2015 State of Green Business

In partnership with Trucost, GreenBiz has produced their 8th annual 2015 State of Green Business report. The report finds that progress in greenhouse gas and emissions, air pollutants, water use and solid-waste production are all slowing down compared to past years. However, 2015 has seen a boost in corperate pledges to eliminate deforestation and innovative ways to measure and manage water risks. The report is bullish about the future of corporate sustainability but asks:

• Will companies be held accountable to their commitments and  provide the scientific rationale for their sustainability goals?
• How will companies step up to the plate ... on the world’s most pressing sustainability issues,  such as climate change, food security, ecosystems preservation, resource efficiency?
• Will be companies be proactive ... on political issues that could accelerate the transition to a low-carbon and more sustainable economy?

Read more at GreenBiz

And here is the report

CDP reports: Sustainability Better for Bottom Line

A new report by nonprofit CDP, confirms what many in the sustainability focused finacial sector have long believed: a business with an ingrained sustastainablity strategy is likely to out perform one with out. It makes sense that a business with a long term outlook would be more resliliant and better protected from risk or depleting resources.

The study, which coincides with the climate talks in New York, finds that S&P 500 companies that build sustainability into their core strategies are outperforming those that fail to show leadership.

Specifically, corporations that are actively managing and planning for climate change secure an 18% higher return on investment (ROI) than companies that aren’t – and 67% higher than companies who refuse to disclose their emissions.

The findings could help answer the long-debated industry question of whether sustainability undermines or improves financial results....

... Beyond that, those companies investing in carbon reductions achieved a 50% lower volatility of earnings over the past decade and 21% stronger dividends than their low-ranking peers.

Read more at The Guardian 

Read the full report at CDP 

Are Your Clients on the Newsweek Green List?

The annual Newsweek Green Rankings are often met with controversy in the sustainability community. But whether you love them or hate them, they are nonetheless a measure of the shifting sustainability of today's corporate giants. For the 2012 Green Rankings, Newsweek partnered with the environmental research organizations Trucost and Sustainalytics to analyze the top 500 US and Global companies by revenue, using a methodology based environmental impact, environmental management, and disclosure. For as much as it leaves out (supply chain) or ignores (anti-regulation lobbying efforts,) the analysis is able to boil down a company's sustainability to a single score.

Many big players show up at the top of the list, such as, IBM, HP, Dell, Nike. Obviously, some of these companies have inherently environmentally unfriendly practices- like producing e-waste. For this reason, the rankings are better viewed as a relative measure of a firm's sustainability from year to year, or against other firms. 

Of course the major issue in quantifying sustainability is who owns the pollution. As manufacturing is outsourced so is its pollution leaving the US with cleaner air and water. But would Apple perform as well if it had to 'own' all of the pollution associated with its product line. Newsweek elaborates:

The Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, China, along with other suppliers, manufactures Apple’s iPhone 5, which has sold millions of copies since its release this fall. The manufacturing of the iPhone produces pollution; who is responsible for that pollution? Is Foxconn responsible, since the emissions and waste derives from their plants? Or is Apple responsible, since it depends on the services of Foxconn? Both have some responsibility. Without Foxconn or the other suppliers, Apple would not have the iPhone to sell. Some responsibility also sits with the financial institutions that benefit from the shares of Apple stock they own. As the old saying goes, you are what you eat, or in this case, what you profit from...

According to Trucost's analysis for the UN, 49% of the environmental impacts of the top 3000 firms come from hidden impacts within the supply chain. This year 20% of the firms in the Newsweek list volunteered some supply chain information, even if incomplete. 

Find the full Newsweek rankings at thedailybeast.com

Read more about supply chain sustainability at thedailybeast.com

Download Trucost's UNEP report on environmental externalities

Pepsico and the Earth Institute develop new carbon calculator

For a company like PepsiCo, which oversees more than 20 brands and hundreds of different products around the world, calculating the carbon footprint of just one of its products can take weeks, and at a significant cost to the company. To save time and money, PepsiCo teamed up with researchers from Columbia University’s Earth Institute to create a tool that can measure the carbon footprint of thousands of products all at once.

The calculator... can calculate the carbon emissions of different materials and activities in a company’s supply chain and operations, and within minutes pinpoint which of these carries the largest carbon footprint.

The Pepsico tool uses data mining techniques to estimate carbon emissions for a variety of products based on the information from previously analysed materials. Pepsi is not the first to prduce a calculator in fact Danone has developed a calculator with SAP to identify the carbon emissions of individual products. Pepsi says they hope to make the tool available to other companies in the future. 

Read more about the Pepsico calculator at Green Biz

Walmart puts more muscle in their sustainability score cards

Walmart is pressing their vendors for even more sustainability data. Developed with the help of the Sustainability Consortium, the new score cards go beyond the 15 questions of the original Sustainability Index and dig much deeper into category specific information. The scorecards will cover 100 categories with more to be rolled out in 2013. Walmart states that vendors who produce positive sustainability results will be rewarded, but those that lag will have to face "family meetings" and the results will be incorporated in to buyer reviews. So far it seems that the sustainability guidelines, although data driven, have been fairly benign in terms of purchasing impacts. Do you think these new score cards will add teeth to Walmart's sustainability initiative? Will score cards spread to other members of the Sustainability Consortium?

Green Biz has a great article on their newest version of the sustainability score card:

If other retailer members (of the Sustainability Consortium,) such as Safeway, Marks & Spencer and Best Buy, develop similar scorecard programs, consumer product sustainability will be pushed to record heights... “The move to build sustainability into the merchandising side of the business is a game changer for the consumer products industry.”

...For each category, suppliers will be ranked according to sustainability progress and action items. Scorecard items will include many of the traditional questions for greenhouse gas emissions, energy efficiency and waste, but will also include questions relevant to each category. For example, for laptops, the surveys will include questions about the energy used during component manufacturing and chemical exposure to workers; for laundry detergent, the surveys will ask about cold-water-wash messaging
and chemical ingredients.

Read more at GreenBiz

Learn more about Walmart's Sustainability Index

Or check out the Sustainability Consortium

Good News! Greener is Cheaper for Industry

Will green chemistry save the day? Well, according to Pike Research, they will at least save the industry $65 billion by 2020

Compared to conventional petroleum-derived feedstocks, these new materials offer greenhouse gas emissions and reduced toxicity. More importantly to the companies that use chemicals in their industrial processes, they offer significantly lower costs. In contrast to the consumer market, where choosing green products usually entails paying a premium, greener is cheaper in industry.

Read more at BusinessWire

Puma Calculates Environmental Impacts... in Dollars

PUMA AG and parent company PPR HOME hired consulting firms PricewaterhouseCoopers and Trucost to calculate PUMA’s total global greenhouse gas emissions and total water use, respectively. As a global sporting goods and clothing company, PUMA AG sits atop an extensive network of suppliers, most of which operate outside PUMA’s direct control. The Environmental Profit and Loss study addressed everything from the extraction of raw materials to processing, manufacturing, and company logistics like design, warehousing, transportation and retail. The study did not address the environmental costs of waste and disposal....

PUMA AG’s Environmental Profit & Loss Account estimated the total economic value of PUMA’s carbon emissions and water use at €94.4 million ($136.95M) in 2010, with greenhouse gas emissions valued at €47 million ($68.18M) and water use at €47.4 million ($68.76M).

Read more at the NRDC's Smarter Business website

Find out about Trucost's methodology

Read PUMA AG’s press release

2011 Green Chemistry awards

Eliminating 199 million lb of hazardous chemicals and solvents, saving more than 21 billion gal of water, and avoiding 57 million lb of carbon dioxide emissions: Those are a few of the annual benefits derived from the technologies implemented by the past 82 winners of the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Awards. Now, five new winners of the presidential award and two of an affiliated student award were crowned during a ceremony held on June 20 in Washington, D.C.

Read more at the American Chemical Society

Injection molder goes "beyond compliance"

Launched in 1973 as a plastic injection molder with six employees, Cascade Engineering has blossomed into a diversified manufacturer with 15 business units and a product line that includes waste containers, auto parts, and furniture components—and, more recently, wind turbines, solar panels, and affordable water filters for the developing world. The company's technical innovations, sustainability efforts, and programs for employees have earned it multiple awards...

...Although the National Association of Manufacturers, or NAM, which represents 11,000 U.S. manufacturers, has forcefully condemned recent moves by the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, Keller voluntarily cut his company's emissions 20 percent from 2005 to 2010. Though NAM would trust national energy policies to "the marketplace and its proven ability to meet the nation's energy needs," according to its official policy statement, Keller advocated for a renewable portfolio standard in Michigan (requiring electricity providers to get 10 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2015) and supports a mandated phaseout of U.S. oil imports. Though various business groups complain about the cost of regulatory compliance, Keller believes that going "beyond compliance" has saved him money. "I'm all for setting goals and having voluntary compliance," says Keller. "But is it enough? That is the question."

Read the full article at inc.com

See what they are doing at Keller's opperations Cascade Engineering