衣食住行 – New Innovation in China’s Basic Needs

Globally, China is often portrayed as the bad guy when it comes to environmental degradation and harm. While this is not without substance, and in many areas China is lacking far behind the world leaders, a growing public consciousness and the identification of opportunity is leading innovators to tackle the problems with business solutions. In this post, we outline areas of development and innova…

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The Elderly Challenge – China’s Graying Population

China faces an imminent and multifaceted challenge regarding its elderly population. It has the world’s largest aging population of 202 million people over the age of 60, a number that is expected to increase to 300 million by 2023 and 400 million by 2033. We can attribute China's aging dilemma to a myriad of factors, one of the most prominent being the 1978 One-Child Policy. While limiting each f…

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Weekly Round Up – Suing Governments, the Fart-Free Cow, and Germany Pays Consumers

With so much going on in the realm of sustainability, leadership, and innovation, and only a limited amount of bandwidth for professionals in this space, we have created this weekly news to highlight articles that we feel are (1) important, (2) relevant, and (3) interesting in the areas of business sustainability. If you have an article that you feel needs to be mentioned, please do so in the comm…

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Labor Displacement and Industry 4.0 in China

Talk of robots replacing labor is everywhere, and a quick search will bring up a host of articles proclaiming our “jobs are at risk” or “the robotic revolution” is upon us. Over the last couple of months we at Collective have been conducting research into the future of labor in China and understanding robotics and automation has been a key area of interest. Throughout this period we have found…

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Weekly Round-up: Superfoods, dams under scrutiny and some positive sustainability news

With so much going on in the realm of sustainability, leadership, and innovation, and only a limited amount of bandwidth for professionals in this space, we have created this weekly news to highlight articles that we feel are (1) important, (2) relevant, and (3) interesting in the areas of business sustainability. If you have an article that you feel needs to be mentioned, please do so in the comm…

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Weekly News Round Up: Nuclear Waste, More Coal Closures and Lake Urmia

With so much going on in the realm of sustainability, leadership, and innovation, and only a limited amount of bandwidth for professionals in this space, we have created this weekly news to highlight articles that we feel are (1) important, (2) relevant, and (3) interesting in the areas of business sustainability. If you have an article that you feel needs to be mentioned, please do so in the comm…

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Weekly News Round Up: Venezuela’s drought, inclusive cities and Chongqing’s environmental drive

With so much going on in the realm of sustainability, leadership, and innovation, and only a limited amount of bandwidth for professionals in this space, we have created this weekly news to highlight articles that we feel are (1) important, (2) relevant, and (3) interesting in the areas of business sustainability. If you have an article that you feel needs to be mentioned, please do so in the comm…

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Sustainable Tech: Food and Agriculture

Tech is becoming a part of all aspects of life and sustainability is no exception to this. In this piece, in the run-up to our Beyond Business As Usual Forum, we present the future of food in China and how tech can be leveraged to help provide for a growing, more expectant urban population. Over the past 30 years, China has experienced rapid levels of urbanization and increased individual a…

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US Exports Trillions of Showers to China

Water is our most important natural resource, it has no replacements or substitutes and all human activity in some way relies on it to function – from the basic biochemistry of the body to large-scale thermal electricity production. Once abundant in many areas, as the planet’s population has grown and poorly managed industrial processes have polluted water sources all over the world, scarci…

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5 Factors that Keep Manufacturing in China

With the rising labour costs that have occurred in China over the past decade and the introduction of the 2008 labour laws the climate for low skilled manufacturing is not what it once was. As a result there is much talk of new manufacturing frontiers and the potential for them to take away jobs and production from China. ASEAN, India and Africa are all areas that are being touted as new, affordab…

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News Roundup: water pollution, sustainability metrics, and Peabody’s bankruptcy

With so much going on in the realm of sustainability, leadership, and innovation, and only a limited amount of bandwidth for professionals in this space to keep up with the news, we have created this weekly post to news, articles, and publications that we feel are (1) important, (2) relevant, and (3) interesting in the areas of business sustainability. If you have an article that you feel needs to…

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News Roundup: New Frontiers of Sustainability, China’s Circular Economy and Rise of Wind and Solar

With so much going on in the realm of sustainability, leadership, and innovation, and only a limited amount of bandwidth for professionals in this space, we have created this weekly post to highlight news and articles that we feel are (1) important, (2) relevant, and (3) interesting in the areas of business sustainability. If you have an article that you feel needs to be mentioned, please do so in…

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News Roundup: Obama & Xi to Sign Climate Agreement, Board Engagement, and the Rules of Sustainability Collaborations

With so much going on in the realm of sustainability, leadership, and innovation, and only a limited amount of bandwidth for professionals in this space to keep up with the news, we have created this weekly post to news, articles, and publications that we feel are (1) important, (2) relevant, and (3) interesting in the areas of business sustainability. If you have an article that you feel needs to…

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Shanghai’s Migrants Want to Return Home

“Shanghai can’t give me the feeling of home. I don’t know if you have same experience. Despite the fact I am not particularly close to my family, I am still most comfortable when I am in my hometown and knowing that my family is somewhere I can reach. Every time when I am heading back home, by just looking at how the landscape is getting more and more familiar, my heart would feel warm”.…

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Sustainability and the Five Year Plan

Given the recent commitments to curb coal consumption, and the signature of carbon agreements in Paris, it should come as no surprise that the recently announced 5th-year plan would heavily emphasize sustainability and the continued need to address China’s mounting environmental and social challenges. Within the recent plan, which you can access here, there are a lot of measures for corpora…

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