Publications by Tag: Toxicity & Product Design
Blog
In Your Words: Ocean Conservancy President and CEO Vikki Spruill on Leadership
Vikki Spruill, President and CEO, Ocean Conservancy
This guest blog is part of BSR's ongoing series exploring what leadership for sustainability looks like in today's world.
Where BSR Will Be in September
Summer is over for BSR staff in the Northern Hemisphere with September shaping up to be a packed month. Here are a few of the places we’ll be and events we’re hosting. We hope to see you there! Read more
A New Tool for Sustainable Product Design
Virginia Terry, Director, Advisory Services
This week, I had the opportunity to see a demonstration of Autodesk’s new Eco Materials Adviser, a tool the company developed with Granta Design that is intended to help product designers make better decisions around material choices. Since the majority of a product’s life-cycle impacts are determined during the design phase, the tool has the potential to help create smarter, cleaner, and more efficient products. Read more
Sustainable Product Design: Closing the Loop on Plastics
Cody Sisco, Manager, Advisory Services
Last week I visited an HP service provider’s facility in Thurnau, Germany where plastic inkjet cartridges are collected and where they take the first step toward reentering the materials stream for HP recycled plastic cartridges. Read more
Jugaad Solutions for Sustainable Design
Virginia Terry, Director, Advisory Services
Jugaad is a Hindi term that means clever and resourceful. It describes a way of getting a job done by using easy-to-find materials, typically in collaboration with others. In Western terms, jugaad could be a kind of crowd-sourced innovation that makes efficient use of scarce resources or reused materials to help improve living conditions. Read more
BSR Insight Articles
The Sustainability Opportunity in Product Obsolescence
Marshall Chase, Manager, Advisory Services
On the last day of the BSR Conference 2011, Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn noted that we have about five years to address the world’s critical sustainability challenges. But to do this, he added, we need new business models. Read more
Re-Scaling for the New Local
Linda Hwang, Manager, Research
In the next decade, rapidly growing urban regions will need redesigned infrastructure, goods, and services to match peoples’ needs and work within planetary constraints. New efforts to track well-being and happiness, ecological systems under stress, and community and culture shocks like forced water restrictions and food-safety scares are driving people to pursue more resilient solutions such as low-impact housing, off-grid water and energy, seed-sharing programs, and community-supported agriculture. Read more
Walmart: The Greatest Sustainability Story of Our Time?
Eva Dienel, Communications Manager
In Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward Humes’ latest book, Force of Nature, Walmart is the unlikely hero in a tale about the environment and sustainability, which Humes calls “the most important story of our age.” I spoke with Humes—who will discuss sustainability storytelling at the BSR Conference 2011—about what makes Walmart’s story so compelling, how to make your business’ sustainability story part of company lore, and how to avoid the trap of “mego” (shorthand for “my eyes glaze over”) when chronicling your own experience. Read more
Improving Product Sustainability Performance
According to Parametric Technology Corporation's recent white paper, companies must embrace "design-for-the-environment" strategies that allow them to remain competitive—and stay ahead of new sustainability requirements—by improving the environmental performance of their products. Read more
State of Green Business 2011
GreenBiz's fourth annual "State of Green Business" report presents the top 10 trends and 20 indices for measuring how well companies are improving their environmental performance. According to the report, green business did not die during the recession; rather, companies are diving deeper and investing in longer-term sustainability initiatives. Read more
Social Purpose Drives Consumers’ Purchasing Decisions
Elissa Goldenberg, Associate, Advisory Services
According to the fourth annual Edelman goodpurpose® study, social purpose is more important than design and innovation or brand loyalty as a purchase trigger when quality and price are the same (see graph below). The survey—conducted annually in 13 countries among more than 7,000 adults—explores consumer attitudes around social purpose, including their commitment to specific social issues and their expectations of companies. Social purpose, according to the survey, is critical to marketing because it allows companies to engage with consumers on a deeper level. Read more
Business and Sustainable Consumption: The Call to Action
In London last week, at BSR's second workshop on business' role in promoting sustainable consumption, representatives from the apparel, food and beverage, telecommunications, and chemicals industries discussed issues such as product design, consumer engagement, and what to do with a product at the end of its use life. Read more
New Eco Index for Improving Product Life-Cycle Impacts
The Eco Index—a new web-based environmental assessment tool created by the Outdoor Industry Association’s Eco Working Group—is aimed at helping companies in the apparel and outdoor industry understand (and ultimately improve) a product's impacts at different life-cycle stages. Read more
How Can Companies Use Life-Cycle Metrics for Sustainable Consumption?
Virginia Terry, Manager, Advisory Services
Now in its third year, the World Economic Forum's (WEF) sustainable consumption work is moving toward tangible actions in three different work streams: engaging consumers, exchanging innovation, and life-cycle metrics. Read more
Business Opportunities in Sustainable Consumption
Linda Hwang, Manager, Research
Not long ago, Southern California Edison conducted an experiment aimed at lowering household energy use. The utility company gave its customers ambient orbs that glowed red when their energy use was high and green when use was low. Within weeks, energy use in this pilot group declined by 40 percent during peak periods. Read more
Web-Based Marketplace Promotes Open Innovation
GreenXchange, a new web-based marketplace launched at the World Economic Forum in January, allows companies to collaborate and share intellectual property (IP) that can lead to new sustainable business models. Read more
Guest Perspective: GreenBiz on Ten Trends Shaping the State of Green Business
By Joel Makower, Executive Editor, GreenBiz.com
“We’re still here.” Read more
The Green Screen for Safer Chemicals
Clean Production Action's "Green Screen for Safer Chemicals" is the first open-source tool to help companies and governments identify substances that are less hazardous for humans and the environment. Companies can use the tool—which focuses on hazard reduction, rather than controlling exposure—to assess the inherent hazards of the chemicals they use in their products and find safer substitutes, while governments can use the tool to support legislation on phasing out chemicals of high concern. Read more
Sprint’s Latest Phone Paves Way for Greener Products
Marshall Chase, Manager, Advisory Services
Sprint's recently released Samsung Reclaim is the latest example of the company's efforts to improve the environmental impacts of its products and services. According to Sprint, this phone—made from 80 percent recyclable materials—is the first phone in the United States constructed from "eco-friendly bio-plastic materials." Read more
BSR and Wal-Mart Build Energy Efficiency in China
For the past six months, BSR has been working with Wal-Mart to improve the energy efficiency in 200 of the company's Chinese factories by 20 percent by 2012. As a panelist at Wal-Mart's recent Sustainability Milestone Meeting, I shared the following lessons from this work: Read more
Trust in Business
Kara Hurst, Vice President
According to the 2009 Edelman Trust Barometer, nearly two-thirds of the public reported less trust in business than the year before. BSR's roundtable event on "Business Success in a Reset World" examined what it will take to earn that trust back. Read more
Events
BSR Conference 2011: Leadership Required
Leadership in business is changing fast. In today’s global, integrated, and transparent world, business is expected to do more than deliver shareholder returns. At its best, business is a creative force and an integral player in delivering prosperity for 9 billion people, applying game-changing technologies for social benefit, and radically reducing our use of natural resources. Learn more
Hazardous Chemicals Substitution and Elimination
Consumers and policy makers are increasingly concerned with the environmental and health impacts of hazardous chemical substances. This has led to the tightening of regulations all over the world and has also driven consumers to turn to safer products. All such moves put pressure on companies to actively seek solutions that allow them to make products with less or no hazardous chemicals. Learn more
Reports
Achieving Effective REACH Implementation: A BSR Issue Brief on New European Registration, Evaluation
Aligned for Sustainable Design: An A-B-C-D Approach to Making Better Products
Word from the Street: Toxicity & Health
This brief includes a framework companies can use to evaluate their level of risk exposure to issues surrounding toxicity and health in order to respond to the growing community of institutional investors, investment advisers and investors who have incorporated environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria into their investment decision-making. Read more
Sustainability Matters
Accelerating and Scaling Innovation for Sustainability | The GreenXchange Platform
Collaborative innovation is one of the best ways to reach common goals, from creating standard protocols for measuring emissions to improving labor conditions for contract workers. By sharing parallel research and best practices, companies can cut unnecessary costs and achieve results more quickly than by acting alone. Learn more
Global Trends in Chemicals Policies
There is increasing evidence that some industrial chemicals found in common household goods cause human disease and have negative environmental impacts. A lack of information to help buyers—from individual consumers to global companies—choose the least hazardous chemicals and products has led to calls for major reforms in industrial chemicals policies worldwide. Learn more
Understanding and Preventing Greenwash
In this webinar, you will learn about the key themes from BSR's new report, "Understanding and Preventing Greenwash: A Business Guide," cowritten with U.K.-based Futerra. Learn more
BSR Review
Information and Communications Technology
The information and communications technology (ICT) industry is in a unique position to advance the sustainability agenda. With an annual spend of around US$2 trillion and a growth rate faster than other industries, the ICT sector is becoming a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and e-waste. It has also contributed to lesser-known negative social impacts such as poor working conditions in some factories, slavery, child labor, and other human rights abuses. View email publication
Sustainable Consumption: The Next Frontier for Business
Welcome to the inaugural edition of the BSR Review, our bi-monthly update on issues central to sustainable business. Each edition of the BSR Review features a collection of BSR's best work—including reports, articles, blogs, webinars, and op-eds—on a particular topic. View email publication
Other Publications & Events Tagged, Toxicity & Product Design
- Blog [ 5 ]
- BSR Conference Session Summaries [ 0 ]
- BSR Insight Articles [ 16 ]
- BSR Review [ 2 ]
- Case Studies [ 0 ]
- Events [ 2 ]
- Research Reports [ 3 ]
- Sustainable Investment in China Article [ 0 ]
- Sustainability Matters [ 3 ]
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