2Sustain

Best Buy has released its sixth corporate responsibility report, which not only reveals the company’s performance highlights for fiscal year 2011, but also outlines several ambitious goals for the future.

For example, going forward, Best Buy is committed to:

• recycling one billion pounds of consumer goods and

• reducing its carbon footprint by 20 percent by 2020, regardless of how much the company grows.

In addition to these goals, Best Buy’s new CSR report discloses that, specifically with regard to environmental stewardship, the company already has: (more…)

PepsiCo now offers five options of eco-friendly, recyclable and compostable cups to its Foodservice customers in the US.

These new cup options include:

• fully recyclable clear plastic cups (one alternative is a rPET cup containing 20 percent post-consumer recycled content)

• compostable paper cups and wax cups made with plant-based materials sourced from sustainably managed forests

According to PepsiCo, the fountain cup portfolio mix empowers Foodservice customers –such as restaurants, stadiums and theme parks, and colleges and universities –to select the right green cup options based on locally available recycling and composting disposal facilities.

PepsiCo also sees the eco-friendly cups as a way to connect with consumers –particularly college and university students –who are increasingly interested in sustainable packaging options.

“The new cups are an advancement in technology, but also in the way we communicate,” said Margery Schelling, CMO PepsiCo Foodservice. “Customers increasingly are asking for environmental products that match changing needs, expectations and lifestyles. We want consumers to enjoy their favorite fountain beverages and feel good about the environmental impact of their purchases.”

In a press release, PepsiCo points out that the roll out of eco-friendly cups is aligned with the company’s global environmental goals and commitments, which include initiatives to reduce packaging waste, use rPET and renewable sources in packaging and increase the national beverage container recycling rate. Specific examples of PepsiCo innovations with respect to beverage packaging include: (more…)

The global packaging industry continues to view sustainability as a top priority.

Among 500 packaging professionals surveyed by DuPont earlier this spring, more than 40 percent consider sustainability the toughest challenge they face.  One-third (33 percent) of those in the poll named cost as a major factor.

DuPont also found that survey participants who are working on sustainable packaging reported a wide range of different strategies. For example: (more…)

It’s only May, but Cintas Corporation has already achieved significant environmental savings in 2011. The company credits these accomplishments to: 1) comprehensive document management services and 2) an innovative plastic-to-fiber process that allows Cintas to create garments from post-consumer material such as plastic water bottles.

In a press release, Cintas says its document management division offers an environmentally-conscious approach to protecting confidential business and personal information, including records from human resources and credit card receipts.

Thanks to the company’s secure SmartShred™ process, Cintas recycled the equivalent of planting 4.4 million trees during fiscal year 2011 –an incredibly impressive achievement that saved approximately: (more…)

Take one look around any doctor’s office or a hospital room, and it’s obvious: Modern healthcare depends on plastic products and materials.

Clearly, increasing the overall recycling of this plastic could have enormous positive impacts on both the environment and healthcare costs, so I was happy to hear that eight leading brands from the healthcare, recycling and waste management sectors are now joining forces to “inspire and enable” sustainable, cost effective recycling solutions for plastic products and materials used in the delivery of healthcare.

The new Healthcare Plastics Recycling Council (HPRC) consists of members from:

• Becton, Dickinson and Company
• Cardinal Health
• Engineered Plastics
• DuPont
• Hospira
• Johnson & Johnson
• Kimberly Clark
• Waste Management

The goal of the collaboration is to identify plastics recycling barriers and solution development along the entire value chain, seeking to affect plastics recycling from healthcare product design and manufacturing through product use, disposal and recycle.

HPRC says initially it will focus on three initiatives: (more…)