Aside from helping you decide what to dedicate space to in your sustainability report, going through the exercise of a well-planned and executed materiality assessment can add new purpose and structure to external and internal engagement initiatives, encourage new levels of collaboration within your sustainability team, and can be the backbone and validation of your sustainability strategy. In short, the materiality analysis can be a source of unique insight that leads to truly differentiating initiatives and signature programs…

The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) implemented a sustainability merit badge in July 2013. The merit badge will be one of 12 required merit badges to achieve Eagle, Scouting’s highest rank. Scouts will have the option of earning the new sustainability merit badge or the existing environmental science merit badge. Merit badges demonstrate advanced skill
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According to a new report released by Ceres, nearly half of more than 25,000 oil and gas wells evaluated in the United States are in water basins with high and extremely high water stress. Future growth of the unconventional resources sector in the U.S. depends on better water management planning and accelerated water recycling. “These
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This is the second in a multi-part series of EHS Journal articles providing background and guidance on the Dodd-Frank Conflict Minerals rule (DFCM). This article explains key provisions of the final rule and analyzes differences between the proposed and final rules.

This is the first of a multi-part series of EHS Journal articles that provide background and guidance on the final rules for Dodd-Frank Conflict Minerals (DFCM) published by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on August 22, 2012. This article describes the background of the rule and analyzes the proposed rule.

Companies manufacturing and selling appliances, equipment and lighting in Latin America face a growing demand from governments and consumers: reduce energy consumption. In a region of about 20 countries, where Spanish is the dominant language and regulatory systems are based on similar legal models, this demand wouldn’t seem to be a significant regulatory problem for
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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published final rules for Dodd-Frank Conflict Minerals (DFCM) on August 22, 2012. “Conflict minerals” are tantalum tin tungsten gold These metals are used in electronics, jewelry, and many other products. The rules will be effective for 2013 for most affected companies. This SEC rule affects many functions: accounting,
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We’ve all heard references to transparency and the need for more openness in business conduct. This article explores two important and independent trend lines associated with business transparency: the cost of acquiring reliable data on business externalities; and the willingness of consumers to pay for this information. The cost of acquiring data continues to fall,
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There has been a lot of talk over the past few years about environmental sustainability. Conferences are held on environmental sustainability, and everyone is talking about it. There are hundreds of definitions of sustainability and yet no one seems to understand what it really means. So-called experts are coming up with “metrics” and “indices” as
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Environmental risks pose a multi-dimensional threat to business that if ignored could consume an enterprise. The reputational risk alone of that “one-in-a-million chance” or “enterprise ending event” can no longer be ignored—ask BP. But beyond the negative ramifications of environmental risks is the often overlooked opportunity for business success that can result from sustainable business
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