For the over 300 CR professionals, CEOs, sustainability executives, and journalists who gathered at the MGM National Harbor, just outside Washington D.C., the 3BL Forum was a fast-paced, idea-packed two days of panels, breakout sessions, issue tables, one-on-one interviews, and networking.

The 2018 annual 3BL Forum has come and gone, but its impact will be reverberating throughout the corporate responsibility field for some time to come.

In this competitive job market, it’s becoming more difficult for companies to attract and retain top talent. If you’re struggling to keep your employees engaged, learn how to curb disengagement before employees start heading for the door.

Circulate Capital, the investment management firm dedicated to incubating and financing companies and infrastructure that prevent ocean plastic, today announced that it expects to receive US$90 million in funding for its strategy to combat ocean plastic from several of the world's leading consumer packaged goods and chemical companies, including PepsiCo (NASDAQ: PEP), the first investor; Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG), Dow (NYSE: DWDP), Danone (EPA: BN), Unilever (NYSE: UN) and The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO). Circulate Capital anticipates formalizing definitive agreements with these parties by early 2019.

As part of its sustainable plastics vision, PepsiCo, Inc. announced a new goal to strive to use 25 percent recycled content in its plastic packaging by 2025.

PepsiCo aims to achieve this goal by collaborating with suppliers and partners, helping to increase consumer education, fostering cross-industry and public-private partnerships, and advocating for improved recycling infrastructure and regulatory reform, all of which are required to realize our ambition. The goal includes an aim specific to PET (polyethylene terephthalate) beverage bottles to achieve 33% recycled PET content by 2025.

The Ray C. Anderson Foundation just awarded the top prize in the Biomimicry Global Design Challenge, the $100,000 Ray of Hope Prize to a Brazilian team working in reforestation in the Atlantic Rainforest in Brazil.

In one year, 7-Eleven, Inc. and its customers have planted 100,000 trees and offset 32,448 metric tons in carbon emissions through the RENEW™ reduced emissions fuel program. That is the equivalent of powering 1.6 million homes for a whole day with no environmental impact.

What matters most, however, are not the conversations that we have with our guests. It’s the conversations our guests have among themselves. Those conversations are the largest part of why we host RayDay, and we can’t know even a small fraction of what comes from them.