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…)

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…)

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…)

The Coca-Cola Company has released its eighth annual system-wide Sustainability Report, Reasons to Believe, and in an effort to improve transparency across the company’s broad sustainability platform, this new report includes several different “firsts” for the beverage giant.

For example, this year’s report was created using stakeholder feedback and, for the first time, The Coca-Cola Company followed the disclosure and reporting requirements of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), earning the company a self-declared grade level “B+.”

In addition, company decided to publish its report exclusively online, using a unique digital format that offers easier access from smart phones, tablets and other mobile devices.

With regard to environmental stewardship, Reasons to Believe reveals that The Coca-Cola Company has: (more…)