What is the meaning and importance of embodied energy as a measure of sustainability and why we need to develop widely accepted standards for embodied energy? This article explores this somewhat arcane concept that seeks to measure how much energy is “embodied” in a product or service; in other words how much energy is used throughout the entire life cycle of the thing being measured including the energy required by decommissioning, disassembly and deconstruction.
Revenue growth for many companies in this current economic environment is very difficult. Enhanced margins can be achieved through energy reduction, which begins with corporate visibility and an empowered, corporate energy manager. by Paul Baier, Vice President of Sustainability Consulting, Groom Energy, and co-author of Enterprise Carbon Accounting. Read Paul’s blog, Practical Sustainability. Follow him […]
Sustainability does not engage employees unless it first and foremost solves problems they experience in their lives. You make sustainability personal and create the best conditions and incentives for employee engagement by making it voluntary, localizing it, listening, demonstrating the effect of the action, making it cross-functional, solicit and respond to employee ideas, give employees as a way to take immediate action, give rewards for successes, make it regular, and build culture around sustainability goals.
cop 16 supply chainCountries need to take ownership of their entire life-cycle emissions and when such agreements are based on data that attributes emissions fairly. But companies are not waiting around for any unlikely agreement that may come out of COP 16. Many are starting to see a sustainable supply chain as a way to not only cut costs, but also create new products that are less impacting to the environment and expand in developing-world markets that are likely to be hit hard by global warming.
To have a sustainable future, people doesn’t need to have a career in sustainability, instead I believe that it should be impart within the values of the company. But if you really would like to have a sustainability career then go for it. Go move mountains.
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.
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.
