2Sustain

Communications conglomerate AT&T, in collaboration with global sustainability consultancy Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), is continuing its march on environmentally-conscious business practices with the release of a new eco-rating system for its products.

In just a few months, consumers will find AT&T eco-ratings on simple, easy-to-read-and-understand labels included with AT&T-branded mobile devices.

As a recent Deloitte study showed, sustainability is becoming increasingly important for consumer purchasing decisions. In fact, more than half (54 percent) of surveyed shoppers said they consider sustainability to be one of their top decision-making factors.

To provide consumers with information so they can make more educated and environmental decisions, AT&T’s new eco-rating system will cover attributes such as: (more…)

The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), the in-house science service for the EU, has developed a new model to help protect global bluefin tuna populations.

The model uses satellite remote sensing data to provide a unique, overall view of the preferred bluefin tuna habitats in the Mediterranean Sea. The potential presence of bluefin tuna can be tracked through daily updated maps, helping to protect endangered stocks, chart their changes over time and fight illegal fishing.

Protection is needed. (more…)

How will climate change impact the coastal landscape of California?

New research from the US Department of the Interior, US Geological Survey (USGS) gives us some insights.

In the first integrated study of its kind, USGS scientists and academic colleagues analyzed how California’s interconnected San Francisco Bay and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (the Bay-Delta system) could change from 2010 to 2099 in response to both fast and moderate climate warming scenarios. The results show that: (more…)

Pharmaceutical companies are “all over the map” with regard to environmental sustainability goals, according to David Schatsky, principal analyst and founder of Green Research, a New York-based corporate sustainability research and advisory firm.

Green Research recently released an analysis of the environmental sustainability goals of 13 leading pharmaceutical companies. The companies studied included Abbott, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly & Co, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi and Teva, and the report found that: (more…)

Forest Footprint Disclosure (FFD) has launched its second Annual Review, identifying how international companies that have direct exposure to forest risk commodities (FRCs) are responding to increasing pressure from deforestation.

These FRCs include timber, soy, cattle products, palm oil and biofuels.

Unfortunately, it appears that many of these FRCs are choosing to ignore deforestation risks. This year, FFD approached 285 companies for its annual review, and only 78 companies (27 percent) responded. (See the full list here.) In the Reveiw, FFD calls on more businesses to recognize the importance of changes in regulation and policy relating to protecting forested lands and the need for managements to assess their risk exposure in more detail.

“It’s not just environmental good sense, it makes increasingly sound business sense to understand and reduce deforestation pressures driven by agricultural expansion right now – to prepare for both future legislation and market opportunities,” Tracey Campbell, Director of the FFD Project, said.

More specifically, the review highlighted these four specific business impacts that could result from not engaging on this important issue: (more…)