April 5, 2011 – Clif Bar & Company is celebrating the 10 -year anniversary of its commitment to sustainability this month. In April 2001, the company was struggling and deeply in debt after deciding to remain solar. Cliff Bar says the decision to “go green” is what got them out of debt at a time when many thought the company would fail.

Starting with a focus on food and agriculture, that environmental commitment grew into a larger business model that moves beyond a triple bottom line to encompass Five Aspirations: Sustaining its Business, its Brands, its People, its Community and the Planet.

In the past 10 years, Clif Bar & Company introduced the first energy bar with organic ingredients (2003), offset its historic carbon footprint (2007), and installed the largest “smart” solar array in North America on its new headquarters (2011). It was also one of the first companies to hire an ecologist ten years ago.

“We hope others can learn from our experience, that bringing sustainability into all parts of the business does not need to be predicated on profitability,” said Gary Erickson, Clif Bar & Company founder and co-CEO. “Even amid tough times, we had a bigger vision for the kind of company we wanted to be and the impact we wanted to have on the world around us.”

In 2003, the company’s flagship product–CLIF BAR–was the first energy bar at retail stores that was USDA certified “Made with Organic.” To date, the company has purchased more than 170 million pounds of organic ingredients, supporting organic farmers across the globe.

“The foundation of our journey toward sustainability was our commitment to organic food and farming,” said Elysa Hammond, Clif Bar & Company’s staff ecologist, and now Director of Environmental Stewardship. “Agriculture has one of the biggest environmental impacts on the planet, profoundly affecting water, wildlife, climate and people’s health on a daily basis.”

By raising crops without the use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, organic farming conserves biodiversity, reduces our dependence on fossil fuels, and fights global warming by storing carbon in the soil instead of releasing it into the atmosphere.

In 2010 alone, Clif Bar & Company purchased more than 40 million pounds of organic ingredients–a 25% jump over 2009. That increase outpaces the growth in overall organic food sales by a ratio of 5-to-1.1

Since 2002 Clif Bar & Company has taken big steps to reduce its climate footprint. In partnership with NativeEnergy, a leading offset provider, Clif Bar & Company has helped build new wind farms that supply renewable energy while generating social benefits for communities in need. By 2007 the company had offset its entire historical carbon footprint, dating back to its founding in 1992.

By the middle of this year, Clif Bar & Company expects to generate nearly all of the power for its new headquarters from solar energy. The company is installing what it says is the largest “smart” solar array in North America—optimized to increase output and reduce costs.

“Our vision has always been to do business in a different way,” said Kit Crawford, co-CEO of Clif Bar & Company. “Those initial steps we took a decade ago grew out of our employees’ insatiable community spirit and passion. While we’re not completely there yet, we’re well on our way to doing business in a way that supports long-term sustainability for our business, our brands, our people, our community and the planet.”

Recently Clif Bar & Company was ranked the No. 1 brand in the Forbes Breakaway Brands survey, conducted by Landor Associates using Young & Rubicam’s BrandAsset Valuator database measuring brand momentum from 2006 to 2009.

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November 10, 2010 – Jeremy Faludi shares with our community the latest case study from his SB Seminars course, based on Project Frog’s modular green building. See how he identifies its greatest impacts, gives meaningful comparisons of LCA data, and brings into play a new metric – ecological return on investment.

The case study is an excerpt of the complete presentation from Jeremy’s SB Seminars course, which next takes place on December 1^st at the headquarters of 3M in St. Paul, Minnesota. It starts where any life-cycle assessment should, by identifying a product or services biggest impacts. For Project Frog, that means energy usage (even in a very efficient building).

The case study ends with the product’s Ecological Return on Investment. Essentially looking at the cumulative GHG emissions of a building, and determining when a Project Frog modular building hits “carbon payback” –or when cumulative GHG emissions become less than a status quo building.

To learn more about Project Frog’s life-cycle assessment or how you can apply this technique to your own products and services, lessen the environmental and social impacts and create competitive advantage through sustainability, check out Jeremy’s course and our other SB Seminars offerings.

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November 15, 2010 – Unilever today unveiled their ambitious “Sustainable Living Plan,” which prioritizes sustainable consumption by decoupling growth targets from sustainability goals, and intends to halve the GHG emissions, water use, and waste produced from company operations as well as supplier and consumer uses by 2020.

The announcement, launched simultaneously in London, Rotterdam, New Delhi and New York, sets out 50 social, economic and environmental targets for the company to achieve by 2020.  The plan’s focus on its supplier impacts and its products’ impact from consumer use is what ratchets up the scale of this new plan – almost 66% of GHG’s and 50% of water use in Unilever’s products’ lifecycle come from consumer use.

Dave Lewis, President of the Americas at Unilever, shared how the company plans to decouple financial growth from environmental impact and deliver more social value through its brands by helping over 1 billion people improve their health and wellbeing. He commented “”Many would say making consumption sustainable is impossible. Our view is that we have to make it possible. We cannot choose between growth and sustainability. We have to do both.”

Other key aspects of the “Sustainable Living Plan” include;

• Sourcing 100 of agricultural raw materials sustainably
• Provide 500 million people access to safe, clean drinking water
• Increase social impact by integrating over 500,000 small farms and small-scale distributors into its supply chain

Unilever CEO Paul Polman took the stage at the London launch and reiterated that he believes sustainability is a path to generating revenue and product differentiation: “We are already finding that tackling sustainability challenges provides new opportunities for sustainable growth: it creates preference for our brands, builds business with our retail customers, drives our innovation, grows our markets and, in many cases, generates cost savings.”

To get a closer look at the new Unilever plan, visit the site here

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November 3, 2010 – Seventh Generation has released its latest Corporate Consciousness report this week; highlighting key product milestones reached this year including the industry-first of utilizing over 90% post consumer recycled content in three product bottles and featuring a new, online format.

The report, titled “Return on Purpose,” utilizes a new online format designed to enhance accessibility to a wider set of stakeholders and make the process of viewing key indicators much easier. The new format also allows for easy data dissemination through social media outlets, navigation through searchable content, and dive deeper into specific areas of data.

Other key highlights include the purchase of sustainable palm oil credits, the launch of a line of botanical disinfectant cleaners and the elimination of dioxane byproducts form dishwashing liquid and laundry detergents.

The report also outlines new company-wide sustainability goals, including a reduction in its virgin plastic use by 80% over the next 5 years, obtaining 100% of its palm oil from sustainable sources by 2012, and ensuring that all of the materials and ingredients used in its products come from renewable plant and mineral sources that ensure compostability and/or biodegradability in marine environments.

For more information, access the complete report here.

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October 29, 2010 – Toyota Motor Corporation, in conjunction with 3 other companies, announced this week that they have developed the first recycling business to recover the nickel in hybrid vehicle batteries that will be re-used in similar hybrid battery products.

Until now, the nickel that was recovered for recycling from these batteries was sent to stainless steel manufacturers for use in their products. By reusing the nickel from nickel-metal-hydride batteries, the company hopes to reduce the production costs of its hybrid vehicle batteries, and in turn its hybrid vehicles.

The company hopes to use the project as a springboard to showcase recovering and recycling technologies in response to global resource limitations. The 3 participating companies, other than Toyota, are Toyota Tsusho Corp, Sumitomo Metal Mining Company and Primearth EV Energy Company.

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October 15, 2010 – On Thursday the world’s largest retailer announced a new commitment to sustainable agriculture and helping small and medium sized farmers expand their businesses with plans to invest over $1 billion over the next 5 years in its fresh food supply chain and doubling its sales of locally sourced produce in the U.S.

Wal-Mart’s program will be focused on 3 specific areas of development: Supporting farmers and their communities, producing more food with fewer resources and less waste, and sustainably sourcing key agricultural products.  All of the company’s goals in the program are set to be accomplished by 2015.

In emerging markets, the company plans to sell $1 billion of food sourced from small and medium farmers, provide training to 1 million farm workers focused on sustainable agriculture and crop selection and to increase the income of its food suppliers by 10%-15%.

Another focus of the program is to accelerate the agricultural focus of the Sustainability Index – which entails the implementation of a Sustainable Produce Assesment for top producers in 2011. For the first time, they will ask suppliers about the water, energy, fertilizer and pesticide they use per unit of food produced.

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October 5, 2010 – KFC announced that it would be expanding the use of its reusable food containers this week. The expansion will take the containers, which the company is touting as an industry first, from the 5 markets that hosted the pilot program to all stores in the United States by the beginning of 2011.

The move is part of a larger packaging shift underway at KFC, which the company is calling its “reuse, renew, rejoice” platform. It includes switching from foam plates to paper plates, using recycled materials in many packages and assigning no new business to suppliers not recognized by an international certification organization or using 100% recycled content.

The company goal for the program is to reduce its use of foam in food packaging 62% by 2011, and reduce total plastic use by 17%.

Other highlights of the program include Sustainable Forestry Initiative certification for 100% of clamshells and 90% of all other paperboard packaging, paper bags are made from 100% recycled content and a minimum of 40% post-consumer content, and the goal to eliminate 100% of foam from company restaurants.

See below for the company’s recently released video outlining the initiatives.

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September 10, 2010 – Whole Foods announced yesterday that it has implemented new responsible packaging guidelines for more than 2,100 body care and supplement products suppliers nationwide, after working for a full year to develop the program with their 25 largest body care suppliers.

Beginning in the summer of 2008, Whole Foods global whole-body coordinator, Jeremiah McElwee, led the team who worked to develop the new guidelines that became effective one year ago. Current suppliers have had 1 year to comply with the new packaging requirements, while new suppliers have had to meet all guidelines before their products can be sold in any Whole Foods outlet.

The rules mandate that suppliers must reduce the amount of plastic in product packaging, use glass packaging where possible, limit materials used to those which are easily recyclable through municipal systems and feature high amounts of post-consumer recycled content.

To spearhead the change, Whole Foods has switched to post-consumer recycled (PCR) content bottles for several of its store-brand supplements and body care products. While the switch to PCR bottles began last Sept., the company expects to switch all of its house-brand Whole Body products, which now use amber plastic PET No. 1 bottles, to PCR packaging by late 2010.

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September 27, 2010 – Last week at the Clinton Global Initiative 2 of the world’s largest clothing retailers, Walmart and H&M, agreed to work with their Chinese textile suppliers to reduce the water, energy, and chemical use in their supply chains through the Natural Resource Defense Council’s “Clean by Design“ project.

Based on the commitment announced today, Walmart agrees that the mills selected to implement NRDC’s program will provide benchmark data on water and energy use at the start of the assessment and will track and verify reductions they achieve. H&M, which operates more than 2,000 stores worldwide, launched a similar agreement with NRDC in Shanghai on Sept. 13.

So far, trial implementations at textile plants have shown that NRDC’s recommended practices can pay for themselves in less than eight months. Taken together, the best practices can cut approximately 25 percent of water and 30 percent of fuel use.

If just 100 small- to medium-sized textile mills implement NRDC’s recommended improvements, China would save more than 16 million metric tons of water annually, enough to provide 12.4 million people drinking water for a year. The practices can also eliminate nearly 1 million metric tons of CO2 annually, approximately the same amount of emissions from 172,000 cars per year.

Other retailers and brands collaborating with NRDC in the Clean by Design effort include Gap, Levi, Nike, Marks and Spencer, and Li and Fung, a large Hong Kong sourcing firm.

For a more in-depth understanding of NRDC’s Clean by Design program, watch below.

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September 14, 2010 – General Mills announced the appointment of Jerry Lynch as Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) yesterday, who leaves his role as the company’s Vice President of Applied Sustainability where he led sustainability business integration and program development worldwide.

Lynch fills the hole left by the retirement of the company’s first sustainability officer, Gene Kahn, who held the role starting in 2003. His new focus will be to lead General Mills’ global environmental sustainability initiatives, driving the company’s activities and brand perception around sustainability.

Lynch has also been active in strategic industry initiatives such as the Sustainability Consortium, the Field to Market Alliance and the Northstar Consortium.

Chris Shea, EVP of External Relations for General Mills commented that “General Mills is committed to protecting natural resources by examining every aspect of our operations, from agriculture to global transportation, for opportunities to reduce our environmental impact. Jerry’s unique combination of business acumen, sustainability experience and leadership skills will drive the continuous advancement of sustainable business initiatives at General Mills.”

The move follows last week’s announcement that Wal-Mart is shaking up its senior sustainability ranks, with the announcement that Andrea Thomas will take over the position of Senior VP of Sustainability from Matt Kistler, who will transition to SVP of Marketing at Wal-Mart U.S.A.

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