There isn’t much Ryanne Waters isn’t qualified to do.Now senior communications specialist for freshwater and food at World Wildlife Fund (WWF) she has built up experience across stakeholder engagement, content curation, design and production, analysis and storytelling, zero waste events, sustainable sourcing — the list goes on. She’s also certified by the U.S. Green Building Council as a LEED Green Associate and TRUE Advisor, and sits on the steering committee of DC EcoWomen, a networking organization for environmental professionals in the Washington, D.C., area. Here, Waters talks the challenges of working at a global NGO and the soft skills that serve her better than any technical degree would. Shannon Houde: You joined WWF in April 2021 after more than four years at the U.S. Green Building Council. What led to you making that switch? Ryanne Waters: I was feeling a little bit stagnant in my role working in event sustainability after the pandemic hit. I was looking for something else, but had really no idea what I wanted, what I could do or what my experience could translate into. I didn't have that sort of singlemindedness of knowing what it was that I wanted to achieve. Initially I was thinking my experience in sustainable events could translate to a corporate sustainability role in the hospitality industry, but that sector was suffering from impacts of the pandemic and many of my contacts were furloughed. So, I had to pivot and shift into a different strategy. That’s where I thought, "Let's look at an NGO that works with corporates," and I happened upon this job posting at WWF. Houde: So, tell us a little bit about how it is to be working for a global nonprofit. Does it live up to your expectations? Waters: For me, WWF was the dream organization to be involved with ever since I was very, very young. And I think in a lot of ways it has lived up to expectations. I get to work on such big, important and cool issues, and I really feel like the work I am doing is important and brings me purpose. WWF attracts such amazing talent, so I also get to work with some of the most amazing, intelligent and inspiring people. Something that I was not necessarily anticipating was how much of an adjustment it was for me personally to move to a larger organization, particularly when we were still working entirely remotely. My prior experience has been in much smaller nonprofits, which had 400 employees or less. WWF has thousands of employees and hundreds of offices all over the world. Even within just the U.S., there's so many different teams and people. So, trying to determine how to navigate all that and adjust to a much larger organization was personally challenging for me. But I think that working for a large nonprofit organization is also really, really rewarding. Because the scale and scope of our work is so big, there is a lot of impact and you do get to work with so many different people, internally and externally, who have just completely nuanced perspectives, so you are constantly learning something new. Houde: In addition to the scale of the organization, what are some of the other challenges that you’ve encountered since you took on the role? Waters: WWF works on a myriad of topics, from forests, to oceans, to freshwater, to wildlife, to food — which I work on — and they all intersect in various ways. That means there’s always somebody else working on a similar area so all that stakeholder engagement and consensus building can be challenging. The other challenge is that a lot of the topics we work on are very nuanced and sometimes can be very technical. In communications, sometimes you have to get your message across in just a sound bite or two sentences or a tweet, and there’s not always room for the nuance. So you have to be able to be concise, and really know what the goal is of what you’re trying to communicate and to who in order to not get too into the weeds. Houde: With that in mind, what is it that your day to day looks like? Waters: My elevator pitch is that I do strategic communications at WWF on their Freshwater and Food Team. What that means is that I get people to care about and take action on things that will help to protect and preserve our critical freshwater ecosystems and landscapes, and drive transformation towards more resilient and regenerative food systems.  But what that looks like day to day is a lot of different things. One day I could be working on a draft communication strategy for our work on seaweed farming. On another, I could be giving feedback to an illustrator on how to make their sketch about regenerative food systems more technically accurate or to convey our message more strongly. I could be brainstorming ideas for comms activation at a [United Nations] summit with a corporate partner or writing an op ed for one of our execs about the interconnections between food production, biodiversity, public health and climate change. You have to be able to be concise, and really know what the goal is of what you’re trying to communicate and to who in order to not get too into the weeds. I don't have any sort of technical, environmental or conservation background. I studied political science and international relations, and my background is in advocacy, communications and events. But I've always been super interested in food systems, and the connectivity and circularity that our natural environment already has and how to kind of work within that.  Houde: You’ve mentioned you don’t have a technical background. How have you been able to navigate this role without those concrete technical skills? Waters: It definitely helped that I worked at different conservation organizations previously. Food & Water Watch is a consumer advocacy-focused nonprofit specifically working on food and water issues. And then, of course, with the U.S. Green Building Council I had access to several relevant certifications. The LEED Green Associate Certification is one that I have, which I find to be very useful. It has a really, really great overview of what I think has transformed into the modern-day CSR role. I also have a TRUE certification, which is another one from U.S. Green Building Council that is specifically on zero waste. That again was a very useful overview in terms of the basics of what is zero waste and how you achieve it. I will say that the certifications were helpful in helping me to gain that basic technical understanding, so I can better translate complex issues to different audiences. But for my specific role, there is not a predetermined or technical education or background. Some of the soft skills you need, though, are the confidence and gravitas to be able to work alongside technical experts who may have advanced degrees or even Ph.D.s in conservation and to be able to think strategically with them about how you can effectively communicate their message to the right people, through the right medium, without getting intimidated by their education and years of experience. This is where mindfulness really helped me push past imposter syndrome and helped me remember not to compare myself to others, and that the unique perspective and experience I bring is inherently valuable in the conservation and sustainability world. The other thing that really helped me was networking and just reaching out to people that had job titles that I thought that I would be interested in and wanting to learn more about them and what skills they had. I've also volunteered for sort of various projects that helped me get more experience. Houde: I'm really curious to hear more about the interview process that that you went through. What types of questions did you ask, for example? Waters: WWF is a very large matrixed organization, as I mentioned, so they have a pretty standardized process where you put your application through a portal, you do a recruiter screening and then, depending on the position and the team, you'll have a series of interviews. For me it was an interview with my direct manager and then an interview with the [senior vice president] of our department.  A lot of the questions that were important to me were around not being regarded as a service provider. In communications specifically, in my experience, you can be seen as a service provider — it’s ‘hey, I need you to write this copy’ or ‘hey, I need you to put this tweet out’ — where you have no say in the strategy or reasons behind why this is the tactic. That was something that happened to me in both communications and events. So it was important to me to find out in the interview process, how the communications role would be regarded on the team. What sort of level of influence am I going to have in the communications strategy that we're putting together? Or am I just an implementer of someone else’s vision? The other really important factor to me was to have autonomy and know there was an inherent trust from my manager. But I learned after I started that at a larger organization, you have to have trust in your employees because there is so much going on that you just can't be involved in everything. Shannon Houde is an ICF certified career and leadership coach who founded Walk of Life Coaching in 2009. Her life’s purpose is to enable change leaders to turn their passion into action and to live into their potential — creating scalable social and environmental impact globally. To follow more stories like these, join Shannon for Coffee & Connect where she interviews sustainability practitioners every month to learn more about what their "day in the life" involves. Adblock test (Why?)

The growing threat to the biodiversity of the planet, upon which life on earth depends, is well documented. It is declining faster than at any other time in recorded history, and this has serious implications for human health and prosperity.Around a million animal and plant species are facing extinction, according to the United Nations. It says human activity has altered almost two-thirds of the earth’s surface area. This is putting enormous pressure on nature and increasing the risk of zoonotic diseases such as COVID-19, as humans come into greater contact with wildlife. Research by the Royal Society Scientific Journal also indicates that climate change is expected to become one of the largest drivers of biodiversity loss by the second half of this century. Rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns could match or even surpass the effects of deforestation and agriculture. However, biodiversity loss has the potential to impact economics, according to a new report from the University of Cambridge. A team of economists has drawn up what it says is the world’s first biodiversity-adjusted sovereign credit ratings. These show how ecological destruction can prompt credit rating downgrades and make borrowing costs spiral. The report said degradation of nature-provided "ecosystem services" — such as bees pollinating crops and plants that regenerate soil and prevent flooding — can create huge economic costs. A new era for the sovereign credit rating system? A sovereign rating is an independent assessment of a country’s or sovereign entity’s creditworthiness. It enables investors to check the level of risk associated with investing in debt (government bonds) of the nation in question. While the agencies behind these ratings are prepared to assess risks such as potential geo-political events, they are less focused on the financial fallout from environmental degradation, according to the authors of the new report. They argue that to manage risk effectively and maintain market stability, biodiversity loss must be factored into calculations. If parts of the world see a ‘partial ecosystems collapse’ of fisheries, tropical timber production and wild pollination ... then more than half of the 26 nations studied would face downgrades. "As nature-loss reduces economic performance, it will become harder for countries to service their debt, straining government budgets and forcing them to raise taxes, cut spending, or increase inflation. This will have grim consequences for ordinary people," said lead author Matthew Agarwala, from Cambridge University’s Bennett Institute for Public Policy. Many countries could face a credit crunch amidst biodiversity loss The report builds on a study published by the World Bank last year, looking at the credit ratings of 26 nations across different scenarios: "a halt to biodiversity loss," as well as what it calls a "business as usual" scenario, where ecosystems degrade at current rates. This includes the global loss of 114 million acres of wilderness by 2030. The researchers also studied a "tipping point" scenario, where ecosystems suffer a partial collapse. This was measured by a 90 percent reduction across marine fishing, wild pollination and supplies of timber from tropical regions. "If parts of the world see a 'partial ecosystems collapse' of fisheries, tropical timber production and wild pollination ... then more than half of the 26 nations studied would face downgrades," the researchers said. "Across the 26 countries these downgrades would increase the annual interest payment on debt by up to $53 billion a year, leaving many developing nations at significant risk of sovereign debt default — in effect, bankruptcy." Almost half of the 26 countries studied would increase their risk of bankruptcy by more than 10 percent under the scenario. Saving nature could save money The researchers say that by better protecting their natural assets, countries could see their creditworthiness improve. "Biodiversity-related risks are a material risk to economic activity and public finances. Protecting the natural habitat is not just important for nature’s sake but also crucial for safeguarding macroeconomic stability," said co-author Ulrich Volz. The research team said it was the first to produce "climate-smart" sovereign credit ratings, which predict climate change-related downgrades as soon as 2030. They conclude that due to the potential size of the growing economic risks, the inclusion of biodiversity into ratings is inevitable. The World Economic Forum’s Nature Action Agenda aims to promote systematic solutions and transitions that will create a "nature-positive" economy through public-private collaboration. Partners such as Unilever, Walmart and Gucci have already made ambitious commitments to address biodiversity loss in their business activities. The business value of protecting the natural environment better is clear. The Forum’s The Future of Nature Business 2020 report has estimated that transitioning towards nature-positive economic models in key sectors could generate almost 400 million jobs and more than $10 trillion in annual business value by 2030. Adblock test (Why?)

This week's run time is 29:34.WEEK IN REVIEW (3:45) FEATURES Turning carbon into value (18:55) Gregory Constantine, co-founder and CEO of Air Company, talks growth plans for his startup — a leading carbon use company specializing in consumer goods such as vodka and fragrance made from air. *Music in this episode: Lee Rosevere: "And So Then," "4th Ave. Walkup," "I’m Going for a Coffee" and "Let That Sink In." STAY CONNECTED To make sure you don't miss the newest episode of GreenBiz 350, subscribe on iTunes or Spotify. Have a question or suggestion for a future segment? E-mail us at [email protected]. Adblock test (Why?)

Imagine taking a worn-out pair of sneakers or used yoga pants back to the brand that produced them, knowing the polyester material they’re made of will be biologically broken down to its fundamental elements, then used to make a shiny new pair of sneakers or yoga pants or anything, really, that’s made from polyester. Which, incidentally, is a lot of stuff.This is the future a biotech startup called Carbios and a group of well-known sportswear brands are working toward. The French startup, which has developed an enzymatic process to break down polyethylene terephthalate (commonly known as PET), recently signed an agreement with On, Patagonia, Puma and Salomon meant to accelerate the commercialization of its bio-recycling technology for textiles. The consortium aims to develop the industry’s first large-scale fiber-to-fiber polyester recycling system, a process that could play a meaningful role in circularity in fashion. The brands "can use plastics to make fibers, but they don’t have a solution for fiber-to-fiber recycling at scale," Emmanuel Ladent, Carbios CEO, said in an interview. At the same time, Carbios has partnered with PET manufacturer Indorama Ventures to build and operate the world’s first commercial-scale bio-recycling plant for PET-based plastic in Lunéville, a commune (or township) in the Meurthe et Moselle region of France. The company expects the facility, which will recycle local plastic waste, to begin operations in 2025. PET is a polymer derived from oil that is primarily used to produce three products: plastic bottles: carpeting; and apparel. The clothing industry refers to PET as polyester, a pet name for a pet fabric that has become the world’s most commonly used fiber, comprising more than 50 percent of fibers produced globally. In the United States alone, more than 34 billion pounds of clothing waste is created each year, much of which ends up in the trash. Often blended with other fabrics, such as cotton, and typically accompanied with fixtures such as buttons, zippers and tags, polyester can be found in all types of apparel, sportswear and footwear. This design complexity makes our clothes and shoes notoriously difficult to recycle using conventional technologies. Many apparel and footwear brands use "recycled polyester" to some degree — in products often marketed as containing "ocean" or "ocean-bound" plastic — but this material comes from conventionally recycled plastic bottles, not from used clothing. While this practice reduces the amount of single-use plastics that end up burned, landfilled or in the ocean and other waterways, recycled polyester from plastic bottles doesn’t address fashion’s own gargantuan post-consumer waste problem. In the United States alone, more than 34 billion pounds of clothing waste is created each year, much of which ends up in the trash. A 'truly circular' solution Carbios uses one of a handful of microbes, discovered by various scientists, that have developed a taste for PET. The company’s enzyme was first identified in compost, and has been modified by its own scientists to work faster and operate at high temperatures where PET is softer. Carbios says its enzyme is also capable of selectively decomposing the polyester material, which makes it possible to recover basically all the polyester found in textile waste, even blended fabrics. And unlike conventional recycling, which degrades the quality of PET, limiting the number of times it can be recycled, as well as the amount that be used in any given product, enzymatic recycling breaks PET down at the molecular level, so it is possible to recreate a virgin quality material that can be recycled over and over again, making the process, in theory anyway, truly circular. "In the traditional recycling world, the solutions are not circular. You can recycle materials one, two, three times, and then it’s over. With our technology, it’s almost infinite," said Ladent, who joined Carbios late last year, replacing co-founder and CEO Jean-Claude Lumaret, who’d led the company since its founding in 2011. French sports gear manufacturer Salomon, whose use of recycled polyester currently maxes out as 38 percent, believes the collaboration with Carbios will allow it to produce a 100 percent recycled polyester product, according to Olivier Mouzin, footwear sustainability manager at the company. "We think we will be able to produce recycled polyester with the same mechanical properties as the virgin one, which is not the case today," he said. Under the terms of the two-year agreement, the brands will collect post-consumer garments containing polyester, as well as work on developing sorting and dismantling technologies. In turn, Carbios will provide them with bio-recycled polyester made from those garments. Mouzin believes it will take several years to reach the point where Salomon might actually produce a product using Carbios’s technology. The best-case scenario might be a small pilot project beginning in 2026 or 2027. Hungry, hungry enzymes Scientists have been studying plastic degrading enzymes for a couple of decades. By the mid-2010s, plenty of these enzymes were known, but it was in 2016 that a key discovery was made. Researchers led by microbiologist Kohei Oda of the Kyoto Institute of Technology in Japan found a bacteria called Ideonella sakaiensis 201-F6, outside a bottle-recycling facility, which could not only break down and metabolize PET, it also could use the plastic as its main source of nutrients. The key to this ability was a pair of unique enzymes made by the bacteria. The first (PETase) breaks down long PET molecules into smaller molecules, and a second (MHETase) then produces ethylene glycol and terephthalic acid, the chemical building blocks of PET. So Ideonella sakaiensis 201-F6 can completely reverse the manufacturing process that makes PET. In the traditional recycling world, the solutions are not circular. You can recycle materials one, two, three times, and then it’s over. With our technology, it’s almost infinite. This discovery energized enzymatic recycling research and led to further advances. While studying the Ideonella sakaiensis PETase enzyme, researchers from the University of Portsmouth in the U.K. and the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) produced a three-dimensional structure of the PETase enzyme that they then tweaked to help them better understand how it worked. In doing so, they inadvertently engineered the enzyme, making it even more efficient at degrading PET. This research was led by John McGeehan, director of the University’s Centre for Enzyme Innovation, and Gregg Beckham, a senior research fellow and group leader at NREL. Then in 2020, McGeehan’s team reported that it had linked the PETase and MHETase enzymes together. This "super-enzyme" could eat PET about six times faster than the two enzymes working separately. Other research groups have produced modified enzymes of their own, as has Carbios, whose process was validated on the cover of the science journal Nature that same year. Carbios’s scientists studied various enzymes, including Ideonella sakaiensis PETase, but found that the leaf-branch compost cutinase (LCC) outperformed the other enzymes they tested. With the modifications Carbios scientists made, which allow the enzyme to work faster and operate at high temperatures, it remains the state of the art in the literature, Beckham said in an interview. "To my knowledge, this remains the best enzyme or at least among the best enzymes reported," he said. Still, Carbios faces a couple of significant challenges, namely energy intensity and cost. Carbios’ process calls for heat treatment and grinding at low temperatures of the waste PET — the polyester shirt or plastic bottle — before it’s placed in a bioreactor with the enzymes. And the processes of heating and grinding the PET are energy intensive, Beckham said. "There are innovations that are needed to reduce the energy intensity of enzymatic PET recycling," he said. "The dream is you can take textile waste clothing or plastic bottles and just drop it in the enzymatic reactor and go. I have no idea when or even if we're going to get there, but that would be super cool." Then there’s the cost, which Mouzin acknowledges is a challenge. "But we need to explore it with Carbios. We need to work on that if we want to preserve the planet," he said. Given the extreme interest in this concept from industry, enzymatic recycling has the potential to scale relatively quickly, said Beckham, who is also the CEO of the BOTTLE Consortium, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)-funded research initiative that launched in 2020 to help drive commercialization of various new technologies (including but not limited to enzymatic recycling) to address the plastic waste problem. BOTTLE, which stands for "Bio-Optimized Technologies to keep Thermoplastics out of Landfills and the Environment," is made up of five DOE national laboratories and five universities, four in the U.S. and McGeehan’s team in the U.K. The consortium is working with industry partners, including Amazon, Patagonia, the Ocean Foundation, Kraft and Heinz, in its efforts to accelerate such technologies.     The University of Portsmouth has also set up Revolution Plastics, which aims to forge links between academics and industry and has a joint Ph.D. project with Coca-Cola. In terms of the commercialization of enzymatic recycling of plastic, Carbios is the furthest along. The startup has been making progress for several years, largely through partnerships with larger companies. In 2017, Carbios and L’Oréal (French) co-founded a consortium to help industrialize its bio-recycling process for plastic packaging, which led to the creation of food-grade, proof-of-concept bottles with consortium partners PepsiCo, Nestlé Waters and Suntory Beverage and Food. Then in September 2021, Carbios opened a demonstration plant in Clermont-Ferrand, France, where it’s been testing its system for plastic bio-recycling. This led to the partnership with Indorama Ventures, one of the largest PET manufacturers with 22 percent of the market, to build and operate a commercial-scale plant. The roughly $206 million facility will have a processing capacity estimated at 50,000 tons of PET waste per year, or the equivalent of 2 billion bottles. Carbios also expects the plant to create roughly 150 direct and indirect full-time jobs. And there’s more to come, Ladent said. "Next year we plan to start licensing our technology, and I hope that soon we’ll have a license in the U.S.," he said. "We would like to start production in the U.S. in 2026 or around that time frame." Adblock test (Why?)

We all know the voluntary carbon market is poised to explode, or is exploding already, depending on who you ask. The value of all those carbon credits hit $1 billion for the first time in 2021, and 2022 doesn’t show any sign of abating. Increased corporate commitments to reduce emissions and net-zero pledges have spurred the growth in demand. A new report from BloombergNEF, "Voluntary Carbon Offset Demand Demystified," dives deep into publicly available 2021 data from the carbon registry Verra to explore the trends underlying the demand for credits. (Verra makes up 80 percent of the voluntary carbon offset supply in the market, about 129.7 million offsets.) The BNEF report looks at 80.1 million retired offsets, or 50 percent of the market in 2021 that had buyers. It analyzes who was buying, how much, what region, the types and ages of the credits — and makes predictions for the future of the market. A lot of the report backs up previous findings from other investigations into the market, but here are four new noteworthy insights.  1. We don’t know the buyers  According to the BNEF report, over 28,000 offset purchases were recorded in 2021. Only 6,200 of those transactions (representing the 80.1 million offsets investigated by the report) disclosed who the specific buyer was. That’s less than a quarter of the activity, and even less when you consider that many of the listed buyers were only identified with code names.  Interestingly, transactions for which the buyer’s information wasn’t disclosed weren’t, on average, of any significantly lower quality than transactions where the buyers’ identity was listed, according to the BNEF analysis. For example, the buyer’s identity was disclosed for about 42 percent of the projects offering co-benefits such as improvements to biodiversity, economic benefits for local communities, and so forth. That was roughly the same percentage as the co-benefits projects that didn’t specifically identify the buyer. Transactions involving older offsets, usually considered to be of lower quality when it comes to criteria such as permanence or additionality, had a 50/50 chance of disclosing a buyer. Buyers need to start shifting their focus from avoided credits to removal offsets. What’s the rationale for secrecy? Disclosing sustainability goals and progress sometimes seems like a lose-lose situation for corporations — if they talk about what they are doing, they get hammered for not doing more, and if they don’t talk about their actions, they get hammered for the appearance of not doing anything. Because offsets have been a criticized form of environmental action, that could be one reason some companies are choosing to stay quiet.   2. Consumer pressure is driving the market  The BNEF report notes that two-thirds of disclosed buyers from 2021 were business-to-consumer (B2C) companies, and mosty of the top offset buyers were consumer-facing brands with household names — Delta Airlines, Shell, Volkswagen and Audi all crack the top 10. An estimated 64 percent of offsets retired in 2021 came from B2C companies, with the rest going to B2B companies. Many airlines, for example, allow consumers to buy carbon offsets directly with their ticket to offset the carbon emissions from their travel. The BNEF report concludes because most disclosed purchases last year came from consumer-facing brands, much of the pressure to buy offsets stems from a desire to appease consumer preferences as opposed to the operational pressure of meeting a climate commitment.  Another proof point for this argument is that cryptocurrency businesses, fiercely criticized over the last year due to their carbon-intensive processes, were the biggest buyers for offsets in 2021. Some crypto businesses use offsets as part of their business model. For example, according to the BNEF report, Toucan Protocol was by and away the top buyer with 16.6 million offsets in 2021. Toucan Protocol buys low-quality offsets to turn them into tokens to be traded over its “carbon bridge” blockchain ledger. In May, Verra announced it won’t allow carbon offset purchases from its registry to be tokenized by the crypto sector, in an effort to avoid double counting. But it is opening a public consultation period to better evaluate how it can work with third-party crypto companies focusing on anti-fraud measure.  3. Corporations are relying on vintage offsets  Vintage offsets, or credits from projects that happened years ago, are popular with corporations, according to the BNEF analysis. The report found that over half of all offsets retired in 2021 were produced before 2015, and the most common ones came from 2014. Many companies, including Delta, achieved their carbon neutrality claims by buying these types of offsets. But Delta was also the only company in the top 10 buyers to purchase offsets produced in 2021. Overall, less than half a percent of the offsets retired in 2021 were produced in the same year. Vintage credits are usually cheaper. They are also usually lower quality, meaning they don’t carry co-benefits and the emissions reduction claims don’t carry as much weight. Some represent emissions reductions that have already taken place but just haven’t been financially rewarded — which runs counter to the promise that credits are funding new projects to combat climate change. The BNEF report also conjectures that vintage offsets are credits that had a hard time finding a buyer because of their worsening quality. Carbon registries and efforts such as the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative are calling for better disclosures and regulations around the sale of vintage offsets.  4. Companies are behind on removal offsets Two types of offsets made up most of the market in 2021, according to the BNEF report — avoided deforestation (47.6 percent of retirements) and energy generation (43 percent of retirements). Both of these credit categories fall under the avoid emissions bucket, meaning that these projects did not remove carbon from the atmosphere but instead prevented the possibility of new carbon being released. Avoided deforestation credits have been criticized for protecting forests that were never really in any danger of being cut down. The BNEF report also states that energy generation credits don’t pass the additionality test, in part because technology costs have come down and the projects no longer need financial support from the crediting market. Even though geothermal, solar and hydro energy generation credits were supposed to be largely discontinued by Verra starting in January 2020, they still make up a large portion of the credits retired each year, which will need to change. According to the BNEF report, buyers need to start shifting their focus from avoided credits to removal offsets related to projects such as direct air capture and reforestation to make a real impact on the climate crisis. But these sorts of offsets are much more expensive.  Adblock test (Why?)

In August 2021, the Port of Long Beach made history after it completed a major project to electrify a container terminal at Middle Harbor in California — the Long Beach Container Terminal. For perspective, the Port of Long Beach is the second-busiest container port in the United States, and this multiyear approach to redevelop and decarbonize the port's operations sent shockwaves across the industry, as the project lasted a decade.As ongoing supply chain troubles continue, brought about by what seems to be one too many "once-in-a-generation" moments — COVID-19 and the ongoing war in Ukraine, to name a couple — I thought it would be interesting to see how this once deemed "greenest terminal on the planet" was faring during these historic times. Was its focus on sustainability putting it at a disadvantage compared to other terminals?  Long Beach Container Terminal is roughly 300 acres in size and is capable of handling 3.3 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) — the standard container measurement — per year. The redesign project split over several phases, with the Terminal’s first redesign phase ending in 2016. As the Terminal opened up the finished portion, crews continued working on phases two and three, finishing in August 2021.  The rest of the country is operating on a model that is 50 years old. To understand more about the Terminal’s operations, I sat down with Anthony Otto, chief executive officer. "Where we are now, we’re as close to zero emissions as possible and we are working towards true net-zero emissions as quickly as we can, and can honestly state and back up that we are the cleanest container terminal in the world at the moment," Otto said. "The rest of the country is operating on a model that is 50 years old."  So what’s unique and exciting about Long Beach Container Terminal that makes it more efficient, more sustainable and ensures it stands out above the rest? This list is not exhaustive, but captures some reasons that stood out to me: The Terminal has about 100 all-electric automated rail-mounted cranes and 72 electric automatic stacking cranes.  All-electric, zero-emission, battery-powered autonomous vehicles, with battery swapping technology, move containers throughout the facility.  All the buildings are LEED Gold certified.  All the ships plug into shore power instead of using onboard diesel engines. The Terminal is working with the local utility provider, Southern California Edison, to show support for decarbonizing the grid by 2045 all while being heavily invested in California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard.  The Terminal purchases renewable energy credits for its electricity usage.  Everything runs off a series of software that improves efficiency and "allows for better thought process, handoffs and equipment management all while diminishing safety issues and redundancies that exist in the old manual model for running a terminal," Otto said.  Where we are now, we’re as close to zero emissions as possible and we are working towards true net-zero emissions as quickly as we can, and can honestly state and back up that we are the cleanest container terminal in the world at the moment. While the majority of the Terminal is electric, roughly a small portion of forklifts and 60-yard tractors remain, attributing to 92 percent of the on-ground diesel-based emissions. The Terminal is planning on turning those over to zero-emission before 2030 by leveraging funds from the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Otto’s comments comparing "the old model" compared with this autonomous and electric one stood out to me. "The traditional model is a longshoreman driving diesel-powered trucks, diesel-powered cranes and in a fully manual environment." This manual process "mixes with over-the-road trucks that are trying to be processed in and out of the facility through the gate, along with on-dock rail, all mixing with diesel-powered equipment … We have designed this facility to be 180 degrees different."   This 180-degree turn to a more sustainable and efficient operation has allowed the Long Beach Container Terminal to weather ongoing supply chain issues and actually thrive. "If there was ever a time in which this technology and design would function right, it is now. By any measurement, we have outperformed any other terminal in this country, whether vessel productivity, how quick we can move the ships, how quick we can move on dock rail freight through our facility onto a rail car to its final destination or in and out of our gate with road truckers," Otto said. "The traditional model generally supports about 5,000-6,000 TEUs per acre per year, whereas our model does more than twice that — roughly 13,000-14,000 TEUs per acre per year." [Want more great analysis of electric and sustainable transport? Sign up for Transport Weekly, our free email newsletter.] Adblock test (Why?)

Date/Time: August 8, 2022 (1-2PM ET / 10-11AM PT)Climate change is simultaneously an existential threat and an unprecedented opportunity to create a more ecologically regenerative, socially just world. Can technology solve some of humanity’s greatest challenges by averting the former and unlocking the latter? What else, beyond technology, is most needed now? Climate tech solutions enabling the transformation of energy, transportation, food and carbon removal markets are already demonstrating enormous potential to confront the climate crisis and improve peoples’ lives. But between the real-world impacts of climate change making these solutions more urgent and the headwinds of political pushback and an economic downturn, how are these technologies likely to fare in fulfilling that promise? Join the GreenBiz analysts covering four of the most dynamic climate tech markets to share what they’re tracking and projecting. Among the things we’ll explore: The state of play and market trends in clean energy, sustainable transportation, carbon removal and regenerative food systems The next generation of technologies on the precipice of becoming mainstream, including those not yet ready for scale but with disruptive potential to accelerate climate progress How these market trends are likely to evolve during an economic downturn and political pushback Opportunities for your company or industry to get involved in climate tech If you aren’t able to tune in live, you can register to access the archived webcast footage and resources after the webcast. Adblock test (Why?)

Reprinted from GreenBuzz, a free weekly newsletter. Subscribe here.I’ve purposefully avoided writing about "purpose." Frankly, I’ve been on the fence about the word and all the meanings ascribed to it. It feels like yet another meme that companies can embrace and exploit without actually changing much. But the subject keeps coming up, so here goes. Not that long ago, "purpose" was just another word: "the reason why something is done or used; the aim or intention of something," according to the Britannica Dictionary. While there’s no standard definition for its use in business, it seems to have taken on outsized importance in today’s world. Having a business purpose is fundamental and expected, at least in some circles. But somewhere along the line, "purpose" became an all-purpose word, especially in the fields of sustainability and corporate responsibility. And, like some other words — see: greenwashing — it can mean just about anything, from the profound to the preposterous. Moreover, it is often used interchangeably with "mission," which is a different thing. "Purpose-driven" is now used so frequently to self-describe companies that it has become a vacuous phrase. So, what’s the purpose of purpose? Is it primarily a marketing tactic? When is a purpose statement purposeful, and when is it just another well-intentioned but ultimately empty slogan? How can companies that promote their purpose do so authentically? 'Purpose-driven' is now used so frequently to self-describe companies that it has become a vacuous phrase. I’m not going to attempt to fully answer all these questions in the next 800 or so words — there are more books, blogs and podcasts on the subject, not to mention conference sessions and speeches, than I care to count. And there is similarly no shortage of articles on purpose-washing, a decidedly awkward neologism applied to companies and campaigns deemed to be inauthentic. Much like its etymological parent, greenwashing, the term is being used, overused and abused by critics to describe nearly any lofty statement a company makes that feels not quite spot-on to someone with a blog or Twitter following. Google — the algorithmic search engine, not necessarily the company — doesn’t help. If you type in a company name followed by "purpose" — for example, General Motors purpose or Fedex purpose — you’ll often get those companies’ mission statements or corporate goals, not necessarily a statement of purpose. (Indeed, searching for Google purpose statement brings the company’s mission statement to the top of the first page.) But mission and purpose are different, albeit complementary, things. The former states "What we do" while the latter articulates "Why we do it." Together, they should answer the fundamental question, "Why do we exist?" Easy target That seems relatively straightforward, but of course it’s not. As with other trendy terms — "net zero" and "just transition" come to mind — there’s growing pushback from investors, the media and the political right. The Wall Street Journal, with its characteristic anti-woke snark, recently asked, "Does Your Mayo Need a Mission Statement?" (It, too, conflated purpose and mission.) The article focused on Unilever’s goal that each of its 400 brands has a social or environmental purpose, and the criticism that policy has been receiving: "Some analysts, investors and former executives say that rather than talking about purpose, Unilever should put greater emphasis on shifting its portfolio toward faster-growing categories and on developing new products." One noteworthy example: "A company which feels it has to define the purpose of Hellmann’s mayonnaise has in our view clearly lost the plot," wrote one of Unilever’s largest shareholders in a letter to investors late last year. "Unilever seems to be laboring under the weight of a management which is obsessed with publicly displaying sustainability credentials at the expense of focusing on the fundamentals of the business." Unilever would likely counter that its purpose statement IS fundamental to its business. “Our purpose is to make sustainable living commonplace,” it states. That comports with BlackRock Chair Larry Fink’s assertion that purpose is what a company "does every day to create value for its stakeholders. It’s not the sole pursuit of profits but the animating force for achieving them." That’s not good enough for some large investors, who don’t seem to see purpose and profits connected. And with the drop in Unilever’s stock and profitability, "purpose" became an easy target. Which begs the question: Is a company’s purpose legit only when it is profitable? Is purpose a luxury affordable only to the financially successful? Unilever’s stock last peaked in the third quarter of 2019. Was its purpose more valid then than now? Some of the pushback is part of an old trope — about purpose, corporate social responsibility, sustainability and other things: They are distractions from the business of productivity and profits. It dates at least to economist Milton Friedman’s assertion in 1970 that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profit. More than 50 years later, that may seem a troglodyte’s view in a rapidly changing world, but that perspective is still rampant — perhaps more than ever in an era when the term "woke capitalism" has become weaponized by the political right and its media allies. But others see purpose as a key to success. McKinsey, for example, describes the integration of creativity, analytics and purpose as the "growth triple play." So, how should a company ensure its purpose statement serves a purpose? A few thoughts: It begins internally. Purpose needs to be embedded in corporate culture before it is communicated to the outside world. Employees at all levels need to understand it, even if they don’t fully appreciate its value. Along those lines, there needs to be high-level buy-in on what a purpose statement is, and isn’t, and how it should be used, and shouldn’t. For example, if it is seen primarily as a marketing vehicle, the odds are that the marketing team will inevitably overuse it, perhaps enthusiastically but naïvely. Each key team — human resources, operations, investor relations, public relations, community relations and all the rest — may need guardrails to ensure the term’s effective and proper use. Purpose is most effective when it becomes a management strategy linked to tangible goals. That often requires a change-management exercise to transform how the business operates and how employees are incentivized and rewarded. Finally, a company’s purpose statement should mesh nicely with its sustainability goals. That includes ensuring that external stakeholders — NGOs, customers, investors, suppliers and the public — view sustainability nested within a company’s purpose and not something separate. None of this will shield you from the critics and haters, but it could provide a bulwark against those seeking an easy target. With today’s emphasis on "authenticity" — yet another vague and overused term — it can take extra effort to ensure that you’re walking your talk. I’ll give the last word to David Packard, the legendary tech pioneer who co-founded Hewlett-Packard. In a 1960 talk to his company’s managers, he offered these thoughts on "purpose," which, more than six decades later, still ring true. Purpose (which should last at least 100 years) should not be confused with specific goals or business strategies (which should change many times in 100 years). Whereas you might achieve a goal or complete a strategy, you cannot fulfill a purpose; it's like a guiding star on the horizon — forever pursued but never reached. Yet although purpose itself does not change, it does inspire change. The very fact that purpose can never be fully realized means that an organization can never stop stimulating change and progress. Purpose can be both ephemeral and elusive, but never-changing. That’s tricky, so let’s be careful out there. On purpose. Thanks for reading. You can find my past articles here. Also, I invite you to follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn, subscribe to my Monday morning newsletter, GreenBuzz, from which this was reprinted, and listen to GreenBiz 350, my weekly podcast, co-hosted with Heather Clancy. Adblock test (Why?)

This week's run time is 44:51.WEEK IN REVIEW (3:30) FEATURES A sweltering European summer (21:05) James Murray, editor-in-chief of BusinessGreen, chats about record-breaking heat waves in the U.K. and Europe are challenging infrastructure and economies, and reshaping the dialogue about climate risk.  Cognizant CSO reflects on climate change and employee well-being (30:20) Sophia Mendelsohn, chief sustainability officer and global head of ESG at tech services firm Cognizant, addresses the company's broad ESG strategy and why employee well-being needs to be considered in the context of climate change.  *Music in this episode: Lee Rosevere: "Keeping Stuff Together," "Not My Problem," "Snakes," "Southside." STAY CONNECTED To make sure you don't miss the newest episode of GreenBiz 350, subscribe on iTunes or Spotify. Have a question or suggestion for a future segment? E-mail us at [email protected]. Adblock test (Why?)

[unable to retrieve full-text content]This video is sponsored by Black & Veatch. Dean Siegrist discusses Black & Veatch's clean transportation initiatives and the opportunities and challenges facing the industry.