Kuhn Associates Sustainability Advisors LLC
Sustainable Business News 
 
Volume 2013, Number 2                                                                                                 May 2013   
In This Issue
Ideas You Can Use NOW
Calendar of Events
About Us
We help companies throughout the product supply chain create sustainable businesses.

Our consulting services include creating enterprise-level sustainability visions, goals and strategies; re-engineering internal processes to reflect sustainable best practices; maximizing the sustainability of today's complex supply chains and assisting with communicating sustainability information in writing and in media.

Our training services include webinars and in-person seminars for large to small groups on topics ranging from GHG accounting to Mastering Supply Chain Sustainability and Social Responsibility. We can custom design training to suit your needs.

 

We work in a variety of industries. We are extremely sensitive to clients' budgets and their capacity for change.
 
Whether it's an environmental or social responsibility issue, our team of professionals is ready to help your business. Please contact us to learn how we can help you.
 
Call 212-343-1006 today.

Greetings!

In this newsletter edition, our Feature Article recaps the just-ended 2013 Ceres Conference, a high-energy meeting of a diverse group of stakeholders aiming to advance sustainable business practices.
      

In our Ideas You Can Use Now section, we provide some tips about capitalizing on the information we gleaned at Ceres.

   

Finally, in the Calendar section, we suggest some sustainability-related events in the coming month or two that you might want to investigate.

 

Happy reading! And starting next month, our newsletter will be coming out monthly ... watch for the next issue in early June! 

 

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Feature Article: Recap of the 2013 Ceres Conference

I'm always energized after attending a conference with the quality of the 2013 Ceres Conference, which just wrapped up in San Francisco. And the sincere, committed people from industry, NGOs, financial institutions, ratings groups and media made for many interesting on- and off-line discussions. There was a lot to take in that can't be covered here, but it's worth recapping some of the things that resonated with me:

 

  • The Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy (BICEP) session, in which Carl Pope (think Sierra Club) made a compelling argument for the corporate imperative to foster a low-carbon economy. During this session, Ceres announced that General Motors (a pretty mainstream manufacturer if there ever was one) announced that it had signed the BICEP declaration calling for the prompt adoption of a U.S. national climate change policy.
  • Dan Hesse, Sprint CEO, talking about how his company has faced the significant sustainability challenges in the ICT industry, partly because, as the child of Depression-era parents, he is hard wired to think about resource efficiency.
  • The great panel session on leveraging supplier environmental, social and governance (ESG) data to drive change. Case studies brought to us from Intel and the Sustainable Apparel Coalition highlight the value of value chain network- and industry-based approaches.  
  • The launch of the Global Initiative for Sustainability Ratings (GISR) program to establish principles-based standards for sustainability ratings --- valuable because of the proliferation of often-too-opaque ratings schemes that make it difficult for companies to have their sustainability stories portrayed accurately and for ratings users to understand the value of one rating compared to another.
  • The panel addressing the Western water crisis, one of many discussions about water. The Colorado River Basin represents the archetypal challenge in sustainable water management (think complexity).
  • The discussions about the need to align financial data with ESG data so that financial capital flows freely to entities that manage their environmental and social capital well and less freely to those that do not. Lots of talk about SASB, Bloomberg's ESG data availability, third-party analytics of sustainability data and integrated reporting.
  • Finally, the wrap-up session on Superstorm Sandy ... perhaps the Eastern U.S.'s most salient reminder that something about our climate has changed and that change represents a threat to our well-being unless we mitigate and adapt ... NOW. Really compelling clips from an upcoming documentary that brings it home.

 

I think that my overall Conference take-away can be summed up in three words: Alignment, Execution and Accountability. Companies that want to excel need to
  • (a) align their financial/business strategy with their sustainability strategy,  
  • (b) execute with aplomb and innovation, and  
  • (c) hold themselves and their value chain partners accountable for efforts, achievements and shortcomings.  

Get in touch if you'd like more details about what I heard and saw; I would be happy to share more insights. Call me at 212-343-1006 or email [email protected].

 

Ideas You Can Use Now!
Here are some ideas about how leverage my Ceres take-aways:
  • Sign onto the Ceres BICEP Climate Declaration, adding your company's name to the growing list of companies demanding action to address climate change at the federal level. Visit www.ceres.org/bicep.  
  • Address your company's water impact profile. Start by gathering data about waster consumption and discharges. Contact us about this complex and important topic because we can help.
  • Assemble a cross-functional team to catalog, review and analyze existing and emerging standards and ratings that might be relevant to your industry. There is a lot of action in this area and now is the time to get an understanding of what role standards and ratings play in your sector. Also, there's still the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of standards/ratings development if you act quickly. We are deeply involved in this area and can help you navigate this issue. Call us. 
If you have questions or comments on these or other "best practices" in sustainability, please contact us by calling 212-343-1006 or emailing us at [email protected].
Calendar of Events
 
Here are a couple of the many interesting sustainability events happening in the coming month that we think worthy of your attention:

June 3 - 6, San Diego, CA - Sustainable Brands 2013 comes to the Paradise Resort in San Diego to discuss what's happening to move the ball forward in sustainability in the consumer-facing space. Learn more or register to join the hundreds of other attendees by visiting  http://www.sustainablebrands.com/events/sb13.

July 8 - 11, San Diego, CA - Intersolar North American Conference brings more sustainability solutions to the Golden State. Join experts in the PV, energy storage and distribution industries to learn about solar technology, deployment and financing. Visit http://www.intersolar.us/en/intersolar.html to learn more and to register for this event.

Thanks for reading! Please contact us today to discuss anything you've read here, suggest a topic for a future Newsletter edition or learn how we can help you build a more sustainable business.

Call 212-343-1006 or email us at
[email protected] for more information.

Sincerely, 

Robert W. Kuhn, President
Kuhn Associates Sustainability Advisors LLC
www.kuhnassociatesllc.com
Copyright 2013  Kuhn Associates Sustainability Advisors LLC
Reproduction without prior permission prohibited.