Posts in 'Innovation'

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 »

I’m convinced that the principles of environmental sustainability have gained a firm foothold at today’s leading companies. Why? Because even in the grip of the worst recession in 30 years, companies across the Fortune 500 list – from Wal-Mart (1) and GE(6) to Owens Corning (422) and SunGard (435) – are actively pursuing sustainability agendas.

At the same time, legislation to cap greenhouse gas emissions is making its way through Congress and the world community is preparing to hammer out a new climate treaty in Copenhagen this December.

So are we done? Not by a long shot.

While many on the biggest companies “get it,” there remains “the next 50,000” – those companies that make up mainstream corporate America that don’t yet get environmental sustainability or worse, haven’t even heard of it. So where must we go from here to spread environmental sustainability from the Fortune 500 to the next 50,000? Read more »

In an earlier post, I introduced this graphic (from a McKinsey report that shows the estimated cost for CO₂ abatement using various technologies).*  In another post, I looked at emissions reductions in the commercial building sector.  Now we look at another big opportunity for “low hanging” emissions reductions – fuel efficiency. Read more »

In my last post, I introduced this graphic* (from a McKinsey report that shows the estimated cost for CO₂ abatement using various technologies).  Today, I’m looking at one of the largest opportunities for “low hanging” emissions reductions: the commercial building sector. Read more »

The hullabaloo in Washington is great fun to watch, but the fact is that many, many companies will not be directly regulated under any new climate bill that gets passed.  So why should companies care?  Well, from 30,000 feet, here’s one reason:

It’s from a McKinsey report that shows the estimated cost for CO₂ abatement using various technologies.  The vertical axis shows cost per ton of emission reductions.  And all the blocks hanging below the horizon represent things we can do now that have “negative cost” – in other words, we save more money than we spend.  Notice that virtually every one of them involves energy and fuel efficiency.  We can get four or five gigatons of emissions savings – that’s four or five billion tons of emissions reductions – while saving money!  So the opportunity is huge. Read more »

For me, one of the memorable lines at last week's Green Innovation for Business Unconference (aka "GIBU") in Austin was from 3M's Phyllis Cheatum, who announced in her opening remarks, "I'm uncomfortable.  At 3M we don't show up to meetings without agendas (like this one).  But discomfort drives innovation."  

The nearly 100 green business innovators who filled 3M's Innovation Center on that warm September morning also embraced discomfort in the name of innovation.  Not only did they collectively fill in the blank agenda wall and volunteer to lead sessions on the fly, but they spent the next eight, high-energy hours tackling some of the toughest, most uncomfortable business-sustainability issues we face today: 

• How do we shift attitudes and, most importantly, behavior of consumers, employees and executives? 
• How should we engage employees, and support and sustain the champions within our companies? 
• In a tough economic climate, what are the creative ways we can build the business case for sustainability initiatives? 
• What does it take to drive green technology adoption?
• How do we set standards and select metrics?  How should we define what it means to be "green"?
• How can we market "green" so that we are sure we aren't "green-washing"?

The two big "ah-ahs" for this blogger, after participating in all the GIBU events this year (in DC, Boston and Silicon Valley, in addition to Austin), were these: 

First, the right people – with the necessary talent, passion and connections – are behind this movement, both in Austin and the other regions.  In Austin, the participants were sustainability managers, engineers, product developers and operations gurus from nearly all the local heavy-hitting companies (3M, AMD, Austin Energy, Dell, Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, National Instruments, etc.).  They were joined by entrepreneurs, government representatives, consultants of all stripes, nonprofits and the leadership of key local networks—such the Austin EcoNetwork and Net Impact Austin.

Second, though the GIBU series was designed to be regional, the big, uncomfortable challenges participants tackled in Austin were very much the same as those debated by their counterparts in DC, Boston and Silicon Valley.  Link up these networks, and we've got some real fire power with which to overcome obstacles and drive green business innovation, nationally and internationally.

For the complete agenda and session notes, visit the Green Innovators wiki.  Or search #GIBU09 in Twitter to get a taste of the immediate reactions and other "ah-ha" moments.

And stay tuned for news on the next iteration of the GIBU series for 2010.  Subscribe to this blog if you'd like to get or stay involved.

Greg Andeck leads EDF's Corporate Partnerships "Innovation Pipeline" to identify and develop groundbreaking environmental initiatives with leading U.S. companies.

The world’s leading companies all conduct extensive research to determine what their customers want and how they want it.  Whether they hire firms like Synovate or Millward Brown, or do consumer research in-house, companies know the value of crafting products that fit their customers’ needs and desires.

This is why it’s so perplexing that companies don’t do the same when developing substantive sustainability strategies.  All too often, companies launch campaigns that are later accused of greenwashing or limit their efforts to indirect efficiency improvements, when it’s their core product that really needs the greening.  It turns out that by paying more attention to their customers, companies can unlock solutions for true environmental innovation and get richly rewarded for doing so.

Taking a Page from Environmental LCAs Read more »

Video is worth more than a thousand words, so we'll keep this post short. In a recent blog post, Marc Gunther highlights a new EDF video about our unique approach to working with corporations. The video uses our collaboration with FedEx and other industry leaders to jumpstart the transformation of the hybrid truck market to illustrate how our partnerships galvanize groundbreaking environmental innovation. At EDF, we are laser focused on using market forces to create environmental change that is good for business and the bottom line. Our goal is to work with market leaders to create a green “race to the top” where companies and suppliers compete not only on price and quality but also on the environmental value they can bring to their customers.