EDF Report Offers Sustainable Business Solutions
Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) recently released its report, "Innovations Review 2008: Making Green the New Business as Usual," which highlights the latest trends and best practices that demonstrate how environmental sustainability efforts are creating new markets, providing competitive advantages, and saving companies millions of dollars.
It features business solutions that are replicable and ready for implementation across business sectors and industries today.
"Environmental Defense Fund recognized that 'business as usual' is changing, so they created a new way to assess environmental innovation," said Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Chief executive officers of businesses featured in the report were on hand at EDF's San Francisco office to discuss the benefits of the innovations to their companies. Speakers included: Ken Grossman of Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.; Charles (Chuck) Kavitsky of Fireman's Fund Insurance Co.; Jonathan Schwartz of Sun Microsystems; Casey Sheahan of Patagonia, Inc. and Richard Swanson of SunPower Corp.
"This report is a roadmap to the future. Whether you work at a company or you're a shareholder and you've wanted to go green, this is the answer book," said EDF Executive Director David Yarnold. "The ideas in 'Innovations Review 2008' show how building environmental considerations into basic business processes can create competitive advantage. We hope these ideas inspire others to reduce waste or improve energy efficiency in their operations, services and supply chains – and strengthen the bottom line in the process."
EDF leadership and a distinguished advisory panel of experts from the fields of environmental science, law, finance and management consulting assessed hundreds of business products, practices and technologies, selecting more than 20 innovations from around the country that are highlighted in the report.
In keeping with EDF's market-based approach to solving major environmental problems, the "Innovations Review 2008" features game-changing best practices that can influence nearly every functional area within a company – including real estate, operations and manufacturing, fleet management, human resources, IT, and finance. Additional innovations highlight transformations under way in the shipping, food and agriculture, retail, and insurance sectors. All the innovations were selected based on environmental benefits, business benefits, replicability, and creativity.
Later in the year, EDF will launch Web-based tools to help companies reduce their environmental footprint and share information on environmental innovations.
For a downloadable version of the report, visit www.EDF.org/InnovationsReview.