2Sustain

Cisco has released its seventh annual corporate social responsibility report, which outlines the company’s accomplishments and efforts in five areas: governance and ethics, the value chain, Cisco employees, society and the environment.

This year, Cisco supplemented its report with input from 25 external global CSR stakeholders who came together via Cisco TelePresence to provide feedback on the company’s CSR reporting process, performance and emerging issues.  According to Cisco, this input resulted in a more navigable report format, increased transparency on supply chain and governance issues  and added detail about how Cisco’s products and solutions are helping its customers meet their energy and environmental goals.

Here are a few environmental accomplishments highlighted in the report:

• Nearly 20,000 Cisco employees use Cisco Virtual Office to extend the company’s network into their homes, permitting high-speed access to voice, video and data applications and reducing green house gas (GHG) emissions by telecommuting one or more days each week.
• Cisco is on track to meet its commitment to reduce all Scope 1, 2, and business-air-travel Scope 3 GHG emissions worldwide by 25 percent absolute by CY12 (from a CY07 baseline).
• In FY11, Cisco conserved approximately 16.9 million kWh of energy and avoided 7,400 metric tonnes of CO2e emissions by investing $1.9 million in energy conservation projects. Twenty-six percent of Cisco’s global energy use was from renewable sources.

With regard to responsible sourcing and the value chain: (more…)

European consumers and business decision-makers are increasingly eager and willing to invest in making their buildings and homes more energy efficient, according to a recent survey conducted by online research organization OnePoll, on behalf of Autodesk, Inc.

More than 2,000 European residents in the UK, France, Germany and Italy participated in the study. Approximately 25 percent were business owners, directors or senior-decision makers. The results show that: (more…)

Asda, which operates more than 500 retail stores across the UK, announced earlier this month that it is on track to deliver customer savings adding up to £800 million (about $ 1.2 billion) by 2020, thanks to its commitment to sustainability initiatives.

The company has been working towards a variety of sustainability targets since 2005, when global parent Walmart announced its commitments to sustainable sourcing and reductions in energy use and waste.

Asda has already made considerable progress. The company has:

• saved more than £70m in 2010 alone by reducing waste and energy usage in its operations.
• reduced absolute carbon emissions by an industry leading 11.9 percent  –exceeding its target to achieve a 10 percent reduction by 2015.
• eliminated 149,000 tonnes of carbon from operations since 2007. (That’s the equivalent of taking 60,000 cars off the road for a year.)
• eliminated 900 jumbo jets worth of packaging from its products.
• reduced energy use in stores equivalent to that used by over 55,000 homes every year.
• eliminated 17 million miles from its supply chain. (The company says that’s the same as going to the moon and back 38 times.)
• redirected all food waste and 96 percent operational waste from landfill through recycling programs, including diverting waste for energy.

In addition, over the past nine months, Asda has asked customers about their views on sustainability issues and what matters to them. Based on this research, the company concluded that: (more…)

Last week, the H.J. Heinz Company released it 2011 Corporate Social Responsibility Report and announced that the company is on track to achieve or surpass its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, solid landfill waste, energy consumption and water consumption by at least 20 percent each by Fiscal Year 2015.

Since the baseline year of 2005, Heinz has achieved the following cumulative reductions through Fiscal Year 2011, which ended on April 27:

• 45.6 percent global reduction in solid waste per 100 metric tons of production globally
• 21.8 percent global reduction in water consumption per metric ton of production globally
• 13.2 percent decrease in greenhouse gas emissions per metric ton of production globally
• 15.1 percent decrease in energy consumption per metric ton of production globally

The 2011 report, which adheres to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) G3 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines, also includes these additional highlights from 2011: (more…)

For the last five years, an annual study by Packaging Digest has shown sustainability’s steady growth as a driver of change and innovation in the packaging sector. Unfortunately, though, data from this year’s survey indicates that this momentum might be slowing.

The Sustainability in Packaging study is the longest running benchmarking survey on this topic in the industry, and the September 2011 drew 674 responses from a cross section of the packaging industry, including consumer packaged goods companies (CPGs), retailers, packaging services and converters, as well as machinery and materials suppliers.

Here are a few key findings: (more…)