2Sustain

Earlier this month, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol launched two new standards to help businesses better measure, manage and report their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions:

• The Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard reveals opportunities for companies to make more sustainable decisions about their activities and the products they produce, buy and sell. Large and small companies can look strategically at greenhouse gas emissions across their value chain, showing them where to focus limited resources to have the biggest impacts.
• The Product Life Cycle Standard enables companies to measure the greenhouse gas emissions of an individual product. Covering materials, manufacturing, use and disposal, the product standard will help companies improve and design new products and provide insights for more informed consumer choices.

The two new standards were developed by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). They were created in response to businesses that want to better understand and measure their climate impacts beyond their own operations, and they’ll enable companies to save money, reduce risks and gain competitive advantage, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol says.

“The new standards provide companies with a comprehensive view of the emissions produced when making a product and across the value chain. They will help companies make better business decisions and stimulate innovation of products and production methods,” explained Björn Stigson, President, WBCSD. “In today’s world, it is necessary to understand and measure the costs for production, labor and transportation of products, which become visible and actionable through emissions.”

Already, these new standards are gaining widespread traction: (more…)

The UPS Foundation has pledged nearly $2 million in grants to help plant, protect and preserve trees in urban and rural areas in the US and around the world.

The company says this reforestation program is grounded in collaboration with several of the world’s leading environmental organizations and will help manage and preserve forests in the US, Belgium, Canada, Brazil and China.

Environmental sustainability is one of The UPS Foundation’s official philanthropic focus areas, and reforestation programs like this one re-plant and protect tree species that can store carbon, mitigating climate change. As the company points out, a recent study published in the journal Science found that in total, established forests and young re-growth forests in the Tropics soaked up nearly 15 billion tonnes of CO2, or roughly half the emissions from industry, transport and other sources. Trees also produce fossil fuel substitutes, such as biomass, and they provide flood control and water regulation benefits.

Here are a few highlights from the list of The UPS Foundation’s new forestry-focused grants: (more…)

The World Resources Institute (WRI) is beefing up its efforts to help companies green their supply chains, thanks to a $420,000 grant from Walmart.

WRI’s Green Supply Chain Initiative will develop and deploy a new set of accounting tools to measure the greenhouse gas (GHG) impacts of a company’s supply chain and the products that are sold to customers. These tools will be based on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Standard, which is an international accounting standard used by businesses to identify, calculate and report their own emissions. It was developed by the WRI and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) in 1998.
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