Job Descriptions for Sustainability Officers and Directors

Acre, an executive search firm that specializes in sustainability and corporate responsibility personnel recently published a report on the evolution of the sustainability professional. The report, The Emergence of the Chief Sustainability Officer, is available free for download from their website.

Acre also provides three sample job descriptions that identify possible role and responsibilities for the following positions:

Corporate Social Responsibility Manager

Corporate Social Responsibility Director

The Chief Sustainability Officer

There is also a good job description available from the Sustainable Cities Institute for a Sustainability Officer.

On our eco-officiency website we also offer a one page summary on the role and need for corporate sustainability officers

Employee Engagement Report by NEEF and GreenBiz

The National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF) in partnership with the GreenBiz group have published a report called, Toward Engagement 2.0: Creating a More Sustainable Company Through Employee Engagement. This report is free for download from both NEFF and GreenBiz websites.

The report provides company case studies and examples of how to create the eco-culture in an organization. It also discusses four key areas to encourage employee engagement with sustainability initiatives. Here is a brief overview of their suggestions:

1. Green Teams: Companies have found success engaging green teams in the company who can help foster and lead green initiatives.
2. Volunteerism: Through volunteerism employees become engaged first hand with non profits as well as social issues that exist in communities.
3. Social Media: Through various company examples, they are finding social media such as discussion forums, are ways that employees can self-organize and contribute to company’s sustainable practices.
4. Awards and Incentives: Through these external motivations, employees also seem to respond well to being recognized via awards or provided perks and incentives to change behaviors.

Packaging Innovation: A Plastic Bottle that Uses Ocean Plastic Trash

Method, a company that manufacturers green cleaning products, is going to launch a new plastic bottle that actually uses plastic waste located in our oceans. They worked with Envision Plastics to figure out how to collect, reuse and manufacture a bottle using 25% of the plastic from the ocean waste. This is a great example of a company applying innovative solutions to our global problems. Learn more about their sustainable journey from the founder’s blog entry, The Next Generation.

To learn more about the garbage patch issue, visit  Greenpeace.

Reduce Your Plastic Use and Improve your Health and the Environment

There has been a lot written about plastic lately. Not only is it harmful to the environment but overwhelming studies are finding plastic harmful to your health. Consider these facts;

• Plastics production produces 14 percent of toxic air emissions in the U.S., and each plant emits an average of 300-500 gallons of contaminated wastewater per minute. (It’s Easy Being Green book)
• 100 million plastic bottles dumped in US every year. Each bottle will take over 1,000 years to biodegrade.  (SIGG)
• BPA (a plastic hardening agent prevalent in bottles, cups and lined tin cans) is so prevalent in food packaging and other consumer items that prior research has detected its presence in at least 90% of Americans. A group of 20 San Francisco residents had 66% less BPA in their urine after three days on a diet of fresh, organic and unpackaged food, scientists found. (Silent Spring Institute)
• 500 billion plastic bags or wraps are thrown away in America each year and are created with 12 million barrels of oil. (DropthePlasticBag.org)

Find out the facts about plastic for yourself with these resources;

Plastic Disclosure is a great website that offers facts and information about the harmful effects of plastic.

GreenBiz released this article a few weeks ago about the plastic use in corporations.

New York Times released this article on the issue of plastic and waste

If you want a more lighthearted approach, view the movie Bag It, that was released early in 2011. It discusses all the issues with plastic. For a review, go to this blog entry.

Unpackaged: A grocery store with no packaged goods!

Imagine a grocery store with no packaged goods– no jars, no cans, no plastic packaging—just food. Well a new store opened in London that is just that, a store with no packaged goods called Unpackaged. Customers bring in their own reusable containers and have them weighed before shopping. Then, consumers fill up their containers with the products they need in only the amounts they desire.  No more packaging to throw away, less food waste and no need to worry about the plastic BPA issue in your food.

According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, packaging waste contributes to about a 1/3 of our waste in our U.S. landfills. They also show that over 10.4 million tons of plastic packaging is thrown away annually by Americans. With 95% of the ecological damage of packaging is from the energy used and the toxins created in the package manufacturing and delivery process. If packaging waste could be reduced, it would be a considerable impact on our waste stream, energy use and toxins in our environment.

Unpackaged was voted as the #48 best shop in London, to take a virtual tour visit the CNN video, Shoppers Weight Up Green Premiums.

We hope it might catch on here in the States!

Energy Management Software Options and Recommendations

Energy management software is a way for companies to track energy usage and waste. This is a growing and changing market and industry with a large part of company’s sustainability strategies focusing on energy conservation.

Here are some resources and articles to learn more about energy management software:

GreenBiz, 6 Rules to Follow When Shopping for Energy Management Software

CA Emerging Technologies, Operations Energy Management: From Data Center Through Facilities

Environmental Leader, Market for Carbon and Energy Management Software

ZD Net, 10 Best Carbon and Energy Management Software Tools

Cloud Computer = Green Business Solution

There has been a lot of press lately on cloud computing that is not only good for data management but also a great green solution for businesses. It offers tremendous energy savings and IT efficiencies. Here are some of the recent reports and articles available on cloud computing;

Green Biz recent article, 4 Reasons Why Cloud Computing is a Green Solution, cites that cloud computing services are expected to grow by 22% annually to 2020. It also discusses the four top reasons cloud computing is a green solution including energy efficiency, utilization and consolidation efficiencies, pay per use and multitenancy.

Accenture put out a great whitepaper called, Cloud Computing and Sustainability, in November 2010 that discusses in more depth how cloud computing reduces the environmental impacts of IT and also provides case study examples.

The Carbon Disclosure Project in collaboration with Verdantix also did a report called, Cloud Computing: The IT Solution for the 21^st Century. It cites that businesses with more than $1 billion in annual revenue can achieve in energy savings of $12.3 billion a year by 2020 through cloud computing services. In addition it projects an overall 30,000 metric tons savings in CO2 reduction.

Then Greenpeace report entitled How Dirty is Your Data, discusses the cloud’s energy footprint on these large cloud based service providers. It provides a table and report card on the primary cloud service providers and their use of clean energy vs. coal.

One of the primary hesitations of moving to the cloud is the security and privacy issue. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has a publication on the Guidelines on Security and Privacy in Public Cloud Computing. The U.S. General Services Administration is moving all their data to a cloud based provider and now offering these services to government agencies. Learn more from Information Week Government article, Cloud Computer is Safer Than You Think, on how they overcame these challenges.

Recycleable Packaging Design Guidelines

The non-profit, Green Blue, has developed a set of design guidelines to improve recyclability in packaging. The have a host of downloadable reports, some free, that offer how to instructions to improve packaging to be more sustainable. Most of these were written with the Sustainable Packaging Coalition.

If you have a food product, be sure to check the FDA  guidelines on using recycled content with food products. Also read Reducing our Footprint: The Food, Beverage and Consumer Products Sustainable Packaging produced by the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association and McKinsey which shares the  results of food, beverage and consumer products switch to sustainable packaging.

If you are working in the packaging industry, consider reading the book, Field Guide to Sustainable Packaging by Steve Sterling. It provides good suggestions, success stories and resources for advancing companies sustainable packaging initiatives.

Top Green Consumer Brands

A new 2011 study was just published that listed the top ‘green’ 2011 consumer brands. Here were the top 10 identified:

1. Seventh Generation
2. Whole Foods
3. Tom’s of Maine
4. Burt’s Bees
5. Trader Joe’s
6. The Walt Disney Company
7. S.C. Johnson
8. Dove
9. Apple
10. Starbucks, Microsoft (tied)

For a good written summary of the report, go to Environmental Leaders article. To view the full study, see their presentation on SlideShare. And if you want to compare from 2010 Top Green Brands, here is the listing.

Sustainable Packaging Options

Today, there are many more sustainable packaging options than there used to be.  Now there are various eco-packaging products that can be as price competitive and durable as plastic and Styrofoam.

Here are a few companies to check out if you are looking for some green packaging options for your company:

Be Green Packaging, based in Santa Barbara, is the one Whole Foods switched to a year ago. The packaging is made from bio-materials and are compostable. Be Green also has Cradle to Cradle certification for their manufacturing processes.

BioCorp also provides biodegradeable bioware including plates, trays, bowls, cups, lunch boxes and compartment trays. They also have cutlery that is heat resistant.

Eco-Products, based in Boulder, Colorado also supplies foodservice compostable packaging.

EPI makes packaging products out of an oxo biodegradable plastic additive technology.

Green Packaging Group is a one stop shopping source for eco packaging. It showcases various vendors and resources for all types of packaging.