Perpetual Innovation

Category: triple bottom-line

  • 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’

  • China Pollution Is Blanketing America’s West Coast – Business Insider

    China Pollution Is Blanketing America’s West Coast – Business Insider:

    Oh boy.

    We export raw materials and coal to China so they can make finished goods and export them back to us in the West/USA. They don’t have the safety worries that we do… Some of the externalities affect only China, but many affect us all, especially those countries and environments closer to the mainland of China.

    “Cities like Los Angeles received at least an extra day of smog a year from nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide from China’s export-dependent factories, it said.

    “We’ve outsourced our manufacturing and much of our pollution, but some of it is blowing back across the Pacific to haunt us,” co-author Steve Davis, a scientist at University of California Irvine, said.”

    Yuk! 🙁

    A good economist would argue that  products (say coal, especially the really dirty, high sulfur stuff) that produce negative externalities should be assessed a tax that roughly matches the costs of the externality. Using this logic, we would tax coal (especially high sulfur coal) that goes to a developing country, and tax them even more if they intend to burn the coal without scrubbers and such. This might not stop them from burning coal, but it would make other options more attractive that are cleaner (less negative externalities).

    Unfortunately, China has a LOT of coal in the country. They now burn more than half the world’s coal each year, so they do have to import it as well.

    ‘via Blog this’

  • A Sustainable Walmart…

    Check out the Corporate Responsibility Report by Walmart for 2012. http://www.walmartstores.com/sites/responsibility-report/2012/pdf/wmt_2012_grr.pdf

    This is very impressive. It not only includes such things as Energy and Carbon Footprint from all of Walmart’s stores, it also addresses the impact of the products and foods from suppliers and how sustainable they are.

    Walmart’s goals of renewable energy are pretty impressive, but they step up and state the long-term obvious: the long-term goal is 100% renewable energy.

    They are moving toward more local suppliers (for foods) which also means they will have a lot more suppliers. They are moving toward all suppliers reporting on their carbon footprint (and water footprint).

    One of the things I really like it that they focus on 10 areas that they think are the most important. Some should help the bottom-line directly, others only long-term or indirectly. Still, they seem to be an impressive, yet target-able  set of objectives. This fits very well into the Triple Bottom-Line of Sustainability.

    Note the need for reporting all along the value chain.

    Note the need for education & training all along the value chain.

    [With all that Walmart does well/right, there are still some who complain and criticize. More on this view in another post.]

    ‘via Blog this’