Perpetual Innovation

Category: sustainability plan

  • Corps report on sustainability, kinda

    Good news corporations are reporting on sustainability-related issues, especially those risks associated with operating a business that does not account or consider the areas where they are not sustainable. Operations in the UnSustainable Zone have lots of risks such as, for example, the company may not really be profitable. Cheap coal, is not nearly so cheap when you figure in all the negative externalities: pollution, health, CO2, coal ash…

    Check out this WSJ article about the reporting, or lack thereof, of sustainability by large companies. First, 81% of companies report something, but 52% of those reporting used “boilerplate language to flag the risks without articulating management response strategies.”  That would mean, if I understand it correctly, that only 42% of big firms report meaningful information on sustainability and the risks to the organization. But using Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, or SASB, would give the reader/investor meaningful information about the true profitability (economic profit) and the underlying risks. (See wikipedia on SASB or SASB.org.)


    I know what you are thinking… These area the same types of risks that Sarbanes-Oxley was supposed to address. If the risks are real, and material, then they must be meaningfully assessed and reported. Right?

    Top Companies Are Disclosing Sustainability Risks, But Not The Way Investors Want
    By 

  • Oh Frack… Ain't no such thang clean oil n gas!

    You’ve heard that there ain’t no such thing as “Clean” Coal. Maybe scrubbing some of the sulpher and removing some of the heavly metals. But certainly not clean. And then there’s the dirty little secret of Coal Ash!.
    But this article sums up the current research related to fracking. Ouch. Evidense keeps mounting about the down-side of oil fracking. This article really sums it up. 
    Link to the Ecologist article on Fracking.
    Of course, our argument here at SustainZine, is focused around the sustainability nature of fossil fuels in general. It’s okay, kinda, to use fossil fuels, but only do so when you have a long term plan that is sustainable, and this is the bridge to the future.

  • Sustainability becomes a business law: Organic is more productive

    Sustainability becomes a business law:

    Two things resurfaced over the last couple days. One is very local to Florida related to Sustainability is the Business Law. It looks at the focus of sustainability from the business view, or from the environmental view; which is the right view. And the answer, of course, is “Yes”.  Aiming for a win, win in the business vs. environment tug of war. The old approach of win-lose turns out to be a lose-lose in the long run.

    But a separate study by the Rodale Institute, with a 30-year long (and ongoing) study of farming showed organic farming to be a hands-down winner over the mass production methods used in the USA. Actual link to the study is here: http://rodaleinstitute.org/our-work/farming-systems-trial/

    That study knocked my socks off!
    Now I gotta go socks shopping for new organically grown socks (bamboo-based
    maybe?).
    A 30+ year field study on Organic farming vs. non-organic (now including GMOs).
    Yields up, resources down (water us and drought tolerance), soil quality, profits up…
    WoW!.
    And, of course, there is a major move in consumer preferences toward healthier foods and more local grown foods as measured by massive moves by such players as Chipotle’s (CMG) and Whole Foods (WFM)… and against the highly processed foods like McDonalds (McD).
    I’m curious what other people think of this study. I wonder how they did several things.
    Also, I
    could not find the exact publication date. The stats were a year or two behind.
    Do you all think that the field study is fully accurate?

    ‘via Blog this’

  • Bloomberg News Adds Its Two Cents to Sustainability Debate

    Bloomberg News Adds Its Two Cents to Sustainability Debate: ““If you don’t have a sustainability plan, you don’t have a business plan” is the note on which the media company”

    If that’s the case, and I believe it is, there are very few companies out there who really have a Business Plan.

    The very first order of business is doing an energy/water/carbon audit. I should think that ever few smaller companies/organization have done that.