Environmental Leader

Derek Wong is a Toronto based climate change and sustainability consultant. Contact him through his blog Carbon49.com.

Three CEOs in One Room: Walmart, Coca-Cola, Unilever

Some of the biggest CEOs in Canada come together for the Walmart Green Student Challenge. I took this rare opportunity to ask them: Where is sustainability going for Canadian industries? Walmart, Coca-Cola, and Unilever already share best practices for their common goals in sustainability. Now they want to see more suppliers come on board. The all-star judge panel for ...

How Third-Party CSR Ratings Impact Share Price

Being added to external corporate social responsibility indices enhances a company’s reputation and can affect its share price, but not always in ways expected. This article examines how the stock prices of 121 companies changed after being added to or removed from the Calvert Social Index. Socially responsible investing has been growing faster than the overall market over the ...

CDP Canada 2011: Key Highlights

Carbon Disclosure Project recently released its Canada 2011 report at the Toronto Stock Exchange. More Canadian companies than ever publicly report their greenhouse gas emissions. Contrary to the common belief that going green slows growth, businesses who take the lead into a low carbon economy delivered twice the financial return compared to their peers. The director of CDP ...

How To Embed Sustainability Into Corporate Culture: A Cheat Sheet

Ninety-three percent of CEOs see sustainability as important to their company’s future success, as found by a UN-Accenture study. But how does one embed sustainability into a company’s core culture? Dr. Stephanie Bertels of Simon Fraser University conducted one of the most extensive researches in this subject. Her findings in the 74-page report are distilled into ...

Coca-Cola: A Case Study In Sustainability

How does Coca-Cola integrate sustainability into their operations? For several years its facility in Brampton, Ontario, one of its largest in North America, has been transforming its manufacturing and distribution to save energy, reduce carbon footprint, water usage, and material usage. In this case study we look at the goals, implementation, and progress of the programs put in ...

Top Talents Attracted to Socially Responsible Companies

Talents are key to success in today’s business. How much would a company pay to lower staff turnover rate by 12%? Best Employers in Canada winner LoyaltyOne achieved this through going green. LoyaltyOne operates the popular Air Miles reward program that is used by approximately two-thirds of Canadian households. In 2009, they created a new C-level position, ...

Federal Election Reshapes Canada’s Climate Policy Landscape

History was made in Canada’s federal election on May 2. Conservative gets majority government while New Democrat serves as Opposition for the first time. How will this alter federal policies on energy, environment, and climate change? Let’s examine the parties’ environmental platforms, their gains and losses, followed by how Canada’s federal policies may change....

Unilever’s Triple Win Sustainability Strategy

Unilever has been the number one Food & Beverage company on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for 12 consecutive years. Through Bullfrog Power, Unilever recently became the largest commercial purchaser of renewable energy in Canada at 59,000 MWh per year. What is Unilever’s sustainability strategy and why do they do it? To find out, I took a ...

Investment Bank, VC, Credit Rating Agency Talk Sustainability

At the conference on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Issues presented by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA), an audience of senior executives from Canada and around the world heard from an industry panel on the current state of how sustainability affects raising capital. Bruce Cooper from Toronto-Dominion Bank’s Asset Management division shared the perspectives from ...

Smart KPIs for Sustainability Initiatives

In any corporate sustainability project, whether it is reducing greenhouse gas emissions, paper use, or supply chain waste, choosing the right key performance indicators (KPIs) is a key ingredient to success. At the conference on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Issues hosted by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA), Cathy Cobey from Ernst & Young ...

New Environmental Disclosure Guidance From Canadian Regulators

A new environmental reporting guidance was released by the Canadian Securities Administrators for companies listed on Canadian stock exchanges, including the Toronto Stock Exchange which ranks third in North America and eighth in the world. How will this affect public and private companies? Let’s take a look. As anticipated in my earlier post Capital Favours Sustainable ...

UN Estimates Annual Global Environmental Costs Equal $6 Trillion

Environmental damage caused by human activity in 2008 was estimated to be $6.6 trillion, equivalent to 11% of global GDP, calculates a United Nations study released today. Global in scope and covering a wide range of environmental impacts by all industries, the new report is an ambitious attempt to estimate environmental externality costs. Putting monetary values to environmental externalities ...