NewsRack: 'Green Purchasing' news in 'Economics and Jobs-National' topic for user flenvcenter

Both Parties Used to Love the Carbon Tax. So Why Are They Giving up on It?	26.9.2020	Mother Jones
This piece was originally published in Grist and appears here as part of our Climate Desk Partnership. It was a cold February day in Salem, Oregon, and Republican state senators were fleeing the capitol. It was weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the country and kept Americans huddled inside. So members of Oregon’s legislature were […]
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From China’s stand to Walmart’s wish list: A Climate Week news cheat sheet	25.9.2020	Resource Efficiency \| GreenBiz.com
From China’s stand to Walmart’s wish list: A Climate Week news cheat sheet Heather Clancy Fri, 09/25/2020 - 00:30 As with virtually all gatherings of the climate community during the COVID age, this year’s Climate Week was convened as an online event — one hosted from more than 20 countries across myriad time zones rather than its usual host city of New York. Instead of running between Manhattan locations, attendees platform-hopped among more than 450 presentations, panels, screenings and other events, including those hosted by the World Economic Forum and the United Nations, while iconic structures such as the Empire State Building turned their lights green to recognize the urgency of the climate crisis. As is their wont, many companies used the occasion to proclaim updated commitments — the buzzword du la semaine was "net-zero" with Walmart declaring a zero-emissions target by 2040 along with a big clean fleet promise and a pledge to "protect, manage or restore" at least 50 million acres of land and 1 ...
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ESG investments: Exponential potential or surfing one wave?	21.9.2020	Business Operations \| GreenBiz.com
ESG investments: Exponential potential or surfing one wave? Terry F. Yosie Mon, 09/21/2020 - 00:30 Amidst four concurrent crises — health, economic, race relations and climate — one stand-out 2020 development has been the rebound of major stock markets and, particularly, the growing performance and prominence of environment, social and governance (ESG) traded funds. ESG portfolios not only have outperformed traditional financial assets this year, but also a data analysis prepared by Morningstar, a financial advisory research firm, concluded that almost 60 percent of sustainable investments delivered higher returns than comparable funds over the past decade. Morningstar also found that ESG funds have greater longevity than non-ESG portfolios. About 77 percent of ESG funds that existed 10 years ago are presently available, whereas only 46 percent of traditional investment vehicles maintain that survivorship. These developments raise two overriding questions: what factors have converged to catapult ESG ...
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Early September frost jeopardized a peak month for Front Range farmers. Here’s how you can help.	15.9.2020	Denver Post: News: Local
At local farms, crews scrambled to collect all of the tomatoes, peppers and more, a month ahead of schedule.
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The Road to Zero-Emission Cities Goes Through Freight	15.9.2020	THE CITY FIX
Left unchecked, urban freight will continue to be a major driver of the global climate crisis.
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Built to Last: The Case for Durable Design	11.9.2020	Business Operations \| GreenBiz.com
Built to Last: The Case for Durable Design What are the implications of building long-lasting, durable products, and what opportunities arise from keeping products in service? "They don't build things like they used to..." This age-old lament seems aptly fit for our era of single-use disposables and planned obsolescence. For the nostalgic, the quality conscious and the eco-friendly consumer, product longevity is a desirable trait. But when competing with lower production costs and repeat purchase revenue, durable doesn’t always add up to the financial value of disposable. How can you make a financial case for durability? What metrics should you weigh when considering it? Can you build customer loyalty by building to last? This discussion explores these questions as it builds the case for durable design. Deonna Anderson, Associate Editor, GreenBiz Group Christine Riley Miller, Director of Sustainability, Samsonite Lauren Smith, Product Sustainability Manager, Columbia Sportswear Holly Secon Thu, ...
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Designing Better Products with Biomimicry	11.9.2020	Energy & Climate \| Greenbiz.com
Designing Better Products with Biomimicry How are four new companies using biomimicry to design more efficient, sustainable and circular products, disrupting some of the world’s biggest industries? A perfectly circular system — one without waste, non-renewable inputs or inefficiencies — already exists in nature. Of course, it’s not that simple for humans. With capital flows on top of material flows, industry on top of ecosystems, our system isn’t quite as perfectly designed. But why start a design from scratch when you can learn from the 3.8 billion years of evolution that have taken place on Earth? Biomimicry, the practice of looking to nature for inspired ideas, can speed up the circular design process by borrowing from the elegance and efficiency of nature to solve complex human problems. Four new companies are embracing biomimicry to disrupt some of the world’s biggest industries including fashion, sanitation and construction. These startups share a snapshot of their work, showing how nature-inspired ...
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Powering China with Clean Energy After COVID-19	10.9.2020	WRI Stories
Powering China with Clean Energy After COVID-19 Comments\|Add Comment\|PrintRooftop solar panels in Kunming, China. Photo by Matthijs Koster/Flickr Following the outbreak of the new coronavirus (COVID-19), and its serious social and economic impact, China has started to stimulate its economy in an effort to recover. Provinces have announced their investment plans, in which new infrastructure plays an extremely important role. This infrastructure will also profoundly affect the development of... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ...
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Circular economy startups compete at Circularity 2020, taking on shoes to shelf-life	31.8.2020	Design & Innovation \| GreenBiz.com
Circular economy startups compete at Circularity 2020, taking on shoes to shelf-life Holly Secon Mon, 08/31/2020 - 01:00 A circular economy is urgently required for the shift to a more sustainable planet. But it will take new, innovative ideas to build a global system that uses and reuses all of the resources within it and moves us away from the deeply entrenched extractive system under which the modern world functions. At Circularity 20, GreenBiz’s online circular economy event, five startups presented their potentially world-altering ideas during the Accelerate competition. This GreenBiz tradition began in 2012 at its VERGE events, offering a venue where startups make a 2.5-minute pitch of their technology to the audience. During last week's event, the online audience voted on its favorite, and an expert panel of Taj Eldridge, senior director of investments at the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI), and Monique Mills, with the Startup Catalyst at the Advanced Technology Development Center at ...
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Ensuring Performance and Safety in Recycled Plastics	26.8.2020	Design & Innovation \| GreenBiz.com
Ensuring Performance and Safety in Recycled Plastics As companies and consumer brands incorporate recycled plastic content into their products and as part of their circularity goals, product integrity becomes an important consideration. There are many ways to evaluate the performance and safety of recycled materials. This one-hour webcast will show you tools to evaluate these aspects and how brands like HP are increasing recycled content in their products and assessing performance and sustainability. Topic include: How regulations and brands are driving the use of recycled plastics The safety and performance considerations of recycled plastics How companies can develop mitigation strategies and reduce risk with testing and certification How to ensure that claims of recycled content are valid and to avoid greenwashing Moderator: John Davies, Vice President & Senior Analyst, GreenBiz Group Speakers: Fred Arazan, Innovation & Partnerships Manager, UL Bill Hoffman, Corporate Fellow & Research Scientist, ...
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The rise (and rise) of sustainability-linked finance	24.8.2020	Small Business \| GreenBiz.com
The rise (and rise) of sustainability-linked finance Joel Makower Mon, 08/24/2020 - 02:11 One silver lining of this horrific moment is the rise of loans, bonds and other financial instruments linked to sustainability outcomes. In this sense, "sustainability" is broadly defined to include environmental issues as well as social ones. And, more recently, a new subcategory of, yes, pandemic-related issues. Indeed, the pandemic response is being financed in part through bonds designed to fund development of vaccines or treatments, support healthcare systems fighting the outbreak or provide relief efforts, such as for cities and counties facing budgetary challenges due to lost revenues and emergency spending. As of the end of May, governments, banks, companies and others raised just over $150 billion globally from selling pandemic bonds, according to research by BNP Paribas, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. "These instruments will contribute to the economic recovery of many sectors and will emphasize ...
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Why e-commerce retailers should increase transparency about their products	21.8.2020	Energy & Climate \| Greenbiz.com
Why e-commerce retailers should increase transparency about their products Deonna Anderson Fri, 08/21/2020 - 01:15 When shopping online, consumers are able to see a lot of information about a product. There’s the product description and specifications of an item. For a bottle of perfume, the listing would declare the fluid ounces and describe the scent. A piece of clothing would show the material makeup and available sizes. A page for a bookshelf would have information about the dimensions. And of course, all of these would display the cost. But even with so much information at the ready, it is still rare to see details about the impact the product has on the climate or the chemical makeup of an item. The Environmental Defense Fund is calling for change. "You have this greater real estate available to share this information about products right on the product page, just like you would the size of a product or colors or product reviews and you have the ability to tell more of the sustainability story, ...
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There's a big appetite for farm-to-consumer shopping	21.8.2020	Energy & Climate \| Greenbiz.com
There's a big appetite for farm-to-consumer shopping Jim Giles Fri, 08/21/2020 - 01:45 Avrom Farm sits in the hills above Green Lake in central Wisconsin. With 5,000 chickens, 200 pigs and six acres of vegetables, it’s a minnow in an industry dominated by an increasingly small number of producers and processors. In March, a stay-at-home order hit the region. In just a week, the restaurants the farm sold to shut up shop, and local farmers’ markets closed. That might have been the end for Avrom. But then something interesting happened. Owner Hayden Holbert cleared space in a corner of his barn and created a tiny fulfillment center, the back-end operation for an online store and delivery service that he had quickly set up. Then he added products from nearby farms to the site. Soon his digital business outgrew the barn and had to be moved into a newly constructed hoop house. In a few weeks, business online had pretty much compensated for the losses from restaurants and markets. Now Holbert is raising money ...
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Journey Foods uses AI to create sustainability recipe for food manufacturers	20.8.2020	Small Business \| GreenBiz.com
Journey Foods uses AI to create sustainability recipe for food manufacturers Jesse Klein Thu, 08/20/2020 - 02:00 Riana Lynn’s company, Journey Foods , is dragging the packaged food business into the 21st century. "Food manufacturing has really only scaled up in the last 60 years," she said. "And that means we’re also working on very antiquated methods." Her company’s software uses machine learning, artificial intelligence, data scraping and cohort analysis to recommend the most nutritious and more sustainable ingredients for food companies, such as its partners Ingredion and Unilever. In 2018, the global packaged food industry generated $2.77 trillion , an amount expected to reach almost $5 trillion by 2027. With veganism surging , many of those trillions of dollars will be spent on plant-based products that companies will need to redevelop to appease shoppers. According to Lynn, when a food company wants to move to a gluten-free or plant-based version of one of its core products, that process ...
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Ulta Beauty is bringing refillable containers back to the cosmetics industry	18.8.2020	GreenBiz.com
Ulta Beauty is bringing refillable containers back to the cosmetics industry Jesse Klein Tue, 08/18/2020 - 02:00 The beauty industry has a plastic waste problem. And it knows it. A quick Google search brings up articles from Allure , National Geographic , Forbes , Teen Vogue and 31,800,000 other results about the issue. It seems those concerns finally have reached a critical mass, inspiring a sustainability makeover at three of the biggest beauty brands in the business — Sephora, Natura & Co, and Ulta Beauty. Last year, Sephora launched Clean at Sephora , a label that originally screened for 13 ingredients considered "unclean" but in July was expanded to over 50 substances, including butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), sulfates, mercury, talc, aluminum salts and lead. The company announced a partnership Aug. 17 with the Environmental Defense Fund to continue the reduction of toxic chemicals in its products. Sephora reported that 94 percent of its products contain no high-priority chemicals laid out by its ...
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Lyft and Ford are leading on climate action. What are YOUR favorite brands doing?	17.8.2020	Main Feed - Environmental Defense
Lyft and Ford are leading on climate action. What are YOUR favorite brands doing?
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In another troubled time, Englewood continues efforts to transform	14.8.2020	Chicago Tribune: Popular
Englewood residents and organizers have big plans for a construction project that will be home to a Fresh Market grocery and food co-op, the first step of a redevelopment that aims to transform vacant lots and abandoned buildings into amenities that include the food store, a recycling operation, a health center, a business incubator, mixed-use housing, a job training site and a restaurant.
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This carbon challenge is bigger than cars, aviation and shipping combined	13.8.2020	Resource Efficiency \| GreenBiz.com
This carbon challenge is bigger than cars, aviation and shipping combined Adam Aston Thu, 08/13/2020 - 02:15 You may not know it, but you rely on industrial heat every day. It helped make the bricks that hold up your home; the cement underfoot. It forged the steel and glass in your car, and it also cooked the aluminum, plastic and silicon in the very screen on which you may be reading these words. Industrial heat is essential but largely invisible. To transform basic inputs into stuff we need, manufacturers constantly heat (and cool) minerals, ores and other raw materials to extreme temperatures. And for all the magic of this everyday alchemy, industrial heat poses a growing threat to the climate. The world’s kilns, reactors, chillers and furnaces are powered mostly by fossil fuels. High-temperature industrial heat, over 932 degrees F, poses a particular challenge because that’s the point at which fuels beyond electricity become the mainstay. Overall, industrial thermal energy accounts for about a ...
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Shoppers: how to find sustainable products online	11.8.2020	Main Feed - Environmental Defense
Shoppers: how to find sustainable products online
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What switching to satellite offices could mean for sustainability	10.8.2020	Energy & Climate \| Greenbiz.com
What switching to satellite offices could mean for sustainability Jesse Klein Mon, 08/10/2020 - 01:45 When the coronavirus pandemic started in March, many of America’s major cities experienced a mass exodus of people in search of places with more living space for home offices and outdoor areas for easier social distancing. And as many tech companies extend their work from home policies indefinitely , such as Google , which recently announced it will allow employees to work from home until July 2021, this migration could become permanent. "There is this phenomenon that we know is happening around people leaving the major cities and going to smaller places," said Lindsay Baker , former first chief sustainability officer at WeWork and founder of space use software app company Comfy . "People sometimes don't choose to live in cities. They live there because they work there." And as employees move away, many companies are starting to reevaluate the necessity of maintaining their large corporate offices or ...
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