Read the full story in GreenBiz.
Organizations are at different points in their sustainability journeys, but all agree that sustainability goals must connect to economic growth and drive value for the organization.
The following process — driven by a cross-functional leadership team — will help your organization to set meaningful, long-term sustainability goals.
Read the full story in GreenBiz.
The idea of engaging outside experts to manage power procurement across multiple locations more efficiently isn’t anything new. It’s a process that energy services companies have specialized in for many years.
Still, fewer than half of big companies officially use outside experts for data or strategy, which could be limiting the potential to curtail their power consumption or spending, according to recent research by advisory services firm Edison Energy.
Read the full story in Environmental Leader.
The US Senate late Tuesday night approved a measure to update the 40-year-old Toxic Substances Control Act, requiring new testing and regulation of thousands of chemicals used in everything from cleaning products to paint thinners and clothing.
The Senate’s passage of the new chemical safety rules, which followed the US House’s final approval late last month, was largely praised by industry and environmental groups.
Solar energy now supports more jobs in the U.S. than either the oil and gas industry or coal mining, according to a new report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Solar jobs grew at a rate 12 times faster than general U.S. job market growth. Worldwide, employment in green energy grew 5 percent in 2015, to 8.1 million jobs, IRENA reported. The 58 percent drop in oil prices since 2014 caused many fossil fuel companies to lay off workers — more than 350,000 people worldwide since the slump began. The IRENA report says clean energy jobs could triple to 24 million by 2030 if nations follow through on the climate pledges they made in Paris last year. “This increase is being driven by declining renewable energy technology costs and enabling policy frameworks,” said Adnan Amin, director-general of IRENA, which is based in Abu Dhabi.
Read the full story in the Huffington Post.
It seems like a marriage made in heaven. Eliminate the vast amount of food waste in our society by giving it to the poor and hungry. No more hunger. No more waste. At least that’s what advocates for food-waste-to-the-poor schemes will have us believe. Here at home, MP Ruth-Ellen Brosseau’s private member’s bill, C-231, Fight Against Food Waste Act, will continue being debated in the House of Commons in the coming weeks.
But this is a relationship doomed before it even begins. That’s because this bill and other initiatives like it fail to address the real root causes of hunger and food waste. In fact, by conflating and confusing these issues, it makes it harder to develop meaningful and effective strategies to address both of these growing problems.
Simply put, food waste will never be able to address hunger because hunger isn’t about a lack of food. It’s about a lack of income. People are food insecure because they can’t afford to eat.
Food waste diversion strategies aimed at the poor don’t fix the food waste problem, either.
This month, Climate.gov is presenting #30DaysofClimateTools, a social media campaign designed to help you manage your climate-related risks and take advantage of opportunities. Follow the hashtag on Twitter.
This is an interactive visualization of the Carbon Cycle, through short-term and long-term processes. It examines the complex relationships in the cycling of carbon through the Earth system.
Read the full story in the New York Times.
Since a devastating fish kill blighted the waters along 120 miles of coastline in central Vietnam, hundreds of people are believed to have fallen ill from eating poisoned fish.
Here in the fishing village of Nhan Trach, the squid that sustain the local economy have virtually disappeared. And a fishing ban has left hundreds of traps sitting unused on the beach and dozens of small fishing boats idle.
“We are so angry,” said Pham Thi Phi, 65, who operates a fishing boat in Nhan Trach with her husband and three grown sons. “If we knew who put the poison in the ocean, we would like to kill them. We really need to have an answer from the government on whether the ocean is totally clean and the fish are safe to eat.”
While the immediate cause appears to have been toxic waste from a nearby steel mill, fury over the episode has exploded into a national issue, posing the biggest challenge to the authoritarian government since a spate of anti-Chinese riots in 2014. Protesters demanding government action have marched in major cities and coastal communities over the past six weeks, escalating what had been a regional environmental dispute into a test of government accountability.
Read the full post in the Climate Law Blog.
Total S.A., the fourth largest oil and gas producer worldwide, has published a comprehensive plan explaining how the company intends to alter its business practices and energy holdings in order to be consistent with the International Energy Agency’s 2°C Scenario in the next twenty years. “Integrating Climate into our Strategy” is the first strategic plan published by a large fossil fuel corporation that seeks to achieve a concrete climate change mitigation goal. Total will focus on portfolio overhaul, technological innovation, and policy advocacy, as its three-pronged approach to helping the world keep cumulative emissions under 1000 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent from 2013 to 2050.
Read the full story in Fast Company.
Convincing water wasters to mend their ways and suddenly stop sprinkling their lawns may be as impossible as it sounds. Far better, or at least far easier, is to put the squeeze on people who are already “water savvy” to save yet more water.
A new study from the University of Florida sets out to categorize different kinds of water consumers, arguing that designing effective public information campaigns to change people’s behavior is difficult when you have no profile for your target audience.
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