Tag Archives: sustainability

NRDC OnEarth

Meet the Change Makers: How Verizon is dialing in efficiency | OnEarth

Greening fleets, mining copper cables and tweaking data centers at Verizon

Verizon can trace its technological roots back to the 1880s, when Alexander Graham Bell’s invention first relayed voices between Manhattan and Boston. Now, as then, the New York-based company still connects old-fashioned phone calls. But these days, digital business services are emerging as big telco’s main focus, from tending corporations’ high-speed networks to building advanced mobile cell services that keep us connected everywhere.

As demand for these digital services grows, Verizon finds itself in a tight race for the top spot in the U.S. telecom market. With $107 billion in revenues last year, it trails only AT&T, which posted $113 billion in sales.

Verizon’s first chief sustainability officer, as well as vice president of supply chain, James “Jim” Gowen believes that focusing on green technology will offer Verizon a way to close the gap with its rival. The company’s efforts, Gowen points out, are already improving Verizon’s efficiency and reducing its environmental impact. In time, he says, they’ll open up new markets, too.

Verizon’s commitment to sustainability is still in its early stages. It was just two years ago that the company formally wove together a variety of ongoing eco efforts that were happening across its far-flung operations. Gowen, who is a long-time veteran of Verizon’s supply-chain operations, was promoted to his post in September 2009. Outside the office, he sits on the sustainability council at Penn State University’s school of business.

One of the biggest challenges to scaling up green efforts, Gowen admits, is Verizon’s enormous size. But that also means the impact of Verizon’s choices is proportionally large, he says.

OnEarth contributor Adam Aston recently spoke with Gowen to learn what lessons Verizon can offer other corporations greening their operations on a large scale.

What’s the scale of your global operations?

Verizon is bigger and broader than many folks realize. We have more than 190,000 employees globally, and have followed our customers overseas, so we’re doing business in more than 150 countries, with more than 90 million retail customers.

In terms of facilities, we have approximately 30,000, ranging from remote equipment sheds to very large data centers. To keep our cellular network humming, we operate approximately 40,000 cell towers.

Only a few dozen U.S. companies listed on the stock exchange, out of more than 7,000, have appointed chief sustainability officers. What led Verizon to take that step?

It was a long time in coming but was really formalized in 2009, when we surveyed green efforts across the company. Verizon was already doing a lot of work in sustainability, but our efforts were separate and often unaware of related work elsewhere in the company.

When we looked at our two big divisions — wireless and conventional wire-line services — it was amazing to me how much was going on. But it hadn’t been brought together yet. So the decision was made to create an office of sustainability, led by a new chief sustainability officer.

The next decision had to do with what the main focus of this role would be: more operational or more policy and marketing? And that affected where the new sustainability office would be based. Some companies opt for Washington, D.C., which implies more of a policy focus. We chose to emphasize operations, so the role was put into the supply chain area, under my watch, at our operations center in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.

Why now?

The pressure was coming from both outside and inside. From our corporate customers, the number of requests to document our sustainability practices as part of quotes for new business was growing steadily. Some of our partners are documenting their carbon footprints, for example, and need us to be able to estimate the impact of the services we provide to them.

Internal pressure was rising, too. There was a groundswell of employees eager to see change move faster. I was getting very frank calls, with folks telling me things like, “I work in Tampa and we don’t recycle.” That caught my attention right away. Green practices are becoming more and more important to attracting and keeping top people.

You mentioned that Verizon operates a huge fleet of vehicles. Is it a target for your green efforts?

The fleet is a major focus. On the road, we operate the third-largest private fleet in the United States, with more than 39,000 vans, trucks, and cars. Keeping them running requires 56 million gallons of fuel every year. Right now, about six percent of our fleet runs on alternative fuels. We’re aiming to boost that figure to 15 percent by 2015.

In 2010, for instance, Verizon added 1,600 alternative-energy vehicles, including specialized vehicles, such as our aerial trucks, which use a hydraulic arm to lift up a worker in a bucket and access overhead wires, as well as hybrid pickup trucks and sedans. As fuel supplies become more reliable, we’re boosting our use of biodiesel and ethanol as well.

It can be simple stuff, too. By discouraging idling by our fleet drivers, we estimate that we saved 1.7 million gallons of fuel in 2009 — roughly the same amount used by 2,800 average cars over a year.

We’re also working with other big fleet operators. In April 2011, Verizon was among five charter members of a new National Clean Fleet Program initiative by President Obama. Some of the other participants are our day-to-day competitors, but by working together, if we go to the auto industry to request greener features, its more likely those changes will happen.

How are you improving the environmental performance of your network and data centers?

Verizon is continuously upgrading our network of cables. The oldest parts of our network were built more than a century ago. There are many wires and switches that date back decades, all of which are being replaced with lighter, smaller, more energy-efficient digital systems. For example, in recent years, we’ve been replacing miles and miles of aging copper cables — some of the older ones are enormous, as thick as an arm — with fiber optics. Given the high value of copper lately, recycling this copper has been a significant source of revenue. It’s like mining our own cable network. These upgrades all deliver improvements in energy use.

Replacing conventional networks with fiber optics can deliver big savings. At a lab in Columbia, Md., Verizon is developing ways to use optical fiber in local area networks, to and from buildings on a campus or to homes in a neighborhood. To date, these have used conventional, older cable technology. Making a switch cuts the amount of power needed to send data between buildings by up to 75 percent and can deliver signals as far as 12 miles without the need to amplify them.

And within our data centers, we’re pursuing ways to lower energy use. We’ve set energy-efficiency standards for the gear we buy from suppliers of network equipment. These standards have saved some 90 million kWh of power consumption and avoided approximately 115 million pounds of CO2 emissions.

Speaking of greenhouse gas emissions, many companies have announced targets they’re working toward. Verizon hasn’t done that. How are you approaching this problem?

We are looking to lower emissions, but our focus has been on what we call an Environmentally Neutral Engineering Policy: for every kWh of demand we add to the network, we aim to remove one or more somewhere else. This has helped us cut emissions. We focus on the energy consumed by our network because electricity accounts for about 90 percent of Verizon’s overall carbon footprint. Of the remainder, about seven percent comes from fuelling our fleet, and most of the balance from operating our buildings.

Company-wide, the push to cut carbon really began in 2009. By the following year, we had lowered our CO2 emissions by a bit more than two percent. That reduction came despite double-digit growth in our network: the volume of data we moved grew by about 16 percent, to nearly 79 million terabytes. Measured this way, our “carbon intensity” efficiency improved substantially: we produced about 16 percent less CO2 for each unit of data we handled. In April, we announced our commitment to reduce our carbon intensity by another 15 percent and I’m happy to tell you that as of the third quarter we are on track.

Even as electronic gizmos become more efficient, they seem to be multiplying at our homes and offices. What is Verizon doing about its customers’ environmental impact?

In April of last year, Verizon launched two new energy efficient set-top boxes, which reduced energy usage by about a third for our customers. Then in January, we were certified as an Energy Star Service Provider for set-top boxes, and we’re now installing four different Energy Star models.

Beyond energy we realize that there are many other “green” opportunities with consumer devices. We’re working to reduce packaging and suspected toxins in our electronics. Working with cell phone makers, we’ve rolled out handsets with greener features.

Motorola’s Citrus, for example, is free of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFRs), chemicals that are believed to pose health hazards. The handset is manufactured from 25 percent post-consumer recycled plastic. Likewise, the packaging is four-fifths recycled, and the user manual is made from 100 percent recycled paper. And as a whole, the cell phone is certified CarbonFree through a deal with Carbonfund.org.

Verizon has played a big role in the Internet revolution, a shift that has on one hand lowered paper use and travel, but on the other has spurred the spread of power-hungry electronics. What’s that next big transformation that will affect energy trends?

The smart grid and electric vehicles are just beginning to emerge. We expect that in the long term they will significantly cut the use of fuel for transportation. Verizon is positioned to play a big role in this shift, by developing information technology, security, and communications services to help the utility sector speed the rollout of the smart grid.

For example, our Internet Protocol and wireless networks are a good match for the sorts of billing, tracking, and management challenges that utilities and car owners will face in re-charging electric vehicles at home and while traveling. By the end of last year, we had contracted with more then 20 utilities to wirelessly connect more than one million meters back to the smart grid.

Sidebar: Truth squad

NRDC’s Samir Succar on the prospects for telcos to pave the way for a smarter grid 

In the realm of sustainability, it’s common for companies to point to future green goals, whether reduced emissions or planned product lines. This can make assessing their eco-progress more of an art than a science.

Consider Verizon’s big green bet on the smart grid, the next frontier in telcos’ efforts to shape the energy impact of their customers. The need to wirelessly link digital power meters and smart appliances to the grid promises huge energy savings. Verizon, like its peers, is tackling this opportunity, but it stands out with ambitious goals to operate smart grid applications on behalf of utilities, relying on its deep expertise with data centers and complex wireless transactions.

“Digitizing the grid holds enormous opportunity,” says NRDC’s smart grid expert Samir Succar, “but it remains to be seen if Verizon will be just a neutral party relaying information to the utility, or if it can really play a role shaping customers’ habits.”

To deliver savings, Verizon and other network operators will have to alter their emphasis on performance over efficiency. Consider a recent NRDC study that revealed that by not enabling energy-savings settings on set-top boxes, cable, satellite, and data providers were costing consumers $2 billion per year in wasted energy. Verizon and the others have responded to those criticisms by rolling out lower-energy devices. 

It’s tough to gauge who’s winning in the telcos’ race for sustainability. Both AT&T and Verizon appointed chief sustainability officers in 2009, but the third-place carrier, Sprint Nextel, beat its peers in a recent green ranking of U.S. companies. Sprint was first out of the gate with four environmentally responsible cell phones. It has also committed to a 90 percent rate of collecting discarded phones, taken steps to lower its junk mail output, and is targeting cuts of 15 percent to its overall emissions by 2017. 

–Adam Aston

URL for original story: http://www.onearth.org/article/meet-the-change-makers-verizon

GreenBiz

What’s Next for PUMA’s Groundbreaking Sustainability Plans? | GreenBiz

Jochen Zeitz has had a busy year. I recently caught up with the long-serving Chairman and CEO of PUMA, the sports gear company where Zeitz blended an evangelical commitment to sustainability with smart branding to return the nearly defunct brand to the top tier of global sports fashion.

As a business story, Zeitz’s success is nearly legendary: he pulled PUMA out of the basement and up to a podium position in the global sportswear market, while boosting share price by 4,000 percent.

Among sustainability watchers, Zeitz has won plaudits for his commitment to develop an environmental profit and loss (EP&L) statement. By estimating a dollar figure on the value of its use of ecosystem services — any resource provided by nature, from clean water, to crop production, wildlife habitat, storm surge protection and so on — PUMA is expanding on the precedent set by carbon footprinting efforts and other self-assessment techniques.

The tool can identify where in its supply chain these costs are highest, and help PUMA develop responses to address these hot spots.

The first results of PUMA’s effort were unveiled last May, when PUMA announced a price tag of $133 million for its toll from water use and greenhouse gas emissions.

As the company outsources the bulk of its manufacturing, it follows that PUMA’s direct operations accounted for about only $10 million of this total. Its supply chain made up the balance. By impact, greenhouse gases (GHGs) and water were split evenly. The top culprits: Cotton farming, cattle ranching for leather, and rubber production accounted for more than half of water use, and about a third of GHG emissions.

Shortly before PUMA released these landmark results, Zeitz revealed he was moving up at PUMA’s parent company. In March, after 18 years of service Zeitzpassed the mantle on to a 32-year-old successor, Franz Koch. Notably, Zeitz was even younger — just 30 in 1993 — when he took over PUMA’s top spot. The move made him the youngest-ever corporate chairman of a listed German company.

Now 48, Zeitz’s new post will let him focus on sustainability more broadly. Zeitz’s new joint role at PUMA’s owner, PPR SA, straddles two titles: He is both chief sustainability officer as well as head of the company’s sport & lifestyle group. PPR, a $19.4-billion apparel empire, includes a variety of luxury fashion brands such as Bottega, Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent.

As Zeitz’s focus shifts to a broader set of brands, his immediate challenge is whether he can repeat his successes at PUMA in developing sustainability practices and metrics. Developing the framework and practices for the EP&L at PUMA spanned a decade or so. “We wanted to get it right internally first before going public,” Zeitz told me. PUMA worked with PricewaterhouseCoopers and Trucost to develop the first version of the EP&L assessment.

Zeitz told me the challenges PUMA faced in developing its EP&L measurement were internal and external. Behind company walls, the process involved incremental, disciplined reinforcement of sustainability as a value.

“It needs to be clear that it’s must be a part of the everyday decision-making process,” Zeitz said. When people are accustomed to established practices, changes in workflow, remuneration, priorities and so on can be difficult, and can’t be rushed.

External aspects of the projects are complicated by a lack of direct control over trading partners and suppliers. To collect critical data from PUMA’s network of external suppliers, the exercise demanded similar shifts of business cultural and practices among PUMA’s partners. “Data collection is a challenge,” Zeitz says. Difficulties surfaced in terms of different standards in different markets, difficulty in securing cooperation from second and third tier suppliers.

With that foundation built, the next stages may come more quickly. Where the first EP&L measured water use and greenhouse gas emissions through PUMA’s supply chain, the next phase — due in 2012 — will include dollar assessments of social impacts as well as broader environmental measures.

In the third phase, sometime after that, “we want to look holistically, at the positives of business,” Zeitz said. Business brings benefits that aren’t well measured either, he added, such as improving health, education and quality of life. “That’s something we want to start valuing,” Zeitz says. “At the end of the day, we have a new method of accounting, really, that looks at the world more holistically.”

Zeitz concedes the process will take time. After all, it’s taken a half-century or so to evolve today’s accounting standards. “This may go quicker, with modern technology,” Zeitz said, but until then, this is one tool among many to help develop greener solutions.

Meanwhile, Zeitz is open to sharing the intellectual property — the methods, standards, and processes — behind PUMA’s EP&L with other companies, including other sports gear players. “Yes, absolutely. For those who are serious and want to associate themselves with what we are doing in an open manner, we will be open with this process,” he said. “We have already had a number of requests from the automotive, chemical and beverage industries, as well as from one of our competitors.”

Eco-initiatives are gaining momentum in the sports apparel biz. In September, Adidas joined PUMA and Nike in a commitment to “detox” its supply chain and production processes by 2020. BusinessGreen reported that Adidas has been negotiating with suppliers, rivals and peers to create an inter-industry standard for toxicity reduction, following Greenpeace’s “Dirty Laundry” report, which revealed the use of and pollution from hazardous chemicals in textile production.

Photo courtesy of PUMA.

NRDC OnEarth

Meet the Change Makers: Maersk Gets Shipshape | OnEarth

How the world’s largest shipping line orders up efficiency. Maersk Line executive Jacob Sterling tells us how.

If global commerce has a circulatory system, it’s the network of thousands of container vessels that ply the world’s oceans, moving goods from port to port. On a typical run, one of these floating juggernauts might pick up thousands of tons of the latest e-gizmos from Shanghai, then a load of toys from Hong Kong to deliver to U.S. consumers. On the return trip, it might haul grain and other commodities from the Midwest, along with recycled paper and metal scrap harvested from New York City’s trash. Over the past half-century, the worldwide adoption of neatly stackable, truck-sized container boxes has driven down freight costs by 99 percent while spurring growth in global trade nearly 100-fold. Without the humble container ship, your glossy iPad would still be a figment of some designer’s imagination.

The dark side of this oceanic trade boom is pollution. Because they burn “bunker fuel” — the dirtiest and therefore cheapest type of oil  — the world’s floating freighters emit staggering volumes of black, sooty pollution. Recent EU estimates suggest that in a single year, a single gargantuan container ship vents the same amount of smog-forming sulfur oxide (SOx) gases as 50 million cars annually. By that count, it takes less than two dozen of the largest container vessels to belch out the same amount of pollution as the world’s entire stock of roughly one billion vehicles. In fact, the world’s freighter fleet is responsible for about 3.5 percent of global warming emissions, about twice the share of the aviation sector.

In the face of these numbers, Maersk Line, the world’s largest operator of container vessels, is taking steps to green its operations. This isn’t an entirely altruistic effort on Maersk’s part — it knows new air-pollution rules are soon tightening in both the EU and the United States and wants to get the jump. Last February, the Copenhagen-based company announced that it plans to build the largest, most energy-efficient container ships on the seas. In a deal with Korea’s Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering, Maersk inked plans to buy 10 new energy-efficient vessels, with options for 20 more, to be delivered by 2016. They ain’t cheap: At around $190 million apiece, and more than 1,300 feet long, the new ships will carry 18,000 containers apiece — 16 percent more than today’s largest vessels. Maersk says they will emit 20 percent less carbon dioxide per container, and featuring advanced new engines, consume 35 percent less fuel per container.

OnEarth’s Adam Aston talked with Jacob Sterling, Maersk Line’s head of climate and environment, about how the company’s very big boats can make a smaller impact on the environment.

Freight ships are among the largest mobile objects in the world. How do you decrease the environmental impact of their operations?

One way is what we call “slow steaming.” In a vessel as big as a freighter, if you cut speed by 20 percent, we found you cut fuel consumption and CO2 emissions by as much as 40 percent. We don’t run all lines 20 percent slower all the time, but we aim to do it as much as possible. For example, we may run slow on a delivery of low-value scrap metal and paper going from Europe to China, but boost speed on the return trip when we’re moving more valuable, time-sensitive fashion apparel. Also, if you slow a given vessel down by 20 percent you might need to add more ships to that route to ensure reliable service for the customer. Overall, though, we see 5 to 15 percent savings in fuel and CO2 emissions on routes that are slow steaming.

Are your big shipping customers asking for greener shipping options?

It’s growing in importance and is part of a mix of services they are seeking. But it can be challenging for them because the push to save energy and cut costs runs counter to many years of trying to make supply chains more efficient. That means that until now the paradigm has been: faster, faster, faster. So much so that in 2007, we took delivery of new, super-fast freight vessels — compared to regular freighters, they’re practically speed boats — that could go almost 30 knots [35 mph]. Conventional vessels cruise at around 25 knots [29 mph], and slow steaming is 20 knots [23 mph].

But now we’re selling off the speed boats because they’re so inefficient at slower speeds. Instead, the vessels we will take delivery of this year will have wide hull shapes and advanced engines that recapture waste heat, to be more efficient, not faster.

Is there any promise in efforts to replace the pollutant-heavy bunker fuel with biofuels?

We’re looking into it. But the volumes we need mean it’s a ways off still. The first generation of biofuels has been disappointing. Often these fuels don’t score well in terms of how much CO2 they actually save [over their entire life cycle] relative to fossil fuels. And the quantities, so far, are too low for our needs. But we’re optimistic. Unlike jets, which need very pure biofuels that remain stable at very low temperatures, our engines could work on biofuels that are less refined. It would certainly help with the challenge we face of getting sulfur out of our fuel supply, because biofuels have close to none.

In port cities such as Los Angeles, Seattle and Hong Kong, freighters are a major source of air pollution. How can you change this?

While in port and while approaching them, we’ve already begun to switch to cleaner marine diesel fuels. In Hong Kong, one of the world’s busiest ports, we led this effort, voluntarily, in a way that led about a dozen other shipping lines to do the same.

In port, the cleaner marine diesel we use is closer to automotive diesel. In Hong Kong, for instance, the fuel we’re using has just 0.1 to 0.5 percent sulfur, whereas regular bunker fuel has up to 20 times more. Bunker fuel isn’t like normal oil. It’s more like asphalt. It has to be heated first before it can be pumped into engines to be burnt.

What about using plug-in electric sources in port, as are offered in Los Angeles and other ports? Are those a factor in cutting pollution, and are they spreading in use?

Shoreside power is certainly a way to cut pollution — but it’s only an option in ports. We are looking into shoreside power, but it does have the downside that we then become dependent on the power sources available locally. Most often electricity production is based on fossil fuels, so it is not a silver bullet.

How well is the global shipping business prepared for the inevitability of rising oil prices?

Higher and more volatile fuel prices have become the new normal in the shipping industry. Increasing fuel prices increase the price on transportation, but they also has the effect that those shipping lines that are best at saving energy and fuel save a lot of money and are more profitable. So increasing fuel prices can actually drive development of cleaner shipping.

Step back and consider the full scope of Maersk Line’s efforts to green its operations. What has been the overall impact?

Since 2007, we have reduced our relative CO2 emissions by more than 14 percent per container moved. This is due to the introduction of slow steaming, as well as our continuous focus on running our vessels more efficiently. In terms of changing the culture of our company, it’s difficult to say. It has always been in the values of Maersk Line to protect the environment and try to be a good global citizen. But now environmental performance is a key element of our business strategy. I think that we as employees will become more aware of the role we play in driving Maersk Line and the shipping industry towards better environmental performance.

How do you feel the industry as a whole is responding to this challenge?

I think that the industry could step up its efforts to develop CO2 regulations for shipping. And Maersk Line strongly supports the goals of the International Maritime Organization to develop them. But without global CO2 regulations for shipping, the sector as a whole risks being seen as a laggard even though it has real potential to drive the transition toward an economy that uses fewer fossil fuels and produces less CO2.

Sidebar: Truth Squad

NRDC’s Rich Kassel weighs in on the pollution challenge facing the world’s shipping lines

Last June in Belgium, Maersk CEO Eivind Kolding told leaders of the world’s great shipping lines that if they are to maintain their role as primary carriers of the world’s goods, the industry must change. As environmental concerns multiply and technology improves, he said, the industry must reduce emissions and clean up operations.

Prodding its peers toward greener practices is nothing new for Maersk. The company “has consistently been ahead of the pack on a wide range of environmental issues,” says Rich Kassel, senior attorney and director of NRDC’s clean fuels and vehicles project. “It has continually signaled where environmental performance will go next.”

Maersk voluntarily lowered sulfur levels in its fuel at U.S. ports years before rules required it. Other industry players resisted the move, arguing that the use of high-sulfur bunker fuel was the only way to stay profitable. But emissions from the dirtier bunker fuels take a huge toll, both on nearby communities — typically low-income communities of color, which bear the brunt of the harm — and nationally, causing tens of thousands of premature deaths every year, as well as increased asthma emergencies and other serious health problems.

Maersk proved that it was possible to use cleaner fuel and still make profits. And its move made it easier for the International Maritime Organization and government regulators to require its competitors to follow suit. “When Maersk shows that something works, it’s easier to advance policies that change the entire industry,” Kassel says.

In the wake of Maersk’s switch to cleaner fuel, the IMO adopted new rules that will soon require all ships to use cleaner fuels whenever they are operating within 200 miles of U.S. coasts. Starting in 2015, ships in this zone will use fuel that contains 97 percent less sulfur than today’s average. This switch will translate into 14,000 fewer premature deaths and $110 billion in health care savings per year by 2020, Kassel says.

—Adam Aston

Original URL for story: http://www.onearth.org/article/meet-the-change-makers-maersk-gets-shipshape

GreenBiz

Patagonia Takes Fashion Week as a Time to Say: ‘Buy Less, Buy Used | GreenBiz

In a novel bid to lower the environmental impact of its products, outdoor-gear maker Patagonia is telling its customers to “Buy less, buy used.” To make it easier for them to do so, the Ventura, Calif.–based outfitter set up an online marketplace in collaboration with eBay.

The tie-up marks a first for eBay, as the auction site’s first-ever venture where its listings are available via another company’s web presence. Used goods can be listed on either site show up at both.

An auction function may not sound revolutionary in the retail world, but Patagonia’s broader agenda here is an unorthodox, perhaps even radical, act for the fashion industry.

Indeed, unveiled in New York last night, against the backdrop of fashion week — that annual blitzkrieg of “toss those togs from last season, here’s what to buy now” — Patagonia’s program points in the opposite direction.

“This program first asks customers to not buy something if they don’t need it,” said Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia’s founder and owner, in a prepared statement. “If they do need it, we ask that they buy what will last a long time — and to repair what breaks, reuse or resell whatever they don’t wear any more. And, finally, recycle whatever’s truly worn out.”

As anyone who has looked on in awe at the long lines of customers snaking through H&M to snap up $11 bikinis or $8 tops, the norm elsewhere in the fashion world has been towards clothes as low-cost, disposable commodities.

To take part in the auctions, customers are asked to take a formal pledge, “to be partners in the effort to reduce consumption and keep products out of the landfill or incinerator,” Chouninard said.

The move entails risks for Patagonia, to be sure. It makes no money on the used transactions, though eBay earns standard commissions. The program has the potential to cannibalize sales of new gear, as buyers postpone purchases of new goods, or look for used alternatives.

Yet with sales of $400 million in 2010, and likely to grow by 25% this year, according to the Wall Street Journal, Patagonia has leeway to try. It’s a move that few listed companies could have entertained. Talking to the Wall Street Journal‘s Stu Wu, Chouinard acknowledged that, as a private company, Patagonia is uniquely situated to experiment. “[Chouinard] doesn’t have any shareholders or other interests to please… ‘I’m in business for different reasons,’ he says. ‘I’ve made all the money I could possibly need.'”

Talk of reducing sales is a sure way to get your run-of-the-mill CEO fired. Yet Patagonia has been pursuing an agenda of the three Rs of waste reduction — reduce, reuse, and recycle — for many years. “Reuse” and “recycle” have proved to be doable. The company has been repairing gear since its beginning — it increased its repair staff to reduce turnaround times, in advance of this announcement — and annually recycles many tons of Patagonia gear from around the world.

The “reduce” goal has proved more elusive, though. At the New York event, Rick Ridgeway, Patagonia’s vice president of environmental programs and communication remarked for companies, “[Reduce] is thorniest one of all.”

He continued: “If we aim to reduce our impact, we have to reduce the amount of stuff Patagonia sells. We have to tell customers to buy stuff only when you really need it. This is an experiment. We’ll see how it goes.”

It’s no small issue. As a reminder of the stakes, Patagonia invited Annie Leonard to the New York event for her take on the conundrum facing companies and individuals trying to do less environmental harm.

Leonard is best known as the creator and narrator of The Story of Stuff, a riveting animated documentary about the lifecycle of material goods. If you haven’t seen it, take the time to do so.

Leonard’s work is unarguably critical of unsustainable mass production and high-volume consumption. Understandably, few companies would be comfortable giving her center stage to remind us why we should consume less. She offered this reminder of the paradox of consumption:

We have built our material economy on a one-way, really fast consumer frenzy, turning stuff into waste. We use too much stuff, and we use too toxic stuff. And people aren’t really talking about this. It’s easier to talk about using less toxic stuff. We shouldn’t have neurotoxins in our lipstick and carcinogens in our children’s toys — that’s a no brainer. We’re not there yet solving that, but at least its acceptable to discuss.It’s a lot harder to talk about the too much stuff problem. We’re getting to the core of some of the fundamental flaws of our growth driven, consumer-mania economy. We start to get to really sensitive places about our relationship to stuff, and how we look to stuff to find meaning, identify or status in life. So it gets tricky to talk about reducing our consumption of stuff.

So when Patagonia called I wondered, “Are you nuts? You’re actually going to tell people to don’t buy a coat unless they need it? You’re going to encourage used stuff to go back to the market?”… [The Common Threads Initiative] is an example of the kind of new paradigm business we need to have, that meets our needs without trashing the planet.

If Patagonia’s move seems controversial, keep in mind that both companies are likely to benefit from increased exposure and reputational gains, attracting new customers interested in the pledge, and cementing the loyalty of existing buyers.

What’s more, I wonder if sales may not be dented as much as it may seem. By formalizing of a secondary market for Patagonia gear, the company will capture the long-tail of demand from tentative, first-time buyers unfamiliar with of shy of the initially high prices for the company’s high quality gear.

For Patagonia, the Common Threads Initiative is an effort to reframe and broaden the scope of its cradle-to-grave focus approach to manufacturing, and integrates with Patagonia’s existing sustainability efforts such as Footprint Chronicles, where the company documents the life cycle of many of its products. Since 1985, Patagonia has donated 1 percent of gross sales to environmental conservation programs.

For eBay, the partnership is another step on ongoing efforts to extend and highlight the company’s Green Team sustainability efforts. In 2010, the company launched eBay Box to make it easier for customers to reuse packaging. The auction house also rolled out eBay Instant Sale to give customers an easier way to sell or recycle used electronics.

NRDC OnEarth

Green Pinstripes: Wharton School of Business Dean Thomas Robertson Talks About Sustainability | OnEarth

Stroll through practically any business school in the country — or any of the fast-multiplying U.S.-style B-schools overseas — and there can be little doubt that an MBA remains a hot commodity. With the start of classes now upon us, business schools are prepping for another near-record year. During this recession, as in past downturns, applications have surged, with candidates looking to use the slowdown to upgrade their credentials.

Just a couple of years ago, this bumper crop might have seemed unlikely. In 2009 the financial meltdown exposed the outsize role played by financial MBAs and math-whiz PhDs in crafting the house-of-cards investment vehicles that all but crashed Wall Street.

Critics pointed to another, deeper cause: a culture of profit at all cost that had been incubated in business schools. “The really grim news for the MBA…is about more than short-term trends,” wrote Matthew Stewart in Slate back in March 2009. “The economic crisis has exposed long-standing flaws…in the very idea of business education.”

If the recession hasn’t dimmed the prospects of B-schools, the crisis of confidence has spurred a flurry of curriculum makeovers at top institutions. Ethics, of course, have come into greater focus. In parallel, there’s been a rising appetite on the part of students and faculty alike to study more sustainable approaches to business. The number of programs emphasizing social, environmental, and ethical issues has been rising steadily in recent years, according to Beyond Grey Pinstripes, an independent, biennial survey of business schools managed by the Aspen Institute.

For a look at how sustainability and post-crash ethics are evolving at an elite business school, there’s no better laboratory than the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, one of the nation’s oldest and largest B-schools and an important nursery for Wall Street talent.

Thomas Robertson took over as dean of the school in August 2007. As the dust from the financial crisis has settled, he has worked to boost the profile of sustainability in Wharton’s curriculum and among its staff. To be sure, Wharton remains strongly focused on finance, even as highly ranked competitors such as Michigan’s Ross School or Berkeley’s Haas School have made sustainability a core commitment. Notably, none of the nation’s top three B-schools — Chicago’s Booth, Harvard Business School, and Wharton, according to Bloomberg Businessweek’s latest rankings — appear in Beyond Grey Pinstripes.

Robertson says Wharton is hoping to change this. Adam Aston, a freelance writer and former energy and environment editor for BusinessWeek, spoke recently with him about sustainability and the greening of Wharton at his office on the school’s leafy campus near downtown Philadelphia.

Sustainability as a business strategy is still the exception, and there haven’t been many successful, mass-market “green” brands. Why do you think that is?

Green business is still quite young. Yet even in that fairly short time, there are some serious questions about whether you can brand green any longer, because the public is so suspicious. To some extent it has reason to be. It’s easier to recall fallen green champions who have failed terribly than it is to come up with green success stories. BP is a poster child for this. The company emphasized for years how green it was, even as the environmental concerns about its operations were mounting, and then the problem spiraled out of control with the Gulf oil spill. Companies have to be careful. They should first ask, do green claims really differentiate our product, and should we be emphasizing that? If so, are those claims credible? Will consumers believe us? There’s a lot that can go wrong, so it’s no surprise that companies remain shy.

Are you hesitant to brand Wharton as a greener business school? You don’t appear in the Beyond Grey Pinstripes rankings, for example.

Wharton has had a funny love/hate relationship with rankings in general. A predecessor of mine, along with the deans at Harvard and a few other institutions, decided some years ago to stop participating. But the ranking services rate us regardless, using information from outside sources. Beyond Grey Pinstripes is among the most demanding, because it requires that we survey the content of individual courses to identify which ones have green content. However now we’re cooperating again for the first time in a long while, and we have full-time people substantially dedicated to answering these requests. The Aspen Institute is probably the most reputable place out there ranking green initiatives in schools. It’s a good place for us to be, whether someday we come in first or thirtieth.

Did you pick up any shift toward greener goals since the financial crisis?

The aftermath of the crisis has reinforced one of the longest-standing strategic pillars of the curriculum at Wharton: social impact. From environment to labor and other social dimensions of business, there’s very much a belief here that business schools must be a force for good in the world. Even so, this is the biggest school in the country. We have 4,900 graduate students plus a few hundred undergrads. And some of our alumni do still go astray.

Do you have any star faculty members working on green issues?

One is our vice dean of social impact, Len Lodish, who also leads Wharton’s Global Consulting Practicum. Among other things, this sends groups of MBAs overseas to apply business skills to solving social and environmental problems. One team recently went to Botswana, for example, to help develop a sustainable funding model for a health partnership. I’d also mention Eric Orts, the director of Wharton’s Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership. Eric is a lawyer and tends to come at these issues from that perspective. He argues that business as usual is quite likely to lead to major environmental catastrophes, and he’s pushing for Wharton to get ahead of the curve on these issues. It’s clear that sustainability is here to stay. I think it has come into its own as a business priority. We all realize that we’re going to destroy the planet if we don’t get on board.

In many business schools, the interest in sustainability is coming from the bottom up, from the students.

It’s true. A lot of student efforts are bubbling up here. Emily Schiller graduated with an MBA from Wharton in 2009 and chose to stay here to become the school’s first associate director of sustainability and environmental leadership.That role grew out of her involvement, when she was a student, as co-chair of Net Impact’s North America Conference, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit events focused on sustainability. She also works with our Student Sustainability Advisory Board, which takes student suggestions and so far has turned them into real savings of more than $100,000. One of their ideas now is to switch to natural cooling of our data center in winter, rather than using air-conditioning. If it’s cold outside, why not take advantage of that?

Sidebar: NRDC FOCUS — Peter Malik, Director of NRDC’s Center for Market Innovation

If business schools could choose one thing to enhance their focus on sustainability, what would it be?
Mortgages. The housing market has to be one of the drivers of economic recovery, but it’s still under severe pressure. Unsound lending practices were partly responsible for the mess, and we need to scale down the role of government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in underwriting private-borrower risk. Banks should also incorporate sustainability criteria into mortgage scoring and pricing. Live in a mansion and drive a Hummer, and you’ll pay more. Live in an energy-efficient apartment and walk to work, and you’ll pay less.

Learn more about Location Efficient Mortgages.

GreenBiz

PepsiCo’s Water-Saving Mission Flows Beyond Its Factories | GreenBiz

When it comes to water issues, PepsiCo‘s fizzy drinks tend to get all the attention. But the company is also a huge manufacturer of snack foods. Its food operations, PepsiCo is finding, offer huge potential to save water — including going “off the water grid.”

At a UK factory that makes Walkers potato chips — or “crisps,” as the locals prefer — PepsiCo is exploring the possibility that the potatoes themselves could yield enough water to operate the factory.

Potatoes offer a unique opportunity to turn off the taps, PepsiCo’s plant managers have recognized. When raw spuds arrive at the loading dock, they’re about 80 percent water by volume.

Indeed, the biggest challenge in making chips crispy is extracting all that water. As the thinly sliced spuds pass through the deep fryer, a thick fog of steam rises from the oil’s surface, as the water steams off.

Instead of letting it escape through a chimney, PepsiCo is exploring the possibility of capturing the vapor, condensing it to reuse and maybe recapturing the heat energy at the same time. It’s a move the company estimates could save the plant in Leicester, England, $1 million per year.

PepsiCo’s UK and Ireland arm has become a leader in setting ambitious environmental and operating goals. These also include being fossil fuel free by 2023 and achieving zero landfill across its supply chain by 2018 (click here to see more on the UK and Ireland goals).

Thinking like this is helping PepsiCo push ahead with ambitious goals globally, to cut water use across the beverage-and-snack conglomerate’s worldwide operations, says Dan Bena, PepsiCo’s director of sustainable development.

I caught up with Dan last week to hear how things were going since Pepsi published its inaugural water reportlast September (click here to download a PDF).

The report followed PepsiCo’s move in 2009 to publicly endorse water as a human right, just in advance of a similar declaration by the UN general assembly.

PepsiCo’s approach combines internal efforts at its plants with collaborative programs to conserve supplies of and improve access to clean water globally.

As part of a broader set of corporate sustainability goals, PepsiCo is specifically aiming to:

  • Improve water use efficiency by 20 percent per unit of production by 2015 compared with 2006;
  • Strive for positive water balance in operations in water-distressed areas; and
  • Provide access to safe water to 3 million people in developing countries by the end of 2015.

Efforts to cut water are ahead of schedule to beat the 20-by-2015 goal, says Bena. To drive this process within its factories, the company is turning to ReCon — short for “resource conservation” — a homemade analytic tool that maps out the use of energy and water in manufacturing plants. Deployed at hundreds of sites, and used in collaboration with supply-chain partners, the tool has saved many millions of dollars in water and energy costs.

“There’s a myth that water is cheap in many areas,” says Bena. “Even in places where it is inexpensive to buy, once you start measuring, you see the costs of treating water, using it, filtering it, and discharging it piling up.

“In some cases, we’re seeing a tenfold increase in the fully measured cost of water from when it enters a facility to when the process is complete. When business people see water costs real money, there’s no better way to get their attention.”

Bena explained that the second of PepsiCo’s three water goals, above, amounts to a kind of “one-for-one” rule. For every liter of water the company uses, PepsiCo hopes to restore, replenish or prevent the waste of as much or more water.

By this measure, Bena says that PepsiCo has already exceeded this goal in India thanks to its role developing a direct-seeding technology for rice. The method drastically reduces the period during which the rice stalks must be submerged in 6 to 12 inches of water.

“We patented a piece of equipment that saves about 30 percent of the water compared with traditional methods,” says Bena.

PepsiCo’s R&D team developed the specialized tractor over about four years, and has given Indian farmers free access to the equipment, along with technical guidance to learn new growing methods.

According to a World Business Council case study of the effort, PepsiCo’s initiative also cut farmers’ costs by 3,500 rupees (about $80) per hectare compared with traditional methods. Extended to 2,630 hectares (approx. 6,500 acres) in 2009, the system conserved an estimated 5.5 billion liters of water.

In addition, the Indian Government estimates that reduced water use lowers the paddy’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 70 percent, cutting down the volume of rotting vegetative mass, which gives off methane, in the standing water.

To push towards its third goal, providing safe water to 3 million people by 2015, PepsiCo has been focusing on developing public water kiosks in Ghana, India and Kenya. “There’s a misconception that people can’t or shouldn’t pay for water,” says Bena. “The reality is that in many poor countries, they already do, and they pay a high price for low quality water.”

Working with Water.org — which is the culmination of the July 2009 merger between Water Partners International and Matt Damon’s H20 Africa Foundation — PepsiCo is trying to supplant high-priced, private water distributors to build community taps.

There’s another benefit, too. “By brining water into a community, you eliminate the time children — often hours, and usually girls — typically spend fetching fresh water,” says Bena.

Back in the factories where it makes fizzy drinks, PepsiCo continues to drive down the volume of water use. “On average, it takes about 2.5 liters of water to produce one liter of beverage.”

“It’s really variable though,” Bena says. “Some newer, advanced plants are running at half that ratio. Some older ones are probably double that. That’s the opportunity that we face.”

Image courtesy of PepsiCo.

Check out the original story here: http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2011/04/19/pepsicos-water-saving-mission-flows-beyond-its-factories?page=full

GreenBiz

With its First-Ever CSO, UPS Kicks Sustainability Up to the C-Suite | GreenBiz

With its First-Ever CSO, UPS Kicks Sustainability Up to the C-Suite
Scott Wicker started at United Parcel Service, Inc. on his first day of college in 1977. The job was part of a deal with his dad: If Wicker could help support his own expenses, his dad would cover housing costs and tuition at Wayne State. Responding to a flyer posted in a school administration building, Wicker applied to UPS and was unloading big rigs in no time.

Thirty-four years and a couple of engineering degrees later, Wicker’s still at UPS. In that time, he’s gone from the loading dock to supervising the $50-billion company’s sustainability strategy and practices.

Scott WickerOn Wednesday, Wicker got kicked upstairs, becoming the shipping giant’s first chief sustainability officer. Wicker was promoted from his former role as vice president of sustainability and plant engineering.

The new title culminates a decades-long process at UPS to elevate sustainability to the company’s highest levels of management. “It was strategic decision, made between our CEO and COO,” says Wicker. “[Sustainability] is high on their list of priorities, so things get done. ”

As CSO, Wicker serves on a steering committee that routinely gathers the company’s top brass — its CFO, CIO, COO, plus heads of marketing and communications, human resources, and communications, among others — to oversee green strategy and help coordinate efforts of midlevel sustainability working groups across the enterprise.

The approach is part of an effort over the past few years “to really put teeth into our sustainability programs,” Wicker said in telephone interview earlier this week. “As sustainability has moved along and we wanted to accelerate that, we needed more structure, and the organization has recognized that fact.”

Top priorities for Wicker include devolving sustainability practices more deeply throughout UPS’ sprawling global operations. To spread the word, UPS will continue to rely on internal training and communications.

Wicker also sees the profit potential in green service offerings as a way to recruit serious commitment from UPS’ sales teams. “We’ve learned we have a competitive advantage in this area, and staff are always interested in ways to sell our business better from a sustainability perspective,” says Wicker. “One of the first places we went was to the sales and marketing team to see the benefits of these programs.”

One example of a green feature that is winning over customers, says Wicker, is UPS’ push to develop detailed carbon footprint reporting for practically any shipment a UPS customer makes. “Every year, the requirement from our customers gets tougher, so our data has to get better and better,” says Wicker.

For instance, the General Services Administration, the federal government’s buying arm, is requiring carbon information for its suppliers. For companies working to meet that requirement by measuring and improving their supply chain, “They discover UPS is big piece of their business model.” …  Continue reading here greenbiz.com

GreenBiz

Winning the Sustainability Battle, Losing the Carbon War? | GreenBiz

Winning the Sustainability Battle, Losing the Carbon War?

In establishing the Carbon War Room, Richard Branson, the British-born media and aviation billionaire, explicitly treats the threat of catastrophic climate change as one similar to the threat posed by a world war.

Taking this metaphor a step further, Branson appointed as his general Jigar Shah to head up the CWR. Nearly a year into the mission, however, Shah seems palpably frustrated.

Speaking with Joel Makower at GreenBiz.com’s State of Green Business Forum in Washington today, Shah emphasized that the foot soldiers in this mission — companies, policy makers and voters — are waging a losing fight in this multi-decade struggle.

State of Green Business

First some context on the scope of the fight. Shah reminded the audience that global greenhouse gas emissions are running at about 50 gigatonnes per year today, and are on track to grow to 60 gigatonnes by 2020 if economic growth and climate trends continue without change. To avoid catastrophic climate change of 2 degrees Celsius or more, scientists say we need to trim 17 gigatonnes from that trend by 2020.

Not surprisingly, technology is ready to help solve the problem, says Shah, who earned a reputation as a wunderkind of the solar business, and a fortune — perhaps several hundred gazillion dollars, Makower joked — as the founder of solar energy pioneer SunEdison in 2003. “You’ve got Bjorn Lomborg saying we can’t do anything without more R&D. And policy people saying unless we pass a price on carbon, we can’t do anything,” said Shah. “That’s just poppycock.”

The deeper problem is a tendency to grasp at feel-good solutions without reaching for, or even acknowledging, harder, far more impactful steps.

Shah offered the example of turning off the taps while brushing your teeth: it’s a painless, feel-good behavioral change promoted by countless green living advice columns. Yet compared to the 40 percent of water wasted through leaking pipes across our crumbling water networks, it’s meaningless.

While Makower suggested you could pursue both lifestyle changes and long-term infrastructure goals, Shah batted back the suggestion. “It is an either-or decision,” no matter how much we’d like to think otherwise.

Echoing psychological studies suggesting that consumers’ interest in these issues peters out after a single action, Shah said: “There’s very few people who react to [any environmental message]. So when an NGO mails out to 20 million people turn off your taps, they could just as easily say the more important thing is to actually fix this infrastructure.” But the harder sell is all to rarely made, said Shah.

The problem is compounded by failures of incomplete information, Shah added. With scant understanding of the scale of the climate change challenge, for example, good intentions get diluted.

via greenbiz.com

GreenBiz

Coca-Cola Decides to Gulp Down the Rest of Honest Tea | GreenBiz

Coca-Cola Decides to Gulp Down the Rest of Honest Tea
Honest Tea, the fast-growing 13-year-old vendor of organic teas, first attracted the attention of Coca-Cola back in 2008, when the fizzy drinks giant took a 40 percent stake in the green-minded startup. Today, CEO Seth Goldman announced that Honest Tea had notified its shareholders of Coke’s decision to exercise its option to buy the balance of those shares, almost three years to the day after their original agreement. The deal is on track to close within the next few weeks.

The deal would cap a period of accelerating growth for the Bethesda, Md.-based tea brand. Sales peaked at some 100 million units of bottles and bags last year, bringing sales close to $100 million, Goldman explained, thanks in part to a boost in distribution that came from the original deal with Coke.

State of Green Business

“We’ve seen growth three-fold,” said Goldman, thanks in part to current or pending distribution deals with major national chains including CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid. The high point of Honest Tea’s arrival to the mainstream, Goldman joked, may have been marked when the company appeared as a clue in a New York Times Friday crossword puzzle. The clue, “Honest ______ (drink brand).” The answer: Honest Ade, not Tea — one for the experts.

In a nod to Goldman’s central role as founder and CEO — or TeaEO — Coke has ensured that he maintains an equity stake in the operation and will continue to run the brand. The move is unprecedented, Goldman told attendees at the State of Green Business Forum today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Coke has a well-evolved business process for buying up small-brands, transitioning out the founder and folding the products into the parent’s larger manufacturing, distribution and marketing operations. “A veteran of the beverage business told me that after a takeover, for the first few weeks, they want to know your opinion, for the next few weeks, they want to know your telephone number, and after that they don’t want to know you,” said Goldman. “This was unusual for Coke, but came from the chairman.”

Speaking with GreenBiz.com’s senior writer, Marc Gunther, Goldman acknowledged the decision stirs charges that the organic tea brand is compromising its green integrity. Honest Tea has cultivated sustainable practices among its tea suppliers to achieve USDA certified organic status. It has also ruled out using high fructose corn syrup, and has certified its products as Fair Trade.

Goldman dismisses the charge, arguing that scaling up his business is the path to delivering the greatest benefits most broadly. “It’s easy to fall into a ‘big is bad, small is good’ trap,” said Goldman. “To those critics, I ask, ‘What’s your strategy to change corporate America?'”

Coke has proven loath to tinker with Honest Tea’s green appeal — even in the face of tension with the newcomer. The companies attracted national attention in 2010 when The New York Times detailed a conflict over Honest Tea’s decision to brand its kids’ beverage line as free of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), despite pressure from Coke. The big drink brand was facing charges over the synthetic nature of the corn-derived sweetener along with the high calorie count of its fizzy drinks…

Continue reading here: http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2011/02/16/coca-cola-gulps-down-rest-honest-tea
GreenBiz

Inside GRI’s Efforts to Boost CSR Reporting in the States | GreenBiz

Inside GRI's Efforts to Boost CSR Reporting in the States

 

Federal efforts to require companies to report on environmental impacts and other sustainability measures in their financial filings have all but stalled, victims of the recession and a loss of momentum for federal climate policy.

But while official efforts have deflated, independent groups are ratcheting up the pressure. The case for greater transparency got a push today, with the announcement that the Amsterdam-based Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), is launching a U.S. effort to guide more American corporations to adapt GRI’s framework to disclose environmental, social and governance performance. Advocates make the case that increased transparency not only tends to boost profitability, but that such details are legally material to corporate financial statements.

Dubbed Focal Point USA, GRI’s US initiative debuted today at a breakfast meeting at NYSE Euronext on Wall Street. Pointing out that only hundreds of tens of thousands of US companies strive to document their broader impact, GRI Chief Executive Ernst Ligteringen asked the 230 attendees, “Why is America letting the world lead in sustainability reporting?”

Born of 1997 U.N. initiative, GRI has over the past decade evolved rules over addressing the needs of different sectors, from mining to media, and worked to win official endorsement of its guidelines from standards bodies such as the OECD and UN.

The value of sustainability practices as crucial to risk management echoed through comments made by a panel of executives whose companies presently follow GRI reporting guidelines. “What is the justification of the 75,000 corporations who don’t report on ESG [environmental, social and governance] issues to fly blind?” asked David Vidal, director, Center For Corporate Citizenship And Sustainability at The Conference Board.

At Avon, which relies on a sales force of 6.5 million independent resellers, GRI’s framework emerged a useful bridge, linking sustainability advocates among the company’s senior ranks, with financial executives. “GRI gives a formal framework that the bean counters can relate too, and get behind,” said Susan Arnot Heaney, Avon’s director of corporate responsibility.

Issues of sustainability resonate especially strongly with Avon’s nearly all-female sales force, Heaney emphasized, creating upward pressure on corporate managers. Avon has over one million direct sales representatives in Brazil alone, a group larger than the nation’s army, Heaney explained.

Simply standardizing sustainability data into more accessible standard forms has enhanced financial markets’ regard for the value of the information, said Curtis Ravenel, Director of Sustainability Initiatives, at Bloomberg LLP. The financial and news service recently has begun to include sustainability indicators alongside conventional financial analytics on one of the most widely viewed data screens in the Bloomberg terminal.

“As a private company Bloomberg didn’t have a culture of reporting or transparency,” said Ravenel. The media company plans to release its first GRI compliant report in 2011, following a three-year effort to compile the necessary data. The exercise helped convince management of the value of reporting on sustainability data internally, and via its terminals, Ravenel explained.

“This is a dynamic time for the Global Reporting Initiative, with sustainability reporting becoming a vital part of the business strategies of an increasing number of companies, including in the US,” said Mike Wallace, Director of the Global Reporting Initiative’s Focal Point USA.

The US launch follows similar announcements in China and India. Following the New York event, Focal Point USA is planning a breakfast meeting hosted by The World Bank in Washington, DC on February 3 and a roundtable event hosted by Ceres in Boston on February 4. For more information about these events and about GRI’s Focal Point USA, contact Mike Wallace or more information here.

NYSE photo CC-licensed by Francisco Diez.

 

via greenbiz.com