Categories: Knights' Hood
January 31 Roundup: UK is greener than you, Office Depot is greener than you, and Olympics will likely be greener than you, too
Green Biz
Want to know what the most untapped value at your place of work is. Look in a mirror. It's you. Employees are one of the most undervalued assets on the road to sustainability, if you can believe it. But by using employees creativity, ingenuity, and unique ideas, companies can earn $100 million dollars in value. Included here is a list of four companies that have done just that. Even better, the list includes just how the organization earned so much its workers.
Office Depot and Sustainability
Market Watch
Shopping for Sticky Notes, pens, or paperclips? You'll probably head to Office Depot. It's been around for a quarter of a century and is a go-to place for businesses. Today, Office Depot released its 2011 corporate citizenship report. Some of the highlights: Newsweek ranked the company the number one greenest large retailer in the United States. It also published its second diversity report, which features products offered by 30 vendors defined as certified minority, women, disabled, and veteran-owned businesses.
Guardian
The London Olympics are slated to be the greenest yet, giving a chance for the UK to highlight its sustainable innovations and industries: low carbon construction and land decontamination techniques deployed in building the Olympic park. Although this world-class event will be a green event, how can the UK maintain this attitude the rest of the time? Although it's already a global sustainability leader, the government and key players still need to do more. Included is a list of what more needs to be done, including factoring in "natural capital", facilitating a smart grid, and adding more sustainability classes to the university timetable.
Guardian
The Zero Draft document is the latest development to come out of the Rio+20 negotiations. One of the included points is the call for "a global policy framework requiring all listed and large private companies to consider sustainability issues and to integrate sustainability information within the reporting cycle." this is huge. Only a small fraction of multinationals currently post CSRs. A development like this has the potential to create transparency and social responsiblity on a scale never seen before.
Business Green
A recent report spells out the UK as a major site for sustainability initiatives in sectors including energy, environment, and technology. It predicts that spending on sustainability projects in these sectors will grow by an average of 16 percent per year between now and 2015. Here's the cool part: the spending won't be coming from just grassroots organizations and small businesses. The report says that the UK's top 420 firms (which make more than £750 million pounds, or $1.18 billion dollars) will rise 12 percent this year to hit £4.3 billion, or $6.76 billion dollars. The pinnacle of spending will be 2015, when the total sustainable market will be worth £6.8 billion.(!)