Summary of a talk given by Frances Edmonds, Director of Environmental Programs, HP Canada in which she outlined how HP’s environmental commitment has led to greater profitability. In this talk she uses various examples of how successful sustainability efforts can be win win propositions that are good for the environment and also good for the company’s bottom line.
Company management should evaluate and prioritize green options while remaining aligned with their organization’s overall business mission. In this post, Susan Buchanan advises organizations that are just beginning the approach to sustainability to start with the low hanging fruit, i.e. the relatively achievable and lower cost green initiatives that can deliver short-term paybacks by reducing energy and natural resource consumption. Starting with an objective evaluation of their current state of sustainability and the options for change both in terms of financial metrics of course, but also looking at other metrics such as footprint and life cycle costing. Once these baseline metrics are established then the many green opportunities become more clear.
GRANT ALERT: The DOE is accepting applications for small-scale process integration projects supporting the development of advanced biofuels that will be able to replace gasoline or diesel without requiring special upgrades or changes to the vehicle or fueling infrastructure.
Consumers’ growing interest in environmental sustainability has prompted companies to launching major ad campaigns touting their green credential, often with misleading claims. Enterprise Carbon Accounting (ECA) software can have the infrastructure necessary to hold greenwashers accountable.
There are many and significant responsibility overlaps between the private sector and government. They include: how to assess whether a potential vendor is green; responding to the people or how the need for society to go green changes the marketplace;and understanding how an organization’s communications can have an impact on its image as a green organization.
Implementing a Product Information Management (PIM) strategy can help support your corporate sustainability initiatives by having correct data throughout the supply chain. Inaccuracies in product information can cause waste and inefficiencies in the supply chain. And how, as a side benefit, PIM systems contribute to a company’s sustainability initiatives by eliminating these inaccuracies, reducing waste and saving money at the same time. Statistics prove the benefits of implementing a PIM solution and as the amount of product information continues to increase, the old methods of managing it all just won’t work anymore when sustainability, efficiency and accuracy is a concern.
Often green washing is not an outright attempt to be deceptive, but rather stems from failing to consider environmental impact measures with the same robust attention as is usually given to more established and familiar measures of business performance.
Can we really ever move beyond petroleum? Traditional fossil fuels like coal and petroleum are so ingrained in our culture and way of life that eradicating them as fuel sources soon is unlikely. We need to think about what we produce and the costs that go beyond the balance sheet: the costs to the environment, to the people that live where our raw materials originate, the cost of the life of a pelican, gull or fish. It is our personal responsibility to consume less and conserve more.
A newly-released Pew Center report “From Shop Floor to Top Floor: Best Business Practices in Energy Efficiency,” documents that US companies are increasingly pursuing innovative energy efficiency strategies to boost productivity and cost savings, while reducing their carbon footprint.
