World Wildlife Fund Sustainability Works

Better business for a better Earth

At World Wildlife Fund, we believe deeply in the private sector’s ability to drive positive environmental change. WWF Sustainability Works is a forum for discussion around strategies, commitments, technologies and more that will help businesses achieve conservation goals that are good for the planet and their bottom lines. Follow WWF Sustainability Works on twitter at @WWFBetterBiz.

filtered by category: Sustainable Business

  • Date: 09 February 2023

As fans from all over the world head to Arizona this weekend for football’s big event, thousands of sustainability professionals won’t be far behind. Greenbiz23 – an annual event for sustainability leaders – kicks off on Tuesday, February 14. Once again, WWF experts from across the organization will lead discussions, provide insights, and connect with like-minded individuals, looking to achieve sustainability solutions at a scale and speed that matters.

If you’re participating in GreenBiz23, we invite you to join an event or session featuring WWF experts and of course come say “hello” during conference networking breaks. Here’s where you can find us:

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  • Date: 20 December 2022

If you’re baking this holiday season, you’re likely doing the best you can to make the most of your ingredients and waste less. But it’s not just up to consumers to do their part; minimizing food waste must be a priority throughout the entire supply chain. And some companies are already rising to that challenge.

Bob’s Red Mill partnered with the Pacific Waste Food Waste Commitment, along with TripleWin Advisory, to develop an employee engagement campaign to reduce food waste in their whole grain milling and packaging facility in Milwaukie, Oregon. The details of the campaign and its results are available in a new case study here.

We caught up with Julia Person, Sustainability Manager at Bob’s Red Mill, to discuss lessons from the campaign and how and why the company is working to address food waste.

Julia Person stands in front of Bob's Red Mill

Julia Person, Sustainability Manager at Bob's Red Mill

Why is addressing food waste a priority for Bob’s Red Mill?

We’re proud to be the first manufacturer to sign onto the Pacific Coast Food Waste Commitment to collaboratively cut food waste in half by 2030, and we hope to lead the way for other companies in the Pacific Northwest. This issue is a priority for two different reasons: we know preventing food waste can help fight climate change and stop hunger, and it also makes our business more efficient and profitable. As an employee-owned company, our profits are shared with the entire team. That’s a powerful incentive for us all to work together to prevent food waste. But it’s also a natural outgrowth of our core values of Respect, Teamwork, Accountability and Determination.

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  • Date: 07 December 2022

The future of the plastic waste crisis will be determined by the actions the world takes today to address it. Some of the world’s largest brands—and users of single-use plastic—have gotten started, by setting time-bound commitments to reduce their plastic waste footprints. If met, many of these targets can help prevent upwards of 50M metric tons of plastic waste by 2030*.

It's crucial, for both people and the planet, that these companies succeed. WWF launched ReSource: Plastic in 2019 with the purpose of closing the “how” gap for success, equipping companies with the latest data and insights they need to take actions that maximize the potential for impact. Through an innovative measurement framework, ReSource helps companies translate their ambitious commitments into meaningful, measurable progress on plastic waste reduction.

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  • Date: 15 November 2022
  • Author: Yvette Cabrera (NRDC) and Pete Pearson (WWF)

COP27 (the 27th meeting of the Conference of Parties to the international climate convention) is underway and we face the stark realization that we are missing our climate targets globally.

But there is hope. Food loss and waste (FLW) are significant contributors to human-caused greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, responsible for 8-10% of emissions globally. Reducing FLW alone can cut methane emissions by up to 15%, which is half of the Global Methane Pledge of 30% reduction by 2030. To drive down emissions and keep global warming below the critical 1.5ºC, food loss and waste reduction is a top climate solution that must be accounted for in countries’ Nationally Determined Commitments (NDCs) towards the Paris Climate Agreement.


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  • Date: 15 November 2022

On America Recycles Day 2020, the United States announced a target recycling rate of 50% by 2030. It’s an impressive goal, and there’s a lot of work to be done to get there. Just two years into that goal, not enough progress has been made. With about 22,000 municipalities managing their own recycling systems, we need national ambition and consistent action to change the way we recycle.

That’s why OneSource Coalition is putting Extended Producer Responsibility—also known as EPR—at the forefront of today's America Recycles Day 2022.

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  • Date: 07 November 2022
  • Author: Linda K. Walker, Senior Director, Corporate Engagement, Forests, WWF

WWF and HP accelerate forest protection, management and restoration in key landscapes in Australia, Brazil and Peru

As a part of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and HP Inc.’s expanded forest conservation partnership to help protect, restore and improve the management of nearly 1 million acres of forest, our collaboration will accelerate forest protection and restoration efforts in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, a global biodiversity hot spot and home to some of the last jaguar populations on Earth. We will also accelerate conservation efforts in two new landscapes: Madre de Dios in Peru, near the headwaters of the Amazon River basin, and the forests of eastern Australia, home to endangered koalas and other species that have been severely impacted by recent wildfires. Work in these three critical landscapes totals nearly 450,000 acres (182,000 hectares).

WWF and HP’s approach recognizes the paramount importance of protecting and better managing existing forests, then restoring forests that have been lost. Our work is grounded in a commitment to put people first, ensuring that each effort prioritizes Indigenous people and community engagement, social safeguards, transparency, and equitable benefits. By doing so, we are not only ensuring a future for forests but also for those who depend on them.

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  • Date: 13 October 2022
  • Author: Sheila Bonini, Senior Vice President, Private Sector Engagement

Every two years WWF releases the Living Planet Report, our flagship publication chronicling biodiversity trends. And the numbers are shocking. WWF’s 2022 Living Planet Index shows an average 69% plunge in global vertebrate species populations - mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish - between 1970 and 2018. Most alarming is that monitored freshwater populations have dropped by an average of 83%.

While these statistics point to a dire situation, we need to take this as an alarm bell, not a death knell. We are capable of reversing biodiversity loss to secure a nature-positive world. And there are plenty of actors from all sectors helping to lead the way.

In that spirit of hope, we asked some of our corporate partners to share their thoughts about why this issue is important to them and how they are working to reverse these trends.

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  • Date: 29 September 2022
  • Author: Christine Black, The Coca-Cola Company & Mary Jo Snavely, WWF

In 2007, The Coca-Cola Company and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) teamed up to tackle the goal of helping ensure access to quality water for communities, nature and businesses around the world. Our work focused initially on securing 11 priority freshwater basins—from the Mesoamerican Reef in Central America and Yangtze River in China to the Danube River in Europe, Rio Conchos in Mexico and Umzimvubu River in South Africa—partnering in more than 50 countries with local cooperation across all Coca-Cola operating units worldwide. Together, we have helped improve water security in some of the world’s most water-stressed areas.

Recognizing the opportunity to do more for both our planet and communities, we expanded the scope of our collaboration to improve environmental performance across the global Coca-Cola supply chain. We launched projects to address critical global challenges: reimagining how Coca-Cola could source agricultural ingredients, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transform its packaging to reduce plastic waste. What seemed like a novel experiment at the time evolved into the gold standard for corporate/NGO partnerships by catalyzing collective action with governments, local communities and other businesses.

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  • Date: 19 September 2022

The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act is a bold step towards rapidly reducing U.S. emissions and limiting global warming, at a time when we really need to make swift strides towards our climate goals. Although the legislation doesn’t go quite far enough, it remains the biggest investment that the United States has ever made in clean energy and decarbonizing our economy.

To rapidly decarbonize and halve U.S. emissions by 2030, which is the goal that allows us to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, we need leadership at every level of the economy. Small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), which represent a significant amount of job creation and economic activity in the U.S. are already taking steps to address climate change and build resilient business futures by reducing their emissions.

Alone, the impact of one small business appears minimal compared to the global climate challenge, especially next to the activity of the largest corporations and heaviest polluters. But together, SMEs make up 90% of businesses worldwide, affect the livelihoods of over two billion people, and drive innovation that reaches the biggest business leaders. That’s a force to be reckoned with.

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  • Date: 03 August 2022
  • Author: Sheila Bonini, Senior Vice President, Private Sector Engagement

The recent news of a deal on a Congressional budget reconciliation package that includes unprecedented federal investment focused on climate change and clean energy is an opportunity that cannot be missed.

To understand the urgency around addressing the climate crisis, look no further than the frequent and extreme storms and unprecedent heatwaves that we are experiencing this summer due in part to human-caused global warming. These past few months have been a window into the more dire impacts of climate change we can expect unless we limit warming to 1.5° C (2.7° F) according to a recent report by the United Nations.

Leading businesses are doing their part to address climate change by setting ambitious climate goals and tackling their own emissions. In fact, more than five dozen of the U.S. Fortune 500 companies have set climate goals approved by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). These are great first steps towards the global goal of halving emissions by 2030, but we need leadership from Washington to incentivize clean energy investment and supply chain decarbonization to achieve climate mitigation at scale.

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