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Is Wal-Mart saving the planet?
Wal-Mart is getting suppliers to compete on environmental/sustainability criteria – and the bar is already quite high. Now business must know how to excel in sustainability if they want to grow. As well as the business payoff, there is likely to be a great environmental payoff – the Toxics Release Inventory serves as a good analogy – and suggests that pollution will reduce significantly as a consequence.
Lessons from . . . Pond Scum?!
Humans are wired to understand and respond to threats like a lion chasing us down. Climate change, population growth, and other stressors happen too slowly for our minds to get around. Furthermore, doubling rates always seem extremely slow – until it’s too late: pond scum with a doubling rate of one day, would starve the life out of a pond just one day after the pond was only 1/2 covered…
Can goats help your green initiatives succeed like this?
Its pretty common to want to start your environmental initiatives with activities your colleagues will see and feel and even participate in. Something like recycled paper in the copy room. That can be a success – people get inspired, they notice they can make a difference, and they start having ideas about how to contribute more.
Are your customers facing needlessly unpleasant tradeoffs?
I like to cook by inspiration, which means that when I go shopping I generally trawl up and down the aisles seeing what strikes my fancy. But not with coffee. With coffee I know exactly what I want: very dark roast, smooth, not acidic, espresso grind, with a hint of bitterness to keep it interesting. [...]
Wordling what really matters @ ren-new!
from http://www.wordle.net
What energy has in common with hard drugs.
by Caroline Rennie How do you know that your avant garde initiatives are actually mainstream? The Mafia is muscling in as a supplier… According to the Financial Times, renewable energy, particularly wind-farms, is increasingly owned and run by the Mafia – for the value of the subsidies, for the value of the renewable energy credits, [...]
Just how transparent is transparency?
by Caroline RennieHow transparent is transparent? Well, how about publishing the webcast of your internal Sustainability meetings and presentations online on a site that has your goals, actions, performance, stories and videos? That’s what Wal-Mart has done here. Mike Duke, the new CEO, speaks to his vision (and how it continues Lee Scott’s) for Wal-Mart [...]
What McDonald’s did wrong, and Wal-Mart does better
by Caroline Rennie McDonald’s could be doing smart, community-building work that builds brand value. But they’re not. Here’s what they’re doing – and what Wal-Mart’s doing better. The story: Nigel Haskel, a minimum wage, 21 year old employee, sees a man start beating a woman in the McDonald’s he works in. He intercedes on the [...]
How is carbon like reporters in Iraq?
by Caroline Rennie They’re both embedded: journalists in the army, carbon in … everything. When you calculate your company or product’s CO2 impact, you’re not just counting what you added – you’re counting the embodied impacts – the energy used and CO2 released when the materials were made, distributed, manufactured into products, used and even [...]
What will happen to your costs when ecosystem costs are priced in?
by Caroline RennieLate last year the US Department of Agriculture announced they were forming a new high level office of “EcoSystem Services and Markets” to determine the cost of depleting and the value of protecting, nature’s services. What exactly does that mean? A few years ago the UN assessed the value of the stuff nature [...]