Responsible Production & the Circular Economy

Bees are critical to one-third of the world’s crops, including ingredients that are used in more than one-third of HÄAGEN-DAZS ice cream flavors such as Vanilla Swiss Almond, Strawberry and Rocky Road. However, bees are being threatened at a staggering rate as an estimated one-third of honey bee colonies were lost between April 2016 and March 2017. Today, HÄAGEN-DAZS celebrates 10 years of passionate support for these extraordinary pollinators to ensure they can continue to thrive and enrich the planet.

I recently had the pleasure to attend Ethical Corporation’s 6th Annual Responsible Business Summit in New York City. The event, touted as the premier brand-focused forum on responsible business in the U.S., brought in 90+ speakers over two days with rich dialogue focused on driving transformational change for society and industry.

Trane, a leading global provider of indoor comfort solutions and services and a brand of Ingersoll Rand, will join other industry experts as a sponsor of the fifth annual U.S. Department of Energy Race to Zero Student Design Competition (Race to Zero).

The world is running out of critical resources. By 2050, demand for important resources like biomass and fossil energy is expected to surpass production by 40 billion tons, leaving companies and consumers at risk from the shortfall. Shifting from the traditional “take, make, consume, and throw away” economic model to a zero-waste, circular economy that focuses on making smarter decisions about resource use, using them to their maximum capacity, and reducing waste combats this global crisis.

Domtar’s Sustainability Monthly Minute is a monthly newsletter offering bite-sized updates on Domtar’s latest sustainability efforts and provides practical eco-tips recipients can use in their daily lives.

SCS Global Services (SCS) announced today that Dave Bubser, a world-renowned forest resource management and certification expert, has joined the company as its new Vice President of Forestry Services. Bubser now oversees international business for SCS’ forest-based certification programs in the company’s Natural Resources division, providing strategic and operational guidance and support to Program Directors, and focusing on client relations, sales and marketing, auditing key accounts, and special projects.

For more than a decade, Health Development Initiative (HDI), a local health organization located on the outskirts of Kigali, has attended to the critical and often taboo health needs of underrepresented Rwandans including the poor and LGBTQ communities. In Rwanda, participating in sexual activity as a youth, a sex worker, or a homosexual – HDI’s target healthcare recipients – is either illegal or so heavily stigmatized that it can destroy lives and fracture communities. Therefore, seeking – and providing – care for these individuals can be a risky endeavor.

One of the biggest players in the sustainability game is Bacardi, which has championed the approach since the beginning of the company, more than 155 years ago.

The Bermuda-­based group launched an ambitious environmental sustainability initiative called Good Spirited, with specific goals in sourcing, packaging and operations. The firm cut its greenhouse-­gas emissions intensity in half in 2016 – more than a year earlier than its end­-of­-December-2017 target.

As a company committed to reducing water intensity across its global operations by 15 percent by 2020, General Motors is constantly looking for innovative ways to conserve water and increase efficiencies. This mindset has led the automaker to adopt a circular economy approach to maximizing water reuse in water-stressed regions, such as Mexico.

Little has changed since the 1940s in the way we make our clothes. We still heavily rely on people to power sewing machines, large swaths of agricultural land to grow cotton, and millions of gallons of petroleum to produce synthetic fabrics. Historically, the fashion industry has not leaned on research and development to stay competitive, instead figuring out ways to reduce production costs and get new products to consumers as quickly as possible.