- Blake had knife in car when Kenosha cop shot him: Wisconsin DOJ Fox News
- Illinois teen arrested in fatal shooting at Kenosha protest, police say CNN
- Milwaukee Bucks reaction to Jacob Blake shooting is no surprise Chicago Tribune
- 2 shot dead and 1 injured in Kenosha during protests; police looking for man armed with a long gun Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
- Donna Brazile: After Jacob Blake and Kenosha, what good is The Talk? Do words even matter? USA TODAY
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Ensuring Performance and Safety in Recycled Plastics
As companies and consumer brands incorporate recycled plastic content into their products and as part of their circularity goals, product integrity becomes an important consideration. There are many ways to evaluate the performance and safety of recycled materials. This one-hour webcast will show you tools to evaluate these aspects and how brands like HP are increasing recycled content in their products and assessing performance and sustainability.
Topic include:
- How regulations and brands are driving the use of recycled plastics
- The safety and performance considerations of recycled plastics
- How companies can develop mitigation strategies and reduce risk with testing and certification
- How to ensure that claims of recycled content are valid and to avoid greenwashing
Moderator:
- John Davies, Vice President & Senior Analyst, GreenBiz Group
Speakers:
- Fred Arazan, Innovation & Partnerships Manager, UL
- Bill Hoffman, Corporate Fellow & Research Scientist, Environment & Sustainability Division, UL
- Ellen Jackowski, Chief Sustainability & Social Impact Officer, HP Inc.
If you can’t tune in live, please register and we will email you a link to access the archived webcast footage and resources, available to you on-demand after the webcast.
taylor flores
Wed, 08/26/2020 – 10:17
gbz_webcast_date
Tue, 09/22/2020 – 10:00
– Tue, 09/22/2020 – 11:00
– Tue, 09/22/2020 – 11:00
- Critics raise questions about Hatch Act violations at Republican National Convention CBS News
- Melania Trump closes second night of RNC marked by apparent violations of Hatch Act – as it happened The Guardian
- White House Dismisses Questions of Whether Convention Events Broke Anti-Corruption Law The New York Times
- Naturalization ceremony provides a moment of cognitive dissonance with Trump’s immigration stance. The New York Times
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Where there’s hope for speeding up business action on plastics
Elsa Wenzel
Wed, 08/26/2020 – 02:01
In 10 short years, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF) arguably has done more than any other group to define and advance the circular economy.
Its landmark report, “The New Plastics Economy,” sounded the alarm in 2016 that if “business as usual” continues, by 2025 the ocean may hold more plastic than fish by weight. Its commitment by the same name has attracted many of the planet’s biggest brand names, among 450-plus signatories, to dramatically slash their use or production of plastic by 2025. PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Unilever and even Tupperware have signed on with governments and NGOs to do away with “unnecessary” plastics and innovate so that other plastics will be reused, recycled or composted; and kept out of natural systems.
Only five years ago, few corporate leaders had plastic pollution on their official radar.
Yet Dame Ellen MacArthur herself is floored by the rapid pace of change in business that has been forced by the COVID-19 pandemic. In food, for instance, business models and distribution methods were reshaped in a matter of weeks, as supply chains flexed to keep groceries in stock and farmers struggled to offload overripe crops. Digital networks and online platforms scaled to meet spiking demand during social distancing. In all this, she finds hope for systemic change toward a circular economy.
<figure data-align="center" data-caption="Much of industry continues to embrace “throwaway living,” celebrated in this Life Magazine photograph in 1955.“>
Much of industry continues to embrace “throwaway living,” which was celebrated in this Life Magazine photograph in 1955.
“People have gotten used to having to jump quickly to change the system,” EMF Chair MacArthur said Tuesday at the GreenBiz Circularity 20 virtual event. “That hopefully will set a precedent for how we can do things in the future and how we can shift quickly in a light-footed way.”
Time isn’t on the side of those who hope to prevent the projection by the Pew Charitable Trusts that plastic waste flows into the oceans will double in the next 20 years. Already, if all the world’s plastic waste could be shaped into a plastic shopping bag, all of Earth would fit inside of it, noted Morgan Stanley CMO and CSO Audrey Choi. Picture a double bag in 30 years.
The business case
Although the financial services firm is far from being in the business of producing or using plastic products, last year it set a resolution to work to keep 50 million metric tons of plastic out of ecosystems by 2030. It’s unique but not alone. The strength of collaborations emerging toward circular solutions, among corporate competitors as well as between business and government, has surprised MacArthur, for one: “The system has to change and I think more than ever, the companies involved in the system want to change.”
Her remark came moments before the launch of the U.S. Plastics Pact by EMF, The Recycling Partnership and WWF. Its 60 signatories across public and private sectors agree to advance circularity goals for plastic by 2025. Similar national plastics pacts are at play in Chile, France, Netherlands, Portugal, South Africa and the United Kingdom.
Choi is among the execs sounding a call to action to propel business in a new direction on plastic. “I can’t think of another instance in which it would be a smart business position to take a finite natural resource, turn it into a product we use on average for 12 minutes and throw it away,” she said, citing that single-use plastic wastes $120 billion in economic value each year.
“Business leaders often care but say either they can’t do anything about it because they’re not a major part of plastic value chain or because the problem is just too big,” she said. “It’s a global economy-wide issue but the fact that it is everywhere should inspire us to action. I believe that in virtually every C-suite you could go around the table and identify why every C-suite officer can care and benefit from trying to address the problem.”
With the experience of having crafted Morgan Stanley’s Plastic Waste Resolution with input from the highest executives, Choi shared these specifics for others seeking to achieve buy-in from the top (she skipped the CEO, because all of it rolls up to the CEO eventually):
Chief financial officers
CFOs initially may frown on making a change by switching costs or assume that alternatives are more costly. But they will find plenty of low-hanging fruit that can reduce operating and capital costs. For example, facilities that adopt cleaning products in powder or concentrate, in reusable containers, could shrink their shipping costs and carbon footprint while increasing profit margins. And companies have benefited from shifting public sentiment on plastics when they’ve issued corporate debt with proceeds tied to plastic waste reduction.
Chief legal officers
CLOs have to keep up with a rapidly evolving patchwork of state laws governing plastic use and disposal, driven by activists, regulators and consumers. Bans on plastic straws, grocery bags and cup lids keep piling up, even if many are on hold during the coronavirus crisis. But company legal officers can streamline compliance and reduce liability by targeting plastic. Woe is the CLO who ignores public sentiment and risks lawsuits or fines; plastic waste branded with their company’s logo is a time bomb waiting to appear in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Chief innovation officers
For innovation chiefs, Choi sees the benefit as fairly intuitive. “Plastic waste reduction can be their muse, inspiring innovation through new products, new services, and new ways to engage customers,” she said. There’s an obvious wow factor to using new material that’s truly biodegradable or recyclable, just as IKEA is replacing plastic foam packaging with mushroom-based material that can be grown in a week, reused and then composted in a month.
Chief marketing officers
There’s a clear and growing opportunity for CMOs as customers vote with their purchases against plastic waste. For example, being the category leader in reducing plastic waste can be a chief differentiator beyond simply competing on price. “Selling your product in a beautiful, branded reusable container comes with the added benefit of the consumer looking to you and only you to refill that container.” If plastic rose to amazing heights in a matter of decades thanks to corporate marketing efforts, imagine the next revolution in plastics coming from the same source.
Chief sustainability officers
“It’s pretty self-explanatory why we should care about plastic waste reduction,” Choi said. In addition to the sustainability aspects, plastic goals are an opportunity to forge C-suite alliances and build bridges with clients and corporate partners, potentially leading to innovative programs and products.
To reduce the plastic burden, Choi envisions drawing on the kinds of scientific discoveries, ingenuity, entrepreneurship and marketing that made plastic part of daily life in past decades.
There are special challenges in this COVID-19 era, as single-use plastics, including disposable masks laced with microplastic fibers, flood waste streams and waterways at unprecedented levels. Yet advancing circularity also helps to meet climate targets. What does MacArthur consider crucial to making a difference on circularity in the next year or so?
“We have an opportunity right now, like we’ve not had before, because of something tragic, to build in a different way,” including for the automotive, industrial and infrastructure sectors, she said. “Accepting what that looks like and making it happen, that for me, that’s the step.”
Topics
Circularity 20
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Single-use plastic cups: an endangered species?
Svetlana Lukienko
Engaging Middle America in recycling solutions
Suzanne Shelton
Wed, 08/26/2020 – 01:00
A few weeks ago, I wrote a GreenBiz piece about what Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs can teach us about the moment we’re in right now, based on our latest polling of Americans. At Circularity 2020, I’m talking about how to engage people in recycling, and the two ideas are linked together.
The gist is that we can’t self-actualize as the people we want to be if we’re not getting our basic needs met. Pre-COVID, 41 percent of us wanted to be seen as someone who buys green products, and 25 percent of us could cough up an example, unaided, of a brand we’d purchased or not purchased because of the environmental record of the manufacturer. As of late May, smack in the middle of the pandemic, these numbers dropped dramatically, down to 2013 levels at 33 percent and 19 percent respectively.
In the rock-paper-scissors game of survival, we just can’t take action on higher-level things when we’re worried about meeting our basic needs. And we’re really worried about getting our basic needs met. Worries about the health of the economy and human health far outweigh concerns about the environment right now.
This was not the case pre-pandemic. We were just as worried about plastics in the ocean and climate change in early March as we were last summer, but that concern plummeted in May.
Think about it like this: We decided to take a cross-country road trip in a car with a transmission that’s on its last legs, so the whole time we’re driving we’re worried about the transmission failing. Then all of a sudden — boom — we get a flat tire.
Now we’re not worried about the transmission anymore. Coronavirus is the flat tire and once we can get it repaired and drive on it long enough to be sure it won’t go flat again, we’ll start worrying about the bigger transmission issue — the environment — again.
For now, though, we feel disempowered and unable to do much about the environment.
For instance, last summer the one environmental issue 27 percent of us felt we actually could do something about was plastic waste. We’ve backslid in a major way one year later: Only 18 percent of us believe we can do anything about it now — and that’s the No. 1 answer!
Not surprisingly, then, we’re less activated on trying to avoid single-use plastics. Last year, one-third of Americans said they actively tried to buy products packaged in something other than plastic and urged friends and family to do the same; as of May, only a quarter of us said we are doing that.
Remember that so much of the outrage about plastics in the ocean is the fact that plastics are in our food stream, so it’s a human health issue. We now have a more pressing, immediate human health issue to deal with — as well as a pressing social equity crisis and economic crisis — so we’ve become less activated on single-use plastics. In fact, you might say that the Great Awakening of our massive systemic issues — spurred by COVID-19 and the murder of George Floyd — has allowed us to go to sleep, for the moment, on the environment.
One last thing for context: With all the noise about the economy, coronavirus, politics and so forth, we’re all hearing less about every single environmental issue we track. For instance, last year 63 percent of Americans said they had heard about bans on single use plastic. Now that number is down to 54 percent.
In the rock-paper-scissors game of survival, we just can’t take action on higher-level things when we’re worried about meeting our basic needs.
So, there’s something to be said for continuing to communicate about environmental issues, and there’s something to be said for demonstrating the behaviors you want people to adopt — both have a correlated impact on consumer action. And, again, it will be hard to motivate action on our environmental transmission while we’ve got an economic and health-related flat tire.
So what does this mean for engaging Americans in recycling?
If we don’t feel like we actually can affect the plastic waste issue and some of us have gone to sleep in terms of our habits and actions, what does this mean for recycling?
Are we less inclined to throw our recyclables in the bin because we feel so disempowered and/or worried about the economy and anxious about keeping our families from catching COVID? And are we aware of the issues in the recycling market — that China won’t take our recyclables anymore and that the American recycling system is in turmoil? If they’re aware, does that affect their willingness to do their part?
Well, it’s a good news/bad news scenario.
In the good news column, the vast majority of Americans (80 percent) believe recycling is the bare minimum they can do for the environment, and it makes them feel better about all the stuff they buy. By the way, 77 percent of Americans say they recycle via a curbside pickup service. So they’re “in” on the current system of throwing stuff in the blue bin and rolling it to the curb.
Some other good news: only 30 percent have really heard about some cities discontinuing curbside recycling programs. And only 10 percent say their curbside recycling services have been discontinued.
So about a third of us are aware something’s going on with our recycling system, but the vast majority of us are happy to keep going along with our curbside guilt-assuaging approach to waste management.
And it is a guilt-assuaging system. While roughly half of us have made some changes to reduce the amount of single-use plastics we buy, plastic is the No. 1 material we all think is easiest to process into a substance that can be used to make a new product or packaging.
And while 40 percent of us correctly answer that plastics coded with the number 1 (PET) are the easiest for recycling centers to process, 38 percent of us have no idea which number is easiest to recycle and the remainder of us answer incorrectly.
So, we’re opinionated about plastics, but blissfully ignorant about them, and we let ourselves off the hook for doing anything different in our purchasing because of the current curbside system.
So what happens when the municipal curbside system fails, as it’s starting to do?
In this case, knowledge or awareness is not correlated to behaviors: 39 percent of us have heard about other countries no longer accepting our recycling and, of those folks, 97 percent say it hasn’t changed their recycling habits. Overall, 77 percent of us believe that what we put in the bin actually gets recycled. (It’s worth noting that’s down from 88 percent the year before.)
In other words, we’re still chucking stuff in the bin with few worries about whether that stuff’s actually being recycled.
We can laugh an ironic laugh at their ignorance or we can look at this as extremely good news. We worked hard to get consumers to adopt recycling behaviors and to adopt the idea that it’s the bare minimum they can do to do their part. And it’s sticking: In fact, they’re clinging to it.
We’re opinionated about plastics, but blissfully ignorant about them, and we let ourselves off the hook for doing anything different in our purchasing because of the current curbside system.
The last thing we want is for them to throw in the towel, which is what they’re doing in places where curbside has been discontinued. Of the 10 percent who say their curbside programs have been discontinued, 56 percent say they no longer recycle.
So, if we want to engage Americans in recycling, here’s what we need to do:
1. We need to continue communicating about — and demonstrating action on — plastic waste
Remember, we’re all hearing less about environmental issues and noticing fewer bans on plastic waste and fewer actions taken by retailers and restaurants on plastic waste, and that has a direct correlation to our own awareness and action. We need to keep the steady drumbeat of communications and action going if we want to bring people along.
2. We need to continue our curbside programs and make them really work.
When these go away, we will see a massive backslide in recycling behaviors. This means we need to ensure that our system works, and that what gets thrown in the bin actually gets recycled. Given that will require massive infrastructure changes (and probably policy changes as well), as a stop-gap we need to:
- Teach them to “look before they toss”: Only 22 percent actually look at the label on an item to see if it’s recyclable before chucking it in the recycling bin. Most haven’t noticed the new How to Recycle label or find it too hard to read. We need a massive campaign on this.
- Teach them what’s actually recyclable: Back to the earlier point, many consumers feel bad about using single-use plastics, so their tactic for assuaging their guilt is to throw everything into their bins. That means they’re throwing a lot of things in that aren’t actually recyclable, which is rooted in a pretty big lack of understanding of what’s actually recyclable.
For example, when shown pictures of various types of used packaging and asked what should be done with them — put them in the recycling bin, the trash bin, or some combination — Americans don’t pick the right answer as often as you’d hope.
My favorite is the plastic creamer bottle with the plastic sleeve/wrap around it. 69 percent say they’d put the entire package in the trash can, 22 percent say they’d put the entire package in the recycling container and 9 percent say they’d put parts of it in the trash can and parts of it in the recycling container. So 91 percent of Americans get this wrong, despite these bottles having a How To Recycle Label displayed, telling them what to do.
The point is that Americans have a mixed level of understanding about what’s recyclable and what’s not. And despite the progress made by getting the How To Recycle label onto so many products, it’s just not enough.
We either have to teach them to look before they toss and help them see what’s actually recyclable or, better, encourage them to put it all in the Blue Bin and upgrade our recycling system and technologies so that it all actually gets recycled.
Want to learn more about all of this? Join me at 1:20 p.m. EDT Aug. 27 during Circularity 20 and/or download a free copy of the full report.
Pull Quote
In the rock-paper-scissors game of survival, we just can’t take action on higher-level things when we’re worried about meeting our basic needs.
We’re opinionated about plastics, but blissfully ignorant about them, and we let ourselves off the hook for doing anything different in our purchasing because of the current curbside system.
Circularity 20
Collective Insight
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- Melania Trump strikes compassionate tone at RNC CNN
- Office of Special Counsel says it won’t be ‘grandstanding’ about potential RNC Hatch Act violations Fox News
- The RNC is on a Hatch Act crime spree The Washington Post
- All the times GOP breached ethics at RNC, according to experts Los Angeles Times
- Key moments from night 2 of Republican Convention POLITICO
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Who has the most sustainable fleets? Time to name names
Katie Fehrenbacher
Wed, 08/26/2020 – 00:30
Sustainable fleets are at an inflection point, and we here at GreenBiz are looking to celebrate them.
That’s why I’m particularly excited to share that GreenBiz plans to publish the top 25 list of sustainable fleets the week before our annual VERGE 20 conference (which will run virtually the last week in October).
The list will highlight the most innovative and aggressive companies, cities, governments and organizations buying and advocating for zero- and low-carbon vehicles, as well as using other technologies that can significantly reduce transportation emissions.
Many types of vehicle fleets move people and goods, or do important work in our cities, and we’ll consider them all as contenders — from passenger vehicles to delivery vans to transit and school buses to garbage trucks to long haul trucks. We’ll also consider all technologies from battery electric to alternative fuels to efficiency tech.
Who’s being aggressive? Who’s being innovative? Who is rapidly speeding toward a goal to decarbonize their fleet?
Let us know! Fill out this form with more information about your/their organization. We’re asking for submissions until Sept. 30. If you have any questions, drop me a line: [email protected].
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Green Fleet
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New sparks for the electric vehicle industry
Zoé Bezpalko
Tue, 08/25/2020 – 01:45
Thinking back to the beginning of 2020 can seem like a lifetime ago. Before the pandemic took root on a global level, the transportation industry was already in the midst of a great and exciting transition. The move to electric vehicles (EVs) was intensifying.
Take General Motors, for example. In early March, the company announced it would have 20 new EVs by 2023. It also is tackling ambitious innovations with its Ultium battery and propulsion system that could enable a GM-estimated range up to 400 miles or more on a full charge with 0 to 60 mile-per-hour acceleration as low as three seconds.
And then COVID-19 hit. Sales for all vehicles plummeted. But new consumer revelations were (and are) occurring on a daily basis — and it is good news for the EV market.
People are appreciating how skies can be clearer and bluer with fewer cars on the road. We’re learning the value of our time and resources with lessons in how to shop more efficiently with fewer trips. With a growing unease in taking public transportation, the demand for electric bikes and cars is also skyrocketing.
While governmental incentives for the EV market in the United States are minimal, the private sector is jumping on board to continue the momentum and meet the new consumer demand.
In June, Lyft announced that every vehicle on its platform will be electric by 2030. Despite a setback in the construction of its factory during the shutdown, Rivian will debut its electric pickup truck and electric SUV next summer. The company is also on track to manufacture more than 100,000 electric vans for Amazon. And GM isn’t shying away from its announcement and commitment to EVs, stating in May that it is continuing at full speed.
But there is still much more that needs to change and be done.
The present and future opportunities for EVs
What can be done to propel the EV industry even further despite the current global climate with COVID-19? Like anything in today’s landscape, it’s complicated — but it’s possible to achieve new inroads.
Let’s be honest. EV design and manufacturing comes with an entirely different set of challenges, even without a global pandemic as a backdrop. From EV design to manufacturing and battery optimization and production, we must address needed changes head-on for a radical, new approach to design and manufacturing.
Battery changes
Of course, not every company can be GM and create its own battery system. That’s why there is a need for greater openness in battery design and production — and what is actually inside the “black box” battery pack provided by manufacturers. If we can tap into the battery itself, we can further innovate for more efficiency.
Battery packs contain components such as cooling, sensors and battery management systems that, if more open, could allow engineers and designers to optimize storage and layout for energy efficiency. With the development of integrated digital design tools, the hope is that addressing both the battery and the car’s geometry in one combined design process will lead to greater efficiency for both.
Manufacturing changes
Even before COVID-19, automotive manufacturers and suppliers already were looking at new ways to modernize factories for better performance and reduced energy consumption.
Last fall, Porsche opened a new, innovative factory to manufacture its first fully electric sports car, the Taycan. The zero-impact facility is the largest built since the company was founded 70 years ago, and it is also one of the first in the world to begin use of driverless transport systems within the factory. It’s a great example of not only the acceleration of EV availability in the market, but a better way to approach manufacturing, too.
COVID-19 and its disruptive impacts on the global supply chain have accelerated how manufacturers and OEMs are looking at their production for more resilience. When factories shut down, it was a chance to step back and think of embedding sustainability throughout operations, in the factory layout itself, or leveraging more additive and local manufacturing. That also means greater opportunity to bring EV manufacturing and production more into the fold and mainstream.
EV design changes
On the vehicle design side, there are still untapped opportunities to improve battery range, especially through lightweighting and friction reduction. Frictions can be reduced by employing computational fluid dynamics software for simulation. And using generative design, designers can look at an incredible array of options to reduce the overall weight of the car.
Imagine taking an EV design and inputting the parameters to optimize such as geometry, materials, mechanical properties or even the manufacturing process. With generative design, the design team can explore the generated solutions and prioritize and choose what is most important for their goals. What’s more, the power of generative design truly shines when coupled with additive manufacturing to reduce waste in production. It even can solve some supply chain challenges for parts availability.
GM has been putting generative design to the test, especially for lightweighting. Its very first proof-of-concept project was for a small, yet important, component — the seat bracket where seat belts are fastened. With parameters based on required connection points, strength and mass, the software returned more than 150 valid design options. The team quickly identified the new seat bracket with a unique, unimaginable style, which is 40 percent lighter, 20 percent stronger and consolidates eight components into one 3D-printed part.
Driving forward
If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that we are all much more resilient than we thought possible. This global pandemic is offering us an opportunity to reflect on a future we want — one that is not only more sustainable, but also more equitable for all.
We are embracing change as never before. As we all adapt to our new reality, industries also follow suit. Change and adaptability always has been endemic to the EV industry. We have made huge strides already. Now it’s time to keep driving forward.
Pull Quote
EV design and manufacturing comes with an entirely different set of challenges, even without a global pandemic as a backdrop.
Electric Vehicles
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Porsche’s zero-impact factory designed to manufacture electric vehicles. Image courtesy of Porsche.
- Wisconsin protesters rally for second night against ‘shocking and outrageous’ police shooting of Jacob Blake USA TODAY
- LeBron James, Alvin Kamara among stars to demand justice after police shooting of Black man in Wisconsin ESPN
- Shooting of Jacob Blake sparks protests in Wisconsin CTV News
- Aaron Rodgers, Cardi B, LeBron James and other celebs respond to Kenosha police shooting Jacob Blake Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
- Wisconsin police shoot a Black man as his children watch from a vehicle, attorney says CNN
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