Blog Archive
When our best friends’ first son was born five years ago, I ran to the bookstore and bought a copy of “Where the Wild Things Are,” which remains one of my favorite books. The author, Maurice Sendak, believed that children need to confront the scary and fearsome things in life. And there are a lot of scary and fearsome things facing children these days.
Last year, a group of teenagers filed suit (Alec L. v. Lisa Jackson, et al, C11-02203) in federal court alleging that the federal government was violating its duty to protect the public by not acting to protect the public trust: our land, water and atmosphere. They request injunctive relief requiring the federal government to act to reduce carbon emissions, create a carbon inventory and create a carbon reduction plan.
Since 2007, the hotel chain has been working towards the goal of being completely carbon dioxide neutral by 2025. Now, four years later, Scandic has managed to halve their emissions and have thereby reached its sub target. What made this possible is the fact that Scandic now’s using solely renewable energy from wind and water for electricity in all the Nordic countries.
Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts, a partner of The Natural Step, was recently featured by Green Globe for their leadership towards sustainability in the hospitality industry.***
Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts is proud to announce that all its 21 hotels in Europe have achieved Green Globe certification. The achievement puts the Swiss upscale hospitality company on target to become the most certified hotel company in the world to receive the Green Globe seal.
"We have been very committed to achieving Green Globe certification across all our properties in Europe and in the process enjoyed very positive feedback and engagement from our employees," said Ola Ivarsson, Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts' Chief Operating Officer Europe.
The Natural Step invites you to join us at the Stockholm +40 Conference next week. The meeting builds from the UN Stockholm Conference in 1972. We are pleased to host a round table discussion on food in collaboration with the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. We would also like to take the opportunity to invite you to an open dialogue meeting set up in conjunction to the conference. The dialogue meeting is planned for Sunday between 1-4 pm and will take you into a discussion of the coming challenges and sustainability. The dialogue springs out of a network of organizations and initiatives.
På svenska:
- The first rule of Wendell Berry’s 17 Rules for a Sustainable Community is: Always ask of any proposed change or innovation: What will this do to our community? How will this affect our common wealth?
This rule encapsulates the element of sustainability often missed: social equity. This is somewhat ironic, because the common definition of sustainable development since 1987 has been “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Most organizations even use common vernacular for sustainability: The “three-legged stool” or “triple bottom line” are used as shorthand for economy, environment and equity.
In practice, however, few organizations measure their social equity performance beyond their own employment practices. Some organizations also include philanthropic contributions in their equity measures. While both of these measurements are important, are they enough?
Max Burgers, long time partner of The Natural Step, is once again making headlines. The restaurant was highlighted in TIME World for their sustainability efforts in the article Why Going Green Can Mean Big Money for Fast-Food Chains.***
In late 2008, a fast-food burger restaurant in Sweden received an odd complaint letter. It was from a mother of two, asking the chain to get rid of the boxes that its kids' meals were packaged in. Her children only wanted the fries and toys, she said, and she was annoyed at having to throw the boxes straight into the recycling bin. It was an unusual request with an unusual outcome. Max Burgers — Sweden's No. 1 burger chain — decided to do away with the kids'-meal boxes in all of its 75 restaurants, explaining to customers that it was reducing waste. No one complained. In fact, sales of kids' meals rose. The company had turned sustainability into a selling point.
Imagine projecting the mega trends of un-sustainability onto a building project. We would see all the symptoms of unsustainability; climate change impacts, ecological degradation; escalating energy, water and travel costs; inefficient HVAC (air) creating uncomfortable houses and offices that make you ill; risk aversion at every stage, creating silo solutions and a race to the bottom of the cost & quality barrel.
What would a building look like that addressed all these issues and responded strategically to these constraints? Imagine that it went even further and used bio-mimicry design to generate solutions that positively improve our society, environment and economy? Well these buildings exist already. They are called Living Buildings.
Training programme - 30th and 31st May 2012
If you’re one of those people who sees sustainability as a huge opportunity to drive innovation and find better ways of doing things, then this is for you. If you’re looking for some sound principles that can underpin your efforts to reduce environmental impacts, whilst also improving the way you meet your customers’ needs; this course will provide the answers you’ve been looking for.
One size does not fit all when it comes to business improvement and sustainability strategy. We believe that businesses can achieve better sustainability performance improvements when they really understand the full range of issues involved, and have a simple, smart framework that develops a tailored response to their particular business situation. When people are competent to take action, change happens and it sticks. So we go beyond a focus on waste and energy to help businesses examine and understand all the opportunities.
One may ask how it is possible to open a chain of Burger restaurants that outperforms the international fast food giants. Max Burgers not only made McDonald’s close down restaurants in the northern towns of Sweden but they also try to seed a revolution for a sustainable fast food industry. Max Burgers are the first chain of restaurants in the world to provide carbon labeling for all its meals and fully offset the environmental impact of its operation by planting trees in Africa. The Max reforestation program is the largest in the entire Plan-Vivo certification system. The goal is to make the whole operation fossil fuel-free and to become a fully sustainable enterprise in a sustainable society. They can however, not reach their goal without help from their industry colleagues.
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