Unadulterated

National leaders in sustainable chemistry gathered at the Green Chemistry in Commerce Council (GC3) annual meeting hosted by Steelcase in Grand Rapids, MI this week to share inspiration, insights and explore the future of the field. Sally Edwards of UMass Lowell and I facilitated a workshop on the business case for The Chemical Footprint Project (CFP).

Challenges to optimize the package’s end-of-life may persist that call for collaboration and new solutions with suppliers, competitors, and waste stream partners. TSC may be able to play a role in enabling these approaches and this was explored during the workshop.

Pure Strategies’ latest research reveals growth in corporate spending in sustainability; more than 80 percent of surveyed companies expect a budget increase from 2016 to 2017 with a third anticipating double-digit growth.

Harmful materials present a significant barrier to shifting many products and supply chains to sustainable and circular economy solutions.

What better time to benchmark your sustainability program than the start of the year? Evaluating whether your program is following best practices can spur improvement and provide justification for prioritizing initiatives.

Climate change presents the critical challenge for our time. The measure of our response will determine the quality of life for generations to come. All of us — individuals, business and government leaders, scientists and educators — must make addressing climate change a priority.

Several billion dollars were earned in 2015 from the sustainability efforts of 153 survey respondents. Signaling a new way of defining the source of business value, these notable gains were uncovered in a new Pure Strategies’ study.

Nestlé and Unilever are helping set the standard for sustainable agriculture, according to a survey of over 150 global sustainability heads conducted by Pure Strategies.

CDP and CSR reporting season has barely passed before over-worked sustainability managers must turn their attention to customer sustainability surveys. While these can be resource-intensive, they also present opportunities to further your sustainability initiatives internally, elevate your brand’s standing with key customers, and stand out in the marketplace.

Does your business embrace the disruptive forces of a low-carbon world as Ford and Ben & Jerry’s are? Over the next 10 years, climate change will drive industrial disruption at rates that previously seemed unimaginable. In response, policy makers must come to terms with the need to keep the mean global temperature rise to 1.5°C.

Sustainability is being driven by large forces at play. Consider that we have a global population of more than 7 billion people who all want to live like we do here in the U.S. That puts incredible strain on our natural resources. Add to that the fact that the climate is warming at an unprecedented rate.

Radio Flyer and Beautycounter stand among leading companies taking proactive steps to manage chemicals in their products and supply chains. These and just over twenty other firms benchmarked their programs and performance in the newly launched Chemical Footprint Project.