Feds launch consultation for Sustainable Development Strategy

Feds launch consultation for Sustainable Development Strategy

Today the Honourable Catherine McKenna, Minister of Environment and Climate Change, released the draft 2016–2019 Federal Sustainable Development Strategy (FSDS) for a 120‑day period of public consultation. Which environmental sustainability targets the Government of Canada should aim for over the next three years, and how those targets can best be measured and reported.

Canada Newswire

Corporate sustainability is changing fast. Is your boss?

New survey reveals many businesses may struggle to retain crucial ISO14001 environmental management standard, unless board level executives start to engage with green issues  How involved is your company’s board in the organisation’s environmental management efforts? 

Business Green

Fairtrade first choice for growing numbers consumers

Double-digit growth in sales of Fairtrade wine, flowers and coffee reveals continued consumer enthusiasm for ethical products, despite market turbulence. In 2015 UK shoppers ate more Fairtrade bananas and drank more cups of Fairtrade coffee than in 2014.

Business Green – Green Lodging News

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4 tools to tell if your company is walking the walk on CSR

Talk is plentiful in the world of corporate sustainability — companies engaged in triple bottom line activity often go to great lengths to make sure everyone knows about what they are up to. Often, this communication comes in the form of press releases and corporate sustainability reports, which flood the web in a seemingly endless stream.

GreenBiz

How the World’s best companies demonstrate their sense of purpose

How do you communicate your company’s sense of purpose — what you stand for in simple terms — in a way that is authentic, transparent and honest?  Increasingly, the answer for many of the world’s biggest companies is to highlight their sustainability work.

Sustainable Brands

EDC boosts green bonds

Export Development Canada (EDC) has issued a new US$300 million, 1.25% fixed-rate green bond to support Canadian companies in the budding clean tech and renewable energy sectors that are deploying their technologies at home and abroad.

Plant – Globe-net.com

Why this could be an investment opportunity.

Toronto Star

New round of funding for Canadian cleantech

Continuing to support and! invest in Canada’s cleantech sector—and the companies that strive to improve the environmental and economic impacts of technology through innovation and entrepreneurship —Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) is once again offering funding for Canadian cleantech development and demonstration projects.

Globe-net.com

UK uses 33% less stuff than in 2001

IKEA made headlines when it openly mused about Western economies “reaching peak stuff”, but there is fresh evidence the insatiable appetite for more stuff might finally be leveling out.  New figures from the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggest that the amount of raw materials consumed by the UK economy fell from 15 tonne per person in 2001 to just over 10 tonnes in 2013.

TreeHugger

White House aims to put a value on ecosystem conservation

The White House has issued a directive (PDF) to point federal agencies toward building ecosystem-services valuation into their plans, investments and regulations. The directive, released late last year, will help agencies synthesize conservation’s ecosystem benefits with its value to society.  

Green Biz

The circular economy moves from theory to practice

Practically speaking, the goals of the circular economy are to shift the take-make-waste linear industrial system in big and meaningful ways to create closed loop systems. The result is a net positive or restorative impact measurable at the scale of an economy, creating shared value with environmental, economic and social benefits. 

Green Biz

What does gender have to do with sustainability?

Take your pick of terminology: balance; equality; empowerment; fairness.  The point is that gender matters now more than ever — not just for the sake of individual women, but for the prospects of the global economy, the environment and society at large.

GreenBiz

MBA students in Canada tackle sustainability to get a competitive edge

Sonja Hiemisch quit her job at Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt to travel halfway around the world and take her MBA at York University’s Schulich School of Business. Hiemisch, who wanted to get more out of her career, was drawn to York because it has one of the best MBA sustainability programs in the world.

Financial Post

University of Calgary launches sustainability strategy

The University of Calgary is taking a sustainability pledge.  After a two-year review on sustainability, the University of Calgary is moving forward with strategies that will see the institution advance both education and campus practices towards being more responsible.

MetroNews.ca

Al Gore ‘extremely optimistic’ climate crisis can be turned around

With the same humor and humanity he exuded in An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore spells out 15 ways that individuals can address climate change immediately, from buying a hybrid to inventing a new, hotter “brand name” for global warming.

Globe and Mal – Ted.com

Government policy

Canada, U.S. target methane in bid to curb climate change

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Barack Obama are expected to commit their two countries to slash methane emissions from the oil and gas industry by at least 40 per cent as part of a bilateral approach to curb climate change.

Globe and Mail

Ontario PC leader Brown announces revenue-neutral climate strategy

Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown has staked out new ground on climate change, announcing to delegates at his party’s weekend convention a climate-change strategy that includes carbon pricing but is revenue neutral.

Globe and Mail

Climate change politics blinds us to effects of dirty air

It is the greatest environmental hazard of the age. Nothing focuses our concern for the future more, divides rich and poor, exercises science, business, politicians, old and young. It is an existential threat, a generational battle. All political and financial resources must be concentrated on stopping climate change.

The Guardian

Financing sustainability

How to make a profit while making a difference

Can global capital markets become catalysts for social change? According to investment expert Audrey Choi, individuals own almost half of all global capital, giving them (us!) the power to make a difference by investing in companies that champion social values and sustainability. 

Ted.com

Apple issues green bonds in first sale

Apple has issued $1.5 billion in bonds dedicated to financing clean energy projects across its global business operations, the largest green bond to be issued by a U.S. corporation, the company’s head of environmental policy said Wednesday.

Reuters – Green Biz

Sustainability professionals

Is fear getting in the way of corporate climate action?

Last week, I attended the annual GreenBiz 16 conference and the Edison Electric Institute Strategic Issues Roundtable.  One conference was for sustainability professionals trying to help their companies and society avoid a 4-degree world, the other for utility strategy folks trying to maintain current standards (99.9 percent uptime; 4-6 percent profit to shareholders) in the face of a rapidly changing reality.

GreenBiz

Clean technology

Clean-tech alliance ask Trudeau change stimulus priorities

In a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the heads of 51 technology and investment firms have laid out recommendations they feel will give British Columbia’s emerging clean-tech industry a much-needed boost.

Globe and Mail

Managing waste

U.S. plastics industry pursues zero net waste

The Plastics Industry Trade Association Monday launched the Zero Net Waste program, a tool for members to use to evaluate waste reduction opportunities and maximize landfill diversion.  The ZNW program will provide plastics companies with a concrete set of resources they can use to pursue, and achieve, zero net waste in their facilities and offices.

ENS Newswire

Tossing out the trash — space station style

The International Space Station just got a whole lot tidier. A pair of NASA astronauts released a capsule, using the Canadarm2 robotic arm, loaded with 1.5 tons of trash Friday as the space station soared over Bolivia. The capsule should re-enter the atmosphere and burn up harmlessly over the Pacific on Saturday.

Toronto Star

Water management

Nestlé test of Elora well gains limited support from critics

A group of citizens is concerned by a Nestlé Waters Canada plan to pump 1.6 million litres of water daily out of a well in Elora.  And part of the problem is that there’s no thorough federal or provincial data about how much water there actually is in the region’s aquifer.

CBC

Wildlife and business

Mass extinction threatens the world’s pollinators — and its crops

Bees, butterflies, bats, and birds have three things in common: They all have names that start with ‘b’, they are all pollinators, and they are all in serious danger.  A United Nations-sponsored study released Friday reports that the world’s pollinators — and the crops that depend on them — are experiencing a trend of deep decline toward mass extinctions.

Grist.org

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