60% Of Supply Chain Execs Measure Emissions

Sixty percent of supply chain executives are measuring their transportation and logistics emissions, according to ‘Green Transportation & Logistics North American Report‘ from eyefortransport.

The survey of over 500 North American supply chain executives shows that the vast majority of respondents, 90 percent, think that over the next three years green issues will remain or become more important to their transport and logistics processes.

Nine percent identified green issues as their No.1 priority over the next three years, while only one percent expects a lessening of importance.

This push towards green is reported to be driven by a number of factors, including financial ROI (61%), public relations payback (78%), improved customer relations (83%), decreased fuel bills
(70%), and improved supply chain efficiency (59%).

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ClimatePULSE: Who owns these greenhouse gas emissions?

From: , Triple Pundit, More from this Affiliate
Published July 15, 2008 11:10 AM

Protocols for corporate greenhouse gas accounting that are based on the ISO 14064 standards, such as the WBCSD/WRI GHG Protocol, use the term "scope" to distinguish between different greenhouse gas emissions sources. There are three categories; Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3. For most registry’s or reporting agencies Scopes 1 and 2 are considered mandatory while Scope 3 is considered optional.

Scope 1 emissions, also known as direct emissions, include any emissions that occur on-site or from company-owned assets. This includes the combustion of fuels, process emissions, and refrigerant leakage. These emissions are aggregated on a facility-level, with the company's vehicle fleet considered as one "facility."

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Food Retailers Advised To Hang On To Sustainability During Hard Times

Despite the economic slowdown it is crucial that food retailers do not put on hold their strategies for sustainability and for building ethical businesses as there is a risk that they could be left behind.

By Glynn Davis

Speaking at the IGD Global Retailing conference in London Joanne Denney-Finch, chief executive of IGD, suggested it would be tempting for companies to take a step back from sustainability until the economy improves but this would be a mistake because those companies that have started to tackle the problem are recouping the benefits.

“Sustainability is about making your business future-proof. There is a massive transformation taking place and we urgently need to use the world's scarce resources carefully,” she says.

Denney-Finch highlighted how large operators like Wal-Mart can make a major difference by focusing on the environment, especially when it involves its suppliers: “It wants its 65,000 suppliers to reduce carbon use and this will have a bigger impact than any governments.”

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The 3 Keys To CSR Reporting Are Materiality, Materiality And Materiality

Alex Hausman
CSR Reporting Manager
The Timberland Company

In the past, the importance of CSR reporting was that it existed at all. Stakeholders just wanted to know if a company was willing to talk about their impacts on the community or the environment. Once companies opened up a communication channel in the form of a report, then the focus became the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). This framework was necessary for the comparability, consistency and credibility of the report.

The GRI has legitimized sustainability reporting and brought it to the masses. Today, over 50% of the world’s biggest 250 companies report and over 2,500 worldwide. This new level of transparency and information has opened up new and unthinkable conversations between companies and its stakeholders. It has helped support, and is necessitated by, the sea change of responsible business initiatives seen around the world.

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Canada Ad Watchdog Releases Green Marketing Guidelines

A new guide (PDF) from the Canadian Competition Bureau of the Canadian Standards Association provides the business community there with green marketing guidelines.

While the guide is not law, the Competition Bureau says it will not hesitate to pursue deceptive environmental claims, fine violators or remove products from store shelves.

According to “Environmental Claims: A Guide for Industry and Advertisers,” the use of vague claims implying general environmental improvement are insufficient and should be avoided; environmental claims should be clear, specific, accurate and not misleading; and environmental claims should be verified and substantiated, prior to being made.

But some say the voluntary nature of the rules means consumers still can’t trust messages displayed on product labels, the Globe and Mail reports.

Douglas Macdonald, of the University of Toronto’s Centre for Environment says that, since companies have been using images associated with nature, freshness and cleanliness to promote their products for decades, Canada should adopt rigorous standards similar to those in place for food labels in order to reduce false or misleading claims.

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority released its Annual Report 2007 in May. The ASA said it dealt with record numbers of complaints about environmental claims as advertisers increasingly sought to promote their ‘green’ credentials. Complaints about environmental claims more than doubled year on year with 556 complaints about 408 ads.

The Federal Trade Commission has announced the third in a series of public workshops being held as part of the agency’s regulatory review of the “Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims,” commonly known as the Green Guides. The Commission’s first Green Guides workshop, held in January, examined issues concerning the marketing of carbon offsets and renewable energy certificates. The most recent workshop, held in April, examined green packaging claims.

In May, Futerra Sustainability Communications released a guide (PDF) that analyzes the current state of greenwash and what’s being done about it.

A Brighter Shade of Green

Rebooting Environmentalism for the 21st Century
by Ross Robertson

I’ve always been a somewhat reluctant environmentalist. I was practically weaned on John Muir’s Yosemite, and as a kid growing up in the suburbs of California in the last decades of the twentieth century, I fell fast in love with the depth and space and beauty of the mountains. They were everything my world of clay lots and cement and computer technology was not—cool, silent, elemental, rich with unquestionable mystery. They were every bit as spiritual as church, minus the dogmatism and the bake sales. The forest wilderness of the Sierra high country made a green romantic out of me, and when I got to college in Atlanta, I became concerned enough about the fate of nature to do something about it. I organized river cleanups and letter-writing campaigns, studied the classics of American nature writing, and sat on the environmental committee of the university senate. I lobbied on Capitol Hill in Washington and protested chip mills and nuclear reactors in Tennessee. I even intercepted a Brazilian merchant ship on its way into Savannah harbor and blocked it from unloading its illegal cargo of Amazon mahogany, which was still wet with the blood of indigenous tribes.

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Five Ways Businesses Can Avoid 'Green Fatigue'

By Preston Koerner
Published June 23, 2008

You may have noticed an article by Alex Williams in the New York Times last week entitled "The Era of Green Noise." The article hits on some trends we're seeing, especially in the green lifestyle area, with people worn out by the green barrage of choices and information. Green advertising and/or pitches might get a roll of the eyes, or worse, some backlash. People may just repel and fight against the message. So businesses are starting to get concerned about the proper way to move forward given this "green fatigue" from the "green noise."

I've been thinking about this and have a few suggestions for businesses that want to keep a quality connection to their customers.

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