Are people who care about CSR all only focused on environmental issues? It is important to investigate further what are the values that people care most about in corporate performance.

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Increasing labor productivity is generally hailed as a positive outcome of technological innovation.  The production of more goods and services with fewer hours worked allows for both higher standards of living and decreased inflationary pressure, since wage increases can result from increased productivity and are not translated into higher costs for goods and services.

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By Jacquie Ottman & Mark Eisen Our economy is slowly but surely heeding the signal that carbon is the new watchword. During the past few years, a steady stream of so-called “biobased” products have been making their way to retail shelves — compostable dinnerware made from corn, plant-based laundry detergents, and bamboo flooring among them. [...]

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The legal battles surrounding the Deepwater Horizon 2010 drilling disaster promise to be just as messy—and more lengthy—than the spill incident itself. The latest shots in this seemingly neverending exercise in passing the buck were fired last month when oil giant BP went to court in New Orleans claiming that US contractor Halliburton (yes, that Halliburton) [...]

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More than 11 million tons of textiles are trashed in this country every year. Most of this material is reusable, rewearable, or recyclable. It’s time to create policies to address this issue and end the needless clogging of landfills.

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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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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 Corine Prothero Effective sustainability conversations need to be heard everywhere. Select students, communities, grassroots movements, businesses, and [...]

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“For an intense week we listened and discussed perspectives on the difficult global context for sustainability,” said Gonen Sagy. Gonen is an alumnus of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, the premier environmental education and research program in the Middle East.

The Institute is preparing future Arab and Jewish leaders to cooperatively solve the region’s environmental challenges as bridges of understanding between people. Located at Kibbutz Ketura in the southern Negev region of Israel, it has a student body comprised of Jordanians, Palestinians, Israelis, and others from around the world, and a curriculum based on “nature knows no borders.”

The environment is a tool to stimulate, teach, and maintain effective cross-cultural communication and reconciliation. Arava generates capacity-building for conciliation and cooperation in the Middle East, in order to transcend political boundaries and achieve environmental change.

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The Federal Aviation Administration is awarding $7.7 million in contracts to eight companies who will help the agency develop and approve sustainably-sourced “drop-in” jet fuels that can be used without changing aircraft engine systems or airport fueling infrastructure. The funds are being distributed by the Department of Transportation’s John A. Volpe Center. “These new green [...]

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A strong case can be made for grubbing on bugs, but in the United States and Europe there’s a prevalent cultural bias against insects as a source of edible protein. Find out why entomophagy—the practice of eating insects—has recently started gaining traction as a viable alternative.

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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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Here’s an idea: Let’s flood the global market with our cheap dirty coal! We won’t be burning and polluting the atmosphere here, merely transporting the coal on 1.5-mile long trains through densely populated areas of the Pacific Northwest, where it will be exported to China. We’ll boost our exports, help our balance of trade and [...]

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This post outlines key considerations for property owners to evaluate when leasing their land for renewable energy development. There are pros and cons to leasing your property to a renewable energy developer and/or owner to earn revenue. It is important to understand how to navigate the complexities of benefits and risks when dealing with newly emerging renewable energy development land leases.

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We are MBA students studying the interconnections of sustainability and business at the Presidio Graduate School. As part of our curriculum, we are developing a capital markets mechanism to monetize ecosystem services that would incentivize communities to preserve and/or rehabilitate vital local ecosystems, such as watersheds. This is a letter of inquiry to engage the Packard Foundation (the Foundation) as an investor in a proof of concept pilot project for the above model.

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Adam Capital Clean Energy Finance, a private investment firm, has agreed to lend $1 million to finance rooftop solar panels for 85 low-income homes in New Orleans. The loan is with Sustainable Environmental Enterprises of Louisiana, a community-development organization engaged in financing solar projects for disadvantaged communities. A joint press release from Adam Capital and [...]

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Apple Skin Skies examines the idea that our atmosphere is thin relative to the size of the planet and the number of humans on its surface. A connection is drawn between the thickness of an apple skin relative to its diameter and how with this simple mental exercise it becomes more clear how human activity could bring about global warming.

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Environmental NGOs have often been perceived as anti-business, anti-growth, tree-loving, bunny-huggers. However, they have evolved to become organized, structured and strategic. Instead of always standing outside with protest signs, NGOs can actually work with companies to help implement their CSR initiatives. This is happening more commonly than previously imagined. Watchdog organizations not only put the [...]

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Newsweek magazine released its list of the greenest companies called Green Rankings list today. The list is in its third year and it will evaluate the environmental performance of America’s top 500 largest listed companies. This year, the list will also include 500 international companies as well. The rankings take into account various areas of [...]

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The environmental movement is, and has been, well aware of the fact that it needs to work on increasing ethnic, age, and income diversity. Mark Tercek, the CEO of The Nature Conservancy, contemplates in his April 7th Huffington Post Green article a study in which EPA officials challenge the movement to become more racially diverse.

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To date, over a dozen colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada have campus-wide bans of the plastic bottles. A dozen more have partially halted bottle water sales to certain campus departments, and hundreds of schools have installed multiple “hydration stations”, where students and faculty can refill their own bottles. Some of the bans have resulted from student activism, while others have been a calculated effort by school administrators to save money.

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Five months out of the year, from November thru March, the California Central Valley experiences a mix of airborne toxins that exacerbate an otherwise natural phenomenon known as Tule Fog: This breathable toxic soup contains the product of ‘development’, such as diesel emission particles (DEP), ammonia, methane, pesticides, herbicides, and other particulate matter trapped in fog.

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Some people passionately argue that going green has nothing to do with large-scale job creation and in fact destroys jobs in the fossil fuel industry that can’t be replaced. Well, there’s a new report from Green For All that debunks that notion. It says that upgrading water and wastewater infrastructure would create nearly 1.9 million [...]

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By Ashok Kamal For decades, it has been clear that a better understanding of sustainability is necessary to ensure humanity’s survival. Now the green imperative has expanded from environmental activists to boardroom executives. The business community is confronting both a call to action and stark ultimatum: embrace sustainability or risk becoming obsolete. The evidence in [...]

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London Fashion week kicked off last Friday and the New York Fashion week is going on this week. Every designer that matters is showing off their fall/winter collection and every critic, celebrity and retailer is taking note of runway trends within this tiny microcosm. It might be tiny but this mostly ethically callous microcosm is [...]

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For decades we’ve taken advantage of our natural supplies and just ignored the fact that one day, we will run out. Now, we seriously need to find a renewable and green power source to continue the evolution of the car. But what fuels have been overlooked since the motorcar was invented?

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As surprising as it may seem (or not) there are problems with Apple’s suppliers in China, namely that many are not exactly environmentally friendly citizens. A coalition of environmental organizations cited “pollution and poisoning” problems in Apple’s China supply chain in two reports on the “Other Side of Apple.” In the second report, this group—Friends [...]

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This article highlights the importance of protecting oceans as the planet’s life support system, and makes the connection between ocean issues and other environmental problems such as climate change.

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By Adam Siegel, RILA Vice President, Sustainability & Retail Operations Industry Research Outlines Progress in Environmental Sustainability Retailers are continuing to enhance and accelerate their progress toward sustainability programs. Here at the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) we are working closely with our members and their partners to come up with new ideas, and find [...]

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Sometimes, changing current methods of doing things has an economic gain. In a groundbreaking report released by Green Scissors, a coalition between four organizations confirms that cutting wasteful and environmentally harmful spending would do just that. The Green Scissors 2011 report  has been released by four organizations: progressive environmental group Friends of the Earth, deficit [...]

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This post examines U.S. prospects for leading in green information technology, as a growing component of the broader clean tech market.

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