Friday, March 25, 2005

Batting 'zero' - and that's a good thing Home town advantage: The Berkeley City Council 'made environmental history' when the Council officially - and unanimously - established one of the nation's first Zero Waste Goals, adopting a 75% waste reduction goal for 2010, and establishes a Zero Waste Goal for 2020. From the press release: Zero Waste is a concept that couples aggressive resource recovery with industrial redesign to eliminate the very concept of waste. 'If it can't be reused, rebuilt, refurbished, reconfigured, recycled, or composted, then it needs to be redesigned - or removed from production all together,' said Dan Knapp, founder and owner of Urban Ore, Berkeley's premier reuse retailer. 'In the 1980's when Berkeley set a goal of reducing waste by 50%, everyone said it couldn't be done', said Mayor Tom Bates who sponsored the resolution, 'Not only did we prove them wrong, but less than a decade later the State of California set that goal for all counties. I am confident that we will not only meet our Zero Waste goal, but give a boost to innovative waste reduction policy across the nation.' 10:21:31 AM    comment []  trackback []

Business and 'Sustainability': Risk, fiduciary responsibility, and the laws of nature I 'll be speaking at The Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco (which I'm told is the nation's oldest  and largest public affairs forum) on April 6. Please share this with your list, and forward to your favorite business executive! Business and 'Sustainability': Risk, fiduciary responsibility, and the laws of nature Gil Friend, President and CEO, Natural Logic Inc Wednesday April 6, 2005. Reception 6:00pm. Program 6:30pm. Details & reservations   Most companies consider 'environmental' concerns peripheral and expensive. They're wrong. Even the companies that pay the most attention to ecological principles and performance aren't doing nearly enough. That poses significant business risk -- and offers substantial economic opportunity -- for businesses and national economies. I'll talk about: - Why we're doing so much better than you might think - How leading businesses and investors are discovering profit, competitive advantage - and 'regulatory insulation' - by looking through an ecological lens. - Why the best - that any of them is doing - is still nowhere near good enough. - Why that poses significant risk, and offers substantial opportunity, for businesses, and national economies. - Why Boards of Directors, CEOs, and CFOs - not environmentalists - should be leading the sustainability revolution. - And how they can. Some shameless self-promotion, from the blurb, (for those of you who don't know me): Tomorrow magazine has called Gil Friend 'one of the country's leading environmental management consultants - a real expert who combines theoretical sophistication with hands-on, in-the-trenches know-how.' He has invested 30 years in dismantling the popular misconception - held by business executives and environmental activists alike - that we have to choose between financial performance and environmental responsibility. 9:46:23 AM    comment []  trackback []