After reading last weeks’s NPR story: In Cyber War, Software Flaws Are A Hot Commodity, I am left wondering how sustainability can be applied to the business case being described therein. The gist of the story is that there exists a perfectly legal market of supply and demand for folks who can figure out holes in security protocol of tier one routing and other network … More
This year the SPC participated in PackExpo as an event partner, and several GreenBlue staff were on hand in the SPC booth to speak with visitors about the role of sustainability in packaging, the activities that the SPC engages in, and the tools and resources it and GreenBlue offers that support the implementation of sustainability activities. The event was a bit under attended, perhaps due … More
On September 25, 2012, President Obama’s address to the Clinton Global Initiative touched on a significant labor issue that has resulted from the interconnected global economy: “All the business leaders who are here and our global economy companies have a responsibility to make sure that their supply chains, stretching into the far corners of the globe, are free of forced labor. The good news is … More
This article by GreenBlue Senior Manager Minal Mistry appeared in this month’s issue of Packaging Digest, which features a monthly column by GreenBlue staff on packaging sustainability. Read the original article. As I was sitting at a local coffee shop on a nice summer afternoon, I overheard a conversation about “all the waste in society” at another table. What stuck with me was a comment that … More
This article by GreenBlue Senior Manager Minal Mistry appeared in this month’s issue of Packaging Digest, which features a monthly column by GreenBlue staff on packaging sustainability. Read the original article. We often hear sustainability described as an iterative process, or a stepped journey to “mount sustainability” as industrialist and environmentalist Ray Anderson put it. At the Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC) spring meeting in Toronto, I … More
Some of you may have been following the SPC’s involvement with this year’s Kids’ Science Challenge, a nationwide competition for third to sixth graders to participate in hands-on learning about science and engineering. This year’s challenge included three topics to choose from: 1) Animal Smarts: come up with an activity for captive animals to utilize their wild instincts; 2) Meals on Mars: invent a creative … More
On November 15, the Sustainable Packaging Coalition presented its Essentials of Sustainable Packaging course for the first time in Mexico City. The audience comprised of packaging professionals that hailed from as far away as Monterrey, Tijuana, and Argentina. I taught the course, which offers a comprehensive overview of sustainability in packaging, including facilitated discussions on topics ranging from defining sustainability within packaging, responsible sourcing of … More
As a follow up on my earlier post on data transparency, I would like to share a discussion between folks in the life cycle assessment (LCA) community and His Holiness the Dalai Lama in India. The conversation builds on the teaching of the previous day by the Dalai Lama about seeking the cause and effect of human activities and the implications on the nurturing capacity … More
This week I watched a TED video presentation titled Battling Bad Science by Ben Goldacre. His 14-minute talk pinpoints the art of presenting a predefined position or outcome by using false inputs and by distorting or omitting relevant data. The problem highlighted is one that we can all instinctively relate to, as it manifests itself in a barrage of information and claims in the marketplace that … More
For the past three years Jim Metzner and his team have put together a national science contest called the Kids’ Science Challenge that asks 3rd to 6th graders to learn about scientific principles and propose a solution to a few tough problems. Curious kids from all over the country submit experiments and problems for real scientists and engineers to solve based on a few broad questions. The … More