Supply Chain

The following outlines six best practices that enabled DuPont’s success in achieving zero landfill waste stream results

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The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), which has been collecting GHG emissions data from companies for nearly a decade, recently released a report which revealed that there is a gap that exists between the carbon reduction performance of companies and that of their suppliers. The study, conducted in partnership with Accenture, was conducted with 50 CDP member organizations including L’Oréal, Philips and Walmart, and more than 1,800 of their suppliers. It found that while 43 percent of companies surveyed have achieved year-over-year reductions in their carbon emissions, only 28 percent of their suppliers have done so.

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Apple, a company that has fans like no other company, is facing now a public uproar with two petitions against the company that have managed to collect more than 200,000 signatures in just couple of days. The first, on Change.org calls Apple to “protect workers making iPhones in Chinese factories,” and the second, on SumOfUs, asks the company to “make the iPhone 5 ethically.” This new wave of online activism brings up the question: Is the OWS movement after Apple?

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Our economy – and thus, our lifestyle – is firmly entrenched in the infrastructure that surrounds us and how we use it. This makes it extremely challenging to change how we live. At the VerdeXchange Conference in my home city of Los Angeles last week, I was pleased to encounter a group of individuals from government organizations and the private sector coming together to figure out how to transition Los Angeles to a greener economy. Even as a resident working in the sustainability field, I was surprised to learn about some of the work being done to green the city’s most carbon intensive and highly polluting facilities, operations, and infrastructure.

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Flyerzone is an online printing company that offers design agency quality services without charging design agency prices. Drawing on the talent of our international network of artists, we add new designs and templates to the site every day, offering our customers a huge range of choices all in one place, at a price they can afford.

We do this by integrating our environmental philosophy with our commercial model: by reducing waste, recycling and using vegetable-based inks, Flyerzone uses as few resources as possible without compromising on the quality of its work. By sourcing 99 per cent of our paper from Forest Stewardship Council-certified forests, we ensure our business is sustainable in both the commercial and the environmental sense.

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A UN-backed survey conducted by Globescan and SustainAbility, of 642 senior executives, campaigners and academics found that the vast majority feel that pressure to deliver short-term financial results is impeding their sustainability efforts. Of course the sluggish economy has been a challenge, but do companies today really have to choose between profitability and sustainability or is this a false choice?

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Not only has the retail industry recognized that sustainability is here to stay, many leaders within the industry have moved from looking at sustainability as a cost center to seeing it as an opportunity to reduce risk, improve relationships with customers and employees, and deliver better products.

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Chinese exports of silicon solar panels surged in 2011, and they’re spiking higher yet following the filing of illegal dumping and subsidy petitions in the US, according to a study of US Customs and Border Protection Service data by CASM, which filed petitions with the US International Trade Commission and Commerce Dept. The brewing trade dispute is significant enough to have prompted Pres. Obama to announced the formation of a new Trade Enforcement Unit in his SOTU address Tuesday night.

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“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 [...]

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When Apple, Inc. – or for that matter, any other company – publishes the names of its suppliers, it’s a pretty good sign that the company is putting pressure on its supply chain to up the ante on sustainable practices. But the pressure doesn’t just come from the company alone. In effect, a supplier list [...]

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I’m not sure if Steve Jobs was a fan of This American Life, the award-winning critically acclaimed radio program, but I bet that if he was still alive, he wouldn’t be too happy about last week’s show. It was dedicated to Mike Daisey’s show “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” and his journey to China to learn more about the people who make all his beloved Apple products.

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If you’ve ever shopped at one of these stores, you know how easy it can be to get sucked in by the low commitment that comes with paying only ten bucks for a new shirt from a popular designer.

Anyone who is even the least bit conscious about where their purchases come from has to question the economics behind this business strategy. How can these stores afford to sell their products at such ridiculously low prices? Unfortunately for fashion lovers, the answer points to cheap labor and poor working conditions.

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The greening of the supply chain is one of the economic engines of the global, $1 trillion revenue growth opportunity for companies selling sustainable products and services. KPMG reports that 95 percent of the world’s largest 250 companies now publish metrics on their environmental and social performance. This metrics-based focus upon environmental performance by the [...]

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In recent years, advocacy organizations like Greenpeace, PETA, and others have been able to leverage the stakeholder engagement trend and the power of social media to focus public attention on their key issues and put pressure on companies to take action. Recent news from The Humane Society of the US (HSUS) reveals that these organizations have added yet another influencing tactic [...]

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Monterey Abalone Company is the first of four companies I will be profiling that have pioneered best practices for making money selling into the green supply chain. The other three profiled companies are large international companies. I wanted to begin this four-part article series with a small business to demonstrate that the opportunity for selling [...]

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Source4Style is using the Internet to facilitate commerce between two groups that are disconnected in the global marketplace – the leading sustainable suppliers and the independent designers and apparel brands that are trying to find them.

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3p is proud to partner with the Presidio Graduate School’s Managerial Marketing course on a blogging series about “sustainable marketing.” This post is part of that series. To follow along, please click here. By Griff Foxley In part 1 of this post, I explored some of the forces at play today that are creating a [...]

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A nationwide smart grid is in the works but starting to stall out, making the goal of improved energy allocation across the U.S. seem unattainable. But with the emergence of “microgrids” on college campuses, what can we learn about building a nationwide system from institutions of higher learning?

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Kraft Foods, the second largest food producer in the world, recently announced the results of a survey measuring its climate impacts, land and water use. The study was intended to provide a more thorough picture of the company’s complete environmental footprint, going beyond direct use and emissions to look at the entire supply chain. The project [...]

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The following post is part of the course work for “Live Exchange” the foundational course on communication for The MBA Design Strategy Program at California College of the Arts. The rest of the posts are presented here. By Ryan Wilday As an industrial designer, and design strategist, I am a prolific user of paper. Whether [...]

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Fremont, CA-based GreenVolts has emerged publicly with a first of its kind turnkey concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) solar power system and a strategic partnership with ABB.

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The US military is set to invest billions in clean energy, and the Navy has just launched a new partnership with with Maersk, a leading player in the global shipping industry, to put renewable algae biofuel to the test. When two behemoths like this join together, it’s a significant breakthrough for the biofuel industry. If [...]

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A sense of optimism pervaded the atmosphere in Durban on the penultimate day and final morning of the UNFCCC’s 17th annual climate change treaty talks, according to one solar industry observer. Rumor was that an agreement to commit to the second phase of the Kyoto Protocol and also extend it beyond its 2020 expiration date were within reach.

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Global demand for rare earth minerals will increase over seven percent a year, but now various reports suggest that prices for these materials will start trending downward.

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If you heard the words “guitar” and “environment” in the same sentence in the last few months you were probably hearing about the raid on Gibson Guitar. While the August raid on Gibson’s factories continues to draw a lot of attention and still gets conservatives and Tea Party supporters angry, another guitar company is coming up this [...]

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Both Nike and Puma adopted a strategy of creating a movement around reframing the word “sustainability”. Although both movements were targeted towards demographically similar markets, the respective target customers have diverging sensibilities. What will be most interesting to see is how the PR of 2011 develops into the actions of 2012.

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The Sixth International Green Awards celebration took place at a glittering gala in London last week. The awards, which are accredited by the Royal Society of Arts, were established to recognize creativity in promoting international sustainability, focusing on media, communication, product design, people and innovation. Their goal is to “bring together and make more visible a [...]

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Davide Vassallo is a global practices leader for DuPont’s Sustainable Solutions Group. As environmental stewards for a company that is the owner and operator of more than 150 production facilities around the world, his group has found that energy efficiency improvements can often be achieved for little or no cost. After running a large number [...]

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The Northeast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) will yield an economic gain of $1.6 billion, create 16,000 jobs and save consumers across its ten participating member states some $1.1 billion in electricity, heating and cooling bills over the next ten years as a result of its first three years in operation, according to an economic consulting firm’s report.

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Times remain hard across the country, but solar power is a bright spot in Tennessee’s economy. The Volunteer State is Hemlock Semiconductor and Wacker Chemie polysilicon and Sharp Solar plants, and solar power projects are cropping up around the Tennessee Valley despite the state’s lack of a Renewable Power Standards (RPS).

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