new research, which will be unveiled tomorrow by the mobile phone operator O2, found that corporate commitment to environmentalism had reached a tipping point because businesses were making money from making themselves green. Nearly 60 per cent of the 500 senior executives questioned said sustainability could increase market share and almost half felt it could boost profits by making their operations more efficient.
"In an experiment that would make Cass Sunstein proud, the PBS is working with designers at IDEO and researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to install a giant screen in the lobby of the San Francisco Federal Building displaying its real-time levels of energy use. The assumption is that if you give people the information, they’ll take steps to rein in their consumption. “We want to see if we can change the behavior of people,” Santella said. Down the road, he hopes to stick a widget on employees’ screens depicting their personal usage. “We want to bring this down to human scale.”
Our research into the forces that have shaped the competitive landscape in recent decades reveals that “business megatrends” have features and trajectories in common. Sustainability is an emerging megatrend, and thus its course is to some extent predictable. Understanding how firms won in prior megatrends can help executives craft the strategies and systems they’ll need to gain advantage in this one.
Approximately $32 million will go to cities, school districts, colleges and universities and other local and state government entities in the first round of grants. More project applications are currently undergoing federal National Environmental Policy Act review.
“Forty years ago, a small crew of filmmakers set out to document some of the more pressing issues involving wildlife in America. They made eight half-hour films around the country — it ended up being the first environmental TV series in the U.S.,” the Thirteen website maintains. “Shot in 1969, the issues weren’t new, but hadn’t been handled much yet on television — the medium had yet to embrace the environmental movement.”
"Dry" cleaning is set to become a domestic activity with a washing machine that uses 90% less water than a normal laundry cycle and could be available by the end of 2011. The device, developed by Leeds-based Xeros Ltd, replaces water with tiny plastic beads that suck up stains and its producers claim it will shift stubborn pounds from household energy bills as well." [Alok Jha, guardian]
Mr. Fleming, who says he became committed to Ms. Cobb “before her high-priestess phase,” describes their conflicts as good-natured — mostly.
But he refuses to go out to eat sushi with her anymore, he said, because he cannot stand to hear her quiz the waiters.
“None of it is sustainable or local,” he said, “and I am not eating cod or rockfish.”
Founder @ Dearing Group LLC.
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