Editor's Note
Sustainable Consumption: The Next Frontier for Business
By Aron Cramer, President and CEO, BSR
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.
This edition focuses on sustainable consumption—an issue we see as the next frontier of sustainable business. At a macroeconomic level, our collective ability to create more prosperous societies depends mightily on a transition to delivering products and services that use significantly fewer resources. For companies, this means looking at the design process, consumer communications, and closed-loop models. The businesses that embrace these as opportunities for innovation will gain a competitive advantage.
To help you explore the challenges and opportunities associated with this topic—which companies have often been reluctant to embrace—we offer a set of insightful strategies, opinions, and tools. Our report, "The New Frontier in Sustainability," provides a comprehensive overview of how sustainable consumption is relevant to all of the elements of the product cycle—from design to end-of-life. We also provide articles and blog posts that offer perspectives and information on specific themes such as life-cycle analysis, influencing consumer choice and product use, and shifting to open innovation models.
We hope you enjoy the BSR Review, and more importantly, find it useful and thought provoking. Please let us know how we can make this publication more valuable in the future.
The New Frontier in Sustainability (July 2010)
Research report: Framed for years as a limitation on business, sustainable consumption—an economic system that allows all individuals to meet their daily needs without disrupting the planet’s healthy ecosystems—actually represents the new frontier of sustainability for business.
Business Opportunities in Sustainable Consumption (July 13, 2010)
By Linda Hwang, Manager, Research & Innovation
BSR Insight article: In the business value chain cycle—including product design, material input, processing and assembly, distribution, engagement and use, and end-of-use—Southern California Edison focused on customers' engagement and use to improve the sustainability of its service.
Rethink Products, Rethink Consumption (June 24, 2010)
By Virginia Terry, Manager, Advisory Services
Blog: With product design and consumer engagement typically viewed at opposite ends of the value chain, our "product rethink" required that participants see consumers not as just end-users of a product but as co-designers of the service.
Your Mission, Should You Accept It: Spend $5 (June 21, 2010)
By Linda Hwang, Manager, Research & Innovation
Blog: With a group of 20 representatives from food, agriculture, apparel, retail, and personal care and beauty companies, we explored our current system of consumption and the business opportunities to radically change that system.
Sustainable Consumption: More Than Meets the Eye (May 28, 2010)
By Kai Robertson, Director, Food, Beverage & Agriculture Practice
Blog: Sustainable consumption is an uncomfortable topic—especially when you're talking with companies who are in the business of selling "stuff" and whose business models for growth are built on selling even more stuff.
Aligned for Sustainable Design: An A-B-C-D Approach to Making Better Products (May 2008)
Research report: Companies succeed in sustainable product design, at least in the short term, by developing a more
integrated design process.
Untying the Sustainable Consumption Knot (September 21, 2010)
By Cody Sisco, Manager, Advisory Services
Blog: BSR member companies gathered to discuss how to push out to mainstream business ideas and actions that maximize consumer value while minimizing environmental and social impacts.
Preventing the Next Oil Spill: Do Consumers Hold the Key? (August 26, 2010)
By Aron Cramer, President and CEO
Op-Ed: Now that oil has stopped flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, it is time to consider the lessons that can be drawn from the Deepwater Horizon spill.
Happiness for Sale? (August 10, 2010)
By Cody Sisco, Manager, Advisory Services
Blog: Decisions about how we spend our money can affect our happiness, but only under the right conditions.
Sustainable Consumption: Back to the Future…and a Call to Action (July 28, 2010)
By Eric Olson, Senior Vice President
Blog: The publication of BSR's latest report on sustainable consumption, which describes the topic as the "New Frontier in Sustainability," gives me cause to reflect on more than a decade of work in the field.
Retailers, Shopping Bags, and Getting Ahead of the 'Green Police' (June 15, 2010)
By Marshall Chase, Manager, Advisory Services
Blog: Although satirically extreme, Audi's controversial "green police" Super Bowl ad underscores the common view that plastic bags are a bad choice for the environment and their status as a symbol of a throwaway society.
Sustainable Consumption in Dubai? (November 20, 2009)
By Aron Cramer, President and CEO
Blog: I have to admit that an American flying to Dubai to discuss sustainable consumption does push the irony meter toward 10.
How Can Companies Use Life-Cycle Metrics for Sustainable Consumption? (July 27, 2010)
By Virginia Terry, Manager, Advisory Services
BSR Insight article: Now in its third year, the World Economic Forum's sustainable consumption work is moving
toward tangible actions in three different work streams: engaging consumers, exchanging innovation, and life-cycle metrics.
Web-Based Marketplace Promotes Open Innovation (February 9, 2010)
BSR Insight article: GreenXchange, a new web-based marketplace launched at the World Economic Forum in January, allows
companies to collaborate and share intellectual property that can lead to new sustainable business
models.
Accelerating and Scaling Innovation for Sustainability | The GreenXchange Platform (April 28, 2010)
Sustainability Matters webinar: In this webinar, learn how GreenXchange—an open source platform that allows companies working on sustainability initiatives to share mutually beneficial intellectual property in a way that's legal and potentially profitable—can bring about opportunities for your business. BSR Member login required.
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