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The 2nd annual green startup competition recognizes twenty-five of the most innovative eco-startups. This year’s winner will receive BBMG’s $25,000 Brand Innovation Charette, and a $1,000 shopping spree at Office Depot.
OG25 Innovative Green Startup finalists will be showcased at this year’s Opportunity Green conference, September 23rd – 24th at Los Angeles Center Studios.
Mobile voting will be provided by MobileGive, whose innovative texting solutions are being utilized again this year.
Watch this site for the voting widget.
September 23rd, 2010 by admin. Posted in Business, Events, Featured, Technology
It’s been exactly a year since Walmart’s historic launch of a Sustainability Index and other measures to assess suppliers and products and, remarkably, the sun still rises in the East and sets in the West.
Most skeptics say there is less than meets the eye. A brief review: Last summer, Walmart announced that it would assess its suppliers on environmental and social criteria. It announced a Sustainable Product Index to “establish a single source of data for evaluating the sustainability of products,” the company said.
Walmart said it would introduce the initiative in three phases, beginning with a survey of its more than 100,000 suppliers around the world. The survey includes 15 questions that “serve as a tool for Walmart’s suppliers to evaluate their own sustainability efforts.
For more on where Walmart stands one year later, visit GreenBiz here.
July 20th, 2010 by Chathri Munasinghe. Posted in Business, News
With sustainability certifications abounding, learn what businesses should consider for their sustainability certification from Melissa Schweisguth in this post from Greenbusinesses.com
10 Tips for Savvy Shopping in the Certification Marketplace
In the face of surging skepticism around social and environmental claims, sellers and buyers alike are demanding verification. Sustainability certification has become a booming industry with over 400 in use and new ones emerging almost weekly. This, in turn, has led to scrutiny and public criticism of apparent shortcomings.
Understandably, the net result has been mounting confusion and uncertainty about what particular certifications deliver and their relative value. To help consumers and businesses navigate this landscape, the Consumers Union launched its Greener Choices database several years ago, providing basic information on over 300 labels. Realizing greater breadth and depth were needed, the World Resources Institute recently launched its more detailed Global Ecolabel Monitor.
Equipped with this intelligence, businesses face the question of how to use it to determine what designations to pursue and ask of suppliers. Strategic selection is key. Given the resources involved, it’s not practical to stamp every admirable trait. Nor is it necessary or beneficial, given that businesses can improve many practices and ensure positive outcomes with their own resources and supplier engagement, and the reality that claims lose their value with saturation. To this end, there are several factors to take into account:
1. Relevance
This is among the first aspects to consider and will help identify potential areas for labeling. Determine what’s pertinent to your mission and key impacts, real-world issues, suppliers and stakeholders. If you have an existing sustainability strategy or materiality analysis, it’s a perfect starting point to ensure alignment across business activities.
2. Relative Priority
Pare down relevant certification areas to what matters most — your biggest impacts, responsibilities and stakeholder concerns. Overlooking these and highlighting trivial issues can invite criticism for greenwash. You’re likely to end up with multiple focal points, given the diverse factors and stakeholders involved.
3. Recommendations
Ask peers, suppliers, field experts and key stakeholders what options they would suggest, any they would advise against, and why. Scan the market to see what comparable businesses are doing and inquire why they selected that path. Close competitors may choose one program over another simply to maintain differentiation, so ask several colleagues for representative input.
4. Governance
Research the ethics behind each label’s development and implementation. Look for independence, regular efficacy assessments and direct audits, 3rd party verification, periodic updating of criteria, broad stakeholder involvement in governance and standard setting, organizational and process transparency, public reporting and the like. Alignment with the ISEAL Alliance Code of Good Practice is a good indicator here.
5. Real Impact
Consider measured, positive outcomes for workers, suppliers, end users, your business, the environment and other stakeholders. Many certifiers produce annual reports and all should be able to produce data demonstrating how their offerings leave people, planet and commerce better off than the status quo. For a balanced, unbiased view, review assessments from 3rd parties and solicit input from directly affected stakeholders, such as workers in supply chain verification programs.
6. Rigor
To avoid greenwash, choose certifications that go beyond the status quo, add significant value and have a meaningful positive impact on people and planet. Seek out high-bar criteria and quantifiable systems that make relative performance clear, such as the graded levels used for LEED and USDA Organic. In addition, look for programs grounded in vetted international frameworks, such as International Labor Organization Conventions, ISO standards and the United Nations Global Compact and its constituent elements.
7. Requirements
Understand what your company, suppliers and other business partners must to comply, and how feasible this is within current systems. Having to make changes need not be a deterrent, since these engender the higher-level progress toward sustainability that’s necessary and truly worthy of recognition. You’ll simply need to estimate what’s needed in such cases and develop strategies for initial certification and scaling up. For example, if sufficient raw materials aren’t available, you might label one product line initially and expand as supply grows, as companies adopting Fair Trade Certified and Rainforest Alliance are doing.
8. Return on Investment
Sellers and buyers often face costs related to audits, licensing, commodity premiums and the like, realized directly or indirectly, through higher supplier prices. In some cases, capital improvements, staff expansion and process changes may also be necessary to meet requirements. These should be clearly linked to necessary activities with quantifiable deliverables, and yield commensurate results and benefits. Ask peers and suppliers what costs they’ve incurred and how ROI has panned out.
9. Recognition and Resonance
Labels, in part, serve a m
arketing function so it’s important to gauge the familiarity and influence of your options. Relative awareness in itself isn’t cause to select or bypass a specific prospect, since it may simply reflect marketing, not real value. It’s simply an indicator of how you’ll need to communicate to build support from stakeholders. A survey from BBMG provides a quick scan of consumer insights around common certifications with marketing tips.
10. Reputation
It’s becoming easier to find independent assessments of labels, from industry experts, media and others. Look for a few different viewpoints for a comprehensive, well-rounded assessment. Give certifiers the opportunity to address any significant negative feedback you encounter, since hidden biases or misconceptions can be at play.
These tips should get you off to a good start in the bustling world of sustainability markers. If you have other suggestions, please share them in the comments section to engage with the GreenBiz community.
Melissa Schweisguth is director of membership development and education for the Food Trade Sustainability Leadership Association and an independent consultant on CSR/sustainability and marketing/communications.
Images CC licensed by Flickr users Andrew Currie, {Guerrilla Futures | Jason Tester}, kafka4prez, sirinyay, adulau and nikoretro.
Original source: http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2010/07/14/10-tips-savvy-shopping-certification-marketplace#ixzz0thoPnRgM
July 14th, 2010 by Amanda Crater. Posted in Business, Certification, Featured
From Environmental Leader
IBM CR Report: Energy Conservation Cuts Energy Costs by $26.8M
IBM’s energy conservation program saved the company $26.8 million and prevented more than 142,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions in 2009, according to the company’s 2009 Corporate Responsibility Report.
IBM’s report provides an overview of four key areas: energy conservation and climate protection, process stewardship, product stewardship and supply chain management. Here are the highlights.
In 2009, IBM’s energy conservation initiatives delivered savings equal to 5.4 percent of its total energy use, which exceeded the corporate goal of 3.5 percent. These projects saved more than 246,000 megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity and more than 410,000 million BTUs of fuel oil, cutting nearly $27 million in energy costs.
IBM has saved 5.1 billion kWh of electricity, which also prevented 3.4 million metric tons of CO2 emissions between 1990 and 2009.
As part of its effort, IBM is leveraging its technologies and solutions to make its data center operations more energy efficient. Projects include expanding virtualization and consolidation projects as well as extending its real-time thermal monitoring system across its data centers to identify areas for energy improvements. In addition, the company is implementing new processes to minimize back-up IT equipment energy use and is improving IT equipment energy efficiency.
In February 2010, IBM opened its new data center in Raleigh, North Carolina, which uses only half the energy required of a similar facility its size.
Earlier this year, IBM’s four-processor and UNIX-based POWER 750 Express and Power 755 enterprise servers became the first four-processor servers in the industry to be qualified to the U.S. EPA Energy Star server requirements.
IBM also is helping cities and utilities become smarter by providing new technologies and tools to help them better manage their resources, while reducing cost, increasing reliability and lowering energy and water consumption.
IBM set a goal to reduce perfluorocompounds (PFCs) emissions from its semiconductor manufacturing operations 25 percent by 2010 against a base year of 1995. As of year-end 2009, IBM’s PFC emissions were 48.8 percent below the 1995 baseline amount of 381,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent. The company attributes a portion of the reduction to reduced manufacturing volumes in 2009.
Between 1990 and 2005, IBM’s energy conservation actions prevented CO2 emissions by an amount equal to 40 percent of its 1990 emissions. IBM’s “second-generation” goal is to reduce CO2 emissions associated with the company’s energy use 12 percent between 2005 and 2012 through energy conservation and the procurement of renewable energy.
IBM’s 2009 CO2 emissions were 2.6 percent below its 2008 emissions, and 5.7 percent below its adjusted 2005 baseline.
To help reduce energy demand, IBM is increasing its purchase of renewable energy.
In 2009, IBM purchased 560 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of renewable energy, an increase of over 100 million kWh compared to 2008. The purchases represent 11.3 percent of the company’s 2009 global electricity use.
In February 2010, IBM announced it had built a thin-film solar cell that claims an efficiency of 9.6 percent, which is 40 percent higher than previous designs. IBM says this solar cell set a new world record for efficiency and holds the potential for producing low-cost energy that can be used widely and commercially.
IBM has eliminated all known uses of perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluoro octanoic acid (PFOA) from its microprocessor manufacturing processes as of January 2010, becoming the first in the industry to announce elimination of these two compounds.
In 2009, IBM saved 1,346 metric tons of packaging material through 60 projects worldwide, delivering annual cost savings of $9.3 million.
In 2009, IBM’s product end-of-life management (PELM) operations worldwide processed approximately 41,400 metric tons of end-of-life products and product waste. These PELM operations reused or recycled 95.8 percent of the total amount processed and sent only 0.5 percent to landfills or to incineration facilities for treatment.
IBM has recovered more than 1.7 billion pounds (770,553 metric tons) of product and product waste worldwide from 1995 to year-end 2009.
IBM set new requirements to address sustainability and environmental aspects of its nearly 30,000 suppliers.
Esty Environmental Partners (EEP) and IBM have launched the Sustainability Innovators Working Group, together with 12 other companies, aimed at developing new management tools and models for environmental management and corporate sustainability.
Original source: http://www.environmentalleader.com/2010/06/30/ibm-cr-report-energy-conservation-cuts-energy-costs-by-26-8m/
July 14th, 2010 by Amanda Crater. Posted in Business, Energy, Featured
By Eric McNulty
I had the pleasure of introducing Rep. Edward Markey for his opening keynote at the recent Executive Council Sustainable Cities leadership forum.
Markey has been at the forefront of the Congressional response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, is the co-author of the Waxman-Markey climate change bill, and author of the bill that increased auto mileage standards for the first time in three decades. The League of Conservation Voters calls him the environment’s best advocate in Congress.
Markey gave a fiery address about the need for the U.S. to become the leader in alternative energy. What I found interesting was his view that regulation can be a catalyst to those efforts. While many business leaders think that regulation in anathema to innovation, Markey disagrees. He pointed to his prior work on the Telecommunications Committee that shifted a segment of the broadcast spectrum into commercial use for cellular and other wireless communications. Without that regulatory move, the cell phone and broadband revolutions would have been greatly slowed or might never have happened at all.
The lesson is that the private and public sectors can be catalysts for each other. The private sector organizations pushing for adoption of a carbon cost bill (either a carbon tax or cap-and-trade) are hoping that it will spur another revolution. They are also, to be honest, hoping to seek regulatory advantage by getting a bill that aligns with their competitive position. Public players have their own interests, too. They are hoping to get jobs created in their districts, contributions from companies that do well as a result of the legislation, and have something to point to as accomplishment in the next election cycle.
July 7th, 2010 by Amanda Crater. Posted in Building, Business, Certification, Climate, Energy, Events, News, Transportation
