Size Matters at Sustainable Brands 2013

Offsetters’ Director of Sales, Jason McCormick traveled to San Diego to attend this year’s Sustainability Brands conference. This 2,500 person conference kicked off a year long, global focus on positive shifts currently taking place in business and society. He shared with Offsetters his experience during the four-day conference.

 

It was a veritable shot in the arm – a week of Southern Californian sun combined with an audience with many of North America’s leading brands including Coca-Cola, eBay, Morgan Stanley, Target, and Nestle. This year’s conference marked a serious discussion on how organizations could reduce their carbon footprint, save dollars, engage employees, manage waste & water and, ultimately, refine their sustainability programs to future-proof their brands.

 

One of the biggest takeaways from this year’s conference was best summarized by Tom Day, Chief Sustainability Officer at USPS. “You need scale to move the needle,” he said during a breakout speaker session. UPS and USPS’s Blue and Brown Make Green Program are two such examples. As the world’s largest mail and package delivery organizations, they have optimized transportation and logistics to save millions of dollars in fuel costs and lower carbon emissions by more than one million tonnes.

 

Many other organizations have followed suite. Mark Brodeur, Director of Global Sustainability at Nestlé Purina, described how Nestlé, the world’s largest food and beverage company, regularly completed product LCA’s in order to understand how best to reduce the environmental impact of selling 1 billion products per day. Chad Davis, Manager of Sustainability at Target Corporation, also noted how Target leveraged its status as a big box retailer to encourage energy efficiency throughout the supply chain. These organizations have demonstrated how scale can play a tremendous role in creating a positive environmental impact.

 

Overall, Sustainable Brands 2013 was a remarkable opportunity to learn about the purpose-driven brand innovation that is presently reinvigorating global and local economies. I look forward to sharing what I have learned in order to help organizations profitably innovate from sustainability.