Eighth-Graders Take Hands-On Approach to Fighting Air Pollution
Jamie Lei and Kenneth Nosaka, air quality measurement tools in hand, were surprised by the readings inside a local fast food restaurant during lunch hour. The numbers were even worse than those taken from a nearby freeway overpass. “I was not expecting that,” Nosaka said.
LifeStraw Releases First Responsibility Report Highlighting New Commitments and 13 Years of Global Safe Drinking Water Efforts
LifeStraw, a global leader in developing innovative filtration and purification products for safe drinking water, today released its first responsibility report highlighting 13 years of global safe drinking water efforts. Specifically, it outlines new commitments to its retail give back programs, sustainability efforts, support of public lands and programs empowering its employees.

Energy & Infrastructure

Making the Case for Connecting Efficiency and Sustainability Teams

Many companies face internal barriers such as siloed departments or expertise that prevent them from reaching their energy and sustainability potential. To clear these hurdles, organizations are starting to integrate how they buy and use energy with sustainability initiatives, an approach that maximizes investments, delivers greater returns and builds more robust, viable operations.

What Can Sustainability Reporting Learn From the Evolution of Digital Music?
With the Digital Reporting Tool, GRI has taken its first step toward making sustainability data available and accessible in digital format. As we drive innovative formats in corporate sustainability reporting beyond PDFs, what can we learn from the path the music industry took as they evolved from vinyl to CDs to digital streaming?

Awards & Rankings

Consumers Energy Named ‘Most Trusted Brand’ Among Midwest Utilities for Business Customers

An independent national survey has named Consumers Energy as a “Most Trusted Brand,” ranking it as a top utility in the Midwest and in the top 15 in the nation among providers of electricity and natural gas according to business customers.

Creating Strong Bridges to Biotech: Professional Development in Action
School is out for summer – or almost – for most high school students globally. But for some teachers, the learning is going to continue. Around the world, Amgen Biotech Experience (ABE) sites are gearing up for their professional development institutes, or PDIs. These multi-day workshops train high school teachers in the ABE curriculum, directly giving them experience with the hands-on biotech labs they’ll run in their classrooms when school resumes in the fall.
Big Impact in Bio: Identifying Biosignals to Improve Women’s Health
From an early age, Suzanne Rohrback had a unique insight into the need for science to bridge gaps in medical care. Her big brother is autistic and growing up, Rohrback remembers thinking there were no good options for him – unmedicated, he could be unpredictably violent and medicated, he would be zombie-like. “But we don’t understand enough about what goes wrong in this condition to have created a better solution,” she says.
Developing the New Mexico Heirloom Corn Project
In February 2016 The New York Times ran a story, “Oaxaca’s Native Maize Embraced by Top Chefs in US and Europe,” highlighting the work of a new company called Masienda that was sourcing landrace (heirloom) corn from small farms in Mexico. Masienda’s business model emphasizes conservation of agrobiodiversity, while supporting smallholders using sustainable/organic farming methods. When some of us here in Santa Fe saw this article we asked the question, “Why can’t this be happening in New Mexico as well?” And so the New Mexico Landrace (Heirloom) Corn Project was born.
50 Farms and No Regrets
Iroquois Valley Farms has reached a milestone: This spring we added the 50th farm to our portfolio. Our farmland REIT — honored as a “Best for the World” company from B Labs — provides secure land tenure for 35 farm families working nearly 9,000 acres of farmland. More families will be joining the Iroquois Valley Farms fold soon.
Engage the Chain: An Investor Guide to Engaging the Food Sector on Sustainability Risks
The challenge is clear for global food and beverage companies: as the population rises, the ag sector they rely on will need to produce more food with fewer greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while shifting toward farm practices that conserve or restore diminishing water and soil resources. Sustainable sourcing strategies and supply chain transparency will become—and are already– essential practices for the food and beverage industry to ensure that their suppliers are making these critical changes.

As significant owners of and lenders to companies, investors can be major forces in driving these sustainable sourcing practices. It’s in their best interest to do so, as business risks that affect company bottom lines can show up as decreased revenue or stranded assets in investor portfolios.
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