The Beverage Industry Environmental Roundtable (BIER) highlights their members' beverage industry sustainability insights and ideas in their BIER Member Spotlight series on a monthly basis. These spotlights include their answers to questions about their company's sustainability achievements and strategy, practical insights from BIER, interesting facts, and more.

The statistics sound bleak: 70 percent of employers cite a skills gap between what they need and what’s available in the talent pool and 22 percent of workers in the Pittsburgh region will be retiring within 10 years with no comparably-sized group to replace them.

In this video, Amgen Scholars at the U.S. symposium at the University of California, Los Angeles, and at the Europe symposium at the University of Cambridge talk about the many and varied new experiences they had with the program.

Data privacy is a primary concern for companies today, but that attention is often focused on customers. Yet they are not the only people whose data companies store. They also maintain information on their employees. And employees are apparently not all that confident that employers are doing a good job of protecting their personal data at the workplace.

“Today, two of National Grid’s service territories, MA and RI, along with jurisdictions across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, made a historic commitment to address one of the largest challenges threatening our clean energy future – transportation emissions. National Grid commends the Transportation and Climate Initiative and their members for their willingness to study and design a regional, market-based system transportation policy to reduce carbon emissions from transportation fuels.”

This year, we learned we have fewer than 15 years to prevent catastrophic climate change. We saw suicide rates rise at a rapid rate and watched journalists experience an unprecedented degree of abuse. When the news is overwhelmingly depressing, we find ourselves saying things like, “Just be positive – things will be alright” – or worse, “It doesn’t do any good to get upset.”

In the business world, blockchain is certainly the latest business craze. In fact, a recent study by PwC found 84 percent of surveyed executives said they have at least some involvement with blockchain technology.

We set a goal to reduce water withdrawal 40 percent by 2030 from 2014 levels. In 2017, we met this goal.

The Michigan Department of Corrections, in partnership with Consumers Energy, has saved $900,000 by completing energy efficiency upgrades, part of the energy provider’s commitment to helping all customers across Michigan lower their energy costs.

“We all have a role to play when it comes to energy conservation and I am pleased we have taken another step forward in our prison facilities to help curb future costs,” said Gov. Rick Snyder.

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