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Sustainable Business in the News

There have been a slew of great articles covering sustainable business lately in the major media – in Barron’s, Fortune, Business Week, the Wall Street Journal and the NY Times. The article, “Good Vibes: Socially Responsible Investing is Gaining Fans and Clout,” appeared in Barron’s Mutual Fund Quarterly Report. Robin Blumenthal, the author, points to the silver lining of the “tidal wave of disclosures about wrongdoing in Corporate America’s executive suites and boardrooms.” It has put a surprising amount of cash and clout in the socially responsible investment (SRI) proponents’ corner, she says. In 2002, SRI mutual funds grew by $1.5 billion, while conventional U.S. equity funds shrunk by $10.5 billion. Mainstream asset managers including Vanguard, State Street and Gabelli now offer SRI investment options and 14 indexes world-wide track SRI investments. As SRI proponents have claimed for many years, their independent research and emphasis on company transparency helps them invest in companies with higher quality management and avoid some of the red-flag problems like asbestos liability, or Enron-style management. The title of the June 4 Fortune Small Business Special Report says it all: “The Green Business Revolution, The Next Big Thing.”The article confirms what we all know: the titans […]

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Citigroup Switches to 30% Post

Citigroup is switching from virgin to 30% postconsumer recycled copy paper, demonstrating that companies can make very real environmental improvements without adding costs. “We’re especially excited about this because it is a simple, yet effective change, says Tom Murray, Alliance for Environmental Innovation (part of Environmental Defense) the group that helped them make the switch.This change applies to Citibank, Global Corporate and Investment Bank, and Global Investment Management locations in the US. The recycled paper costs the same or less than the virgin paper the company had been using.As the world’s largest financial services firm, this small change will result in big benefits: savings of 6,700 tons of wood each year, enough to build 500 average single family homes in the U.S. It will also generate annual savings of 1,000 tons of solid waste, 19 million gallons of wastewater pollution, and 2,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions.Environmental Defense (ED) and Citigroup hope that other financial service firms will follow to reduce the environmental impacts of their paper use. Virgin copy paper is still the norm in the paper-heavy financial services industry. ED helped Citigroup procure recycled paper at a price equivalent to virgin paper and also helped them develop an […]

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Finding the Highest Uses for Urban Wood Waste

by J.K. FairchildEach day, thousands of trees from the urban forest that stand in the way of commercial development will be removed in the name of progress. Land will be cleared to make room for new buildings and parking lots, causing trees to be cut down. They will most likely be chopped into pieces and sent to the landfill as solid waste. According to Steve Bratkovich, Forest Products Specialist, US Forest Service, “The equivalent of 3.8 billion board feet from municipal trees alone, is annually either landfilled, burned, chipped or left to rot. This is roughly equivalent to 30% of the US annual hardwood lumber production.” To use some of this waste, Marcus von Skepsgardh founded PAL’s Tree Recycling Yard, a nonprofit urban tree recycling program in the San Francisco Bay area. Nationally, PAL’s offers a prototype of a workable urban tree recycling operation and locally, it provides a source of recycled and salvaged wood products for the public, while offering an alternative destination for urban trees and logs otherwise headed for landfill. The end results include substantial landfill diversion, valuable uses for urban waste wood, green building materials, reduced demand for virgin timber, conservation of natural resources, increased public […]

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