For decades, General Motors cultivated a “man’s world” image for its cars and trucks. The Chevy Silverado pickup is still aimed at rugged outdoorsmen and construction businesses. And let’s not forget the lumbering Hummer, based on the Humvee military vehicle.

Who could have imagined that, by 2021, GM would have more women on its board than any other carmaker, not to mention most other businesses?

Mary Barra, an electrical engineer, broke the mould when she became chairman and CEO seven years ago. Women now occupy seven of GM’s 13 board seats. The latest appointee, announced in March, was Meg Whitman, Hewlett-Packard’s former CEO. “Our diverse board of directors is a competitive advantage for GM as we work to deliver a better, safer and more sustainable world,” Barra noted.

Pressure to diversify corporate boards has grown in recent years in line with the realization that a business is unlikely to reach its full potential unless its leadership mirrors its employees, customers and suppliers. In a review of U.S. initial public offerings over four years, Goldman Sachs concluded that companies with at least one female director performed significantly better than those with none.

Nasdaq proposed last December that at least two members of every listed company’s board not be straight white men. In most cases, one must be a woman, the other a member of an under-represented minority or LGBTQ.

Even so, few companies have so far matched GM’s record. Women make up fewer than half the directors at 95% of companies in the Russell 3000 Index, which tracks the 3,000 largest U.S.-traded stocks by market value, according to advocacy group 50/50 Women on Boards.

Despite GM’s standout record on board diversity, the carmaker failed to make JUST Capital’s latest list of American companies leading the way for women in the workplace. JUST’s rankings track not only board gender diversity but also pay gaps, paid parental leave, backup dependent care, and paid time off or vacation policies. Of 928 companies surveyed, only five checked all the boxes: Bank of America, Etsy, General Mills, Hewlett-Packard and Starbucks.

E-commerce website Etsy came out on top. Women make up half of its board, and a third of its engineers are women, double the industry average. It offers generous paid parental leave and six months of paid leave for caregivers and adoptive parents. Those seven women on GM’s board clearly still have some work to do.

Zero: Chevron

Follow U.S. energy giant Chevron on Twitter and you’ll notice that it likes to portray itself as an ardent fighter for the environment. “Innovation is everything,” it trumpeted on April 5. “Find out how we’re investing in technologies that help address climate change.” Three days earlier, the company boasted about its support for a price on carbon.

Yet those tweets are a far cry from the way Chevron runs its business, judging by a groundbreaking complaint lodged with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in March: Earthworks, Greenpeace and Global Witness accused the company of “greenwashing” – spending more time and money crowing about its environmentally friendly products and practices than doing the work to make them so.

The complaint marks the first time that activists have asked the FTC to apply its Green Guides against a fossil fuel company. The guides, first issued in 1992 and revised several times, seek to help marketers ensure that their claims are true and substantiated.

The groups allege that “for too long corporations like Chevron and other oil majors have taken advantage of loose or vague rules regarding advertising and other interactions with consumers, and our coalition seeks to hold them to account in order to ensure that they cannot lie to the public without consequence again.”

They cite a study by the Climate Accountability Institute, which identifies Chevron as the world’s second-biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, after oil giant Saudi Aramco. According to the study, Chevron and three other investor-owned companies – ExxonMobil, BP and Royal Dutch Shell – have spewed out more than 10% of all carbon emissions since 1965.

A 2019 report by InfluenceMap estimated that Chevron and four other publicly traded oil and gas producers spend almost US$200 million a year lobbying to delay, dilute or block government policies aimed at tackling climate change. As an example, the report cites Chevron and BP’s contributions to a campaign that successfully blocked the imposition of a carbon tax in Washington State.

Edward Collins, the report’s author, told The Guardian: “Oil majors’ climate branding sounds increasingly hollow and their credibility is on the line. They publicly support climate action while lobbying against binding policy. They advocate low-carbon solutions but such investments are dwarfed by spending on expanding their fossil fuel business.”

Chevron insists it is working with governments to design “balanced and transparent” policies that reduce GHGs and address environmental goals while ensuring that consumers have access to affordable, reliable and ever-cleaner energy. Now let’s see what the FTC says.

The post Heroes and Zeros: Etsy versus Chevron appeared first on Corporate Knights.

To limit the long-term rise in global temperatures to 1.5°C, it said governments and industry must wean themselves off fossil fuels ASAP, push for energy efficiency in all walks of life, and invest trillions in renewable energy.

Coming from the Paris-based IEA, an intergovernmental body founded in the wake of the 1973/74 OPEC oil embargo to assure global energy supply, the report turned heads. Overseen by the energy ministers of 30 major economies, the IEA has generally defended fossil-fuel interests. But with most countries missing their emission-reduction targets and catastrophe looming, the IEA finally picked a side.

“This gap between rhetoric and action needs to close,” said IEA executive director Fatih Birol. “Doing so requires nothing short of a total transformation of the energy systems that underpin our economies.”

Nine days later, on May 26, calls to close that gap came fast and furious. Chevron shareholders voted 61% in favour of an activist proposal asking the oil company to cut its total greenhouse gas emissions, including those coming out of customers’ tailpipes, emissions known as Scope 3.

That same day, at least two ExxonMobil board members were unseated in a bid to, as Reuters put it, “force the company’s leadership to reckon with the risk of failing to adjust its business strategy to match global efforts to combat climate change.”

Eli Kasargod-Staub, the executive director of Majority Action, a shareholder group, told The Guardian, “For the first time in history, responsible shareholders have breached the walls protecting recalcitrant boards of directors.”

Also that day, a Dutch court ordered Shell to reduce its GHGs by 45% by 2030, based on 2019 levels, after determining that Shell’s climate plans were inadequate. Pundits began calling it Black Wednesday and ‘a day of reckoning’ for Big Oil as courtrooms and boardrooms turned on industry.

“For the first time in history, responsible shareholders have breached the walls protecting recalcitrant boards of directors.”

-Eli Kasargod-Staub, executive director of Majority Action

“This is a monumental victory for our planet, for our children and a big leap towards a livable future for everyone,” said Donald Pols, director of Friends of the Earth Netherlands.

Though Royal Dutch Shell said it will appeal the ruling, more good news was announced May 26: Canada’s largest oil company, Suncor, committed to going net-zero by 2050, adding it would slash emissions across its value chain by a third by 2030.

Luckily, the IEA’s report, Net Zero by 2050, “shows that there are still pathways to reach net-zero by 2050,” said Birol. He called the IEA’s prescribed course “the most technically feasible, cost‐effective and socially acceptable. Even so, that pathway remains narrow and extremely challenging, requiring all stakeholders – governments, businesses, investors and citizens – to take action this year and every year after.”

The report sets out 400 milestones necessary to achieve net-zero by 2050. Most important: ensuring that developing economies receive financing and technological aid to build their energy systems equitably and sustainably. Birol insists that a world powered by clean electricity means huge opportunities, “with the potential to create millions of new jobs and boost economic growth.”

“Big Oil and Gas has just lost a very powerful shield,” summed up David Tong, a senior campaigner with Washington, D.C.’s Oil Change International.

But the IEA’s shift doesn’t mean the path to 2050 will be smooth. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers dismissed the report as “unrealistic.” Alberta Energy Minister Sonya Savage predicted Alberta’s fossil-fuel sector “will continue to grow and thrive.” Large emitting countries such as Japan, Australia and the Philippines bucked the proposed ban on new development, claiming natural gas, oil and in some cases even coal still have roles to play.

It doesn’t help that the IEA has been sending out mixed messages. Weeks after the release, as OilPrice.com pointed out, “the agency called on OPEC+ to increase production as demand for oil rebounded faster and stronger than the agency had apparently expected.” By July, benchmark crude oil prices had surged to multi-year highs after a breakdown in negotiations with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

In its July oil market report, the IEA cautioned  that “while prices at these levels could increase the pace of electrification of the transport sector and help accelerate energy transitions, they could also put a drag on the economic recovery.” It added, “Volatility does not help ensure orderly and secure energy transitions.”

Meanwhile, back in Canada, oil industry advocates continue to suggest that the sector should be positioning itself to capitalize on the next oil boom. However, in a report released last month, Jeffrey Craig of Veritas Investment Research said, “Given the pressure to both cut emissions and invest in renewable energy, we expect the super majors to shed mostly upstream oil and gas assets [in the oil sands] to fund investments into renewables.”

Right on cue, when BP slashed its long-term oil price outlook in late June, the company’s oil sands investments were rendered “worthless,” Reuters reports. The fate of those stranded assets remains to be seen.

South of the border, oil majors are feeling the heat this week as Democratic senators proposed a climate pollution tax that could cost Exxon, Chevron and other big emitters billions annually while establishing a “Polluters Pay Climate Fund.” The draft bill could see US$500 billion raised over 10 years to be used toward investments in communities facing fossil-fuel-driven climate impacts, including extreme flooding, rising sea levels and a more severe wildfire season.

Corporate Knights director of research Ralph Torrie points out that “the smart money and long-game investors” have been pivoting from fossils to renewables for years. “If the IEA can get out in front of that parade, it can only help.” Torrie suggests that the right question to be asking is not “What will happen?” but “What must happen?” if we are to avert truly dangerous climate change.

While new technologies may help power the transition, he credits the agency for seeing energy efficiency as a resource: “We must thread the eye of a needle here, and there is only time now for one attempt at it.”

A version of this story appeared in the Summer Issue of Corporate Knights magazine.

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Nitrogen – which is usually combined with two other fertilizer macronutrients, phosphorous and potassium, and then sold as NPK – also exacerbates climate change. The world’s most widely used chemical fertilizer, at 100 million tonnes per year globally, synthetic nitrogen leaches into ground water as nitrates, which enter the atmosphere as the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide. N2O has 300 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide. To mitigate such effects, Ottawa has proposed a target of reducing agricultural nitrogen emissions by 30%, while new technologies and biofertilizers are germinating multibillion-dollar markets.

One of the bright new sprouts is Lucent Biosciences, a biotechnology start-up in Coquitlam, B.C. Five years ago, it began experimenting with solutions to mitigate soil degradation and nutritional decline caused by NPK. With $5 million in development funding, Lucent created Soileos, a biofertilizer that binds zinc, iron, boron and manganese to cellulose derived from waste pea, lentil, rice, coconut and corn husks, thereby preventing these micronutrients from leaching into the soil.

A patented technology makes the micronutrients bioavailable, meaning that plants’ needs determine the rate of release, says Lucent CEO Michael Riedijk. Adding cellulose also enriches dirt by enhancing the microbial biomass, similar to regenerative agriculture practices, says Lucent co-founder and vice-president Jose Godoy Toku. “Soileos is unique because it improves soil health.”

Soileos isn’t a replacement for macronutrient NPK  chemical fertilizers but a complement that reduces nitrogen use, says Riedijk. It can also be applied alone or used with manure on regenerative farms, Godoy Toku says. Godoy Toku expects the product will be approved for use on certified organic farms by next year.

Indiscriminate use of NPK has caused soil infertility and led to higher soil salinity and alkalinity (when the pH rises above the optimum 6.0 to 7.0 to levels as high as 10). In Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, a lack of micronutrients is linked to growth and learning-development problems in children, Riedijk says. “Crops today don’t have the same nutrient content they had 30 or 40 years ago. Generally, the iron content of crops has dropped 20% in the past few decades.”

Soileos is undergoing testing in 40 field trials of eight hectares each across Canada and the United States. Lucent, which works with Simon Fraser University’s 4D LABS, a materials science research institute, has already undertaken two years of field testing, growing 150,000 plants in 32 trials and analyzing 5,000 tissue samples. The data are striking. Corn fertilized with Soileos showed an average yield increase of 12%, tomatoes 26% and lettuce 30%. One trial, conducted with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, boosted cabbage yield by 50%.

Soileos is available commercially, with one tonne a day produced at the Coquitlam plant. The company aims to produce 10 tonnes a day within the next 12 to 18 months, eventually reaching 100 tonnes. Lucent hopes to test Soileos in Africa in 2022 to assess its effect on alkaline soils.

The climate crisis is exacerbated by decades of excessive nitrogen use. It is imperative that alternatives be developed to reduce environmental impacts and enhance crop yields to feed a growing number of hungry people around the globe.

Roberta Staley is a Vancouver-based author, magazine editor and writer, and documentary filmmaker.

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But can they do it again? A new study is urging the healthcare sector to undertake another life-saving mission: leading the charge against the climate crisis. According to the report, issued by global advocacy organization Health Care Without Harm (HCWH), “The entire sector must mobilize and transform itself to help protect public and planetary health from climate change.”

As HCWH founder and president Gary Cohen said in introducing the report, “You can’t have healthy people on a sick planet.”

The first step in the Global Road Map for Health Care Decarbonization is for health systems to acknowledge the damage they do. Healthcare generates 10% of the global economy and produces 4.4% of net global emissions. If this sector were a country, the report says, “it would be the fifth-largest climate polluter on the planet.”

Decarbonizing healthcare would be a long, hard road – as it’ll be for every industry. But imagine if hospitals and health systems invested the same effort and conviction in this struggle that they’ve shown in beating back COVID. In fact, this is how HCWH believes healthcare’s climate battle should start: with every national government declaring that the climate crisis constitutes a health emergency, requiring “concerted national and global action.”

Record-breaking temperatures in Western Canada have already killed hundreds of Canadians this year and the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment cautions that strokes, heart disease, cancer and respiratory diseases are all worsened by air pollution created by wildfires. A 2020 study by Health Canada concluded that “hundreds to thousands of premature deaths per year [are] attributable to wildfire particulate matter” in Canada.

By reframing climate as a health emergency, HCWH hopes health professionals will bring new energy and credibility to the lagging carbon wars. An Ipsos poll in March showed that healthcare workers (at 69%) and doctors (at 67%) are Americans’ most trusted professionals, ranking well ahead of teachers and the armed forces (61%), scientists (60%), the police (49%), clergy and judges (41% each) and bankers (34%). If health officials can put whole countries on lockdown, they may also be able to sell the behavioural changes required in zero-carbon society.

“You can’t have healthy people on a sick planet.”
— Gary Cohen, founder and president, Health Care Without Harm

First, healthcare must clean up its act. “Prevention, preparedness, and equity are paramount,” warns the report. “Health care must become climate-smart, charting a course toward zero emissions that is inextricably linked with building resilience and meeting global health goals. Just as the pandemic has exposed the fragility and inequities of social safety nets, the sustainability struggle must consider ‘health equity.’” It continues: “Covid-19 response and recovery also provides an opportunity to build back better and invest in climate-smart (resilient and zero emissions) health care as a disaster preparedness and prevention strategy.”

HCWH’s “road map” proposes actions that would reduce total healthcare emissions between 2014 and 2050 by 4.8 gigatons of carbon dioxide. To put this win in perspective, say the authors, “this cumulative reduction is equivalent to the entire world economy’s global greenhouse gas emissions in 2017.”

How does the healthcare sector pull off this transformation? The report prescribes all-out sectoral, multi-industry and global collaboration: “Health care delivery, facilities, and operations, the sector’s supply chain, and the broader economy must all transition from fossil fuels to clean, renewable, healthy energy.” HCWH sees three high-impact pathways to decarbonizing healthcare, starting with decarbonizing healthcare delivery, facilities and operations; using healthcare’s procurement clout to lead the decarbonization of its supply chains, which account for 70% of the sector’s total emissions; and ensuring that health professionals advocate for society-wide decarbonization as a way of reducing the burden of disease.

This is the silver lining that will make all this work worthwhile, the authors note. “Health care climate solutions can be more cost-effective than business as usual. Climate-smart solutions can save health care systems operating costs and reduce countries’ healthcare costs by reducing the burden of disease caused by pollution.”

Prognosis: With society definitely feeling under the weather, decarbonizing healthcare could be just what the doctor ordered.

A version of this story appeared in the Summer Issue of Corporate Knights magazine.

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A new study from New York University says top international food producers are lagging behind industries that are actively trying to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Worse, the researchers say, U.S.-based agro-giants have spent hundreds of millions campaigning against climate action and obscuring the role meat and dairy play in damaging the planet.

It’s enough to make you switch to bean burgers.

The study, The Climate Responsibilities of Industrial Meat and Dairy Producers, in the journal Climatic Change, contends that animal agriculture generates 14.5% of all human-caused GHG emissions. The researchers examined the records of 35 major producers and found that only five, as of last summer, had joined other big emitters in pledging to reach net-zero by 2050.

The researchers also found that even the industry’s ESG leaders – which include Nestlé and Danone – generally fell short, and mainly addressed only their energy consumption. They tended to ignore emissions from their suppliers and glossed over the gritty reality that their industry runs on methane emitted by animal digestion, which is 80 times more potent than carbon in trapping heat in the atmosphere.

Many consumers know about the propaganda campaigns waged by the mining and fossil-fuel industries to dodge responsibility for climate change. The NYU researchers – Oliver Lazarus, Sonali McDermid and Jennifer Jacquet – conducted the first scholarly investigation into how 10 U.S. meat and dairy giants influence regulators and the public. They concluded that between 2000 and 2020, Big Ag (meat and dairy and other sectors) invested US$750 million in supporting political candidates. (That’s only slightly less than the energy industry’s comparable spend: US$1 billion.)

The study found that all 10 companies engaged in research that minimizes the link between animal agriculture and climate change. Three firms – Tyson, Cargill and Smithfield – went even further, supporting “countermovement organizations” or similar groups that play down the link between agriculture and climate change.

The researchers hope their revelations about the politics of bacon and eggs will help the meat and dairy industry, regulators and environmental reformers find common ground to establish new levels of reporting and accountability. In the absence of significant climate action, the World Resources Institute warns that total agricultural emissions could increase 58% by 2050 – a sizzling scenario that will only ensure we’re all done like dinner.

The post Big Meat pulls from Big Oil’s playbook to delay climate action appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Benevity began above a shawarma shop in 2008. Former CEO Bryan de Lottinville launched the firm to boost companies’ charitable contributions by helping them see social purpose as an investment, not a handout. Today, Benevity helps companies increase employee and customer engagement with a “gamified” platform that makes it easy and fun for firms, staff and clients to pursue their interests in donating to charity, volunteering, grant-making or taking positive social action. It then tracks the impact of their contributions. Benevity says companies that engage their people in social missions enjoy 57% lower employee turnover – and that saves major clients such as Microsoft, Apple, Telus, Kroger and Visa tens of millions of dollars a year.

With more than 650 employees and two million users, Benevity has processed donations worth more than $7 billion to 300,000 global charities. In December, Benevity became a rare Canadian “unicorn” – a company worth more than $1 billion – with its purchase by London-based private-equity firm HG Capital. Two months later, HG brought in some new partners, including two “strategic minority investors”: Bono and Skoll’s Rise Fund, and U.K.-based Generation, an impact-investment firm cofounded by Al Gore.

About the same time, de Lottinville stepped down as CEO. He was replaced by Benevity’s chief financial officer, Kelly Schmitt – a welcome sign that the new owners want current management to lead the company forward. And that’s important, because the plague year 2020 made many organizations value shared purpose. “It was the year that cemented the new role of business as a source of trust, hope, connection and empathy,” says Benevity’s chief impact officer, Sona Khosla. Now, she says, organizations have to develop systems to support those ideals. That means Benevity is expecting another big growth year; it plans to hire 300 new employees.

Khosla is also overseeing a new research arm, Benevity Impact Labs, which monitors industry trends, collects data and explores new issues, such as mental health, to help organizations better understand and measure social action. “We want people to support causes they care about, when they want to,” she says. “We’re using capitalism for all it can do.”

Benevity sees vast opportunities to expand by being a force for good. Beyond “HR,” it is helping clients embed purpose in their product and marketing experiences. The company offers workbooks and toolkits to help companies lean into events such as Pride or Earth Day, and it’s now helping clients evolve “corporate social responsibility” initiatives into strategic ESG (environmental, social and governance) programs. At the far end of the supply chain, Benevity is increasingly doing the cheque-processing for small charities, relieving corporations of a frustrating chore while helping struggling non-profits get paid sooner.

Bono hasn’t stopped by Benevity’s offices on the banks of the Bow River. Al Gore hasn’t dropped in for coffee. But leaders from Generation and Rise now sit on Benevity’s board, so the new advisors seem serious about helping. And why not? As Khosla says, most companies with ESG programs can measure their governance and environmental progress – but have no clue how to measure social impact. (Many charity professionals still refer to “the giving glow.”) Benevity is leading the race to promote, quantify and normalize goodness. If that doesn’t deserve A-list support, what does?

The post Calgary’s billion-dollar Benevity bets that good deeds are their own reward appeared first on Corporate Knights.

It was quite a PR comeback, considering BlackRock had been getting skewered in the press after its former head of sustainable investing, Tariq Fancy, penned a handful of damning op-eds calling most sustainable investing “PR spin” and a “deadline distraction” from climate change.

Nevertheless, the new BlackRock U.S. Carbon Transition Readiness ETF arrived to much praise. Its stated approach: investing in large- and mid-cap companies that “BlackRock believes are better positioned to benefit from the transition to a low-carbon economy.” Of course, believing a company is well positioned to benefit from the transition is one thing; seeing them actually lead the transition is another.

The fund has holdings in more than a dozen laggard energy companies, with less than 20% of near-term investment in the energy transition (see sidebar). Eight of its holdings have been actively blocking climate policies. It’s not just BlackRock, of course. A number of funds marketed as sustainable, low-carbon or ESG-aligned are heavily invested in many of the very same companies you’d see in conventional funds. Usually lots of Big Tech (Facebook, Apple, Google owners Alphabet) and a good lacing of Big Oil.

The Carbon Transition Readiness funds put a different spin on things. As the Financial Times noted, “Rather than exclude companies that rate poorly on climate-related metrics, the new ETFs take an underlying equity index – the Russell 1000 and MSCI All World ex-US index, respectively – and assign portfolio weightings that reflect a carbon transition readiness score.” In practical terms, that presumably means the fund chose to sink only US$2.7 million into Exxon but put $4.5 million into Chevron and $10 million into Kinder Morgan because of varying carbon transition scores.

Said BlackRock’s CEO, Larry Fink, “These funds will enable investors to understand which companies are transitioning faster than others.” Sorry, Larry, but did investors actually need these funds to understand that Exxon and Chevron are transitioning at a glacial pace?

“If this ETF is really named ‘Carbon Transition Readiness’ then I have to ask what we are transitioning to and what we are getting ready for?” said As You Sow CEO Andrew Behar. “Based on our analysis, this ETF ignores Larry Fink’s statement, ‘climate risk is investing risk,’ while doubling down on business as usual.”

We asked Tim Nash, founder of Good Investing, for his take. “Since these ETFs launched with so much money already committed, this is likely an active fund created for institutions who were facing pressure to lower their carbon risk exposure and wanted to take a small step in the right direction. However, these ETFs won’t go far enough for most activist investors.” For those looking to divest from fossil fuels, Nash suggests AGF Global Sustainable Growth Equity ETF or iShares ESG Equity ETF Portfolio.

Bottom line: look before you leap.

Fund spotlight:
BlackRock U.S. Carbon Transition Readiness ETF
What’s promised: This ETF invests in large- and mid-capitalization U.S. equity securities “tilting towards those that BlackRock believes are better positioned to benefit from the transition to a low-carbon economy.”

What’s inside: The fund is dominated by all the standard Big Tech firms found in conventional ETF holdings: Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook, the last two of which have been booted off the Corporate Knights Global 100 index because of red-flagged illegal activity. In fact, more than a quarter of this fund’s holdings trip our red-flag alarms, including manufacturers of harmful pesticides, major weapons contractors (think Honeywell and Raytheon) and Big Pharma laggards failing on offering fair access to medicines. Since this is a low-carbon transition fund, let’s break down which holdings trigger Corporate Knights climate-related flags:

• 14 energy companies with less
than 20% of their near-term investment in the energy transition, including Exxon, Chevron, Kinder Morgan and ConocoPhillips.
• 8 climate-policy-blocking companies,
including Berkshire Hathaway, Goldman Sachs and Valero, as well as a few energy companies mentioned above.
• 3 big brands selling industrial meat,
including Spam-king Hormel.
• 1 deforestation and palm oil laggard,
namely Kraft Heinz Co., which Global Canopy gives a big fat zero to when it comes to its overarching commitment on deforestation (a primary contributor to climate change).

BlackRock’s position: “LCTU leverages BlackRock’s proprietary climate analytics to analyze a company’s ability to thrive in the transition to a low carbon economy, resulting in a portfolio with almost 50% less carbon intensity than its Russell 1000 benchmark.” LCTD’s GHG intensity is said to be 18% lower than benchmark.

The post ESG BS Detector: Do new “green” funds support the carbon transition? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The Dutch seem to think it’s possible, and their path to a more sustainable form of blacktop runs through the disgusting goop recovered from the settling ponds of sewage treatment plants.

The Netherlands and its major cities are known internationally for advanced policy-making about the circular economy. Various joint ventures involving scientists, municipalities and technology firms are testing new biological approaches to recovering cellulose from wastewater (i.e., used toilet paper), extracting the “lignin,” or fibre, and upcycling it into a glue-like substance that can, in theory, be used in composite materials. One possibility: a binding agent that can displace some of the heavy oil used to make traditional asphalt. Talk about closing the loop.

Pilot “bio-asphalt” projects are taking place in Amsterdam and Vlissingen, a smaller city near the Belgian border. In fact, research on the development of “bio-oil” as another type of sustainable binding agent in road construction has been published recently in China and the European Union. The results seem encouraging. “The utilization of bio-oils in bitumen and asphalt production presents a timely opportunity for the asphalt industry to simultaneously improve its sustainability record and reduce its negative impact on the environment,” a Dutch-Irish research team concluded in a paper published last December.

Sacha Stolp, the director of the “future-proof assets program” for the City of Amsterdam, points to a stretch of road near the port area where the municipality is testing this new pavement. “If it works for Amsterdam,” she says, “it could work for the entire world.”

The global road network extends 16.3 million kilometres and consumes much of the 1.6 trillion tonnes of asphalt produced each year. More than 400,000 kilometres of that massive web of infrastructure traces through Canadian cities and our vast hinterland. While humanity knows how to reduce the carbon footprint of transportation, roads will still need to be maintained, and the production of the ingredients of paving materials are some of the world’s worst emitters: diesel-spewing trucks that haul stone, gravel and sand (the key ingredients of road building); the carbon cast off by cement production; and the emissions related to the extraction of the crude-oil-derived bitumen glue that holds it all together.

The notion of incorporating recycled materials into pavement “is not new,” says life-cycle analysis expert John Wolodko, an associate professor in the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Agriculture, Life and Environmental Sciences. Research and pilot projects stretch back two decades, although these have accelerated in the past few years, he says. “As with any type of new material development, there’s a long cycle time until there’s adoption.”

As governments look to slash emissions, roads should become a major target for future reductions.

Besides the toilet paper derivative being tested in the Netherlands, the list of potential pavement additives is extensive – everything from cigarette butts (for the tar) to ceramics, shredded plastics and waste cooking oil (crushed glass is already added in many provinces). Brazilian researchers last year identified another “highly satisfactory” source: the grainy mineral sediment that accumulates in holding tanks in water treatment plants fed by the country’s mountain rivers.

A key consideration, of course, is whether experimental asphalt can do the job. Civil engineers and transportation infrastructure officials know that roads are among the most abused surfaces on the earth, subject to pounding, vibration, thaw-freeze cycles, salt, water and so on. Conventional asphalt pavement is optimized for durability, tensile strength and safety, which is why the traditional confection of crushed stone, sand, cement and tar has been so difficult to alter (cement is made from crushed limestone and is used to make concrete).

But Wolodko points out that the technical and performance considerations are just half the story. The use of recycled materials is also about the economics of road building, as well as the supply chain – can contractors access enough recycled materials to meet their needs? A Swiss study published last year in the Journal of Cleaner Production adds another layer: for even further benefit, can those recycled materials be both sourced and used locally – a process the paper describes as “urban mining”? The Dutch toilet paper trials tackle precisely this question.

After evaluating a long list of potential ingredients, the Swiss research team recommended that two materials were ready for commercial use: steel slag, a residue of the metals used in the steel manufacturing process, and crumb rubber, which comes from end-of-life tires (ELT).

The Swiss evaluation, in fact, wasn’t the first time crumb rubber has come up as a potential additive for asphalt, and thus a way of upcycling some of the millions of cast-off tires discarded in Canada each year. Earlier studies have found that rubber is not only a viable additive, but actually makes roads more durable.

In California, which has aggressive circular economy policies, crumb rubber was used in about half of all the road construction that took place in 2018, according to the Canadian Association of Tire Recycling Agencies (CATRA). There are varying accounts of the extent to which this material – known as rubber-modified asphalt (RMA) – finds its way into Canadian pavement. CATRA says 487,000 tonnes of old tires were diverted from landfill last year, and some of that material does become RMA (the rest is used to make products like sealants or “tire-derived fuel”). CATRA describes the technology as “fairly new,” requiring more research. Civil engineer Doubra Ambaiowei, the technical director of the Ontario Road Builders’ Association, says crumb rubber adds flexibility to asphalt but still has “issues with cracking.” Other research, including a 2014 study on an Ontario pilot project, found that it performs just as well.

“This is the future we face. It’s like a budget. We have to account for everything we do. Everything we touch [including roads] has an environmental cost.”
— John Wolodko, associate professor, University of Alberta

Some observers wonder whether the Canadian road building industry and municipalities have simply given up on used tires. Jo-Anne St. Godard, executive director of Ontario’s Circular Innovation Council (formerly the Recycling Council of Ontario), notes there was “a flurry of activity” about a decade ago, when a rural municipality north of Greater Toronto decided to test crumb rubber additives in its highway repairs. The pilot project in Grey County showed those roads performed better and lasted longer. But despite the benefits, St. Godard says, the experiment “just sort of died on the vine.”

Ambaiowei points to another pothole on the road to more sustainable blacktop. In the 2000s and early 2010s, road builders were given the green light to use “reclaimed asphalt pavement” (RAP) in new paving projects instead of sending it to landfill. In theory, there’s a certain elegance in old roads being recycled into new roads.

What’s more, for contractors as well as their municipal or provincial clients, the savings were highly attractive. But a 2015 Ontario Auditor General’s report slammed the practice, saying it contributed to pavement deterioration and cost the provinces millions of dollars in premature repairs. The use of RAP has “drastically dropped,” Ambaiowei says.

This kind of backsliding is, without question, the wrong direction, says St. Godard. She notes that a significant part of the issue around roads in particular is that the vast majority are commissioned through public sector procurement processes, which tend to be very conservative – use what worked yesterday – and designed to reward the lowest-cost bidder.

In fact, she and her team have been consulting closely with Dutch officials, who have a completely different view and are much more intentional about embedding circular economy approaches in requests for proposals for large public-works contracts. Here, by contrast, public sector procurement officials don’t have much to do with the policy-makers charged with environmental practices.

“Why is there such a disconnect?” St. Godard wonders.

Wolodko doesn’t see the technical challenges associated with upcycling waste materials in road construction as insurmountable. And, he cautions, the impetus to find solutions – sorting out the chemistry, the bureaucratic silos and the supply chain – will become increasingly present as carbon pricing drives up the cost of the commodities that go into traditional pavement.

“It becomes a decision point,” he says. “This is the future we face. It’s like a budget. We have to account for everything we do. Everything we touch has a cost and an environmental cost.”

Including, and perhaps especially, the pavement beneath our feet.

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“The whole world has been turned upside down, and there are a lot of new issues in terms of food that have come to the fore,” says Lori Stahlbrand, co-developer of a new four-year Honours Bachelor of Food Studies at George Brown College in Toronto.

“Food is a major contributor to climate change and greenhouse gases,” she says. “It is a major employer and now is going through a massive upheaval.” In March, a United Nations study linked one-third of global greenhouse emissions caused by human activity to the production, processing and packaging of food.

At George Brown, with a long-established chef school, the food-studies degree aims to put eating in context, with sustainability, equity, health and nutrition, and food policy as foundational themes of the farm-to-table enterprise.

“It is really about training the leaders within the food sector for tomorrow,” says Stahlbrand. A recognized food-policy analyst and non-profit leader, she previously led the

implementation of a local, sustainable food-purchasing program at the University of Toronto.
In 2019, George Brown hired her and Caitlin Scott, who holds a PhD in social and ecological sustainability from the University of Waterloo, as professors to design the new program from scratch.

Over four years of study, students will be expected to develop their culinary skills while they learn about the dynamics of local, national and international food systems; analyze social, political and environmental aspects of food theory and practice; incorporate health, equity and sustainability perspectives in their activities; and communicate effectively about food issues with a variety of stakeholders.

Believed to be the first of its kind in Canada, the program makes a “bold statement,” says Sylvain Charlebois, director of Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab.

“They are not just looking at graduating new students so they can get jobs,” says Charlebois, a professor and researcher in food distribution and policy. “They are looking at changing the world here … I am very impressed with the program’s DNA.”

Toronto chef and restaurant owner Brad Long, known for his local and sustainable food practices, served on a program advisory council for the degree.

“Immediately, you realize that this is something that should have existed long ago,” he says, noting the program’s holistic design. “It is about having people understand at greater depth what they are doing. That is always going to make any process better in a lot of ways.”

This September, George Brown expects to enrol 24 students, growing to a class of 60 in several years. Stahlbrand says the program, directed at high school graduates and older learners with appropriate academic records, will likely eventually include an option for graduates of the college’s two-year culinary program to count those credentials toward completion of the four-year degree.

One member of the initial cohort is Meggie Adamu, 27, who is deeply rooted in her family’s Ethiopian food culture. After graduating in political science and sociology from McMaster University five years ago, she worked in various food-industry-related jobs, but not as a cook.Prior to the pandemic, she organized special events to show off the cuisine of low-traffic restaurants in the Hamilton area. But with COVID-19 shutting down restaurants, she decided to explore ways to develop food products from popular Ethiopian ingredients, such as souff (known as safflower in Canada). While safflower oil is familiar to Canadians, Adamu says Ethiopians “milk” the seed to produce alternatives to dairy products, such as yogurt, during religious fasts.

The new degree “is the perfect program for me,” says Adamu, given her entrepreneurial and culinary ambitions to integrate Western and Ethiopian cooking practices in the kitchen. After graduation, she hopes to work with her aunt, who opened an Ethiopian food truck business in Toronto several years ago.

In preparing for a post-pandemic world, Stahlbrand is eager to rethink the role of food in society.

“Food is no longer just about what we are going to have for dinner, flavour and the best ingredients,” she says. “They are tied into a global food system.”

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