Private investments in sustainable technologies such as renewable energy, water, energy efficiency, and green construction hit $5.3 trillion in 2014 — more than halfway to the 2020 goal of $10 trillion — according to a recent announcement by Ethical Markets.

To help track investments as they accrue, Ethical Markets in 2007 established the Green Transition Scoreboard® (GTS). The GTS tracks Renewable Energy ($2.6 trillion), Water ($484 billion), Energy Efficiency ($1.1 trillion), Green Construction ($512 billion), Green R&D ($363 billion) and Cleantech ($258 billion).

Ethical Markets says water is becoming a major investment opportunity as global policy makers, businesses and civic society realize water is critical to environmental, social and human capital, and must be integrated into financial markets rather than overlooked as an externality. The Water sector added $484 billion to the GTS, 9 percent of the overall total and more than either Green R&D or Cleantech.

The GTS definition of 'green' omits nuclear, clean coal, carbon capture & sequestration, and biofuels from feedstock other than saltwater-grown algae. Fossilized sectors are becoming increasingly stranded assets as perverse subsidies are targeted, low-carbon regulations are implemented and oil, coal and gas reserves become more costly and harder to exploit. Nanotech, genetic engineering, artificial lifeforms and 3D printing are considered on a case-by-case basis. The GTS omits government and institutional investments.

Sustainable technologies and infrastructure investments are the next evolution in finance, building on earth systems science and information from satellites tracking conditions on Earth, Ethical Markets says. GTS data sources include NASA; well-respected cleantech; Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance and Reuters; UN and other international studies; individual company reports; indexes such as Calvert, Domini and Pax World; PowerShares Cleantech Portfolio, Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes, London's FTSE4GOOD, NASDAQ OMX Green Economy Index, ASPI Eurozone; newsletters and stock reports from around the world posted daily on the Ethical Markets site. Sources of financial data are screened by rigorous social, environment and ethical auditing standards.

Since 2009, Ethical Markets has recommended 10 percent of institutional portfolios be invested directly in driving the transition to a sustainable economy.

In related news, a recent report by the SEE Action Network and the Institute for Industrial Productivity (IIP) found energy-efficiency programs are helping industry achieve higher energy savings, cost savings and productivity improvements. And across the pond, Unilever, Philips, 3M and several other members of the European Alliance to Save Energy (EU-ASE) recently signed a letter sent to the European Commission calling for a new set of competitiveness objectives to exploit all possible cost-effective energy-efficiency opportunities by 2030.

Desso, the global carpets, carpet tiles and sports pitches company, today announced its participation in 'Healthy Seas, a Journey from Waste to Wear,’ the multi-industry initiative aimed at removing marine waste, particularly fishing nets, for the purpose of creating healthier seas. Desso says it will turn the recycled marine litter into ECONYL^® yarn for use in new carpets.

As part of its commitment to recycling healthy materials into its carpet products, Desso has also worked with Aquafil, one of its key suppliers and a co-founder of the Healthy Seas initiative, which developed the capability to recycle old Polyamide 6 yarn from used carpets and fishnets into new material, known as ECONYL^® yarn, over and over again.

Today, the Dutch carpet maker says over 90 percent of its commercial carpet tile collection is Cradle to Cradle^® (C2C) certified and over 50 percent of its carpet tiles contain ECONYL^® yarn, made from 100 percent regenerated nylon including post-consumer yarn waste from DESSO's Refinity^® plant.

"Since 2010, we have been using ECONYL^® yarn in many of our carpet products as part of our ongoing commitment to the circular economy powered by Cradle to Cradle^® principles," says Desso CEO Alexander Collot d'Escury. "We are delighted to combine our commitment to using recycled content such as ECONYL^® with the critical task of helping to clean up the seas."

Alexander Collot d'Escury, CEO of Desso,
keynote speaker at
SB '14 San Diego

Since 2008, Desso has followed C2C principles, ensuring the materials in its products are as healthy as possible while being safely recyclable. The framework, a key component of the company’s vision to “make the floor work for our health and wellbeing,” is enabling Desso to make the transition to a restorative circular economy model.

"The Cradle to Cradle^® vision is to design products and services that make the world better than it was before," Collot d'Escury says. "The way the oceans have been fished — leaving waste behind and harming sea life and the environment — is a stark example of bad design. We are delighted to support the Healthy Seas initiative, which fits in with Desso's commitment to developing a business model that utilises waste in order to create healthy new materials and at the same time make a positive impact on the planet."

"We are delighted to have Desso's support for the Healthy Seas initiative," says Giulio Bonazzi, CEO of Aquafil, and a co-founder of the Healthy Seas initiative. "It is fitting that our largest customer of ECONYL^® yarn in Europe and one of the companies that has been leading the way in terms of Cradle to Cradle^® and the circular economy should be involved in this critical project to clean up the seas and turn waste into an economic benefit."  

Fellow sustainable carpet maker Interface became the first flooring company to join Healthy Seas in October.

According to a report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), there are approximately 640,000 tons of abandoned fishing nets in the oceans, accounting for one-tenth of all marine litter. These discarded nets can remain in the sea for centuries continuing to catch or injure marine life such as fish, dolphins, turtles and marine birds (known as ghost fishing). Healthy Seas aims to provide a solution by bringing together businesses, NGOs, divers, fishermen and other stakeholders to recover the fishing nets and upcycle them into carpets, socks, swimwear, underwear and other items.

In the lead-up to this year’s SB Innovation Open, we’re catching up with some of our favorite paradigm-disrupting startups from past years. This week, we have an update from Thread.

When we last met SBIO 2013 finalists Thread, the burgeoning social enterprise had taken up the task of transforming the tons of plastic waste littering Haiti not only into local jobs but also quality products for consumers in the US and eventually around the world.

The ambitious venture, spearheaded by CEO Ian Rosenberger and COO Lee Kimball, continues to work towards its “big, hairy, audacious goal” of collecting, recycling and transforming 1 billion lbs of trash into useful products by 2032. Most importantly, Thread continues to detail its progress with meticulous metrics and captivating graphics, which continues to set apart the company from its competitors.

There are three facets to Thread’s operation:

1. Collect and process plastic waste into rPET flake (Recycled by Thread);

2. Sell the flake to businesses to be used in their supply chains (Powered by Thread);

3. Use the recycled materials themselves to create consumer products, such as fabric (Made by Thread).

Among the many achievements in its four short years, Thread, now a certified B Corporation, has collected 1.3 million lbs of waste, created over 1,600 jobs in Haiti, and eliminated 13,911 miles from the typical supply chain per shipment. See a snapshot below:

Candice McLeod: Did being a finalist in SBIO help with Thread’s progress?

Ian Rosenberger: SB set the context for us. It was our first big conference as an organization where we were forced to talk about our story to a wider audience. The one thing that we realized is that we actually need to sell something. Last year, we had ideas; now we are rolling out our first fabrics — Made by Thread — for business to business this spring.

CM: Thread has a pretty impressive impact report. Looking through the metrics section, you seem to have either met or exceeded your goals. What drivers have helped you get there?

IR: CSR is not separate for us. The nature of Thread is that the better that we do as a company, the better is business. Also, our competitive differentiator is the metrics. We even give scores to our supply chains.

CM: Last year, you told me that you had a mission of telling your story “breadcrumb style” using GPS monitors to track how materials are sourced, processed and distributed. How is that going?

IR: We have developed a name for that platform: “Ground to Good.” It allows Powered by Good partners to trace social, financial and environmental metrics, such as stories behind the people in the process, like the names of a family, to quantifying how much less CO₂ was emitted during transport because of Thread’s process.

CM: Do you plan on setting more aggressive goals?

Lee Kimball: Depends on which of us you’re asking that question. Ian wants to jump off the cliff, I want us to have a parachute. We are trying to bite off the right amount. For example, we are looking at moving into other countries and increasing our partnerships. A partnership that we are particularly proud of is with Pittsburgh-basedMoop bags, local to our headquarters. We are also in talks with national brands.

CM: Has it been particularly challenging to work in Haiti?

IR: Working with the Haitian people has been a perk. While working in Haiti has its challenges, it’s not arduous. Not only are we working in Haiti, but have begun work in Honduras which is considered the murder capital of the world. These places get a bad rep because it is often easy to create a bad headline, but life goes on. Building businesses such as Thread helps.

CM: What are you most proud of so far?

IR: I’m most proud of our team’s persistence. We have had success operating in developing countries, which is something that takes a little longer to develop and makes success a little sweeter. We are proud that we can get up to go work everyday

LK: I think we have created something that didn’t exist before. We spend a lot of time at the bottom of the supply chain and work in literally the dirtiest business on the planet but we think that we can make a big difference in the people and the companies that

CM: Anything in particular that you would like our readers to know?

IR: Our fabric is for sale, and we are open for business. 

Stay tuned for updates on the 2014 SB Innovation Open! The top 10 finalists will be revealed next week.

Last week, Honda unveiled its net zero energy "Smart Home" on the University of California Davis campus. The company says the building, which includes a charging facility for a Honda Fit EV and is intended to demonstrate Honda's vision for zero-carbon living and personal mobility, will on average generate more electricity from on-site renewable energy than it receives from the local utility.

UC Davis describes the project as: “A Honda-developed home energy management system and an energy-efficient design that will allow the occupants to use less than half of the energy of a similarly sized new home in the Davis area for heating, cooling and lighting. The home is also claimed to be three times more water-efficient than a typical US home.” The home is expected to generate a surplus of 2.6 mWh of electricity over the course of the year while a comparable home will use roughly 13.3 mWh. The offset is nearly 13,100 pounds of CO2 per year, which increases to 23,500 pounds a year if you take transportation fuel into account.

“With the Honda Smart Home, we’ve developed technologies and design solutions to address two primary sources of greenhouse gas emissions — homes and cars,” said Steve Center, VP of the Environmental Business Development Office of American Honda Motor Co. Inc.

Honda broke ground on the home in April and went on to incorporate a host of key features, including:

• A 9.5-kW solar photovoltaic system on its roof, which generates enough power not just for the home but also for charging a Honda Fit EV. The home can operate independent of the City's power grid, if necessary.
• The home's Honda Fit EV has been modified to accept power directly from the home's solar panels or the stationary battery. Most solar panels convert energy into AC but electric car batteries mostly use DC. The home supplies the car directly with DC, thereby eliminating energy loss during conversion.
• A 10-kWh battery energy storage system (using lithium-ion cells — the same as the Fit EV) allows stored solar energy to be used at night, when energy demand is typically high and electric vehicles are usually charged.

• The building is managed by Honda's Home Energy Management System (HEMS), which monitors and controls the home's energy loads, the Fit EV and the energy storage system. It manages the building's demands and communicates with the homeowner as well as the utility company to optimize consumption and generation — reducing consumption and supplying energy back to the power grid when feasible.

  “Honda’s HEMS is also capable of improving grid reliability by automatically responding to demand response signals and providing other grid services. If the electricity grid is overloaded, for example, the Smart Home is capable of shedding its load and even supplying power back to the grid. This type of smart grid connectivity will enable the mass deployment of electric vehicles and renewable energy without sacrificing grid reliability,” says UC Davis.

• In most homes, heating and cooling systems consume a significant amount of energy. Below the Honda home's yard is a geothermal heat pump that recovers heat from the earth and the home's wastewater, while a radiant heating and cooling system has been installed in the floors and ceilings, which have more potential to be efficient than a forced-air system.
• Concrete is a huge emitter of CO2 in construction, largely due to emissions during the production of cement. The Honda home was built using a combination of concrete and pozzolan, a volcanic ash, thereby reducing the use of concrete by half. In addition, a technique called post-tension was used to compress and strengthen the concrete, requiring less material.
• Passive design helps to maximize the home's efficiency — i.e. it considers the local weather conditions and the sun's direction to optimize heating and cooling of the home.
• According to UC Davis, the LED lighting used throughout the home is five times more energy-efficient than conventional lighting. As Honda explains in a video: “Mimicking the natural shifts in daylight that occur from morning to night, the lighting design allows occupants to select lighting scenes that complement occupants’ circadian rhythms and support nighttime vision.”
• The Honda home is thrice as water-efficient as a typical US home. Dual-flush toilets with WaterSense certification; low-flow faucets in the sinks and showers; a high-efficiency washing machine and dishwasher; climate-specific garden plants and greywater recycling contribute to savings.
• Construction materials were chosen with care, avoiding those that emit volatile compounds and contribute to indoor air pollution. The house features FSC-certified lumber and 96 percent of the construction waste associated with the project, including drywall, brick, plastics and lumber, was recycled. 

UC Davis says that in addition to showcasing Honda's vision, the home “will function as a living laboratory where the company, along with researchers from UC Davis and Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), will evaluate new technologies and business opportunities at the intersection of housing, transportation, energy and the environment.” The University's West Village is the largest planned zero net energy housing development in the US.

According to the official video, “Honda envisions a zero-carbon future with electric vehicles powered by renewable energy. We are demonstrating a pathway for the full integration of electric vehicles into our home.”

“What we are trying to do is develop a technology pathway to meet California's goal of having zero net energy homes,” Center says. “But we are also trying to exceed that by including transportation in the solution.”

More details on the Honda project at UC Davis are available on the company's website.

Honda experimented with extensive demo testing of a smart home in Saitama, Japan in 2012, with the ultimate goal of reducing CO2 emissions by 50 percent. The home includes solar panels, rechargeable home battery units and Honda's Smart Home System amongst other features.

Another motor company that’s venturing into home energy optimization is Ford: Last year, the automaker launched MyEnergi Lifestyle, a strategic collaboration with Whirlpool, SunPower, Eaton and Nest that shows how a typical home can significantly reduce its carbon footprint by integrating solar power with time-flexible vehicle charging and home appliance usage to achieve an energy-efficient lifestyle.

If you’ve ever thought of dropping a book on your boss’s desk, in the hopes of sparking a Ray Anderson-type conversion, here’s a tip. Don’t use the new IPCC report: It’s gloomy, terrifying and a muddle.

Try this instead: Andrew Winston’s business transformation book for the “new normal” of climate change-fueled disruption. It’s called The Big Pivot.

The strategist and Green to Gold author has written a practical, working handbook for teams, organizations and corporations to “recreate their operations to succeed within the scientific reality of a hotter, wilder, more radically open world.”

In the book, which launches April 9 (join us for the launch! See details below), Winston deftly manages a tricky balancing act: talking about humanity's impending catastrophes while maintaining a rational, business-minded focus on solutions. I’m glad to say that he pulls it off.

And glad for the rest of us, too, because we need a Big Pivot. That’s what Winston calls the kind of rapid and radical business transformation needed to get from today’s normal of insufficient action to new low/no-carbon, climate-resilient practices and strategies.

To start, Winston briskly lays out the science: Failure is what awaits us if businesses don't prepare for climate-change-fueled weather disasters, resource scarcities and a radically transparent global marketplace.

Andrew Winston,
keynote speaker
at
SB '14 San Diego

For sure, Winston is swinging for the fences by calling for “dramatic improvements in operational efficiency and cuts in material and energy use, waste and carbon emissions.” But only because climate science — not the boardroom — demands it.

Then onto examples: Winston knows The Big Pivot is possible because he's seen and helped companies do it. He shares stories to show that change can come from decisive leadership rather just than the stick of regulation or crisis. These up-to-date case studies are perfect, sharable examples of what leading companies are doing today.

And finally, he offers 10 strategies for how your company can make big, bold moves for equally big returns on business stability and profitability.

Each strategy is stated as an action, such as “Fight short-termism” and “Set big, science-based goals.” And for each strategy, there’s a “How to Execute” section.

For example, one of the simplest (but hardest) things companies can do is to throw out their goal-setting processes that rely on internal or industry benchmarks. Instead, Winston says we have to peg our goals to meeting the true size of the planetary problem, with suggestions for doing that.

Overall, I appreciate Winston’s refreshingly blunt perspective on two points, both of which can mire sustainability work in problems rather than solutions.

The first is that climate change — as a human-caused, dangerous scientific reality — is not up for discussion. Readers who are grappling with climate denialism or its poisonous cousin, climate fatalism, in their workplaces will find Winston a good model for not engaging and getting on with things.

The second is to dismiss the stall tactic he calls “the increasingly absurd question [of], ‘What’s the business case?’” For readers who are genuinely uninformed about why the world’s businesses need to do things differently, the book’s appendix offers a crash course. Readers can also consult Winston’s earlier book, Green to Gold.

I find his use of the pivot metaphor to be really smart. For one, readers who aren’t comfortable with high-stakes sustainability goals might find themselves on more familiar ground by thinking about entrepreneurial pivots. Successful Start-Up 101 is all about trying one thing, then shifting deliberately to another, to find the right customers and positioning. Giving The Big Pivot an entrepreneurial cast, deliberate or not, may help draw in hesitant readers.

What Winston doesn’t talk much about, by necessity of brevity, are the specific people at leading companies who are making Big Pivot changes towards science-based goal-setting, heretical innovation and radical cooperation.

And that’s a shame, because they’re the real story of The Big Pivot— not companies or strategies or tools to get to zero.

I think that The Big Pivot starts with each of us thinking of ourselves this way. And more importantly, by thinking of our colleagues, partners, competitors and elected officials as capable people who are also up for the challenging of creating a better future.

I'm inspired by Winston's call for businesses to buck the short-term safety of a quarterly profits-obsessed status quo. It's time to pivot to a focus on long-term, science-based realities. With a certain climate-challenged future ahead of us, The Big Pivot gives us a realist's path to making sure it's a prosperous one, too.

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The Obama Administration has released its official strategy for reducing methane emissions as part of the President’s Climate Action Plan, which takes steps to further cut methane emissions from landfills, coal mining, and agriculture, as well as oil and gas systems through cost-effective voluntary actions and practical standards.

This spring, the EPA will assess several potentially significant sources of methane and other emissions from the oil and gas sector. The agency will solicit input from independent experts through a series of technical white papers, and this fall will determine how best to pursue further methane reductions from these sources. If the EPA decides to develop additional regulations, it will complete those regulations by the end of 2016.

Some key highlights of the strategy include:

Landfills: In the summer of 2014, the EPA will propose updated standards to reduce methane from new landfills and take public comment on whether to update standards for existing landfills.

Coal Mines: This month, the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will release an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) to gather public input on the development of a program for the capture and sale, or disposal of waste mine methane on lands leased by the Federal government. Later this year, the BLM will propose updated standards to reduce venting and flaring from oil and gas production on public lands.

Agriculture: In June, the dairy industry, the USDA, EPA and DOE will jointly release a “Biogas Roadmap” outlining voluntary strategies to accelerate adoption of methane digesters and other cost-effective technologies to reduce US dairy sector greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 25 percent by 2020.

Oil and Gas: Building on success in reducing methane emissions from the oil and gas sector through voluntary programs and targeted regulations, the Administration will take new actions to encourage additional cost-effective reductions. Key steps include:

As part of the Quadrennial Energy Review, and through DOE-convened roundtables, the Administration will identify “downstream” methane reduction opportunities, the White House says. Through the Natural Gas STAR program, the EPA will work with the industry to expand voluntary efforts to reduce methane emissions.

“Reducing methane emissions is a powerful way to take action on climate change; and putting methane to use can support local economies with a source of clean energy that generates revenue, spurs investment and jobs, improves safety, and leads to cleaner air,” the White House said in a statement. “When fully implemented, the policies in the methane strategy will improve public health and safety while recovering otherwise wasted energy to power our communities, farms, factories and power plants.”

Methane makes up nearly 9 percent of all the GHGs emitted as a result of human activity in the United States, the White House says, with up to 23 percent resulting from food waste in landfills, according to the NRDC. Methane pollution in the US has decreased by 11 percent, even as activities that can produce methane have increased. However, methane pollution is projected to increase to a level equivalent to over 620 million tons of carbon dioxide pollution in 2030 absent additional action to reduce emissions.

A number of private-sector enterprises have found innovative ways to reduce methane emissions, albeit on a small scale. California-based startup Newlight Technologies is capturing methane gas from dairy farms and turning it into AirCarbon, a durable and versatile plastic that can be used in everything from furniture and food containers to auto parts. AirCarbon removes more carbon from the atmosphere than its manufacturing emits, making it a carbon-negative material.

Meanwhile, enterprising dairy farms including Straus Family Creamery in Petaluma, California, and Bakerview EcoDairy in British Columbia are using anaerobic digesters to turn the methane gas released from cow manure into electricity. About 65 percent of cow manure is composed of methane, which allows the farms to offset roughly a third of their energy use each year.

Today, H&M and Zara/Inditex, the world’s two largest clothing brands, announced commitments to eliminate ancient and endangered forests from all of their rayon and viscose clothing. The retail and design leaders developed these new purchasing commitments in partnership with environmental NGO Canopy as part of an initiative to address the growing impacts of the clothing industry on the world’s forests, biodiversity and climate. Organic fashion brand Loomstate also joins EILEEN FISHER, Quiksilver, Patagonia and 17 other progressive apparel brands already backing the “Fashion Loved by Forest” campaign.

Canopy research has found that threatened forests are routinely making their way into clothing. Rayon, viscose, modal and other trademarked fabrics are increasingly made from the world’s most endangered forests, from the tropical rainforests of Indonesia to the great northern Boreal Forests. Globally rare forests are cut down, pulped and spun into suit jacket linings, dresses, skirts, t-shirts and tank tops. The dissolving pulp/viscose industry is poised for continued ambitious expansion and poses an increasing risk to threatened forest ecosystems around the world. Canopy says today’s commitments by these brands will help curtail the problem and build solutions.

“These clothing sector leaders are showing that being stylish doesn’t have to cost the earth,” said Canopy executive director Nicole Rycroft. "Canopy is excited to see two of the largest brands, both major trendsetters, stepping up to ensure fabrics are no longer sourced from the world’s endangered forests."

The global apparel industry is a US$1.2 trillion sector with enormous market and cultural influence. Now Inditex/Zara and H&M, in concert with the over a dozen other brands and designers supporting Canopy’s “Fashion Loved by Forest” initiative, will be helping to tackle supply-chain transparency specific to forest-fabric sourcing. Their efforts will both help them avoid fibre from contentious forest regions and send a powerful signal to the logging and pulp sectors that market demands are shifting.

“H&M wants to play a strong role in ensuring a future for the planet’s ancient and endangered forests. We are fully committed to exploring our supply chain and doing our utmost to avoid these fabrics within the next three years,” said Henrik Lampa, environmental sustainability manager at H&M. “Working with Canopy, we are excited to take the additional step of encouraging leaders throughout the supply chain to support conservation in endangered forests and use alternative inputs — for example, recycled clothing— so our actions create lasting change.”

In addition to the well-publicized plight of tropical rainforests due to palm oil production, Canopy says last year an estimated 70 million trees were cut for fabric production, a number projected to double in the next 20 years. The last intact rainforests of Indonesia are falling at an alarming rate and species such as the critically endangered orangutan and Sumatran tiger may vanish within our lifetimes if this trend is not reversed. In the only campaign of its kind globally, it is the combined efforts of leading brands, designers, retailers, models, suppliers, fashionistas and Canopy that will help curtail the demise of critical forest ecosystems and spark the development of solutions.

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

Apple, Facebook and Google are leading a growing number of tech companies that are working to power the Internet with 100 percent renewable energy, signaling a major shift in the sector over the past two years, according to a new report released today by Greenpeace. Those companies are leaving behind Amazon Web Services, the company that hosts the data for many of the Internet’s most popular services, which powers its infrastructure with polluting energy sources that contribute to global warming, the report found.

The report, Clicking Clean: How Companies are Creating the Green Internet, details the immense power that technology companies have either to drive a renewable energy revolution, or to chain the new digital economy to old, polluting sources of power. The stakes are high: If the Internet were a country, its electricity demand would currently rank sixth, according to the report. Estimates from the industry expect Internet data to triple from 2012 to 2017.

“Apple, Facebook and Google are powering our online lives with clean energy, and building a greener offline world for everyone in the process,” said Greenpeace’s Senior IT Analyst Gary Cook. “These companies have proven over the past 24 months that wind and solar energy are ready and waiting to power the Internet, and the rest of our economy, with clean electricity.”

Greenpeace evaluated the energy choices of 19 leading Internet companies, surveying their electricity supply chains of over 300 data centers. Five of those companies — Apple, Facebook and Google, along with fast-growing business-to-business companies Rackspace and Salesforce — have committed to a goal of powering their operations with 100 percent renewable energy.

Apple became the first company to achieve its 100 percent renewable energy goal to power its iCloud, leading the companies evaluated with its Clean Energy Index of 100 percent. Apple is operating the largest privately owned solar installation in the US at its North Carolina data center.

“Apple’s rapid shift to renewable energy over the past 24 months has made it clear why it’s one of the world’s most innovative and popular companies,” Cook said. “By continuing to buy dirty energy, Amazon Web Services not only can’t seem to keep up with Apple, but is dragging much of the Internet down with it.”

Meanwhile, Facebook flexed its muscles to push its utility in Iowa, MidAmerican Energy, to power its data center there with wind energy. MidAmerican responded by investing $1.9 billion in wind power generation, placing the world’s largest-ever order of onshore wind turbines in part to meet the social network’s demands.

Google has pioneered the use of power purchase agreements for wind energy to provide electricity for its services, including Gmail and YouTube.

Google, Apple and Facebook all pushed Duke Energy, the largest utility in the US, to offer new renewable energy options for large electricity buyers in North Carolina.

Amazon Web Services, which hosts a large part of the Internet, including popular companies including Pinterest, Netflix, Spotify, Tumblr, Airbnb, Yelp and Vine, currently sources only 15 percent of its electricity demand with clean energy, according to the report; coal powers 28 percent of the company’s cloud, nuclear 27 percent, and gas 25 percent. Amazon’s growth is fueling the increased use and construction of coal and gas-burning power plants in Virginia, and has jeopardized clean energy growth in Oregon. While Apple, Facebook and eBay have led the broader sector to be more transparent about its energy use, Amazon steadfastly refuses to reveal any details about its energy footprint to its customers or the public.

Twitter also does not share any details about its energy footprint, and has made no efforts to procure cleaner electricity, in stark contrast to its social media rival Facebook.

Greenpeace assessed colocation data center companies, which rent out data center space to customers, for the first time in Clicking Clean, finding that they use low amounts of renewable energy; most also lacked transparency about their energy footprints.

Greenpeace is calling on all major Internet companies to:

• Make a long-term commitment to become 100 percent renewably powered.
• Commit to transparency on IT performance and consumption of resources, including the source of electricity, to enable customers, investors, and stakeholders to measure progress toward that goal.
• Develop a strategy for increasing their supply of renewable energy, through a mixture of procurement, investment, and corporate advocacy to both electricity suppliers and government decision-makers.

One company not included in the Clicking Clean investigation but making bold commitments that would make Greenpeace proud is SAP, which announced last week that it will power all its data centers and facilities globally with 100 percent renewable electricity starting in 2014.

And Microsoft, which earned some favorable mentions in Greenpeace's report, announced in its 2013 Citizenship report that it had achieved carbon neutrality, after introducing an internal carbon fee for renewable energy and carbon offsets; this led the company to increase its purchase of renewables in the US by 70 percent, from 1.1 billion kWh in 2011 to 1.9 billion kWh in 2012.

Jenn Vervier, Director of Strategy & Sustainability at New Belgium Brewing, knows firsthand the potential craft beer has to create profound and lasting change. Since starting part-time on the bottling line more than twenty years ago as a graduate student, Jenn has gone on to serve as CFO, COO, and the company’s first director of strategy & sustainability. She spearheaded the development of the brewery’s sustainability management system and has pushed for greater advocacy for environmental regulation. Jenn’s crusade at New Belgium focuses on overall business sustainability that along with environmental initiatives, includes employee ownership, fair employment practices, and active engagement with suppliers, distributors and the greater community. As Jenn would say, great beer is made by passionate and considerate people. By attracting customers to their product, New Belgium is hoping to turn the tide in the beer industry towards greater concern for the environment, the community, and for employees.

I got to sit down with Jenn to talk about New Belgium’s social and environmental leadership when she came to Yale to participate in the Yale Colloquium on Sustainability Marketing sponsored by Dekra. Here are some highlights of our conversation:

When your position was created at New Belgium, how did you go about developing a set of sustainability priorities and goals based on the company’s core values and beliefs?

In creating the Sustainability Management System we sat down and asked, “How does the brewing industry contribute to the world’s environmental woes, and how can we help change the industry?” Through our conversation we identified the areas we wanted to focus on: water stewardship, carbon and climate change, waste, and, also very importantly, advocacy. When we looked at the possibilities at the time, we thought, “Even if we became a net-zero brewery in water use, waste, and energy, would the world be so much better off?” While we are the third-largest craft brewery in the country, we are still a small player on the scene. And that’s when the value of our brand became very apparent to us. We realized we could use our brand awareness to turn the little splash we create when we operate according to our values into a ripple, raising awareness around the issues, and highlighting what people can do to tackle those issues.

Sustainability is a theme that seems to come up often in the craft brewing industry. What is it about beer-making that leads to such awareness and concern for environmental issues?

I think that people who get into craft brewing tend to be renegades. They’re passionate about beer and passionate about making beer, and they think, “I can do this better.” It’s very entrepreneurial and I think entrepreneurs are naturally thrifty and that’s where sustainability goes hand in hand with just good business practice. They also tend to be very tied to their communities, which is also very true for New Belgium. Our customers are our neighbors are our coworkers, and that lends itself to being concerned about social responsibility.

What response have you seen from your customers to your sustainability initiatives? Are people recognizing your efforts and purchasing your product because of it?

I think only at a very shallow level. There are people who drink our beer who are environmental geeks and people who are organizational development geeks. These groups really go out and look for our products. But I think the vast majority of beer consumers find out about us on their liquor store shelves or in their local bar and I’m not sure how many choose to look further into what our company does. I think it’s enough that people choose us because we make great beer. If they’re also interested that we’re 100 percent employee-owned and that we’ve been practicing environmental sustainability for over 20 years, then that’s great, too. The reason that we do it is not to influence our consumers — we do it because it’s the right thing to do.

What challenges do you face in communicating to consumers the positive social and environmental impacts New Belgium has accomplished?

Often, the things New Belgium does to pursue our core values and beliefs do not show up in the primary product attributes of our beer. When you’re buying a cleaning product you are looking for toxic versus non-toxic, but, when you’re buying a beer you’re looking for great taste and alcohol. Both choices often involve the influence of brand identity, but with many other products, sustainability is inherent to the product itself. However, the fact that we know everyone in our supply chain, or that we have a 99 percent waste-diversion rate is secondary to the primary attributes of the beer. So, how do we talk about those positives we have in our value chain or in our operations? Do we try to promote those things if they are peripheral to what the consumer is buying? Does the consumer care? Certainly some do, but you do risk alienating those that don’t when they really want to know, for example, is this the best White IPA I can buy?

Do New Belgium and the other larger craft breweries discuss sustainability strategies at the annual Craft Brewers Association conference? What form does the discussion take?

Yes, that’s the most regular and reliable platform for discussion. The annual conference has a sustainability track with between five and seven sessions over the course of three days. We solicit proposals and we try to balance things that will be relevant for very small and very large brewers alike. As for the range of topics, we have sessions on technical matters such as wastewater treatment or ways to reduce energy usage and we’ve begun to discuss matters of advocacy. Last year, we had a session on the Clean Water Act (CWA) where the NRDC was able to explain what the threats to the CWA are. This evolved into a discussion of water conservation efforts and strategies. In addition, there was a session on extended producer responsibility, which came from the idea that any of us are only as sustainable as our industry. If we all rely on the same packaging from the same suppliers, the only way for us to have more sustainable packaging is to work together.

For more on sustainability marketing in the craft brew industry check out Jenn’s conversation with Chris O’Brien, author of Fermenting Revolution: How to Drink Beer and Save the World, at Yale.

The Colloquium on Sustainability Marketing is a joint effort between the Center for Business and the Environment, the Yale Center for Customer Insights and DEKRA to unravel and address the challenges associated with creating environmentally preferable products and brands that customers love. 

Christine Bader, author of The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil (Bibliomotion, March 2014), worked for BP for nearly a decade managing the social impacts of some of the company’s largest projects in the developing world. We asked her about the complexities of being a corporate change agent and other challenges surrounding corporate idealism. 

Anna Lui: Who was this book primarily written for? Did you have a corporate management audience in mind, or the increasingly skeptical/cynical American public?

Christine Bader: Both! I want the book to serve as a source of information, inspiration and connection to the people inside corporations who want to have a positive impact on the world.

But I also wrote it to inform a more sophisticated conversation about the role of business in society. Whenever a corporate disaster happens, the narrative that emerges is, “Oh, another evil company — we need stronger regulation.”

There’s no substitute for good regulation. But we should be paying more attention to what’s going on deep inside these companies — which often had people working to prevent the very disasters that ensued. Why did they fail?

AL: You share that you felt like an outsider both inside BP (accused of being a closet activist) and out (assumed to be a corporate shill). Which of the two was easier to navigate, and why?

CB: Depends on the day! It hurt when my colleagues seemed to question whether I had the best interests of the company at heart, because I saw my job as aligning our business interests with the needs of the people we were affecting. There is no shortage of examples of how bad company-community relations affects a company’s bottom line: ExxonMobil’s liquefied natural gas plant in Aceh had to shut down for four months in 2001 because of the surrounding civil unrest, costing the company somewhere between $100-350 million. Freeport-McMoran’s Grasberg copper and gold mine in Indonesia spent $28 million on security in 2010 alone. And people have gotten hurt around both assets.

It stung when people outside of the company accused me of being a sellout, because a lot of people don’t seem to understand that the impacts that energy companies have on communities and the environment is the cost of our consumption. We are all complicit in those impacts — which I am working to mitigate.

AL: From your observations and interviews you conducted, is "the invisible army" of corporate idealists inside the world’s biggest and best-known brands growing in numbers? Why or why not?

Christine Bader, speaker at Sustainable Brands 2014
San Diego

CB: Definitely growing. In 2012, half of the companies in the Fortune 500 produced CSR or sustainability reports. You’d be hard-pressed to find a company that doesn’t have someone with “sustainability” or “corporate responsibility” in their title.

That said, what those people do is all over the map: from reducing greenhouse gas emissions to improving supply chain working conditions to employee volunteer programs to philanthropy. All of those activities are worthy, but I want to see everyone focused on the impacts of a company’s core business.

AL: Do you think the emergence of, or the need for, corporate idealists — or intrapreneurs, as they are often called — is more common in some industries than others? Do change agents of this nature pop up in some types of companies more than others?

CB: A number of industries realize how essential it is to have people focused on assessing and managing their social impacts: a mine can’t operate if the neighboring community has blockaded its only access road. Factories that treat their workers better are more productive and see less turnover. Tech companies know that users have to trust them or they’ll click elsewhere.

Certainly companies that are consumer-facing, that have recognizable brands, are more sensitive to issues and incidents that could affect their reputations. But even companies that could fly under the radar are realizing that adverse human rights impacts can mess up business continuity and their relationships with financiers and business partners.

AL: What is the best piece of advice you ever received from another corporate idealist?

CB: Dave Stangis was the first formal CSR professional at Intel and is now vice president of public affairs and corporate responsibility at Campbell’s Soup. He told me that the days of evangelizing are over: “We spent the first ten years of our careers, those of us that have been doing this for a while, to try to convince people they needed to be like us: they needed to think sustainability. They needed to think about corporate citizenship, reputation. Now you see us saying that’s nice, but it doesn’t work. You’re not going to convince anybody. We have to help them do their job.”

When Dave first got to Campbell’s in 2008, his CEO was keen to announce some bold sustainability goals — quickly. He had to reign him in: “I said, ‘We can do this in five minutes, you and I, but I want to do this collaboratively. Let me get the business and functional leaders to set the goals and agree on the framework. They will be more invested and the strategy will have staying power.’” Dave’s approach ended up with sustainability goals (such as reducing energy and water use and waste) factored into incentive compensation for managers across the company — much more effective than trying to implement a CEO declaration!

For more on how companies worldwide are driving #OrganizationalChange from the inside out, check out the editorial channel.

Philips has designed its new 40-Watt LED lightbulb to resemble a traditional incandescent bulb, while saving significant energy and lasting up to 25,000 hours.

Traditional incandescent bulbs continue to be phased out, but many continue to argue that they prefer their light to that of LEDs. By producing a bulb that looks the same, produces the same kind of light, but uses an LED rather than a traditional filament, Philips hopes to win consumer holdouts over to the energy-superior alternative.

Philips’ clear LED bulb sports an innovative lens for a sparkling, filament-like light effect. The bulb is 85 percent more efficient than a traditional incandescent bulb, with a 6W input wattage: 78 lumen per watt ratio. The high-quality light, with 470 lumens output, stays as clear and bright as a 40W bulb, even when it is dimmed, Philips says.

“With our L-prize LED bulb we showed that we could match the quality of incandescent light. With our clear LED bulb we’ve combined the aesthetic beauty and shape of the traditional incandescent with the benefits of LED,” says René van Schooten, CEO Light Sources & Electronics for Philips Lighting. “Using our innovations in LED the bulb is highly energy-efficient, saving up to €10 per bulb per year compared to traditional bulbs.”

The clear LED 40W replacement bulb is available starting July 2014 for US$12.

Philips also recently unveiled Hue Lux — the first smart white-light LED bulb with perfect dimming controlled from the app on your mobile, and the newest addition to Philips'Hue family of personal wireless lighting solutions. 

In January, Philips introduced a new InstantFit LED T8 that reduces the cost for facility managers replacing fluorescent tube lighting with energy-efficient LED technology, known as LED tube lamps (TLEDs). Philips asserted that if all current fluorescent lighting was replaced by TLED lamps, it could result in savings of over $55 billion in energy costs — the equivalent of energy generated by 210 medium-sized power plants.

Philips, along with Unilever, 3M and several other members of the European Alliance to Save Energy (EU-ASE) recently signed a letter sent to the European Commission calling for a new set of competitiveness objectives to exploit all possible cost-effective energy-efficiency opportunities by 2030.

Animal and plant nutrients company EnviroFlight has developed a system that turns the by-product from breweries, ethanol production, and pre-consumer food waste into a feedstock for Black Soldier Fly larvae — which then become feedstuff for fish, poultry, swine and cattle — according to a new segment released this week by QUEST, an Emmy Award-winning multimedia series with a new focus on exploring the science of sustainability.

Fueled by a demand for a healthy, nutrient-rich protein, the market for seafood has grown steadily over the past five decades. However, the small fish used to make fish meal are wild-caught, which is creating a growing threat of overfishing in the world’s oceans.

EnviroFit, based in Yellow Springs, Ohio, says larger carnivorous fish crave its “insect meal” the same way they do fish meal. The main difference is that the insect meal can be created in a more affordable and sustainable way than traditional fishing. In this way, the company is hitting two birds with one stone; reducing waste while creating a more sustainable way to raise seafood.

EnviroFit raises Black Soldier Flies, encouraging them to mate to produce the larvae, which feed off and bioconvert the material. By doing so, the frass — the waste product created by insects after digesting the feedstock — becomes a high-protein, low-fat feedstuff for carnivorous fish including rainbow trout, perch, bass and bluegill. See the segment below:

The larvae are then cooked, dried and converted into a meal that is 40 percent protein and 46 percent fat. The oils can be extracted, which boosts the protein content to above 70 percent. Enviroflight has developed and tested a number of feed formulations using insect meal and other locally available ingredients for complete diets for multiple species of fish.

The company says the key to its process is the prevention of ammonia creation in the frass by stabilizing the material immediately after the insect larvae consume the feedstock. This keeps the nitrogen fixed and eliminates odor, while also mitigating the formation of molds and mycotoxins. The frass also is beneficial as an animal-safe fertilizer.

Enviroflight's system is comprised of proprietary bioreactor, breeding and nursery systems, designed to be viable anywhere in the world and optimized for operation in developing nations. The breeding system is able to produce mating events and eggs in any climate due to the fact there is a continual source of eggs in all weather conditions.

“We have the technology that can solve two problems,” Glen Courtright, president and founder of EnviroFlight told QUEST. “We can solve a food problem, and we can solve a waste problem.”

The potential for insects as a more nutritious and sustainable source of protein isn't limited to animal feed — a handful of enterprising entrepreneurs are hard at work exploring the viability of insects for use in human food; though consumers in Western countries may find the idea hard to swallow.

In other seafood news, Food Lion, one of America’s largest supermarket chains with more than 1,100 stores across the eastern and southeastern US, recently announced the adoption of a sustainable seafood policy that will cover approximately 1,000 fresh, frozen, canned or packaged seafood products sold at its stores. The Gulf of Maine Research Institute will help Food Lion assess its suppliers.

Sustainable cleaning products giant Ecover announced this week it is developing an algae-based laundry liquid as part of its goal to cut the use of palm oil in all of its products.

Palm oil has become a huge topic of concern for NGOs, brands and consumers alike. The ubiquitous oil and its by-products are used in hundreds of packaged food, personal care and cleaning products — as demand has continued to increase, its production has become the largest single driver of deforestation in South East Asia and parts of Africa and South America.

As CEO Philip Malmberg explains in a video, “All the big soaps are using massive amounts of palm oil — this has become a really unsustainable way of growing and harvesting the palm oil, and it has had massive, massive impacts on wildlife, on the forests. Rainforests are being cut away and they’re being replaced with palm trees and that’s the major concern. So we’re offering a much better, much more sustainable liquid laundry product.”

Malmberg insists the algal-based oil will in no way compromise on the quality or effectiveness of the brand’s conventional products.

Click for full infographic.

Ecover only uses RSPO-certified palm oil, which ensures more sustainable sourcing. But as the demand for palm oil has increased, the company says it sought out a less impactful alternative.

“The environmental benefits of the algae oil are multiple — first of all, it has a much lower greenhouse gas footprint, or CO2 footprint, because of how it’s sourced,” Tom Domen, Ecover’s long-term innovation manager, says in the video. “Secondly, the water usage to grow the algae is massively different from any other oil you find in the market — either renewable or fossil-based oils that are out there.

“Thirdly, it doesn’t compete with land usage, it doesn’t compete with food — so really, it’s the most sustainable oil in all areas,” Domen says.

Another benefit of algae is that, since it can be grown anywhere, it doesn't need to be shipped across the world as most palm oil does, resulting in an even smaller carbon footprint.

While the spotlight on the destructive nature of the palm oil industry has prompted a number of major brands and their suppliers to commit to zero-deforestation methods of procuring the oil, an investigation last month by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) found that a majority of those companies are so far falling short of their commitments.

In September, Unilever — one company that scored highly on the UCS scorecard — formed a supply partnership with Solazyme around the companies'jointly developed Tailored™ Algal Oils, which Unilever says it will use in its Dove and Brylcreem brand personal care products.

Lowe's has been ordered to pay $18 million for illegally disposing hazardous waste, including pesticides, batteries, fluorescent bulbs and other toxic materials, as a result of a civil enforcement action filed Tuesday in Alameda County Superior Court, San Jose Mercury News reports.

According to the suit, more than 100 Lowe's stores throughout California routinely sent items such as spilled or returned paint or damaged batteries to local landfills that were not permitted to receive the materials. The suit claims the company also took used batteries and used fluorescent light bulbs collected from its stores' recycling programs and threw them in the garbage.

The hazardous dumping violations were found by investigators from the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) and environmental regulators who conducted inspections of Dumpsters belonging to Lowe's stores.

“The support of statewide hazardous waste prosecutions brought by city attorneys and district attorneys is a top priority for the Office of Criminal Investigations,” said Reed Sato, DTSC Chief Counsel. “OCI will always provide assistance for these important efforts to obtain hazardous waste management compliance by the retail industry.”

The final judgment stipulates that Lowe's pay $12.85 million in civil penalties and costs and $3 million for hazardous waste minimization projects. An additional $2 million will fund supplemental environmental projects aimed at consumer protection.

"The dangers inherent in dumping hazardous waste cannot be understated, it is absolutely essential that we protect our environment for future generations," said San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón.

Lowe's was cooperative throughout the investigation, and has adopted enhanced policies and procedures such as keeping hazardous waste in segregated, labeled containers to minimize the risk of exposure to employees and customers.

Nevertheless, Lowe’s recently made it into the top 10 of the list of the 100 Most Loved Companies, determined by global opinion research consultancy APCO Insight. The findings were generated by APCO Insight’s Emotional LinkingSM model, which measures consumers’ emotional attachment to brands.

Last month, the DTSC challenged manufacturers of certain products containing chemicals of concern to make their products safer and dramatically change the way consumers are protected from potential toxic harm. As a key step in its Safer Consumer Products regulations, DTSC announced three draft “priority products” — Children’s foam padded sleeping products and furniture containing TDCPP (chlorinated TRIS); Spray Polyurethane foam systems containing unreacted di-isocyanates (dg); and paint strippers containing methylene chloride — and asked manufacturers to find a safer alternative.

Tabasco, a brand synonymous with chili sauce, knows what it takes to sustain flavor and success. A family-owned business since 1868, the sauce — known by locals as “Cajun ketchup” — is made on Avery Island, Louisiana and exported to 166 countries worldwide. Today, the McIlhenny family still personally chooses every pepper, tastes every batch and takes proactive measures to boost the Island's natural capital, to ensure the Tabasco tradition can continue for generations to come.

It all began in the mid- to late 1860s when Edmund McIlhenny, a New Orleans banker, was given seeds of Capsicum frutescens peppers from Central America. He sowed the seeds on Avery Island and eventually experimented with them, adding salt from the island and vinegar to make a sauce. Its popularity amongst family and friends led to McIlhenny growing his first commercial crop in 1868 and sending out the sauce in old cologne bottles the following year to grocers in New Orleans, priced at $1 per bottle. McIlhenny patented Tabasco, the first commercially sold hot sauce, in 1870 and five generations later, the sauce is still made from the same simple blend of red Tabasco mash, vinegar and salt.

Until the 1960s, the company grew all the peppers on Avery Island. When demand increased beyond the Island’s capacity to keep up, the company moved the growing and processing operation to farms in Africa and Latin America — but the process still begins on Avery Island. SVP Harold “Took” Osborn, one of Edmund McIlhenny’s great-great grandsons currently in charge of the business, personally inspects and selects the pepper plants from the 20 acres of the Island where peppers are still grown. Seeds from the chosen plants are then sent to the farmers abroad — until then, they are safeguarded in a family vault.

“It’s essentially an heirloom plant, the same stock — we’ve never modified them,” Osborn said in a recent 60 Minutes interview. “Every time you breed something, you give up something — taste is always the first thing that gets cast away.”

Farmers in Africa and Latin America then grow the peppers and send the salted mash back to Avery Island where it is aged for three years in oak whiskey barrels. Once CEO Tony Simmons (another of Edmund McIlhenny’s great-great grandsons) approves the mash, vinegar is added and the concoction is stirred for about four weeks, after which the sauce is strained and bottled for consumption.

Contrary to its name, Avery Island is not really an island — it is a salt dome about 140 miles west of New Orleans roughly 2 miles wide. Not only do Avery Island and the company have a deeply intertwined past but also a present and future. The island's natural capital is intrinsically tied to Tabasco's success: Surrounded by marshes and swamps, Avery Island is at significant risk from storms and hurricanes and was hard hit by Hurricane Rita in 2005; the company lost some of its crop and a gatehouse and narrowly escaped damage to the factory.

So the company is actively engaged in efforts to protect the Island, such as constructing a levee around their operations, installing water-pumping stations and planting new, indigenous grass to build more protective marsh. Other efforts at conserving the area’s biodiversity include a 170-acre Jungle Gardens (with semitropical foliage and wildlife such as alligators, deer and raccoons) and Bird City (migratory egrets).

“As a company that is over 140 years old, we want to build a business that is sustainable to the next 140 years,” Osborn says.

While the long-distance shipping of pepper mash isn’t ideal from a footprint-management perspective, the highlights of Tabasco’s Sustanability Report reveal other ways that the company operates consciously: waste pepper skin, seeds and runoff are used for compost or in other products; discarded barrels are used to build fences and tables; the majority of their products are bottled in glass; and whenever possible, packaging materials are regionally sourced.

The company says it also leases land on the Island for oil and gas drilling and salt mining (the mine from which Tabasco sources its salt). As much as that seems antithetical to the company’s conservation efforts, Osborn begs to differ.

“We use those resources to help the land where the oil isn’t,” he told 60 Minutes.“All of this land protects the Island — protects it from storms, protects it from erosion, and it’s part of our heritage.”

Hot sauce is a billion-dollar industry, with numerous new players always emerging on the scene. Welcoming the competition, Simmons told 60 Minutes: “The market itself has been growing. And the more people that come into this category, we think the better it is. Because if you begin to use hot sauce, we think sooner or later, you're gonna find Tabasco. And when you do, we're gonna get you.“

Recent studies have shown that demand from consumers and clients for sustainable businesses is on the rise. The benefits from investing in sustainable development projects can increase your brand value while improving the health, environmental condition and economic standing of some of the more disadvantaged social groups in the world.

These days, carbon offset projects go beyond simply reducing a company's carbon footprint. Projects located in developing countries offer job and education opportunities and better access to health services. Projects specifically targeting the environment, such as forest rehabilitation projects, also protect animal diversity and endangered species.

These added benefits are key to engaging a business's major stakeholders. Below are some questions to ask when trying to decide which project is best aligned with your business values.

What social benefits will resonate most with my customers?

By choosing projects that will resonate with your target clientele, you can attract and retain customers through appealing to their values and building trust. Whether you want to improve the livelihood of remote communities, increase their access to job opportunities or protect native forests, the diversity of projects available means you can be specific about what social benefits you want to incorporate.

An example of a company that invests strategically in projects is The Body Shop. Its values of defending human rights and protecting the planet are at the core of the brand and the Australian branch has invested in various initiatives, including the Cambodian Cook Stove Project. This project not only reduces carbon emissions by providing energy-efficient cook stoves, it also reduces deforestation in the area, improves the health of stove users and saves money on fuel expenses, which can then be used for basic needs.

How easy will it be to talk about the project with key stakeholders?

Projects that are closely aligned with your business objectives are easier to communicate to clients, staff and other stakeholders. For small, entrepeneurial businesses, projects such as the Kariba REDD+ community-based project would be easy to identify with. This project works with the locals in Zimbabwe to improve their livelihood, educating them in conservation agriculture, honey production and fire management.

Projects involved in certain industries will resonate with businesses of that sector. Microsoft and Intel, for example, support computer-education programs around the world and donate software to nonprofit organisations.

Why invest in sustainable development projects?

For businesses where the supply chain is located in areas with little environmental regulation, projects located in that region help offset the environmental impact. Other reasons to invest could be to give back to the local community, to increase transparency, and, in anticipation of future resource depletion, be forward-thinking.

The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), in managing its environmental impact, offsets its flight carbon emissions through projects such as the Alize Camseki wind farm in Turkey and the Armenis Farm Biogas Project in Cyprus. Another initiative is its sale of eco-tickets, which also offer free public transport to football matches.

What kind of sustainable development project makes sense for your business?

SC Johnson announced this week that it achieved zero waste-to-landfill status at its eighth global manufacturing facility, demonstrating progress toward its ambitious goal of reducing its global manufacturing waste by 70 percent by 2016. From 2000-2012, the company says it has reduced its global manufacturing waste by 62 percent as a ratio to production.

The Manaus, Brazil site is the company’s eighth zero landfill facility, and over the last few years it implemented several initiatives that increased recycling rates, reduced packaging and expanded access to environmental education. SC Johnson’s other zero landfill facilities include two in China and one each in Pakistan, The Netherlands, the US, Poland and Canada. Through 2012, the company says 10 of its global manufacturing facilities achieved waste-diversion rates of at least 90 percent.

“As each of us looks to reduce the amount of waste we generate and increase recycling rates both at home and within our community, SC Johnson is committed to identifying innovative and scalable ways to minimize our global manufacturing footprint,” said Kelly M. Semrau, Chief Sustainability Officer at SC Johnson. “Waste reduction — and achieving zero landfill — is a key role in our business strategy to continuously innovate, making even better products in the most sustainable way possible.”

SC Johnson aspires to eliminate waste altogether at each of its manufacturing facilities worldwide. As the company makes continual progress toward reaching this goal, it aims to decrease the amount of waste that is sent to landfills. By fostering a culture of sustainable behavior change throughout its manufacturing facilities and offices worldwide, SC Johnson seeks the proficiency and participation of its employees to identify innovative and scalable solutions to decrease waste.

Examples of SC Johnson’s achievements to reduce waste include:

• In the Manaus, Brazil facility’s journey to achieving zero landfill, onsite leaders examined the site’s entire production chain to identify its primary sources of waste, developed a revised material separation process and an innovative packaging reduction system, and launched an internal campaign to increase awareness around the environmental impact of employees’ waste. Since 2012, the facility has prevented an average of 91 tons of waste per year from being sent to landfills and has increased its amount of recycled products by 16 percent.
• Europlant, SC Johnson’s manufacturing facility in Mijdrecht, The Netherlands, has been a zero landfill site for over a decade. Employees and an onsite robot ensure that waste and packaging materials are separated throughout the manufacturing process to be reused or recycled. The site recycled almost 800 tons of its waste last year.
• At the Brantford, Canada facility, employees formed teams to identify and remove process steps that create waste. The facility also eliminated garbage cans and introduced centrally located recycling stations, which makes it easy for employees to place all recycling in the appropriate container and reduce the amount of waste that is sent to landfills.
• At the Shanghai, China facility, employees have identified several solutions to reducing waste after analyzing the makeup of containers and labels along with delivery alternatives.
• At the company’s largest manufacturing facility in Mt. Pleasant, Wis., employees recycled 8.6 million pounds of waste in 2012. This included used oil, light bulbs, batteries, and kitchen grease. Across the company’s Wisconsin facilities, employees have recycled 615,000 pounds of paper, equal to saving more than 3,600 trees. In addition, company cafeterias use plant-based cold beverage cups, corn-based disposable forks, knives and spoons, and compostable containers for to-go items.
• The Bay City, Mich. manufacturing facility recycled more than 6.3 million pounds of waste from 2012-2013 and has diverted 100 percent of its waste from landfills since November 2011.

In other SC Johnson news — in January, the American Cleaning Institute (ACI), the nonprofit trade association representing over 120 companies in the US cleaning products industry including SC Johnson, launched a new voluntary initiative to promote and demonstrate continual improvement in the cleaning products industry’s sustainability profile.

And we're just over halfway through the company's "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, which launched on St. Patrick's Day.

Western seafood lovers may begin to notice a change in the availability of some of their favorite fish varieties as a result of a number of new restrictions placed on commercial fishing in recent weeks, in an effort to preserve the integrity of marine ecosystems and the sustainability of fish stocks.

In late March, the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), Oceana, The Pew Charitable Trusts and WWF welcomed a decision by the EU Fisheries Council to place trade restrictions on Belize, Cambodia and Guinea for failing to combat Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing. EU member states must now ban the import of fish from the three countries and ensure that EU fishing vessels do not operate in their waters. The EU IUU Regulation aims to deprive market access for illegal fish by requiring “catch certificates” for imports into the EU, as well as banning the entry of fish from countries and vessels involved in illegal fishing.

EJF executive director Steve Trent said:“Closing the world’s most valuable seafood market to countries that do not cooperate in fighting illegal fishing is a crucial step, and we applaud the EU for taking this decision. Whilst it is not perfect, the EU IUU Regulation is clearly the world’s leading piece of legislation in this field — there are already signs that coastal communities in West Africa are seeing the benefits of the EU’s action towards offending vessels and flag States.”

IUU fishing depletes fish stocks, damages marine ecosystems, puts legitimate fishers at an unfair disadvantage and jeopardizes the livelihoods of some of the world’s most vulnerable communities. The value of IUU fishing is estimated to be between US$10-23 billion, representing between 11.06 and 25.91 million tons of catch, according to the Marine Stewardship Council.

In addition to welcoming the ban, the NGOs are calling for greater transparency in the way the EU evaluates third-world countries’ efforts to fight illegal fishing. They are also calling on the European Commission to close a loophole that allows non-EU vessels fishing in the banned countries’ waters to continue exporting their catches to the EU, and to work with EU member states to strengthen efforts to keep illegally caught fish off the dinner plates of European consumers.

The three countries were initially amongst eight countries identified by the European Commission in November 2012 — Fiji, Panama, Sri Lanka, Togo, Belize, Cambodia and Guinea — for inadequate monitoring of their fishing fleets, neglecting to impose sanctions on illegal fishing operators, and failing to develop robust fisheries laws. In 2013 the Commission announced that all but the latter three had improved. Last month’s Council decision confirms the Commission recommendation that the countries be formally blacklisted or “red-carded” and prevented from trading fish with the EU.

A second round of “yellow cards” was issued by the European Commission in November 2013, with Curaçao, Ghana and South Korea warned that they could also face the same set of trade measures if they do not cooperate in fighting IUU fishing. South Korean vessels have been widely documented fishing illegally in West Africa, causing significant impacts on coastal fishing communities and the marine environment. The NGOs are calling on the EU to continue to show the same resoluteness towards other countries that repeatedly fail to observe the rules.

Meanwhile, that same week the Pacific island-nation of Palau announced its plans to ban all commercial fishing vessels from its waters, creating one of the world’s largest marine reserves, according to the Food and Environment Reporting Network (FERN). The sanctuary will cover roughly 230,000 square miles, an area of ocean slightly smaller than the size of France.

If Palau is successful, it will mark the first time a nation has completely banned fishing vessels from its entire Exclusive Economic Zone. The move is significant for the country, which is located in the part of the Pacific inhabited by the world’s last healthy stock of tuna — worth an estimated $5.5 billion. Commercial fishing, largely by Japan and Taiwan, currently represents $5 million annually, or 3.3 percent of Palau’s GDP. But Palau argues that its tourist diving industry is far more significant, bringing in $85.3 million a year.

This isn’t the first move by Palau to attempt to protect its marine life from exploitation. In 1992, Palau and seven of its neighbors — Micronesia, Kiribati, Nauru, the Marshall Islands, the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, and Tuvalu — called the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA) — signed an agreement stating that they’d collaboratively manage their tuna stocks and limit fishing in their waters. FERN likens the PNA to “the Saudi Arabia of sashimi”: their collective stocks account for nearly half of the world’s skipjack tuna — America’s favorite fish — and nearly a third of the world’s total tuna population.

As FERN points out, Palau’s latest move may risk international relationships and foreign aid, which are brokered alongside tuna fishing licenses. The country is slated to receive $215 million from the US in economic assistance and grants through 2024.

Time will tell how well these bans will be upheld and how they will affect the global seafood market. To ensure your seafood choices are sustainable in the meantime, you almost can’t go wrong buying local or from a number of conscientious retailers— or there’s always Long John Silver’s.

General Motors, Samsung and Best Buy are among the 127 organizations to receive 2014 Energy Star Partner of the Year Awards, which the Environmental Protection Agency awards to organizations that have demonstrated innovative strategies to help customers, partners and stakeholders to save energy and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through energy-efficiency projects.

Other recipients include Meritage Homes Corporation, PepsiCo, Sears, 3M and LG Electronics.

The winners were selected from 16,000 Energy Star partners, including manufacturers, retailers, public schools, hospitals, real estate companies and home builders, for their dedication to protecting the environment through greater energy efficiency.

In addition to the 45 organizations receiving the Partner of the Year award — for strategically and comprehensively managing their energy use, promoting Energy Star products and practices in their own operations, and providing efficient products and services to consumers and within their community:

• 72 companies are being named Partner of the Year — Sustained Excellence winners, for continue to exhibit exceptional leadership year after year in the Energy Star program
• 10 Partner of the Year — Climate Communications winners have raised their customers’ awareness of the impacts of climate change and the effectiveness of energy-efficient behaviors
• Nine Excellence winners are receiving awards in part for their superior efforts in the Home Performance with Energy Star program. The remaining organizations are receiving Excellence Awards for specific activities to promote energy-efficient products, homes, or buildings

“Each year, Energy Star partners create jobs, protect the environment and raise the bar for the home-improvement industry through their dedication to energy efficiency,” said Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy David Danielson. “This national program helps homeowners by providing access to innovative home-improvement solutions and enabling American families to save money by saving energy.”

Products, homes and buildings that earn the Energy Star label prevent GHG emissions by meeting strict energy efficiency requirements set by the US EPA. From the first Energy Star-qualified computer in 1992, the Energy Star label can now be found on products in more than 70 different categories, with more than 4.5 billion sold. Over 1.5 million new homes and 23,000 office buildings, schools and hospitals have earned the Energy Star label. Since the Energy Star program began, American families and businesses have saved $297 billion on utility bills and prevented more than 2.1 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions with help from Energy Star.

See the complete list of winners here.

In related news, Honda recently unveiled its net zero energy "Smart Home" on the University of California Davis campus. The building, which is meant to demonstrate Honda's vision for zero-carbon living and personal mobility, includes a charging facility for a Honda Fit EV, and will on average generate more electricity from on-site renewable energy than it receives from the local utility.

And across the pond, Unilever, Philips, 3M and several other members of the European Alliance to Save Energy (EU-ASE) recently signed a letter sent to the European Commission calling for a new set of competitiveness objectives to exploit all possible cost-effective energy-efficiency opportunities by 2030.

Southwest Airlines has announced a multi-year commitment to Placemaking — a movement that reimagines public spaces as the heart of every community.

Through the Southwest Airlines Heart of the Community program, the airline says it has partnered with a nonprofit dedicated to Placemaking, Project for Public Spaces (PPS), to collaborate with local community partners in cities across the country to bring new life to their public spaces. Southwest says Heart of the Community is part of a broader efforts to connect people and strengthen local communities through its core business, charitable giving, community outreach and environmental initiatives.

Building on successful pilot projects in Detroit, Mich., and Providence, R.I., in 2013, Southwest and PPS say they will help to transform multiple public spaces in 2014 with the intent to expand the Heart of the Community program, as well as support dozens of public spaces through Placemaking projects in the years to come.

For more than 30 years, Placemaking has helped to incite social, economic and environmental benefits in communities around the world, Southwest says. Placemaking is rooted in community-based participation and involves the planning, design, management and programming of public spaces and capitalizes on a community’s assets and potential to create vibrant destinations — such as neighborhood parks, community markets and downtown squares.

Last week, Southwest and PPS unveiled their most recent project in San Antonio, Texas, where they partnered with the Center City Development Office to activate historic Travis Park through new physical amenities, including games, umbrellas, tables and chairs and ongoing programming, such as fitness classes and live music. In 2013, Southwest and PPS worked with the Downtown Detroit Partnership to transform an underutilized lawn in downtown’s Campus Martius Park into a seasonal beach with a deck and seating that serves as a fun and relaxing community gathering place for workers, families and children.

The airline and nonprofit also worked with the Downtown Providence Parks Conservancy to create the Imagination Center, a new place for family activities in Burnside Park, located in the heart of downtown Providence, R.I.

In late 2013, Southwest provided a gift to support the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning’s research white paper, Places in the Making, which demonstrated the power of Placemaking to create connected, sustainable, healthy, and economically viable communities. The research emphasized Placemaking’s positive impact on community building and empowerment and cited the need for public/private partnerships to advance the practice of Placemaking.

“Having Southwest Airlines make a commitment to supporting this movement nationwide is a breakout moment for Placemaking,” said Fred Kent, founder and president of Project for Public Spaces. “Placemaking is about strengthening the connection between people and the places they share, and it’s a movement that needs the energy of a company like Southwest to help support and empower local communities to reimagine their own public spaces.”

In December, Southwest joined the CECP, an organization that supports leaders and community investment teams within companies to make an impact on both the communities around them and their bottom lines. The organization does this through networking, collaboration, one-on-one support, measurement and research.

In other travel news, Royal Caribbean Cruises and several other organizations recently partnered to address unsustainable development and climate change in several tourism destinations in the Caribbean and Latin America, by safeguarding “their natural and cultural assets, while enhancing communities and securing a vibrant regional economy."