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Submitted by Guest Contributor

 By Karen Ribeiro

Bio-what?

The word biochar, let alone the biological and chemical properties of it, is not widely understood. You know that biomass is, generally, plant wastes and you know charcoal is great for barbeque, but what on earth is "biochar"?

In simplest terms, it is specialized charcoal appropriate for use as a soil amendment where its physical structure -- millions of tiny pores per cubic inch -- allow it to greatly enhance soil health, conserve water, and hold carbon.

Thousands of years ago when the native people of the Amazon were devising optimal land use practices, as described in Charles Mann's bestseller 1491, they figured out how to return carbon, sequestered by plants and trees, back into the soil in order to sustain and increase its well being. This black earth carbon or "Terra Preta" is still there, accompanied by the resulting colonies of soil microbes. Industrial agricultural practices have strayed far from these roots, to be sure, but such practices are making a real comeback.

On both hyperlocal and large scales, the biochar industry is turning waste into “black gold” for agriculture – and the climate.

Spreading the Word on Biochar

One of the first experts a person journeying into the field of biochar will meet is Dr. Johannes Lehmann, a soil scientist at Cornell who has published many papers on the benefits of biochar as well as the textbook Biochar for Environmental Management Science and Technology. YouTube videos run the gamut from the easily digestible Biochar Bob series and various TEDx talks to the deep dive science of energy and agriculture with John Miedema along with thousands of small scale cook stove demonstrations of TLUDs (top lit up-draft units).

But without a sophisticated penchant for extra curricular study, Joe Q Public isn't learning about biochar and what it can do to restore denuded, compacted soils to absorbent, thriving ecosystems. Now, the United States Biochar Initiative (USBI) and the International Biochar Initiative (IBI) would like to change that. Both sponsor annual conferences and the next USBI North American Biochar Symposium will be at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst on October 13-16.

Further Research, Scaling Up Needed

As with any emerging industry, there are multiple complexities to be overcome.

The types of waste materials or feedstocks, used to produce biochar; the temperature at which the feedstock is heated or pyrolyzed; and the process of inoculating or preparing, the biochar before it is added back into the soil: these are all factors to be considered.

Standards have been developed by IBI, production kinks have been worked out, but many longitudinal studies with different types and amounts of biochar are still needed to support the entrepreneurs producing and selling char.

Like with any technology, we need higher volumes of biochar to drive down its price per ton and thus get many more farmers to use it.

And we need a larger market to encourage investors to capitalize larger production capacity and help biochar play a larger role in agricultural and climate solutions. Studies and field trials like one conducted by the New England Small Farm Institute can encourage policymakers to draft new guidance and move the market forward.

Market development thinking goes something like this:

“if only we could divert a significant percentage of funds from the current flow of money invested in harmful things by large foundations, venture capitalists, big name celebrities, the department of defense? ... we could finally and properly support the countless budding entrepreneurs ready, willing and able to make a real difference in the systems of agriculture, energy, community, education, and even help restore Mother Earth herself.”

Certainly the hope we are harvesting within the biochar industry is no different.

A Simple Thing To Consider About Biochar

Biomass left to rot, whether dying trees in a forest, manure on a farm, or decomposing peat bogs, releases the greenhouse gases it had once held. Converting these wastes into a high value soil amendment that also sequesters carbon for hundreds or thousands of years, can, perhaps, ensure soil health and mitigate climate disaster.

Taking part in this national and global movement to restore the natural well being of elemental ecosystems across the earth -- where any and all viable, high-impact actions are explored -- restores one's hope in the future.

We need this action NOW because solutions are rooted in patience, longevity ... time. And we're in danger of losing all three.

About the Author:

Karen Ribeiro is the principle of Inner Fortune, an environmental consulting and coaching firm in Amherst, Mass., and has designed a variety of in-person and online programs and tools to stimulate intuitive clarity. Ribeiro is currently the conference director of the 2013 USBI North American Biochar Symposium, and has just started writing a new book melding an extensive genealogy exploration with the intriguing exploration of biochar's impact on root structures. For more, visit www.innerfortune.com.

What do you get when you combine mobile banking and that pretty plastic blue Visa card? Accessible banking to millions of Africans, a game changer in consumer banking and an innovative approach to CSR in emerging markets. In South Africa, Standard Bank has revolutionized financial services with AccessBanking, a new way to save and spend money that runs on one of SAP’s new banking software platforms.

Standard Bank’s AccessBanking is a big step forward for personal finance in South Africa. Currently as much as 33 percent of the country’s population is does not have access to banks. Many South Africans who have a bank account but live in the townships that are located in the far outskirts of South Africa’s largest cities are as far as 25 to 40 miles away from the nearest branch. But with an ID card and a cell phone, Standard Bank can offer access to cash at thousands of sites in South Africa, provide jobs to the unemployed and help merchants expand their business.

So how does AccessBanking work?

Standard Bank’s employees and “AccessAgents” pitch promotional tents across South Africa or local corner stores (called “spaza shops” in South Africa) or malls in townships and smaller cities across the country. Signing for an account is easy: all a customer needs is identification and proof of residence. Then the AccessAgent fills out a brief form, sets up a transactional or savings account and demonstrates how to use the service. The process generally takes fewer than 10 minutes and has been done in as fast as two minutes. Customers are definitely excited over this service: during our visit yesterday to Tembisa, a township outside of Johannesburg, the queues to sign up at two locations to which we paid a visit were long.

But this is not mobile banking--the card does not go away. Upon signup, the customer receives a blue Standard Charter debit card with the famous credit card symbol plunked in a corner. According to Audrey Mothupi, Head of South Africa’s Inclusive Banking, South Africans aspire for a rectangular debit card similar to what the richer citizens in their country enjoy. Upon receiving the card, customers can walk into over 7,000 “AccessPoints” in South Africa and deposit or withdraw cash, check their balances, transfer money and buy prepaid electricity or mobile telephone airtime.

According to Standard Bank, about 90,000 new accounts open monthly, adding to the 3.5 million customers the bank migrated from older legacy accounts. In turn, these customers benefit from a seamless way to manage their money instead of hiding it in a mattress or making a long trip to the nearest bank branch. They benefit from a safe and secure banking system that allows them to deposit even the smallest amounts of money close to their home. Standard Bank only charges a fee if the customer uses an ATM or completes a transaction with one of the bank’s branches. At an AccessPoint, however, no transaction is too small: “That hairdresser who made a quick R200 (1 rand is about $0.10) can run into the store and deposit her money safely,” said Mothupi. And every single transaction is followed up with a quick SMS message.

Merchants also benefit from AccessBanking. Based on the level of activity they generate in their stores, a store owner can gain anywhere from an extra $200 to $800 in revenues monthly. They also become affiliated with a brand many South Africans once viewed as out of reach or in Mothupi’s words, “even foreign.” Plus, consumers who walk into one of these AccessPoints will likely walk out with a few products purchased at the same location.

The AccessAgents, upon completing a comprehensive training program, have what is hard to come by for many in South Africa and elsewhere in the region: a job. Currently 1,000 of these agents work across the country and Standard Bank plans on hiring more. Standard Bank not only pays agents for every account they set up, but for each new account that is actually activated. Such an extra step is important, Mothupi explained, because the extra effort helps convince customers to use this service often. And they do: over 2.3 million transactions worth R460 million (about $46 million) are completed monthly.

For Standard Bank, AccessBanking is about providing a much needed service and helping strengthen South Africa’s economy for everyone. “It’s about building new ecosystems,” Mothupi said, and similar revolutionary systems are underway. Spaza shop owners are now gaining access to a similar system, changing the way they stock their stores. They used to have to make an overnight trip to a warehouse store, which is both a huge waste of time and inefficient because it is difficult to gauge what kind of products, and how many, they can sell in the next several days. But now some merchants are testing a system where the same warehouse store can proactively message them and give them an estimate of how many various food and drink products they need--plus deliver them quickly.

If corporate social responsibility is about using a company’s expertise to better society, then Standard Bank and SAP’s partnership is one off to an exciting start.

Image credit: Steward Masweneng/Unsplash

Submitted by Guest Contributor

The Civic 50, a groundbreaking initiative launched in 2012 by the National Conference on Citizenship, Points of Light and Bloomberg News, identified the top 50 community-minded S&P 500 corporations that best use their time, talent, and resources to improve the quality of life in the communities where they do business. The ranking is based on seven dimensions - community partnerships, measurement and strategy, leadership, design, employee and civic growth, cause alignment, and transparency.

In part five, Ilir Zherka, Executive Director of the National Conference on Citizenship, decodes the fifth dimension: leadership.

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Matthew McGowan, an eight-year old with cancer, had so much fun at Give Kids the World Village in Kissimmee, Fla., that his father, Rich, went straight back to the community relations department at Hasbro Inc. to urge them to support the nonprofit resort for kids with life-threatening illnesses. Rich is also a manager of inventory and accounting at Hasbro’s Pawtucket, R.I. headquarters.

Turns out the giant toymaker was already in discussions with the organization and had in development a special edition of its famous Candy Land board game for the families as part of the Village’s 20^th anniversary. 

“When the first of those games came off the assembly line six weeks later,” recalled Pam Landwirth, president of Give Kids the World, “we invited Matthew to be there so we could give him one.”

Rich McGowan said the boy was delighted. “He looked at the board and said, ‘That’s where the dinosaur squirted us, that’s where we got ice cream’ and so on. It just brought back so many good memories.”

“Nobody from Hasbro ever just watches,” Landwirth said. “They want to be involved. They think nothing of getting into a polar bear suit or a Christmas tree costume for the group’s Winter Wonderland parade and Santa gift-giving events. Hasbro also funds the event’s floats, presents and costumes. That tells you something about the culture of the organization,” she said.

Going in Deep 

For valuing executives willing to moonlight as polar bears, Hasbro earned honors in leadership last year from The Civic 50, a ranking of America’s most community-minded companies.

The Civic 50, a partnership between National Conference on Citizenship and Points of Light, ranks corporations on seven dimensions of local involvement. The leadership dimension requires a firm to show how it involves its executives, board members and senior managers in its community engagement programs.

“Executive involvement is part of our DNA,” said Karen Davis, Hasbro’s vice president for community relations. “We go in deep – it’s not checkbook philanthropy.”

Leaders of the $4.3 billion corporation are evaluated not just for their success in promoting Monopoly, GI Joe, Transformers, Play-Doh and Hasbro’s countless other toys and games, but also for their hands-on neighborhood involvement, Davis said.

Country managers worldwide have philanthropic budgets they can allocate to local nonprofits, and Hasbro matches employee donations of time at child-centered community groups and hospitals with donations of up to $2,500 in cash. 

“Most every management team member serves on a [nonprofit] board of directors,” she added. “We use our contacts and our company assets to help nonprofits whenever we can.” 

Beyond Checkbook Philanthropy

In the case of Give Kids the World, Hasbro’s leadership offered the use of its classic brand IP like Candy Land and My Little Pony to create some truly magical experiences for the children and families staying with the non-profit, not to mention the thousands of toys and games donated each year. Hasbro employees have volunteered their talents to assist with the design of different elements, while others have dedicated time volunteering at the Village, including a group of 30 employees who did a mission trip there last winter. Hasbro’s CEO Brian A. Goldner also sits on Give Kids the World’s advisory board. 

Hasbro now donates 10,000 free Candy Land games plus 20,000 toys each year to Give Kids the World Village. The resort has hosted 121,000 families of seriously ill children from all 50 states and 74 countries. Matthew’s Boundless Playground, which also doubles as a larger-than-life sized Candy Land board, was named after Matthew McGowan, who died shortly after his visit to the resort.

In 2009, Matthew’s Boundless Playground was added to the Give Kids the World Candy Land game, the same game Matthew himself originally saw come off the assembly line years before. Hasbro donates the game to every single family that stays at the Village.

From Toys for Toddlers to Youth Empowerment

Experiences like those at Give Kids the World are just some examples of how Hasbro works to help children in need. In 2010, the company’s leadership team approved the expansion of its philanthropic focus to include youth empowerment. This resulted in a multi-year grant made through the Hasbro Children’s Fund to launch generationOn, the youth service enterprise of Points of Light, designed to help empower millions of young people to make their mark on the world through volunteer service.

Nina Mahalingam, 8, got involved with generationOn after the tsunami in Japan. “I felt overwhelmed and sad,” she recalled. “We decided we would make paper cranes as a symbol of hope.”

Her “Wish Upon a Crane” idea brought in $18,000 in donations from 12 countries and nearly 10,000 cranes, which now make up an art installation in Japan’s Sendai train station. “I feel happy when I do things for others,” she said. “I don’t think that I’ll ever stop giving.”

As proof that anyone can make a difference in the world, regardless of age, Hasbro honored Mahalingam and five other Hasbro Community Action Heroes as standout volunteers at its annual gala in NYC co-chaired by Hasbro’s CEO Brian Goldner. “We try to bring the best of who we are to the table for each and every philanthropic program we support,” Davis said.

Image credit: Flickr/Wendell

Submitted by Guest Contributor

Global Manufacturing Sustainability Director John Maguire joins us this week to explain how Unilever’s ambition to double growth while reducing its impact on the environment is at the heart of their business model and drives their very challenging sustainability targets.

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This week we announced that since 2008, the company has achieved a CO₂reduction of more than 1 million tonnes from improvements in our manufacturing and logistics operations. The reduction is the equivalent to taking 250,000 cars off the road.

Although we recognize it is an important milestone on our eco-efficiency journey, we know we still have a long way to go to achieve our ambition.   

Putting sustainability at the heart of our business model in 2010 has undoubtedly been a solid starting point. Our sustainability program not only helps us to ensure best practice; it’s also an effective engine for growth. While working towards our 1 million tonnes CO₂ reduction, our sales grew by 26 percent, from €40.5 billion in 2008 to €51.3 billion in 2012. We’re finding that achieving global business growth in Unilever does not have to cost the earth.

Reducing Energy Usage

Like other FMCGs, we are operating in a market where energy prices continue to climb, resources are scarce and climate change presents us with many challenges and opportunities. Our primary focus is to reduce energy and where possible buy energy from renewable sources. In Europe, U.S. and Canada, we are already purchasing 100 percent of the electricity we consume from renewable sources.

While we are proud of the progress we have made, the next challenge is: how can we reduce our energy usage further while increasing our use of renewable energy sources?

Leveraging Our Global Scale

Our strategy of design once and deploy globally enables us to take a more cost effective approach to capital investment for the new eco-efficiency projects we are introducing across Unilever sites. We leverage our global scale by selecting ideas with the best financial and eco-efficiency payback and then implement them globally.

Like sourcing cost efficient renewable energy from biomass boilers. Biomass boilers have the double benefit of reducing bio-waste and helping us reach our 40 percent renewable energy target.

Only a few weeks ago, I visited our Boksburg factory in South Africa where we use the waste sunflower husk produced as a by-product and use it to generate heat energy in a biomass boiler. This significantly reduces the amount of energy, which would otherwise be produced from coal and is a good example of a circular value chain. This is just one of the 30 biomass units we have across the globe supplying more than seven percent of our renewable energy, with six more planned for this year in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Investing in New Technology

While our strategy provides us with a clear roadmap to achieve some of our eco-efficiency targets, others are still very much a work in progress. Where possible we look to introduce new cost efficient technology into our factories and offices such as solar day lighting and motion-sensitive LED lighting.  

Love it or hate it, we use waste from the Marmite production process to power the factory that makes our divisive yeast extract. Marmite, itself a by-product of the brewing industry, is made at our Burton, U.K. site, where inevitably some sticks to the sides of the manufacturing equipment.

This residue, of which there is about 18,000 tonnes a year, needs to be cleaned out of pipes to prevent them from clogging and to maintain hygiene. We put the waste residue into an anaerobic digester, where It is eaten by bugs who give of methane that is then burnt to create energy.

Involving Our Global Factory Workforce

And our employees continue to play a crucial role. This year we have created a "small actions big difference" fund to encourage suggestions from our global factory workforce – with the stipulation that ideas have to result in delivering an eco-efficiency improvement as well as a good financial return.

In addition, we also plan to launch an employee engagement campaign to increase the number of people who get involved in sustainability improvements. This program will launch on the day we release our second year progress report of the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan on April 22^nd.

Tackling Our Water Challenges

We have made good progress in reducing the amount of water abstracted by our manufacturing sites. Since 2008, we have saved the equivalent of around 1.5 liters of water for every person on the planet. However, our future targets for reducing water usage during our manufacturing process are going to be very challenging.

Currently, we have invested in effluent recycling projects at four of our sites in South Asia. At our Indian manufacturing sites we are using rainwater for factory utilities such as cooling towers, boilers, manufacturing processes (following treatment) and toilet flushing. Our focus now will be to give more emphasis to factories in water scarce locations.

By 2020, we aim for water abstraction by our global factory network to be at or below 2008 levels, despite significantly higher volumes. This represents a reduction of approximately 40 percent per ton of production.

New Technology Without Changing Consumer Behavior

Further, to reduce water use, Unilever needs to develop new products and tools, which help people use less water. But we have learnt that while creating new product technology is important, it is not enough. We still need to motivate people to adopt the new water-saving behavior such as using less water when rinsing laundry by hand and changing habits in the shower.

We cannot do this alone. In the end it will require water pricing and water metering alongside consumer education to drive the right behaviors. At that point we will need to be ready with products and tools that help people make their water go further.

There is still much for us to do, but overall, we’re proud of the progress we have made so far on our manufacturing eco-efficiency targets. Next week, we will launch the second year progress report of the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan.

Stay tuned.

Previously: Sustainable Sourcing: Unilever Challenges Its Own Value Chain

About the Author

Based in Surrey, John Maguire is responsible for defining and implementing the long-term sustainability strategy for Unilever’s manufacturing sites globally. His team supports Unilever sites across the globe, helping them achieve the very challenging targets set under the Sustainable Living Plan. John has more than 30 years experience in the Supply Chain of FMCG Companies with previous roles involving managing operations in factories within the confectionery, foods, printing and packaging sectors

Despite being owned by Unilever, Ben & Jerry's steadfastly maintains its own vendor relationships and, most importantly, its determination to continue its social initiatives.

About ten years after the company began in 1978, founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield sat down and wrote a three-part mission statement.  As Greenfield explained, the community-minded organization, at some point, had to become a company and worry about marketing and distribution, but they wanted a concrete reminder of what they really stood for.

Ben & Jerry's created social, product and economic statements to define their mission. Whenever the company, led by their social initiative-minded board, needs to make a business decision, they use this mission statement as a compass to point the way. "The success of the business, quality of the product and the value we bring to the world go together," said Social Activism Manager, Chris Miller (formerly of Seventh Generation).

Many times companies will write a mission statement, only to revise it numerous times as their direction changes, Miller explained, but Ben & Jerry's mission statement has stood the test of time for twenty-five years.

Ben & Jerry's has three main areas of focus: Caring Dairy, fair trade practices and eliminating GMOs.

Caring Dairy

Ben & Jerry's works with more than 90 farms in Vermont (their home state) to source 100 percent of their dairy needs. They have established a program called Caring Dairy under which they work with the farms to meet guidelines for eleven global indicators, including:

• animal husbandry
• biodiversity
• energy
• farm economics
• impact on local economy
• nutrients
• pest management
• social human capital
• soil fertility and health
• soil loss
• water

The company helps farms implement sustainable farming practices that benefit the livestock, the land and the farmers. Farmers pledge not to treat their cows with hormones, learn how to conserve water, enrich the soil and run their farms better.

It's all part of a long-term strategy to invest in communities, Solheim explained. "We not only work with farmers to pay a fair wage, but to move them up on the value chain. We'll be back next year and the year after. They can count on it."

Fair Trade

As Greenfield mentioned, Ben & Jerry's has long been a big proponent of fair trade wages and practices.

Fair trade is about making sure people get their fair share of the pie. The whole concept of fair trade goes to the heart of our values and the sense of right and wrong. Nobody wants to buy something that was made by exploiting somebody else.

Again, relationships come heavily into play. As with the dairy farmers, the company looks to develop and maintain long-term relationships with the intent to benefit not only the farmers, but their communities. The company's goal is for all products to be fair trade certified by the end of 2013, but it does not plan to sever ongoing supplier relationships to meet that goal. For example, as part of Unilever, Ben & Jerry's could source their vanilla from the same fair trade supplier Unilever uses, but the company has a long-established relationship with a fair trade Ugandan cooperative and continues to work with them. The company's brownies come from Greyston's Bakery in New York, where they "don't hire people to bake brownies, but bake brownies to hire people." The bakery supports childcare, affordable housing, community gardens and health care programs, and Ben & Jerry's has ordered brownies from the bakery since the 1980s.

Ben & Jerry's also sources their cherries from Oregon, and although they are not certified fair trade, the company will continue to get their cherries from Oregon and pay a fair price due to the long-term relationship they have with the supplier and community. Ben & Jerry's also works with Fair Trade International and together they have established a fund where the company pays whatever difference exists between the prices they pay their current vendors and fair trade wages (if there is any), and FTI uses those funds to support fair trade practices worldwide.

"The real power we have to do good," Miller said, "is the money we spend on the business - purchasing fair trade ingredients, paying a living wage and investing in the community."

Anti-GMO

As much pride as the company takes in treating its own people well, they also take in making a quality product. Ben & Jerry's ice cream is a premium product marketed to adults (not children) and made with exceptional ingredients, fair trade and otherwise.

Twenty-two of their flavors (80 percent of ingredients) are already free of GMOs (genetically modified organisms), and they expect that all of their products will be GMO-free by the end of 2013. The day after they spoke to us, Solheim explained, the company was hosting a special workshop for their specialty suppliers to help them identify GMOs and avoid them. Ben & Jerry's supports change in the food system and is dedicated to helping rebuild non-GMO supply chains in the U.S. The company supports all measures to ban GMOs and mandate product labeling. They are implementing product labeling for themselves by 2014.

Get the dough out of politics

In addition to these business-related social initiatives, Ben & Jerry's also stands staunchly against Citizens United. During the 2012 election season, the company campaigned to get the dough out of politics. Cohen himself goes the extra mile with his personal crusade, the Stamp Stampede, and stamps money with slogans such as "Not to be used to bribe politicians," and "Stamp money out of politics."

"I think it's important for companies to stand up for something or things not just related to the widget that they sell, but issues as a whole," Miller said.

The word we heard the most from Miller, Greenfield and Solheim was "relationship" and how important their long-term relationships are to the company in its dealings with suppliers and investments in community, but one that wasn't spoken but demonstrated at every turn, was "loyalty."

Image credit: Robert Marschelewski/Flickr

The following is a guest post by our friends at Bard College's MBA in Sustainability Program (a 3p sponsor) - for the business leaders of the future who recognize the importance of all business moving towards true sustainability—economic, environmental, and social.

By Brady McCartney

Since its founding, the U.S. has seen its population steadily move from rural to urban environments: the 1790 U.S. Census reported a 95 percent rural to 5 percent urban ratio, the 1890 U.S. Census, a 28 percent to 72 percent ratio, the 2010 U.S. Census, a 20 percent to 80 percent ratio. While urbanization has produced large-scale economic and community development throughout the country, it has also created challenges with water and sewage, air quality, vehicle traffic, energy systems, and natural resource consumption. In an attempt to address these urbanization issues, groups of architects, engineers, urban planners, government officials, academics, and community leaders have begun to develop a possible solution: eco-districts.

An “eco-district” is a defined urban area in which collaborative economic, community, and infrastructure redevelopment is explicitly designed to reduce negative and create positive environmental impacts. Eco-districts were developed in order to scale the success of green building initiatives. By focusing on buildings and systems found within a defined district rather than an individual building, eco-districts are seen as the next step in reducing the environmental impacts of cities. Supporters claim that an individual building is not necessarily the optimal scale for water conservation, energy efficiency, and renewable energy creation systems, to name a few. An eco-district, on the other hand, has the potential to accrue more significant benefits and savings from greater systems optimization and integration because of the larger yet manageable scale of a district. As the Portland Sustainability Institute puts it, “Districts are…small enough to innovate quickly and big enough to have a meaningful impact.” Currently, many U.S. cities are in the early stages of testing the viability of eco-districts, including Living City Brooklyn’s Gowanus project; five pilot projects in Portland, Oregon; Washington D.C.’s SW Ecodistrict.

While the term “eco-district” may be new to many, supporters view eco-districts as a part of a forward-looking continuum: from green buildings to eco-districts to eco-cities. Though eco-cities are the longer-term goal, advocates of eco-districts presently view districts as more logistically possible than entire cities. And, equally as important, eco-districts are considered more politically possible than other initiatives such as a carbon tax or infrastructure redevelopment because they may not require major legal changes or federal spending.

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The author, Brady McCartney, is currently a dual MBA/MS degree candidate at Bard College’s MBA Program in Sustainability and Center for Environmental Policy. Brady has worked as a sustainable transit consultant for TransitCenter, an energy efficiency consultant at Bard College, and sustainable housing client manager for homeless men and women at North Beach Citizens. Follow Brady on Twitter.

[Image Credit: rs-foto, Flickr]

Submitted by Guest Contributor

This week -- and leading up to the launch of Unilever's 2012 Sustainability Report later this month -- we begin a series of conversations with the leaders and executives of Unilever reporting on how the company is performing against the famously ambitious goals laid out in its Sustainable Living Plan. From sustainable sourcing to changing consumer behavior, they will lay out the challenges, report on the progress being made and offer key highlights from 2012 that helped/roadblocked the targets.

We start off with Chief Procurement Officer Marc Engel identifying the challenges and laying out the process for Unilever to reach its goal of sourcing 100% of raw materials sustainably by 2020.

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This week we announced that more than a third of our agricultural raw materials are now sourced sustainably. This is a significant milestone on our journey towards a target of 100 percent by 2020.

Currently, our sustainable sourcing figure stands at 36 percent - up from 24 percent in 2011.

We are very proud of the rate of acceleration in recent years; given that it took us 10 years to get to 14 percent by 2010, what we have achieved over the past two years is no mean feat. I am convinced that putting the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan at the heart of our business has created an evolution with 173,000 employees now striving toward the same goals.

This has been a game changer for us.

Continuing the Pace…

But with good momentum, the next challenge for us is: how do we continue this pace? 

To create real impact and move things forward at scale, partnerships are needed. We cannot move the needle alone. So bringing like-minded businesses, NGOs and governments together to drive this agenda is becoming increasingly important. And it's starting to happen.

With Cross-Sector Partnerships…

In January 2011, a global partnership to accelerate sustainable agricultural growth was announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Unilever joined 16 other companies – among them Wal-mart, The Coca-Cola Company, Nestlé and Kraft Foods – to support the New Vision for Agriculture. Backed by a coalition of businesses, governments and farmers, the partnership seeks to improve food security, environmental sustainability and economic opportunity around the world.

It's a significant mission and working with others is becoming a critical success factor: by transforming global supply chains together, we can move faster in creating critical mass and also increase awareness among consumers of the benefits of sustainably sourced products.

And Constant Introspection

However, let’s also take a step back and ask ourselves the question - how do we define sustainability? Is it just ‘green’?

With the bar continuously being raised, we see and support a shift from looking predominantly at avoiding the environmental “negatives” to actively enabling positive social impact. And to drive this without doubt or confusion, we have explicitly included this in our company vision, which is to double the size of our business whilst reducing our environmental footprint and increasing our positive social impact.

So when we look at sustainable sourcing, we look beyond our environmental impact.

Like our partnership with Netherlands-based Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH) and the Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA) on co-funded farmer field schools. Between 2007 and 2012, 450,000 smallholder tea farmers were trained to the Rainforest Alliance standard [in preparation for certification]. Because of the clear impact and urgent need, in 2012, Unilever, IDH and our partners agreed to invest a further €4 million to take the sustainability initiatives to scale.

Now, this training has the potential to benefit not only farmers working with Unilever but the tea industry as a whole.

Besides, investments like this increase agricultural productivity and create better livelihoods. If smallholders have access to agronomy training, better quality seeds and fertilizer they can significantly increase their yields. This in turn leads to higher farmer income.

The next step: financial literacy training, especially for women, to help direct higher income to be spent on improving livelihoods, through nutrition, health and education.

This lifecycle approach feeds from a recent report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations The State of Food and Agriculture 2012, which explains the benefits of investing and driving sustainability in the agricultural industry. Stepping up in agriculture would not only allow us to feed the world, but also to reduce poverty and hunger and promote environmentally sustainable practices.

A true win-win scenario.

Offering Sustainable Choices to Consumers

Every day, the future of our planet continues to be threatened. Climate change, water scarcity, reducing yields due to unsustainable farming practices, all threaten agricultural supplies and hence food security. All this, while populations continue to exponentially grow and aspire to higher standards of living. Still, one billion people go to bed hungry every day.

It’s clear that is is not viable – and that we have to decouple growth from our environmental footprint and increase our social impact.

While we're committed to use research, resources and our reach to evolve sustainable solutions for our supply chain, it is equally important to never lose sight of the value that embedding sustainability brings to many of our brands.

The trick is to find the sweet spot between the brand delivering something good for the planet or societies, while offering something good for our consumers – be this convenience, quality or price; or a combination of all. Like Lipton Tea and Magnum Ice Cream: Rainforest Alliance certification delivers benefits for the environment and quality benefits for the consumer. Or our first Knorr soup labeled to have been made with ‘sustainably grown tomatoes’.

Small examples but emblematic of the direction we are pursuing.

The challenge is huge, and we fully realize that Unilever can’t solve the issues alone. To create large-scale change we need everyone involved to be part of the solution. Our commitment is relentless, we learn everyday day by working with others, and we believe that many small actions will eventually make a big difference.

Are you in?

About the Author

Based in Switzerland, Marc Engel is responsible for Unilever's spend and delivering its target to source 100% of raw materials sustainably by 2020. Unilever Procurement has 1,700 procurement specialists who are all partnering with suppliers to deliver sustainable profitable growth tea farmers in Kenya and Tanzania.

Prior to being appointed Unilever's CPO in 2008, Marc has held a variety of roles since 1990 across the business including Regional Supply Chain VP, Ice Cream Latin America, Managing Director of the Ice Cream businesses in the Caribbean, Central America, Andina and River Plate and VP, Supply Chain for Spreads, Dressings and Olive Oil.

American coffee shop titan Starbucks is ramping up its ethical sourcing programme with a new farming research and development centre in Costa Rica. The move forms part of the company’s ongoing billion-dollar commitment to ethically sourcing 100 per cent of its coffee by 2015.

Starbucks plans to adapt a current 240-hectare working farm, located on the slopes of the Poas Volcano, into a global agronomy centre. This will enable the company to expand its Coffee and Farming Equity practices (C.A.F.E.), the ethical sourcing model developed in partnership with Conservation International.

The new centre will also influence the development of coffee varieties based on the insight offered through soil management processes. This  work could offer significant advantage in the development of future blends, says the company.

“This investment, and the cumulative impact it will have when combined with programmes we have put into place over the last forty years, will support the resiliency of coffee farmers and their families as well as the one million people that represent our collective coffee supply chain,” said Howard Schultz, Starbucks chairman, president and ceo. “It also opens up an opportunity for Starbucks to innovate with proprietary coffee varietals that can support the development of future blends.”

In total, Starbucks has invested more than $70m in collaborative farmer programmes and activities over the past 40 years, which include C.A.F.E. practices, farmer support centres, farmer loans and forest carbon projects. All of these integrated programmes directly support improving farmer livelihoods and a long-term supply of high-quality coffee.

The new facility will build on the work currently happening at five Starbucks farmer support centres. These are located in Rwanda, Tanzania, Colombia, and China – as well as the brand’s first farmer support centre which opened in San Jose, Costa Rica in 2004.

“The convergence of climate change and ecosystem deterioration creates stress on the ability of farmers to produce crops. The work of Starbucks over the last several years to address many of these issues facing coffee producers is very impressive,” said Peter Seligmann, chairman and CEO of Conservation International. “The opportunity this continued investment brings will ensure the most innovative resources are brought to bear for sustainability and resilience across all farming communities.”

Supermodel Gisele Bundchen has teamed up with charity Practical Action to raise awareness of the impact of energy poverty.  

According to Practical Action, in Sub Saharan Africa, two in every three families live without electricity and around 3bn people cook on open fires inside their homes - filling them with toxic smoke - resulting in the death of close to 2m people a year.

To mark the UN’s Year of Sustainable Energy for All, Bundchen, travelled to Kenya and experienced the realities of energy poverty first hand, taking part in a dawn firewood collection with women in Kisumu, Western Kenya, who still cook on traditional fires that fill homes with toxic smoke.

Practical Action is working to install improved cookstoves and smoke hoods which remove up to 80 per cent of the toxic smoke inside homes (pictured below). Margaret Gardner, director at Practical Action said: “The international community recognises a number of basic rights: the right to water, the right to food, the right to health, the right to adequate housing, the right to earn a living and the right to take part in cultural life. Missing from this list is the right to energy. Yet, everyone needs energy. Energy poverty denies people a basic standard of living, which should be available to all.”

Around half of Cambodia’s tropical flooded grasslands have been lost in just 10 years according to new research from the University of East Anglia (UAE).

The seasonally flooded grasslands around the Tonle Sap, Southeast Asia’s largest freshwater lake, are of great importance for biodiversity as well as a vital fishing, grazing, and traditional rice farming resource for around 1.1m people.

In 1995, the grassland area spanned 3349 km2 but by 2005 it had been reduced to just 1817 km2 – a loss of 46 per cent.??Despite conservation efforts in some areas, it has continued to shrink rapidly since, with a further 19 per cent lost in four years (2005-2009).

Factors include intensive commercial rice farming with construction of irrigation channels, which is often illegal. Some areas have also been lost to scrubland where traditional, low-intensity agricultural activity has been abandoned.

The research has been led by Dr Charlotte Packman from UEA’s school of Environmental Sciences, in collaboration with the Wildlife Conservation Society Cambodia Program and BirdLife International.

“The area around the Tonle Sap lake is the largest remaining tropical flooded grassland in Southeast Asia. It is hugely important to both biodiversity and the livelihoods of some of the world’s poorest communities. Our research shows that these grasslands are disappearing at an alarming rate,” said Dr Packman.

“Rural communities have been left vulnerable to land-grabbing and privatisation of communal grasslands. Intensive commercial rice production by private companies, involving the construction of huge channels and reservoirs for irrigation, is denying local communities access to the grasslands on which their livelihoods depend and destroying a very important habitat for threatened wildlife.”

Researchers compared aerial photographs taken in 2005 with land cover maps from 1995 and 1996. They found that the greatest losses had occurred in the north and west and in inner floodplain areas. They then collected habitat information from almost 1,000 points to establish the rate of habitat change between 2005 and 2009 in the largest remaining area of grassland. This showed that grassland in the key southeast area had declined from 923km2 to 751km2 in four years.

Almost all of this loss was attributable to either intensive rice cultivation, which had risen by 666 per cent during that period, or newly constructed reservoirs.