2Sustain

First there was the carbon footprint. Next came the water footprint . . . and then the forest footprint.

Now, it’s time to get ready for the plastic footprint.

The New York Times is reporting that starting in early October, hundreds of companies and institutions around the world will receive a questionnaire asking them to assess and report their use of plastic.

The goal of this new survey? To build awareness about plastic use and have companies manage and utilize plastic more wisely, according to Doug Woodring, an environmental entrepreneur in Hong Kong who has a background in asset management and is the driving force behind the initiative.

The Plastic Disclosure Project (PDP), which was first introduced in September 2010 at the Clinton Global Initiative, will be re-launched to the public with a new website next month.

The initiative aims to improve transparency in reporting while educating both businesses and the general public about the possible environmental and health impacts of the materials used in production. Researchers estimate that about 90 percent of plastics made today are not recycled. As PDP points out, that represents an enormous opportunity for recycling, re-use, better design and cost savings. (more…)

A new report evaluates job impacts under these two Clean Air Act rules currently being proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA):

• the Clean Air Transport Rule, focused on sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from 31 targeted states in the East and Midwest and

• the Utility MACT rule which, for the first time, will set limits on hazardous air pollutants such as mercury, arsenic, lead and hydrochloric acid.

The research concluded that the job impacts are positive,  underscoring the significant economic benefits of updating the nation’s power plants.

The report, New Jobs-Cleaner Air: Employment Effects under Planned Changes to EPA’s Air Pollution Rules, prepared for Ceres by Dr. James Heintz of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, finds that these new air pollution rules will provide economic benefits and jobs across much of the United States, concentrated especially in the next five years.

More specifically, the report concludes that: (more…)

China’s colossal economic growth has come with enormous costs to the environment. China’s water resources have been particularly hard hit, and these days, the Yangtze tops the World Wildlife Fund’s list of the ten most-threatened rivers in the world.

BSR recently took an in-depth look at these issues, focusing specifically on water challenges and risks now inherent in the global electronics supply chain.

For this research, 10 Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) members submitted supplier names to BSR for matching against a publicly available database containing information on corporate environmental violations. After analyzing the 640 suppliers and matching them against the database, BSR found that: (more…)

Forming a partnership that illustrates the current trend towards non-profit/for-profit sustainability alliances, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has teamed up with The Coca-Cola Company to improve the water quality of the Yangtze River in China.

In many ways, the Yangtze has taken the brunt of China’s colossal economic growth, and even though the river provides China with 35 percent of its fresh water, it now ranks number one on WWF’s list of the ten most-threatened rivers in the world. For Coca-Cola, which operates 39 bottling plants in China, the partnership with WWF represents an opportunity to strengthen its commitment to water stewardship while mitigating its water risks.

A recent post at Knowledge@Wharton explains how non-profit/for-profit partnerships such as this one can be mutually beneficial: (more…)

Researchers from the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have released the Toxic 100 Air Polluters index, an updated list of the top corporate air polluters in the United States.

Based on the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) from industrial facilities across the United States, the Toxic 100 Air Polluters  index takes into account not only the quantity of chemical releases, but also the toxicity of chemicals, transport factors such as prevailing winds and height of smokestacks, and the number of people exposed. It provides access to this information on all firms operating in the United States, regardless of size.

In addition, for the first time, the Toxic 100 Air Polluters index includes information on the disproportionate risk burden from industrial air toxics for minorities and low-income communities. This makes it possible to compare corporations and facilities in terms of their environmental justice performance as well as overall pollution. For example, the findings reveal that minorities bear 65 percent of the air toxics risk from facilities owned by ExxonMobil, although minorities make up 38 percent of the U.S. population.

PERI researchers found that the top five air polluters among large corporations are: (more…)