Search

It may be taken as an encouraging sign of the times the number of multinational corporations now taking sustainability seriously. We're not talking about companies simply paying lip-service or “greenwashing,” but rather instilling an ethic and values of social and environmental sustainability from the core of their businesses outward to include suppliers, distribution and sales partners, customers and those outside of, but affected by, their investments and activities.

Resource-, energy- and capital-intensive, auto manufacturing has been an engine of economic growth and a core aspect of industrial and economic development worldwide over the course of the fossil fuel-era. Times change, and businesses, as well as ways of doing business, change with them, however. Today, multinational auto manufacturers such as Fiat-Chrysler are digging deeper and making comprehensive efforts to embed social and environmental, as well as economic, sustainability into their strategic business plans and day-to-day operations.

Some 300,000 people worldwide were involved in Fiat-Chrysler's short- and long-term sustainability strategies and realizing comprehensive sustainability targets, objectives and reporting. In its “2013 Sustainability Report: Economic, Environmental and Social Responsibility,” the multinational automaker lays out its short- and long-term strategy underlying those goals, reviews what's been achieved to date, and outlines how it plans to realize the sustainability goals it has set out to 2020.

No "Johnny Come Lately"

Though they have changed in substance and taken different names and forms over time, Fiat-Chrysler is no “Johnny Come Lately” when it comes to a corporate culture that recognizes, values and promotes enhancing the sustainability of every aspect of its business, Chrysler Group's Mary Gauthier, a veteran in the automaker's sustainability reporting group, pointed out during a 3P interview.

Having lost institutional memory along with veteran employees during the period when the U.S.-based automaker filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization (2008-2010), Chrysler managed to rediscover a history of activities, as well as underlying values and attitudes, that today full under the umbrella of sustainability in the wake of its 2009 acquisition by Fiat, the United Auto Workers (UAW) pension fund, and the U.S. and Canadian governments.

“When we first started, we found that, across the company, we were doing the right thing [regarding sustainability]. There were pockets within departments that had been doing these types of things, but we hadn't brought it all forward and together in a cohesive, prominent form,” Gauthier said.

The high value and strategic importance Fiat Group senior management, led by CEO Sergio Marchionne, places on social and environmental sustainability revitalized and provided strategic focus and direction to Chrysler's sustainability initiatives, Gauthier continued. “We've had a lot of encouragement from our CEO, Sergio Marchionne, on down, and we've been seeing results from the grass roots up as well.”

Sustainability and public recognition

The success of Fiat-Chrysler's sustainability initiatives and reporting have not gone unnoticed by organizations looking to promote and foster adoption of pioneering corporate social and environmental sustainability standards and reporting.

For the fifth consecutive year, for instance, Fiat Group in 2013 maintained its place in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices, which are produced in collaboration with RobecoSAM. It also confirmed its leadership in the CDP's (formerly Carbon Disclosure Project) Italy Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index and Carbon Performance Leadership Index.

Reductions in water use and greenhouse gas emissions across its manufacturing operations worldwide are two prominent examples of the success of Fiat-Chrysler's ongoing efforts to enhance the environmental and social sustainability of its operations.

Sustainability in auto manufacturing: Thinking outside the box

Fiat-Chrysler manufacturing plants worldwide are now reusing 99 percent of the water used in the manufacturing cycle. That was a savings of more than 2.1 billion cubic meters (m3) of water in 2013 -- equivalent to 13 consecutive days of water flow over Niagara Falls. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per vehicle produced have been cut 15 percent over the past four years.

The multinational automaker's energy efficiency initiatives are also paying handsome dividends. Some 730 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electricity savings have been realized. Those savings flow directly down to the financial bottom line.

These results are illustrative of Fiat-Chrysler's broad-based “green” manufacturing drive. Fiat Group plants in Pomigliano, Italy, Tychy, Poland and Tofas, Turkey, for example, all achieved Chrysler WCM (World Class Manufacturing) Gold level performance ratings. Its Bielsko Biala plant in Poland won the Automotive Lean Production Award 2013.

As Fiat-Chrysler strives to enhance the overall sustainability of its operations, it is also thinking outside the box, stretching beyond convention and thinking “green” when it comes to engine and vehicle design.

Its 3.0-liter EcoDiesel V-6 and Fiat 500e Battery-Electric Drive System was among the winners of Ward's “Best Engines for 2014,” while its 0.9 TwinAir Turbo bi-fuel natural gas-powered engine earned “Best Green Engine of the Year 2013” honors among the 12 categories included in the International Engine of the Year Awards.

The automaker's sustainability initiatives extend to supply chain partners around the world, as well as Chrysler dealerships in the U.S. Chrysler publicly recognized 30 of them for their eco-friendly operations in 2013.

Fiat-Chrysler: Sustainability and society

Promoting economic and social equity and opportunity are core aspects of triple-bottom-line and sustainability's conceptual framework. For Fiat-Chrysler, that entails creating business and employment opportunities for the socially disadvantaged and minorities, as well as supporting the work of community development groups. As Fiat-Chrysler Group Chairman John Elkann elaborated in the foreword to the group's 2013 sustainability report:

“Social responsibility is another aspect of our activities that is very important to us. We believe firmly in the values of multiculturalism and diversity and, wherever we have a presence, we actively contribute to the advancement of local communities.

Fiat-Chrysler committed some €19.7 million (~US$27.3 million) to local communities last year and spent €3.9 billion (US$5.41 billion) with minority suppliers – nearly 17 percent of Chrysler's North American purchases. Under the Chrysler Group Volunteer Program, Chrysler employees themselves contributed over 9,400 volunteer work-hours in the U.S. in 2013. As Elkann highlighted:

“Of approximately €20 million committed to local communities in 2013, for example, around 40% was for cultural, educational and training initiatives. For every social initiative, we give priority to the involvement of local employees and suppliers in order to create jobs, stimulate the local economy and strengthen social ties within each community.”

Changes in Fiat-Chrysler's sustainability strategy and initiatives have come with the passage of time. Not only is the automaker putting more time, money and other resources into them, it's also refining its strategy and goals, as well as the means by which to achieve them.

Completed and released in 2011, Chrysler's first sustainability report, dubbed “The White Album,” prompted the automaker's parent to draw together all the resources it was devoting to sustainability and centralize the its sustainability reporting function.

“We published in October (2011), reporting at a GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) A-level. We hit that goal and immediately upon publishing we got the word to work together to publish with Fiat. Six months later, in April 2012, we published a joint sustainability report with Fiat,” Gauthier recounted.

Sustainability: From concepts to practice

For the 2013 report – “The Blue Album” – the Fiat-Chrysler sustainability team zoomed in on streamlining and communicating information on “materiality” and other “headline” factors regarding its sustainability strategy and goals. That went hand-in-hand with earning comprehensive GRI G-4 comprehensive-level certification.

The effort for the first time included conducting multi-stakeholder events that spanned the automaker's global operations. Fiat-Chrysler dealers, suppliers and customers, as well as students, and social and environmental NGOs assembled in Brazil, Italy and Michigan along with group staff during these events. As Gauthier told TriplePundit:

“We talked to them about mobility and transportation, and how they saw them evolving out to 2020. We talked about the present, covering sustainability across the value chain.”

Themes common among regions, as well as differences between them, emerged during the course of the three events.

Feedback flowing from the multi-stakeholder event in Turin, Italy, for example, coalesced around promoting “a culture of sustainability, educating stakeholders, and promoting sustainability concepts across the board among various stakeholders,” Gauthier elaborated. At Chrysler's headquarters in Detroit's Auburn Hills, participants' discussion centered on new models of mobility in response to changes in the urban environment.

In Belo Horizonte, Brazil, managing the “end-of-life” of projects and achieving “cradle-to-cradle” product development was central to the discussion. So was Fiat-Chrysler's involvement in public policy and efforts to improve public goods and services.

Fiat-Chrysler's "Materiality Matrix"

In its “Materiality Matrix,” Fiat-Chrysler's sustainability team identifies the topics common among participants across the three multi-stakeholder events.

“The same things rose to the top across regions,” Gauthier explained. “The upper quadrant is all about the consumer and our products impact on them, from vehicle safety and quality to customer satisfaction, research and innovation – the production side of our business in its entirety.”

The sheer size and scope of its sustainability initiatives – from materials and equipment procurement, supply and manufacturing through distribution and sales to reporting – alone makes it clear that Fiat-Chrysler's commitment to sustainability isn't greenwash. It's about putting sustainability at the core of its business.

When asked what its stakeholders and the public can expect going forward, Gauthier said, “We've set goals, we watch the trends, and we're committed to developing new mobility solutions. The synergies between the two companies have already produced some very innovative products and thinking. Stay tuned and we'll see what comes forth. We have a Fiat 500 EV (electric vehicle).”

An interactive version of Fiat-Chrysler's 2013 sustainability report is available on the group's website.

Images credit: Fiat-Chrysler, "2013 Sustainability Report: Economic, Environmental and Social Responsibility"

Editor's note: This is the first post in a two-part series. You can read the second post here.

By Darshan Goswami, M.S., P.E.

In the coming years, India will face seemingly insurmountable challenges to its economy, environment and energy security. To overcome these challenges, India needs to shift to non-polluting sources of energy.

As Jeremy Rifkin, an economist and activist, said in New Delhi in January 2012: "India is the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy sources and, if properly utilized, India can realize its place in the world as a great power,” and adding “but political will is required for the eventual shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy.” The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has also recommended that the world needs a major shift in investments from fossil fuels to renewable energy in order to curb greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

India has tremendous energy needs, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to meet those needs through traditional means of power generation. More than 40 percent of rural Indian households don’t have electricity. While India is developing domestic energy sources to satisfy the growing demand, it is also anxious about having to import increasing amounts of fossil fuels that exacerbate the trade deficit and can be harmful to the environment. Coal imports hit a record high during the last fiscal year and will likely rise further over the next five years since India aims to expand its power-generation capacity by 44 percent.

The country's inability to generate clean, affordable power is also a major constraint to achieving energy security. The present centralized model of power generation, transmission and distribution is growing more and more costly to maintain and, at the same time, restricts the flexibility required to meet growing energy demands. India needs to encourage a decentralized business model in order to more readily take advantage of abundantly available renewable energy sources like solar, wind, hydropower, biomass, biogas, geothermal and hydrogen energy, and fuel cells. India is blessed with an abundance of these resources, yet it spends millions of rupees to import oil, coal and natural gas -- resulting in enormous amounts of renewable energy being unused/wasted. To that end, renewable resources are the most attractive investment, because they will also provide long-term economic growth for India.

To secure its energy future, India urgently needs to design/implement innovative policies and mechanisms that promote increased use of abundant, sustainable, renewable resources. All of India’s future energy demand could be met by utility-scale and rooftop photovoltaics (PV), concentrating solar power (CSP), onshore and offshore wind, geothermal, and conventional hydropower. This would require building many more solar power systems and wind farms, hybrid solar-natural gas plants, solar thermal storage and advanced battery-based grid energy storage systems. Investment in these technologies would create millions of new jobs and an economic stimulus of at least US$1 trillion, and perhaps much more if all indirect (ripple) effects are included. Other major changes involve use of electric vehicles and the development of enhanced smart grids. Making the transition to 100 percent renewable energy is both possible and affordable, but requires political support.

What needs to be done?

Instead of an overarching energy strategy, India has a number of disparate policies. To date, India has developed a cluster of energy business models and policies that have obstructed adoption of renewable energy expansion plans. This present approach threatens India’s economic competitiveness, national security and the environment. India must fundamentally transform the manner in which it produces, distributes and consumes energy to reduce its dependence on foreign oil, create jobs, enhance global competitiveness and decrease carbon emissions.

The government of India has taken several measurable steps toward improving infrastructure and power reliability (such as development of renewable energy from solar and wind), but clearly more needs to be done -- and fast. One step in the right direction was the establishment of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) in late 2009. However, the present JNNSM target of producing 10 percent of the country’s energy from solar − 20 gigawatts by 2022 − is totally inadequate. JNNSM needs to take bolder steps, with the help of central and state governments, in order to play a greater role in realizing India's solar energy potential. One such step would be establishment of a nationwide solar initiative to facilitate deployment of 100 million solar roofs and utility-scale generation installations within the next 20 years. In achieving such a goal, India could become a major player and international leader in solar energy for years to come.

In addition, developing off-grid powered micro-grids have the potential to change the way communities generate and use energy, and can reduce costs, increase reliability and improve environmental performance. Micro-grids can be used to take substantial electrical load off the existing power grid and so reduce the need for building new or expanding existing transmission and distribution systems.

Renewable energy potential in India

Renewable energy is the only technology that offers India the theoretical potential to service all its long term power requirements. The Indian subcontinent is blessed with abundant renewable energy resources. For instance, taking advantage of 300 to 330 sunny days a year, India could easily generate 5000 trillion kWh of solar energy, which is higher than India’s total yearly energy consumption. Even if a tenth of this potential was utilized, it could mark the end of India’s power problems. Using the country’s deserts and farm land, India could easily install around 1,000 GW of solar generation – equivalent to around four times the current peak power demand (India’s present generation capacity is about 210 GW).

Wind energy can also help India convert to 100 percent renewable energy. According to the environmental group World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), while India has no estimates of its offshore wind potential, up to 170 GW could be installed by 2050 along the of coastline. Hydropower could generate an estimated 148 GW, Geothermal around 10.7 GW and Tidal power about 15 GW. If these abundantly available resources were properly developed and utilized, all of India’s new energy production could be derived from renewable energy sources by 2030. In addition, all existing generation could be converted to renewable energy by 2050 while maintaining a reliable power supply in the interim. Barriers to implementing the renewable energy plan are seen to be primarily social and political, not technological or economic.

In the next post in this series, Goswami will explore 10 strategies India can enact to go 100 percent renewable by 2050. Click here to read the post in full.  

Image courtesy of Solar Energy Bay

The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the writer and are not intended to represent the views or policies of the United States Department of Energy or the United States. The article was not prepared as part of the writer's official duties at the United States Department of Energy.

Darshan Goswami has over 40 years of experience in the energy field. He is currently working as a Project Manager for Renewable Energy and Smart Grid projects at the United States Department of Energy (DOE) in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Previously, he was a Chief of Energy Forecasting and Renewable Energy at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in Washington, DC and spent three decades at Duquesne Light Company, an electric utility company in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Darshan is a registered Professional Electrical Engineer with a passion and commitment to promote, develop and deploy Renewable Energy Resources and the Hydrogen Economy.

The U.S. consumer electronics industry set a new record for electronic waste recycling in 2013, according to a new report. Electronics manufacturers and retailers collected and recycled more than 620 million pounds of e-waste across the country last year – more than double the amount of electronics they recycled three years ago.

The Third Annual Report of the eCycling Leadership Initiative was published in late April by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), the technology trade association that represents the U.S. consumer electronics industry and hosts the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The CEA launched the eCycling Leadership Initiative in 2011 as an industry-led effort to bolster consumer awareness of e-waste recycling, improve e-cycling infrastructure and increase e-waste collection, with the goal of recycling 1 billion pounds of electronics annually by 2016 – enough e-waste to fill a 71,000 seat NFL stadium.

Made up of electronics manufacturers, retailers, recyclers, nonprofits and government agencies, the program represents the consumer electronic industry’s move towards extended producer responsibility: a model of product stewardship that requires the manufacturer of a product to take responsibility for the environmental and social impacts of its product throughout the product’s lifecycle – from sourcing the material and production to consumer use and disposal.

Since the eCycling Leadership Initiative’s inception three years ago, the amount of e-waste collected by electronics manufacturers and retailers like Dell and Best Buy has significantly increased, the report revealed: from 300 million pounds in 2011 and 585 million pounds in 2012 to last year’s statistic of 620 million pounds. More than 99 percent of this e-waste was processed by third-party certified “responsible recyclers,” the report stated.

The report also found that Americans now have access to more than 8,000 e-waste collection locations, including retail stores, government-run facilities and nonprofit programs. This number does not include the thousands of additional drop-off sites for mobile devices in retail stores and through mobile carriers like Sprint, the report said. The CEA estimates that the number of collection centers for larger consumer electronics has grown from 5,000 in 2010 to 8,000 today.

CEA recognized Apple, Best Buy, Dell and DIRECTV as “Initiative Leaders” for each exceeding the CEA’s 2013 consumer hardware recycling goals by more than 125 percent, while acknowledging Acer, HP, Samsung, LG and Sony as “Initiative Performers” for surpassing the CEA goals by between 100 and 125 percent.

The report also reflected on current and future challenges facing e-cycling, including the electronics industry’s replacement of cathode ray tube (CRT) glass in televisions and computer monitors with LCD, LED and plasma displays. Because the industry is no longer making new products with CRT technology, manufacturers do not need old CRT glass to recycle into new products, and recyclers can’t find markets for the CRT glass they collect. To tackle this issue, CEA partnered with the Environmental Defense Fund in 2012 and the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries in 2013 on two CRT Challenges, competitions that sought proposals for new financially viable and environmentally responsible uses for old CRT glass.

The eCycling Leadership Initiative has a long way to go in reaching its “Billion Pound E-Waste Challenge,” especially, as the report noted, when the electronics industry is increasingly making products with reduced weights – a trend that will, no doubt, bring down the initiative’s collection numbers. But it is encouraging to see an industry come together to take responsibility for its products -- to relieve local governments and taxpayers of disposal costs, harmonize collection infrastructure across the country and, ultimately – hopefully –  make less toxic, more environmentally-friendly products in the first place.

“We want to make recycling electronics as easy as purchasing electronics,” said CEA President and CEO Gary Shapiro. “Electronics recycling is a national issue, and CEA continues to work toward a national solution to replace the complicated patchwork of rules that varies from state to state.”

You can read the eCycling Leadership Initiative’s four-page report here.

Image credit: Flickr/U.S. Army Environmental Command

Passionate about both writing and sustainability, Alexis Petru is freelance journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area whose work has appeared on Earth911, Huffington Post and Patch.com. Prior to working as a writer, she coordinated environmental programs for Bay Area cities and counties. Connect with Alexis on Twitter at @alexispetru

Welcome to our series of interviews with leading female CSR practitioners where we are learning about what inspires these women and how they found their way to careers in sustainability. Read the rest of the series here.

TriplePundit: Briefly describe your role and responsibilities, and how many years you have been in the business.

Andrea Learned: I’m a thought leadership and business development consultant specializing in social content and social media engagement strategies. I work mainly, but not solely, with sustainability and CSR-focused clients. Helping them amplify their work and forward that business movement is my passion. Overall, I’ve been in marketing consulting for 25+ years, which includes about 10 years of deep expertise in marketing to women (I co-authored the book, Don’t Think Pink). Starting in about 2009, I transitioned into my sustainability-focused corporate leadership and B2B communications consulting.

3p: How has the sustainability program evolved at your company?

AL: I am a sole proprietor (Learned On) with an extremely low “company” footprint, so I’ll answer this question with how it has evolved in my thinking. When I first realized how much my personal values were reflected in my own purchases and in the types of clients I worked with, it was all about better communicating the direct message of “green” or “sustainability.” As both my interest and knowledge have deepened, I’ve become more interested in business development strategies and helping corporate leaders “socialize” their sustainability wisdom – so that it is more indirect, or as I often call it: sustainability hidden in plain sight. Also, where I began my career with more of a B2C marketing and messaging focus, I now concentrate on the individual, professional development angle.  This, to me, lends itself to building a “sustainable” pipeline of sustainability and CSR-focused leaders for years to come. I can be much more passionate about socializing sustainability thought leadership than I could be about specific consumer-facing products or services.

3p: Tell us about someone (mentor, sponsor, friend, hero) who affected your sustainability journey, and how.

AL: I’d have to say my peers in the Goddard College Master’s in Sustainable Business and Communities program. I was one of the few “capitalists” in the bunch, so I was incredibly influenced by the energy, determination and passion so many of them showed in starting their own nonprofits, developing community funding sources and creating a better world through innovative and grassroots models. Spending time with these mainly significantly younger people in a gorgeous setting in Vermont every few months only helped us forge stronger bonds.

3p: What is the best advice you have ever received?

AL: It may just have been the bumper sticker (and then a series of friends and mentors reminding me of it along the way), but it is this: Question assumptions. I keep that in mind personally (how I’ve gone about building my business), and I advise clients to do the same with what they write and share.

3p: Can you share a recent accomplishment you are especially proud of?

AL: I get a charge from helping younger people see broader career possibilities and helping them learn to network in the sustainability community (using social media, of course!). If I can pass my knowledge along, and save a future sustainability leader a few steps, I absolutely love it.

As someone who has written about the gender lens on sustainability leadership for a while now, I am also still very proud of a piece of mine that published in The Solutions Journal in early 2011: Gender and the Sustainable Brain.

3p: If you had the power to make one major change at your company or in your industry, what would it be?

AL: To help corporate clients see that, if you engage wisely on social media, no one is “competition.” Everything you do/share should be a body of work that elevates and amplifies the good of the industry (and you will get noticed for it, and be differentiated by it, without a doubt).

3p: Describe your perfect day.

AL: Riding my bike to a meeting in downtown Seattle, coming home and walking my dogs, and having a client or two say, “Wow – I get it,” about social media engagement. Pretty simple.

As we all know, coal is dirty. It is a fossil fuel and has a big environmental impact, as the Environmental Protection Agency outlines. When coal is burned greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide, are released. Mining, cleaning and transporting coal also generate emissions. Large amounts of water are used to remove impurities from coal at the mine, and coal-fired power plants use large amounts of water for producing steam and for cooling. Then, there is mountaintop removal -- which blows the tops off of mountains to get to the coal lying beneath.

Stanford University clearly understands just how dirty coal is because its board of trustees, acting on a recommendation from the university’s Advisory Panel on Investment Responsibility and Licensing (APIRL), announced that it will not make direct investments in coal mining companies. Specifically, Stanford will not make direct investments of endowment funds in publicly traded companies whose principal business is coal mining for energy use.

The resolution means that Stanford will not directly invest in about 100 publicly-traded companies whose primary business is mining coal, and will divest of any current holdings in those companies -- making it the first major university to divest from coal. In addition, Stanford will recommend to its external investment managers they they avoid investments in these companies.

"Stanford has a responsibility as a global citizen to promote sustainability for our planet, and we work intensively to do so through our research, our educational programs and our campus operations," said Stanford President John Hennessy. "The university's review has concluded that coal is one of the most carbon-intensive methods of energy generation and that other sources can be readily substituted for it. Moving away from coal in the investment context is a small, but constructive, step while work continues, at Stanford and elsewhere, to develop broadly viable sustainable energy solutions for the future."

In 1971, Stanford adopted the Statement on Investment Responsibility, which states that the trustees’ main obligation in investing endowment funds is to “maximize the financial return on those assets.” However, the statement also allows that when trustees judge “corporate policies or practices cause substantial social injury” they can include this factor in their investment decisions.

A student-led organization called Fossil Free Stanford petitioned the university last year to divest from 200 fossil fuel extraction companies. APIRL’s Environmental Sustainability Subcommittee met with the group and then conducted its own research. “Stanford’s decision is a clear testament to the power of the student movement for divestment and the broader movement to combat climate change,” the group said in a statement.

Although Stanford has not divested from other fossil fuel companies, it may do so in the future. Deborah DeCotis, the chairwoman of the board’s special committee on investment responsibility, told the New York Times, “This is not the ending point. It’s a process.” She added, “We’re a research institute, and as the technology develops to make other forms of alternative energy sources available, we will continue to review and make decisions about things we should not be invested in. Don’t interpret this as a pass on other things.”

Stanford is the not the only organization to divest from coal. In January, a group of 17 foundations with almost $2 billion in assets agreed to divest from fossil fuel stocks, including coal, in their endowments. The foundations that agreed to divest include Ben & Jerry’s Foundation and the Schmidt Family Foundation, created by Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt.

Image credit: Wally Gobetz

Editor's note: This is the first post in an ongoing biweekly series on the climate adaptation gap. Stay tuned for future installments here on TriplePundit!

Recent data indicate that a gap exists between corporations understanding the big-picture risks of climate change and their actions to address those risks to shore up their bottom line.

MIT’s Sloan Management Review published results of the annual sustainability survey they conduct with BCG (aka The Boston Consulting Group). In Harvard Business Review's synthesis, they note: “The vast majority of respondents in a new Sloan and BCG survey say climate change isn't a significant issue … And of the 27 percent that acknowledge climate change is a risk to their businesses, only 9 percent say their companies are prepared for the risk.”

In contrast to this data, another corporate survey—the annual World Economic Forum Global Risk Report--says, this year, four out of the top 10 global risks derived from the World Economic Forum’s global risk perception survey relate to climate disruption:

• Water Crisis


• Failure of Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation


• Greater Incidence of Extreme Weather Events


• Food Crisis

These risks share space with other risks such as high unemployment, fiscal crisis and political and social instability.

As the report starts: “To manage global risks effectively and build resilience to their impacts, better efforts are needed to understand, measure and foresee the evolution of interdependencies between risks, supplementing traditional risk-management tools with new concepts designed for uncertain environments.”

The takeaway from WEF’s report: It’s up to all of us to build and refine the proper measurement tools to ensure we are creating business opportunities that offer rewards for humanity in this era of climate risk. A goal will be to pair other notable trends about sustainability progress to lead the way.

So, based on the WEF numbers, if corporations see a risk, but, based on the MIT numbers, they do nothing about it, that gap suggests that businesses are not yet sure how to manage the risk that a changing climate brings to their value chains.

Since climate adaptation relates to the direct impacts on our most important assets—our employees, our customers, our communities and our families--those who advise corporations possess a great opportunity to demonstrate to their clients the significant collateral benefits of a five-step plan of adaptation action. The five steps are outlined briefly here, and will be rolled out in-depth throughout a six-part, biweekly series on Triple Pundit.

1. Examine the relative risks of geographies in supply chains. Where are your most vulnerable communities and supply chains? What resilience can be built to protect these people and assets?


2. Identify relevant vulnerabilities in geographies where you maintain significant human and capital assets. Tools like ND Global Adaptation Index can help, plotting countries on a matrix and digging into specific country profiles. When assessing their global risks, corporate leaders can also employ other indices to inform their thinking—from Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, to the major credit-rating agencies’ foreign-currency ratings, and the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report.


3. Review your business-continuity plans based upon these vulnerabilities and risks, perhaps including an economic risk analysis for the most likely issues. If you are just beginning this assessment, draft up a list of questions based on research surrounding steps one and two. Use this information to inform your business-continuity plan.


4. List strategies that could be used to prepare your most vulnerable assets. What investment is available and what processes must be taken to secure these assets?


5. Create a short and medium-term plan that does three things: 1) Starts with adaptive actions you already are taking as part of your business as usual. 2) Sets priorities of adaptations with collateral benefits; e.g., mitigating greenhouse gas emissions (onsite stormwater management), improving employee morale (work from home options) or buoying your reputation (shoring up public health systems in one of your supplier hubs). 3) And, very importantly, includes financials for avoided risks.

Many cities, including Toronto, New York and London publish their adaptation plans, and they are worth a look for inspiration.

Read more in the Climate Adaptation Gap series:

1. Bridging the Climate Adaptation Gap: From Recognition to Action


2. Bridging the Climate Adaptation Gap: Relative Risks of Geographies in Supply Chains


3. The Climate Adaptation Gap: How to Create a Climate Adaptation Plan

Joyce Coffee is managing director of the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index (ND-GAIN). Coffee, who is based in Chicago, serves as the executive lead for related resiliency research, outreach and execution. Stay tuned for the next post in “The Climate Adaptation Gap" series on Tuesday, May 20. The series will deep-dive into the complicated look at supply chain risk assessment. Next up: “Relative Risks of Geographies in Supply Chains”.

In March, we hosted our first #3pChat Tweet Jam on sustainable fashion, featuring prominent sustainable designers and merchandisers from around the world.

Now, on Thursday, May 8th; 12 Noon PST / 3pm EST, we're bringing you our second large "Tweet Jam" on sustainable seafood. We have been running a special sponsored series on the topic for the past several weeks, and now it's time to invite a few experts in for a live conversation, in which you can participate!

Questions of discussion will include:

• The future of "wild" fish, and aquaculture as a solution?


• The efficiency of labeling and consumer responses?


• Do diners care? Can the restaurant industry play a part?


• What is the role of businesses? NGOs? Government?

FOLLOW ALONG LIVE:

Tweets about "#3pChat"

ABOUT OUR PANELISTS: 

George H. Leonard - Chief Scientist, Ocean Conservancy - @GeorgeHLeonard

George provides science and policy advice to a number of organizational priorities including marine debris, ocean acidification, and sustainable fisheries and aquaculture. Before joining Ocean Conservancy, he developed the scientific foundation for the Seafood Watch program at Monterey Bay Aquarium and helped launch the Communication Partnership for Science and the Sea (COMPASS).  He is active member of the twitter-verse on these and other emerging ocean conservation issues.

Tim Fitzgerald - Environmental Defense Fund Oceans Program, Senior Advisor - @hawaiifitz

Tim directs EDF’s sustainable seafood program and is a senior member of EDF’s National Policy team, where he engages the seafood supply chain to advance better fisheries management policies. Tim serves on the conservation board of Ecofish LLC and is an advisor to Fair Trade USA, SeaWeb and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. He is a frequent speaker on conservation and health issues concerning the seafood market, and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and NPR’s Fresh Air, in addition to invited testimony in front of the President’s Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.

Jason Simas - iPura Foods, Director of Communications - @iPura

Jason is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and founder of Grant, Hamilton & Beck, LLC, a communications consultancy for innovative, purpose-driven and quality-focused brands.  He designed and manages social media communications for iPura Foods, a life sciences company focused on Food Safety and Sustainability.  He is also the creator of the Sustainable Seafood Bloggers Association set to launch in May.

Clare Leschin-Hoar - Independent Food Writer / Journalist - @c_leschin

Clare is an award-winning journalist who covers food policy, seafood and sustainability trends within the food industry. Her work has appeared in Scientific American, The Guardian and many more. She's a regular contributor at  TakePart. Her seafood-specific coverage has recently included stories on the impacts of ocean acidification; turf wars over seafood certification; feed and sea lice solutions in aquaculture, and seafood safety post-Fukushima.

THE DETAILS:

Thursday, May 8th; 12 Noon PST / 3pm EST Follow along on Twitter at: #3pChat

RSVP by sending the following tweet: "Join me May 8 at Noon PST to talk about sustainable seafood w/ @Triplepundit & experts. http://bit.ly/SustyFishTweetJam #3pchat"

Never done this before? Read our primer on how a twitter chat works.

Have a question for our panelists? Leave a comment below or tweet us at @triplepundit. The Tweet Jam will be an hour long and we’ll have a series of conversation starting questions lined up. You’re welcome to jump in any time and add your own thoughts or questions to the dialogue.

Our series sponsors have made this chat possible. Their twitter information is below and we’ve invited them to weigh in during the chat as well.

• Future of Fish - @FutureofFish


• Bell Aquaculture - @BellAquaculture


• Verlasso - @VerlassoSalmon


• Fish Choice - @FishChoice


• Monterey Bay Aquarium; Seafood Watch - @SeafoodWatch

Image credit: Michelle Tsang/Unsplash

Easyjet is nearing the era of the paperless plane.

The UK's largest airline with a fleet of 220 Airbus aircraft will complete the fitting of Panasonic Toughpads, in place of laptops and printed navigational charts, in all of its cockpits by the end of this month.

Each aircraft currently carries about 25kg of paper, encompassing forms, checklists and detailed manuals. By removing paper completely, it can improve efficiency and costs, by reducing fuel burn and production and subsequent distribution to easyJet's 24 bases. This will save around half a million dollars in fuel costs alone. It will also reduce the cost of printing and distributing the paper versions of the manuals and forms.

Captain Brian Tyrrell, head of flight pperations for Easyjet said: “Eradicating paper, including the cumbersome manuals with thousands of pages on-board, by providing access to the same information via these devices is an important step in reducing weight but it also means we can improve the speed and efficiency of our communications by remotely saving information and providing crew with up to date information.”

Easyjet's annual fuel bill is around £1.2bn. According to the airline, an Easyjet passenger's carbon footprint is already 22% less than a passenger on a traditional airline flying on the same route and aircraft
 

While the results from the second Business in the Community (BITC) Workwell FTSE100 benchmark showed the average company score on the up, the provision of mental health support continues to be a low scoring area. Indeed, there is almost no reporting of psychological health being measured or addressed. 

Stephen Howard, chief executive, BITC, commented: “We are encouraged that the broad picture on public reporting around employee engagement and wellbeing is one of improvement. The findings have shown that what gets measured gets managed, with clear examples of leadership highlighted through this process. However, the lack of reporting on mental health emphasises the culture of silence around this issue. When one in four adults will experience a mental health condition in any given year, there is much to be gained by employers in publically disclosing the specialist support services they do have in place."

The continued low level of reporting on provision of mental health support has led to the development of the BITC Mental Health Champions Group, which pledges to tackle the growing issue of underreporting on mental health, end the culture of silence around mental health in the workplace, and ensure that mental wellbeing is recognised as a strategic boardroom issue. 

Although mental health continues to be an underreported area in public reporting of employee engagement and wellbeing, BITC says it is likely that companies have more policies and programmes in operation than they currently report externally but trends, intelligence or learnings from these initiatives are not being put in the public domain. Research5 shows that 85 per cent of UK companies offer an Employee Assistance Programme as part of their support but the benchmark score for the provision of Employee Assistance Programmes only scored six per cent.

Other key findings from this year's benchmark report show that the highest scoring BITC Workwell segments were Diversity and Inclusion (companies with detailed reporting increasing from 25 to 45 per cent) and Health and Safety (from 29 to 60 per cent), showing how compliance drives measurement and reporting. BITC says that Barclays, British Land Company, BT, GSK and RBS were leading companies in the process

You can access a copy of the full report here. 

 

Picture credit: © Alena187 | Dreamstime.com

  

Editor's note: This is the first post in a three-part series on sustainable fish farming startups. You can find the second story here and the third here. 

Powered by their rapidly expanding populations, emerging world economies are working hard to close the gap with developed nations. As this trend of convergence continues and accelerates, growth in the coming decades will increasingly focus on the developing world.

Even now about 1 billion people, mostly in developing countries, depend on seafood as their main source of protein. How to feed a hungry and growing population from an increasingly stressed resource, in many places teetering on collapse?

Got fish?

The World Bank estimates that by 2030, as the global population tops 8 billion people, only 38 percent of seafood consumed globally will be wild. The rest, fully 62 percent, must come from fish farming and aquaculture.

As vital as wild fishery preservation is to ocean health and biodiversity, given this outlook for the necessity of farmed fish, the focus for building an adequate source of healthy seafood for human consumption must look to the expansion of sustainable fish farming, aquaculture and aquaponics.

Bringing sustainable fish production to scale requires a variety of new approaches and techniques developed by visionary -- and sometimes controversial -- business startups, operating in diverse circumstances. From the open ocean far offshore to inner-city “post industrial” warehouses, solutions are emerging.

Farmed fish falters

“It used to be individuals that were farming salmon," says Neil Sims, co-founder and CEO of Kampachi Farms on the Big Island of Hawaii. "Often there were salmon fishermen that had increasingly constrained (fishing) seasons and so they went and banged together some boards to make a net pen and bought some salmon fingerlings from the hatchery, they had a couple of net pens out on their dock - and that was pretty poor practices. There was poor siting, it was poorly engineered, under-capitalized, it was unsustainable feeding systems … and it was fairly impactful. It was not well done.”

It wasn’t a good start.

These initial poorly-conceived attempts at fish farming have left a bad taste in many people’s mouths, even as they unwittingly consume farmed fish, sustainably grown or not. Resistance to change is natural, just as it is inevitable. Overcoming resistance to new approaches is an uphill battle. We shouldn’t make light of the genuine environmental concerns and significant challenges that persist with aquaculture and aquaponics, especially if it is to scale to the level required to feed a hungry world. But surely this resistance must be countered, proving to public and expert alike that not only is sustainable, healthy and nutritious fish farming and aquaponics possible, it is essential.

For Sims, what some pejoratively call “factory fish farming” is a promising new, low-impact method of raising healthy native fish in the deep waters off Kona, Hawaii. On the other hand there is Jason Green, founder of Edenworks  building a new, whole-systems approach to the centuries-old technology of aquaponics, even while battling preconceived (and Green says unfounded) notions of it as an unscalable means of producing tasteless fish and produce.

From the sultry warm ocean waters off Hawaii to an inner-city factory of post-industrial America comes what could be the answer to the question of how to feed upwards of 11 billion people by century’s end, most of whom will depend in large measure on farmed fish to survive.

First, to Hawaii!

Kampachi Farms: Sustainable harvest in the open ocean

Kampachi Farms, an open-ocean mariculture* startup co-founded by Neil Sims and Michael Bullock, has not only faced stiff opposition from some (not all) environmental groups, but it has also played a central role in helping to define aquaculture law and policy.

Based in Kona, on the Big Island of Hawaii, Kampachi Farms evolved from its predecessor, Kona Blue Water Farms, a firm pioneering basic scientific research in open-ocean aquaculture. Sims and Bullock launched Kampachi Farms in 2011 to leverage their research and begin work on developing efficient, commercial-scale methods of producing sashimi-grade Kampachi near primary markets.

Most mariculture occurs in protected bays and estuaries, where effluents and interactions with wild stocks can easily cause environmental damage. Sims and Bullock believe the only viable solution to scalable and sustainable mariculture is to move it further offshore into deeper waters. And that’s exactly what they did with the start of the Velella Project

*Mariculture refers to growing fish in salt water, aquaculture in fresh water

Velella Project

When I first visited Kampachi Farms’ onshore hatchery, located on the grounds of the Natural Energy Lab in Kona, in the spring of 2012, the “beta” run of the Velella project was well underway. Once the Kampachi fingerlings grown in large onshore tanks were ready, the young, native fish were moved to an untethered deep-water drifter pen riding through the natural eddies flowing around the leeward side of the Big Island. An escort tender ship accompanied the pen to make small course corrections to ensure the pen didn't come near the fragile coral reef system and to provide sustainable, efficient feed, mostly from U.S.-grown soybean products.

At that time, in early 2012, the future of aquaculture and mariculture was uncertain, as a lawsuit brought by Food and Water Watch against the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was wending its way through court. Principal among the issues Food and Water Watch had with NOAA was allowing the Velella project to proceed in federal waters.

Food and Water Watch characterized Velella as “factory fish farming,” challenging its legality in court with the Magnuson-Stevens Act as the basis for its argument. In what was already an uncertain atmosphere, the suit brought the founders of Valella into a complicated area that spanned legislation, the role of governments and NGOs, and how to best help environmental groups understand mariculture.

Image credit: Kampachi Farms

Read the rest of Startups in Sustainable Fish Farming: 

• Part 1: Sustainable Fish Startups: From the Open Seas to the Inner City


• Part 2: The Future of Mariculture: Bridging the Gap Between Startups, Lawmakers and NGOs


• Part 3: Sustainable Fish Farming: Global-Scale Aquaculture in the Big City