Guest Columns
Solar Costs Are Dropping. Is It in Your Future?
With all the bad press from the federal bailout of Solyndra, one fact was forgotten. Sales of Solyndra’s alternative solar cell design dropped, leading to its bankruptcy, because of a glut in the market ...
COP17: The Challenges, Outcomes and Sustainable Recruitment Trends
Director of Climate Change and Sustainability Services at KPMG, Neil Morris, believes COP17 has greater potential to have practical outcomes than COP15 and COP16 combined.
The seventeenth Conference of Parties (COP17) is taking place in Durban from ...
Improving Supply Chain Profit, Production & Sustainability
Elevating the discussion around sustainable supply chains, Microsoft recently announced it will mandate supplier sustainability disclosure in 2013. As Environmental Leader reported, Ford has also announced that it has more than tripled the size of its program ...
Deepwater Horizon: One Year On
BP's Deepwater Horizon sparked criticism from regulators, investors, the public and media in the U.S. Yet many oil spills in the global oil & gas industry - before and after BP's disaster - are largely overlooked in the ...
Resource Efficiency vs. Carbon Reduction
The dramatic improvements in efficient lighting technologies over the past three centuries have left the energy intensity of lighting unchanged. The higher energy efficiencies have all been used up by ever-expanding lighting applications. And the share of ...
New Trends Predicted for Ultracapacitors in the Energy Storage Industry
As 2012 quickly approaches, it is time to take a look at upcoming trends in the energy storage industry. Moving into next year ultracapacitors will see increased use in transportation, smart grid, server memory applications and consumer electronics ...
‘Fast Broadband for Everyone’ vs the Desire for a Low-Carbon Economy
Fast and superfast broadband
The growth in data volume is tangible and there is indisputable evidence (e.g. Japanese internet exchange) that the CAGR of data volume is currently around the 40 percent mark. Vodafone has experienced 69% data ...
Bringing ‘Fair Trade’ Home
The topic of fair trade may seem unusual from a guy like me who usually writes and speaks about sustainability with a focus on packaging. However, today environmental responsibility and social responsibility are rightly tied together and ...
Tools of the Green Manufacturing Trade, Part 3
This is a continuation of my discussion of the the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) Sustainable Manufacturing Toolkit and related items. In case you've missed the past two posting you can see the ...
The Power of Social Entrepreneurship to Create a Sustainable World
The concept of sustainable development stemmed from environmental movements in earlier decades. International forums, such as the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, brought sustainable development to the mainstream. Today, the concept is often over-used and it ...
Five Questions To Ask About Grid-Interactive Energy
Renewable energy is a market on the move. With announcements coming nearly every day about the latest advances in harnessing the elements for cleaner, cheaper power generation, it's easy to see how something at the system integration ...
‘Green’ Banking Part III: Reducing Environmental Underwriting Risk
From coal, to real estate, to small business lending, environmental, social, and governance underwriting criteria are a critical tool for banks to reduce risk and enhance profitability for themselves and their business partners.
In Part II ...
Interconnectedness and the Collective Brain
The other day I was reading James Gleick's book, "The Information," a good read for anyone in our business, when I came upon the following passage: "It is not the amount of knowledge that makes a brain, it ...
Don’t Let the Raters and Rankers Define Your Sustainability Strategy
The proliferation of sustainability rating and ranking schemes over the last decade has impacted how global companies approach sustainability -- generating both competition for recognition and scrutiny of their value and credibility (not to mention a lot ...
Career Trends in Energy and the Environment
The UN has declared 2012 as the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All and a growing demand for professionals within the energy and environmental sectors supports this.
The Energy Context
Our global energy production is undergoing a ...
How Environmental Awareness Builds Business
Customers respond to sustainability practices, and businesses have reacted to that with enthusiasm over the years, if not always with sincerity. There was a time when slapping green paint on the side of a traditional practice was enough ...
Regulatory Definitions of ‘Nanomaterials’
In 2004, the UK Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering published perhaps the first widely respected and cited assessment of the potential health and safety, environmental, and ethical implications of nanotechnologies and the use of nanomaterials. ...
Novo Nordisk Retrofits US Headquarters for Sustainability
Novo Nordisk in the US faced a rare challenge: how to grow but keep the environmental footprint lean?
At Novo Nordisk, sustainability is deeply embedded in our work and culture. Our company has long maintained a Triple Bottom ...
Shifting Sustainable Practices and Preferences in Packaging
Conventional wisdom suggests that when economies are flat, consumers prioritize their time and spending on activities and goods/services that fulfill basic needs. Green behaviors, historically, are considered more of a nice-to-have, but not essential during challenging economic ...
Confused about LCA Standards? You Should Be
How fast-moving consumer goods manufacturers can untangle and benefit from standards:
Last month four key international bodies released updates to their lifecycle analysis standards and guidelines. For those of us who think about these things on a daily ...
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Tesco Tackles Food Waste with Ethylene-Absorbing Strips
