The growing success of the circular economy, and the real benefits the approach is delivering to the UK economy has been highlighted with the publication of Veolia’s latest Sustainability Report.
Source: ciwm-journal.co.uk
A decades-old technology gets an upgrade, and lots of buzz.
To address this issue, White recommended that Baue & McElroy gather a collective voice to support more robust enactment of Sustainability Context. So Baue & McElroy pulled together about 150 global experts to join the Susty Context Group, in order to conduct ad hoc, opt-in advocacy to advance Sustainability Context. In its first year, the Group submitted a raft of Public Comments to: Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Universal Standard Public Comment by r3.0, for signatures of SCG Members International Integrated Report Council (IIRC) Public Comment Letter 2020 on its International Framework (Submitted 19 August 2020 with 26 signatories); Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) on G4, the fourth generation of Sustainability Reporting Guidelines (Submitted 24 September 2012 with 66 signatories), and its GHG Emissions Guidance (Submitted 12 November 2012 with 27 signatories); International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) on its International Framework (Submitted 8 July 2013 with 63 signatories); Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SAAB) on its Conceptual Framework (Submitted 26 July 2013 with 37 signatories); Global Initiative for Sustainability Ratings (GISR) on its Principles (Submitted 2 April 2013 with 57 signatories). Of these four organizations, GISR was the only one that addressed the Susty Context Group’s input. (When GISR officially disbanded in 2019, it transferred custodianship of its Principles to r3.0.)Perhaps the most significant early influence the Susty Context Group exerted was in instigating what became the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi). At the 2012 Ceres Conference in Boston, SCG Co-Founder Baue pointed out to World Resources Institute (WRI) VP for Science & Research (and SCG member) Janet Ranganathan that the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the gold standard for corporate GHG emissions reporting, lacked an explicit tie-in to the climate science – in particular, the threshold of the carbon budget. Ranganathan invited Baue to meet with her and GHG Protocol Global Director…
Adidas and Allbirds announced a partnership that seeks to “open the doors to each other’s suite of sustainable innovations” in an attempt to create a shoe with the “lowest carbon footprint ever recorded.” This marks the first time in history that Adidas has collaborated with another footwear brand…
While economic growth is essential, it needs to deliver a positive social impact without leaving a negative footprint on the environment…
Over 200 of Ireland’s leading executives gathered at the Irish Management Institute (IMI) campus in Dublin yesterday as it hosted its annual National Management Conference.
The report states that of the 92.8 billion tonnes of exploited resources in 2015 (which equates to 34.4kg of raw materials per person per day, excluding water), only 8.4 billion tonnes was recycled. This equates to just 9.1% of all resources. The Dutch think-tank Circle Economy made the most of the annual meeting of world leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos to publish its first report on the circular economy, titled the Circularity Gap Report. If 21.5 billion tonnes of raw material are put into long-term stock, notably in construction, the remaining 51.9 billion tonnes are transformed into short-lived products and are assumed to be scattered in the environment. Of the 19.4 billion tonnes of materials turned into waste only 46% is recycled, according to the report, whose main objective is to develop a method and indicative references to measure the world economy’s progress towards a more circular economic model. Pressure on natural resources decreased by 28%. This waste completely goes against the environmental commitments discussed by governments and corporation at the COP21. The extraction of natural resources multiplied by twelve between 1900 and 2015 and should double once again by 2050. But a fully circular economy would decrease pressure on natural resources by 28%, the report calculated. Indeed, 67% of greenhouse gases are emitted by the exploitation of natural resources. A fully circular economy would enable us to cut these emissions by 72%, according to the report. A crucial contribution if you take into account the UN’s last Emissions Gap Report published in October, which served as a reference to the Circularity Gap Report. According to the UN report, even if all participating states of the Paris Agreement were to keep to their commitments, the global temperature would most likely rise by 3-3,2°C before 2100. Therefore the agreement’s goal of keeping the global temperature rising above 2°C would not be reached. On 22 January France’s Environment Minister Nicholas Hulot revealed that France had failed to meet its 2016 carbon emission targets by 3.6%.
Read the full article at: www.euractiv.com