After a term in Sustainability Marketing and a year through my sustainability concentration, I can easily say that I learned a lot more than I though I would. I’ve met great people who are passionate about the environment, who can look up and see 10-20 years ahead, and understand that things have to change in our world.

To start-off, I personally see sustainability as an opportunity for business. Yes I care about the environment, but it solely is not enough to drive people. I am a business student and my main objective in the future will be making profits, but I don’t deny the fact that the process of making profits must change because world will not sustain itself if we don’t help it. There is only one world to live in, why trash it to fill your pocket instead of care for it so the future generations can also benefit from it.

One of the most important things I learned is that customers are resistant to change, and they will not sacrifice their convenience for the environment. Most of the people are not willing to pay premiums for the green products either. The biggest challenge the green products are facing currently is that they have to offer every benefit that other leading brands offer, they have to be around the same price-range as others, they must be accessible, and they must convince people that they are actually environmentally friendly.

Overcoming these barriers are not easy, but more and more people now know that Sustainability has to be the norm, and we are the ones who is going to make it. The sooner you act the better because world is already moving towards that direction.It is not a matter of “if”, it is a matter of “when”.

Thank you to everyone in class and to Tamar for enhancing my vision and inspiring me.

The world is in our hands, let’s make it beautiful.

Pictures taken from:

http://www.mcicontainers.com/sustainability/sustainability/pages/sustainability.aspx

http://www.epa.gov/sustainability/analytics/sustainability-impact.htm

Advancing Environmental Excellence

Although marine transportation is the most environmentally friendly transportation method compared to air transportation, trucking and railing, it does not mean that there isn’t room for further development. There are many programs aiming to protect the oceans, as well as reduce the environmental impact of cargo vessels. “Green Marine is a voluntary environmental certification program for the North American marine industry.”, and it addresses nine key environmental issues including aquatic species, cargo residues, garbage management, greenhouse gas emissions, oily water etc.

The participant of this program are shipowners, ports, seaway corporations, terminals and shipyards. These participant have to demonstrate year by year improvement in order to be able to maintain their Green Marine Certification. Participants complete annual self evaluation, and the all of the results are made public to make the process transparent. The self evaluations are verified by an accredited external verifier before being publicized. According to 2014 numbers, 82 participants are involved in the program, and the numbers are likely to increase.

This certification might not be as valuable today, but I believe it may become a certification that every company must have in the near future to be able to do business within the industry. Companies who are acting quick can achieve a significant competitive advantage in the market, since sustainability is becoming more and more important especially within the supply chain.

References:

http://www.green-marine.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Performance_Report_2013_web.pdf

http://www.green-marine.org/about-us/

http://www.green-marine.org

A Site for Students, Educators and Others

Tools towards being more sustainable is available to the society. A lot of information can be found online on how to make your everyday actions more sustainable, how to reduce your environmental impact, how to choose the right products etc. A good example of this is The Autodesk Sustainability Workshop. The website is created to make “learning about sustainability in design and engineering easy, accessible and free to educators and students.”, by providing “online resources that teach the principles and practice of sustainability in engineering and design.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDDlWefoiy0

The website offers free videos and tutorials about how to incorporate sustainability practices into product and building design processes. Although the content is targeting post secondary architecture, engineering and design students, the content is available to anyone for free. The website also provides valuable information to educators on how they can implement sustainability in the existing curriculum. With the help of these tutorials and introducing sustainability in schools, the new generation with bright minds can start thinking about how to build a product in a more sustainable manner.

The most important aspect of the website is that the videos are very short, engaging, and easy to understand. The videos are followed up by more information that elaborates on the specific topic and links are provided to more resources to aid the research of the audience. You can check the link below and see the structure of one of the tutorials.

Improving Product Lifetime

It is key to educate people if we want to make sustainability a common sense, and this website is definitely a valuable resource for engineers, architectures and designers.

References:

http://sustainabilityworkshop.autodesk.com/#sthash.EWdyN5rQ.dpuf

http://sustainabilityworkshop.autodesk.com/about-us

Product Information at Point of Purchase

It is very important for customers to make the right decision to purchase the right product, the product that provides the benefits that they want with the lowest possible environmental impact. The information must be available for the customers so they can make an educated decision. Thanks to the modern technology, our smartphones, and environmentally responsible companies the information has become more accessible. Good Guide and Nike’s Making app help customers by providing valuable information about the product, the material used, social and environmental impact and health issues.

Good Guide is an application/website that provides evaluations of the health, environmental, and social impacts of a specific consumer product. The product categories include personal care, food, babies&kids, and household products. It enables the customers to make comparisons, and aids them to make the best decision. You can either go online and search for the product on the website, or you can scan the barcode with your smartphone app and the information will be available within seconds.

Nike’s Making is “a tool to inspire designers and creators to make better choices in the materials they use.” It provides information to make real time decisions whether you are a designer or a customer who wants to know the impacts of the material you use. “Making is powered by the Nike Materials Sustainability Index (MSI), a database that was created by Nike over seven years using publicly available data on the environmental impacts of materials.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhTjaSuBp7E

As a customer who makes several purchasing decisions every day, it is very important for me to know the impacts my purchasing decisions, and applications like these improves the trust between the producers and customers by providing transparency.

References:

http://nikemakers.com/how-making-works

http://www.goodguide.com/

Sustainable Tea Agriculture

Turkey is the World’s 5th largest producer of tea, fourth largest tea market, and has the highest average annual tea consumption per capita. Unilever’s Lipton brand has launched a sustainable tea agriculture project in Turkey in partnership with Rainforest Alliance, which “aims to improve the social, economic and environmental impacts of tea production.”

The initiative will train 15,000 Turkish tea growers one-to-one, and help them to move towards sustainable agricultural practices. The trainings will also provide information about erosion control, waste management, work safety, record-keeping, biodiversity, fertilisation and pruning, which will significantly improve the farming practices.

The Rainforest Alliance seal is placed on the packages, and Lipton aims to have all the tea sold in Turkey sourced from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms by 2018.

Tea growers in Turkey are located in very city region called Rize, and they are usually uneducated people who never had the chance to go to school. They inherit the land from generation to generation, and the farming practices are outdated. Besides the trainings, Lipton will also provide health services targeting back, spine and joint pain to around 5,000 women growers. This program will certainly benefit the local community, as well as the tea production in the world since Turkey is a very big part of it. It also feels better to know that the women tea growers will be treated better after this program and that they will be in slightly better conditions than they used to be.

References:

http://www.unilever.com/brands-in-action/detail/Lipton-s-sustainable-tea-in-Turkey/292029/

http://www.lipton.com.tr/cay-hakkinda/detay/822205/cay-tarimi-surdurulebilirlik-cay-tarimi-projesi

Save on heating costs in your holiday home via smartphone

Following our last client challenge with Brinkman Climate, I developed an interest in possible carbon offsetting programs. Myclimate recently started a new carbon offsetting program in collaboration with Swiss.com to distribute “remote control systems for oil and gas heating units in holiday homes across Switzerland.” The program aims to control the temperature setting of a house by using a remote heating control via smartphone. “This remote system saves on heating costs and energy without compromising on comfort, and thus makes a significant contribution towards climate protection.”

We know that in order to create a significant voluntary market for carbon offsetting, the consumers must be incentivized, and they must not be expected to make radical changes in their daily lives. This program provides monetary benefits to the participants by reducing their electricity cost, it is very easy to use and adapt, and it also helps reduce the carbon emissions. The installation of the remote system with myclimate discount costs between $1000 to $2000, but could reduce the annual energy cost by up to 50%, which means the long term benefits clearly offsets the short terms costs, as well as a significant amount of CO2.

Although the program specifically targets Swiss winter houses, it can be developed further and can be used in almost everybody’s daily lives. A lot of people including myself can simply forget the thermostat on before leaving home for an entire day, which results in waste of energy and money.

Reference:

http://www.myclimate.org/carbon-offset-projects/projekt/save-on-heating-costs-in-your-holiday-home-via-smartphone-370/

Cradle to Cradle certified products

In 2013 Puma launched two new collections called “incycle”. Puma Incycle is the Industries first cradle to cradle certified selection of recyclable and biodegradable clothes, acesorries, and shoes. They have implemented a technical and a biological process to create their first 100% closed loop and cradle to cradle certified product line specifically footwear, apparel and accessories. This collection is very efficient and sustainable because it takes into account the whole life cycle and the supply chain of the product. The incycle range is broken down as in the figure below for PUMA suede sneakers and T7 track jackets.

The biological cycle starts with industrial composting to decompose the product, and turn it into biological nutrients. These nutrients then can be used to help grow resources such as cotton to make new products. The technical cycle shreds the product into raw materials by a machine that is specifically designed to break down clothes. Then those materials are melted down to make polyester pellets, which are then used in the production of other products.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9zfkYHtuMc

Puma implemented “Bring Me Back” program in order to prevent people from tossing the products in the garbage and put them back into the production cycle. They have placed bins into their store to make it more convenient, and increase the customer participation for this initiative.

This is not the first step Puma has taken to reduce their environmental “paw” print, and it sure will not be the last. We as consumers are expecting the brand to take stronger initiatives and make the clothing industry greener.

References:

http://www.sustainablebrands.com/sites/default/files/A4_Cycles_PREVIEW_sm.jpg

http://www.apinatbio.com/eng/apinat-puma.html

http://www.gizmag.com/puma-incycle-recyclable-biodegradable/26273/

http://www.c2ccertified.org/innovation-stories/puma

Greening The Supply Chain

As a Transportation and Logistics student, and a person passionate about the environment, I have been wondering about possible ways of greening the supply chain. Cargo Logistics Canada conference that I have attended last week offered a seminar about the Green Transportation Challenge, which introduced me the SmartWay Program that not many companies are aware, or a part of right now, but will be a requirement to be able to do business with big companies such as Nestle in the near future.

The SmartWay program is “an innovative partnership between public and private stakeholders with the shared goal of saving fuel and reducing greenhouse gases and air pollution from the freight transportation supply chain.”

The topic raised a lot of questions during the seminar, and some business professionals in the trucking industry questioned the usefulness of the program. However Greg Kraliz, the leader of national distribution of Nestle Canada, clearly stated that being a part of the SmartWay program is going to be a requirement very soon enough in order to be able to work with Nestle. He also said that their customers demand them to be environmentally conscious, and they will be taking bigger steps towards being more sustainable.

References:

http://www.scmanational.ca/en/tools-a-resources/smartway

http://www.scmanational.ca/en/news/scma-news/1320

Sustainability means satisfying today’s demand without sacrificing future generation’s benefits. It is hard for everyone to be conscious about it since human beings are selfish creatures. In order to inform people and alter the way they do things, it is very important for the big companies to lead the way. Although there are certain things expected from those companies, it would be unfair to expect it if the companies are not getting monetary benefits.

The triple bottom line is a framework that companies use to evaluate their environmental, social, and economic performance. This framework helps us to understand what firms consider while making decisions. People, Planet, and Profits. All three dimension are crucial, and if one of them is overlooked, the results will harm the company in the long term. If a company wants to be sustainable, it needs to be able to sustain itself first, and the only way to sustain a company is to make profits. Doing environmentally or socially responsible things will not benefit the company, nor anyone else if it doesn’t yield any profits.

If we consider intermaché’s inglorious fruits and vegetables campaign, it is very successful according to all three dimensions.

Environmental benefit: Reduces food waste significantly

Social benefit: Promotes eating healthy fruits and vegetables.

Economic benefit: Generates revenue from products that were going to be wasted.

This campaign has much more to it than these 3 simple benefits, but it shows how an action can be socially and environmentally responsible, and generate profits as well. This is exactly what we need, because companies are profit maximizing agents, people are selfish, and world resources are finite. If we want to take bigger steps towards being sustainable, we as consumers have to accept the fact that companies will always want to make money, and companies have to accept the fact that they can and must do more than just that.

Pictures Taken from:
http://www.powerhousegrowers.com/triple-bottom-line-the-modern-business-model/#prettyPhoto

https://matiesmarketing244.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/fotor091622381.jpg

When I read my friend Max Rosenblatt-Hood’s blog about using video games in management, I agreed his ideas about using video games and giving immediate feedbacks, making simple and boring tasks more fun is an effective way of management.

However, I don’t agree with his statement that say some employees can find it patronizing because they get points and achievements. Every employee gets some sort of feedback from their managers. Sooner or later, frequently or rarely, it’s going to happen. Why not make it in a more informal way so the message is sent, but no feelings are hurt. Instead of talking to your employees once in a year and criticizing them, giving them more frequent and less formal feedbacks can be more efficient.

Of course, this can not be done in every company, but the companies that has the flexibility can benefit from this idea, and create a warmer organizational culture.

Link to Max Rosenblatt-Hood’s blog: https://blogs.ubc.ca/maximus/2012/11/18/video-games-in-management/