The world that surrounds us – the signs that direct us, the smartphone pages we flick through, the way we use buildings, how we move around cities – is consciously or unconsciously designed. This design has a great impact on the use and sustainable credentials of our products and systems. In fact, 80% of the environmental impacts of the products we use daily are determined in the very early stag…
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 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…
In continuation of our consumer waste series, we examine the challenges faced in the area of plastic waste production and management. China has a big history with plastic. Throughout its rise to economic prominence, China has manufactured and exported a huge amount of plastic products to eventually become the world’s largest plastic producer in 2013. More recently, China's domestic consumption…
Over the last month, we brought in eight industry experts to five leading Chinese universities across Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang, where they shared their experiences and had discussions with over 160 students on a variety of sustainability-related topics. At East China Normal University thirty Bachelor, Master and Ph.D. students majoring in environmental engineering joined a discussion with s…
The impact from the sheer level of food waste in China is felt economically, environmentally, and politically: Economically, because farmers and consumers in effect pay for the waste as middlemen, processors, brands, and retailers are able to protect their margins more effectively. Environmentally, as, for every unit of food wasted, China’s precious water resources are wasted while at the…
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 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 c…
In this post, we continue our insight into the areas of the consumer waste framework in China. Last week we addressed the packaging industry and here we focus on the developing e-waste stream. By 2020, about 60% of the population in China will live in cities, with 300 million additional residents expected to move into China’s urban centers by 2030. With this population shift comes a dramatic c…
The world that surrounds us - the signs that direct us, the smartphone pages we flick through, the way we use buildings, how we move around cities - is consciously or unconsciously designed. How things are designed can have significant implications for sustainability...
This Wednesday, Richard Brubaker, Founder of Collective Responsibility, was invited to give a presentation to students at Hopkins-Nanjing Center (HNC), where he addressed the importance of sustainability, leadership, and innovation Kicking off his presentation with an explanation of how he understands sustainability, and why sustainability is never really about “saving the polar bears”, he spen…
Joined by 90 MBA students from Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of Northern Carolina who came to Shanghai this September for their summer immersion program, Richard Brubaker, Managing Director of Collective Responsibility and Visiting Professor of Sustainability, from the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), was invited to speak on sustainability in China and share his 15 y…
Sustainability in China has been a topic of many conversations for years now. It is a story that has been about smoggy skies and polluted skies, and as the challenges have grown, calls for a different model suitable to trends of urbanization have grown louder. It is a story that has gained more steam over the last several years as urban residents have become more numerous, grown wealthy, and a…
This month, Rich Brubaker hosted a sustainable business session at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai. Robert Duguay, VP & GM of Ecolab’s Water Division, David Nieh, Head of Lend Lease China, and Patrick Riley, China GM for Interface were the keynote speakers to the latest MBA class. Robert Duguay spoke about the importance of water as part of the food-water-energy n…
While messages of rising carbon emissions, global warming, and planetary alarm seem to be a regular occurrence at the global level, in many part of the world, the discussion is centered around a more tangible set of limits: the availability of water, air pollution, the pressure of growing populations in the urban environment, and finding the energy supplies needed to keep the global economy on a g…
While messages of rising carbon emissions, global warming, and planetary alarm seem to be a regular occurrence at the global level, in China the discussion is centered around a more tangible set of limits. For China, a country whose goal is to surpass the U.S. as the largest economy in the world by 2030, finding a balanced economic model that protects its environment and meets the increasing ne…
Over the last few months, one of the topics that I have been speaking on has been the need for firms to go beyond "Business as Usual," and last week Interface Flooring once again provided an excellent example for how a firm can do just that. Their announcement, Interface To Recycle Discarded Fishing Nets Into Carpet provides an overview of the program: Global carpet tile manufacturer Inter…
