In this post, Elaine analyzes the GRI’s own sustainability report, asking what extent GRI Stakeholders should be content with a report about direct impacts and outputs (the things that the GRI is saying, doing, using) versus a report about the outcomes the GRI can reasonably claim to have influenced.
Examines the case for government leadership in promoting the development of distributed grid connected energy storage, arguing that government leadership is necessary in order to kick start this very important component of the robust electric energy infrastructure that is in our nations best interest. The author also argues that doing so will bring down electric vehicle battery costs and help promote EV adoption rates, which are inhibited by high unit costs driven by battery prices.
Examines 16 important qualities that green building materials should strive to achieve and that builders need to weigh during the materials selection process of a project. A well planned green building material selection process can help to ensure the best solution for a given project with given goals and constraints peculates up through the decision process.
This post examines the importance of successfully communicating the importance of sustainability for the bottom line, in terms of risk mitigation, value opportunities and business benefits associated with sustainability to an organization’s CFO. The CFO is typically ultimately responsible for investor relations, facilities, purchasing, human resources, IT and have a large impact on all organizational resource allocation decision making in general, and CFOs can have a major impact on the ultimate success or failure of an organizations sustainability programs.
In this post Robert focuses on the green marketing gap, the perception gap that exists and results in most Americans perceiving green as an elitist phenomena. He outlines some of the principle problems that have caused this state of affairs to develop and argues that marketing should be geared to reinforcing the benefits that your product offers the planet.
Looks at the importance of sustainable packaging in achieving a sustainable supply chain. Many factors ranging from form factor, packaging weight, to recyclable post consumer content and so forth acting in concert go into green packaging, which can lead to significant cost savings throughout the supply chain, at each single step where packaged materials are used, including consumer packaging itself. The post goes on to list important considerations and attributes related to green packaging.
In this post guest author Bob Faulhaber does a little bit of self examination, using his own personal life to illustrate the many ways and the many habits we may have that might make us considerably less green than we would like to think we are. He takes stock of how he lives; in what kind of house; his work; his car; his kids and his personal habits.
indoor marijuana weed cannibisThe yearly greenhouse-gas pollution of the $40 billion per year marijuana industry is responsible for about 3% of all electricity use or 8% of household use. Indoor growers use high-intensity lights that are 500 times more powerful that a standard reading lamp. They also use several other high energy industrial practices. The closest comparison for these massive, industrial-style grow facilities are data centers, which consume about two percent of the nation’s electric power.
This post highlights how facilities management is an important, if often unsung part of so many businesses… any businesses with facilities, in fact. Sustainable facilities management is an area that can have a profound and near term impact on overall business sustainability. Very large potential energy savings and hence carbon footprint reduction could be realized in facilities management areas such as HVAC or lighting for example; the embodied energy of facilities — their materials and recurring requirements; how runoff is handled and so forth all are areas in which sustainable facilities management can really impact the triple bottom line in a positive way.
