Humble News: Green Spotlight - Businesses Taking Eco-Action
While Global Cooperations are important in implementing environmental policies, Businesses play a just as much important role in adopting green practices as they directly affect how we, the public, consume their products or services. As Sir Richard Branson (Billionaire, Knight for his Service to Entrepreneurship) puts it into words, "We must look at the issues around protecting our natural resources, one of the biggest entrepreneurial opportunities of our lifetime”.
Similar to Global Cooperation, one company can not do it alone, as such, these two joint corporate eco-initiatives are two of the most impactful and high-profile, right now:
Climate 100+
A global initiative that involves 700+ investors, across 166 companies, 5 investor groups with an estimated combined total assets of about $68 trillion across the border. This initiative aims to make business transitions to going green a priority to ensure the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters take necessary action on climate change.
Nature 100
Solidified during the latest COP15 Global Convention just last December 2022, this global investor initiative aims to empower corporate ambition towards eco-action with a focus on reducing nature and bio-diversity loss, with hopes of potentially reversing the damaged already caused.
While Climate 100+ focuses on mitigating climate change, Nature 100 focuses on promoting biodiversity. With these 2 initiatives working hand in hand, there are high hopes for a better, greener economy. This clamor also empowered financial institutions to take a firmer stand against environmental hazards and their eco-action focuses on defunding potential “climate chaos” projects. Crèdit Mutuel in France, has a jumpstart as it already stopped financing coal projects since 2018 and more recently, HSBC also announced that it will stop funding new fossil fuel projects.
17 Best Green Companies
Nike - Transitioning to sustainable manufacturing and advertising of sportswear and implementing a “Move to Zero” initiative that includes: eliminating single-use plastic, initiating dialogue with its designers on a Circular Design concept.
Apple - Created solar and wind farms to power offices and retail stores. As a company, they also focus on 3 main sustainable efforts: minimizing climate impact, preserving natural resources and use of safe materials for production and work environment.
Patagonia - To aid climate change, founder Yvon Choinard transferred the $3B business to an environmental trust (Patagonia Purpose Trust) and nonprofit (Holdfast Collective) stating that “Earth is the only shareholder”. They have championed the concept of up-cycling and repairs.
Starbucks - 100% ethically-sourced coffee and has pledged +100M trees to coffee farmers, making coffee the first globally sustainable agricultural product. Paved the way in making the cups more recyclable as possible.
Ikea - Leader in sustainable industry practice in furniture production. Ikea also sources 50% from sustainably harvested forests with 100% of its cotton meeting Bear Cotton Standards (reduce water and energy, regulate fertilizers and pesticides). Their stores are also powered by 700K solar panels from all over the world.
Seventh Generation - Mission as personal care and cleaning product company is “to transform the world into a healthy, sustainable & equitable place for the next seven generations”. Have used environmentally friendly, sustainable packaging with the goal of being zero-waste by 2025.
A Good Company - Environmentally sustainable E-commerce company that is determined to eliminate climate change by being transparent and purposeful in all the products it manufactures (ie. World’s first climate-positive notebook made of stone paper and pens made out of melted firearms).
Honda - Planted +700K trees to curb 30% of the carbon emissions it produced with the manufacturing of automobiles and motorcycles from 2000-2020. They have also entered a Power Purchase agreement for renewable wind and solar energy aiming to cover 60% of North America’s requirements.
Disney - Commits to producing 100% zero-carbon electricity for its global cooperations by 2030. Currently, they have policies in place such as - zero waste and zero-net greenhouse policies in all its facilities.
New Belgium Brewing - Largest craft beer company in the US that only works with sustainable vendors and holds a Platinum-certified Zero Waste Business certificate where 99.9% of their waste goes through a recycling program.
Pela - Created the world’s first 100% compostable phone case, 45% of which is from plant-based material. Has a goal to prevent 1B pounds of plastic from being produced in the next 5 years. Also a 1% for the Planet Member where 1% of its revenues goes to environmental efforts.
Johnson & Johnson - Founded the Global Aquatic Ingredient Assessment Tool (GAIA) to better understand and control the environmental impact of its products. By 2025, the goal is to use 100% recyclable, reusable, or compostable packaging, and certified post-consumer and pulp-based packaging.
Imperfect Foods - Mission to reduce food waste and to make fresh produce more affordable and accessible by purchasing cosmetically-imperfect fruits and vegetables that would otherwise go to waste directly from farms and deliver them to customers’ doorstep for an average of 30% less than grocery store prices.
Salesforce - Cloud-based software company that focuses on using new technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across economic sectors.
Native Shoes - Evolved manufacturing practices of shoe manufacturing to make it more earth-friendly such as using vegan leather and creating a 100% biodegradable shoes that uses natural materials and can be composted.
Numi Organic Tea - Known for its root-to-branch sustainability when producing their teas. Initiated OSC2 (One Step Closer to an Organic Sustainable Community), a group of CEOs and business leaders from sustainable companies by sharing their environmentally good practices across different industries.
Who Gives A Crap - Produces nature-friendly toilet paper that is 100% plastic-free, with an option between 100% recycled paper or 100% recycled bamboo. 50% of the company’s profits go to building toilets for impoverished communities around the world.
“Going Green” for companies also extends to online shopping, as more online brands and companies either pledge a donation (monetary, plant a tree, save an endangered specie, etc) or are transparent when it comes to the company’s environmental impact in producing and shipping ordered products. Programs such as ShopPay, EcoCart and Beam have developed collaborative efforts with these companies to ensure brands offer and deliver on their environmental promises.
Knowing all of these efforts made by these (big and small) corporations, how and why is it important?
For Companies - pledging to an environmental mission is generally better for a company’s brand image and attracts a group of loyal “green” customers, some even willing to pay a little more premium for the benefit of supporting green products. Going green is also good for a company’s long-term bottom line as it decreases waste, decreases cost and they tend to enjoy “green” incentives, rebates and reliefs in certain states.
For Consumers - the sheer availability of these eco-products enables a shift in cultural consumption of “green-er” options and preferences. As such, the law of economics goes into play - demand creates supply, with abundance of supply, prices will drop making it more accessible for all. The transparency and pledges that these businesses make also help us become more informed consumers on what, how, where to purchase and who to support.
Let’s all make a conscious effort to choose green, to be green.
Sources:
https://www.climateaction100.org
https://www.natureaction100.org
https://greencitizen.com/blog/green-companies/
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/22/which-banks-are-increasing-decreasing-fossil-fuel-financing-.html
