekeeping staff, with direct and actionable guidance and expectations.

At Red Lion, general managers and facility managers are responsible for budgets impacted by energy, water and waste services, and they also play key leadership roles in the organization. To get these employees on board and ensure they were effective in their position, the cost of resource use was tied to their job responsibilities and clear guidance was provided on how to manage these resources. Red Lion continues to engage this key group through a series of trainings, sharing of performance metrics, and highlighting successes of individual properties through a strategic communications campaign. 

For many hotels, the housekeeping staff is a high-impact employee group, as they are responsible for daily upkeep in the hotel rooms and interface with controls for lighting, HVAC and water use all day long. Because of this, housekeeping staff were a primary focus for Red Lion’s employee engagement strategy. The group was provided training, tools and oversight to help them reach the company’s sustainability goals through their day-to-day tasks. These efforts ensured that the simple activities – such as turning off lights in unoccupied areas, opening drapes to make use of natural light to clean, and reporting leaky faucets – are a reliably integrated part of the housekeeping routine. Red Lion also implemented a visual weatherboard system, which consists of color-coded cards to help the housekeeping staff quickly and easily identify how to adjust the room thermostats based on the day’s outdoor temperature.

Evaluate and Modify: Red Lion continuously measures the progress of its plan by tracking the performance of each site through a monthly report delivered by Ecova. The report provides in-depth data on water and energy consumption by each property. Additionally, Red Lion annually surveys all employees to evaluate their awareness of the sustainability effort and expectations. With these results, Red Lion is able to see where targeted efforts are having impact and identify employee groups or locations that need more help with engagement. Finally, and most importantly, performance information is shared regularly with all employees to bring home the message that performance is a result of every employee’s efforts, every day. 

LAUNCH — the strategic collaboration between NASA, NIKE, Inc., the US Department of State and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) — announced Friday it has added the expertise of a host of Scandinavian innovators in its continued search for sustainable materials. LAUNCH teamed up with Nordic-based companies IKEA, Novozymes, Kvadrat, Arla and a number of government institutions to announce LAUNCH Nordic, an initial step in taking the LAUNCH process to innovators around the world. 

LAUNCH Nordic adds a new dimension to the established LAUNCH process, which draws upon its members’ collective intelligence to address some of the world’s greatest challenges, by focusing on a specific region to harness the unique strengths of local innovators and companies. In support of the global LAUNCH initiative, LAUNCH Nordic will also focus the challenge on sustainable materials and how they are made.

“The LAUNCH approach has been successful in identifying and supporting powerful innovations,” said Hannah Jones, Nike's VP of Sustainable Business and Innovation. “By bringing LAUNCH to the Nordic region, which is a hub for sustainability and design, we believe we can unlock new ideas and technologies that will revolutionize sustainable materials and manufacturing systems.”

LAUNCH Nordic kicked off March 14 at a summit in Copenhagen that brought together 120 global industry stakeholders, materials specialists, designers, researchers, innovators and policy makers.

During the summit, the LAUNCH Nordic Challenge 2014 was opened to individuals and teams, start-ups and established companies. The Challenge seeks breakthroughs that will transform the system of textiles, fabrics and fibers into one with a minimal environmental impact and/or that drives social equality. Specifically, LAUNCH Nordic 2014 is focusing on innovations within the areas of:

• Closed Loop Solutions & Design for Disassembly
• Cleaner manufacturing & chemistry
• Sustainable Investments & Procurement
• End-user Engagement

The initiative is seeking game-changing, scalable, early-stage technologies and prototypes. Innovations can be business models, financial instruments, technologies and programs that accelerate research, education and capacity building. The application deadline is June 1, and in August, the strongest innovations will be selected and participants will take part in an immersive program that provides access to capital, creativity and capacity building. 

"At IKEA, we know first-hand how important collaboration can be in bringing new innovations and technologies to scale,” said Håkan Nordkvist, Head of Sustainability Innovation at IKEA. “Together with our partners from LAUNCH and LAUNCH Nordic, we can participate in the identification and development of transformational innovations that can help solve global sustainability challenges.”

LAUNCH Nordic follows the LAUNCH 2020 Challenge, which last year convened global thought leaders at NIKE, Inc. headquarters in Portland, Ore., to catalyze action around one of the world’s biggest challenges — the sustainability of materials and how they are made. LAUNCH will remain focused on the materials challenge for the next six years in order to drive systemic change. 

It’s been a busy year so far for IKEA — in February, it launched its “Wonderful Everyday” campaign, aimed at explaining the brand’s values and sustainability ethos to consumers — beginning with the importance of switching to LED bulbs. The bulbs also play a role in the two-month campaign the IKEA Foundation launched later that week to raise funds to provide solar-powered lighting and other renewable energy technologies to UN refugee camps run through the sale of light bulbs in its stores around the world. The company’s positive momentum hit a snag when the FSC suspended the certification of its subsidiary Swedwood, which was suspected of cutting old-growth forest in Karelia, Russia, but the certification was reinstated last week after an appeals committee investigation.

In July, Denmark-based Novozymes, one of the world’s largest producers of microorganisms, bio-pharmaceutical ingredients and industrial enzymes, released new enzymes that boost ethanol and oil production from corn while saving biofuel plants energy and money.

For more examples of groundbreaking cross-sector partnerships driving social and environmental change, check out our editorial channel highlighting #Collaboration.

For more on how companies are using #GreenChemistry to drive sustainable innovations, check out the editorial channel.

Longtime rivals ConAgra Foods and Procter & Gamble have teamed up to help Feeding America tackle the ongoing issue of childhood hunger in the US with the 2014 Child Hunger Ends Here campaign, through which the companies hope to help donate up to 7 million meals to the more than 20 percent of children across the country that are food insecure.

Specially marked packages of 42 ConAgra Foods and P&G brands (including Banquet, Chef Boyardee, Healthy Choice, Hunt’s, Pampers, Bounty, Tide and Pantene) will feature 8-digit codes — for each code entered on the campaign website or Facebook page from March through August 2014, ConAgra or P&G, respectively, will donate the monetary equivalent of one meal (11.1¢) to Feeding America. Codes can be entered through June 2014 for P&G brands and August 2014 for ConAgra Foods brands.

While entering codes, consumers will be able to submit their zip codes to support the local Feeding America food bank serving their community. Up to ten local food banks with the highest number of zip codes entered within their service area will receive the monetary equivalent of a 100,000-meal donation ($11,111).

The campaign has also enlisted the help of country singer Hunter Hayes, who will help raise awareness for child hunger while encouraging consumers to take action by entering the codes found on the companies’ participating products. And for every download of Hayes’ new single, "Invisible"— which brings visibility to the nearly 16 million children who, according to the USDA, are living in food-insecure households in the US — the campaign will also donate 11.1¢ to Feeding America, up to 1 million meals. The campaign will also be supported with retail promotions, national TV integrations and a social media campaign.

"I'm proud to partner with ConAgra Foods' Child Hunger Ends Here program to share the message of hope in the fight against child hunger," says Hayes, who has worked with the program since 2012. "My new single 'Invisible' speaks to anyone who has ever felt outcast, alone or invisible, including children who suffer from food insecurity. Hungry kids are in our schools, our neighborhoods and even right next door."

To help drive the message home, Hayes will attempt to break the Guinness World Record of concerts played in a 24-hour period this May, according to Billboard. In “Hunter Hayes' 24 Hour Road Race to End Child Hunger,” the singer will set out to perform 10 concerts in five states on May 9, beginning on "Good Morning America" at 8 am in New York City, and hitting venues in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Jersey before winding up with a 5 am set at the Trocadero in Philadelphia.

Feeding America says longtime partner P&G has donated $2.8 million to the hunger cause since 2007, and ConAgra donated the equivalent of 4.6 million meals as part of the 2013 Child Hunger Ends Here campaign. The companies’ joint participation doubles the brands participating in Child Hunger Ends Here, making it easier for consumers to join the fight against child hunger.

"We are incredibly grateful for ConAgra Foods' ongoing commitment to fight domestic child hunger, and we are delighted that this year our longtime partner P&G will join the robust Child Hunger Ends Here program," says Bob Aiken, CEO of Feeding America. "Through our national network of food banks, we help feed 14 million children each year, which we could not accomplish without the support of our partners and the engagement of their consumers."

In January, Project 7 rather appropriately teamed up with 7UP for a campaign to “make every bottle count.” Through November, specially marked 20 oz. bottles of 7UP sold in the US will feature a unique code under the cap — buyers can then log onto the Make Your Bottle Count website and enter their code to choose one of 7 areas of need — Feed the Hungry, Heal the Sick, Hope for Peace, House the Homeless, Quench the Thirsty, Teach them Well and Save the Earth — that they would like 7UP’s donation from their purchase to benefit.

To coincide with St. Patrick’s Day, America’s favorite “green” holiday, SC Johnson (SCJ) today kicked off its 30 Green Days Challenge, designed to inspire families across the US to take simple steps each day with the goal of developing habits for more sustainable living.

The 30 Green Days Challenge starts with updates from four writers/bloggers/mothers leading their families toward making one simple change aimed at living more consciously, every day for 30 days. The four contributors — Sheena Tatum of Sophistishe.com; Liz Jarvis of The Mum Blog; Kate Goodman, author of Good Life Eats, Etc; and Jill Amery of the Savvy Mom Blogger Collective and publisher of UrbanMommies.com — will be sharing their progress and tips on SCJ’s Green Choices blog and their respective blogs, and on social media with the hashtag #30GreenDays.

“What’s exciting about 30 Green Days is that it’s centered on real families and real experiences,” said SC Johnson’s Chief Sustainability Officer, Kelly Semrau. “Whether it’s trial, tribulation or triumph, there’s learning about sustainable behavior that can inform and inspire others.”

To encourage families across the country to try their own 30 Green Days Challenge, SCJ has developed an action calendar as well as tip sheets for trying, or increasing, responsible daily actions such as recycling and saving energy.

Engaging people in sustainability remains one of the cause’s biggest challenges — ensuring their behavior reflects their engagement is another. Example: While 7 out of 10 Americans say they always or almost always recycle, apparently merely 1 in 5 consistently recycles bathroom items, according to a report commissioned last year by Johnson & Johnson. So in October, J&J launched Care to Recycle™, a recycling campaign that begins with a gentle reminder to recycle more items from the bathroom. Since then, J&J has teamed up with zoos, city government and businesses across the Ohio Valley, and online platform myActions, to inspire one million “green” shared actions in the area by Earth Day in April. For every action taken, a donation is made to the cause of the user's choice. 

Part of the reason I eat less junk food these days is because I don't really know what it is anymore. I have nothing against fat and sugar, but junk food is full of stuff I no longer recognize. A homemade cookie is one thing, Diet Coke is something else. If I put stuff in my body, I want to understand it.

This seems modest to me. I am not an organic foods zealot, but I am drifting that way because mainstream food production is economizing too much. That means more permutations (emphasis on "mutation") of additives, crap, filler, and who-knows-what. If the rise of Chipotle indicates anything, it is that these types of concerns are mainstream.

Meanwhile, introspection surrounding consumption is spreading from organic foods to other areas such as ethical fashion. Nobody, however, is really thinking about the structures of advertising itself. Given this is the linchpin of the web economy, it is an oversight. No one is asking what responsible web messaging *really* looks like … and who can blame us? Who wants to risk picking a fight with Google?

Most web pages are a mashup of technologies, each with a monetization strategy, combining an information-gathering capacity with a paid placement. As economic pressures increase, the page fractures with distracting placements, "discovery" tools, widget after widget, "sponsored links" explicit and implicit, etc. These ads remain as mysterious and unaccountable as a junk food additive — we don't know where these technologies come from. We don't know what they are doing with our data. We don't know what they are collecting about us. We don't know how they are really financed. We don't even know if they are part of the web site we are patronizing or not.

We know when one EULA or privacy statement meets blow-back, highly optimized content monopolies compensate around it. The business plan is gradual capitulation through retention. No one really likes additives in anything. We just cannot escape them.

This has been the thinking for 20 years and we need to ask ourselves if it really makes sense as a business model. Are we poisoning ourselves? Signs of change are emerging. Forget the economics of cat videos — social publishers want to be taken seriously. Quick hits, like potato chips, do not sustain an audience or build brand equity. Subsequently, the unique opportunities of our new publishing milieu have not been fully realized. It may be true that the Internet theoretically supports infinite advertising inventory but, by the same devices, it also supports infinite accountability. Information is not a commodity but an exchange; big data is more than a corporate database, it is a binding compact.

This is our philosophy at Uncommon Union: The future belongs to those who can put substance on the table; the rest is arbitrage. For this reason we've been focusing on working with businesses who are committed to social enterprise and triple-bottom-line thinking, and see accountability as ultimately linked to product quality. These companies tend to have substantive content and issues they are deeply concerned about. Furthermore, these concerns inform essential attributes of their products. This new orientation reaches a whole new level of potential when considered in context of the economics of web content I've just described.

Microsoft, Allstate and Unilever are sponsoring California’s first We Day— an educational initiative aimed at inspiring students to become active local and global citizens — on March 26.

Organized by international charity and educational partner Free the Children, the event will feature celebrity speakers and performers including recording artists Macklemore, Selena Gomez and Jennifer Hudson, Kid President, and actors Seth Rogen and Orlando Bloom. It will bring together 16,000 students from over 400 schools across the state.

Spearheading its arrival in California are long-time Free the Children supporters and We Day California co-chairs Natalie Portman and Magic Johnson, along with philanthropic thought leaders Jeff Skoll, founder and chairman of the Skoll Foundation, Participant Media and the Skoll Global Threats Fund; and Daniel Lurie, CEO and founder of Tipping Point Community. Professional sports teams including the Oakland Raiders, San Francisco Giants, the San Jose Sharks and the Oakland Athletics are also lending support to We Day.

“I believe in the power of young people to change the world, but they need support and guidance to do so,” said Portman, Free the Children ambassador and We Day California co-chair. “We Day helps to bring that passion to life, encouraging young people to take meaningful actions towards the issues they care about and giving them the tools to make it a reality.”

Since 2007, youth involved in the We Day program have raised $37 million for over 1,000 local and global causes and logged more than 9.6 million volunteer hours, Free the Children says.

Tickets to We Day cannot be purchased — they must be earned by students through service. They can do this by committing to take action on at least one local and one global initiative of their choices as part of the year-long educational program called We Act. The We Act program supports students and educators with free educational resources, student-led campaigns and support materials to help turn the inspiration from We Day into sustained activation.

After nine events across the US and Canada in 2013, We Day kicked off its 2014 events series in London on March 7; subsequent events are scheduled in Seattle (March 21), California and Ottawa (April 9).

From children helping to helping children: ConAgra Foods and Procter & Gamble, with the help of country singer Hunter Hayes, have teamed up to help Feeding America tackle the ongoing issue of childhood hunger in the US with the 2014 Child Hunger Ends Here campaign, through which the companies hope to help donate up to 7 million meals to the more than 20 percent of children across the country that are food insecure.

On March 22, the world will acknowledge World Water Day to celebrate the importance of fresh water and advocate for the sustainable management of freshwater resources. Established in 1993 by the United Nations General Assembly, World Water Day is a reminder of the critical value of water to life, and a collective call-to-action to address the increased pressure that is threatening what is considered our most precious resource.

In the days leading up to World Water Day, The Coca-Cola Company, in partnership with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Global Water Challenge, launched the #ToastToWater social media campaign. The campaign asks people to publicly thank water for all it does while also educating site visitors about water challenges being faced around the world.  

#ToastToWater encourages people to take a photo or video toasting water with their favorite beverage and then upload it to Facebook, Twitter, Vine or Instagram and tag it with #ToasttoWater. Starting on March 17, a selection of photos was posted to the campaign’s website, which also offers information about global water challenges. 

Today, approximately 783 million people lack access to safe drinking water and more than 2.5 billion don’t have adequate sanitation, making billions of people vulnerable to disease and food insecurity. By bringing attention to this alarming and disheartening situation, the partners aim to drive positive change to consumer behaviors toward water — encouraging people to conserve and make a difference.

Contributing to that change, Coca-Cola set a 2020 goal to “give back” an amount of water used in its beverages and their production. To meet this goal, the Company is working to improve its water-use efficiency and treating all wastewater in its manufacturing operations. Coca-Cola also is replenishing the water in its finished beverages back to communities and nature through the support of healthy watersheds and community water programs.

Read more about Coca-Cola’s water stewardship efforts, including The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation’s Replenish Africa Initiative (RAIN). Learn how Coca-Cola and WWF are working together to tackle the natural resource challenges impacting fresh water, and how we’re helping accelerate the delivery of safe water and sanitation as a member of Global Water Challenge.

As natural capital, biodiversity and ecosystem services are terms that are increasingly bandied about, a few questions are increasingly being whispered by corporate colleagues that are worth answering:

• Why are they relevant to business?
• How can companies integrate these issues into decision-making processes?
• When and where are they most readily applicable?

Simply put, the conveners of the 2013 World Forum on Natural Capital explained that “natural capital can be defined as the world’s stocks of natural assets which include geology, soil, air, water and all living things. It is from this Natural Capital that humans derive a wide range of services, often called ecosystem services, which make human life possible.”

The 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment defined ecosystem services as “the benefits people obtain from ecosystems. These include provisioning services such as food and water; regulating services such as flood and disease control; cultural services such as spiritual, recreational, and cultural benefits; and supporting services, such as nutrient cycling, that maintain the conditions for life on Earth.”

And the Convention on Biological Diversity defines "biological diversity" as “the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems.”

Perhaps surprisingly for such un-sticky terms, natural capital, biodiversity and ecosystem services (BES) are now a part of international best practice with considerable activity underway, including:

• Governments around the world: 68 national governments around the world are now engaged in work on ecosystem services — from research through task forces — and some are promulgating new policies on the issue. This includes implementing countries and donor governments that are engaged with the World Bank’s Wealth Accounting and the Valuation of Ecosystem Services (WAVES) partnership.
• Companies across most industries: 47 multinational businesses are publicly asserting that they are undertaking work on ecosystem services.
• Financial services sector trend- and standard-setters: As of January 2012, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) requires due diligence on all loans to include consideration of impacts and dependencies on biodiversity and ecosystem services, as part of Performance Standard 6. This requirement is also a part of the Equator Principles and applies to loan review within the 79 Equator Banks.
• Corporate disclosure and ranking entities:CDP is adding new indicators as well as expanding focus on commodities and how they affect ecosystem structure and function — such as work on corporate impacts on forests. The Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) now consider ecosystem services for one sector (forestry), with potential for broader application in the coming years. And the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is considering broader inclusion of biodiversity and ecosystem services.
• NGOs: The majority of leading nonprofit organizations have ecosystem services initiatives.

Corporate leaders have the opportunity to proactively engage with these issues and integrate this thinking into business decision-making processes to identify and avert, or mitigate, ecosystem malfunction risk and related operational, reputational and regulatory risk.

In light of all of this activity, the question is: How can companies assess corporate risk associated with impacts and dependencies on biodiversity and ecosystem services? An assessment of BES risk is related to, but distinct from, a review of carbon emissions and water use. A BES assessment considers what a project or enterprise needs from natural systems in order to continue normal operations relative to total user demands and availability in the future — while factoring in cumulative effects of impacts and changes in ecosystem structure and function.

Ecosystem services assessments offer the context for understanding a wide range of individual corporate environmental impact metrics — within the broader functioning of ‘green infrastructure’ upon which projects, companies, communities, societies and economies rely. For example, if a company’s water use is headed downward, it is perceived as positive. But what if total water use in a region is significantly increasing? What if these water demands affected overall water availability within the region?

An ecosystem services assessment would reveal these dynamics, which elevate corporate risk, by laying bare an individual company’s demand relative to total demand and supply, such as through application of WRI’s Corporate Ecosystem Services Review (ESR) or a tailored process. Key components that leading practitioners have highlighted within BES applications include:

• Screen in order to determine whether or not there is a need for a detailed biodiversity and ecosystem services assessment, which would ideally include ‘trigger’ questions, general ‘rules of thumb,’ and guidelines for when a full assessment is needed of corporate impact and dependencies on ecosystem services.
• Scope to ensure that the assessment is focused on the most important issues and generates key insights on trade-offs associated with ecosystem dynamics and ecosystem services in environmental, social and economic contexts.
• Source, or gather, baseline data, both related to present and well as potential future scenarios of ecosystem structure and function, which could affect flow of ecosystem services.
• Assess corporate impacts and dependencies on ecosystem services over time, including review of relative importance and/or ranking of impacts as well as dependencies over time for various ecosystem services beneficiaries.
• Develop mitigation and management plans as well as an implementation plan.

The benefits of natural capital and BES approaches can be applied throughout a business. For example:

• Corporate strategy— Integrate considerations of natural capital and ecosystem services into strategy, and in the process support reputation and brand value, while also differentiating from competitors
• Corporate finance— Factor BES opportunities and risks into decisions about potential mergers, acquisitions, major investments, and new project development
• Supply chain management— Assess potential for supply chain disruption due to future changes in flows of ecosystem services, as a result of climate change, or cumulative effects from resource uses within a watershed; analyze parts of the supply chain to identify quantifiable impacts and dependencies on ecosystem services
• Product life-cycle assessment (LCA)— Assess how life-cycle stages could affect biodiversity and ecosystem services
• Real estate management— Assess “idle” lands in terms of which ecosystem services exist and can be restored, with conservation value used to communicate the value that can be realized; prioritize selection of lands for restoration and assess how to efficiently allocate resources

As more companies engage, the opportunity is simple and most easily explained, as laid out, by politician and diplomat Robert Strauss who was reported to have said, “When you see a parade form on an issue in Washington, you have two choices: You can throw your body in front of it and let them walk all over you, or you can jump in front of the parade and pretend it’s yours.”

A natural capital, biodiversity and ecosystem services parade is forming: Will companies join in, and even call it their own?

In celebration of World Water Day (March 22), Levi Strauss has released new stats about how much water can be saved by changing the way it makes its products: A new infographic illustrates the amount of water the company has saved through the production of its Water<Less jeans collection — designed to reduce the water used in the finishing process by up to 96 percent — and its 100% recycled water standard, a first for the apparel industry. According to the infographic, the line has saved over 770 million liters of water — enough to supply drinking water for 811,000 people for one year — since its launch in 2011.

This spring the company will make 9 million units of the Water<Less jeans, saving 71 million liters of water, according to Environmental Leader.

Levi's is inviting its customers to do their part to conserve water for World Water Day and every day — the company says that by washing their jeans every two weeks, instead of weekly, they’ll save 14 liters of water, the equivalent of five days' worth of drinking water for one person.

In other water-conservation news, on Monday, the Coca-Cola Company, WWF and Global Water Challenge launched the #ToastToWater social media campaign in honor of World Water Day. The campaign asks people to publicly thank water for all it does while also educating site visitors about water challenges being faced around the world.

In this three-part mini-series, Core77's Stefanie Koehler shares her experiences in bringing a sustainability focus into her work. Read part one.

Putting Theory Into Practice

Practicing sustainability-focused design, like any art form, is a skill that requires craft and sensitivity. As designers, we are tasked to skillfully create consumable goods, services and systems that inevitably make an impact on many levels, many of which are not well understood or even measurable. By learning and then practicing various approaches, I have begun to understand design from a whole-systems perspective, considering both the micro and macro scale. This way of thinking has led me to consider the trade-offs — from materials to process to business strategy — that I make with every design decision.

Doing Is Believing

Many people think that sustainability-focused design is a burden — futile, depressing and difficult. Some don't even believe it is possible. Designing with sustainable outcomes in mind may have these pitfalls but I have been able to debunk these negative opinions by studying sustainability theory and putting it into practice.

To become efficient and ultimately more effective at anything, one needs to practice — a lot — and sustainability-focused design is no exception. By applying comprehensive sustainability approaches to different design challenges, I have not only learned that sustainable outcomes are achievable but also that it is rewarding, both personally and professionally.

In Jeremy Faludi's Collaborative Product Design course, offered by the Sustainable Design graduate program at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD), I was able to practice sustainability-focused approaches such as energy effectiveness, design for appropriate lifetime, biomimicry and responsible materials, to name a few. We directly applied these solutions to new solutions for existing products with real companies; I had the pleasure of practicing a collaborative redesign for Steelcase's Circa Chair.

Platforms for Practice

As systems thinker extraordinaire Buckminster Fuller said, we must be "comprehensive anticipatory design scientists" (Fuller 1999) — comprehensive in our approaches and anticipatory in designing for problems before they happen. In addition to courses, I've found that external design competitions, such as Core77's Design for (Your) Product Lifetime Competition, are helpful platforms that challenge me to practice various approaches and anticipate design problems before they occur.

For this competition, I addressed challenges with public bathroom paper towel dispensers. Using the Whole Systems and Life-Cycle design method created for the Autodesk Sustainability Workshop, coupled with other resources such as Dan Lockton's Design with Intent Toolkit, I learned techniques for making better products and influencing ideal behaviors with my designs.

While mapping out each phase in the product's life and analyzing the environmental impacts, I discovered that I had to refocus my challenge. Rather than addressing the dispenser alone, I had to look at how parts along the whole system might be designed to reduce people's use of the paper towels. This led me to investigate how various environmental cues — an illustration of "perfect paper towel technique for using one sheet"; changing the layout of the bathroom — might serve to encourage sustainable behavior.

I also explored how the consumption of the towels may be reduced by using a "half-sheet" dispenser product design idea. This might leverage the same behavior pattern of grabbing multiple sheets, many of which end up being only 50 percent used/moistened, but that requires a bit more work and time to use a lot of paper towel. It could also reduce the frustrations expressed by custodial staff when changing out giant rolls of paper towels.

Faludi expresses that in doing green redesigns, "We feel like we're succeeding in turning sustainability from a burden into an innovation tool, and making the world better one product at a time." I would go one step further to say "...making the world better one product and system at a time." If I learned anything from designing for a product's lifetime, it's that the systems (and services) that support and deliver these products are as just as important as the products themselves. Designing products with closed-loop services and circular economies in mind is key in truly sustainable solutions.

Following the Product Lifetime competition, I used the Biomimicry Student Design Challenge competition to continue practicing sustainable design for global challenges. More about this is my next article. Stay tuned!

This post first appeared on the Core77 blog on March 4, 2014.

In a bold and understandably unpopular move this week, the City of Paris banned half its motorists from driving their cars and motorcycles on Monday and Tuesday after a series of warm days and cold nights caused the city's worst pollution levels since 2007, BBC News reports.

Part of a scheme to reduce the number of vehicles on the road — and the resulting pollution — only motorists with odd-numbered number plates were allowed to drive on Monday, and only those with even-numbered plates could travel on Tuesday. Prior to the restrictions, Parisians were given free travel on buses, metros and public bikes over the weekend.

While many Parisians showed they were willing to face the 22-euro ($30 USD) fine rather than cancel their commutes, most complied with the restrictions. BBC News reports that most cars on the road were odd- and even-numbered on Monday and Tuesday, respectively, and traffic seemed lighter than usual.

There were exceptions for taxis, commercial electric and hybrid vehicles and for cars carrying three or more passengers.

Roughly 700 police ran nearly 180 control points around the Paris region, handing out tickets to offenders. Police ticketed nearly 4,000 people by midday on Monday, and 27 drivers had their cars impounded for refusing to cooperate with officers.

The scheme seems to be helping — along with improvements in weather conditions, air quality also is on the mend. The city implemented the same plan to combat pollution in 1997. Paris air quality-monitoring body Airparif says it had a noticeable impact on improving air quality, although some critics have disputed its findings.

Delivery companies particularly disliked the restrictions, and it is likely that the scheme will influence the outcome of the city’s mayoral election next week.

While it is easy to focus on the direct negative economic impacts from schemes such as this, environmental issues such as air pollution can have an even larger cost in the long run. Last year, the TEEB for Business Coalition released a study that found the global top 100 environmental externalities are costing the global economy some $4.7 trillion a year in terms of the economic costs of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, loss of natural resources, loss of nature-based services such as carbon storage by forests, climate change and air pollution-related health costs.

Meanwhile, hydrogen fuel cell cars are emerging as great alternatives to traditional gas-powered vehicles. Hydrogen cars have more than three times the standard range of plug-in electric vehicles (EVs), can be refueled in minutes rather than hours and look and handle more like traditional cars. However, a current lack of hydrogen refueling stations is preventing widespread adoption.

TripAdvisor, the go-to global site for travel advice, is extending its GreenLeaders program to 19 new markets including Canada, the UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Explaining the benefits, Jenny Rushmore, Director of Responsible Travel at TripAdvisor, said, "With so many travelers placing an importance on the eco-friendly practices of the places they visit, hotel and B&B owners stand to gain a real competitive edge by promoting their environmentally friendly practices."

The program was launched in the US in 2013 and has so far awarded 3,700 qualifying hotels and B&Bs GreenLeaders status, based on the environmentally friendly practices the property has in place. Businesses apply at no cost and are rated against criteria ranging from towel and linen reuse, recycling and composting to the use of solar panels and electric car charging stations. The status is displayed alongside the hotel's listing on the site, thereby allowing discerning travelers to choose more eco-friendly options. TripAdvisor developed the program in consultation with the United Nations Environment Program, the US Green Building Council, ENERGY STAR®, and the International Center for Responsible Tourism Canada.

TripAdvisor is a powerful player in the travel industry with its ratings and visitors' comments increasingly having an impact. The US site has been collecting travellers' comments on the issue and is now also making these available on the property pages. As more and more people choose to travel with a conscience, guides such as TripAdvisor’s and assessment tools such as the Sustainable Travel Leadership Network’s TravelWell tool for destinations, will boost the industry's efforts.

Speaking of destinations, the Honduran island of Roatán took it upon itself to assess its own sustainability. Last fall, the island became the first tourism destination to complete a 360-degree assessment and action plan for destination-level sustainability, according to a diagnostic conducted by Sustainable Travel International. The diagnostic process evaluated Roatán’s performance on five key pillars of sustainability, which include sustainable tourism planning and governance, economic linkages, preservation of cultural heritage, social and community issues, and environmental protection.

Strengthening the systems that provide health products and care is the most critical investment in global health, according to international survey results released today by Devex and global health organizations PSI and PATH.

Of the 1,500 international health development experts polled in the survey, 63 percent believe that strengthening health systems is a crucial investment over the next five to 10 years. The survey also found that 60 percent of respondents rated improving service delivery systems — or getting health care to people who need them — as a top priority for achieving stronger health systems.

Devex conducted the survey in partnership with PSI and PATH to highlight smart investments that have the greatest impact on global health needs. The findings provide insight into the minds of those who work on the front lines in meeting the greatest global health challenges.

Using innovation to solve global health challenges emerged as another important theme in the survey; the findings showed that investing in research and development was considered the smartest investment option for supporting innovation. The private sector was identified as a leading source for innovative technology solutions.

“Experts in our field agree that innovation has the power to transform health care and reduce poverty as we know it, but without steady funding we cannot tap its potential,” said Steve Davis, President and CEO of PATH. “Investing in innovation enables creative ideas to emerge and evolve into health care solutions that can save lives now and in the future.”

“Investing in global health creates a more stable and secure world for us all by providing basic health care and services to people around the world,” said Karl Hofmann, president and CEO of PSI. “As private, public and nonprofit sectors think about how to best use their resources for the greatest global health care results, Impact magazine’s ‘Best Buys’ issue will help them make the right choices.”

The private sector is taking more and more independent action to improve public health. In February, CVS Caremark announced that it will stop selling cigarettes and other tobacco products at its more than 7,600 stores across the US by October 1, 2014. It is the first action of its kind by a national pharmacy chain. CVS also regularly educates customers through its Project Health Events, where individuals can receive free health screenings to check blood pressure, body mass index, glucose, total cholesterol and even receive oral or dental care. Last October and November, CVS held several events aimed at helping customers make sense of their healthcare coverage options under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

As global meat consumption continues to drive accelerating deforestation, drought and other threats to endangered species, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) launched a new campaign this week urging Americans to “take extinction off your plate.” The campaign says eating less meat is one of the best ways people can reduce their environmental footprint.

“Many people don’t realize the devastating toll meat production has on wildlife and the planet,” said Stephanie Feldstein, population and sustainability director at the CBD. “The livestock industry has nearly driven animals like wolves extinct, and it’s responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than cars, trains and airplanes combined.”

Click to enlarge infographic.

The new campaign website, TakeExtinctionOffYourPlate.com, features information about the impact of meat consumption on wildlife, the climate, habitat, water and land. It also includes resources to help people adopt an Earth-friendly diet and a pledge asking people to commit to reducing their meat consumption.

According to the “Earth-Friendly Diet Pledge,” cutting just one-third of your meat intake can save as much as 340,667 gallons of water, more than 4,000 square feet of land, and the greenhouse gas equivalent of driving 2,700 fewer miles a year.

“Americans already eat more meat per person than almost anyone else in the world, and our wildlife and climate are paying the price,” said Feldstein. “As our population grows, we’ll face worsening problems of livestock-driven drought, pollution, climate change and wildlife extinctions unless people start choosing to eat less meat.”

Earlier this year the Center surveyed its members to learn more about attitudes toward meat production among the conservation-minded. More than 75 percent said the biggest barrier to reducing meat consumption in the United States is lack of awareness about issues related to meat production, and 80 percent believe environmental groups should be doing more to reduce overall meat consumption as a way to address environmental problems.

But a number of recent studies point to a growing awareness and concern for sustainability when it comes to food: New research released last week revealed Americans are willing to sacrifice variety and dollars in order to eat more consciously. Although family satisfaction reigns supreme (97 percent), health and nutrition (93 percent) and sustainability (77 percent) are now also important factors when deciding which foods to buy. And a report released in August by the Center for Culinary Development projected that growing consumer awareness of the vulnerable state of the global environment and food supply, along with increased education about ecologically sound foods, will lead to a long-term increase in environmentally conscious eating.

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places. The CBD’s population and sustainability program recently distributed more than 500,000 Endangered Species Condoms (just in time for Valentine's Day) as a way to highlight the connection between unsustainable human population growth and the effects on wildlife around the world.

US consumers aren’t the only ones who love their red meat — it figures prominently in traditional cuisines around the world, particularly in Latin America, and increasingly in Asia — so reducing widespread demand for meat enough to halt its devastating effect on planetary health may not be a realistic goal. A number of savvy entrepreneurs and researchers are assessing the viability and scalability of using crickets as a sustainable alternative to beef and other resource-intensive livestock as a source of protein (which may be a challenge for Western palates), but ultimately, the onus is on major beef producers/consumers such as McDonald’s to demonstrate whether or not ‘sustainable beef production’ is an oxymoron.

For more examples of how organizations are driving #BehaviorChange, check out our editorial channel.

For the seventh consecutive year, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts throughout the Western U.S. and Hawaii will participate in Earth Hour, a global event organized by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to raise awareness about climate change. On Saturday, March 29, at 8:30 p.m. (local time) these Fairmont hotels and resorts will participate by turning off their lights for one hour.

“Earth Hour is a unique opportunity for Fairmont colleagues and guests to participate in the world’s largest global climate change initiative,” shares Thomas Klein, Regional Vice President and General Manager for Fairmont San Francisco. “It furthers our ongoing support of environmental awareness and demonstrates the hotels’ ongoing energy conservation stewardship.”

Here are a few details surrounding the event at various properties:

• In Sonoma Valley wine country, guests of The Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa can lounge by the lobby fireplace and twinkling candles during Earth Hour. The resort’s new lounge, 38◦ North will be highlighting sustainable, organic and biodynamic wines, while its Michelin award-winning dining room, Santé, will showcase the region’s abundant local products and world-famous wines.
• The Fairmont Kea Lani, Maui will turn off non-essential lighting throughout the 22-acre property. Over 200 floating candles will be placed in the lobby fountain and outdoor paths will be lit with battery-operated candle luminaries. At 7:30pm, an oceanside “lights out” yoga class on the Polo Lawn will be lit only by tiki torches.  
• At the Fairmont Newport Beach, all non-essential principal lighting and the hotel’s pool heater will be shut off during the hour. Staff will encourage guests as well as vendors to go “electricity free” in their guest rooms, homes and places of business. The hotel’s culinary team will share complimentary “Environmentally Sustainable” bites between 8:30 and 9:30 and bambú restaurant will feature a special prix-fixe menu showcasing their hotel-harvested honey and goat cheese specialties from Drake farm, a local artisan partner. The hotel will also be supporting the initiative with the following "Green in the O.C." package, which includes:
  • Overnight stay in Junior Suite
  • 24-hour use of an all-electric Chevy Spark
  • A welcome bottle of Trinity Oaks wine (a tree planted for every bottle sold) 
• The Fairmont Miramar Hotel & Bungalows will host a free hour of Glow Yoga under its majestic Moreton Bay Fig tree, open to hotel guests and community members, from 8:30pm – 9:30pm. Participants are asked to bring their own yoga mats and will be given glow bracelets to wear during the one-hour yoga session. The seaside ambiance will further be enhanced by tea lights and candles throughout the hotel and glow sticks will be presented to children of guests, to educate them on the conservation of electricity and sustainable earth efforts. 
• Guests of The Fairmont Orchid, Hawaii can dine by candlelight at Brown’s Beach House Restaurant and Norio’s Japanese Steakhouse and Sushi Bar, which will be offering Earth Hour specials featuring sustainable cuisine and locally sourced products.
• The Fairmont San Francisco will once again switch off its principal lighting for one hour to mark Earth Hour and invite guests to celebrate the event with a candlelight dinner or drink, as they enjoy a suggested sustainable entrée at the hotel’s Laurel Court Restaurant & Bar.
• Guests in the heart of Silicon Valley at The Fairmont San Jose can “unplug” while relaxing in the candle-lit lobby or a special LED martini created in honor of the event. Guests will be encouraged to join the global initiative by turning off unnecessary guest room lighting.  

Earth Hour is a WWF event that began in 2007 in Sydney, Australia, when 2.2 million people and more than 2,000 businesses turned their lights off for one hour to take a stand against climate change. It showed that everyone, from children to CEOs and politicians, has the power to create change in the world. With the invitation to ‘switch off’ extended to everyone, WWF’s Earth Hour quickly became an annual global event. It’s scheduled on the last Saturday of every March – closely coinciding with the equinox to ensure most cities are in darkness as it rolls out around the Earth.

Fairmont is not the only hotel chain showing its commitment to increasing the sustainability of the hospitality industry:

• Last year, Caesars Entertainment’s hotels in the US, Uruguay and China participated in Earth Hour for the fifth year in a row, and last month the hotel chain became the first to sign on to the EPA’s WaterSense H2Otel Challenge;
• Hilton Worldwide announced in November it has saved $250 million through chain-wide energy-efficiency improvements in the last four years;
• Marriott is working to empower women, create jobs in emerging markets and fight human trafficking;
• And if you still need more sustainable hotel options to choose from, consult TripAdvisor’s handy GreenLeaders-certified properties – this week, the site expanded the program to include destinations in Europe and Canada, as well as the US.

European food-waste prevention project FUSIONS (Food Use for Social Innovation by Optimizing Waste-Prevention Strategies) — a four-year project (July 2012 – August 2016) funded by the European Commission framework program 7 — is working towards achieving a more resource-efficient Europe by significantly reducing food waste. Along with UK partner WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme), FUSIONS has launched a series of feasibility studies around using social innovation to tackle food waste.

For the purpose of the pilots, “social innovation” is described as innovations that simultaneously meet social needs and create new social relationships. The feasibility studies are being launched to test how social innovation can be used to tackle food waste – anything from using the Internet to connect those with surplus food to those who need it, to arranging community-based food preservation programs and events. 

39 proposals responded to the call for ideas between February and November 2013, seven of which will be enacted by FUSIONS’ partners in Sweden, Denmark, France, Austria, the UK and Greece. In the coming months, these projects will be supported and evaluated so that FUSIONS can discover the potential of the proposed innovations and some of the key barriers and opportunities to their delivery.

The seven feasibility studies:

• Order-Cook-Pay (Partner: The Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology, Sweden)The study tackles canteen food waste by transforming traditional ways of working within the food service sector. It will develop and implement a web-based tool to provide school kitchens and business canteens with accurate information about the numbers of lunches to serve.
• Surplus Food (Partner: Stop Wasting Food, Communique, Denmark) The study tests a decentralized system to connect surplus food with those in need via the Internet or an SMS service that connects local food producers, retailers, restaurants and catering outlets with local shelters, crisis and refugee centres, women shelters, etc.
• The Gleaning Network EU (Partner: Feeding the 5000, UK) Gleaning Network EU aims to disseminate best-practice guidance and support for the creation of national gleaning networks to redistribute wasted fruit and vegetables from farms to charities. The study will provide a model for collaboration between growers, grassroots volunteers and charities across Europe, as well as giving specific support to groups initiating gleaning networks.
• Food Service and Hospitality Surplus Redistribution (Partner: The Hungarian Foodbank Association, Hungary, BIO by Deloitte, France) This study will develop new social relationships between the food-service sector and food banks in Hungary, as well as providing a model for collaboration that can be replicated across Europe.
• Disco BôCô (Partners: Feeding the 5000 [UK], Bio by Deloitte [France]) Disco BôCô aims to organize collaborative and festive events to bring people together to cook and preserve discarded fruits and vegetables. The project will mobilize local communities to connect and make use of food surplus by developing domestic preservation skills.
• Advancing Social Supermarkets (Partners: University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences [Austria], Bio by Deloitte [France]) This study supports the implementation of “social supermarkets” in the EU based on the experiences of already established markets in France and Austria.
• Cr-EAT-ive Schools (Partners: Anatoliki [Development Agency Thessaloniki], Greece) The project aims to develop food waste-prevention methods and practical tips to encourage behavior change in the families of preschool children (aged 3-5 years) at home and in the food services of the nursery schools and kindergartens. This will be achieved through the development of a series of innovative educational tools and activities that will involve parents, children, preschool educators and cooks.

According to research released by WRAP last fall, UK households waste £6.9 billion ($11 billion) worth of food and drink, or 7 percent of overall sales, each year. The organization estimates that the grocery retail supply chain produces roughly 6.5 million tons (Mt) of annual waste. Of this, 3.9 Mt is derived from food and drink manufacturers, with the majority being food.

Food waste is not WRAP’s sole area of focus: Last month, the organization released research that revealed UK consumers have a staggering £30 billion worth of clothes in wardrobes that haven’t been worn in the last year, and they annually throw away clothing that is still worth at least £140 million. So, with the cooperation of retailers M&S, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and John Lewis, fashion brands including Stella McCartney and Ted Baker, and the support of over 30 suppliers, NGOs and recyclers, WRAP launched the “Love Your Clothes” campaign to help UK shoppers reconnect to those lost billions languishing in their wardrobes. 

To learn more about innovative ways companies worldwide are eliminating waste, check out our #WasteNot editorial channel.

For more examples of game-changing multi-sector and -industry #collaboration to solve some of the world's most pressing problems, check out our editorial channel.

Those who have long-fretted squeezing out that last bit of toothpaste from the tube may soon be able to rest easy — a student at Arizona State University has designed a new origami-inspired toothpaste tube designed to release every drop of paste, according to FastCoDesign.

Founded in 1873, Colgate is the oldest commercial toothpaste brand. ASU design student Nicole Pannuzzo decided she could improve the brand's packaging, and was inspired to design the new tube by the number of gadgets on sale aimed at getting toothpaste out of the tube. Rather than adding more unnecessary products to solve the problem, she thought it more logical to redesign what already exists.

The result is a cylindrical, spiraling, origami-influenced tube design. The tube collapses like an accordion as toothpaste gets used until it is flat as a folded piece of paper — and the paste has nowhere to go but out. The design also is freestanding due to a flat-top cap and canister shape, which makes it easier to leave out on the bathroom sink.

Pannuzzo also redesigned the red-and-white Colgate logo, which she says fails to stand out when stacked next to other brands that have a similar packaging scheme — horizontal, white, sans serif type against a sparkling, splashy background. She says she envisions the container would sit or at least be transported in transparent cylindrical tube. This also could help stand out on shelf when rival products are either lying flat inside a cardboard box, or standing upright.

Pannuzzo’s design already has garnered interest from Colgate’s advertising team. Her redesign approach to solving a common problem is classic Cradle-to-Cradle — rather than add more products to correct a poor design, it is better to eliminate the problem through intelligent design.

Last month, the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute launched a product registry aimed at increasing transparency from manufacturers. The Cradle to Cradle Certified^CM Product Registry allows consumers, designers and builders to make wiser, healthier decisions and calls for greater transparency from manufacturers.

In other packaging news, a recent report by Smithers Para found that consumer demand, government legislation and technology advances will propel sustainable packaging to a $244 billion market by 2018.

No one can deny that the emergence of circular economy thinking is throwing up some fascinating dynamics right now. This urgent need for systems-level redesign requires an experimental cocktail of innovation and imagination, not to mention open platform dialogue and collaboration. Increasingly, brands are realising that is it no longer sufficient to be wedded to sustainable ideals; they need to be prepared to disrupt their business models from within.

Just take this recent sound bite from Kingfisher Group CEO Ian Cheshire: “I'd rather disrupt my own business than have a competitor do it for me.” Cheshire was talking at Resource, the world’s first major circular economy event held earlier this month in London, where he called for tougher legislation to help incentivize the creation of more closed-loop inventions, such as Kingfisher’s power drill, that will drive material flow optimization.

But bringing a circular economy to life also requires a formidable amount of business risk. P&G’s corporate waste strategy leader Forbes McDougall highlighted the need for big corporates to mix things up by connecting with smaller, more nimble entrepreneurs. “It can be economically driven and that would really accelerate the uptake of this concept across business,” he observed.

One of the big challenges, especially if brands are looking to buy in more disruptive thinking and skills, is creating that safe platform for dialogue. There are a number of sensitive barriers to negotiate here — not least those of competition laws, disclosure agreements and intellectual property rights. This is an area that the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Circular Economy 100 initative could potentially get a grip on, as could the more design-led Great Recovery project and the forthcoming Disruption Innovation Festival.

The concept of circularity relies heavily on promoting new models of consumption that move away from ownership towards leasing, sharing and access. This will likely see consumer-facing brands prosper, especially if they get the messaging right. Take the example of eBay’s Common Threads partnership with Patagonia— a genius move by both brands to tackle the downstream impacts of apparel goods during the use and disposal phase. At Resource, eBay’s head of social innovation for Europe Lorin May revealed that her company was actively exploring how it could use its global reach to help brands progress further on this agenda.

These types of partnerships can only work if there is mutual gain to be had on both sides. Working towards circularity is likely to become increasingly competitive and there is a danger that companies may look instead to take single ownership of a particular product chain. Lifecycle ‘ownership’ of such goods down the supply chain could lead to cross-subsidization of markets and a monopoly-type scenario. As a result, higher costs and production inefficiencies might occur.

What is healthier perhaps is the creation of more ‘open-loop’ systems as proposed by Interface’s sustainability director Ramon Arratia, whereby circular stakeholders, particularly manufacturers, look to scavenge waste materials from outside of their supply chains. Defining the size and scope of these loops, whether closed or open, and how they might best intersect and interact is certainly one area that requires closer inspection.

In addition, the creation of each new circular business model will come with its own associated carbon impact and this is a dilemma that companies will have to wrestle with. There is no point trying to re-engineer a ‘better’ system if the material, energy and labor inputs don’t justify the final savings that can be gleaned from the output. Already certain organizations such as The Restart Project are questioning whether important considerations such as product durability, repair and reuse are being overlooked in this equation.

A circular, restorative economy promises a radical break with the past, but it is wise to remember that brands are still at the brainstorming stage and many are relying on outside funding to undertake such experimentation. Even if some of these trials prove successful, figuring out how to scale up such pilot work will require more investment, and more risk. The stark reality is that no matter how pressing the environmental case, if there is no economic payback in sight then the concept is destined to become a disposable fad in itself.

If this should happen, what then? What lies beyond a circular economy? It’s a question no one is asking yet — perhaps they should.

Water is the word of the month — as California suffers through one of the worst droughts in its history, Silicon Valley-based tech companies are innovating to reduce their water consumption and brands from Coke to Levi’s raising consumer awareness of water usage and conservation leading up to UN World Water Day on March 22.

Click to enlarge.

Now, Toronto-based solar company PURE Energies is also doing its part, by educating people about the important role water plays in energy production. PURE Energies’ #WorldWaterDay infographic compares different energy-generation methods and the amount of water each of them consumes. Water is required to produce nearly all forms of energy, and energy is needed at all stages of water extraction, treatment and distribution; roughly 8 percent of global energy generation is used for pumping, treating and transporting water to various consumers.

While switching to solar power can result in lower utility bills and reduced carbon footprint, a lesser-known benefit is that solar power also requires no water to generate (though cleaning solar panels could drive that usage back up again).

As the infographic illustrates, coal is the biggest water hog, consuming 100-1,100 gallons of water per MWh — equivalent to 2 Olympic-size swimming pools. Next in line is nuclear, at 600-800 gallons per MWh, followed by natural gas (20-300 gallons per MWh).

A number of businesses are proactively taking a holistic approach to managing their energy and water usage: Marks & Spencer recently became the first retailer to receive the triple award of certification for achievements in carbon, water and waste reduction from the Carbon Trust. And after research released last week asserted that businesses and governments must tackle energy and water use in tandem or risk major disruption, companies including Sainsbury’s, Boots UK, GlaxoSmithKline, Nestlé and Nokia committed to looking at their carbon-water management holistically.

Meanwhile, last week Duke Energy, American Electric Power and Hoosier Energy became the first buyers of interstate credits for water nutrients in the United States' new pilot program, which the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) launched for water-quality trades in the Ohio River Basin. Water-quality trading is a market-based approach that could enable the energy companies to offset the significant impacts of their operations using nutrient-reduction credits from farmers who implement conservation practices, EPRI says.

To learn more about the many ways organizations worldwide are utilizing #cleantech to advance sustainability, check out the editorial channel.

For more examples of how brands are using #Communications to share their values with consumers, check out our editorial channel.