Today, Ford Motor Company announced a partnership with GE through which it will install electric vehicle charging stations at more than 60 of its offices, product development campuses and manufacturing facilities across the US and Canada. In a Google hangout hosted today by Triple Pundit, Ford's Director of Vehicle Electrification and Infrastructure, Mike Tinskey, said the initiative will begin this month with the installation of the GE WattStation at Ford's headquarters in Michigan.

“We know that a growing electrified vehicle infrastructure is key to making plug-in vehicles a viable option for more consumers. Ford is committed to doing its part to help develop that infrastructure,” Tinskey said.

The service will be free to employees for the first four hours of charging each day. Ford estimates it will cost about 50 cents to fully charge each vehicle.

“Our hypothesis is that if our employees are driving those type of electric vehicles (hybrid) and their commute is more than 21 miles a day, we can actually give another opportunity to charge during the day — and get all of their Monday through Friday driving on electricity and electricity alone. And we really think if that hypothesis is true, it's gonna go a long way and we are likely to see other employers across the nation embrace the same type of concept,” said Tinskey,

Tinskey said the Ford-GE initiative differs from other workplace charging options in that the stations will be networked to gather data on usage and plan for future installations. The company is also urging employees to use the MyFord® Mobile smartphone app to collect driving and charging information, which will help Ford understand driving patterns and potentially influence future product design. “We'll be able to see all the station usage and when we start hitting a capacity constraint, we'll be able to flag that particular location and expand accordingly,” Tinskey explained.

Ford has said it considers analytics and big data the next frontier for innovation, competition and productivity. The company continues to expand its use of big data as more and better technologies, methodologies and datasets emerge, and this latest method of collecting data is a great example. 

Earlier this month, GE renewed its ecomagination commitment to find technological solutions to save money and reduce environmental impact, including an additional $10 billion to reach a total investment of $25 billion in R&D by 2020. GE says the new investment will advance research in natural gas, power plants and renewables.

To learn more about how organizations are using #ICT and #BigData to drive sustainability innovation, check out the editorial channel.

Mars Incorporated has announced a new sustainable palm oil policy, which commits Mars to both industry-leading standards and to developing a fully traceable pipeline back to known palm oil processing mills by the end of the year. The initiative is supported by the company's new deforestation policy, which focuses on its sources of palm oil, beef, soy, pulp and paper.

The policy will also require all of Mars' suppliers to confirm their commitment to the principles in Mars' sourcing charter by the end of 2014, and have a fully sustainable and traceable palm oil supply across their operations or to have plans in place for doing so by the end of 2015.

While Mars says its palm oil use accounts for only .2 percent of global use, the company has been a member of the RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil) since 2010. Mars purchased 100 percent of its palm oil last year from RSPO-certified sources via the “mass balance” program, which requires processors to purchase palm oil from certified sources but allows them to mix it with conventional palm oil during transportation, processing and packaging. Under the new policy, all palm oil received by Mars will be continue to be RSPO-certified but must also be fully traceable and compliant with the additional standards set by the Company.

“Rapid expansion of palm oil plantations continues to threaten environmentally sensitive areas of tropical rainforest and carbon-rich peatlands, as well as the rights of communities that depend on them for their livelihoods. We have recognized that even though we have already implemented a 100 percent certified supply of palm oil this is not enough. We believe that these additional measures will not only help build a genuinely sustainable pipeline for Mars, but will also help accelerate change across the industry by encouraging our suppliers to only source from companies whose plantations and farms are responsibly run.” said Barry Parkin, Chief Sustainability Officer at Mars.

The company also announced that it has become a member of The Forest Trust, a global nonprofit that will work with its suppliers in mills and plantations to help them build traceability and verify that they meet Mars’ sourcing criteria. Mars will report progress on its commitments annually and provide updates every six months on its website.

With demand continuing to rise for palm oil due to its use in a variety of products, a spotlight has been shown on the destructive nature of the industry. Palm oil production is the largest driver of deforestation in South East Asia and parts of Africa and South America, highlighting the need for sustainable practices; unfortunately, a recent scorecard by the Union of Concerned Scientists showed that most companies were not making good on their palm oil sourcing commitments, if they had made one at all. Though recent pledges from L’Oréal and Unilever both scored in the 80^th percentile for their comprehensive approach to the issue, Kellogg’s commitment to fully traceable palm oil last month only scored 52.8%, since UCS said it “lacks deforestation- and peat-free commitments and [has] weak traceability or transparency commitments.” It will be interesting to see how Mars’ new plan stacks up in comparison.

To learn more about how companies worldwide are cleaning up their #SupplyChains, check out our editorial channel.

B Lab on Wednesday recognized 92 companies from 15 countries and 31 industries for creating the most positive, overall social and environmental impact.

The "B Corp Best for the World" list honors businesses that earned an overall score in the top 10 percent of all Certified B Corporations on the B Impact Assessment, a rigorous and comprehensive assessment of a company's impact on its workers, community and the environment. Honorees were recognized among micro, small and mid-sized businesses.

The ‘Best for the World’ companies come from 31 different industries such as manufacturing, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals and real estate. A majority operate in a service industry, including 17 honorees in financial services and 15 in environmental consulting. Some 30 percent of honorees are based outside the US, with 15 companies operating in emerging markets, such as Afghanistan, Kenya and Colombia.

Highlighted companies include CDI Lan, a Brazilian education and training company generating income and employability in low-income communities through Internet cafes; d.light design, a manufacturer and distributor of solar lighting and power products providing access to reliable, affordable, renewable energy for nearly 30 million people in 60 countries; and Sunrise Banks, a Minnesota community bank supporting affordable housing, small business development and not-for-profits.

Each honored company is a Certified B Corporation, B Lab says. They leverage business to solve social and environmental problems and have met rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. Today there are over 970 certified B Corporations across 60 industries and 32 countries, unified by one common goal: to redefine success in business.

“Employees, consumers, investors and policy makers increasingly want to support companies that create a positive impact in the world and the Best for the World honorees are the best of the best,” said Jay Coen Gilbert, co-founder of B Lab. “It’s particularly inspiring that 21 percent of the 2014 honorees are first-time winners but long-time B Corps. They’re winning the race to the top.”

According to a recent survey by Net Impact, 80 percent of Millennials want to work for a company that cares about its impacts; more than half said they would refuse to work for an irresponsible corporation. Justin Yuen and Richard Rosen, president of B Corps FYMI and ROSEN, respectively, say the B Corp certification — which hardwires economic, social and environmental aspirations into the structure of a business — has helped their companies attract, and keep, the people they want working for them.

Well-known B Corps include Ben and Jerry's, Method and Patagonia, the latter two of which were featured in the first 'Best for the World' list in 2012.

Carlton Solle grew up in Marin County, surrounded by the beauty of the Bay Area. But it wasn’t until he spent time in Costa Rica that he saw natural beauty contaminated — beaches overgrown with garbage floating downstream. In response, he founded Treeson and created a Kickstarter campaign to raise launch funds. The new model for water bottle consumption provides an interactive alternative to plastic — it is designed with a mailing label on the bottle, so customers can easily avoid landfills by mailing the bottles back to the manufacturing plant. We spoke with Carlton about Treeson’s unique value proposition and why he started the social enterprise.

Why are you rethinking the water bottle?

One of the biggest environmental problems facing the world today is plastic waste, and we’re running out of landfill space. The answer now is to ship it all overseas, to landfills that are often built on the outskirts of urban centers near creeks and rivers. The overflow inevitably ends up in these waterways and gets carried out to sea where it threatens marine life or pollutes remote beaches. That’s what motivated the idea for Treeson.

The reality is that bottled water is here to say: it’s a $6.7 billion market and its explosive growth provides little incentive to change. Treeson presents an alternative: Mail the water bottle back to us when you’re done drinking it. The mailing label is right on the bottle! It’s free, easy and a fun way to be reminded of the fact that every small choice can be part of the problem or part of the solution. We hope that this inspires the industry to move to fully sustainable solutions.

How did you get engaged with environmental issues?

I grew up in Marin County and always actively enjoyed the outdoors. But I am ashamed to say that I never really understood how important those spaces were and the role they play in all of our lives until I traveled to Costa Rica. It is easy to take natural beauty for granted but being in Costa Rica changed me. That’s when I started getting involved with environmental organizations and saw the incredible achievements they were able to accomplish with little in the way of resources.

Do you feel that Treeson's sustainability component is enough to drive consumer behavior change?

To some context, the folks who buy plastic water bottles by the caseload every month are not bad people and it’s not that they don’t care about the environment — they just don’t really think about it and there’s not community pressure to do so. Bottled water is cheap, convenient and has become ubiquitous for those reasons.

I’ve found that the best way to reach the maximum number of people and motivate them to change their behavior is to offer a simple solution and provide a choice that people can feel good about without having to pay more for it.

As the category grows, there is a trend firmly toward private label. This suggests that there is little brand loyalty overall. Everyone is competing on the same terms with roughly the same product offering. What Treeson does is offer a choice that no one else is even contemplating. The shopper will still get to buy a case of water but our product will do something about pollution, create clean energy and plant trees — all for no extra cost. Now, you may not be a die-hard environmental activist but our hope is that this is an appealing proposition for your average consumer.

Walk us through how the water bottle is being designed.

It is a lengthy process but a creative one and a lot of fun to be part of. A huge part of it is the upfront homework that we do because it’s a project that’s never even been attempted — even the “green” packaging out there is generally produced in industrial facilities so there is only so far we can go with the existing infrastructure.

We want to use only plant-based materials. Bio-plastics are pretty common, but most are made from genetically modified corn — we want nothing to do with putting more GMOs into the ground. So we have to do extra sourcing work. We also have the labels to consider: paper, adhesives, inks and laminates are predominantly petrochemical-based, so we turned to non-GMO soy inks, for example.

Congratulations on a successful Kickstarter campaign! What’s next for Treeson?

Thank you! We raised an incredible $96,242 with the help of 648 backers. It was a truly amazing experience. We have big plans for this brand and bottled water is only the beginning. Other beverages are an obvious extension that is easy for us to roll out but we have plans beyond drinks. Our mission is to explore how packaging itself can be revolutionized and made less wasteful. We want our Treeson Drop & Tree logo to become as recognizable as the Nike Swoosh or Apple’s logo. When you see that icon, you will know that you have the greenest packaging possible for a product in that category and you will know that we are working on making it even greener! 

For more examples of #startups increasing social and environmental sustainability through disruptive innovation, check out the editorial channel.

For more examples of innovations in sustainable #packaging, check out the editorial channel.

To learn more about innovative ways companies worldwide are turning waste into resources, check out the #WasteNot editorial channel.

Just a week after the release of its most recent sustainability report— complete with new 2020 targets, including providing access to clean water to a million people worldwide — and just in time for World Water Day, Keurig Green Mountain (KGM), has announced a multi-faceted effort to address the long-term, interconnected challenges of the global water crisis, starting with a commitment of $11 million to support leading NGOs working to promote water security around the world.

“Freshwater resources are dwindling and communities throughout the world are threatened with scarcity,” said Brian Kelley, president and CEO of Keurig Green Mountain. “Water is a critical natural resource that is fundamentally important to our company, our consumers, our stakeholders and our supply chain. As a business and as global citizens, we have a responsibility to promote good water stewardship in the world.“

The company announced that in late 2014, it will convene water experts at the first annual Keurig Green Mountain Water Summit in Vermont to stimulate conversations, collaboration and problem solving to address the global water crisis. In addition, KGM will continue to focus on processes and products that reduce its internal water footprint, as well as help consumers save water.

As part of the $11 million commitment, KGM funded four water-related nonprofit organizations:

• charity: water, a global nonprofit with a mission to bring clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. Working with charity: water, KGM aims to bring clean drinking water to one million people by 2020.
• Global Water Initiative (GWI), created by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation in partnership with CARE, Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to focus resources and expertise on the efficient and equitable use of water resources for agricultural production to improve food security, resiliency, and sustainability for communities. The partnership is driving on-the-ground work to improve management of water resources in coffee-growing areas of Central America.
• Raise-the-River, a coalition of leading conservation NGOs working within a landmark US-Mexico policy framework to restore the once lush and vibrant Colorado River Delta by reconnecting the Colorado River to the Gulf of California. Together, KGM and Raise-the-River are helping lead the charge to restore the health of the Colorado River, starting with the Delta.
• American Rivers, a nonprofit that protects wild rivers, restores damaged rivers and conserves clean water for people and nature. This partnership will bring communities together to clean up and restore their local rivers. KGM employees have participated in river clean-up activities for 10 years, including several years in partnership with American Rivers.

Keurig Green Mountain says its commitment to addressing the water crisis aligns with its goal of understanding and reducing its water footprint and creating products that help consumers save water. For instance, the Keurig® Brewing System uses water from the tap and only uses amounts of water that will be consumed, meaning the company doesn’t ship water, and consumers don’t throw out water in the form of wasted coffee.

A new coffee venture, TOMS Roasting Company, is the latest “one for one” product from TOMS — proceeds from the sale of its coffee will help provide access to clean water in the countries from which the company sources its beans; every cup purchased will provide a day’s worth of clean water; for every bag, a week’s worth.

Sony Pictures’ upcoming blockbuster The Amazing Spider-Man 2 weaves an exciting web of action onscreen, combined with environmental consciousness and responsibility behind the screen. According to the studio, the physical production of the film, hailed as “the most eco-friendly blockbuster in the history of the studio” by Hannah Minghella, president of Production at Sony Pictures, was entirely carbon-neutral, thanks to attention to a variety of pertinent and easily modifiable details.

The initiative began right at pre-production and was supported at every level from producers and studio executives to the cast and crew. The below video by Sony explains the various ways that the film attempted to adopt environment-friendly practices, ranging from basic waste segregation and recycling to setting more complicated, department-specific agendas with weekly incentives to motivate the team.

According to the video, the sets were built using rented, salvaged and reused wood and over 490 tons of materials such as steel, glass, etc were recovered or donated. Even the artificial weather for the film was created with care — biodegradable snow and water-based atmospheric smoke were used during production. Waste management included recycling of textiles used in costumes and set dressings, use of eco-friendly detergents, ensuring responsible disposal of oil and fuel (a result of car crashes and other stunt scenes), composting (5195 cubic yards recycled/composted), and elimination of plastic water bottles on set (193,000 water bottles conserved). Some of the activities extended beyond the shooting of the film, including planting of trees at select shooting locations, donation of leftover lunch and craft services food, eco-conscious messaging in set decoration and a Twitter campaign, which provided ongoing updates.

In a partnership with Earth Hour and WWF China, Sony Pictures purchased carbon offsets by providing 100 clean cookstoves for communities near China’s Giant Panda habitat region, reducing deforestation and improving air quality for local residents. In a press release, Sony stated: “Through its efforts, the studio will receive Gold Standard carbon offsets that render the entire physical production of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, as well as its publicity tour, carbon-neutral.”

This month, Spider-Man will be the first Super Hero ambassador for Earth Hour, the annual worldwide lights-out event in recognition of climate change. Spidey and the film’s stars Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx and director Marc Webb are also throwing their support behind Earth Hour Blue — a new digital crowdfunding and crowdsourcing platform aimed at engaging people around the world and participants in the annual event to raise funds for on-the-ground environmental projects from across the world.

“I’m proud Spider-Man is the first Super Hero ambassador for Earth Hour because he shows we can all be Super Heroes when we realize the power we all have,” says Andrew Garfield, who plays Spider-Man. “Earth Hour is a movement that has created massive impact around the world, so imagine what we can do this year with Spider-Man by our side.”

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

To learn more about how companies worldwide are engaging employees in sustainability, check out our editorial channel.

Just because you're doing good work as a social entrepreneur doesn't mean you get to skip on the more commercial parts of running a business. Your good story isn't enough to grab customers and create more impact, you need to build a good brand. Every other month, brand innovation firm BBMG hosts Five x 5, a social innovation workshop designed to help five startups with their most pressing brand-related challenges. Five teams of planners, strategists, creatives, and entrepreneurs donate their time and expertise to delve into each challenge and then share insights and concepts before the networking continues.

Last month, social incubator Echoing Green joined us in inviting ioby, Seeding Labs, Regalii, Enstitute, and b condoms to the studio. Here are five things we learned about branding for good from that strategy session.

What's Your Word?

Branding is the art and science of creating and delivering a consistent message, image and experience that brings your unique difference to life across all touch points. Doing good has never been more mainstream, so social enterprises must work harder to differentiate to help build reputation, attract donors, volunteers, and so on. One solution is to focus on that singular word you want to try to own--in your own way--in the minds of your audiences. Like Volvo owns safety. Or Nike owns performance. Enstitute, which runs an apprenticeship program for millennials, is reframing the national dialogue about education: it’s not about schools but skills in the 21st century. With this word front and center, the Enstitute team can now consider positioning its offering and thought leadership programs around the power of skills to transform our emerging workforce in the new economy.

Unearth the Target's Aspiration

The more you say, the less you mean. Focus, focus, focus. The startup b condoms is focused on young people of color, a segment not reflected in market leaders like Trojan and Durex. But outside a tagline that inspires the audience to “b cool, b safe, b yourself,” the brand has had trouble capturing the emotional benefit behind its products. Using empathy exercises, we saw the brand through the consumers’ eyes and realized that these condoms serve as a badge, giving customers permission to live life on their terms. Concepting a new lifestyle campaign based on this insight was an easy task in the minutes that followed. Here’s to being bold, sexy, and healthy.

Hack Your Brand's Archetype

In a David-versus-Goliath mission, Regalii is taking on the Western Unions of the world by building a new model for remittances, the process by which new immigrants send money home to their families and loved ones. Brand archetypes around remittances often fall into what we call the Caregiver category, motivated by compassion, empathy, and a desire to help, but the relationship is too uni-directional, linear, from sender to giver. Through a visioning exercise, it became clear that describing them as a magician is a better archetype for Regalii’s work because it sparks change in the lives of individuals and communities around the world. Inspired, we crafted a new brand narrative that emphasized collaboration and achieving shared goals together, repositioning Regalii as the magic ingredient bringing change to the lives of both givers and recipients.

Frame or Be Framed

When Seeding Labs received a $3 million grant from USAID for their Equipment Transfer Program (ETP), the organization was challenged with renaming the program for a larger audience. ETP is one of the most functionally powerful capabilities of Seeding Labs — providing scientists in emerging markets with research equipment donated by scientists in the United States — but the team wanted to ensure that old equipment was viewed as “treasure,” not someone else’s “trash.” A stakeholder map revealed who cares about the transfer program, what they can do to help it, and what they need from us to take action. The emerging themes, like “connecting scientists across borders,” gave us the basis for generating new naming pathways.

Build It from the Inside Out

With ioby, a crowdfunding platform for neighborhood improvement projects, we wanted to recruit more users to start projects. We knew that people were donating to projects that already had a leader, but very few of these donors were signing up to be leaders themselves. In truth, ioby had never asked them. So, rather than looking outward to build a general, costly awareness campaign, we decided to look at converting actual recent donors into project leaders. The team then concepted a new ambassador program with layers of incentives, triggers, and support designed to make it easy for donors to try starting new projects in their neighborhood.

In sum, branding for good is also good branding.

Know your word. Make it a word no one else can own in the same way you can. Work hard to embody it. Make it relevant to your audiences’ aspirations. Map stakeholder needs to ensure you’re connecting the dots and empowering audiences. How will you help them be their best selves? Against your competitive set, is your archetype unique enough, clear enough, to help you communicate your mission while standing apart from the pack? Finally, look within to find your strongest ambassadors and work with them to build your goodwill from the inside out.

The next Five x 5, co-hosted with the The Blue Ridge Foundation, will be on April 10.

This post first appeared on FastCoExist on March 17, 2014.

Water crises ranked third among 10 global risks of highest concern in 2014, according to the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Risks Perception Survey, and water risk is on the agendas of business and investors as never before. So today, to coincide with World Water Day, WWF unveils its updated Water Risk Filter.

The free online tool allows users to map production facilities, supply chains and commodities. The new version of the website includes data on more than 120 agricultural commodities — including cotton, palm oil and corn — making it the most sophisticated tool for tracking water risk exposure.

“What we’re seeing with water is a real convergence of the business agenda and the conservation agenda,” says Jochem Verberne, Head of Corporate Relations at WWF International. “Companies and investors are beginning to understand that their futures depend on a natural resource that is shared among many users. That creates business risk, and it creates incentive to be part of the solution. The Water Risk Filter can help.”

The Water Risk Filter generates a score based on the physical, regulatory and reputational risk related to water in basins around the world. It also includes an extensive risk-mitigation toolbox, allowing the user to reference relevant case studies demonstrating actions to improve water management.

First released by WWF in 2012, the Water Risk Filter was developed in collaboration with the German development finance institution DEG. Although now much more powerful, WWF says the Water Risk Filter remains too easy not to use. By simply inputting a facility location or a commodity and where it’s grown, the user will receive information identifying risk hot spots. Once those locations have been identified, the user can review possible responses in the filter’s mitigation toolbox.

Close to 50,000 individual facilities have been assessed by the Water Risk Filter since its original release. Over 1,500 different organizations have used the tool, including global fashion retailer H&M, which utilized the filter when creating a new water strategy for its entire value chain.

“The Water Risk Filter helped us see all the places where water touches our business, and create strategies to address raw material risks, support supplier factories and improve efficiency in our own stores and offices,” says Felix Ockborn, Environmental Sustainability Coordinator for water at H&M. “The tool helped us see that working beyond our direct operations to promote sustainable water management is in the best interest of our business.”

In the days leading up to World Water Day, WWF — along with The Coca-Cola Company 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.

Energy-efficiency programs are helping industry achieve higher energy savings, cost savings and productivity improvements, according to a new report by the SEE Action Network and the Institute for Industrial Productivity (IIP).

The report, Industrial Energy Efficiency: Designing Effective State Programs for the Industrial Sector, investigates successful and well-designed industrial energy efficiency (IEE) programs in the United States. The results provide a strong case for industry participation in statewide programs.

IIP says it is clear from the research that state energy-efficiency programs are helping both industry and ratepayers save money and cut energy use.

“Our research shows that industrial energy-efficiency programs offer participants extensive savings by reducing energy bills. But the benefits are wider than that,” said Amelie Goldberg, North America program manager at IIP and primary author of the report. “There’s no question that industry’s participation in energy-saving efforts is also helping eliminate or delay the need to build more expensive power generation, transmission and distribution capacity.

“In turn, this means the programs are facilitating efforts to cut the harmful greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. It’s a win-win situation for all,” Goldberg added.

IIP says looking ahead, everyone’s rates can be kept down by ensuring the majority of energy customers have access to energy efficiency services, such as those offered through IEE programs.

IEE programs work by providing information, technical assistance and incentives to industrial facilities to support energy efficiency equipment upgrades and improved maintenance practices, and to promote energy management to ensure continuous improvements. The programs, if designed and implemented well, can be more cost-effective than efficiency programs in the commercial and residential sectors, helping to ensure that states and regulatory utility commissions encourage delivery of energy services as cost-effectively as possible.

The report found that the keys to success are making a sizeable commitment over a number of years, and ensuring there are strong strategic energy-management programs in place in firms. The energy savings achieved warrant the effort — they go well beyond those made by individual firms as part of their own energy-efficiency initiative.

For example, the NORPAC paper mill in Washington State participated in a program offered by the Bonneville Power Administration in conjunction with the Cowlitz County Public Utility District. The company invested $35 million, and an additional $25 million was offered in program incentives for equipment to improve the refining process. NORPAC now saves 100 million kWh of electricity per year, equivalent to cutting its power requirements by about 12 percent.

Last year, Ceres and its Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR) released a report that said energy efficiency could be a multi-hundred-billion dollar investment opportunity in the United States, but better policies are required to unlock broad-based financing from institutional investors. Around the same time, Deloitte published a separate report that said that improving energy efficiency at America's businesses is as important to brand-building as it is to growing the bottom line.

Microsoft, Google and several other companies last week joined a new White House program to launch a suite of climate data projects aimed at serving businesses, governments and the public.

The Climate Data Initiative calls on the private sector to build tools using government datasets that will make communities “more resilient to climate change and to forge cross-sector partnerships to make those tools as useful as possible.”

More than 100 datasets, web services and tools related to coastal flooding and sea level rise are now publicly available at data.gov/climate. The site will expand over time to cover other climate-related topics, including human health, energy infrastructure and the food supply.

Meanwhile, the USGS, the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency have released mapping information regarding hundreds of thousands of the country’s infrastructure units and geographical features, such as bridges, railroad tunnels, roads, river gauges and canals.

The initiative is part of President Obama’s climate plan, outlined last June.

Businesses, hospitals, city planners and resource managers will all benefit from the data and tools, the White House says. Information on data.gov/climate could help builders avoid areas prone to future sea-level rise, and water utility operators to identify potential threats to the local water supply.

Some businesses involved in the Climate Data Initiative include:

• Microsoft Research — The technology company will give 12 months of free cloud computing to 40 climate change scientists and decision-makers. Microsoft also launched a free resource, Adaptable FetchClimate, for retrieving past and present observations and for future climate-prediction information.
• Google — The search company has committed to provide one petabyte (1,000 terabytes) of cloud storage to house satellite observations, digital elevation data, and climate and weather model datasets drawn from government open data. Google also has formed partnerships with the Desert Research Institute, the University of Idaho, and the University of Nebraska to model water consumption from vegetation around the world, and provide near real-time drought mapping and monitoring for the entire continental US.
• Intel Corporation — The company will sponsor three regional partnerships such as “hackathon” events  and San Jose.
• Esri — The GIS mapping software company will develop and publish a series of free and open “maps and apps” developed in partnership with 12 cities to address issues including droughts, heat waves or flooding. Esri also has announced an online portal for sharing climate-related resources.

Other organizations involved in the effort include the World Bank, NASA, MIT, Antioch University New England, CartoDB, Code for America, the Rockefeller Foundation, annual hackathon EcoHack and the Alliance for Water Efficiency.

In related news, to commemorate World Water Day on Saturday, WWF unveiled its updated Water Risk Filter. The new version of the free online tool allows users to map production facilities, supply chains and commodities, and includes data on more than 120 agricultural commodities — including cotton, palm oil and corn — making it the most sophisticated tool for tracking water risk exposure.

And last month, Apple, SolarCity, San Diego International Airport, Sungevity and Sapphire Energy joined more than 120 California-based companies in signing the Climate Declaration, a business leader call to action that urges federal and state policymakers to seize the economic opportunity of addressing climate change. Launched last year by Ceres and its business network, Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy (BICEP), the Climate Declaration has more than 700 signatories nationwide, including General Motors, Unilever, Gap and eBay.

Not long after Mars jumped on board earlier this month, this week the deforestation-free consumer products bandwagon got even fuller with new commitments from General Mills and Colgate-Palmolive.  

Palm oil has become a consumer product staple, used in everything from food and fuel to beauty products and cleaning agents. The dramatic rise in demand has driven increases in deforestation, and NGOs such as Greenpeace and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) have continued to keep the issue in the spotlight by engaging with companies, consumers and the industry at large.

“It’s wonderful to see major brands step up and demand deforestation-free palm oil,” Sharon Smith, campaign manager with UCS’ Tropical Forest & Climate Initiative, said of the Colgate-Palmolive commitment. “We’ve seen that when consumers speak out, companies listen, and when the companies demand better palm oil, producers on the ground follow suit. Not only will this improved process reduce emissions, but it’s also a win for consumers.”

General Mills’ announcement pertains to an update to its 2010 policy on responsible palm oil sourcing that now includes a traceability component that was lacking in the previous version. While this addition is necessary to helping the company ensure that its products are deforestation-free, and the company still insists on a 2015 goal for implementation, UCS says there are still glaring omissions in the policy.

“General Mills seems out of touch with the industry definition of High Carbon Stock forests, a method used to identify critically important forests,” Smith said. “The company claims there isn’t an industry methodology — an argument generally used to justify cutting down important forests — but in fact, there is an established method and General Mills needs to adopt it. This policy update is certainly an improvement for General Mills, but the company will need to follow through if it wants to demonstrate a true commitment to reducing deforestation.”

Meanwhile, just today Colgate-Palmolive announced a new commitment to making its products deforestation-free, including achieving full traceability of its palm oil supply back to the plantation by 2015. Under its new policy, Colgate-Palmolive commits to responsibly source the forest commodities of pulp and paper, palm oil and derivatives, soy and soy oil and beef tallow

Colgate-Palmolive’s policy recognizes the need to go beyond the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)’s certification schemes in order to remove deforestation from its products. Importantly, the policy specifically mentions protecting peatlands, High Conservation Value and High Carbon Stock forests, as well as safeguarding community rights.

“Colgate-Palmolive’s policy to source responsible palm oil is a vast improvement,” Smith said. “They scored high marks for committing to protect peatlands, carbon-rich areas of decayed vegetation, as well as High Carbon Stock forests, areas of critically important forests.

“The one defect in Colgate-Palmolive’s plan is its timetable,” she added. “The company plans to fully implement this commitment by 2020 — that’s six years of climate emissions from deforestation and peatland conversion as well as labor violations that the company will condone before they demand full compliance with the policy. While the commitment itself is looking good, Colgate-Palmolive should speed up the implementation timetable.”

While welcoming its commitment to palm oil traceability by 2015, Greenpeace said it will push Colgate-Palmolive to implement its No Deforestation policy before its stated 2020 deadline.

Greenpeace was also quick to point out that Colgate’s announcement further isolates competitor Procter & Gamble, which has so far failed to adopt an effective No Deforestation policy despite years of pressure from Greenpeace and other NGOs.

“With pledges from Unilever, Nestlé, L’Oréal and now Colgate-Palmolive to clean up their supply chains, P&G is choosing to lag behind its competition. The hundreds of thousands of people powering our campaign to end deforestation must be wondering what P&G’s next step will be: more greenwashing or real action?” said Areeba Hamid, forest campaigner at Greenpeace International.

Since 2007, Greenpeace has been confronting P&G on how it is exposing its consumers to forest destruction during which time the company has failed to take any adequate action. Prominent RSPO members, such as Musim Mas and KLK, both suppliers to P&G, continue to clear forests.

UCS recently graded the palm oil sourcing commitments of 30 top companies, including Colgate-Palmolive and General Mills. The scorecard found that 24 of these household brands have inadequate commitments or lack commitments altogether. If General Mills and Colgate-Palmolive make good on their new policies, it should help raise their rather meager scores — 42.6 and 44.9 out of 100, respectively.

To learn more about how companies worldwide are cleaning up their #SupplyChains, check out the editorial channel.

For more examples of how NGOs and brands are driving #BehaviorChange, check out the editorial channel.

We know that stakeholder engagement is tough. Whether large or small, here at 2degrees we’ve seen businesses around the world sourcing expert opinion from our pool of sustainability professionals to find out how best to continue their journey.

We also know that you guys are doing some tremendous things — initiatives that have been largely tucked away in a cupboard, silently working away without the respect they deserve. And we think they need a little bit of sunshine.

Enter the 2degrees Champions Awards, v 2.0.

Now in their second year (hence the 2.0), the 2degrees Champions Awards have attracted more than double the entries from last year, and since the longlist went live there have already been over 2,700 votes (if you haven’t already, you can cast your vote here).

But hold on — rewind. Why are the awards such an opportunity, apart from a boastful title and a flashy trophy to boot?

There are certainly some big players in the longlist, but thanks to our voting system the playing field is levelled so that smaller businesses are just as likely as the top brands to win an award. Instead of leaving the decision in the hands of an elite panel it’s you, their sustainable business peers, who award the crowns.

Low Carbon Hub, nominee in the Social Value category, drumming up votes through the Twittersphere.

Needing as many votes as possible, entrants have been busy getting their message out to the masses. From circulating emails amongst the internal gang to saturating Twitter walls with pleas to loyal followers, entrants have been busy drumming up support. We even sent them a personalised #Team T-shirt, setting them the challenge of enlisting as many supporters as possible to sport it for a selfie (After all, the latest research shows that you get more re-tweets with a photo…). As a result, social media buzz around the Awards has gone off the scale with entrants’ campaigns already reaching over two million people.

And if that wasn’t quite engaging enough, the Awards Ceremony itself is an ideal opportunity to bond with other teams, but it’s also an excellent chance to network with the crème de la crème of the sustainability world.

And while I might be a little biased, it comes straight from the horse’s mouth:

“The best thing that the 2degrees Awards have done is to introduce me to a couple of new contacts, such as Global Action Plan. We ran a session with Trewin Restorick on social value together with Hazel Blears as a direct result of coming in contact over the Awards," says Social Enterprise Mark founder Lucy Findlay, who won Supporting Player of the Year at last year’s event.

If you didn’t enter this year’s awards, you can still get involved — voting is still open, so let us know who you think deserves the sustainability crowns for 2014. There are plenty of categories to vote on — from Social Value, Internal Engagement and External Communications, to Supply Chain Management, Built Environment and Sustainability Champion of the Year (with the latter including individuals who have been the real driving force behind great change).

And don’t forget Personality of the Year: Matt Damon, Vivienne Westwood and Russell Brand are all up for nomination.

Those who vote will be entered into a prize draw for the chance to snap up five tickets for them and their colleagues to attend the glitzy Awards Ceremony taking place at Wembley Stadium in London on July 9!

And whether you’re inspired by the nonprofits or the celebs, learn from the entrants and winners from this year, and perhaps you could be one of next year’s champs.

To see the longlist and vote for your winner visit https://www.2degreesnetwork.com/awards/vote/.

SAP today announced that it will power all its data centers and facilities globally with 100 percent renewable electricity starting in 2014. The shift will help minimize the company’s carbon footprint as it moves to a cloud business model, and will help eliminate carbon emissions caused by its customers’ systems by moving them into a green cloud. 

This news was included in the recently released 2013 SAP Integrated Report, which noted that the company’s overall energy efficiency remained steady while greenhouse gas emissions increased from 30.0 grams CO2 per euro of total revenue in 2012 to 32.4 grams CO2 per euro in 2013. At the same time, absolute carbon emissions increased by 12 percent; as customers increasingly leverage SAP® software in the cloud, systems that previously ran at customers’ sites are increasingly running in SAP data centers and have become part of SAP’s total emissions.

SAP is reiterating its commitment to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from operations to levels of the year 2000 by 2020. Not only is the company taking these transformational measures to meet these absolute targets and mitigate the environmental impact of cloud computing, but it has also launched the following innovative programs:

Thomas Odenwald, SAP's SVP of Energy and Resource Management Strategies, speaker at SB '14 San Diego

• A new initiative to subsidize and encourage electric vehicle adoption for German employees, a project that began in 2014 with 60 electric vehicles and will help to extend charging infrastructure and optimize the operations of electric vehicles in SAP’s fleet management.
• In 2013, SAP built the first LEED-certified building in all of Brazil and achieved EMS ISO14001 certification for its Budapest, Palo Alto and Vancouver offices.
• The successful launch of TwoGo by SAP, a mobile app that encourages carpooling within public and private organizations, supports efforts to reduce the cost of fuel, parking and business trips and emissions, as well as enhance employee networks.
• SAP invested EUR3 million in the Livelihoods Fund, which plants trees and conducts clean energy projects in underserved rural areas to both restore their ecosystems and offset carbon emissions globally. With support from SAP and others, the Livelihoods Fund has planted more than 100 million trees in Latin America, Asia and Africa.

“Committing to 100 percent renewable electricity in our data centers and facilities is a natural consequence of our business model shift into the cloud,” said Peter Graf, chief sustainability officer at SAP. “By delivering our industry-leading cloud solutions in an environmentally friendly fashion, we expand our competitiveness in the cloud software market while further enhancing our sustainability leadership. It’s a beautiful example of how SAP puts sustainability at the core of its value creation.”

Key non-financial results from this year’s report include:

• 89 percent of employees agree with the statement that SAP needs to pursue sustainability as a strategic priority.
• Overall the percentage of women in the workforce slightly increased in 2013 to 31 percent from 30 percent in 2012, and the percentage of women in management increased to 21.2 percent in 2013 from 20.8 percent in 2012.
• While there was a slight dip in employee engagement scores, SAP’s score is industry-leading at 77 percent in 2013 compared to 79 percent in 2012.

In other SAP news, the company announced last month it has co-developed a personalized technology infrastructure for in-vehicle mobility services as part of a joint innovation project with BMW Group Research and Technology. The prototype utilizes the SAP HANA® Cloud Platform, which will provide personalized services such as parking, fuel, beverages and food to drivers based on their location and route.

To learn more about how organizations are using #ICT and #BigData to drive sustainability innovation, check out the editorial channel.

Latin America has become a large producer of sustainable foods but has yet to become a significant consumer, according to recent research from Organic Monitor. The study finds that while Brazil is now a global source of sustainable coffee, soybeans, sugar, juices and herbs; Argentina and Chile are well-established southern hemisphere sources of organic fruits and vegetables; and Colombia and Peru are important exporters of natural ingredients, regional consumption of sustainable foods remains negligible.

With 6.8 million hectares, Latin America has 18 percent share of global organic farmland. More than US$1 billion of organic products is exported from the region per year, however local markets are insignificant in size. The region is also a major source of fair trade products, such as cocoa, sugar and coffee, yet there is no domestic market. Most Rainforest Alliance and UTZ Certified products grown in the region are also destined for Europe and North America.

As will be discussed at the Sustainable Foods Summit in São Paolo this week, a major challenge for Latin America is to develop local markets for sustainable products. Various studies show consumer awareness of sustainability issues is rising, but awareness has yet to translate into demand. Low consumer knowledge of sustainable production methods and high product prices are cited as barriers to market growth.

Brazil has the largest market for sustainable foods in the region. Its most successful retailer is Pão de Açúcar, which has partnered with local farmers to secure supply of certified products and markets about 700 organic products under its Taeq private label. Other retailers, including Walmart and Carrefour, are also investing in sustainable product ranges.

Native Products is one of the few Latin American sustainable food companies to build a strong market presence, with products are in over 20,000 Brazilian outlets. Its success is partly due to its wide product range, spanning from sugar, coffee and juices to breakfast cereals and snack bars.

Organic Monitor says it sees product portfolio as a ‘key ingredient’ for local markets to develop. Most Latin American producers are focusing on agricultural commodities for export markets. Lack of domestic production is leading some retailers to import finished products such as organic baby food and beverages from the US. High transportation and import costs further inflate product prices.

A bigger obstacle however is changing consumer behavior. Many Latin Americans perceive organic, fair trade and other eco-labeled products as luxuries. Consumers maybe becoming more aware of sustainability issues, but perceptions will have to change if local markets are to take root.

On the flipside of that, recent research by Cone Communications found that a surprisingly high percentage of US consumers are willing to sacrifice variety and dollars in order to eat more consciously. According to the 2014 Cone Communications Food Issues Trend Tracker, 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.

With most of the focus regarding the carbon footprint of air travel on the planes themselves, little attention is generally paid to that of airports. a new project to convert the rest of the vehicles on the airfield at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport from fossil fuels to electric power is about to save the airport millions of dollars and tons of greenhouse gases (GHGs).

The Port of Seattle, along with Alaska Airlines, Western Washington Clean Cities and US Representative Adam Smith have unveiled a new project providing nearly 600 electric charging stations throughout the airport for ground support equipment (GSE) such as baggage tugs, bag ramps and pushback vehicles. Converting the GSE from fossil fuel to electric, each year the project is projected to save $2.8 million in airline fuel costs and 10,000 tons of GHG emissions – the equivalent of taking 1,900 cars off the road.

"The eGSE project here at Sea-Tac should serve as an example of how energy efficiency is not only good for the environment, but is also a smart financial investment," Smith said. "We must continue to invest in alternative energy technologies that protect consumers, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and strike a balance between moving away from our dependence on fossil fuels while mitigating the economic impact of that transition."

The port has installed charging corrals with smart, fast-charging plug-ins for vehicles to receive a full charge in less than 4 hours. The smart technology determines which vehicles need the most charge and meters out the power. This first phase provides 296 charging locations throughout concourse D, C, and the north satellite. The second phase will cover the rest of the terminal at concourse A, B, and the south satellite for a total of 576 charging locations by September. 

"This project provides the infrastructure for airlines to convert their vehicles from diesel to electric in Sea-Tac's effort to become the first major airport in the U.S. to provide charging stations at all gates," said Courtney Gregoire, co-president of the Port of Seattle Commission. "As many as 650 vehicles could eventually be covered by electric technology and make a huge difference in the airport's carbon footprint."

Alaska Airlines has taken the lead in this green opportunity with 204 electric vehicles (146 with Alaska, 58 with Horizon) in operation on the ground at Sea-Tac. The environmental benefits are substantial. Alaska's conversion to electric vehicles is the equivalent of taking 360 passenger vehicles off the road for a year, or a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions of 1,000 tons a year.

"Switching from fossil fuels to electric-powered equipment not only benefits the environment by reducing carbon emissions and fuel use, but the transition is expected to save Alaska Air Group about $300,000 a year in fuel costs," said Jeff Butler, Alaska Airlines' VP of airport operations and customer service. "These sustainability efforts help us keep our costs down in order to provide better value for our customers."

The $31 million project is funded in large part through federal grants. The US Department of Energy provided $5 million through a grant with the Western Washington Clean Cities Coalition. An additional $3.5 million came from a Federal Aviation Administration grant. Part of the grant money is being used to help airlines fund the purchase of new electric vehicles. Additional airlines are scheduled to join the program later this year.

The electric GSE charging stations are part of Sea-Tac's larger air-quality strategy, which includes these recent projects:

• Centralized pre-conditioned air for aircraft parked at gates will save $15 million in airline fuel costs and 40,000 metric tons of GHGs (began operation in July 2013).
• 48 EV charging stations in the airport garage — the most of any airport in North America (added 2010 through late 2013).
• A fleet of clean, compressed natural gas (CNG) buses moves customers between the terminal and the Rental Car Facility, saving 165,000 vehicle trips per month versus single rental car shuttles (opened 2012).
• Requirements for taxis serving the airport to use CNG vehicles or have high-efficiency engines of 45 miles per gallon or better (2011).
• A centralized off-aircraft recycling system of large capacity, computer-monitored compactors that reduces waste sent to landfills, decreases air emissions, improves ramp safety, saves more than $250,000 each year and reduces pickup trips by 75 percent (2010).
• Greener Skies flight procedures — a partnership with Port of Seattle, Alaska Airlines, FAA, and Boeing — uses satellite-based guidance technology to fly more direct, optimized profile descent approaches which burn less fuel and reduce emissions and noise.
• Promote aviation biofuel development in the Pacific Northwest in a partnership with Alaska Airlines, Boeing, other airports and Washington State University.

The Mariners are another Seattle organization working to increase the sustainability of their facility in the city, teaming up for the last two years with BASF for Sustainable Saturdays at Safeco Field, which aims to divert ballpark waste from the landfill. To date, Mariners fans have already diverted more than 86 percent of game-day waste from local landfills, according to BASF.

In other airport news, last month San Diego International Airport joined over 120 California-based businesses — over 700 businesses nationwide — in signing the Climate Declaration, a business leader call to action that urges federal and state policymakers to seize the economic opportunity of addressing climate change.

When wrestling with the attitude-behaviour gap and grappling with the emotional and often-irrational nature of the human animal (aka any of your business's stakeholders), you’ll need all the help you can get. Whether you’re crafting a communications strategy to encourage positive behaviour change or facilitating a process to unleash new ideas and breakthrough innovation on a project, thankfully, digital media is facilitating the rapid sharing and diffusion of smart, practical ways to create change.

Over time, I’ve come across a range of online tools, usually free, that provide useful frameworks or helpful stimulus for shaping change and driving innovation. Here I’ll share some of the tools I’ve found most useful, and I invite you to use the comment functionality below to share your favorites with other readers.

Communication tools that also influence behaviour

I’ve found insights from the worlds of behavioural psychology and user experience (UX) design particularly useful. Here are some of the best:

Design with Intent Toolkit

Find 101 approaches to influencing behaviour through design, organised into eight lenses such as the ‘interaction lens’ or the ‘ludic lens.’ Even better, they’re completely free to download.

Wheel of Persuasion

This tool offers a wide range of scientific insights into the psychology of conversion grouped into five dimensions. While it’s focused on online UX design, the thinking can equally be applied to encouraging more sustainable behaviour; for example, the principle of ‘equivalence framing’ is presented in terms of persuading online purchases but can equally be applied to persuading people to make more sustainable purchases. 46 insights are openly available on the website, but you need an access code to view the full tool.

The Hooked Model

A four-stage approach to creating products and services that form habits. More detail of the thinking behind this trigger-action-reward-investment approach can be found in this Slideshare deck or by reading the book.

Mental Notes Cards

50 cards, each featuring an insight into human behaviour and how to translate this into better web design. The principles can easily be adapted to tackling the challenges of promoting sustainable consumption – for example an approach such as ‘chunking’ (grouping information into familiar manageable units) works as well for explaining a complex sustainability concept as for helping someone navigate a website. Out of print currently, but worth getting when available again – in the meantime, check out the bookshelf that inspired them.

Tools for ideation and innovation

Stanford d.school's design thinking toolkit

It’s great to see a prestigious educational establishment such as Stanford’s d.school make its best design thinking tools free for everyone to use. Either download the full design school bootcamp bootleg toolkit or take a more focused approach by downloading:

• The understand mixtape— discovering insights via human engagement.
• The experiment mixtape— advancing your solution via prototyping.
• The ideate mixtape — generating unexpected ideas via reframing your challenges.

The development impact and you toolkit

NESTA has brought together 30 practical tools to trigger and support social innovation, grouped into 8 handy categories, such as ‘develop a clear plan’ and ‘sustain and implement.’ You may well have come across quite a few of the tools before, but it’s really useful to have them all in one place.

Create your own tools

There are more and more examples of companies creating brilliant sustainable consumption tools of their own, such as Nike’s Making app or The Agency of Design’s Energy Trumps, both of which facilitate selection of less impactful materials for manufacturing. Here at Given, we think ‘cool tools’ can be a brilliant way of engaging employees and customers — from an app for Virgin Media customers to help children to get the most from the Web while keeping them safe online, to a tool for P&G’s global marketing teams to understand their products' impacts in order to guide innovation and shape communication to address them.

What tools could you create for your suppliers, colleagues or customers to change behaviour or spark innovation?

Arizona State University (ASU) and the Dutch Municipality of Haarlemmermeer, along with private partners in the Haarlemmermeer region, have come together to create the world’s first regional plan based on the principles of a circular economy.

The project, “Haarlemmermeer Beyond Sustainability,” will be coordinated by the Global Sustainability Solutions Center (GSSC) at Haarlemmermeer, a program within the Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives at ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability. The center will partner with the municipality, Park 20I20 and SADC (Schiphol Area Development Company) to create a regional visioning and planning strategy that will close resource loops in the most efficient, economical and sustainable manner possible.

ASU’s center in Haarlemmermeer will act as facilitator for the municipality and various stakeholders in the region to define and outline the strategic plan. The project includes designing the circular economy strategy and identifying closed-loop energy, water, matter and other resource cycles that are pragmatic, market-based and adaptable for the region.

“Sustainability is not a voluntary option, we don’t see it as a choice. It is our duty and inevitably the new way of living — the new economy,” said John Nederstigt, alderman of the Municipality of Haarlemmermeer.

Join us for a free webinar during which ASU and the City of Phoenix will examine Re-Imagining the Public-Private Partnership: How One City is Transforming Trash into Treasure— Wednesday, March 26, at 10am PT.

The primary challenge is to create a development strategy for the region and its various area developments as a whole that aims to achieve a high level of sustainability, ASU says. Expertise from the university’s sustainability scientists and scholars will help to develop a strategy with a flexible framework based on adaptive governance principles that accommodates future innovation.

The visioning process is beginning this month with an executive working group of leaders from local businesses, communities and the municipal government to establish project definitions and outcomes. ASU researchers will then develop the strategy document with assistance from Dutch university partners.

Situated just southwest of Amsterdam in the basin of a drained lake, and with Schipol Airport as a primary economic driver, Haarlemmermeer hopes to create what it calls a “sustainable silicon valley” where business, research and education institutions freely collaborate.

ASU also has partnered with the City of Phoenix to launch a citywide campaign to encourage residents of the greater Phoenix area — the 10th-fastest-growing metropolitan area in the US — to turn trash into resources. "Reimagine Phoenix" aims to guide residents of the region to routinely reduce, reuse, recycle and reconsider their consumption patterns with a multi-pronged, citywide strategy based on unique private-public partnerships and cross-sector collaboration.

In other ASU news, a design student at the university recently designed a new origami-inspired, waste-eliminating toothpaste tube designed to release every drop of paste. Colgate has expressed interest in the design.

ExxonMobil for the first time ever has agreed to publish a Carbon Asset Risk report on its website describing how it assesses the risk of stranded assets from climate change. The report will provide investors with greater transparency into how ExxonMobil plans for a future where market forces and climate regulation makes at least some portion of its carbon reserves unburnable.

The move came in response to a recent resolution filed by Arjuna Capital, the sustainable wealth management platform of Baldwin Brothers Inc., and As You Sow, a nonprofit shareholder advocacy group promoting environmental corporate responsibility. The two parties have agreed to withdraw their shareholder resolution in exchange for ExxonMobil providing information to shareholders on the risks that stranded assets pose to the company's business model, how the company is planning for a carbon constrained world, how climate risks affect capital expenditure plans, and other related issues.

This is the first successful withdrawal with an oil and gas producer on the carbon asset risk issue this proxy season, As You Sow says. The proposal reflects increasing investor concern about the issue of stranded assets and builds on a shareholder initiative coordinated by Ceres, in which shareholders representing $3 trillion in assets under management, asked 45 companies for increased disclosure about whether they are addressing carbon-related risk, the impact on capital expenditure decisions, and whether they are implementing strategies to avoid stranded assets in a carbon constrained world. Carbon Asset Risk proposals were filed at 10 fossil fuel companies this year.

As You Sow says these proposals highlights a growing awareness of carbon asset risk. World governments agree that if catastrophic warming over 2°C is to be avoided, no more than one-third of current proven carbon reserves can be burned. These reserves, currently on the balance sheets of the 200 largest coal, oil, and gas companies are valued at $20 trillion. However, a recent Unburnable Carbon report calculates that in 2012 alone, the 200 largest publicly traded fossil fuel companies collectively spent an estimated $674 billion on finding and developing new reserves – reserves that cannot be utilized without breaking the world's carbon budget.

ExxonMobil's agreement to report publicly on carbon asset risk is an important step in addressing the likelihood that Exxon's reserves are at risk of devaluation in a carbon-constrained future, and how the company is responding to the long-term financial risks climate change poses to its business plans.

"Investors are the canary in the coalmine and will move their money to avoid material risk," said Natasha Lamb, director of equity research and shareholder engagement at Arjuna Capital. "Forward-thinking companies need to re-assess how they allocate shareholder capital and act strategically to shift their business models. If Big Oil can't redirect capital to low-carbon energy alternatives, investors will. "

Political deadlock in Washington might be stifling any hope of a national carbon program, but it isn’t preventing companies from establishing their own initiatives. Take Microsoft, which has implemented a carbon fee program aimed at incorporating the cost of carbon pollution, both internal and external, into the financial structure of the company.

First implemented at the beginning of the 2013 fiscal year (July 1, 2012), Microsoft’s Carbon Fee Program is a financial model that puts an incremental fee on the carbon emissions associated with the company’s operations.

To ensure alignment across its widespread organization, the company established a steering and governance body called the Carbon Neutral Council. Working with this body, Microsoft designed its model to be simple and repeatable, following five basic steps for implementation:

1. Calculate carbon impact
2. Establish a carbon reduction policy and develop an investment strategy
3. Determine an internal carbon price
4. Gain approval and establish governance and feedback loops
5. Administer the fee, communicate results and evolve to increase impact

To illustrate, Microsoft’s internal cost for energy use includes not only the price it pays the utility for that energy, but also the price it pays to offset the carbon emissions associated with its energy use.

“For business air travel, our cost includes not only the price we pay the airline for the airplane ticket, but also the price we pay to offset the carbon emissions associated with the flight,” said Josh Henretig, Director of Environmental Sustainability at Microsoft. “The associated fee is charged to those groups responsible for the resource consumption. The fees that we collect through the carbon fee model go into a central fund used to subsidize investments such as internal efficiency, clean energy and carbon offset projects that enable Microsoft to reduce emissions and be net carbon neutral.”

Communication has been one of the greatest challenges Microsoft has had to work through to execute the program. But this was not unexpected — in any complex, global organization, communicating the process, the expectations and the results is no simple feat.

“We’ve had to work hard to ensure everyone in the company — from international subsidiaries to individual product groups, corporate finance to sales and marketing, understand how the carbon fee works and the steps they can take to not only reduce their carbon fee, but save money and help the environment at the same time,” said Henretig.

Microsoft says the program has been well-received internally, and has opened the door to conversations that weren’t otherwise occurring by making everyone accountable for lowering the company’s environmental footprint. With the price in place, employees are teaming up to discuss how to drive efficiencies and further invest in more clean energy. Even people outside of Microsoft’s sustainability team are beginning to ask, “How do we work together to reduce carbon and mitigate the incremental fee?”

“Through the Carbon Neutral Council, we are in the process of reviewing new long-term commitments to purchase renewable energy and invest in a variety of efficiency projects," Henretig said. "We’ve found that people throughout Microsoft are very open to understanding the role of energy and carbon emissions in their business and taking steps to reduce the impact of their business on the environment.”

Microsoft already is seeing some early benefits from the initiative. For one thing, the company achieved carbon neutrality and increased its purchases of green energy in the US by 70 percent, from 1.1 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) in 2011 to 1.9 billion kWh in 2012. The carbon fee has also allowed Microsoft to invest in projects such as the Keechi Wind project, where it committed to purchase 100 percent of the electricity generated from the Keechi wind farm over the next 20 years.

Microsoft also is investing in carbon offset projects to offset “unavoidable” emissions. To date, the company has purchased credits from 20 projects on four continents, seven of which are forest conservation, avoided deforestation and reforestation projects. The range of project types Microsoft invests in will help reduce threats to forests worldwide from illegal logging, unsustainable agriculture, charcoal production, palm oil conversion, and encroachment of roads and settlements. The company also is supporting conservation and helping emerging nations to accelerate their transition to a low-carbon economy. Besides its investments in renewable energy and carbon offsets, Microsoft also is using IT to make its buildings more energy-efficient.

It is encouraging to see private sector organizations taking independent action to position themselves for a more sustainable future, but it will need the public sector’s help to instigate widespread change. In recognition of this fact, Microsoft last September joined hundreds of other US businesses in signing the Climate Declaration, which calls on federal policymakers to seize the economic opportunity of addressing climate change.

Ultimately, it is up to us. Just as it is our duty as consumers to support forward-thinking companies, it is our duty as citizens to support forward-thinking candidates. Keep that in mind when you head to the polls during the midterm elections this fall.

The movement of people and goods is crucial to the world economy. Globally, the transportation sector is expected to continue growing, with a geographic shift of demand and manufacturing to the developing economies. But with this growth, environmental concerns are also increasing: Presently, more than 60 percent of the 87 million barrels of oil consumed daily power the world’s transportation sector, and liquid fossil fuels account for 94 percent of the energy supply to the sector.

If the transportation sector is to successfully reduce its impact and help limit climate change to an increase of less than 2°C, it cannot continue to develop under a business-as-usual scenario. According to the predictions of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s ‘Vision 2050’ report, universal access to low-carbon transport is necessary and expected by 2050. An 80 percent reduction in energy use by light-duty vehicles is also forecast, along with a 50 percent drop in energy usage within shipping/freight transportation.

These changes will create challenges and opportunities for all companies operating within the sector. If suppliers are to respond effectively to these trends, they need to focus on bigger, bolder innovations that can substantially advance sustainability and deliver better value for customers. And they need to recognize that industry-wide innovations are increasingly the result of companies working together.

The transportation sector needs these sustainable solutions, so naturally, businesses need to commit to investing the necessary funds. At global paints and coatings company AkzoNobel, we invested over €370m in research and development last year, two-thirds of which was focused on sustainability.

The fruits of AkzoNobel’s investments in R&D and open innovation can be seen in products such as Intersleek, a result of collaboration with Newcastle University. This solution enables ocean-going ships to move faster and use less fuel through the use of anti-fouling coatings. Another example is a breakthrough basecoat/clearcoat system we have developed for aeroplanes that has streamlined the application process: Requiring one coat instead of the usual two or three, it dries in two hours (rather than ten) and offers lower dirt pick-up, resulting in less need for cleaning. The potential weight reduction brought about by using less paint also means improved fuel efficiency.

At AkzoNobel, our company culture also focuses on unlocking the creativity of our people and looking for the best ideas to help us tackle future challenges — no matter whether they are our own or someone else’s.

We organize “Innovation Events” to bring our enthusiastic employee communities together for a day of brainstorming and solving challenges. These events are designed to benefit from our people’s collective brainpower and a diversity of science, technologies, nationalities, backgrounds and businesses present — inspired by the energy, enthusiasm and willingness to help each other. We also recognize those who excel in incorporating innovation in their daily jobs. Our main platform to do so is the annual AkzoNobel RD&I Innovation Excellence Award, which rewards RD&I teams who have turned creative ideas into significant business successes, displayed openness in the achievement of business goals and driven innovation throughout the company. The teams that submit entries are global and cross-functional in their composition and involve members in marketing and production as well as researchers, reflecting the fact that innovation isn’t just about research

We also reach out to individuals, companies and the academic world through our Open Space initiative to let them know that we welcome their input. Our goal is to develop a dialog with the best thinkers, scientists, engineers and inventors, to enhance our shared capability to build a better world based on principles of sustainability and social responsibility. And of course, we want to explore the mutual benefits that we can realize when we join forces.

Incremental improvements will not be enough if we are to successfully tackle the sustainability challenges facing the transportation sector. It is only by delivering radical solutions and developing big and bold innovations that we will be able to drive significant change. Companies that can provide this will ultimately stand to benefit.