Posts in 'Exchange'

A corporate sustainability manager's job is never done.  These harried multi-taskers deal with everything from phasing Styrofoam cups out of the cafeteria to setting company-wide carbon reduction goals.

And now they need to blog, tweet and manage Facebook fan sites—so said the line up of experts at the recent Social Media for Sustainability conference, hosted by Just Means.

Panel after panel covered the hows and whys of using social media to engage employees, customers and other stakeholders.  But the big idea, underscored in nearly every presentation, was much more fundamental:  It's all about transparency. Read more »

Several people pointed me to Mary Tripsas' post at the New York Times called "Everybody in the Pool of Green Innovation" this weekend – it really struck a chord. The article focused on two initiatives involving major corporations to share patents that protect the environment and foster new innovations. Through the Eco-Patent Commons companies like Xerox, IBM, Nokia, and Ricoh, working with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, pledge to make environmentally beneficial patents available in the public domain. The Eco-Patent Commons now includes 100 patents from eleven participating companies.

Meanwhile, Creative Commons, the innovative engine behind CC licensing for content sharing, is helping launch a new initiative to increase patent-reuse called GreenXchange. Partnering with Nike and Best Buy, they have a "vision of creating an open innovation platform that promotes the creation and adoption of technologies that have the potential to solve important global or industry-wide challenges" and are using their expertise in crafting licenses and legal language to both protect patent-holder interests while enabling easy reuse.

The motivation for these initiatives is captured in Mary's quote of Dr. Sara Slaughter from MIT's Sloan Sustainability Initiative saying, "We all want to save the planet, and the problems are bigger than any one firm, sector or country."

Indeed, we need to do a lot fast and being really good at sharing resources is critical – sharing within businesses, across businesses, across business sectors, between the private sector and the public sector, and across national boundaries. This sharing is enabled by what I call the "sustainability commons" – that virtual place where people and our sustainability resources interact. Read more »

Last week, I had the pleasure of participating in GE's latest energy Treasure Hunt. The Treasure Hunt methodology, developed by Toyota, uses lean manufacturing techniques and a focused, employee-led process to identify opportunities to cut energy costs and carbon footprint.

GE has conducted more than 200 treasure hunts at its facilities worldwide, a process that has driven a reduction in GHG emissions of 400,000 metric tons and saved the company over $100 million. (Read more about how they did it on GreenerBuildings)

The event marked the culmination of a three-day process where teams of GE employees combed its plant in Lynn, Mass., which manufactures jet engines, marine engines, turbofans and aircraft engines, looking for energy savings.  Team members confessed that they were a bit skeptical about finding much this time around Read more »

The 130 sustainability leaders who gathered at the recent EDF/Ashoka "Green Innovation for Business Unconference" (or GIBU) in Silicon Valley didn't shy away from tough questions. Here are a few of the thornier ones:

* Should "green" be a source of competitive advantage—or does that hold us back from critical knowledge-sharing?

* Should internal sustainability initiatives continue to be presented to employees as voluntary programs and/or special projects? What are the tradeoffs if we require participation rather than incentivize it?

* Can we continue to shift all knowledge and commercial transactions to the computing "cloud" without confronting the total environmental costs of data transfer and storage?

Luckily, there was no shortage of brain power at this latest installment in the GIBU series, which eBay hosted at its San Jose conference center on August 5. Dozens of companies—including Cisco, Hewlett Packard, Intuit, NetApp, Nvidia, Palm, Salesforce.com and Yahoo!—were at the table, along with consulting firms and leading-edge nonprofits and foundations (such as Grid Alternatives, Imagine H20, Net Impact, Skoll Foundation and Sustainable Silicon Valley.) Read more »

EDF recently enhanced one of our most popular resources for companies: PaperCalculator.org.

Now fully updated with the latest scientific information, it is a robust tool for understanding how different paper choices affect the environment – whether you want to know how many trees were spared by reducing paper use, or the energy savings from choosing recycled content versus virgin.

Random House, Staples, PepsiCo, Wells Fargo and Starbucks, among others, have used PaperCalculator.org to manage their paper purchases. In total, the tool saw 27,000 uses in the past year.

So what’s new with version 2.0? Read more »

Exploring Networking, Knowledge, & Learning for Sustainability

This summer I am fortunate to be working on an internship with Environmental Defense Fund's Innovation Exchange (EDF) and AltaTerra Research. I am exploring how Fortune 1000 executives learn about sustainability and their business. We want to learn more about the resources executives use to make decisions around sustainability – where they get information, generate ideas, find partners, and solve problems. The results will be published by AltaTerra Research and will inform EDF's work to further sustainable business practices.

The first step was to gain familiarity with the sustainable knowledge networking landscape. Read more »

Boston was recently named the nation's "best city for clean tech" and we were fortunate enough to hold our second Green Innovation for Business Unconference across the river in Cambridge this week at Microsoft New England. Close to 100 business leaders, entrepreneurs, academics and advocates came together for a day-long group-think to figure out how to drive environmental improvements deeper and more quickly into the private sector. Read more »

"Marketing should never be involved in sustainability strategies until the very end."

I heard those exact words recently from a senior environmental manager at a sustainability conference in Chicago.  In fact, many of the executives I spoke with agreed that "the trend of marketing hijacking CSR programs" needed to be stopped – and stopped quickly.

As part of an environmental NGO that collaborates with companies only when we can ensure measurable business and environmental results, I understand these concerns.  For many companies, the allure of today's "green consumer" is obscuring and even derailing the opportunity for material environmental improvements in its operations or supply chain. So let's all agree that it's imperative for marketing and communications professionals to embrace the principle of "act first and talk later".  Read more »

A few updates about the Green Innovation for Business Unconferences that are coming up.

Hurry Up & Register

People are starting to register, especially for the Washington DC event, but there is still plenty of room at all of them.  Don't hesitate, do it now!  Here are links to the registration pages:

• June 11 in Washington, DC at Google DC
• June 22 in Boston, MA at Microsoft's R&D Center in Cambridge
  
• August 5 in the San Francisco Bay Area/Silicon Valley at eBay
• September 16 in Austin, TX at 3M

(Hint: You can get an idea of who is attending each event by skimming the list at the bottom of each registration page. It gives organization and title of each registrant.)

Let's Discuss What We Should Discuss

Since the Unconferences are "open space" format events, there is no fixed agenda. Those of use who attend will decide what to talk about after we arrive. But that doesn't mean we can't do some homework in advance. Ashoka is offering one opportunity with their Social Entrepreneurs Chat on Wednesday June 3 (4 to 6pm ET). The general topic is entrepreneurship and the environment but they have encouraged us to discuss topics for the Unconferences as well.

Another opportunity is through the event wiki and community site. Even if you can't attend an event, please join and participate online. (You'll have to register with wetpaint to participate.)

Thanks to New Supporters

In addition to the generosity of Google for offering space in their DC office and Microsoft for offering use of their new R&D facility in Cambridge Mass, we'd like to welcome and thank these supporters who have joined us:

Greener World Media as our media sponsor.

Event supporters, so far, are:

Sustainable Business Network of Washington

 Academy for Educational Development

2degrees

GEMI

The SOAP Group

Please visit the event wiki to learn how you too can become a sponsor.

Have a great weekend.

By Dave Witzel

• Are you driving environmental innovation within your company?
• Do you have ideas for operating more efficiently?
• Are you exploring "greener" products or services?
• Are you interested in new ways to engage employees, customers, suppliers and other stakeholders in sustainability?
• Do you have insights about what motivates or blocks environmental innovations in your business?
• Do you want to redefine "business as usual" for your company and your industry?

If so, have we got the event for you!

Please join Environmental Defense Fund's Innovation Exchange and Ashoka at regional "unconferences" that will bring together professionals engaged in making their organizations more efficient, sustainable and leading-edge. Through connecting with other innovators to share experiences and ideas, explore new trends and opportunities, and brainstorm out-of-the-box solutions, we can all "be green while saving green and making green."

How to participate?

1) Attend!

Who should attend?

• Individuals working in companies, from small to large, directly involved in sustainability efforts
• Senior management committed to, or curious about, the opportunities that sustainability initiatives can offer
• Staff and management of nonprofits working in partnership with corporations
• Staff from public sector agencies working with corporations and/or pursuing entrepreneurial innovations to take more sustainable practices to scale
• Academics and consultants creating tools, forging partnerships and supporting models of what works in business sustainability

Is this you?  Sign up now.

• June 11 in Washington, DC at Google DC
• June 22 in Boston, MA at Microsoft's R&D Center in Cambridge
  
• August 5 in the San Francisco Bay Area/Silicon Valley at eBay
• September 16 in Austin, TX at 3M

2) Help with planning.

Whether or not you can attend in person, please read more about the event and share your thoughts on planning and structuring the event – what should we be talking about?  Sign-up to get updates and add your thoughts on the Green Innovation for Business wiki.

3) Become a Supporter

We're looking for additional supporters of the event.  Organizations that would like to help are asked to either

• make a nominal financial or in-kind contribution (at least $250 for non-profit organizations or $500 for for-profit organizations) per event. These contributions will be used to defray the costs of the events.

or

• Contribute to marketing and outreach through their channels, emails lists, members, and events.

Supporters will be recognized on the registration page, on this website, in materials distributed at events they sponsor, and during opening and closing of those events. You  will also get one ticket to attend.  Contact me if you are interested in becoming a supporter.

4) Lead a session

These will be open-space, "unconference," format events meaning the people who attend decide what we talk about.  (Learn more about the unconference format on the wiki – trust me, you'll like it.)  Think about what you want to discuss – problems you have, projects you've been involved with, new ideas you want to explore – and then be ready to help lead the discussion.

5) Invite your colleagues

Success of these events will be determined by who attends and participates.  Please pass the word to people you know are involved in making business more sustainable. Give them these URLs and ask them to attend as well.

• June 11 in Washington, DC at Google DC
• June 22 in Boston, MA at Microsoft's R&D Center in Cambridge
  
• August 5 in the San Francisco Bay Area/Silicon Valley
• September 16 in Austin, TX

Hope to see you there.