World Wildlife Fund Sustainability Works

This Saturday, March 30 at 8:30 p.m. local time, millions of people, companies and municipalities around the world will celebrate Earth Hour. They will turn out their lights in solidarity for the fight against climate change and renewing their commitment toward protecting our planet.

As the world’s leading sports and live entertainment company, AEG believes we have an opportunity to use our business assets and influence to create positive change in the world.  Through our worldwide network of more than 150 venues, we entertain more than 100 million guests annually, and what better way to raise awareness for this important initiative than to add our venues to the list of iconic structures that will join the global Earth Hour movement?

2019 marks the 10^th year that AEG’s is celebrating Earth Hour. We’ve made this an annual tradition because we believe that sustainability is a shared endeavor, touching everyone in all organizations and all corners of the globe.  Through our environmental sustainability program, AEG 1EARTH, are working hard to conserve more, use less, source responsibly and find better ways to work.

But this year’s Earth Hour event takes on an even more urgent tone, in light of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recent report on global warming. According to the report, as a global society, we have less than 12 years to make “unprecedented” changes to our way of life or face increasingly dire consequences.  Just last month, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization released a report explaining that global loss of biodiversity from habitat and ecosystem degradation is threatening the world’s food supplies, as just nine species account for 66% of total crop production. 

The views expressed in this blog do not necessarily reflect those of WWF.

Americans love a good bargain. Case in point — the renewable energy market, where costs continue to fall, and companies are moving fast to take advantage. In 2018 alone, a mere 40 U.S. companies contracted for more than 6 gigawatts of renewable energy, doubling the previous record. That’s enough power to supply over 1 million homes.

But even as companies are doing more renewable energy deals than ever before, scientists warn that we have to move faster to decarbonize the economy in time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Companies can do even more to speed up America’s transition to renewable energy, if we can remove a few obstacles standing in their way. 

Increasingly, the price of renewable energy is not the problem: Costs for renewables are dropping, beating out coal and even natural gas in many places. Renewables also offer businesses less energy price volatility, allowing a company to lock in a price for decades, a significant advantage compared to market fluctuations in the price of natural gas. And renewables help companies meet their carbon reduction goals.

The price is right, companies can plan with confidence that the price won’t change, and renewables help companies meet their climate goals. So, what’s the problem? In short, access to the market for buying renewable power. Even for big companies, buying energy isn’t like buying a TV at the mall or ordering takeout online. If you want 100% renewable energy – rather than the mix of mostly dirty electricity with a little clean power thrown in that many utilities supply to their customers – it can get complicated, fast. Only the biggest companies have in-house expertise to navigate the complexities of a renewable energy deal.

And that’s in places where electricity markets are even open for these kinds of deals. In most American states, utilities control electricity markets, providing power to all customers — and choosing the source of this power. In these ‘regulated energy markets,’ companies can’t purchase their energy directly. A few companies have found creative ways to hack the system: For example, large technology companies have used their leverage when bringing new energy demand to the state (e.g., new data centers) to negotiate renewable energy deals with their utility. But existing and smaller customers lack the leverage to secure a deal.

It’s clear that the deck is stacked against these companies. To tackle climate change, that has to change. Companies need to learn from each other and to collectively use their voice to make it easier for everyone to buy renewables.

That’s where the Renewable Energy Buyers’ Alliance (REBA) comes in. REBA is a coalition of energy buyers and suppliers looking to transform America’s electricity system while bringing 60 gigawatts of clean energy online by 2025. And they are working together to drive progress in those challenging “regulated markets” — thanks to powerful new tools like green tariffs, buyer aggregation and innovative policy incentives.

Green tariffs come in many shapes and sizes but are essentially programs where a utility allows buyers to purchase renewable energy at a fixed rate. In some cases, companies have collectively partnered with utilities, which in turn buy electricity from renewable energy sources on the companies’ behalf. Such deals highlight a recent innovation of aggregating the purchasing power of multiple buyers in a single deal, thereby reducing prices and transaction costs.

This kind of ‘aggregation’ can be especially helpful for smaller companies. Large buyers are increasingly offering to ‘anchor’ lower costs for smaller companies who join the deal. In other cases, a group of smaller companies can serve as a collective anchor to negotiate a deal none of them could do alone.

It’s time to use these good examples to design innovative policies that bring these options to different markets. Legislation in Michigan and North Carolina triggered the development of green tariffs, while California expanded direct access for large customers to shop for renewables competitively. REBA is helping to build these innovative new procurement structures across markets, but more work is needed across the country.

And now REBA is about to really up its game. Today, the coalition is officially transforming from an NGO-driven initiative – driven by World Wildlife Fund, World Resources Institute, Rocky Mountain Institute and Business for Social Responsibility – to a business-led association. Under this new model, REBA will crowd in hundreds, even thousands, of new corporate members who collectively have the power to drive policy and regulatory fixes, level the playing field on costs and increase options for all customers to buy renewables.

Some trade associations in America have a bad reputation for blocking progress on climate change. But companies use trade associations for their biggest priorities, for when they really want to raise their voices together to have the greatest impact. What if we had a new trade association chartered to help save the planet? Starting today, we do.

Many challenges remain, but the unprecedented clean energy procurement in 2018 demonstrates a growing corporate consensus that renewable energy is the future. And now REBA offers a powerful vehicle — driven by American businesses — to help us get there.

Plastic is everywhere. It’s in our food and water. It’s in hundreds of diverse wildlife species. It’s found its way to the most remote parts of the world. And in the centuries that plastic waste takes to degrade, it’s polluting critical ecosystems and the species that call them home in ways that we’re just starting to wrap our minds around.

One dump truck full of plastic waste enters our oceans every minute. Over the year, this accumulates to 8 million tons of plastic entering our oceans. If we continue with business as usual, the future looks dire for nature and people. It’s estimated that by 2050, 99% of seabirds will have ingested plastic. The plastic waste crisis poses an urgent and rapidly growing threat to the entire world. To avert catastrophe, we have to stem the flow of plastic waste into the natural world — now.

Forget piecemeal solutions. We must rethink the entire lifecycle of plastic — how we source, design, manage, and reuse the plastic materials that communities depend upon — and engage key players at every stage along the way. The global scale and complexity of the challenge demands a multi-faceted and coordinated response that spans every region of the world and every sector of society.

The private sector has a particularly critical role to play. Businesses can foster positive change in their direct operations and across their supply chains, motivate and collaborate with other industry leaders and service providers, influence policy, engage individual consumers, and spark public dialogue — exactly the kind of ripple effect we need to achieve WWF’s global vision of No Plastic in Nature by 2030.

A recent report by WWF, “No Plastic in Nature: A Practical Guide for Business Engagement,” examines the scope and causes of the plastic waste crisis and offers a clear and pragmatic guide for businesses to lead the much-needed plastics revolution. 

WWF brought different areas of expertise to bear in creating this report—a fitting process, given the critical role that collaboration has to play in all of our recommendations. Through an analysis of best practices, independent research, and case studies, the report synthesizes what works, and what’s adaptable. Specifically, there are the four ways that companies can drive systemic change:

• Embrace strategic collaboration – making purposeful design improvements will maximize impact
• Shift the thinking around design, packaging, and distribution so that the later stages of plastic’s life cycle are kept in mind. The result will be improved recycling and composting rates, as well as robust markets for recycled materials
• Engage consumers in ways that shift behavior for the long-run
• Innovate the ways we currently collect, recycle and compost waste

The plastic waste crisis represents a shared challenge for nature, communities, and business. The end goal of No Plastic in Nature is within the world’s reach, and now we have a roadmap to get us there. We call upon businesses to help lead the way.

The following is an excerpt of a story featured in AGDAILY titled "The words of Rural America — we are here!"

I have read several stories recently that make life in rural America seem pretty dismal — the population is aging and decreasing, everyone is poorly educated and addicted to drugs, and the land is either not accessible to the public, or it is being destroyed by crops and cows . I wonder how much time those journalists spent in rural America before they wrote those stories? Any places that matter take a time investment to understand.

Well, I haven’t just visited the “flyover” states, I live here — five generations of my family have lived in the same central Montana county. I can’t speak for all of rural America, but I can speak about this place, and I would like to challenge the stereotype.

My husband and I have two children, and we chose to raise them in rural America. We left good-paying “regular” jobs to live and work in the country. We read a lot of children’s books, and one of our favorites is Horton Hears a Who. I think often of those Whos and how they united to yell as loud as they could, “We are here! We are here! We are here!” for someone to hear them.

There aren’t many of us out here — 500 people in all of Petroleum County. We are spread out, and we work full-time jobs (sometimes several jobs). We are mostly farmers and ranchers, teachers, and local government staff. We are not journalists, marketing directors, or graphic designers — it is hard to gather together to be loud enough to tell our own story. But, we have a story to tell...

...We are passionate about our land. This includes the public land where we graze our cattle and the private land that has sometimes been in families for over 100 years. Most of Petroleum County is grassland or the Missouri River Breaks — land that is not suitable for growing crops, so instead, most of us raise cattle.

The grasslands evolved with grazers. The two are codependent on each other and the grasslands need a large herbivore grazing it just as much as the cattle need the grasslands. When a cow grazes, she chomps off part of the plant, which allows it to regrow. When a plant does not have the opportunity to regrow, it becomes decadent — old growth dies and clogs out any chance for new growth to happen. The wildlife, such as deer and antelope, don’t graze this old, dead grass. Cattle hooves break up plants and create litter that covers the ground — this catches water and helps plants to regrow. And, finally, cows poop and pee — the best form of natural (and free!) fertilization out there. Grazing is part of the whole system that enhances both the soils and everything that is below ground, as well as the grasses and other plants above ground.

Ranchers provide, “ecosystem services.” This means that when we use good land management practices, we provide benefits to the land from which all of society benefits. Healthy grasslands, which can be achieved through cattle grazing, provide ecosystem services like carbon sequestration, water filtration and water storage, open spaces, and wildlife habitat. The beauty of using cattle to graze the grasslands is that they can be managed to address the needs of the land. For example, a noxious weed infestation can be grazed at a certain time of year to get it under control. Where buildup of plant material has happened, grazing that buildup can keep fire danger managed to a more natural level. Studies of grassland songbirds have shown that some of these birds need short grasses, and even prefer bare ground, at certain times of the year. Ranchers can graze their cattle through pastures on a rotation that benefits these declining bird populations.

To read the full story, visit AGDAILY.

When it comes to agriculture, what you don’t know can hurt you. That’s why companies are beginning to use blockchain technology to trace food products—notably, seafood, beef, and soy—back to their source. But, according to Accenture's new report titled “Tracing the Supply Chain: How Blockchain Can Enable Traceability in the Food Industry,” using the technology well takes careful planning and wide collaboration.

Global commodity supply chains are far-reaching, complex, and immensely fragmented. Millions of producers supply thousands of processors that sell to thousands of importers and so on. Without complete traceability, companies put their brands and potentially even their customers’ safety at risk. Food recalls, exposés of slave labour, reports of illegal deforestationand Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU), are just a few examples.

Today’s paper-based systems for tracking food to its source are a 20th century solution in a 21st century marketplace. Platforms like blockchain, however, enable anyone with a smartphone and internet access to connect with everyone else from fishers and farmers to retailers and restaurants to shed light on current complex and opaque supply chains. That’s the kind of visibility that companies need to mitigate risk, to reputation and product alike.

In addition to providing traceability, systems like blockchain can also lower costs and achieve efficiency gains through improved supply chain and inventory management. Improved transparency can help companies recall products in less time for less money. Indeed, our report reveals that blockchain technology can create a transparency revolution in our global food system, but only if industry, producers, financial institutions, government, and civil society follow a few basic guidelines.

First, there is a lot of excitement around blockchain technology. But, before investing capital into the development of a blockchain solution, companies must ensure that blockchain adds the intended value. In general, our research showed that it could enhance traceability for a variety of commodities, including wild-caught tuna, farmed shrimp, soy, and beef.

Second, any blockchain system must be able to connect millions of farmers, hundreds of processors, and thousands more distributors, brands, retailers, and foodservice companies. It will work only if it’s interoperable and digital transformation is enabled. It will fail if fishers, farmers, and processors use different systems for each of the hundreds of retailers, traders, and other companies further down the supply chain. As companies jump on the blockchain bandwagon, many are creating their own in-house, enterprise solutions with different languages and transaction systems.

Third, data must be presented uniformly. (Anyone who has tried to merge two differently formatted Excel spreadsheets can tell you how important that is.) Producers, processors, and others along the supply chain must use consistent language to refer to products and their characteristics—from agreeing on “soy” versus “soya” to kilograms versus tons. Otherwise, companies will end up with a towering babble of data.

Fourth, even immaculately designed systems cannot avoid human error. People make mistakes, so using electronic trackers and other devices that automatically upload information to the blockchain, such as radio ID tags, can improve the quality and consistency of data shared on the blockchain.

Finally, companies must strike the right balance between transparency, security, and privacy. Of course, blockchain systems should include as much detail as necessary to trace products. But exposing the names and addresses of thousands of producers could put them at risk. Companies may use information to gain competitive advantage over their rivals, so, where possible, transaction details such as quantity and price between two participants would be visible only to stakeholders of the transaction.

Early blockchain trials are promising, but it is still early days. It could be a powerful tool, but it won’t work if companies wield it blindly. They need to coordinate with their buyers, suppliers, partners, and even their competitors to build an effective, sustainable, and interoperable system. That’s the best way—perhaps the only way—that companies can eliminate illegal and unethical practices from their supply chains and, better yet, from the planet entirely.

About the Report:

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation funded “Tracing the Supply Chain: How blockchain can enable traceability in the food industry” as part of its efforts to assess the feasibility and costs associated with accelerating blockchain for traceability in beef, soy, farmed shrimp and wild capture tuna supply chains—namely, soy and beef in Latin America and aquaculture in South and Southeast Asia. The report benefited from advisors, including representatives from SAP, Microsoft, IBM, Republic Systems, Synapse Nexus, and WWF. 

This blog was originally posted on Accenture's Technology Innovation blog.

Whether it’s in your personal life or your business, without connections you won’t find success. For the seafood industry—and for all the people around the planet who eat fish or fish for a living—it’s the same story. If seafood is to be sustainable and profitable, connectivity is key.

This is important because the decline of our ocean ecosystems is now mainstream knowledge confirmed by new data and science practically every week. The latest Living Planet Report shows just how much fishing has had an impact on our oceans and the global food supply chain. Since 1950, vessels have hauled in nearly 6 billion tons of fish and invertebrates, like lobsters and mussels. That’s the equivalent weight of 9.4 million yellow school buses hauled out of the ocean every year. And if that is hard to imagine, just picture these buses lining up bumper to bumper—it would wrap around Earth three times, and then some.

While some fishing is sustainable, much is not – and some is outright illegal. Telling seafood products apart requires tracking what’s caught (or farmed), where, when, how and by whom. But for seafood, which has one of the most complex global supply chains of any food product, traceability is a significant challenge. Following fish from vessel to dinner plate cannot be done without dozens of technologies being able to smoothly interoperate. 

How interoperability works

Interoperability is a big word for a relatively simple idea—technology is most useful when different systems can communicate with one another seamlessly.

Consider the smartphone that you rely on for every day life. If you travel across state lines—or even overseas – as long as you cover the cost, your phone will work. That doesn’t just happen. The mobile industry prioritized interoperability to make that possible.

The same is true for ATM cards. Interoperability makes accessing a massive network of banks possible, which allows you to withdraw money anywhere in the world using only a sliver of plastic, getting the cash you need instantly and securely.

Where business is leading

Technology can create transparency throughout the seafood supply chain, but only if systems can communicate and share information. The key is for the seafood industry to come together around a culture of transparency and data sharing, and to establish digital data sharing standards and practices.

Fortunately, the seafood industry is actively engaged to make that possible, and business leaders are on the cusp of a breakthrough that will change the way the global seafood supply chain works.

With the help of WWF and the Global Food Traceability Center, more than fifty leading companies have come together through the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability (GDST) to draft a set of voluntary industry guidelines and create the technical standards needed to allow key information to flow easily across the sector. The GDST includes small, medium, and large businesses from North America, Europe and Asia, and represents the whole supply chain from fishers to processors to retailers. They are working not only to establish basic interoperability standards, but also to produce industry-wide best practices for the quality of information and verification practices.

This work is expected to wrap up in just over a year, but there is still time for additional companies and stakeholders to be a part of this process. Go to the GDST website to learn more or get involved.

Although it sounds wonky, the creation of a framework to enable interoperability of seafood supply chain management and information systems will be a critical moment on the timeline of technology in ocean conservation. Perhaps a Living Planet Report published a generation from now will tell the story of how a set of companies dedicated to interoperable information sharing helped open the door to greater knowledge about where our seafood comes from and how we can manage our ocean resources for long-term, sustainable health.

Ceres and WWF first launched the AgWater Challenge in 2016 to encourage better water stewardship among the world’s most influential food and beverage companies. On October 16, Target and Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) joined seven already participating companies in making stronger, more transparent commitments to better protect freshwater resources in their agricultural supply chains.

WWF caught up with Target’s Vice President of Corporate Responsibility, Jennifer Silberman, to learn more about the company’s commitments.

Last month, the world’s preeminent climate scientists issued a somber warning to the world: we have a dozen years to halve global emissions to get on a path to prevent catastrophic climate change from devastating our communities later in this century. We need only look to recent fires in California or storms in North Carolina for a taste of the dangerous future in store if we fail to take up this charge. 

What once were thought to be “tomorrow’s problems” are now today’s crises -- that’s as clear as ever in the recent United Nations report and in our daily news feeds. The global community needs to keep warming to no more than 1.5 degrees to ensure our collective safety and prosperity. To get there, we need zero net emissions by 2050 – full global decarbonization – which requires cutting current emission levels in half by 2030.

But doing so is a tall order. The transformation of our food, transportation and electric systems required to fully decarbonize our society is unprecedented. It means we’ll need to harness every tool at our disposal: technological innovation, national policy, sub-national climate action and an economy-wide price on carbon.

Perhaps what’s most critical – and in shortest supply – is radical cooperation. We need all facets of the US economy to be part of the solution, exploring common ground and collaborating where possible toward a common goal.

Listening and collaboration are values that have guided WWF’s climate work from the beginning. We have a long history of working with some of our nations’ largest energy users – including major companies and metropolitan areas – to set and scale science-based climate targets. Engaging the private sector and regional governments is essential to transforming entire markets to lower-impact business models.

Effective solutions to the climate crisis will catalyze positive transformation across the many sectors of our economy. A price on carbon and complementary national regulation are critical to getting us there in the US. While discussions around carbon pricing have percolated among economists and think tanks over the last decade, only recently has the dialogue expanded to include leading businesses in the chief sectors of the US economy and voices from across the, too-often divided, political spectrum. The Climate Leadership Council (CLC) has led just such an effort, which is why WWF is pleased to be joining this important conversation.

We need private sector stakeholders and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle to come together and meaningfully support a carbon pricing policy that meets and exceeds the targets set by the United States under the Paris Agreement. While carbon pricing is not a silver bullet, it’s a solution that merits robust discussion, creative design and honest debate. For some sectors, an appropriate carbon price has the potential to be a gamechanger. In others, like the transportation sector, carbon pricing alone likely will not be enough to bring down emissions at the pace needed to meet our national targets.

In joining CLC, WWF is not endorsing all elements of the Council’s four-part plan. We fully support the US Environmental Protection Agency’s authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate climate pollution. Specific regulations the agency has issued to address climate pollution from power plants, vehicles, and oil & gas facilities are critical to achieving the immediate emissions reductions we need now.

It’s not surprising that such a diverse group of players come to the table with some differing views. That’s okay and in fact expected when exploring grand ideas with the potential to take on the biggest crisis facing our planet. What matters most is that by tackling this together, we can help spur the kind of bold solutions the problem demands. This effort may succeed, or it may fail. But we won’t know if we choose not to sit at the table together. 

Walmart’s Project Gigaton is a supplier-focused initiative to prevent one gigaton of greenhouse gas emissions across their global supply chain over 15 years (2015-2030). Project Gigaton aims to inspire suppliers to reduce emissions across their own operations and supply chains.

There are six pillars of Project Gigaton through which suppliers can reduce emissions: energy, agriculture, forests, packaging, waste, and product use. World Wildlife Fund works with Walmart on several of these pillars to help suppliers reach their sustainability targets, and, in turn, further WWF’s conservation mission. In this blog, Marty Spitzer, Senior Director of Renewable Energy at WWF, highlights the energy pillar of Project Gigaton.

How does energy contribute to climate change and emissions outputs within a company’s supply chain?

The vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions around the world come from energy consumption. And for many companies, their supply chain emissions far exceed emissions within their personal operations. That means when looking at a company’s carbon footprint, energy emissions in the supply chain is a good place to start.

If a supplier has already set an emissions reduction goal what is the value of joining Project Gigaton?

For an individual company that’s already set a goal, what Project Gigaton provides is access to a large group of companies and an easy onramp to initiatives that will help companies achieve their goals and set more ambitious targets over time.

The Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance (REBA) is one example of an initiative available to Walmart suppliers in Project Gigaton that can help companies make it easy to buy renewable energy. Project Gigaton also encourages companies to set science based goals to reduce their emissions in line with the standards of the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi). The SBTi offers the global standard and accreditation for companies setting SBTs. Project Gigaton also has a relationship with RE100 for companies looking to set a 100% renewable energy goals. We are excited about Project Gigaton because it is a platform that is helping to drive collective action at a large scale and also directly connecting companies with the programs needed to implement their goals.

If a supplier is just starting out on their sustainability journey, what would they do to get ready to join Project Gigaton? Who can help?

The first thing that every company should do as they embark on their journey to address climate change is measure their emissions footprint and set up a baseline so they can prioritize the most important emissions and track progress over time. That can be done in house, by a consultant, with NGOs or through partnering with companies. With a baseline in hand a company can identify its greatest reduction opportunities, set goals and begin to implement them. On the Project Gigaton website, companies can sign up and add their commitments. Even if a company has not yet set up a baseline or target, they may still get started with Project Gigaton by investing in emission reduction projects and registering them with Project Gigaton. 

If a company has already joined Gigaton under the energy pillar, why sign up for other pillars?

If a company is well on its way with its energy goals, there are other ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Depending on what kind of company it is and where its footprint is most significant, looking beyond energy emissions is a tremendous opportunity to approach emissions holistically and execute larger reductions.

What resources are available to help those already committed, those looking to commit and those who feel there’s a barrier of entry for a supplier of their size.

For those who are thinking about joining, there are really no barriers to entry. Walmart encourages suppliers to look at their own operations and make a commitment that works best for them. For larger companies, there are quite a few initiatives out there that are designed for your participation and Walmart’s Sustainability Hub has many of those initiatives listed. For smaller companies, those initiatives may not feel like the right fit, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t invest in emissions reductions goals. Smaller companies can start with a commitment to simply understand where their emissions are coming from and subsequently branch out to individualized goals related to transportation, packaging, commodity-driven deforestation or whatever area will help reduce emissions within their operations. 

This blog is part of a series. Please see our additional Project Gigaton Q&As on forests,  agriculture, and food waste. You can join Project Gigaton by submitting your own emissions target, or by submitting goals that fall in one or more of the six pillars. Links to join can be found at: www.walmartsustainabilityhub.com/project-gigaton

Schreiber Foods is a Wisconsin-based dairy company with global reach. As the company has grown, they’ve built sustainability into their operations. Currently, the company is focused on setting science-based targets to limit their carbon emissions and, in doing so, is seeking to collaborate with a broad range of stakeholders, including World Wildlife Fund, to achieve those goals. They participate in Project Gigaton, Walmart’s supplier-focused initiative to prevent one gigaton of emissions across their global supply chain between 2015 and 2030, and through that are helping make shifts in the dairy grocery aisle. Colleen Geurts, Environmental & Sustainability Director at Schreiber Foods, shared why the company is committed to science-based targets, and the role animal digestion of feed plays in their company’s emissions.