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Category Archives: Sustainable Business
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Lane Jost in News 9 hours ago
The national conversation on local food systems continues to evolve in complexity, intrigue and now, rigor. On the front page of today’s Chicago Tribune is a story about a University of Chicago geophysics professor who is examining the merits — in carbon intensity terms – of local versus conventional farming. Professor Pamela Martin along with… Read More…
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Keenan Shaw in Events 10 days ago
Chicago is most notably home to Wrigley Field, the world’s first sky scrapper, and the deep-dish pizza. What most might not know is that inside the Windy City there are more LEED-certified buildings than anywhere else in the U.S. and the city will soon boast the largest LEED for Neighborhood Development project where residents live… Read More…
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Cindy Tickle in Inspiring People 13 days ago
In Athens on June 11, 2010, Dr. Wayne Visser, Director of CSR International, interviewed John Elkington, Founder and Non-Executive Director of SustainAbility and Founding Partner and Director of Volans Ventures. During the interview, Elkington spoke about where he sees the sustainability and social enterprise agenda heading. I found a couple of his remarks interesting. In… Read More…
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Jonathan Banco in Corporate Social Responsibility 14 days ago
Hot off the presses comes Net Impact’s rather comprehensive report on business schools focusing on “sustainability” programs. “Net Impact is an international nonprofit organization with a mission to inspire, educate, and equip individuals to use the power of business to create a more socially and environmentally sustainable world.” The organization is active on campuses and… Read More…
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Energy efficiency service companies (ECOs) soon may be venturing abroad to take their businesses into regions where the demand for energy is growing tremendously. The most notable countries in need for energy efficiency technology and services are China, India, and countries in the Middle East. Although China’s solar energy industry is among the world’s largest,… Read More…
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Emily DeMasi in Energy 23 days ago
From local biking options in Pittsburgh to east coast travel via MegaBus and the future of nationwide travel possibilities on high-speed rail, I have written on varied modes of transportation that offer “greener” possibilities for my fellow wanderers. However, sometimes cost, time and distance make air the best option for travel. Somewhere between Chicago and… Read More…
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Today kicks off the American Business Conference’s 4th part of a global series of Sustainable Agricultural Summits. And what better city for this summit to take place, but San Francisco. California is home to 81,500 farms and ranches and tallied revenues of $36.2 billion last year alone. That figure represents 11.2% of the nation’s total…. Read More…
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Vermont Hospital Wants To Be The Greenest Health Care Facility in the US — And Makes a Convincing Case (Part I: Mainstreaming Sustainability) Sustainability, clean energy investment, green jobs and health care reform have all been resounding themes of the first 18 months of the Obama administration. But rarely do we conceive of healthcare reform… Read More…
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Indeed, sustainable business makes for strange bedfellows. Just this week, Seventh Generation announced it will soon offer its environmentally-friendly products in more than 1500 Walmart stores nationwide and on Walmart.com. And according to Treehugger, this is a complete about-face for the “esteemed nontoxic, enviro-friendly household product maker”. Not so long ago, Seventh Generation refused to… Read More…
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While many companies are still try to figure out what their CSR strategy is (or in some cases, what CSR is period), lumber and paper giant Weyerhaeuser has recently issued its 2009 Sustainability Report. Weyerhaeuser was an early adopter of the voluntary Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) report. The company started publishing a report of their… Read More…
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A recent United Nations Global Compact (UNGC)/Accenture study of 766 corporate CEOs has found that 93% of executives surveyed believe that sustainability will be a key factor in the future of their businesses. So, I suppose CSR is the new Tiger Woods for the global management consulting behemoth?
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On the surface Honest Tea and Coca-Cola may seem like strange bedfellows, but ultimately, each company adds value for one another. The question is, does it come at a price? This issue was explored recently in a New York Times Case Study in the Small Business report.
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Heidi Tolliver-Nigro in Corporate Social Responsibility 42 days ago
When people hear the word “deforestation,” the image that comes to mind is logging. Logging is tied to paper and fiber-based products, which are subsequently labeled forest-killers. That’s some powerful imagery. But is it accurate?
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Knights Apparel CEO Joseph Bozich (pictured above in the firm’s Dominican Republic factory) doesn’t believe boosting market share and doing good are mutually exclusive. In Sunday’s New York Times, business reporter Steven Greenhouse covers the firm’s newly acquired Dominican Republic apparel operation that makes t-shirts and sweats for American college and university bookstores.
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A few days ago, I blogged about the American Forest & Paper Association’s ability to blow its own horn that its member companies have made great strides in key areas of sustainability, including paper recovery, emissions reduction, use of alternative energies, and much more. I was looking at its 2010 “Sustainability Report” again today and… Read More…
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Look around you. How much of what you use on a daily basis comes from the forest products industry? Everything from the office paper you put into your printer to the wood fiber in the RTA furniture in the office is produced by this massive, global industry. Sometimes, the news coming out of this industry… Read More…
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San Diego lobster fisherman Shad Catarius (no relation to the spawning fish) supports an annual trapping tax of of $300 currently before the California legislature. The tax on the $7.8 million annual spiny lobster market would raise the cost for Catarius to make a living on his boat McGhee Marie. In a San Diego Union-Tribune… Read More…
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Celestial Seasonings pillow-style tea bags are made with natural fiber and no strings attached. On Tuesday, I blogged about SunChips’ new fully compostable bag. But hey, it’s Frito Lay. They’ve got the bucks to be super green, right? Then I opened a box of one of my favorite brands of tea, Celestial Seasonings, and there… Read More…
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SunChips chooses transparency to market its new 100% compostable bag. Last year, I wrote about SunChips’ “compostable” chip bag that wasn’t really compostable at all. It was one-third compostable, which meant that its compostable layer was laminated to two-thirds non-compostable layers, rendering it — well — noncompostable. Now that’s changed. SunChips bags are now 100%… Read More…
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Many people think that if they use paper, they need to pay attention to carbon emissions, but if it’s e-media, not so much. Not true. Whether it’s print or electronic, all media has a carbon footprint. According to a report by Don Carli of the Institute for Sustainable Communications, as reported in Printing News: According… Read More…
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Businesses and individuals can make a difference by choosing sustainably sourced paper products. As oil continues to spew into the Gulf of Mexico and Hooters girls contribute to the solution by donating pantyhose, my thoughts turn to environmental paper certifications. Okay, it’s not going to solve the devastating loss to wildlife, eco-systems, and local economies… Read More…
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Ingram’s Lightning Source Inc. today announced that it has received Chain-of-Custody (CoC) certification from three leading environmental organizations: the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forestry Certification (PEFC). Chain of custody (CoC) is an accounting system that tracks wood fiber through the different stages of… Read More…
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Panera Bread opened its first non-profit cafe with the motto: Take what you need; leave your fair share. I was surprised to read about Panera Bread’s new cafe in St. Louis dubbed the St. Louis Bread Company Cares Cafe. The concept is simple yet groundbreaking… take whatever you want to eat or drink and instead… Read More…
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Nathan Schock in Book Review 107 days ago
A review of the textbook Sustainability Marketing: A Global Perspective – the idea that a business degree can help better the world. Ahhh. Remember that first day of college? Young. Naive. You think you can change the world. Then, your parents start bugging you about choosing a career and so you major in business and… Read More…
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In the last 24 hours, I’ve experienced The Tale of Two Communications Philosophies. The contrast between the two drives home, to me, the challenge facing the green industry. First, a conversation I had with a client — a new business start-up — about its website copy (which I’m writing). Sure, they wanted to let people… Read More…
