All Articles About Sustainable Consumption
BSR Insight Article: The Case for the Responsible Use of Antibiotics in Food-Producing Animals
Roger McElrath, Manager, Advisory Services
For years, antibiotics have been administered on meat-producing farms to treat sick animals or prevent infections when there is a known disease risk. The meat industry also uses antibiotics for non-therapeutic purposes to grow animals faster or to compensate for the effects of overcrowding or unsanitary conditions. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the use of antibiotics in food-animal production accounts for approximately 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the United States. Recently, experts have concluded that there is a direct link between the use of antibiotics in food-producing animals and the growth of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. At the same time, a growing number of consumers are making buying decisions based on the health, environmental, and social attributes of food—including whether the animals that were used for their meat were administered antibiotics. In many respects, the U.S. meat industry has provided a safe and economical supply of meat protein to satisfy the increasing demand of consumers. But underlying that success has been an industrial-scale approach to raising food-producing animals that has created social and environmental challenges, including the need for and/or generation of large amounts of water, waste, and greenhouse gases. While these issues are well-known, less understood are the impacts of the industry's antibiotic usage. Read more
BSR Insight Article: The Better for Wear: Reducing the Impacts of Clothing
Susanne LeBlanc, Analyst, Advisory Services, BSR
According to a WRAP U.K. study of 7,950 British adults, the most significant opportunity to extend the useful life of garments is by making clothes last an additional nine months beyond their current average lifespan of 2.2 years. That would reduce carbon emissions by 27 percent, water use by 33 percent, and waste output by 22 percent. WRAP U.K. also estimates that the cost of resources used to make and clean clothes could be reduced by almost US$8 billion a year. Read more
Blog: Fashion Consumers Want to be NICE Consumers
Susanne LeBlanc, Analyst, Advisory Services, BSR
In the sustainable fashion dialogue, we often hear that the fashion industry and its consumers are simply not ready to address environmental issues. Yet, in reading a recent report published by WRAP U.K. on sustainable fashion consumption, I was pleasantly surprised. Read more →
BSR Insight Article: European Environmental Agency Report: Sustainability Themes for the Coming Year
Julia Robinson, Communications Associate
The European Environment Agency's latest annual report covers four main sustainability trends for the year ahead: Read more
BSR Insight Article: Going from ‘What’ to ‘How’ in Sustainable Procurement
Celine Suarez, Manager, Advisory Services
Making sense of the increasingly dizzying array of product certifications, labels, data and other sustainability initiatives is a challenge, even for experts. While the best of these efforts provide comprehensive, accurate data on a product's many sustainability attributes, it can be exceptionally difficult to synthesize the data and judge the relative "sustainability" of different products. Procurement professionals face the additional challenge of integrating these criteria into purchasing decisions that must also account for traditional considerations like cost, quality, and delivery. Even initiatives such as the Sustainability Consortium, which takes a comprehensive, science-based approach to conveying the full lifecycle of products' sustainability impacts, will need to be applied to thousands of products that companies purchase before the system can realize its full impact. So how can companies start using the information from the Consortium and other initiatives to evaluate things like light bulbs, bath towels, or milk? How can companies begin to unpack and compare the lifecycle sustainability attributes of the products they procure? If a light bulb is Energy Star certified, is that the best indicator of its overall energy efficiency? If a bath towel was made with certified organic cotton, but that cotton was shipped from Uzbekistan to Saskatchewan, is it considered sustainable? If a gallon of milk is hormone-free but made on a factory farm, is it healthier for humans, or is that benefit outweighed by the fact that it's polluting the soil? A single product might be rated on as many as 20 to 30 sustainability metrics covering issues from natural resource extraction, material inputs, manufacturing, carbon footprint, waste, water use, packaging, and more. BSR's Center for Sustainable Procurement (CSP), an initiative funded by Hilton Worldwide, is examining how procurement professionals can more effectively and efficiently integrate sustainability considerations into their day-to-day purchasing decisions. Read more
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