World Wildlife Fund Sustainability Works

This is a call to all those scrambling to finish their strategies for the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants. Commonly known as CPRG, this EPA program will soon provide $4.6 billion to states, local governments, tribes, and territories to build and unleash ambitious plans for slashing greenhouse gas emissions and toxic air pollution.

No doubt cities and states nationwide are working in overdrive to drop their Priority Climate Action Plans, or PCAPs, by March 1, gearing up for competitive funding to bring their initiatives to life. Last December, NRDC published a call for action, making a case that adding food waste projects will make the CPRG applications more competitive. Already leading the charge are Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Oregon, throwing down the gauntlet with food waste in their playbook. New Jersey held extensive workshops and community building sessions that looked at food waste.

These climate action blueprints are going to be important. Every state and city must tackle food waste. With CPRG grants in play, there’s a rare opportunity for action since waste systems are controlled by city and state governments and typically require policy and government funding to fix. The proposals must show real climate impact and scalability.

Unfortunately, many climate proposals still fail to address the crisis of food waste, the single largest item in trash. In the US alone, growing food that is wasted generates 170 million metric tons of CO2 emissions annually, equivalent to those of 42 coal-fired power plants. And that’s not even counting methane emissions from food waste rotting in landfills. Landfills rank third in US methane emissions. Global agriculture devours 40% of the world’s land and 70% of its freshwater and emits one third of global greenhouse gas emissions.

But food waste is more than an environmental issue. World Wildlife Fund estimates that 40% of the world’s food is either lost on farms or tossed away in restaurants, grocery stores, schools, and home kitchens while 780 million of us go to bed hungry. We must revolutionize our food systems to feed more people without wrecking the planet. Cutting down on food waste can be a powerhouse for slashing methane, supporting farmers, and boosting local communities.

Thankfully, there are coalitions and state toolkits available today that can be adapted and scaled. For example, California’s Senate Bill 1383 sets methane reduction targets by curbing disposal of organic waste in landfills. It aims to ensure that edible food is recovered, food scraps are composted, compost is purchased by cities, and that inedible food can be used for industries and animal feed.

Climate action plans aren't one-size-fits-all. What works in one state might not cut it in another. But the silver lining lies in the fact that as cities and states work to address food waste, they can tap into a shared treasure trove of best practices and amplify solutions.

So last call. If your PCAP isn’t shouting “Food Waste!” I suggest you add it immediately. Of course, things like energy and transportation are important, but the picture isn’t complete without regenerative and waste-free food systems.

Pete Pearson is senior director of food waste at World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Washington, D.C., where WWF works together with the Zero Food Waste Coalition.

The US Round Table for Sustainable Poultry and Eggs (US-RSPE) gathered 65 industry leaders, experts, and stakeholders in November 2023 for their annual meeting. This pivotal conference aimed to propel the sector’s sustainability efforts by addressing critical issues within the poultry and egg supply chains and creating a collaborative atmosphere for workshopping shared challenges.

In 2018, WWF was a founding member of the US-RSPE, in part because of the need to encourage market transformation towards sustainable intensification and the need for continuous improvement at speed and scale yet seen. The roundtable has evolved to not only be the thought leader on the sector’s continuous improvement, but to be a space for leaders to collaborate and advance action on shared challenges across the pillars of people, planet, and poultry.

The meeting encouraged and facilitated rich discussion across all three pillars of poultry and egg sustainability – people, planet, and poultry. Robert Bonnie, USDA Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation shared his optimistic perspective of the industry’s progress and opportunities, followed by timely discussions on how to advance the impact each organization has associated with biosecurity and bird health, effective workforce development strategies, and poultry feed sustainability.

Executive Director of US-RSPE, Ryan Bennett, expressed enthusiasm about the outcomes of the meeting, stating, "November was a chance for us to provide the resources and knowledge for the poultry sector to go into 2024 ready to support and change the conversation about poultry sustainability."

The meeting served as a platform to set the course for the organization's growth with the release of a new strategic plan, building on the success of the member-driven metrics framework and its impact on the poultry and egg sector.

A significant achievement highlighted at the conference was the current progress on the Roundtable Framework Tool, the first-ever sustainability assessment tool designed specifically for the poultry and egg industry. With a year of implementation behind them and having met past strategic objectives, US-RSPE is aiming to scale further, supporting the sector's growth and sustainability.

As the Framework continues to be a game changer, Bennett emphasized the organization's commitment to increasing awareness and expanding support to drive positive change within the industry. The US-RSPE annual meeting has proven to be essential for those dedicated to advancing sustainable practices within the poultry and egg sector.

For our Rising Stars series, we're featuring the next generation of leaders who are working toward a more sustainable world. We recently spoke with Jess Zeuner, a Program Specialist on the Plastic & Material Science team at World Wildlife Fund to learn about her role, her inspiration, and advice for those new to the field.

The black-footed ferret is one of North America’s most endangered mammals, with only around 390 individuals left in the wild. One of the main threats to ferrets is sylvatic plague, a non-native disease against which they have no natural defenses. There is an effective vaccine – but getting it to individual ferrets is much more complex than it sounds.

The black-footed ferret is a mostly nocturnal species which makes its home in prairie dog burrows—the ferret’s primary food source. And with so few individuals spread out across such a large area, locating them is a daunting task. Technological limitations have also been challenging: the equipment used to locate ferrets and power vaccination equipment typically runs on loud, polluting gas generators, which can scare the creatures away.

Thankfully, sustainable technology solutions are catching up to these problems and bringing black-footed conservation into the 21^st century. WWF has recently partnered with Jackery to provide a more ecologically friendly method for powering ferret detection and protection equipment. Check out the video below to watch a WWF expert in action during a recent ferret survey and vaccination expedition, implementing these new high-tech solutions like solar generators, drones, and thermal cameras:

All those bottles on beaches, fashion garments in landfills, and obsolete tech devices in dumps or incinerators, didn’t have to meet this fate. They became trash because a plan wasn’t put in place at the beginning of the product lifecycle to recapture the waste and use it to make new products and materials. That’s the basic premise of a circular economy. And it takes responding to external factors, collaborating internally, and coordinating across the entire supply chain to accomplish it well.

Having worked at WWF for over eight years leading large corporate partnerships, I saw that the most sustainable companies didn’t have the biggest sustainability teams. On the contrary, these brands effectively embedded sustainability strategy, and personnel, into each functional area: marketing, supply chain, finance, etc. This is an evolution from the often grassroots, isolated sustainability teams of years prior. The strongest companies strive to meet consumers where they are, satisfy shareholders, hold one another accountable, and meet government compliance rules.

As we think about creating a truly circular economy, the level of complexity increases as do calls for new ways to work together to drive change. Internal and external coordination must be ratcheted up. There is no room for siloed thinking; change requires a systems-thinking approach to understand the interdependencies within and outside of an organization. Additional tools are needed, especially in a rapidly changing landscape with circularity expectations from regulators, shareholders, and consumers.

Governments

One significant shift currently underway involves the ways that governments are tackling one of the major challenges in circularity: plastic waste.

Governments at the local, state, and national levels are addressing plastic waste in different ways. Perhaps most significant is the Global Treaty to End Plastic Pollution, which is establishing a set of legally binding global agreements that delineate the steps and timelines necessary to change the production and consumption of plastics. Along with domestic and state legislation, initiatives like this will lead to regulatory measures. Encouraging creative thinking requires internal collaboration among stakeholders and countless others to make that shift from a voluntary to a regulatory landscape.

Companies

As Peter Drucker famously said, “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Business change as critical as circularity requires implementing a change in corporate culture. One of the best ways to shift culture is to involve cross-functional teams in designing process change. It ensures collective understanding, clarity in accountability, and personal responsibility. In addition, making a concerted effort to align incentives across functions will encourage internal behavior change, which is especially effective when linked to corporate targets. The result is more employees taking ownership in their respective roles and encouraging the right conversations at the right levels of seniority.

Consumers

Circularity presents a new way of doing business and engaging customers. It is no secret that companies track legions of customer data before, during, and immediately after a sale. But infrequently do they continue to track that product (and its disposal). And most don’t provide guidance to the end user about how to manage or reclaim a product or its materials. Plus customers can feel abandoned when they are left to dispose or recycle the products and packaging on their own, without the help of the company who produced it or the municipality who collects it. This is a missed opportunity for circularity!

Since leaving WWF, I have been working to launch the Global Impact Collective, a new consultancy that uses systems and design thinking to advance sustainability implementation at pace.

Design thinking is an important process, which sometimes requires an expert guide and facilitator to ignite innovative ideas. The process brings together crucial stakeholders who can contribute different perspectives to the same problem. And when used well, it has become a powerful tool to drive alignment, improve collaboration, and surface truly innovative solutions.

At The Collective, we bring together key teams, including product design, sourcing, packaging, marketing, sales, finance, and others – people who don’t often find themselves in the same room at the same time, focused on problem solving. This process gives organizations the space and speed to develop many creative ideas and solutions at once. And because all the stakeholders are in the room, new solutions are socialized and pre-vetted for testing.

Consumers, governments, and companies can’t solve the plastic waste problem on their own. Coordination across sectors will be critical to understanding the perspectives of different stakeholders and making sector-wide progress. But before cross-sector collaboration happens, internal coordination within your organization is key. When you bring design thinking into the equation it invites an expansive, perspective shifting mindset. It allows you to say, “how might we…”, opening the door for broader, more creative solutions that are more inclusive and engage players throughout the value chain.

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

Arizona in February is known for snowbirds, sunny skies and of course, sustainability! GreenBiz24 will take place Monday, February 12 – Wednesday, February 14. This annual conference brings together leaders from across the country and around the world to share ideas, trends, and innovations in sustainability.

As always, WWF experts will participate in workshops and panels, lead discussions and provide valuable insights to conference attendees looking to find new and innovative solutions to help their companies and organizations take their sustainability and conservation efforts to the next level.

If you’re participating in GreenBiz24, we invite you to join a workshop or session featuring WWF experts and of course come say “hello” during conference networking breaks. Here’s where you can find us:

Each year the Markets Institute at WWF releases a list of potential emerging developments that will affect the global food system and will be important for producers, consumers, the private sector, and governments to consider. The topics are identified through research, interviews, data analysis, gleanings from others, and especially through discussions with the Markets Institute’s Thought Leader Group. Here is a condensed version of our full report. As always, we welcome feedback, so please get in touch.

The oatmeal is steaming, and platters of fresh baked goods and cut fruit sit enticingly at each of the round tables. Asilomar State Park conference center, located on a beautiful nature preserve, has been serving visitors via a family style service that was as unchanged as the protected landscape around it. “We hadn’t changed our service model in over 100 years,” Head Chef David said. On this day, a group of hikers and a sorority alumni summit were the breakfast attendees.

Asilomar conference center food service is run by Aramark, who is a signatory to the Pacific Coast Food Waste Commitment (PCFWC). Under this commitment, Aramark signed on to work towards the region’s target to reduce food waste by 50% by 2030. In the United States, around 38% of food is lost or wasted, which represents 6% of our greenhouse gas emissions and lost potential revenue for businesses. In food service, the bulk of the waste is post-consumer, that is food left on people’s plates. In 2023, Aramark joined the PCFWC’s other two food service signatories, Compass and Sodexo, to launch a collaborative pilot focused on reducing post-consumer plate waste through intentional consumer messaging. Sites put up posters and table tents that called customer’s attention to the problem of food waste. This unprecedented project and collaboration between the food service companies speaks to the model of the PCFWC, which brings together food businesses to share information pre-competitively in order to accelerate the reduction of food waste. Together, these three companies make up nearly 50% of the food service market share in the United States, so the policies and strategies they choose to implement will have a big impact.

With COP28 now in our rearview mirror, it’s clear that insufficient attention has been paid to what is perhaps the most complex climate issue of all: How to reduce the environmental footprint of producing food and address the impact of climate change on future food production. To address these issues, we should consider what I call the “1% Solution,” which would add a 1% environmental service payment to the price of food exports.

Current market prices do not cover the actual costs of food production in many, if not most, parts of the world. Those costs include what are often referred to as social and environmental externalities—unacceptable impacts like deforestation and conversion, soil erosion and degradation, poor livelihoods for farmers and farm workers, malnutrition and insufficient food.

Most governments can’t afford the fundamental changes to their food systems necessary for more sustainable food production, even as global population and food consumption continue to increase. Global trade, meanwhile, has doubled every 20 years, from 6% of global production in 1980 to 30% in 2020. What if we tapped into that explosive growth in trade to cover the cost of sustainability?

Infrastructure, permitting, and tracking systems key to success

On December 22, 2023, the U.S. Department of the Treasury released proposed rulemaking for the clean hydrogen production tax credit under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The IRA offers a production tax credit of up to $3 per kg of hydrogen produced based on carbon intensity. Electrolytic hydrogen, produced by using electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, could be eligible for the highest-level tax credit if zero-carbon electricity (i.e. electricity produced from renewable sources or by nuclear power) is used. The average cost to produce green hydrogen, renewable-based electrolytic hydrogen, before the tax credit is approximately $5-6/kg. This means that the tax credit has the potential to significantly lower the production cost of green hydrogen.

Green hydrogen is a versatile and critical decarbonization solution for hard-to-electrify sectors like heavy industries (e.g. chemical and steel) and long-haul heavy-duty transportation. It could also play an important role in enhancing grid resilience and reducing renewable curtailment in the power sector.

The main issues to look for in the proposed guidance are the “three pillars” related to the electricity used to produce hydrogen: temporal matching, incrementality, and deliverability. Together these create a framework environmental groups and many in the hydrogen industry have advocated for to ensure that green hydrogen delivers genuine climate benefits and contributes to greening the electric grid. The hydrogen industry has been anxiously awaiting detailed guidance as it will have significant implications for their project siting, design, and profitability.