Institutional Investors Make “Sustainable Business” An Investment Priority

This one is for anyone attending the upcoming ASAE and the Center Social Responsibility Summit.

The 2008 Investor Summit on Climate Risk will bring together more than 400 institutional investors, Wall Street leaders and CEOs from around the world to consider the scale and urgency of climate change risks, as well as the economic opportunities of a global transition to a clean energy future.

According to the Wall Street Journal,”Investors are increasingly trying to come to grips with the uncertainty about how the U.S. government will address the issue of global warming, and what effects that will have on businesses from power companies to insurers…

But just like the “tipping points” that many scientists point to in the Earth’s changing climate, investor interest in how to play global warming seems to be gathering steam. Investors are taking a more proactive role. Last week, three big banks said they’ll toughen financing standards for coal-fired power plants that could come under fire from new environmental regulations.Increasingly, the accent is on business opportunities presented by the world’s efforts to rein in global warming. Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Deutsche Bank AG have set out to identify which companies help the world adapt to changing climate, such as water-treatment companies, as well as businesses that can help mitigate further climate change, like clean-energy firms.”

Why should I care? Follow the money.

Investors are finding that the future of business (and future investment) will be in companies and industries who are innovating business models, product or service designs or delivery systems to be more sustainable economically, environmentally and socially.

It isnt simply about recycling or making modifications to systems proving they cant fundamentally change.

Social responsibility is passe.

Sustainable business models and product/service designs are what investors see as the future.

It is about innovation.

Business got us into this. Business will get us out.

Follow the money.

Making Business Sense of Climate Change – A Practical Guide

Vanessa Cotton and I reprise for a session on this Tuesday at MPI’s PEC NA here in Houston on the topic of making a business case for developing a “sustainable business strategy” for meetings and events from a planner and supplier perspective.

We’ll be presenting a case study featuring one of MCI’s clients and how MCI led them through via our sustainable consulting services along with the use of a green meeting calculator that feeds to a database for benchmarking your footprint against other events. This effort led to the client choosing ExCel London for an upcoming congress because of its advances in sustainable business services for meetings. They actually have a worm farm that converts waste to compost as a new revenue streams. Yum!!!

Slides are here.

Global Platform for Innovating Sustainable Materials & Products Announced

Material ConneXion Inc., McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry LLC (MBDC) and the Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency (EPEA) announced a strategic collaboration to create a global platform for developing innovative sustainable materials and products.

Together they will provide services that will help companies expand their ability to innovate and create higher-quality, more sustainable products and processes.

The relationship will help to promote and disseminate Cradle to Cradle design principles by providing greater global access to Cradle to Cradle material information, certification and product development.

As of January 2008, Material ConneXion’s libraries around the world will feature Cradle to Cradle Assessed and Certified materials, and in collaboration with MBDC and EPEA, they will offer Cradle to Cradle Certification and Cradle to Cradle product development.

By pushing for better product design, smart production processes, and a greater use, re-use and recycling of defined, ecologically intelligent materials, companies can incorporate environmentally conscious planning into their own frameworks. To facilitate this, Material ConneXion, MBDC and EPEA will jointly offer the following services: workshops providing an understanding of Material Intelligence, Sustainability and Cradle to Cradle design principles; material assessment, process evaluation and certification; and sustainable material/product development.

About Materials ConneXion

Material ConneXion offers four indispensable assets to architects, designers, and manufacturers.

1. The Advanced Materials Solution Team advises in the development of materials and products by providing crucial material intelligence gained through extensive research.
2. Subscription-based Material Libraries on three continents maintain over 4,000 materials reviewed by an independent jury on a monthly basis.
3. Material ConneXion LABS-temporary library exhibition installations-and Innovation Alerts-keep companies, universities and non-profits on the cutting-edge. New materials create innovative design solutions, provide more sustainable options, and accelerate the design development process.
4. Dynamic material dialogue is essential to this process, and so Material ConneXion is committed to its creation through active Public Programming, including exhibitions, an annual conference on materials and design, and MATTER magazine, published quaterly. This December, Material ConneXIon will publish its second book, Ultra Materials: How Materials Innovation is Changing the World.

About MBDC

From a June 2007 post here on os.a .

About EPEA

EPEA is an independent scientific research institute based in Hamburg, that develops Cradle to Cradle product solutions. EPEA aligns products to Cradle to Cradle design goals with tools that have been developed for this purpose. Cradle to Cradle design makes products possible that are economically successful, healthy for users and supportive for the environment and future generations.

Their innovative design not only addresses appearance and functionality, but it also addresses the definition of their composition and enables a new dimension of quality and security of these products along with their material flow cycle. By integrating economic, social and environmental aspects, they are superior to currently produced and available products.

EPEA’s driving goal is to not only reach positive effects for end users by aiding in the development of healthy products, but also for the environment in general by way of safe products for consumption and products of service, where technical nutrients are recovered and processed, based on EPEA’s Intelligent Product System (IPS).