The latest ways brands are supporting a shift toward sustainable consumption, and best practices for brands aiming to encourage more conscious consumer behavior and lifestyles
Colgate toothpastes and toothbrushes will not be the focus of the brand’s first-ever Super Bowl advertisement. Rather, it will be using its airtime to remind viewers to turn off the tap when brushing their teeth. Read More...
Waste reduction charity WRAP’s new Clothing Durability Report reveals that extending the active life of clothing items by nine months could reduce carbon, waste and water footprints of clothing in the UK by 20 to 30 percent each and cut resource costs by £5 billion. Read More...
Could the bicycle be the tool for change that our cities need? A new documentary and a related app are hoping to inspire better design, smarter political decisions, and reduced CO2 emissions in the urban planning process by shining a light on the bicycle and its growing conflict with the car. Read More...
Ahead of the UN 2015 Paris Climate Conference (COP21), Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo became the latest major banks to pledge to eliminate their support for the coal industry in favor of reducing carbon pollution associated with the industry.Morgan Stanley said that it “recognizes that climate change poses significant risks to the global economy and that reducing carbon emissions is critical to our success in addressing the challenges presented by a changing climate.” Read More...
Joss Tantram of Terrafiniti started the final workshop of SB’15 London by simplifying the title of the session and calling it ‘old challenges, new tools,’ and giving us three change challenges to think about: Read More...
At least 36 percent and up to 57 percent of the the tree species in the Amazon Rainforest should qualify as threatened on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List, the most widely recognized authority on threats to species conservation, according to a new study published in the journal Science Advances, as reported by The New York Times. Read More...
Danone, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble and Unilever continue to lead the corporate sector in making and living up to zero-deforestation commitments, but many firms have yet to make public sustainability commitments, according to a new ranking by the Global Canopy Programme. Read More...
Organizations in the United States and United Kingdom continue to concoct clever ways to convince their citizens that recycling is worthwhile. In England, a new behavior change campaign is trying to reinforce that every little bit helps: If every Londoner recycled one extra plastic bottle a week for a year, enough energy would be saved to power Wembley Stadium for two years – a venue that can hold 90,000 people. So Resource London is asking Londoners to recycle “just one thing,” in its new “Recycle for London” campaign. Read More...
What will our food system look like 10 years from now? According to a new report from the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), a sustainable, secure UK food system will depend on industry and government action to reframe issues and innovate. The waste-reduction charity predicts there will be new business opportunities in protein supply, data-enabled technology, and food designed for nutritional requirements. Read More...
Fires are raging across the 3,000 mile length of Indonesia, destroying tens of thousands of acres of forest. More than 127,000 forest fires have been detected so far this year, which is expected to be the worst on record. Visibility in some cities has been reduced to 30 yards by noxious orange haze. There have been more than 500,000 cases of acute respiratory illness and at least 19 deaths. Read More...
Environmental watchdog ForestEthics announced today that four major US companies — Xerox, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Delta Dental and Bigelow Tea — have expanded their commitment to support and promote responsible forestry, by distancing their brands from the controversial Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) paper and wood certification and labeling, and instead supporting and promoting that of the Forest Stewardship Council. Read More...
A new cup will use aromas and a patented “sweet taste technology” to trick people who prefer sugary drinks into thinking they are drinking a fruit-flavored water. The Right Cup, designed to help people drink more water, will launch its crowdfunding campaign in a few weeks. Read More...
The U.S. Forest Service is the latest organization to be targeted by environmental groups demanding action related to the California drought. On Tuesday, the Courage Campaign Institute, Story of Stuff Project, and Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service for allowing Nestlé to illegally bottle water from San Bernardino National Forest. Read More...
Royal Dutch Shell PLC CEO Ben van Beurden promoted a carbon-pricing plan at the Oil & Money conference in London on Tuesday. The Wall Street Journal reports that the plan will encourage investment in renewables and favor cleaner-burning natural gas over more carbon-intensive coal. Read More...
Nestlé’s Pure Life® Purified Water recently announced a new campaign dedicated to encouraging children to drink more water. A recent study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that a little more than half of all children and adolescents don’t get enough hydration. Although excessive dehydration — which is rare in the developed world — is associated with serious health problems, even mild dehydration can cause issues including headaches, irritability, poor physical performance and reduced cognitive functioning.1 Read More...
On the heels of a coalition of British NGOs and businesses issuing a “litter manifesto” to help clean up the UK last month, research from Keep Britain Tidy has revealed that an anti-littering campaign launched in May has achieved rather impressive results. Read More...
UK chef and “Food Revolution”-ary Jamie Oliver teamed up with food lobbying organization Sustain to encourage the UK government to consider a tax on sugary drinks and use the proceeds to help curb childhood obesity.Oliver launched a petition last week that has gained over 129,000 signatures so far. The UK Parliament considers all petitions that get more than 100,000 signatures for a debate.“Studies show that soft drinks with added sugar are the largest single source of sugar in the diets of UK school children & teenagers,” reads the petition page. Read More...
On Friday, Subaru released a trailer for “Who We Are Is What We Leave Behind,” a video series documenting the car company’s National Parks zero-landfill initiative. See episode one below: Read More...
One year after drugstore chain CVS Health stopped selling cigarettes, the company released new data that shows the decision has influenced tobacco sales across many types of retailers and announced a new school-based tobacco-prevention program. Read More...
Recent studies suggest consumers are increasingly motivated to buy sustainable products, especially the rising generation of socially motivated millennials — that’s the headline in the sustainable business community. But we also know that it’s difficult to motivate consumers to act upon their best intentions. They may state their preference to buy organic, ethically produced products in the abstract, but their actual choice may be different at the point of purchase. Read More...