Business & Finance

“The move to build sustainability into the merchandizing side of the business is a game changer for the consumer products industry,” says Tim Greiner, managing director of Pure Strategies, whose firm is working with Walmart to build category-specific evaluation tools. According to Greiner, Walmart’s aggressive move into category scorecards will have a profound effect on other retailers' programs and on the entire consumer products value chain. Read the full story

"For their corporate people to take this step is very encouraging," said hook fisherman Eric Hesse of West Barnstable. Hesse, who was among a group of five Cape Cod fishermen who sold their catch of cod to Whole Foods in the first quarter of last year, said fishermen and representatives of the chain will meet next week to look into a new agreement to buy locally landed fish. "We were able to establish a relationship with them," he said. "Now, we're in the planning stages again."

Like the Haugheys, Evan Goldsmith, founder and owner of Hope for Women, was inspired to start his business after multiple trips to India in the 1990s. He worked on a service project in the Himalayas creating pressed-flower greeting cards with local women for a group in the U.K., and said he wanted to stay connected after moving back home. “I realized the market was growing for socially valuable products,” Goldsmith said. “Flashing forward to 2003, the Fair Trade movement was starting to grow with coffee and chocolate.”

That closeness has a dollars-and-cents value. Cyclists travel at what Portland Bike Coordinator Roger Geller calls a “human-scale speed” that allows them to “stop and buy something.” Read the full story

Sustained and superior performance depends, in part, on effective measurement, management and disclosure of traditional financial metrics. There are many other metrics such as those used to evaluate environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance; resource efficiency; business model resilience; innovative capacity; brand strength and corporate culture can be just as informative on how a business is creating value.

Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) representative Dustin Mulvaney, an Assistant Professor at San Jose State University, works with SVTC to see that materials in computers and solar panels are safely handled and recycled. Mulvaney said First Solar is required to handle PV modules in a way that minimizes any accidental cadmium leakage at other sites. Most likely, he added, the biggest occupational hazard First Solar has encountered on the AVSR1 site is “workers being cut by broken glass.”

After compiling data from 21 Silicon Valley companies, Wilson and his co-authors Heather Madison and Steven Healy discovered that 57 percent of the companies surveyed did not have a confined space safety plan in place other than to call the fire department. As a result, the companies resort to calling 911 in the case of any confined space emergency. “The employers need to take responsibility for having a way to rescue their employees in the event of a confined space emergency before the firefighters arrive,” Wilson said.

Sad tales of our failures in society to be adaptable, remarkable stories of the intricate ways in which natural organisms have survived and thrived for billions of years on an unpredictable planet, and hopeful examples of how all sorts of people, organizations, corporations and bureaucracies have learned to be adaptable.

How can we set corporate sustainability goals - be they energy, greenhouse gas, waste, product sustainability or packaging? How do we ensure the goals are stretch goals? Who should set the goals? What time frame should the goals cover?