[MonteQuest]

People don't want to go thru the trouble of learning about energy systems in order to properly install one. The ONLY way a mass implementation of alternative independent energy systems is going to happen is if Uncle Sam steps in and gives contractors a "tax break/handout" to build new houses with solar panels slapped on top of the roof or *insert your favorite technology*

Solar PV is $7/watt (do-it-yourself) versus $9/watt installed. People don't need to learn anything about installing energy systems.

There are tax breaks already for doing so.

[Graeme]

Is austerity creating savvy sustainable consumers?

With households increasingly struggling to pay the bills it might be assumed that issues such as sustainability would be sidelined. It is certainly true that tightening budgets have hit the sale of organic products, which saw a 3.7 per cent fall in the UK last year. But there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that austerity has triggered a new set of positive shopping behaviours across all social economic groups.

Sainsbury's has taken a close look at their customer's shopping habits and has found that quality, integrity and sustainability are increasingly the drivers that shape shopping choices as well as prudence. They have concluded that there is a move from excessive and conspicuous consumption to savvy sustainability. Their view is that people are rediscovering the shopping and cooking habits of previous generations, including planning weekly meals, being creative with leftovers or preparing more packed lunches.

The research findings are supported by more concrete statistics. The total amount of waste that households in England produce has dropped every year since 2007. Last year was the first time that households recycled more waste than was dumped into holes in the ground.

Government travel surveys show that miles travelled by car started slowing in the mid-1990s and have fallen ever since. The number of annual car trips has also dipped while rail use boomed. Long-term declines in cycling and walking have also reversed.

businessgreen

[Graeme]

Corporate Sustainability Plans ‘Almost Double Year-on-Year’

In 2012, 64 percent of US companies said they had a sustainability plan in place or were in the midst of drafting one, up from 38 percent in 2011, according to research by hygiene and paper company SCA.

In SCA’s 2012 Tork Report, titled The Sustainability Gap, 31 percent of US firms and 30 percent of Canadian firms said their sustainability plans are having a positive impact on the bottom line (see chart). But 57 percent of US companies and 60 percent of Canadian companies saw no impact on their bottom line, and 12 percent of US companies and 10 percent of Canadian companies saw a negative impact on profits from their sustainability initiatives, the report says.

SCA warns that industry has approached the end of “corporate sustainability 1.0″ – the picking of low-hanging fruit – and that there is now a large gap between the status quo and the next level of achievement.

To get to the next level of sustainability achievement, businesses and consumers should consider the following initiatives, SCA says:

Reducing food waste: Americans waste 40 percent of the nation’s food supply, the single biggest contributor to solid waste in landfills.

Adding a universal sustainability index, a guide to help consumers and companies make smarter product choices. This was deemed a good idea by three-quarters of people surveyed.

Reducing the amount of “green washing,” or false claims by companies that tout a product’s environmental benefits.

Sustainability plans should also include the health of a company’s workforce, but this is generally not the case at present, according to the report.

environmentalleader

[dohboi]

Keep in mind that 'sustainability' can mean something very different in a corporate setting than to an environmentalist. For most corporations, their basic activities are fundamentally non-sustainable.

[Graeme]

D, I think and hope the mindset is changing.

2013: Life on the Edge of the Sustainability Cliff

The six key sustainability standards in 2013 are:

1. Sustainability Accounting Standards Board [SASB]
SASB is developing sector-based KPIs for sustainability disclosure. Through its evidence-based approach, SASB will dramatically improve the precision, materiality and disclosure of sustainability indicators for integrating ESG factors into financial markets. SASB is now hosting various sector-based groups to provide input into its KPI development.

2. Global Reporting Initiative [GRI]
GRI is the de facto standard for corporate sustainability reporting. A total of 4,994 organizations have produced more than 10,000 corporate sustainability reports following GRI guidelines. GRI will introduce in 2013 the next generation – G4 – of its reporting guidelines.

3. International Integrated Reporting Council [IIRC]
The IIRC, another disclosure initiative, is a global coalition of regulators, investors, companies, standard setters, accountants and NGOs. Together, this coalition shares the view that communication about businesses’ multi-dimensional value creation should be the next step in the evolution of corporate reporting. Already, hundreds of companies are experimenting in blending financial and sustainability reporting. IIRC is nurturing and tracking this process in its effort to build a generally accepted integrated reporting framework.

4. The Sustainability Consortium [TSC]
The TSC is the leading authority on product sustainability standards. Under the leadership of new Executive Director Kara Hurst, TSC is expanding into China and is ramping up the release of scientific-based and collaboratively developed standards for improving product sustainability.

5. United Nations' Principles for Responsible Investment [UNPRI]
The UN PRI is an international network of 1,138 investors representing over $32 trillion in assets under management. UN PRI works to accelerate the integration of ESG issues into investment analysis and decision-making processes with the goal to understand the implications of sustainability for investors and to help signatories incorporate these issues into their investment decision-making and ownership practices. The rapid uptake of UN PRI demonstrates how sustainability considerations are being infused into investment decision making.

6. Global Initiative for Sustainability Ratings [GISR]
The GISR is a new participant in the family of initiatives aimed at making capital and other markets agents of, rather than impediments to, achieving the Post Rio+20 sustainability agenda. Complementary to the disclosure focus of SASB, GRI and IIRC, GISR's mission is to create a world-class corporate sustainability ratings standard as an instrument for transforming the definition of value and value creation by business in the 21st century.

GISR’s new global standard will be coupled with capacity building, certification and analytical tools to embed sustainability into the capital markets worldwide. GISR will release the principles component of this standard in May 2013 at the Ceres conference.

Accelerating the Sustainability Transition

Collectively these six initiatives, each with a distinct but linked role in the emerging sustainability information landscape, will:

Transform the way corporate sustainability information is disclosed by developing new disclosure standards for material sustainability information and value generating strategies;

Reposition corporate reporting to tell a more complete story of how an organization’s strategy, governance, performance and products lead to the creation of value over the short, medium and long term;
Improve the precision, materiality and disclosure of sector-based sustainability (ESG) KPIs;

Accelerate the global uptake and impact of integrating ESG factors into investment decisions and financial markets; and

Build general acceptance for a new standard for measuring corporate sustainability performance that can elevate ratings as a more powerful tool for accelerating the integration of ESG factors investment decision-making.

The early achievements of these organizations point to 2013 as a watershed year for accelerating the transition – and moving markets – toward more sustainable outcomes that both business and the world so urgently need. The shift away from myopic focus on short-term financial returns to a more expansive, long-term focus on vital capitals is an idea whose time has come. Such a transformation is no longer an option, but a necessity, if the next decade and beyond is to avoid a “sustainability cliff.”

csrwire

[Newfie]

Graeme,

While it is surely true, I'll believe it when I see it. Sure a few enlightened individuals see the light, but not the heard.

[Graeme]

Big business and sustainability: the missing links

As another year begins, big business will continue falling well short of taking the leadership role on the sustainability the world urgently needs. While many chief executives now publicly identify sustainability as a key issue for their companies, walking the talk is proving more elusive.


Consider the slow pace of business progress on two of the most talked about global sustainability challenges: climate change and water scarcity. A Ceres-Sustainalytics evaluation of 600 large, US companies earlier this year found that only one third had set time-bound greenhouse gas reduction targets. Water fared even worse. Among four water-intensive sectors analysed, only a quarter of companies had assessed water-related risks to their operations, let alone set targets for managing water risk.


In November 2012, the International Integrated Reporting Council published a prototype reporting framework aimed at helping companies create a clear narrative of how they create value over time. The creation of an integrated report will force compilers of financial reports to communicate the full range of factors that materially affect six types of capitals: financial, but also manufactured, human, intellectual, natural, and social.

Towards the end of 2012, the World Resources Institute released a sustainability Swot (a strengths/weaknesses/opportunities/threats framework). Putting a new spin on the familiar, it helps managers link specific environmental challenges for their business with broader mega-trends, such as demographic and social shifts, changing political and regulatory priorities, and technological advances. It also facilitates collaboration with colleagues, customers, and even competitors to manage the risks and opportunities that emerge.

A dozen companies – including Staples, Delphi, Danone Brasil and Target – have already road-tested the institute's Swot. Target, a leading US retailer, used the framework to look at specific product areas where environmental challenges could create risks to its reputation, or have an economic or health impact on their guests, or disrupt their supply of raw materials.

And these guides aren't alone. Other emerging tools include greenhouse gas accounting frameworks and geographic water risk evaluation databases, that enable companies to improve efficiencies, reduce operational risks, and boost their bottom line.

guardian

[Graeme]

Sustainability: Environmental puzzle solvers

Miller, an environmental social scientist, was one of the first PhD graduates from the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe. Established in 2007, the ASU PhD programme was one of the first in the world devoted to sustainability — using interdisciplinary approaches from fields such as Earth and environmental science, conservation biology, engineering, economics and urban planning to maintain ecosystems, the environment and natural resources. But in the past few years, colleges and schools focused on the subject have sprung up (see 'The many ways to get sustainable'). In principle, sustainability training helps engineers and scientists not only to produce better materials, but also to understand the social impacts of their work.

Nature

[Graeme]

4 Barriers To Overcome In Achieving Corporate Environmental Sustainability

Implementing corporate environmental sustainability strategies is increasingly becoming standard practice. For example, more than 300 of the S&P 500 report their greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories each year to the Carbon Disclosure Project, and companies from the Fortune 100 and S&P Global 100 are investing billions of dollars to reach renewable energy procurement targets. Some companies are going further and taking steps to reduce the environmental impact of their products, services, and supply chains.

Despite this encouraging progress, a confluence of global environmental challenges is putting more pressure on corporate environmental sustainability strategies to get to scale quickly. Not enough global businesses have integrated environmental sustainability into their long-term decision making. And, as it stands today, existing practices are not enough to protect the natural resources that society and businesses depend on.

WRI examines this gap between existing corporate sustainability practices and the environmental protection needed for the 21st century in our new report, Aligning Profit and Environmental Sustainability: Stories from Industry. We interviewed sustainability managers from AkzoNobel, Alcoa, Citi, Greif, Johnson & Johnson, Mars, Natura, and Siemens to better understand why strategies that are good for both business and the planet are not getting to scale.

We identified four barriers in these discussions, as well as ways companies can overcome them:

Improved environmental sustainability is not valued in internal capital allocation decisions. Companies often lack the internal mechanisms to properly value the benefits of managing environmental sustainability, such as reduced exposure to energy price volatility, water risks, and other environmental impacts of operations and supply chains.

The goals of corporate sustainability teams and financial teams are not well aligned. Divergent priorities mean that sustainability teams and financial teams often do not effectively engage each other. As a result, sustainability teams are brought into project planning too late to influence project design and cannot make an effective case to financial decision makers.

Companies lack metrics to account for external environmental costs. Without a clear method to price external costs—such as the risk of climate change to society— companies can’t factor these “expenses” into their traditional decision making. Companies may find they are not fully cognizant of the real costs and risks associated with their investments over time.

Environmental factors—such as climate change and water scarcity—are not being fully integrated into long-term business strategy. As a result, companies often miss opportunities to improve financial performance through environmental improvements in processes and product lines.

wri

[Graeme]

How to Break the Stalemate on Global Sustainability

The current growth model is not sustainable. Neither the green economy nor alternative sources of energy can prevent global warming. Solutions will come from concerted actions at the local and national levels, from the adoption of instruments and practices borrowed from other disciplines like peacebuilding, and from the move to a “no-waste economy”, according to experts here.

In its milestone report, “The Limits to Growth”, published in 1972, the Club of Rome warned that the human ecological footprint had grown dangerously quickly from 1900 to 1972. Shortly thereafter, the warning proved to be prophetic: by 1986 the human ecological footprint had overshot the carrying capacity of the Earth. At current production and consumption levels, we need 1.5 planets to survive; if everyone lived like a U.S. citizen, we would need five planets.

Land, water and biodiversity continue to decline. Global CO2 emissions are on the rise. The oceans are warming and the sea level is rising continuously. Forest cover has decreased by 300 million hectares since 1990.

In his new book, “The Crisis of Global Sustainability”, presented in Geneva on Mar. 15, Tapio Kanninen, co-director of a project on sustainable global governance at the City University of New York and member of the Club of Rome, warms that we cannot continue with the current model of economic growth whilst limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius.



Alexander Likhotal, president of the Green Cross International, has a different paradigm shift in mind. “All the euphemisms like green economy will not help,” he told IPS. “We need a circular economy to decouple economic growth from the use of energy and materials.”

A circular economy is, by definition, a restorative economy: products should be designed for longer use and materials reused and recycled, which would increase the demand for maintenance and repairs. The concept has been around since the 1970s but it has gained momentum again due to the activities of the U.S.-based Ellen MacArthur Foundation and to “Bankrupting Nature”, a recent report authored by Ander Wijkman and Johan Rockström, co-president of the Club of Rome.

The circular economy “is creating a new model for business”, Likhotal continued. “Rolls Royce, for example, in addition to providing luxury cars, constructs engines and turbines for aircrafts. But they have stopped selling the engines to air companies – instead, they lease them. They benefit not from the bulk sales of the engines but from maintenance and competitiveness of the services, and are dramatically reducing their expenses.”

He believes an increase in services like leasing would compensate for the loss of jobs resulting from the decrease in production. Other major companies like Caterpillar have stopped selling huge trucks, and have begun to lease them.

“It is a win-win situation that is gaining more ground,” he stressed. “The change is coming…but it will not come without legislation and taxation incentives – political systems should provide some motivation for more openness and competiveness in terms of services provision.”

iede

[Graeme]

4 Lessons On Environmental Sustainability That Every Corporation Should Learn

This is the last of a five-part blog series, Aligning Profit and Environmental Sustainability. Each installment has explored key ingredients to help businesses overcome barriers that prevent them from integrating environmental sustainability into their everyday operations. Read the entire series.

4 Ways Companies Can Embed Sustainability into Long-Term Business Strategy

In WRI’s recent working paper, Aligning Profit and Environmental Sustainability: Stories from Industry, we identify four recommendations that can help scale up these good ideas, including:

1. Set goals that integrate environmental considerations into core business decision-making. This can be achieved by reflecting environmental benefits in required payback periods or hurdle rates for projects that provide the company with important experience with low-carbon technologies and process changes. UPS, for example, relaxes the “hurdle rate” – or minimum rate of return required by the company – on certain vehicles it tests as part of its “rolling laboratory” for its fleet. These vehicles have the potential to reduce fuel use and costs over time.

2. Implement internal mechanisms that ensure environmental sustainability is valued and support public policies that put a stable price on externalities like GHG emissions and other environmental risks. For example, Greif took a lifecycle GHG view of its business operations to identify how new business growth could be achieved while reducing lifecycle GHG emissions. Other companies have joined coalitions like the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, which strongly call for public policies to address climate change.

3. Vest the Chief Sustainability Officer with greater authority over capital budget decisions and engage the sustainability team early in project planning. Giving the CSO some authority over financial planning—as Alcoa and AkzoNobel have done—can help ensure that the aspirations to improve environmental performance—which are often only enshrined in a company’s sustainability goals—are integrated into how the company invests its money.

4. Establish and manage metrics that comprehensively indicate risks and opportunities across the corporate value chain. For example, understanding supply chains’ cost to society—as Natura does through its supplier engagement program—can help companies choose suppliers that mitigate environmental risk and provide value. Companies that do not measure the environmental impact of their actions across the value chain may be missing important risks that should be mitigated, as well as opportunities to improve their environmental performance and save money.

The good news is that we’re already learning from the examples of business leaders who are aligning profit goals with environmental sustainability. Mainstreaming their best practices—and innovating new ones—can help put the world on a trajectory for a truly environmentally sustainable economy.

wri

[Graeme]

Sustainable innovation could be worth £100bn for UK companies

Sustainability advocates are undergoing a rethink. For decades, they've harangued big business about what it ought to be doing. The tactic has elicited a begrudging, heel-dragging response for the most part. Now, they are hoping that a shift in focus might just kick corporations into action.

A new study from Accenture, Business in the Community (BITC) and Marks and Spencer makes precisely this case. According to the Fortune Favours the Brave report, sustainable goods and services in the UK now represent a pot worth £200bn. UK companies that adopt sustainability practices and strategies, meanwhile, could stand to cash in on productivity gains of an additional £100bn. That's some prize.

"We can talk about population, water, land use, energy and climate change, but that doesn't necessarily inspire businesses to take the right action", says Richard Gillies, director of Plan A at Marks and Spencer.

"So the motivation is creating vibrant, growing businesses that create successful economies, which is why the report stresses the prize."

During a period of flat growth, the 'green' economy marks a rare chink of light. Clean technology, for instance, has seen 24% growth since the height of the financial crisis in 2008. So-called "circular economy" services, such as recycling and recovery, have grown 18% over the same period.

Where sustainable economic success differs from traditional models is on the duality of its outcomes: what Harvard management professor Michael Porters defines as "shared value".

That's to say, what works for business delivers for society and the environment too.

guardian

[Graeme]

World’s top banks to penalise businesses that damage nature

It is not easy to put a value on a forest, a clean river, or unpolluted air, but that is what a group of the world’s biggest banks is attempting to do.

They have agreed that the way the present economic system uses and often destroys the environment without paying to do so is not sustainable.

The banks are also concerned that some companies are using up natural resources so fast, with no thought for their own future, let alone that of the planet, that they will collapse.

They want a way of warning them and ultimately withdrawing their credit unless the companies mend their ways.

The 43 financial institutions, including the World Bank, are setting up a working party as a consequence of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in 2012, also known as the Rio+20 summit, when the initial 39 large banks signed a Natural Capital Declaration.

The declaration defined natural capital as “the Earth’s natural assets (soil, air, water, flora and fauna), and the ecosystem services resulting from them, which make human life possible.”

The document went on to say that the food, fibre, water, health, energy, climate security and other essential services provided by natural capital were worth trillions of dollars a year, but that they were not adequately valued.

Carrot and stick

“Despite being fundamental to our wellbeing, their daily use remains almost undetected within our economic system. Using natural capital in this way is not sustainable”, the declaration says.

The bankers went on to acknowledge this was partly their fault because they had no way of valuing this natural capital, nor did they currently recognize the danger to the stability of some companies because of its destruction.

They want governments to force companies to disclose their dependence on natural capital and the impact they have on it by disclosures in annual financial reports.

They also want penalties for companies not doing so and tax incentives for those who protect natural capital as part of their business.

rtcc

[ralfy]

The bad news is that banks can only operate outside sustainability.

[dohboi]

Nor can modern (or any other?) civilization.

[Graeme]

Is the sustainability glass half full or half empty?

A shift in the corporate landscape that sees companies increasingly taking the lead in tackling the world's biggest problems, is a reason to be optimistic, writes Brad Kahn.

With carbon emissions rising, deforestation continuing and many companies still struggling in a shaky global economy, it might seem alluring to embrace a "half empty" perspective.

Yet examples to the contrary were abundant last month as sustainability leaders from around the world met in Copenhagen for the Forest Stewardship Council's (FSC) In Good Company conference.

FSC, as the organisation is frequently known, protects forests for future generations by creating a market for products from certified responsibly managed forests. The two-day conference brought together retailers, environmental groups, forest products companies and manufacturers to provide a critical look at the current state of corporate social responsibility, and branding through environmental labelling to chart a path forward.

FSC invited the Fairtrade Foundation to share the organisation's experience of working with companies promoting their products with Fairtrade labelling. Many Fairtrade certified products are sold in FSC certified packaging in the UK and globally.



From deforestation to global climate change, there is much work to do. While the FSC has certified more than 180 million hectares of forest around the world (nearly 450 million acres), that represents only 10% of the world's working forests. Clearly we are just getting started. Even so, as participants returned home, it was clear that among this crowd the sustainability glass was very much half full.

theguardian

[careinke]

Is the sustainability glass half full or half empty?

A shift in the corporate landscape that sees companies increasingly taking the lead in tackling the world's biggest problems, is a reason to be optimistic, writes Brad Kahn.

With carbon emissions rising, deforestation continuing and many companies still struggling in a shaky global economy, it might seem alluring to embrace a "half empty" perspective.

Yet examples to the contrary were abundant last month as sustainability leaders from around the world met in Copenhagen for the Forest Stewardship Council's (FSC) In Good Company conference.

FSC, as the organisation is frequently known, protects forests for future generations by creating a market for products from certified responsibly managed forests. The two-day conference brought together retailers, environmental groups, forest products companies and manufacturers to provide a critical look at the current state of corporate social responsibility, and branding through environmental labelling to chart a path forward.

FSC invited the Fairtrade Foundation to share the organisation's experience of working with companies promoting their products with Fairtrade labelling. Many Fairtrade certified products are sold in FSC certified packaging in the UK and globally.



From deforestation to global climate change, there is much work to do. While the FSC has certified more than 180 million hectares of forest around the world (nearly 450 million acres), that represents only 10% of the world's working forests. Clearly we are just getting started. Even so, as participants returned home, it was clear that among this crowd the sustainability glass was very much half full.

theguardian

Thanks for the info. Our forest is FSC certified. Pays more at harvest, for using sustainable practices that I use anyway.

[Graeme]

New Report On Global Corporate Sustainability Practices Shows Talkers Outnumber The Doers

In their quest to pursue growth and profits, many companies focus on reputation management alone while ignoring sustainable practices, which, according to a new report, is one of the most vital aspects of surviving in a crowded marketplace and should find its place among the core competitive strategies of a company.

The most significant sustainability issues revolve primarily around three areas -- social, environmental and economic -- that cover issues ranging from climate change to health care programs for employees. And, according to a new global research report by MIT Sloan Management Review and The Boston Consulting Group, while many companies “walk the talk” in addressing major sustainability concerns, there is a chasm separating thought and actual action.

“Walkers focus heavily on five business fronts: sustainability strategy, business case, measurement, business model innovation and leadership commitment,” the report said. “'Talkers,’ on the other hand, are equally concerned about the most significant sustainability issues, but address those issues to a far lesser degree.”



According to the research, the percentage of companies that have successfully established sustainable business practices has only grown from 30 percent to 37 percent over the past five years. In comparison, the percentage of companies that have tried but failed to build a workable sustainable business model has increased from 8 percent to 20 percent in the same period.

Worse, more than 50 percent of the report's respondents had not even tried to develop such a model.



The report said that “Walkers” are the companies that are closing the gap between thought and action by creating comprehensive, dedicated sustainability efforts. More than 90 percent of the Walkers had developed a strategy, compared to only 46 percent of Talkers.

Walkers also beat Talkers in terms of making sustainability a top management agenda item as 70 percent of the former had it as a permanent item on their company’s senior management to-do list, compared to only 24 percent of the latter.

According to a report from Bloomberg, a sustainable business model pays off and a perfect example of this can be seen in corporate America, where sustainability is steadily becoming part of the mainstream, helping companies produce “cost savings, revenue growth, and competitive advantage, along with environmental benefits.”

ibtimes

[Graeme]

Use less to create more – and reap the rewards

Using resources wisely sounds like a no brainer. What profit-making company would want to operate wastefully, using expensive energy unnecessarily while stacking up energy bills and watching profit margins dwindle?
Some of the benefits of resource efficiency are obvious: if you use resources wisely or simply use less, you will save money and help preserve the environment. But many forget about the reputational gains you can get from demonstrating a genuine commitment to minimising environmental impact. After all, who wouldn't want to invest in, or buy from, an efficient organisation?

Gerrit Heyns, partner at Osmosis Investment Management, maintains that resource efficient companies, which use less energy, water and create less waste per unit of revenue, "tend to produce higher investment returns than their less resource efficient rivals".

As well as appealing to investors, companies seen to be acting responsibly may attract more revenue, as consumers grow more environmentally conscious and make choices based on more than price alone. This in itself acts as a further draw for investors because a company with a healthy sales pipeline is an attractive investment opportunity. So it's really a virtuous circle.
Heyns continues, "Sustainability is an economic imperative. Companies that use less to create more show greater sustainability; as a business, for the environment and for the world as a whole."

businessgreen

[dohboi]

Any kind of mining is inherently unsustainable. But few advocates of sustainability imagine a society that does no mining, afaik.