DuPont’s Six Ways to Achieve Zero Landfill Waste
The following outlines six best practices that enabled DuPont’s success in achieving zero landfill waste stream results
Five Ingredients to Grow a Grassroots Green Team
Five ingredients and a little follow through’s all it takes to grow a grassroots green team, according to research.
Winning Bids Going Green in HR and Risk Management
“Our business revenues are directly tied to winning competitive bids,” explains Elizabeth Barry, Chief Sustainability Officer of Marsh & McLennan Companies. “Over the last couple of years an increasing number of our customers are inserting into their bid packages questions that seek documentation of our company’s sustainability commitment.” Barry’s comments reflect the growth of the [...]
3 Emerging Trends in Employee Engagement
Two years ago, when the concept had just started to really gain traction, we reported the results of a survey conducted by Brighter Planet on engaging employees on sustainability issues. The company just released an update to that study which includes responses from employees at some of the companies leading corporate sustainability efforts including Walmart, UPS, and [...]
How a Custom-Fit Workplace Can Save Money and Reduce Emissions
If your daily roundtrip commute to work is around 40 miles then you are spending approximately $2,000 per year on fuel. AAA estimates that the hidden costs of car insurance, oil changes, annual depreciation on your car purchase, etc. add a whooping $3,000 more to your annual costs. In addition, you are pumping approximately 20 pounds [...]
The Kind of Business Leadership We Need for Our Evolution
The following is a guest post by our friends at Saybrook University’s Organizational Systems Program (a 3p sponsor) – designed for students who want to understand the nature of organizations, collaborative practices, and transformative change. By Jorge Taborga, Ph.D. student in organizational systems, Saybrook University Leadership in our modern cultures is not only highly valued [...]
Don’t Fear the Compost: A Corporate Zero Waste Implementation Story
By Matt Courtland Zero waste is a movement that aims to eliminate the material that goes into landfills by recycling or composting most items. I recently implemented his next generation recycling and a sustainability initiative as my company’s Green Committee chair. After months of planning, we launched the program in late spring. Now that we have [...]
SunGard’s Climate Corps Fellow Takes a Fresh Approach
By Jacob Shirmer There’s nothing quite like summer in New York City. But I must admit the mugginess of a 95-degree day makes me thankful SunGard’s office in midtown Manhattan doesn’t skimp on air conditioning. As SunGard’s third EDF Climate Corps fellow, I am conscious of the energy this cooling action demands . Fortunately, I’m [...]
Tips for Successfully Working With Metrics and Reporting
By: David Jaber Many CSR professionals struggle with setting benchmarks, measuring progress toward goals and evaluating past performance. But it doesn’t have to be difficult. Here are some tips to get you started: Good metrics should be: – relevant. If your goal is to ‘improve public understanding of environmental justice,’ the metric needs to be [...]
The Three Green Building B’s: Benchmarking, Best Practices, and (Major) Benefits (Part 2 of 2)
by David Jaber Benchmarking doesn’t require site assessments, as the Orchard Hotel and Xanterra examples in Part 1 show. We just need the data. For example, a state in the Western US wanted to look at the comparative environmental performance of five plants in one of its most prominent industry sectors. They already had data [...]
The Three Green Building B’s: Benchmarking, Best Practices, and (Major) Benefits
By David Jaber Facility assessments (investigating a building’s energy, water, material usage and waste, similar to LEED O+M or other facility greening audits) can provide significant value in multiple ways. For one, when done at multiple facilities of a similar type, assessments allow us to benchmark across these similar facilities in the hopes of identifying [...]
Creating Big Impacts Through Community Engagement
There is a growing public expectation that companies should give back to their communities in an authentic, meaningful way. Companies are taking notice and creating programs to address these demands. The positive return for adopting a robust corporate responsibility program is resounding,as evidenced by the reception for Panera Bread’s Community Café program, (whose founder Ronald Shaich received [...]
How to Move From “Bolt-On” to Embedded Sustainability
Switching over to recycled paper, adding solar panels to the roof or increasing philanthropy are all a good start for a company jumping in to the sustainability pool, but they are not going to generate actual progress on climate change or other global issues. The “bolt-on” just doesn’t cut it as a sustainability strategy anymore. [...]
What’s Really ‘Green’? A Look at Mattresses, Part III
By Jonathan L. Gelbard, Ph.D. Previously, I explored the cacophony of greenwashing that plagues the mattress industry, making green mattress purchases quite the head-twisting endeavor. In a follow-up post, I proposed a four-question framework for evaluating green purchasing choices – in mattresses and beyond – and explored the first two key questions of this framework: [...]
Creating a Sustainability Army
A new book, Army of Entrepreneurs (AOE), by Jennifer Prosek, shares a system that makes entrepreneurial behavior as a core part of a business. While the book focuses on business in general, insights and lessons learned can be applied successfully to the business of sustainability. All too often, as companies begin to expand and grow, [...]
Should Employees Play for Sustainability?
This post is part of a blogging series by marketing students at the Presidio Graduate School’s MBA program. You can follow along here. By Eric Raymond People play games for three billion hours a week. Do you know what they are doing for the other few billion hours? Working. These two activities, it turns out, [...]
Walmart – A Sustainability Enabler this Earth Day
By Matt Courtland In the spring of 2009 it happened. The Green Committee I founded and currently chair decided to utilize Walmart in our ongoing educational campaign about the benefits of sustainability. At the time I was horrified by Walmart’s business tricks that ran competitors out of town; the unjust wages, benefits, and lack of [...]
What’s Really ‘Green’? A Look at Mattresses, Part II
By Jonathan L. Gelbard, Ph.D. In my previous post, I took a look at examples of greenwashing that just about anybody on the hunt for a ‘green’ mattress is likely to run into. Here, I provide Part II in this series: a framework for navigating choices in an industry fraught with greenwash. Whether you have [...]
What’s Really ‘Green’ in the Confusing World of Mattresses? Part I
Jonathan L. Gelbard, Ph.D. Last fall, I began work for my first client in the “green” mattress industry, Spaldin Sleep Systems. To familiarize myself with their products and the current state of sustainability in the sector, I researched Spaldin’s materials and certifications and developed a competitive landscape matrix. I dug into the websites of over [...]
Video Interview: Navigating Green Building Certifications
Dealing with green building certifications, even for building material professionals, is anything but easy. Serious Materials, a company dedicated to building better buildings, is creating solutions to improve energy efficiency and building sustainability. This interview with Brandon Tinianov, the CTO of Serious Materials, is a continuation of our conversation on the new windows of the [...]
Video Interview: Serious Materials on the Empire State Building
Buildings consume over 50% of the energy in the US, and over 50% of building energy consumed by buildings is in heating and cooling. Serious Materials, a company dedicated to building energy efficiency, is curbing unnecessary heating and cooling losses with their window technology while making offices more comfortable. In this interview, Brandon Tinianov, the [...]
Making Sustainable Water Use Operational at Anheuser Busch InBev
by Hugh Share A year on from the announcement of our global environmental goals, Anheuser-Busch InBev is on track to achieve a global water usage rate that will put the company on the leading edge of the brewing industry. As the issue of sustainable water use continues to climb the corporate agenda, it has become [...]
Anusara’s John Friend: Yoga and Green Business Success
I saw a yoga class in a business for the first time while touring Clif Bar’s new and very green headquarters during my interview with CEO Kevin Cleary. Cliff Bar measures its operations and rewards its associates around five aspirations: Business Brand Community People Planet Some of the “people” oriented milestones Clif Bar has achieved [...]
Video Interview: Collaborating with the EDF
Environmental issues are best solved in collaboration. Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) partners with businesses, governments and communities to find practical solutions to environmental problems. Beth Trask focuses on developing corporate partnerships at EDF. In this interview she shares the latest activities and resources available to businesses. EDF started 20 years ago with the first corporate [...]
Video Interview: Applying Sustainability in the Workplace
What does sustainability mean in the business context and how do you apply it in the workplace? Marsha Willard, the CEO of AXIS, and the co-author of The Business Guide to Sustainability and The Step by Step Guide to Sustainability Planning, shares her experience in working with small to medium sized companies to make sense [...]
Intuit Employee Passion Leads to Freecycle@Work
Intuit is well known for Quicken, TurboTax, and its recent acquisition of Mint.com, and is generally a darling of the personal finance crowd. Sustainability fans may also be familiar with their environmental initiatives- groundbreaking stuff like Intuit Green Snapshot which shows users how much money they could save with environmental improvements. Overall, Intuit has also [...]
Leonardo da Vinci, Sustainability Sage
Historical Perspective – By Dr. Reese Halter Leonardo da Vinci, born in the middle of the 15th century, was the founder of modern science and an interpreter between nature and humanity. He sought to understand the nature of life two centuries before the microscope was invented. He believed the Earth was a living, self-organizing and [...]
Sustainability Programs Must Engage Employees
By Matt Courtland People learn through stories. When special tales are told frequently, they become more than words. They are transformed into myths which hold life lessons. The Green Committee I founded in 2007, and which I wrote about launching in Developing an Award Winning Sustainability Program, has one of these stories. It shines a light on [...]
2Degrees: The Social Network for Business that Changes Everything
In business, surely the name of the game is to compete: produce the highest quality good for the lowest cost, protect your trade secrets from competitors and screw them over where possible. But what if it isn’t? Not any more, anyway? That’s what 2degreesnetwork.com suggests to its members: the chance to cooperate to solve problems [...]
Video Interview: Internal Stakeholder Engagement at Siemens
Today’s large corporations have the size and power to literally move mountains. But with hundreds of thousands of employees spread over dozens of countries and business units, agreeing on where that mountain should be moved to is a monumental challenge. In this interview, Alison Taylor, the VP of Sustainability – Americas at Siemens, discusses the [...]
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Where We’re Going
Have your event listed here.
Webinar: Feb 17Greening Stonyfield Farm: As a consultant with Stonyfield Farm for the past 12 years, Switzer Fellow Tim Greiner will discuss efforts to broaden and deepen sustainability within the company. He will discuss the company's efforts to track its environmental impacts, barriers the company had to overcome.
Webinar: Feb 29Product Scorecards for Sustainability: Product scorecards that detail and evaluate environmental and sustainability aspects of products are increasingly adopted by leading companies. This webinar covers the best practices in this area and a case study by Seventh Generation.
NY: Mar 19-20Wall Street Green: The longest running and most comprehensive environmental market event in the industry. The Wall Street Green Summit covers cutting edge content, industry developments and features the practitioners and the leaders of tomorrow.
Bay Area: Mar 22-23GRI Certified Training: Demand for sustainability experts is growing rapidly as companies look for proven professionals. For companies, GRI trained employees mean faster implementations and better use of the GRI Sustainability Reporting Framework. Join our partner ISOS group for this two day session. Early bird discounts apply!
SF: Mar 26-28Cleantech Forum San Francisco: The 2012 Cleantech Forum San Francisco will mark the 10th anniversary of Cleantech Forums, the annual gathering of the global clean technology innovation community. Our theme this year is “The Power of Global Partnerships,” an exploration of how strategic relationships are playing an ever more important role in the future of clean technology. For a $300 Discount use code "VIPofTriplePundit " More Info.
SF: April 10-12 Navigating the American Carbon World: The must-attend event for professionals in the carbon landscape. Over the past decade, NACW has consistently provided informative content, thoughtful discussions and outstanding opportunities for collaboration.
Have your event listed here.
Webinar: Feb 17Greening Stonyfield Farm: As a consultant with Stonyfield Farm for the past 12 years, Switzer Fellow Tim Greiner will discuss efforts to broaden and deepen sustainability within the company. He will discuss the company's efforts to track its environmental impacts, barriers the company had to overcome.Webinar: Feb 29Product Scorecards for Sustainability: Product scorecards that detail and evaluate environmental and sustainability aspects of products are increasingly adopted by leading companies. This webinar covers the best practices in this area and a case study by Seventh Generation.NY: Mar 19-20Wall Street Green: The longest running and most comprehensive environmental market event in the industry. The Wall Street Green Summit covers cutting edge content, industry developments and features the practitioners and the leaders of tomorrow.Bay Area: Mar 22-23GRI Certified Training: Demand for sustainability experts is growing rapidly as companies look for proven professionals. For companies, GRI trained employees mean faster implementations and better use of the GRI Sustainability Reporting Framework. Join our partner ISOS group for this two day session. Early bird discounts apply!SF: Mar 26-28Cleantech Forum San Francisco: The 2012 Cleantech Forum San Francisco will mark the 10th anniversary of Cleantech Forums, the annual gathering of the global clean technology innovation community. Our theme this year is “The Power of Global Partnerships,” an exploration of how strategic relationships are playing an ever more important role in the future of clean technology. For a $300 Discount use code "VIPofTriplePundit " More Info.SF: April 10-12 Navigating the American Carbon World: The must-attend event for professionals in the carbon landscape. Over the past decade, NACW has consistently provided informative content, thoughtful discussions and outstanding opportunities for collaboration.Have your event listed here.
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