2Sustain

The world’s leading chemical company, BASF, has announced new ambitious environmental, health and safety goals.

Since BASF operates in an energy-intensive industry, it makes perfect business sense for the company to mitigate its energy and raw material risks by focusing on energy efficiency and then broader sustainability goals.

For example, by 2020, BASF wants to:

• Increase its energy efficiency –defined as the amount of sales products in relation to the primary energy demand – worldwide by 35 percent, compared to the previous goal of 25 percent.
• Reduce greenhouse gas emissions per ton of sales product by 40 percent compared to 2002.
• Reduce carbon emissions related to the amount and distance of transported natural gas by 10 percent compared with 2010.
• Reduce by half the current amount of drinking water in use for production compared to 2010.
• Establish sustainable water management systems at all production sites in areas of water stress.

These new ambitions mesh well with BASF’s past progress. As of last year, the company had: (more…)

Here’s a great interview with Adam Werbach, whom you may remember for rocking the boat among environmentalists in 2004 with his speech that challenged the green movement to link its goals with broader social and economic initiatives. The youngest-ever president of the Sierra Club (he was elected back in 1996 at age 23), Werbach stirred more controversy when he helped spearhead Wal-Mart’s sustainability efforts in 2006. (More about Wal-Mart’s initiatives here and here.) Now the CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi S, a consultancy arm of the global advertising firm dedicated to sustainability solutions, and the author of a new book, Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto, Werbach sat down with the McKinsey Quarterly to discuss “when sustainability means more than ‘green’.”

He talks about how the definition of sustainability has changed, and why it’s essential that we attach the ingenuity and innovation of the corporate world to help solve today’s global environmental challenges. (Case in point: Werbach reminds us that a truck from Wal-Mart was the first to reach Hurricane Katrina survivors.)

Enjoy the video. For more, read an adaptation from Strategy for Sustainability at the McKinsey Quarterly.