No matter who attends the BSR conference, we always seem to find a balance between the people who legitimately wish to improve sustainability, not just for their company but the planet, and those who set out to further their profits by subtle or blatant greenwashing.
During the Thursday morning breakfast, Zhang Yue, chairman and CEO of China-based Broad Air Conditioning woke the crowd up as he spoke through an interpreter. A few minutes before that, I found myself asking a colleague “Who is this guy?” After 10 minutes, I changed my mind. More people should listen to this guy. True, I haven’t done due diligence on his company but if his company does half the things that he says they do then I’m on board. Yue created China’s first “non-electric chiller” and insists on showing consumers how triple paned windows will reduce their need to use air conditioners. Consider that their business revolves around making air conditioners.
We need a new model for production and consumption. According to World Watch, “If the consumption aspiration of the wealthiest of nations cannot be satiated, the prospects for corralling consumption everywhere before it strips and degrades our planet beyond recognition would appear to be bleak”
When we think about “sustainable packaging,” we think about recycled paper and plastics, but there is a lot more to sustainability than that. In running across a company called Distant Village Packaging, which specializes in sustainable packaging, that fact was brought home in a powerful way. . . in pictures.
I learned of A Distant Village when it introduced what it calls “the world’s most environmentally-friendly labels.” Called Pure Labels, these are adhesive-backed inkjet or laser printer labels made of wild grass paper. They are not only produced with 100% recyclable materials (including no HDPE or other plastics) but are manufactured according to what the company calls “the strictest adherence to socially responsible business practices.”
We had a chance to put together a Way Basics shelf recently. It really was as easy as they represented - at least it was for Woody the wonder dog and my two daughters Mary and Jessie.
I read about Way Basics and was intrigued. I needed some simple book shelves and figured I’d just go to a garage sale and find something, but it just hadn’t happened yet - didn’t realize how prized these things were! So, I was thrilled when they sent me a sample to play with.
In the constant push for ever newer and greener technology and energy, we sometimes forget that it is often both simpler and cheaper to revisit old techniques in new ways. And that’s exactly what a group of researchers in California has done.
GE partners with New York state to create a $ 100 million manufacturing facility for a new sodium based battery technology in the Capital region.
Who imagined that ordinary table salt could be the secret to storing energy?
GE is once again bringing the notion of a technology based economy home, this time with ordinary kitchen ingredients like table salt. Today, the company announced a plan to locate a new, sodium battery manufacturing facility in Upstate New York’s Capital Region.
The sodium battery was developed in GE’s Global Research Center. Made of ordinary table salt and nickel, the sophisticated technology already has about 30 patents blocking the intellectual property in its space.
GE has already invested more than $150 million to develop advanced battery technologies, including this high energy density, sodium-based chemistry battery that is designed to store huge densities of energy in a relatively small space. The first application will be GE’s hybrid locomotive, which will be commercialized in 2010. The investment in sodium battery technology complements GE’s investment in A123, a leading supplier of lithium batteries for plug-in electric passenger cars.
A public-private partnership in New York State
New York Governor David Paterson, is intent on making his state, the capital of the global clean energy economy. He and Dennis Mullen, President of the Upstate Empire State Development Corporation, have shown strong support for GE’s sodium battery project from the outset.
With this investment of $550 million worth, Ford continues the track to deliver its promise to bring four new electric vehicles to the U.S. by 2012 and will support approximately 3,200 jobs.
The Inspired Economist interviewed Jennifer Moore, Corporate News Manager at Ford. Here’s what she had to say.
IE: Why is Ford making over an SUV facility to manufacture the Ford Focus? Will Ford completely halt….or merely downsize its production of SUVs and Lincoln Navigators?
JM: The retooling of this facility to make small cars and the battery electric vehicle is a part of our overall transformation plan to convert some of our truck plants to small car facilities, leverage our global assets and produce smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles for our customers.
We have not halted production of the Lincoln Navigator and Ford Expedition - production was transferred to our Kentucky Truck plant. We still believe there is a market for large SUVs for customers who desire the size and capability of the vehicles, but we recognize that market will clearly be smaller than it was in the past. As part of our transformation, we are balancing our product portfolio and that is the reason we are retooling the Michigan Assembly Plant.
TerraCycle has done it again . . . Tom Szaky and his talented wife, Soyeon Lee have managed to make used Frito Lay bags into CD covers for Soyeon’s latest release, Reinvented.
Soyeon is a classical concert pianist, with an impressive Julliard, Carnegie Hall performance history who may be the first to bring the eco-cause into the world of classical [...]
In the January 5, 2009 issue of Chemical & Engineering News, the official trade journal of the American Chemical Society, the ACS announced the formation of the Formulated Products Roundtable. This organization, which will begin operating later this month, is an industry-financed partnership between the ACS’s Green Chemistry Institute (GCI), a not-for-profit group devoted to promoting green chemistry, and sixteen prominent companies that manufacture cosmetics, perfumes, soaps, detergents, and other household and industrial cleaning products. Its aim is to share [...]
If Wal-Mart is ever going to achieve the status of a company truly committed to sustainable business practices, there’s one 800-pound gorilla that it must address: China. The company’s sustainability summit on October 21 and 22 in Beijing was an attempt to do that, both from a PR perspective, but also in terms of “laying down the law” with its suppliers in China.
Supplier commitments: All suppliers will sign new agreements indicating compliance with environmental laws, starting with Chinese suppliers to the U.S., UK, and Canada in just 3 months. Over the next 3 years, all suppliers globally will sign.
Audits: Wal-Mart will “strengthen” its surprise and third-party audit program
Supplier goals: The top 200 suppliers will achieve 20% energy efficiency improvement, and most importantly, “By 2012, all suppliers that we buy from directly should source 95% of product from companies that have the highest ratings in audits.”
Product goals and quality: Zero defective merchandise returns by 2012. Lee Scott connected quality to sustainability in very funny, specific terms: “Customers want a sock that will not fall down even if washed.”
Transparency: Suppliers must reveal the name and location of every factory they use to make a product, as early as November for apparel, then home goods, toys, and others by the end of 2009. As [Wal-Mart's Vice Chairman Mike] Duke said, “If you sell us tennis shoes, we expect you to know and tell us where it was made and which sub-contractors were involved…If you don’t pose these questions, our customers will…in this age of YouTube there is no trust without transparency.” (Wal-Mart will have more insight into what’s going on at factories than ever before thanks to the work of Ma Jun who runs an NGO that has compiled compliance data on every factory. See his group’s stunning water pollution map here.)
Dropping suppliers: Wal-Mart will work with suppliers that fail to comply, but “if after a period of time, the supplier does not improve, we will move our business.”
Carbon Sciences, Inc. has developed an innovative technology to convert carbon dioxide (CO2) - which is implicated in the issue of global warming - into a number of commercially useful, earth-friendly carbon products. The company calls this technology advance: GreenCarbon Technology. The aim is to extract value from carbon emissions by transforming the gas into a product that holds commercial value.
No matter who attends the BSR conference, we always seem to find a balance between the people who legitimately wish to improve sustainability, not just for their company but the planet, and those who set out to further their profits by subtle or blatant greenwashing.
