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…)

The US Postal Service is on track to meet two long-term sustainability goals.

For years now, USPS has been committed to:

• reducing energy use in its facilities 30 percent by 2015

• reducing greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent by fiscal year 2020.

New last week, the agency reported significant progress on both fronts.

USPS says it has achieved:

• an 8 percent reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from its fiscal year (FY) 2008 baseline –that’s a reduction of 1,067,834 metric tons of CO2 and an amount equivalent to the annual emissions of approximately 204,000 passenger vehicles

• a 12 percent reduction in facility energy-related emissions from its fiscal year (FY) 2008 baseline –enough to power approximately 39,000 average American households for a year.

What’s contributing to these positive results? According to USPS, the reductions are coming from a variety of sources, including: (more…)

Last week, Kohl’s Department Stores released its first annual corporate sustainability report.

The report, available at www.kohlsgreenscene.com, includes updates on the company’s primary environmental strategies: (more…)

Over the next two years, the global sustainable business market will reach a tipping point, triggering rapid market expansion, according to new research from Verdantix.

After analyzing spending patterns of more than 2,500 global firms, Verdantix found that growth rates of investment in sustainable business programs will be between 50 percent and 100 percent higher in 2013 than in 2011. As a result, total spend on sustainable business programs by $1bn revenues firms in Australia, Canada, the UK and the US markets alone will hit $60 billion in 2013.

In addition, Verdantix says the “tipping point” will be fueled by these three specific factors: (more…)

Back in 2007, China earned the dubious distinction of overtaking the US as the world leader in greenhouse gas emissions.

Since then, it seemed there would be “no end in sight.” As China’s economy continues to soar, won’t its energy use and GHG emissions follow the same trajectory?

Surprisingly, a new analysis by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) suggests the answer to that question is a rather emphatic “no.”

According to the research, China’s energy use will level off well before mid-century, even as its population edges past 1.4 billion. Why? Because, somewhere between 2030 and 2035, China will: 1) reach a “saturation” point with regard to consumer goods, and 2) develop alternative energy sources.

For example, the study predicts that before 2050: (more…)