Fast Fashion’s Sustainability Promises Undermined by Waste

Hennes & Mauritz AB or H&M, the Swedish fashion giant, is in big trouble. According to its quarterly report released on 27 March 2018, the world's second-largest clothing retailer is now sitting on $4.3 billion of unsold garments and accessories. To reduce the stockpile, the company is planning to cut prices, slow expansion in stores, and boost its e-commerce instead. It may even get unsol…

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Unspoken Crisis: Mounting Textile Waste in China

With an exploding urban population and a rising middle-class, China is rapidly increasing material use and consumption. Alongside its burgeoning economy is a proliferation of consumer waste. While most debates are around the wastage of food or packaging materials like plastic and paper, little attention is paid to the old clothes that people clean out of their wardrobes. Chinese dump roughly 26…

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China’s Electric Vehicle Boom Brings a Wave of Battery Waste

The amount of retired EV (electric vehicle) batteries will grow at an unprecedented rate in China. Recycling them will bring twofold benefits – reducing the consumption of raw materials for producing new batteries and minimizing potential environmental and health hazards caused by the mismanagement of battery waste. – Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (中国工业和信息化部专家) With hundred…

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China’s Environmental Tax: What Business Needs to Know

In China, while the pressure of economic growth on the environment has been well documented, over the last few years, there have been a number of pilot and campaigns (nationally and provincially) to identify and reduce pollution at the local level. Since Chinese Premier declared “a war on pollution” in 2014, China has set up plans and targets for cleaning up its air, water, and soil. Last year,…

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Impact of China’s Waste Ban is Global

As the world’s largest waste importer, China received more than 7.35 million tons of plastic scraps and 28.5 million tons of mixed paper in 2016, about half of the globe’s total. Coming mainly from Europe, Japan, and the United States through direct or indirect trade via Hong Kong, for decades the products were flushed in China, a country that was willing to take these products, process them, and…

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Event Report: Shanghai eWaste Factory Visit

Last week, to understand more about the eWaste issue in China, we have organized a tour to TES-AMM, a eWaste factory in Jiading, Shanghai. 15 guests with an interest in sustainability area from Shanghai and Suzhou joined us for the tour. Opened in 2005, TES- AMM (Total Environmental Solutions Asset Material Management ) has established an Integrated WEEE Management Solutions for recycling e – w…

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Mars Launches “Sustainable in a Generation” Plan

From supporting marriage equality to climate change, corporations are taking an increasingly prominent public stand on political and societal issues. While the risk of doing so is enough to keep some companies out of the ring, those who decide to take a stand are becoming stronger from the inside out. Decades of academic and market research show that consumer and employee trust, identification,…

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Pursuing a Corporate Sustainability Career, Echo Bao | Sustainability Ambassadors 009

In this episode of Sustainability Ambassadors, we speak with Echo Bao, Sustainability Manager at DSM, about how she developed her career in corporate sustainability. A career path that was unexpected at first, but through which her flexibility, curiosity, and ability to engage her business leaders, has allowed her to drive the value proposition of sustainability further in a company that already h…

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E-Waste: Does the Informal System Do It Better?

In our extensive research into the informal waste systems of Shanghai over the last year, we have recently begun to explore the inner workings of a specific branch of this system: the e-waste stream. As the fastest growing waste stream, with over 16Mt generated in Asia, e-waste is hazardous, complex and costly to treat. It is also incredibly valuable with a thriving economy set up around it. Du…

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Green Initiatives, Engagements, Actions, and Impact | Nitin Dani

In this episode of Sustainability Ambassadors, we speak with Nitin Dani, Founder of Green Initiatives to learn about the work that he has done in Shanghai to develop one of the strongest platforms for sustainability minded young professionals to come together, to be engaged, and be catalyzed to act. It is an interview that offers a lot of insights into how he, as a young entrepreneur, had taken…

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Passion, Hands On Experience, and Optimism | Yue Cao

In this episode of Sustainability Ambassadors, we speak with Yue Cao.   When building up networks of sustainability leaders and innovators, it often takes the progressive action of a single individual to catalyze real change. These individuals are Sustainability Ambassadors, and they have the capacity and the drive to inspire change at any level of an organization – from the new tal…

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Passion, A Business Mindset, and Mentors | Sharon Xiao, UPM

When building up networks of sustainability leaders and innovators, it often takes the progressive action of a single individual to catalyze real change. These individuals are Sustainability Ambassadors, and they have the capacity and the drive to inspire change at any level of an organization – from the new talent to the visionary executive. In this episode of Sustainability Ambassadors, we sp…

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Responsible Sourcing and Scaling Sustainability | Sandra Durrant, Target

In this episode of Sustainability Ambassadors, we speak with Sandra Durrant, Director of Responsible Sourcing at Target about her career, the issues she is most concerned with, and how she looks to leverage the power and scale of business to solve these problems. It is an interview that we know aspiring and experienced professionals alike will be inspired by, and for more stories like Sandra’s,…

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Closing the Loop on Waste Forum

Shanghai’s “Closing the Loop on Waste” professional forum on Wednesday night brought together 50 young professionals who were interest in learning about how business was closing the loop on waste. Opening the forum, Collective Responsibility’s Director of Corporate Advisory Charlie Mathews  spoke briefly about China’s virtually unparalleled rate of urbanization, and the mounting challenges he a…

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Qatar’s Food Security Crisis: Lessons for China

You might be forgiven for thinking that politics is politics and food and resource provision is left to business, but more and more so implications of politics on a country's ability to feed and power its population are increasing. The current scenario in the Gulf states is proof of this, on 5 June, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries severed ties with Qatar and moved to cut off land, sea and…

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