3p Contributor: Sheila Samuelson
Recent Articles
RoofPoint: A Tool for Managing New and Existing Roof Space for Sustainability
Dr. Jim Hoff speaking about RoofPoint. Image by D.C. Taylor Co.
Recently, the Regional Sustainable Business Alliance, a group formed out of the Cedar Rapids, IA, Area Chamber of Commerce, brought nearly 50 professionals together to learn about a forthcoming environmental rating system for roofs, called RoofPoint.
You might be thinking, “Wait, there are already green rating systems for buildings.” You’re right.
Today, most professionals are familiar with the US Green Building Council (USGBC) and the revolutionary Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system. What began as a single four-tiered certification over a decade ago now includes criteria for many types of buildings and projects. Certainly, LEED has pioneered a change in the way we design, build, maintain, renovate, and inhabit our built environment. On August 31, 2011, the USGBC announced the 10,000th commercial building to achieve LEED certification.
Voluntary Reporting of Carbon Emissions: How and Where?
Last January, the US Securities and Exchange Commission gave a nod to the fact that climate risk is a material business issue when it voted to require companies to disclose the impact of climate change on their businesses in their public filings. This fact was not lost on the participants of the LCA Sustainable Supply Chain Summit in Chicago earlier this month, who all spoke of programs to measure and reduce their carbon emissions and, in most cases, asking their supply chain partners to do the same.
Whether a company measures its carbon footprint at the request of stakeholders, to get ahead of competition and regulation, or simply to identify cost reductions, there are a number of reasons to voluntarily report this information, and several options for doing so. Sharing emissions data and reduction goals can help build trust among stakeholders and confidence among investors, and can help companies understand where they fall in relation to others in their industry.
The Climate Registry, the US EPA Climate Leaders program, and Carbon Disclosure Project are each organizations dedicated to increased transparency and comparability of greenhouse gas information. The organizations differ in many ways. In order to help sort out these differences, below is a short summary of each organization followed by a more comprehensive table highlighting useful information in more detail.
IT Giants: The Greenest Data Center is the One That Isn’t Built
Image source: Data Center Knowledge
Last month, Dell made the somewhat shocking announcement that it may never build another data center. The company was referring to the fact that it’s doubled its workload using no extra power and building no new data centers, simply by squeezing more capacity out of its existing servers. With an industry standard for data server utilization at about 12 to18 percent, there is ample room for improvement. What Dell realized was that by getting rid of its underutilized assets and swapping out the oldest and most outdated 25 percent of servers each year for the newest virtualization models, it would easily recoup its capital expenditures through reduced energy costs.
LCA Summit: Standards for Measuring a Product’s Life Cycle Emissions
Image source: GE Global Research
At the LCA Sustainable Supply Chain Summit in Chicago last week companies like Texas Instruments, HP and MillerCoors said they ask suppliers to report carbon emissions. A representative from BASF, a chemical company, said it voluntarily makes its greenhouse gas (GHG) information available to the companies to which it supplies goods. GE has developed an entire suite of LCA tools, which it uses to glean information about the benefits and risks of individual products across the value chain.
As tracking scope 1 (direct emissions from fuel combustion) and scope 2 (indirect emissions from purchased electricity) emissions becomes a more comfortable and routine process, companies are increasingly looking beyond their own boundaries to their supply chains. This expanded focus includes measuring emissions from the products and services purchased from suppliers (scope 3), and calculating emissions for the end-to-end life cycle of a single product.
LCA Summit: Advice on Ensuring Success in Your Sustainability Program
The LCA Sustainable Supply Chain Summit last week in Chicago packe
d loads of high quality content into a two-day event. More than thirty speakers from some of the largest companies in their respective industries spoke on topics ranging from the scientific perspective on LCA to ethical and social issues to more traditional supply chain considerations, such as transportation, packaging and waste. Among the speakers were sustainability directors and the like from Johnson & Johnson, Verizon, Motorola, Cadbury, GE, HP, Maersk, MillerCoors, and Sodexo, just to name a few.
A large part of the value of the conference was hearing about how sustainability programs were approached, what proved effective, and which efforts flopped. Despite being presented by mostly enormous, international corporations, many of the over-arching themes that were reiterated by multiple speakers will have value to companies of any size.
Cadbury at LCA Summit: Communicating CSR Goals to Suppliers
One especially prevalent theme at the LCA Sustainable Supply Chain Summit in Chicago this past week was the need for companies to communicate corporate responsibility goals to suppliers. While requiring suppliers to report on environmental metrics was uncommon, most presenters said their companies did request that suppliers fill out an environmental or social performance scorecard. In general, the consensus was that suppliers should be considered partners in reaching sustainability goals. Sherilyn Brodersen, Ethical Sourcing Manager for Cadbury USA, shared a story that perfectly illustrated why this is the case.
Cadbury addresses sustainability through several programs, including Cadbury’s Cocoa Partnership, which envisions “thriving rural communities that can support a sustainable cocoa supply chain.” The Partnership works closely with communities and farmers in Ghana — from which they have sourced cocoa for over 100 years — providing community libraries and fresh water wells, teacher training and supporting farmers’ ability to grow more cocoa and earn more income. This works out great for Cadbury, by helping to ensure long-term availability of one of its most critical supply materials, and for the local Ghanan communities.
LCA Sustainable Supply Chain USA This Week in Chicago
Sustainable supply chains seem to be front-of-mind recently as giants like Wal-Mart and IBM seek to reduce risk by understanding the impacts of their suppliers. Other companies are making headlines by addressing the downstream supply chain, with clever ways of reducing packaging, and not only setting, but also achieving zero waste goals. And for some companies, such as Hewlett Packard, working toward a greener supply chain is old hat.
Smart companies are addressing the supply chain issue for good reasons. A February 2010 study by McKinsey showed that companies with strong sustainability programs are companies that innovate and find value creation opportunities. A High Performance Supply Chain study by Accenture found that leaders who actively address sustainability in product design, manage their supply chain carbon footprint, and adopt an integrated view of sustainability across the supply chain, are also best-performers on cost and service.
IBM: Managing Risk in the Global Supply Chain
“Ultimately, if a supplier cannot be compliant with requirements on the environment and sustainability, we’ll stop doing business with them.”
This quote, from John Paterson, IBM’s vice president of global supply and chief procurement officer, in the April 14 NY Times, is more than a hollow Earth Month pledge to reduce impact. It represents the reality that suppliers that don’t manage their environmental and social responsibility are high-risk, and high-risk suppliers are not good for business. IBM’s strategic business decision to up the accountability ante for suppliers is designed to manage risk and ensure long-term viability through the cultivation of a robust and resilient supply chain.
IBM relies on 28,000 suppliers in more than 90 countries–a $40 billion supply chain. If even a fraction of a percent of these suppliers–or their suppliers, in turn–could not keep up with regulatory compliance, lacked availability to increasingly scarce natural resources, or became the targets of a PR campaign against them, these “weak links” could wreak havoc for IBM. By addressing the sustainability of its end-to-end supply chain, IBM is ensuring itself against disruption.
Walmart Greens Supply Chain
On the heels of unveiling “Great Value” brand CFLs last week, Walmart announced today that the company is working with suppliers to gauge and reduce the energy consumed in buying, manufacturing and distributing the products they sell, beginning with a focus on seven products (DVDs, toothpaste, soap, milk, beer, vacuum cleaners and soda).
Through energy reduction policies like this, retailers with supply networks on the scale of Walmart’s, can send a ripple of efficiency standards and product innovation through multiple industries, and squeeze inefficiency out of operations. Walmart, which will encourage the rest of its suppliers to respond to their new program, is working closely with suppliers and organizations like the Carbon Disclosure Program.
Articulating that this initiative is both a sound business decision for Walmart’s supply chain and the environment, the firm’s Chief Merchandising Officer said, “This is an opportunity to spur innovation and efficiency throughout our supply chain that will not only help protect the environment but save people money at the same time.”
Original article from One Shade Greener.
Online Bill Pay Saves More Than Just Trees
Scientific American points out that the benefits of online banking and billing reach beyond saving trees. Reducing paper use also reduces the resources needed to make, ship and discard the paper.
Imagine every US household opting to receive no paper bills or bank statements. The fuel saved (26 million BTUs) in this scenario would power San Francisco for a year, and 16.5 million fewer trees would be cut down annually. 20,000 swimming pools full of water would be saved and 56,000 garbage trucks of solid waste would be eliminated. Air pollutants and particulates would be cut, contributing to increased air quality. And the cost? Just displacing a few electrons to receive your bills and statements online.
53% of households do their banking online already. If you’re ready to go paperless, ask your bank, utility, phone and cable companies, etc. how to stop paper mailings on your account.
Article from One Shade Greener
Four (Green) Stars at Kimpton Hotels
“We know that we can still perform at a high level using our skills, resources and intelligence to operate our business and, at the same time, make a positive contribution to save the planet. We know this because we are already doing it with success stories across the country.” – Kimpton website
Recently, we pondered the inefficiency of a standard hotel room. Here we have an example of a supra-standard boutique hotel company that considers their environmental impact in all of their operations, from their sustainable buildings, down to their organic shampoos and natural cleaning products. And they haven’t just jumped on the green bandwagon, they’ve been doing this since 1985.
Kimpton Hotels, based in San Francisco with over 40 three- and four-star boutique hotels around the US, has made a life-long commitment to environmental responsibility. They’ve proven that operating with sustainable values won’t stop them from delivering a premium guest experience. In fact, polled hotel guests say they are loyal to Kimpton because they appreciate the sustainable ethic. A good portion of their clientele are business travelers whose companies have also adopted CSR strategies, and are committed to consuming products and services with the least impact.
Visualization of Ecological Footprint by Country
Population
Ecological Footprint
Worldmapper has created a series of 366 world maps, each showing the proportion of a single variable in each of 200 territories, encompassing 99.95% of the world’s population. The maps are density-equalising cartograms, which allow direct comparison of one map to each of the others. The above comparison of current world population (top) with ecological footprint (bottom) gives a clear visual representation to just how out of balance consumption in the US has become. If you’ve read that it would take six Earths to support a world population that lived like the average American citizen, this shows why.
Other map categories include population histories and future projections, income, wealth, poverty, education, resources, manufacturers, pollution, health, and much more.
Fast Company’s Greenest Cities
Speaking of walkability, the current issue of Fast Company highlights Chicago, Stockholm, Portand and Vancouver as Green Leaders in their 2007 Fast Cities index.
Here’s why the leaders were chosen:
Chicago: Since 1999, the city has planted 2.5 million square feet of heat-reducing rooftop gardens, more than all other U.S. cities combined. Mayor Richard Daley has overseen a downtown renaissance and the planting of 500,000 new trees. In the wake of a deadly 1995 heat wave, he has also launched a raft of aggressive initiatives to cool the city while conserving energy–and beat New York to an environmental action plan by two years.
Big Waste Comes in Small Packages
The New York Times reported on a consumer trend today that may be on the right nutritional track, but the wrong track environmentally. The rise of the 100-calorie snack pack – in everything from beef jerkey to cottage cheese to licorice – indicates a reversal of the “super-size me” trend of the early 2000s. The 100-calorie packs are profitable for companies, which can charge 20% more for the packaged convenience, adding up to a $20 million dollar per year industry.
While the packages are small, the aggregate ecological downside of this trend is large. Multiple small packages, plus a larger box or bag to contain them all creates more waste, and is a step backwards in materials efficiency. Consumers are essentially paying more for less product (which they want) and more waste (which has no value). As the article points out, the irony is that buying one large bag and measuring out single servings would provide more product for the dollar – and it would also reduce packaging waste.
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