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Sustainable Brands ‘12 Conference

May 13, 2012 Add Comment Edit

Executives from CNN, Walmart, Safeway, Ford, Coca-Cola will be amongst the more than 1,000 Attendees at Game-changing Sustainable Brands ‘12 Conference in San Diego CA, taking place on June 4 – 7, 2012. As reviewed in a May 8, 2012 press release, attendees at the Conference will collaborate and share sustainability strategies and insights in response to mounting environmental and social pressures and shifting consumer demand. The theme of SB'12 is “The Revolution Will Be Branded”, and over 80 sessions will explore the unfolding market drivers and cutting-edge strategies for building business and brand value by innovating for sustainability.

The speaker line-up includes more than 150 business and design leaders from a wide range of industries coming together to address the cross-cutting environmental and social concerns driving the need for radical innovation.

Business/Brand Strategists:

Mike McCarthy, Senior Vice President of Programming, CNN International

Toby Corey, Chief Revenue Officer, Solar City

Adam Monroe, President, North America, Novozymes

Susan Sweet, President, General Manager, Neutrogena

Uwe Dreher, Global Head of Marketing, BMWi

Peter Nowlan, CMO, Molson-Canada

Maria Davlantes, SVP, CMO, Interface

Siddharth Sanghvi, General Manager, Sustainable Commerce, eBay

Designers & Innovators:

Volker Schaedler, VP, Innovation and Technology, North America, BASF

Mathieu Turpault, Managing Partner, Design, Bressler Group

Christiaan Maats, Founder, Design and Development, OAT Shoes

Phil Giesler, Director of Innovation, Unilever Corporate Ventures

Chris Yura, Founder & CEO, SustainU Clothing

Sustainability Executives:

Michael Dupee, VP Corporate Social Responsibility, Green Mt. Coffee Roasters

Rick Ridgeway, Vice President, Environmental Programs & Communications, Patagonia

Jim Thomas, VP Sustainability, PetCo

Gwen Migita, VP, Sustainability & Community Affairs, Caesar’s Entertainment

Jeff Rice, Director, Sustainability, Walmart

John Viera, Global Director, Sustainability & Environmental Policy, The Ford Motor Company

Shama Alexander, Environmental Officer, Director of Sustainability, LUSH

Marketing & Stakeholder Communicators:

Peter Callaro, Integrated Marketing Creative, The Coca-Cola Company

Maggie Kendall, Director of Marketing, CSR, NBC Universal

PJ Connell, Director of Marketing, Reef

Christopher Lukezic, Director of Marketing and Communications, Airbnb

Chris Arnold, Director of PR, Chipotle

Visit the Speaker Page to view the current list of confirmed speakers.

“Sustainability is the key to driving radical innovation throughout all industries,” said KoAnn Vikoren Skrzyniarz, Founder/Chief Catalyst of Sustainable Brands, “The Sustainable Brands Conference prides itself in bringing together the leading thinkers and doers spanning multiple industries to share their unique perspectives that benefit all.”

Several leading sustainability, business and brand strategy, product design, supply chain and communications executives from top global brands, bonfire brands, NGOs, academia and thought leaders have already registered, including executives from: AT&T, Quicksilver, Nestle, Harley-Davidson, Pepsi, Sony, Yahoo!, World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy, Petsmart, National Parks Service, BASF, 3M, Blue Shield of California, The Dannon Company, Hewlett-Packard, Johnson & Johnson, National Geographic Society, Wharton, Princeton University, UC Berkeley, Recyclebank, UPS, Target, and many more – over 1,000 attendees are expected.

To see a complete list of who is coming to the event click here.

Regular Price registration is available until May 13 after which prices will increase to Late Registration pricing. Visit the Registration Page to secure your spot, as available space at the conference venue is now extremely limited and will sell out shortly.

About Sustainable Brands

Sustainable Brands is the global learning, collaboration, and commerce community committed to replenishing the world through better brands. Sustainable Brands offers news and views from thought and practice leaders, online and live events, a robust resource library, peer-to-peer learning groups, E-learning, and a set of solutions providers for corporate brand and sustainability professionals, social entrepreneurs and the eco-system of supporting value partners. Sustainable Brands inspires, engages and equips today's business and brand leaders to grow revenues and enhance brand value, reputation and loyalty, while helping create a healthy and sustainable future for all. Sustainable Brands is a production of Sustainable Life Media located in San Francisco CA.

What Businesses are Doing to Combat Climate Change

May 10, 2011 1 Comment Edit

Some members of the business community are already playing a leading role in the war against climate change. These companies are making better use of resources, increasing energy efficiency measures, creating more energy-efficient products, and investing in new energy technologies. Many of these businesses are implementing technologies that reduce CO2 emissions and increasing their use of renewable energy while decreasing their use of energy derived from fossil fuels.

Companies like Xerox, PUMA, HP, Walmart and even smaller companies like Zotos are successfully incorporating sustainability initiatives and reducing their environmental footprint.

Assessment and reporting is an important part of these efforts and we are seeing more and more measurement tools, best practices, benchmarks and verification.

Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the US, it has specific environmental goals to reduce energy use in its stores and pressure its 60,000 suppliers in its worldwide supply chain to follow its lead. On energy efficiency, Wal-Mart wants to increase the fuel efficiency of its truck fleet by 25% over the next three years and double it within ten years. By 2020, it is expected to save the company $494 million a year. The company also plans to build stores that are at least 25% more energy efficient.

By addressing the environmental issues inherent in their business models, companies not only improve their practices, but also ensure the sustainability of their core business and help to make entire markets more sustainable.

For many companies, looking at more efficient energy use can pay off in the medium to long term. The problem is that shareholders are preoccupied with short term returns, and it may take many years for the costs of climate change to become apparent. However, heavily subsidized carbon-heavy fuels will not be artificially cheap forever and clean technology will be less expensive once it gains critical mass. Many businesses are looking at longer term time horizons and they increasingly understand that companies that ignore the trend will be at a competitive disadvantage.

Businesses are increasingly concerned about factoring environmental risks along-side other factors that impact a company’s performance and value. This trend will continue as carbon intensity starts to show up on balance books through organizations such as the Carbon Disclosure Project.

The involvement of the business community is crucial to global carbon reduction. Around 97 percent of the C02 emitted by western industrialized countries comes from burning coal, oil and gas for energy, much of which is used by business.

Some businesses are offsetting their carbon by paying someone else to plant trees or find other ways to reduce carbon emissions. Businesses that have purchased carbon offsets including HSBC and The Guardian newspaper.

Efficiency initiatives and renewable energy have many advantages for the environment and businesses are increasingly understanding the benefits for their bottom line.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

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Canadian Tire's Sustainability Leadership

November 19, 2010 Add Comment Edit

Canadian Tire Corporation is showing sustainability leadership by reducing energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and waste. According to a recent news release, it is among the first major Canadian companies to report quarterly on its efforts, reflecting the integration of sustainability into its daily operations and aligning environmental and profit performances.

Canadian Tire was founded in 1922 and officially incorporated in 1927. Canadian Tire has a long-standing tradition of operating with integrity. Canadian Tire's commitment to ethical business practices is a key part of their core values of honesty and respect.

The company has developed a Code of Business Conduct to appropriately direct the actions of all employees and those individuals who act on behalf of the company. In addition, the company also has a separate Supplier Code of Business Conduct.

Canadian Tire also applies these high standards to its sustainability initiatives. The company has completed a total of 200 sustainability projects in 2010.

Canadian Tire's sustainability measures are reported in relation to three key segments of the business operations: Products and packaging; product transportation and buildings and operations.

One of the highlights this year include the design, construction, and opening of the first of its next-generation, energy efficient stores. These stores are 75 per cent more energy efficient than those built in 2010.

Packaging and handling changes to its retail products are helping Canadian Tire avoid 620 tonnes of product and packaging waste annually. Right-sizing 35 products is reducing 470 tonnes of packaging material. (Product rightsizing ensures that products are not over-packaged for the size and fragility of the product in question, contributing to reduced transportation costs, GHG emissions and packaging stewardship fees).

Tyler Elm, VP of Business Sustainability at Canadian Tire is committed to the company's sustainability goals, and strongly supports the integration of sustainability into business operations at a high level.

Through collaboration and soliciting feedback, Canadian Tire is demonstrating its commitment to stakeholders.

Canadian Tire is a leader in sustainability best practices and a model for others to follow. The company is not only appreciated by patrons across the country, its leadership has been recognized by Canadian Business for Social Responsibility (CBSR).

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Sustainability is a Catalyst for Innovation

June 08, 2010 Add Comment Edit

The companies participating in Sustainable Brands 2010 are functioning models of the evolving relationship between sustainability and innovation.

A 2008 report titled “A New Mindset for Corporate Sustainability" was co-sponsored by BT and Cisco, and was written by six academic experts from the United States, China, United Kingdom, Singapore and Spain. According to the report, sustainable innovation is creating new business models, opening up new markets, and providing a competitive advantage. Sustainable innovation is also improving profitability.

This report is more than a theoretical summary or academic exercise, it includes case studies that demonstrate how companies are employing innovative sustainable practices to better the environment and their bottom line.

Organisations that wish to grow profitably in the future must focus their efforts to benefit shareholders, society and the environment simultaneously. Concentrating on any one of these areas at the expense of the other two may compromise a business's long-term success. A focus on sustainability provides the best means to implement this triple-pronged strategy simultaneously, enabling organisations to innovate, differentiate themselves and succeed."

Although sustainable practices were once dismissed for being too costly, as evidenced by Sustainable Brands 2010, more and more companies are coming to the realization that sustainable innovations are a gateway to growth.

Sustainability affords new opportunities for innovation and for profit.
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Sustainable Brands Innovation Open Finalists

June 07, 2010 Add Comment Edit

Earlier this year Sustainable Life Media (SLM) announced the top 11 finalists for Sustainable Brands Innovation Open (SB’IO). On Monday June 7, 2010, these brands will began presenting their products and services in a bid to impress the SB’IO judges. There are many well known companies associated with SB’IO, here is a review of the 11 new innovative sustainable brand finalists for 2010:

BioLite is an affordable, ultra low emission, wood burning cook stove for the 3 billion people that cook on wood. The BioLite stove features patent-pending technology to harness the fire’s own waste heat to drive the stove’s efficient process. The result is a product that cuts wood consumption in half, reduces toxic smoke emissions by 95% and nearly eliminates black carbon, a potent climate warmer.

Blue Avocado™ is a mission-driven, lifestyle products company that makes it EASY to DO GOOD and GET IT DONE™. A women-owned business started in November 2009, Blue Avocado offers lifestyle products that inspire people to easily reduce their environmental impact, look good and have fun doing it. The gro-pak™ reusable shopping system (which helps to eliminate 1,000 plastic bags annually), Lunch Tote, and Big Chil are just a few members of the Blue Avocado family of reusable and collapsible products that deliver value, avoid waste and invite people to take the first step on the green journey.

Cityscape Farms creates urban greenhouse systems for year round productions of sustainable and local fresh food. Using underutilized parts of the urban landscape such as vacant lots and rooftops, Cityscape Farms aims to transform cities into net food producers instead of merely consumers. The farming is aquaponics, a closed loop system that combines aquaculture (fish cultivation) and hydroponics (soilless farming) whereby filtered fish effluent becomes nutrient feed for crops. It’s efficient, scalable and well-suited for urban applications, does not rely on petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides and is eligible for USDA organic certification.

The Clarity Project is a fine jewelry social enterprise committed to improving the quality of life for miners and their families. They source only fair diamonds, gems and precious metals, and invest all of their net profits back into mining communities.

KOR is creating sustainable hydration with thoughtfully-designed hydration products that deliver a stylish, healthy and rewarding consumer experience. KOR’s mission is to celebrate and protect water. Leveraging reusable bottles, filtered water solutions, and portable water enhancements, KOR products bridge the gaping divide between the traditional reusable market and the latent market of consumers simply waiting to find a better alternative to the $50 billion global bottled water market.

Myoo Create is a new crowdsourcing community, generating innovative ideas and solutions to social and environmental problems through prize driven challenges. The custom-designed competitions are an effective way for organizations to engage with customers and the wider community to help build their sustainability story and brand reputation.

Open Data Registry’s patent-pending Internet Product Code (IPC) is a specialized unique identifier (URI) embedded with environmental and product life cycle semantics. It innovates upon UPC / EPC in two key ways: (1) Defining a product’s identity based upon how it was made, rather than who made it; (2) Storing that identity on the Web, rather than in a restricted-access database, such that anyone in the world may freely link any data to or look up any other data across the Web linked to that IPC.

Source4Style makes sustainable design possible by creating the world’s most innovative online marketing platform for designers and suppliers to showcase, connect and transact. Source4Style is poised to become the definitive B2B portal for sustainable design, offering interactive tools that decrease the barriers to ethical global sourcing. Robust search capabilities, interactivesourcing maps, online negotiation tools and breadth of trusted content on environmentally-friendly and fair trade materials will make sustainable design the norm.

Tremont Electric develops and commercializes renewable power generation solutions based on its patented nPower® energy conversion technology. The nPower® intellectual property is centered exclusively on the interaction between electromagnetic fields and the physical world. The initial product, the nPower® PEG, is a $149 wearable generator that recharges cell phones, Mp3 players, cameras and GPS devices by harvesting the kinetic energy generated by human motion, through activities like walking, jogging or riding a bike.

TrueVue Solutions is a software and information company that helps customers discover and quantify the financial risk attached to current environmental and social factors, providing SDR data and access to benchmarking data from hundreds of indicators across 100 industries to help customers understand how they rank within their industry.

ZippGo rents and delivers a zero waste moving box solution to residential and office clients. Sustainable pack and move solution consists of reusable moving boxes made from 100% recycled plastic, a custom-made reusable and recyclable moving dolly, and sustainable packing supplies made from recycled post consumer paper. ZippGo delivers the boxes to the client on biodiesel powered delivery trucks, the client packs and moves their belonging, and ZippGo picks up the boxes from the client’s new location at their convenience. ZippGo boxes come pre-assembled (no tape required) with attached lids, have handles for carrying, are crush proof, tear proof, and water proof.

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Sustainable Brands 2010

June 06, 2010 Add Comment Edit

Sustainable Brands 2010 (SB’IO) is driving market-changing innovation and helping to forge a new path for tomorrow’s leading brands. On May 25, 2010, Sustainable Life Media (SLM) announced the top 11 Sustainable Brands Innovation Open (SB’IO) finalists. SB’IO is a week long event that commences Monday June 7 and involves more than 800 brand leaders, innovation executives and designers.

SLM is the leading producer of sustainable business conferences and educational events, with products and services designed for the sustainable business community. Last year’s SB’09 conference furthered three years of consecutive growth, realizing a 20% increase in attendance despite the recession. The event brought together business and brand strategists, designers and sustainability executives for three days of extraordinary conversation, inspiration and insights into new strategies and tactics for leading profitable innovation for sustainability in the 21st century.

This year SLM are offering event tickets at the Associate Membership level, designed to provide cost-effective access. Associate Membership is designed for early and pre-startup sustainability companies, who are innovators in areas such as energy creation, business metrics and analysis. At SB’IO, Associate Members have access to parts of the conference as well as Sustainable Life Media‘s premium video and online learning content. To help with virtual communications, SLM has also launched Connext™ a new online capability that will facilitate collaboration activities at SB’IO.

SB’IO has four distinct tracks: Observe, Redesign, Measure and Communicate. The conference is titled, “Power of AND,” this theme moves beyond an "either/or" mentality to a new way of solving the increasingly complex business and environmental challenges faced by companies today.

The conference is intended to inform business strategy, product design and communications. SB’IO provides inspiration, techniques and best practices as economic realities, corporate responsibility and the environment come together to create a new strategic business imperative.
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Next: Sustainable Brands Innovation Open Finalists, Sustainability is a Catalyst for Innovation

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