Unadulterated

A new Pure Strategies report, “The Power of Chemical Footprinting: Radio Flyer Unlocks Their Safer Materials Strategy,” demonstrates the power of understanding corporate chemical footprints as a platform for crafting and advancing a proactive approach to chemicals management.

What better time to benchmark your sustainability program than the start of the year? Evaluating whether your program is following best practices can spur improvement and provide justification for prioritizing initiatives.

CDP and CSR reporting season has barely passed before over-worked sustainability managers must turn their attention to customer sustainability surveys. While these can be resource-intensive, they also present opportunities to further your sustainability initiatives internally, elevate your brand’s standing with key customers, and stand out in the marketplace.

Radio Flyer and Beautycounter stand among leading companies taking proactive steps to manage chemicals in their products and supply chains. These and just over twenty other firms benchmarked their programs and performance in the newly launched Chemical Footprint Project.

The Guardian featured Pure Strategies’ report, Advancing on the Path to Product Sustainability, in an examination of the financial benefits of sustainability. Our research found the top business value gained was employee engagement, with 33% of survey respondents realizing $5m or more.

The 10 Principles draw from Cheryl’s experience consulting on sustainability for several of the world’s leading food industry brands and retailers, her academic background and prior experience working within the food industry.

Unfortunately, taken as a whole, the corporate response wasn’t aggressive enough, brilliant enough or visionary enough. The gulf between the scale of the challenges and the level of response is too vast, with too many companies still citing modest, multi-year reductions in emissions or water use as the sum total of their sustainability goals.

As Ben & Jerry’s and Seventh Generation demonstrate, having a clear direction that aligns with consumers’ values is an important business foundation. These companies have created loyal networks of consumers and employees and have successfully leveraged their enthusiasm in pursuing campaigns for political change.

The gripping new Showtime docu-series, Years of Living Dangerously, tackles climate change with a combination of Hollywood star power, heavyweight scientists, and frontline reporting. Sending big name such as Harrison Ford, Thomas Friedman, Lesley Stahl and Jessica Alba into the field as correspondents to document the human impact of climate change, the series conveys the issue’s urgency with drama and facts.

If there is a good side to the third consecutive year of drought in California, it is that many business leaders are finally taking water seriously.

With the excess of New Years’ Eve parties behind us, it’s a good time to check in on food waste – a problem that continues to scream for progress.

The most recent photos of air pollution in the City of Harbin in northeastern China were otherworldly. Visibility was so poor that traffic lights disappeared and buses got lost on their routes. The smog closed schools, shut the airport, and disrupted city transport. The Beijing smog emergency last January reminds us that this is only the beginning of the winter heating season’s abysmal air quality in many Asian cities.

There’s a revolution underway. When the store where you buy cereal plans a major initiative to work with grain growers to reduce fertilizer impacts, you can feel the ground shift beneath your feet. When buyers routinely move their conversations with suppliers from price and shelf space to product recyclability, we’re definitely in a new millennium.

Last week found all of us from Pure Strategies bent over radishes, tomato plants, and kale as we weeded, picked and trimmed our way down harvest-ready rows.

Have you been dreading what you might find in the new G4 sustainability reporting guidelines? Smaller and mid-sized companies, take heart. There is (mostly) good news. There are also some tasks you should begin right now.

Water-related power outages in India; over 900 vessels stranded on the Xijiang River in Guangxi, China; industrial projects halted in at least seven U.S. states; closures of the Yangtze due to water shortages — despite carrying 60 percent of the goods transported by river in China…

​For most sustainability managers, there comes a time when your program starts to take shape. There is a future direction; there are goals – even some achievements. You’ve moved beyond baby steps with light bulbs and recycled office paper. You’re tackling the big stuff. You’re proud of the program you and your team have created. It may not be perfect but your aim is true and you are making progress.

“The sky is so blue; it looks fake.” That was what most shocked a Chinese graduate student I befriended during his studies in the United States. He had never seen a brilliant blue sky before. His friends back home thought he used a filter for his photographs because surely the sky could not be that color. He didn’t come from a rainy locale but from one of the many polluted cities in China.