2Sustain

The risk of natural resource shortages, coupled with changing customer and employee expectations, is likely to impact core business objectives in the coming years. Exactly how global companies have been addressing impacts like these has been somewhat murky –at least until now.

Results from a 2011 Ernst & Young LLP/GreenBiz Group comparative survey, “Six Growing Trends in Corporate Sustainability,” determined an increasing financial focus by executives on corporate sustainability efforts affecting core business objectives.

For example, the replies of 272 sustainability executives from 24 industry sectors provided several illuminating statistics centered on six major trends: (more…)

A new partnership between Nike, Inc. and Netherlands-based DyeCoo Textile Systems B.V., is poised to introduce a revolutionary technology to the sportswear world.

DyeCoo has developed and built the first commercially-available waterless textile dyeing machines. Remarkably, this industry-altering technology eliminates the use of water in the textile dyeing process by using recycled carbon dioxide—supercritical fluid carbon dioxide (SCF CO2 ) to be exact—to adhere coloring to cloth. After exploring this technology for the past eight years, Nike expects to showcase the new apparel at several events later in 2012.

Here are some facts and figures on the textile industry and what changes this growing technology will bring: (more…)

Ford of Europe is slashing the amount of waste it sends to landfills.

Ford announced a few weeks ago that by increasing the proportion of waste recycled and reused across European production lines, the company can cut landfill waste by a whopping 70 percent. That means a reduction in the average landfill waste generated per vehicle to 1.5kg by 2016 from 5kg in 2011.

In addition, Ford said it wants to reduce water use by 30 percent.

Based on annual production of 1.2 million vehicles, that translates to reducing water use by approximately 1.3 billion liters per year –or 1,100 less liters of water for each car or van produced.  Ford says this plan will also save €2.3 million (about $3 million) over the same time period. (more…)

Last week, the H.J. Heinz Company released it 2011 Corporate Social Responsibility Report and announced that the company is on track to achieve or surpass its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, solid landfill waste, energy consumption and water consumption by at least 20 percent each by Fiscal Year 2015.

Since the baseline year of 2005, Heinz has achieved the following cumulative reductions through Fiscal Year 2011, which ended on April 27:

• 45.6 percent global reduction in solid waste per 100 metric tons of production globally
• 21.8 percent global reduction in water consumption per metric ton of production globally
• 13.2 percent decrease in greenhouse gas emissions per metric ton of production globally
• 15.1 percent decrease in energy consumption per metric ton of production globally

The 2011 report, which adheres to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) G3 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines, also includes these additional highlights from 2011: (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…)