August 20th, 2009
by Will Sarni
I was recently in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, for a client retreat to discuss corporate sustainability strategy and enjoy a few days of vacation. It was a great visit to a wonderful place.
The reason I wanted to say a few words about Lunenburg is that the town is an example of how the environment and business are intimately connected.
The tie between Lunenburg and sustainability is that it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site and for more than 200 years was the reigning center of the cod industry. Hundreds of schooners set sail every year to deliver salt cod around the world.
The …
Tagged: agriculture, environment, natural resource, supply chain, sustainabiliy, UNESCO World Heritage Site
Posted in Business, Sustainability
August 10th, 2009
by Will Sarni
I just received and have “scanned through” the latest issue of the Harvard Business Review (July-August 2009) and wanted to share some of the articles, which focus on some key sustainability drivers.
The issue includes “10 Trends You Have to Watch” and “Managing in the New World.” These articles highlight the new importance of “sustainability business drivers” and how there is a new business paradigm.
The old business paradigm relied on abundant resources and few stakeholders, and companies were not very transparent. In the new paradigm, resource efficiency is essential, “everyone” is a stakeholder and companies are increasingly transparent.
Even …
Tagged: Climate Change, environment, innovation, sustainable business
Posted in Business, Sustainability
May 6th, 2009
by Will Sarni
I have known about Serious Materials for a while as they are one of my business examples of “sustainability driving innovation.”
In my opinion, sustainability is fueling innovation through the creation of new businesses and new products. This innovation is also driving the “creative destruction” of some industries (some of the Detroit automakers?) and creating new ones (Tesla and Better Place?).
This is obvious.
What is not so obvious is that the job creation from these new and in some cases disruptive industries is creating brand value.
In my opinion, Serious Materials is now known, not only as an …
Tagged: Green Jobs, Serious Materials, Sustainability, Vestas
Posted in Business, Green Jobs, Sustainability
April 21st, 2009
by Will Sarni
This past week was filled with news stories regarding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) “endangerment ruling.”
Some background, and how this latest move “fits” within the quickly evolving U.S. policy:
On April 2, 2007, in Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007), the Supreme Court found that greenhouse gases are air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act. The Court ruled that the U.S. EPA Administrator must determine “whether or not emissions of greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles cause or contribute to air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare, or whether the science …
Tagged: Clean Air Act, environment, EPA, greenhouse gasses, Renewable Energy
Posted in Climate Change, Renewable Energy, Sustainability
April 13th, 2009
by Will Sarni
I participated in a panel discussion titled “Communicating the Business Value of Sustainability” at the Food Processing Environmental Conference in San Antonio a couple of weeks ago.
Tim Carey from PepsiCo (Director, Sustainability) participated on the panel and presented “Sustainability in a Recession: Keys to Performance in a Capital-Constrained Environment.”
Tim presented a very clear and concise case for aggressively pursuing a sustainability strategy in the “middle” of this economic downturn.
His key theme was that during the recession it is essential (yes, essential) to leverage sustainability to drive innovation and increase resource efficiency. Why, you ask, would this be critical during a …
Tagged: business value, PepsiCo, resource efficiency, supply chain, Sustainability
Posted in Business, Sustainability
April 1st, 2009
by Will Sarni
Today we were inundated with e-mail alerts and blogs that provide details of the Waxman- Markey plan drafted by the House.
The plan outlines a cap and trade program to regulate greenhouse gases. The draft proposal will use 2005 as a base year and require that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions be reduced by 20 percent by 2020, 42 percent by 2030 and 83 percent by 2050. This draft legislation is a bit more aggressive than the timetable proposed by the administration.
In addition the legislation would require utilities to generate 25 percent of their electricity from renewable energy by 2025.
Key provisions, yet …
Tagged: Climate Change, greenhouse gas, markey, Renewable Energy, U.S. Climate Action Partnership, USCAP, waxman
Posted in Business, Renewable Energy, Sustainability
March 12th, 2009
by Will Sarni
I am compelled to raise a voice and declare that we do not need a new color to describe sustainability. Doing so is an absurd exercise designed to fabricate a new marketing tag line and does nothing to communicate the value of sustainability to consumers and businesses.
Recent taglines regarding the “new colors of green” include:
“Blue is the New Green”, The New York Times. November 20, 2008
“Yellow is the New Green”, The New York Times. February 27, 2009
“Black is the New Green”, Financial Times. February 28, 2009
I will go further and recommend we jettison the words “green” and “eco” as more …
Tagged: ecomagination, green, greenwashing, new green, Sustainability, sustainability and value
Posted in Business, Sustainability
March 4th, 2009
by Will Sarni
We are once again in the midst of the creative destruction of industries. By way of background, the term “creative destruction” is from Joseph Schumpeter’s 1939 book, Business Cycles. He believed that business cycles were caused by innovation. Stu L. Hart and Mark B. Millstein in their 1999 article titled, “Global Sustainability and the Creative Destruction of Industries” (Sloan Management Review, ISSN 0019-848X, Vol. 41, Nº. 1, 1999) linked Schumpeter’s business concept of creative destruction to the business drivers of sustainability.
I agree with Hart and Millstein. A lot of people think that the current destruction we’re seeing is exclusively the …
Tagged: business drivers, carbon, global sustainability, Sustainability, water
Posted in Business, Sustainability
March 2nd, 2009
by Will Sarni
In a very brief period of time we went from no federal action on addressing climate change to both Congress and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “rushing” to regulate carbon dioxide.
Recent articles in the New York Times (February 19, 2009) and the Wall Street Journal (February 23, 2009) summarize the recent announcement that the EPA will be moving ahead in responding to a Supreme Court order to determine whether carbon dioxide is a pollutant that endangers public health and welfare. It was almost two years ago that the Supreme Court decision (Massachusetts vs. U.S. EPA) ruled that the EPA …
Tagged: carbon dioxide, Clean Air Act, Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. EPA
Posted in Business, Sustainability
