Dumpster Diving Day Saves Burt’s Bees $25K Annually
Posted by Jace Shoemaker-Galloway March 15th, 2010 
View Comments
The old adage “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” sure rings true for a North Carolina-based earth friendly natural personal care products company. In 2008, employees from Burt’s Bees took part in Dumpster Day, an event held to educate employees about waste reduction.
Trash destined for the landfill was collected for two weeks and divided into three categories – items that should have been recycled but were not, things that should be recycled and garbage. With about five tons of stockpiled trash dumped onto the parking lot, employees donned Hazmat suits and dove in to find out what they could dig up.
The Economist’s 2010 Corporate Citizenship Conference
Posted by Cindy Mehallow March 12th, 2010 View Comments
Giving Government a Helping Hand
How much of a role should business play in tackling global questions such as climate change, unemployment, restoring trust in the aftermath of the financial crisis and distributing international aid? What is the nature and extent of the private sector’s responsibility in resolving these issues? At what point should corporations step alongside government and help shoulder some of the burden? These questions, which go to the very heart of defining corporate citizenship and corporate social responsibility, are some of the issues that will be discussed at the Economist’s 2010 Corporate Citizenship Conference kicking off next week.
The conference line-up features a veritable who’s who of big names in sustainability and leading thinkers from the public sector including: Diana Taylor managing director of Wolfensohn & Co. and former president of the World Bank; US Department of Labor Deputy Secretary Seth Harris; Loews Hotels Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jonathan M. Tisch; and Steve Case, co-founder of America Online and Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Revolution. A highlight will be a conversation with President Bill Clinton who will likely provide an update on the Clinton Global Initiative.
Genomics, Next Gen Fuel Cells, Water: Parting thoughts from ECO:nomics
Posted by Chris Zwicke March 11th, 2010 View Comments
*image from Gas 2.0
The Wall Street Journal’s third annual ECO:nomics conference: Creating Environmental Capital wrapped up last week and I’m pleased to report that it delivered on the promise of frank, highly strategic, executive-level discussions. The conference will return next year; here’s hoping that we have some new energy and carbon legislation in place by then and that the focus continues to shift from risk management to more transformative approaches in which sustainability is viewed a business opportunity.
Some parting thoughts from the conference:
The potentially revolutionary
Algae that feed on carbon dioxide, using sunlight to fix the CO2 into hydrocarbons that can be refined into gas and diesel just like what comes out the pump today: can/should they be genetically engineered for enhanced productivity? BP and Exxon are placing big bets on J. Craig Venter’s work in synthetic genomics. Interviewed at the conference, this “life designer” goes beyond biomimicry and creates new organisms though the “software of life,” DNA.
The Toxies Awards Recognize Worst Chemicals of the Year
Posted by Jace Shoemaker-Galloway March 11th, 2010 View Comments
Millions of people around the world tuned in to last weekend’s Academy Award show, bringing another Hollywood award season to a close. While nabbing an Oscar or Emmy is considered an honor, another lesser known red carpet event took place last weekend where winning an award is not recommended.
The Toxies were held at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood on March 3, 2010. Awards were given to Bad Actor Chemicals, chemicals and compounds found in everyday products that affect our health. There are over 80,000 synthetic chemicals currently registered for use in the United States. Many of those chemicals have not been adequately tested. 1,400 chemicals in use today that have been studied, have known links to cancer, birth defects and other health-related problems.
Energy Secretary Chu Fields Questions at ECO:nomics
Posted by Chris Zwicke March 9th, 2010 View Comments
U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, fresh from the inaugural ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, was the final and perhaps most anticipated speaker at last week’s ECO:nomics conference. Throughout the conference, regulatory uncertainty had been the greatest complaint of energy execs and venture capitalists alike. In comparison, the recession had up to this point been addressed rather cursorily: while it has certainly sapped financing for potentially disruptive technologies, the established players at the conference largely claimed that they had not reduced their innovation spend.
*image from energy.gov
Chu’s initial remarks focused on the DOE’s R&D priorities (with fun acronyms like BEET-IT) and Recovery Act investments. His tone balancing patience with urgency, he advocated for a comprehensive energy bill with a long-term signal that “there will be a cap on carbon and that cap will ratchet down.” Referencing the shifts from wood to coal and from coal to oil and natural gas, he noted that “shifts in energy supplies take decades, typically half a century,” even when the new supplies are economically superior, but that climate change demands we do it faster. During his talk, decades were often the timeframe, e.g., to work out siting and costing issues in long range transmission with centralized renewables. At the same time, Chu invoked China, more often than climate, as a reason to hurry: “We can still be the leader in this new industrial revolution…but the train is leaving the station.”
Betting on RecycleBank: The Next Big Thing?
Posted by Chris Zwicke March 8th, 2010 View Comments
In the CleanTech space, solar may be hot, the future of the smart grid may be bright, but Ron Gonen, CEO of RecycleBank, is proving that recycling can be sexy too.
At its ECO:nomics conference, the Wall Street Journal announced its first ranking of the Top 10 venture-backed, clean technology companies. The survey “seeks to identify green companies that have the capital, executive experience and investor know-how to succeed in an increasingly crowded field.” CEOs from three of the ten firms—John Baumstark of Suniva, Cree Edwards of eMeter, and RecycleBank’s Gonen—were on hand at the conference for an elevator pitch competition titled “Uncovering the Next Big Thing.” After the pitches and follow-up questions, the audience voted on who they would fund with a hypothetical million dollars. RecycleBank won the three-way race with nearly half of the votes.
Reputation as Growth Driver: Disney and “Generation Green”
Posted by Chris Zwicke March 5th, 2010 View Comments
With kids as one of its core demographics, The Walt Disney Company is obviously quite interested in what kids care about. Speaking at the Wall Street Journal’s ECO:nomics conference, Disney President and CEO Robert Iger discussed how kids as young as five are becoming increasingly concerned about environmental issues. It doesn’t stop with this “generation green.” Disney, like many other companies, has heard similar concerns from other customer groups, shareholders, and employees (current and potential). According to Iger, addressing the company’s environmental impacts is not only the right thing to do morally but the right thing to do for shareholder value. The business case boils down to brand value, based on the assertion that reputation can drive long-term growth.
But are customers willing to pay more for green products and services? The audience of mostly corporate execs pressed Iger on this several times. I am not aware of any studies that could convincingly challenge the consensus of doubt in the room on this question. However, while acknowledging that many customers shop for value (especially in a recession), Iger challenged the notion that everything that is better for the environment must also cost more. He suggested one way to lower costs on environmentally preferable products is to aggregate buying power, something Disney is beginning to pursue as a member of the Sustainability Consortium with Walmart.
Web 2.0 and the River of Sustainability Information: Is More Better?
Posted by 3p Guest Author March 5th, 2010 View Comments
By Ryan Whisnant
Last week I attended a panel hosted by the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan: “Green Tech: How the Web and Information Technology are Empowering Sustainability.” The panel featured Nick Aster, founder of TriplePundit.com, Nigel Melville, assistant professor of Business Information Technology at the Ross School of Business (who hosts a blog on IT and sustainability), and Karl Rosaen, a former member of the Google Android team who is currently working on realtimefarms.com , which aims to empower local farmers and raise awareness of the availability of fresh local produce.
The core question that emerged from the panel was whether new information technologies empower sustainability and, if so, how. Web 2.0 and social media technologies including blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and online video are clearly increasing the volume and sharing of information, but does this translate to more sustainable practices, either by companies or by individuals? One dynamic that has clearly shifted is the quest for authenticity. While business transactions in the not so distant past required establishing real human relationships, only recently have “layers of firewalls and PR departments” created a buffer for this direct human transaction with business. Ironically, it’s technology that is bringing back a sense of authenticity. Whether information sharing and human transaction are really the same thing is questionable, but there’s no denying that web 2.0 has created a system of checks and balances that helps hold companies more accountable in a public forum – companies just can’t fake it any more.
Corporate-NGO Partnerships: A Conversation With EDF’s Gwen Ruta
Posted by Chris Zwicke March 4th, 2010 View Comments
It is a testament to how far the sustainable business conversation has come that new partnerships between large corporations and environmental NGOs are meeting with less and less surprise and skepticism from both the business and environmental camps. Certainly, some actions are still capable of raising eyebrows, such as the Environmental Defense Fund opening an office in Bentonville, Arkansas to work with Wal-Mart. However, the positive impacts of such partnerships on both the economic and environmental bottom lines are increasingly well documented. This is not to say that any given corporation today would immediately recognize the value in or be comfortable partnering with an NGO, but preconceived notions are giving way to a new sense of possibility and we may be nearing a tipping point.
Gwen Ruta, Vice President of Corporate Partnerships at EDF, is co-facilitating a working group session on “Working with NGOs” at this week’s ECO:nomics conference in Santa Barbara. She is interested in gauging the mindset of business executives given the state of the economy and the recent Copenhagen climate summit. In this context, Ruta seeks to continue increasing the visibility and familiarity of EDF to corporate leaders and to broaden EDF’s influence in the private sector.
State of the World Forum Moved to Brazil as Washington Disappoints
Posted by RP Siegel March 2nd, 2010 View Comments
In early February, the State of the World Forum announced a decision to cancel their Climate Leadership Summit scheduled for this week in Washington because, in the words of Forum President Jim Garrison, “this is simply not the right time to convene a major conference of this kind in the nation’s capitol.” Because, as the conference organizers concluded from the lack of commitment in Copenhagen and events thereafter, “it would have virtually no impact on either the thinking or the agenda with which the U.S. Congress and the president are now engaged.”
Citing the “paralysis to which Washington has succumbed with regard to any action on global warming,” the forum has turned their eyes to other nations that might serve as more convincing role models in the quest to take the kind of urgent, large scale, meaningful action that the consensus of the scientific community deems necessary with ever-deepening alarm.
Forum President Jim Garrison elaborated his position in an exclusive statement to Triple Pundit:
WSJ’s ECO:nomics Conference Kicks Off This Week
Posted by Chris Zwicke March 1st, 2010 View Comments
The Wall Street Journal’s Environmental Capital blog may have closed up shop earlier this year but the name lives on in the Journal’s third annual ECO:nomics conference: Creating Environmental Capital. The event, focusing on the “most urgent issues in business and the environment,” continues to draw a host of prominent executives, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and nonprofit leaders. Robert Iger, Disney President and CEO, Steven Chu, U.S. Secretary of Energy, and Amory Lovins, Chairman and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute, are among this year’s speakers. The format of frank, highly strategic, executive-level discussions has apparently struck a chord, with many participants returning year after year. Three days in Santa Barbara can’t hurt either.
I will be writing from the conference starting this Wednesday and I invite your comments on what promises to be a stimulating agenda. Against the backdrop of carbon regulation uncertainty and the lingering recession, the 2010 program has a stronger focus on energy than in years past, with a series of sessions on oil, coal, wind, solar, and even genomic approaches to biofuel production. Later, a clean-technology elevator pitch session will feature execs from eMeter, Recycle Bank, and Suniva. New to the lineup this year are working group sessions (closed to the press) on topics ranging from Financing Green Projects to Working with NGOs, in which participants discuss and determine action priorities.
A Greener Olympics: Coke’s Green 2010 Winter Olympic Games Efforts
Posted by Jace Shoemaker-Galloway February 19th, 2010 View Comments
Numerous organizations and companies have committed to making the 2010 Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games more environmentally friendly. Whether it is the Olympic medals comprised partly of electronic waste or the Olympia electric ice-resurfacing machine, next to gold, green is the color of choice when it comes to the 2010 Winter Games.
Coca-Cola is taking part in a variety of sustainable efforts that are the largest and most comprehensive in the history of the company. The soft drink giant, an Olympic Games partner since 1928, is committing to be carbon neutral by reducing the company’s Olympic carbon emissions by 100 percent.
Olympic Medals Reuse E-Waste: Green is the new Gold for 2010
Posted by Jace Shoemaker-Galloway February 12th, 2010 View Comments
The Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games have added another color to its coveted gold, silver and bronze medal lineup – green! For the first time in Olympic history, the 2010 athlete medals contain metals from end-of-life electronic waste, commonly referred to as e-waste.
Teck Resources, Ltd., a diversified mining company based in Vancouver, is the exclusive supplier of the metals used in the Olympic medals. Components from circuit boards originally destined to landfills, have been added to all of the athletes’ medals. In fact, 6.8 metric tonnes of circuit board from end-of-life electronics were diverted from landfills for the making of the 1,014 medals. The company is also an Official Supporter of the Games.
What Do C-Level Employees Take Home from a Conference like the State of Green Business Forum?
Posted by Scott Cooney February 8th, 2010 View Comments
At last week’s State of Green Business Forum put on by Greener World Media, I reported live on some of the interesting developments in the world of green business presented at the conference. As a small business specialist, this kind of conference is, admittedly, somewhat foreign to me. The conferences I usually attend, such as Green America’s Green Business Conference, the Green Festival, and the like, are mostly tailored to and for small businesses, notwithstanding the occasional ‘big business in small business clothing’ such as Clif Bar and Organic Valley.
The conference included heavy hitters like Microsoft, SAP, Autodesk, UPS, and Best Buy. C-level execs sat and listened to discussion panels and powerpoint presentations from a wide variety of speakers, such as Van Jones and Inc. Magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year 2009, Kevin Surace of Serious Materials. It was eight hours of listening to some amazing information.
As a former employee of Saatchi & Saatchi S, a sustainability consulting firm whose core competency was employee engagement around sustainability, I have a baseline level of understanding about what people take home from trainings, conferences, and other employer-sponsored events. If the mission of last week’s conference was to engage, empower, educate, and excite employees to go back to their companies and spread the gospel of sustainability, there were two key elements that, my experience says, could have been more effective for sending those disciples back into the world truly engaged and ready to fire up their troops.
What’s New
Where We’re Going
NY: Mar. 24
FT Investing in a Sustainable Future - Learn how investors are using new techniques to generate returns on responsible investments and hear about the latest trends in CSR activities.
SF: Apr. 14-16
Navigating the American Carbon World - Looking at the status of climate policy in 2010 and how climate initiatives will move forward with or without new policy.
Chicago Apr. 28-29
LCA Sustainable Supply Chain USA How To Measure, Prioritize And Reduce Social And Environmental Impacts In The Most Effective Manner
April 28-30
SF: Social Enterprise Summit/World Forum
SF: May 20-21
Microfinance USA 2010 - The place where microfinance practitioners, investors, and enthusiasts meet.
Monterey: Jun. 7-10
Sustainable Brands 2010 - Explore The Power of "And" at this year's highly anticipated SB10 conference - a 3p favorite since it's inception. Join more than 700 business and brand strategists, designers and sustainability executives for three days of extraordinary conversation.
July 29-30
GRI Certified Sustainability Reporting Course - Get the tools needed to fully assess the sustainability of business activities and to reduce the negative impacts of day-to-day operations.
LA: Sept. 1-2
Women in Green Forum - Recognizing the achievements of women across the vast range of environmental industry sectors.
Partners
University of Kansas Green Jobs Tweets
- RT @GreenGrowthCC: RT @LauraSantora: Green businesses move to cities with good public policies that will help growth. #greenjobsku
- on my way back to kc. kind of bittersweet but a complete 180 as to how i view green jobs. and i thought i was open minded! #greenjobsku
- Common complaint about public transportation: it's a hastle. But I just made 40 min trip w/ a 40 &30 lb bag w/out problems. #Greenjobsku #fb
- Enlightened this week with #kuj500 on several issues all leading to one point: life is sacred & worth preserving. Now sleep. #greenjobsku
- http://twitpic.com/19y57o - homeless friends w/ their best friends. Berkeley has most conscious homeless I've ever met. #greenjobsku #fb
- Nominations Now Open for 2010 Corporate Engagement Award of Excellence
- The Abbott Fund, Boston University School of Medicine and Leading Health Institutions in Vietnam Inaugurate the Abbott Fund Institute of Nutrition Science at Bach Mai Hospital
- PepsiCo Marks World Water Day 2010 with Global Water Goals
- CBRE Teams with The Green Standard
- Mannington's 25% Postconsumer Recycled VCT Honored with Environmental Stewardship Award
Recent Comments