Environmental sustainability is no longer the purview of boutique eco-brands. And it is no longer just about compliance with regulations or securing positive press coverage. It’s about driving cost savings through efficiencies, creating new markets and securing competitive advantage. Smart companies realize that what is good for the environment is also good for business. But after taking care of the basics—like switching to energy-saving lighting, buying recycled office supplies and printing double-sided—what is the next step?
With this new annual review, Environmental Defense Fund aims to showcase some of the most promising new trends and best practices. Our goal is to provide a variety of actionable ideas and some inspiration for more dramatic change. The new processes, products and technologies highlighted in this report were selected based on four key criteria: good for business, good for the environment, ready to be implemented and innovative. We did not include ideas that are still in the R&D stage or those that have already been widely implemented or documented. In some cases, we selected innovations that have already been fully tested and put into commercial use; in other cases, we chose to highlight promising early-stage ideas.
The categories included in this first report are areas in which Environmental Defense Fund has significant expertise (such as packaging, energy and transportation) or where there are substantial opportunities for innovation (such as IT and insurance). We anticipate covering different categories in future editions.
Within each category, we attempted to provide a range of ideas: from incremental changes to more radical, business-model innovations; and from those that offer quick implementation and a short payback period to longer-term, more involved “gamechangers.”
Click here to review the full report from the Environmental Defense Fund