Rupert Murdoch revealed today that his media empire achieved its goal, set nearly four years ago, to become carbon neutral by the end of 2010.

News Corp., home to a wide range of properties that includes the Fox News Channel, 20th Century Fox, Harper Collins, Wall Street Journal, MySpace and the National Rugby League, also unveiled a mix of short-term and aspirational long-term goals to guide its environmental efforts moving forward.

"I am proud to announce that News Corporation has reached its first major sustainability milestone: We have become carbon neutral across all of our global operations and we are the first company of our kind to do so," Murdoch wrote in a memo sent to News Corp. employees. "We made a bold commitment in 2007 to embed the values of energy efficiency and environmental sustainability into all of our businesses -- for the benefit of our communities and our bottom line." 

Making News Corp.'s operations more efficient will save the company millions of dollars, Murdoch wrote. Just consolidating its data centers will save News Corp. $20 million a year and reduce related emissions by 15 percent once fully implemented.

The investments in energy efficiency yield an average of $180 per ton of carbon avoided, according to Liba Rubenstein, the company's global energy initiative director. That can add up when you consider that News Corp.'s absolute emissions in fiscal year 2010 were 2 percent lower than 2006 levels, and 9 percent lower than peak emissions in 2008. The company offset 110 percent of its FY 2010 carbon footprint by investing in emissions reduction projects that include capturing landfill gas and destroying potent refrigerants.

Rubenstein's team will now work toward a series of measurable 2015 goals, including:

• Reducing absolute greenhouse gas by 15 percent, compared to 2006 levels
• Reducing greenhouse gas intensity by at least 15 percent
• Investing in clean energy equal to 20 percent of electricity used
• Engaging its 100 largest suppliers on improving their environmental impacts
• Measuring its waste footprint and developing a strategy to reduce it

News Corp. also created a set of intentionally broad long-term goals with no time horizon:

• Power all of its operations with clean energy
• Grow its business without growing its greenhouse gas emissions
• Minimize the amount of solid waste sent to landfill from its production operations
• Continue to engage its readers, employees and customers on sustainability

OAKLAND, CA — More than 30 companies and organizations — including the likes of Nike, Gap, Patagonia and Walmart — have joined forces to create the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, and the first item on their agenda is a tool to measure the environmental impacts of clothing.

Building off of the Outdoor Industry Association's (OIA) Eco Index and Nike's environmental design tool, the coalition's Sustainable Apparel Index is being crafted as an industry-wide tool for evaluating any kind of apparel. 

The first version of the Sustainable Apparel Index will be tested in the coming months by a select group of companies, and then refined. Sometime this year the index will also be updated with criteria specific to footwear.

The coalition was born out of a collaboration between Patagonia and Walmart. Rick Ridgeway, chair of the coalition and vice president of environmental initiatives at Patagonia, said that in 2009 Patagonia figured out it could combine two of its efforts: Working on the OIA's Eco Index and advising Walmart on its supplier sustainability assessment program.

"We started wondering what kind of strategy we could develop to take the work that the OIA was creating and broaden it out, to get it in place beyond the outdoor industry," Ridgeway said. "We realized to really leverage it we'd be smart to invite Walmart to join us in extending an invitation to a very large circle of companies in the apparel and footwear sector to adopt a uniform sustainability index."

The first dozen members of the coalition began meeting informally in early 2010, and its numbers have grown to include 33 apparel companies, retailers, manufacturers, NGOs, academics and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 

Ridgeway said the coalition's early members decided the quickest way forward would be to build on work that has already been done. The OIA's Eco Index provided a framework for measuring outdoor gear, and Nike's Environmental Apparel Design Tool provided metrics and measurements for a wide swath of materials used in clothing.

The coalition is planning for its index to be used only internally by companies for now, and has no set plans for making a related label for consumers to see how different items score on the index.

Members of the coalition so far are Adidas, Arvind Mills, C&A, Duke University, Environmental Defense Fund, Esprit, Esquel, Gap, H&M, HanesBrands, Intradeco, JC Penney, Kohl’s, Lenzing, Levi Strauss & Co., LF USA, Marks & Spencer, Mountain Equipment Co-op, New Balance, Nike, Nordstrom, Otto Group, Outdoor Industry Association, Patagonia, Pentland Brands, REI, TAL Apparel, Target, Timberland, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Verité, VF Corp and Walmart.

Ridgeway said there are a number of reasons for companies to get involved in developing a common tool for measuring apparel's impacts. First off, it can lower supply chains cost, along with impacts. "All the participants in this group realize if they're using the same tool with their vendors, that will drive efficiencies." Companies can also use the tool to manage risks, improve reputations and get ahead of possible regulations by regulating themselves.

The coalition's overall mission is to reduce the environmental and social impacts of clothing and footwear, and to that end it will also promote promising innovations and spotlight ways to improve practices at any point in supply chains.

For-profit members pay annual dues, and the coalition is working on expanding from being invitation-only to have a more open membership structure in 2012.

In order to support the continued refinement of the index and other work, companies will likely pay a tiered licensing fee for access to the index. The intent, Ridgeway said, is to have a way to fund the work of the coalition while also making the index available to as many companies as possible.

_{Clothing store - CC license by epSos.de (Flickr)}

Recently Xerox, Waste Management (WM), and Arizona State University hosted the Executive Sustainability Summit, a conference for managers in the private and public sectors working on environmental and social issues. I was asked by Xerox to attend and give my thoughts on what I heard and saw. 

The day kicked off with some big picture thoughts on sustainability from WM SVP Duane Woods and Xerox’s global vice president of Environment, Health and Safety, Patty Calkins . As a long-standing sustainability exec and thought leader, Calkins has a good perspective on what it takes to implement a successful environmental strategy. She laid out four “critical fundamentals to any sustainability program.”

Calkins’ four principles are:

• Take a quantitative approach. As she said, even though we’re sick of hearing it, the old saying “what gets measured gets done” has proved to be true every time.
• Keep a value-chain focus. Think beyond the four walls of the company to look at impacts up the supply chain and down through customer use and end of product life. 
• Be economically driven. If initiatives don’t help the business, they won’t be sustainable by any definition.
• Seek quick payback and easy wins. Show success quickly.

I agree in principle on these, but wanted to elaborate on them and add my perspective. Starting with good quantitative data is critical, and marrying that with a value chain perspective creates a powerful starting point for sustainability thinking. These are definitely the two big fundamentals. Really knowing where your footprint lies – and it rarely is centered within your own operations – helps identify the true risks and opportunities for your business.

The third and fourth principles are solid, but are more nuanced in execution. Yes, sustainability has to be economically viable -- to be obvious, if a company did things that weren’t profitable, it wouldn’t survive, so it wouldn’t be around to provide environmental or social benefits. But we need a broader sense of what’s included in the “economics” of strategic and tactical sustainability actions. 

The typical cost/benefit analysis that most companies use is fundamentally broken in two ways: it doesn’t take into account either long-term benefits (strategic investments that pay off later) or intangible value (brand enhancement or customer and employee loyalty, for example). The “hurdle rates” we apply to capital investments are ignored for many common strategic decisions, such as investing in innovation and R&D, building a presence in a new geographic or product market, or engaging in brand-building activities and advertising. These all may have longer payback periods than the typical two-year hurdle rate. Like these investments, sustainability initiatives can also be both “economically-driven” and take larger strategic benefits into account.

For example, sustainability leaders are helping customers lower their environmental impacts, which may entail using less of their product (in my next article on this event, I’ll explore how both Xerox and Waste Management are doing exactly that). This kind of cutting-edge initiative is absolutely economically driven -- maintaining or growing market share by satisfying customers is a good thing -- but it could take time to make the transition.

Clean water doesn't come cheap. Businesses often have to rely on expensive water filtration systems to ensure their clean water supplies. And to meet drinking water quality standards implemented since the late 1980s, researchers expect that treatment plants across the United States will have to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure.

But what if businesses could save money by protecting upstream forests instead of building new, costly infrastructure?

One means to achieve this is called "payments for watershed services." Businesses and water utilities provide financial incentives to landowners to conserve, manage and restore their forests in order to protect water supplies.

Many payments for watershed services share a common trait: they are investments in "green infrastructure" instead of "gray infrastructure." In other words, they are investments in forests and natural open space instead of in human-engineered solutions to address water problems (see figure 1 below).

For example:

• By naturally filtering water, forests can reduce drinking water treatment costs. New York City saved billions of dollars in water filtration costs by conserving the forests and natural landscapes of the Catskills instead of paying for a new water filtration system.

 

• By curbing erosion, forests can keep sediment and excess nutrients out of waterways. Forest buffers near streams can prevent nitrogen from entering waterways at approximately a third of the cost of wastewater treatment plant upgrades.

• By filtering water through its porous soils, a forest can minimize wastewater treatment costs. According to the Army Corps of Engineers, a forest or forested wetland can filter water at approximately one-seventh of the cost per thousand gallons than can conventional wastewater treatment systems.

According to a new issue brief from the World Resources Institute, public entities are not the only ones that can benefit from investments in green infrastructure. Businesses that depend on a consistent supply of clean water, such as beverage companies, power companies with hydroelectric facilities, microchip manufacturers, and housing developers may have a business case as well.

WRI's brief provides an overview of businesses and water utilities in the United States and other countries that are already beginning to pursue forest conservation as a cost-effective means of ensuring clean water supplies. Many of these approaches could be applicable in the southern United States too, which contains 29 percent of the country's forestland. However, awareness of these kinds of incentives is mixed, and markets and infrastructure to handle transactions are just starting to emerge.

Going forward, these kinds of payments for green infrastructure can be a powerful tool for conservation and business alike. With its combination of forests and freshwater challenges, the South is ripe for using this new approach.

To access this brief and other issue briefs in the Southern Forests for the Future Incentives Series, and to learn more about southern U.S. forests, visit: www.SeeSouthernForests.org.

Image CC licensed by Flickr user Ian Sane.