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Canadian internet authority sets up sustainable plan

3 years ago

Canadian company, CIRA, announced an environmental sustainability strategy aimed at reducing its operational impact and promoting a greener internet in Canada. According to a report, internet usage creates more greenhouse gas emissions than the aviation industry.

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The uses of 5G can be leveraged to improve businesses’ bottom lines as well as their ecological footprint, according to Qualcomm. Features include “Smart living” technology, which reduces the need to travel by allowing more to be done at home.

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Climate scientists have been warning about the wildfires and hurricanes that are overwhelming communities. Today there are also risks lurking within government bonds, the biggest part of the global debt market. Climate risks could cause central bank assets to collapse.

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According to CatIQ, storms across Alberta and Saskatchewan caused a total of $120 million in insured damage. Winds, hail and rain on July 22 caused $56 million in damage, while storms on August 31 brought flash flooding and hail that caused $64 million in damage.

Canada Green Building Council

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The City of Toronto has received an application from Gairloch Developments for a mixed-use, mostly residential building on a site located in the Junction Triangle neighbourhood. The proposal includes 30 new residential units in a single mid-rise building spanning 6 floors.

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When Bruce Redman Becker renovated Marcel Breuer’s Armstrong Rubber company building, he treated the planet as his client. The hotel conversion is pursuing multiple certifications: LEED Platinum, Net-Zero, Energy Star, and EnerPhit, the renovation standard for Passivhaus.

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Cities have a new platform to help them adjust to growing urbanization and find ways to tackle the increasing need to reduce carbon and add energy efficiency in the World Economic Forum’s newly released Toolbox of Solutions.

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From more cost-effective designs to affordable workspace management, Sidewalk Labs is building a suite of tools to make developers’ lives easier – and greener. Sidewalk Labs is the urban innovation arm of Google’s parent company Alphabet.

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Sun Life Financial Inc. has appointed Alanna Boyd as Senior Vice-President and Chief Sustainability Officer. This newly created role, focusing solely on sustainability, is a first for Sun Life. Boyd will build on Sun Life’s long-term environmental and social commitments.

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When TerraCycle launched Loop — its e-commerce service featuring goods packaged in reusable containers — two years ago during the World Economic Forum in Davos, the plan was always to eventually include physical retail locations in the mix.

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Northstar Clean Technologies is a $45 million clean technology company focused on the recovery and repurposing of single-use asphalt shingles. Northstar recently raised $12.24 million and subsequently listed on the TSX Venture Exchange.

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Google is joining the Travalyst coalition — and has put in place a new team of engineers, designers and researchers focusing only on travel sustainability — to create tools that help make it easier for people to find sustainable options while traveling.

Procore

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NEO welcomes Mackenzie Investments back to the NEO Exchange with the launch of the Mackenzie Global Sustainable Bond ETF, an actively managed sustainable ETF. The bond seeks to align with the investing values of socially responsible investors.

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OPINION: Canadian businesses are not opposed to setting up environmental programs while seeking financial returns. In fact, most have implemented some sustainability activities or plan to. Where they lag is in adopting measurement and disclosure practices crucial for raising capital.

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Companies with strong board networks, especially companies with experienced board members, have better environmental, social and governance (ESG) policy outcomes than those with weak board networks, a study from S&P Global Market Intelligence’s Quantamental Research found.

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Managing and tracking environmental, social and governance (ESG) objectives are an increasing focus across industry and supply chains as businesses weigh growing demand to disclose results and improve on the impact of those initiatives.

Energy Profiles

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While the last decade has proven to be a reckoning of sorts for corporate attitudes toward environmental, social and governance (ESG) imperatives, employee health and wellness has been chronically overlooked as a key ESG concern.

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The sustainable investing space has been critiqued these past months and has had its first major investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Those on the green finance frontlines say the critiques fall between merited and misguided.

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More than 600 companies from the S&P 1200 index now use the SASB standards in their external communications to investors. The SASB standards have the greatest traction in North America, based on a regional breakdown of adoption rates in the S&P Global 1200.

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A Carbon Tracker report indicates the world’s most polluting firms fail to embed climate issues into their financial reporting. The study showed 70 per cent of the 107 carbon-intensive companies included worldwide could not prove they considered climate impacts in their accounting.

Industry Events