Brunch in the Park is one of the top parties in Barcelona. It takes place every Sunday of the year in the Mountain of Montjuïc, in Barcelona. The party starts at midday and finishes at midnight.

Why am I talking about a party? This is supposed to be a course blog, talking of real sustainable initiatives, not about getting drunk and dancing!

Bruch in the Park has created an initiative to reduce the amount of waste that can be found in the Moutain of Montjuïc. For all those volunteers who want to collect plastics and waste from the mountain, Bruch in the Park rewards them with 5 entrances to all the events organized by the institution: Brunch in the Park, Brunch in the City, Hivernacle Pop Up.

The initiative started 5 years ago and it has been gaining popularity which is reflected in the reduction of trash in the mountain. The party not only is leisure now but being aware of the environment.

So you know, if you come to Barcelona and want to experience one of the best parties in the city and want to save the price of the entrance, which is 20€ ($30) contact the organizers and get ready to party!

For more information visit the following site:

https://noticierouniversal.com/actualidad/brunch-in-the-park-barcelona-ofrece-entradas-gratis-a-cambio-de-limpiar-la-basura-de-montjuic/

Plastic is the biggest culprit when it comes to waste production; we throw away more plastic than any other material. And around 90% of all the waste that ends up in our seas and oceans. Also, it takes hundreds of years for it to biodegrade, creating a serious problem for future generations to deal with as well.
The main goal of “Conceptos plásticos” (Plastic concepts) is transforming plastic and rubber
waste into an alternative construction system for temporary and permanent homes, shelters,
classrooms, community rooms and other buildings. This prevents pollution generated by plastic
and also prevents waste from ending in dumping sites and polluting the earth. This system also
transforms plastic waste into the building materials that communities need to get a physical
infrastructure.

Ten years ago when Colombian Fernando Llanos tried to build his own house in Cundinamarca,
Colombia, he realized that moving the materials from Bogota was going to be very difficult. After mulling it over, he decided to build his house out of plastic, and after a series of trials and errors, he ended up meeting architect Óscar Méndez, who developed his thesis on the same subject, and together they founded the company Conceptos Plásticos (Plastic Concepts) in 2011.
The plastic waste that is recycled is obtained from popular recyclers and factories that discard
tons of plastic daily. It is melted and injected into a mold creating three-kilo waste blocks that
work as pieces of Lego, allowing communities and whole families to participate in the easy
construction of their own homes. The materials contain additives that make them resistant to fire and as the structure is based on plastic, it’s resistant to earthquakes. Each brick is cheaper and more fuel efficient to manufacture than conventional bricks. It also saves more energy than other ways of recycling plastic. Additionally, they are thermoacoustic and earthquake-resistant, which is up to code for Colombia, taking into account the country’s high levels of seismic activity.
They provide the communities with the required materials and give them the instructions on how to build their houses using their system. A house for a single family is built by four people, with no experience in construction and it takes only five days to build it. A shelter for 14 families is assembled by 15 people, with no construction experience, in just 10 days.

What makes it inspiring?
It inspires me how they recover and add value to materials of difficult final disposal, multi-layer
waste plastics, electronic waste and rubber, recycling and reducing the huge amounts of waste
and converting them into an alternative housing solution.
From their sustainable housing system, they reduce the quantitative housing deficit, improving the quality of life of vulnerable communities, giving them new opportunities, involving recyclers,
associations, foundations and socially responsible companies.

Many companies are shifting the ways they do business towards being more sustainable. By being sustainable they are achieving to reduce waste by adopting a more Kaizen attitude: waste-less, looking for maximum efficiency.

In today’s post, I am going to share with my readers how one of the worlds leading companies is aiming to be more sustainable. PepsiCo owns a great number of leading brands, being Pepsi and Lays one of the most well-known.

PepsiCo highlights that their growth and success depends on the availability of natural resources to make their products. Having said that, the company is working to reduce its impact on the planet by:

• Reducing, reusing, and reinventing our plastic packaging
• Protecting and conserving global water supplies, especially in water-stressed areas, and helping to provide access to safe water in the communities where we live and work
• Working to achieve an absolute reduction in GHG emissions across our global business
• Supporting sustainable agriculture by identifying and sharing best practices with our growers and suppliers while protecting human rights
• Working to reduce the solid waste our production facilities sent to landfills.

The company has been working on these aspects during the last 10 years, a crucial time for sustainability awareness and has achieved positive results in water use reduction. They have additionally helped around 16 million people to have access to fresh water since 2006.

Waste reduction is crucial when referring to packaging. For 2025 PepsiCo is aiming that 25% of their packaging will be made of recycled material. In my opinion, they could be aiming for a larger number. However the size of the company conditions heavily this change, and it is better than nothing.

Recently PepsiCo partnered up with the NFL, US Bank Stadium, Aramark, SMG and Minnesota Sports Facilities authorities to recycle, compost and recover 91% of stadium waste from the 2018 Super Bowl.

As for the future, PepsiCo created an agenda where objectives are set. They name the waybill under Agenda 2025. The agenda was created 4 years ago and aims for a corporate change during the 10 next years. For more information, you can check the Agenda 2025 in the following link.

https://www.pepsico.com/docs/album/sustainability-report/2015-csr/pepsico_sustainability_report_2015_and_-2025_agenda.pdf?sfvrsn=25a5bcaa_4

Bernat!

Hi guys, welcome back to my blog.

Sincerely, I have not been too inspired lately about what to write. However, scrolling through Instagram I found something interesting to share with you.

Some sports events attract the attention of lots of viewers worldwide. The most popular event, more than Superbowl and Champions League final are the Olympic Games. The next Olympic Games will be held by the Japanese city of Tokyo in the summer of 2020.

The thing that draws my attention is the new initiative that the Tokyo Organizing Committee has. As we all know, there are three types of medals given to the athletes: gold for first, silver for second and bronze for the third. This won’t change. What will change is that all the medals that will be won by athletes in Tokyo will be made from recycled metallic parts from discarded electronic devices. In total, 5000 medals will be manufactured from reused metals.

The project involves citizen participation as the electronic devices will be provided by the Japanese population. The recollection started in April 2017 and so far the organizers can assure that there is enough metal to manufacture the desired number of medals. The following picture shows us the amount of metal collected by October 2018.

The recollection will finish on March the 31st successfully collecting all the materials needed to pursue the project objectives.

The initiative will have high notoriety and will encourage more similar initiatives for not only future Olympic Games but also for other competitions. In the following link, you can find the promotional video made the Organizing Committee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Suzi_McCdPE&feature=youtu.be  

After a week of inactivity, I’m back with more sustainable initiatives!

This post is about the great advantages of owning an electric car over the traditional gasoline or diesel vehicles.

Automotive companies are heavily investing in achieving high-performance electric cars having Tesla as their referent market leader. Tesla targets a segment of the market that has high-income rates, are environmentally friendly and are interested in new technologies.

Not all electric cars are as expensive as a Tesla, as I said Tesla is the market leader being able to charge a high price for their cars due to the willingness of customers to pay high prices for exclusivity. Japanese cars have been developing electric cars for several years, achieving better results in aspects of the use of energy, achieving larger autonomy.

It is true that electric cars have a higher selling price than combustion engine cars. However, in the long term driving an electric has many advantages for car users:

-Reduces CO2 emissions and carbon footprint.

-Electricity is cheaper than petrol.

In regions like Catalonia for example, there are many tolls roads and to park in the city all the places have to pay for the minute, adding up to big quantities for every hour. Why am I saying this? Related to a previous blog post, many initiatives are been created in Spain to regulate the use of gas-powered vehicles. By owning an electric car, toll prices are reduced by 30% providing a significant money safe at the end of the year.

Additionally, electric cars don’t pay any parking fees when parking in Blue and Green zone (paying parking zones) which represents a great safe of money.

To finish, when a car is bought, there are two taxes associated to the transaction: circulation tax and license plate tax. Electric cars owners save up to 75% of the circulation tax and are exempt from paying the license plate tax. Adding up all the savings, maybe it is that of a bad option to buy an electric car, isn’t it?

The Forest Stewardship Council is a non-profit organization established in 1993 to promote responsible management of the world’s forests. FSC sets several standards that must be covered in order to achieve the eco-friendly label and certification.

An industry that uses a lot of forest resources is the publishing industry. Paper pastry is extracted from wood in order to make books. Therefore, several publishing houses have noticed the importance to develop their products being conscious about the environment.

In this post I will focus on the biggest publishing house in the world, Penguin Random House. PRH operates in worldwide markets divided in three: US and Canada, UK and Spain and LATAM.

Penguin has set the goal that by 2020, 100% of their books will be produced with sustainable paper. Currently, 98% of books in the UK market are labeled by FSC and the percentage is similar in the Spanish market.

PRH Grupo Editorial (Spain and Latin America) will promote the FSC label by including it in all the books that use sustainable paper. This will give brand awareness on sustainability and notoriety. PRH follows the FSC standards all along their value chain: acquiring paper pastry from sustainable forests, using nontoxic inks and recycling books if they have to be destroyed because they haven’t been sold.

PRH Grupo Editorial has an imprint called DEBOLSILLO, which literally means in pocket. These books are intended to be practical to be carried since they are light, and they have a lower price than hard-covers. These books are the paperbacks or softcovers. Currently, PRH is looking into developing the first imprint that uses 100% recycled paper. They are intending to sell the books at the same price so that price doesn’t affect the customers.

However, everything is not good news. In some markets PRH is struggling to keep the standards of FSC. For instance, in LATAM finding responsible forest providers that could cope with the groups demand is hard. It is about time that some FSC provider who can cover PRH demand appears and all the books that Penguin Random House produces will be ecofriendly!

Currently, businesses are changing. To the digitalization pattern we add the more sustainable aware attitude companies are taking. It is constantly in debate whether the companies should be forced by governments to change their business models or the company itself should change the way they use and consume resources.

Personally, I think that companies should not be forced to change the way they operate. However, the ones that do change their business model to meet sustainability should be rewarded or at least receive notoriety by doing so.

Extrapolating the situation to a day to day situation we find some initiatives governments are starting up, not for companies, but for individuals.

In Europe, due to the high level of polluted air in the cities, some new regulations are starting to appear. For instance, in Barcelona, any diesel-powered vehicle that is over 10 years old won’t be able to drive in the city from 1st January 2020. This initiative will reduce air pollution and will force drivers to renew their car for less polluting vehicles. However, the main intention to use public transport for city commutes.

Ada Colau, mayor of Barcelona is starting a new initiative in order to encourage the use of public transport. After lowering the price of the most popular public transport card (T-10, which are ten rides) which had been rising every year since 2012, she offered a solution for the owners of the more than 10 years old cars.

If they were to sell the car obliged by the new law, they would receive a free public transport pass for 3 years. However, the small print says that they would not be allowed to buy a car in those 3 years.

This as an example of an environmental regulation that will affect many citizens of Barcelona and a way to reward the “environmentally clean” citizens. This is an example of what governments could do with companies, rewarding them in a way that reaches the public image so that sustainability is more valued. An option could be creating an EcoFriendly label issued by governments themselves.

Welcome to my Bolg! My first post will be about how is the fashion industry gaining concern on creating sustinable patterns in their value change. I took this information from an article published in www.lavanguardia.com

In Spain, fashion industry is one of the leading sectors in economy because of Inditex, or Zara at it is more well known.

There are several new brands that are introducing sustainability in their core values. This are not big conglomerates if companies and that shows disagreement with our course. We are always saying that are big companies who set the “rules of the game”. However, with small players shifting into sustainable businesses change can be achieved as well.

Ethical Time is Spain’s first sustainable clothes App. What this App does is to rate how sustainable brands are, not just environmentally, but aswell socially, financially… It covers all aspects we talked about in class. With an App like Ethical time a public opinion is created, and this will make other companies be part of the “sustainable community”.

H&M is a Swedish multinational clothing-retail company known for its fast-fashion clothing for men, women, teenagers and children. H&M has created a new business unit under the name of Concious H&M which uses sustainable materials and has sustainability in their core values. 50% of the materials used in Concious H&M are recycled.

Another way to enter the market of sustainable products is with alliances with NGO’s. An example is the brand EcoAlf that partnered with Upcycling the Ocean. The NGO provides EcoAlf with plastic found in the sea which is recycled and turned into jackets, t-shirts…

Animo Valiente! is great example of reutilising. The company manufactures jeans, not only trousers but also jackets. The input materials are old jeans, so they reutilise old products and they turn them into new pices of clothing. (https://www.instagram.com/p/BdpVOc1nHqr/?utm_source=ig_embed)

This are some of the examples I wanted to share with you. What is my point in this article?

Including sustainability into the core of a business is not a local trend, it is happening everywhere: Canada, US, Europe, Asia… It is true that big companies have a greater impact but it is also much harder for them because they are influenced by many factors being the stock price the first one.

It’s with small actions, or small companies, that we achieve great things!

Bernat

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