Month: September 2023

On World Suicide Prevention Day, we remember all those affected by suicide. In 2020, the United States had 1 death by suicide every 11 minutes. But help is available.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, dial 988 to find help and support.

KYOTO, Japan, September 18, 2023 /3BL/ – Over 1,000 CEOs and executives from the world’s leading companies gathered in Kyoto for the Consumer Goods Forum’s Global Summit, the industry’s annual meeting to set priorities and move forward as one.

The 64th edition of the event, taking place at the historic venue where the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997, comes at an especially crucial moment. As climate change, political conflicts and other disruptions continue to roil the supply chain, companies must ensure that consumers retain access to the goods that support and improve their lives. This imperative is reflected in the edition’s theme: Pursuit of Harmony in Turmoil: Working Together to Make a Difference.

“Kyoto, I think, is the right place to be,” said CGF Managing Director Wai-Chan Chan in his opening address, noting the significance of the venue to the CGF’s climate agenda as well as the ancient capital’s traditional significance as a centre of harmony. “So it’s fantastic that we’re all here.”

As a CEO-led organisation, the CGF offers a unique opportunity for top-level leaders in the private sector to meet on a level with their public-sector counterparts. That public-private collaborative spirit was apparent from the first minutes of the summit, which opened with warm welcomes from Fumio Kishida, Prime Minister of Japan, and Tatoshi Nishiwaki, Governor of Kyoto Prefecture.

“We need a frank exchange of views between government and the business community,” said Kishida via pre-recorded video, comparing the Global Summit to the G7 Summit which he chaired in Hiroshima last month. Nishiwaki, joining in person, reiterated the summit’s importance and looked forward to its impact on sustainable business, global well-being and harmony.

New Co-Chairs Sharing their Ambition for Acceleration, Focus and Collaboration

Frans Muller, President & CEO of Ahold Delhaize, and Dirk Van de Put, Chairman and CEO of Mondelēz International, as the CGF’s new Co-Chairs with an ambition to drive faster industry-wide action on urgent challenges facing people and planet. The new Co-Chairs spoke today about their desire to accelerate a greater combined impact for people and planet by driving action at scale across CGF’s broad membership and beyond.

Recognising the diverse nature of CGF’s membership – including the different pressures, priorities and regional factors facing each company – the new Co-Chairs are focused on mobilizing members and the wider community around a set of five initiatives which aim to deliver a major positive impact: Employee Mental & Physical Health, Human Rights Due Diligence, Forest Positive Supplier Approach, Plastic Golden Design Rules and Emissions Reduction. At the same time, all the Coalitions of Action will focus on accelerating their impact.

Leaders Steering Through the Storm

The role of CEOs in driving the CGF agenda remained at the forefront of the day’s programme, with a speaker list including over a dozen chief executives. In a conversation on the future of retail, Walmart International President & CEO Judith McKenna shared regional and global trends she has observed from her vantage point, such as the spread of cashless payments in India and the importance of omnichannel in China. “On the question of whether you should be global or should you be local; the answer is yes,” she said.

Her presentation was followed by a fireside chat with Nathalie Roos, CEO of Lipton Teas and Infusions, a company that provides a major share of the world’s second most popular non-alcoholic beverage (after water). Roos outlined the company’s four-pillar approach to building consumer trust based on congruence, transparency, vision and shared value. “Trust is business, and it’s not a one-company job,” Roos said. “By collaborating, sharing best practices and combining our strengths, we will build a better world together, one cup of tea at a time.”

Understanding the New Consumer

Though each of the CEO speakers had a different perspective on the global industry, they agreed on a common thread: Consumer behaviour has changed dramatically since the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic, and companies must evolve in step. Two of today’s panel discussions hinged on this topic, backing up anecdotes with data that quantify new forms of consumption and predict future developments.

In the morning plenary “Consumer Behaviour Business Models — The Latest Trends,” leaders from major consulting firms and consumer goods companies presented data that points to changes on the horizon, including high rates of social anxiety among young teenagers (driving a preference for online shopping) and greater levels of discretion around premium spending. However, Solitaire Townsend, Co-Founder of Futerra, cautioned against seeing predictions as inevitable prophecies. “We can affect these trends,” she said, pointing to YouTube and TikTok as powerfully influential tools.

A later plenary, “The World is Changing, Consumers are Changing — We Need to Change Too,” addressed the global change agenda from different angles. Incoming CGF Board Co-Chairs Frans Muller, President & CEO of Ahold Delhaize, and Dirk Van de Put, Chairman & CEO of Mondelēz International, outlined the five key initiatives they plan to focus on during their upcoming tenure as the need for all the Coalitions to further accelerate impact. Malina Ngai of A.S. Watson Group stated that consumers are changing but perhaps not the way that we think, and that retailers and manufacturers need to adapt accordingly. She explained to the audience that the meaning of the Chinese word for “Business” 生意 incorporates the concept of customer-centricity. She explained that the second character 意 (Yi) is made up of three parts: 立 – Determination, 日 – Every day and 心 – Think from Customers’ Perspective. Cécile Beliot-Zind of Bel Group reiterated that CGF is an inclusive forum with room for all companies, regardless of size or geographic location. “CGF is not only about the big companies. It has to be an inclusive ecosystem if we want to change fast enough,” she stated.

Accelerating Innovations in Japan and Beyond

The pace of innovation was a key theme in parallel and special sessions this afternoon. Expert panels on spreading Japanese food culture and the role business can play in developing a human-centred society showed how harnessing technology to innovate can deliver impact. Drawing on award-winning examples from across Japan, participants heard how digital technology has contributed to shaping a sustainable future for cities. While a panel of top Japanese speakers shared examples of how digital innovation is transforming the food chain.

Two further sessions tackled innovations to address sustainability challenges. Participants heard how developments in product packaging were key to the next phase of circularity for plastics. The panel considered the current state of recycling single-use packaging and the opportunities to engage consumers with alternative models such as reuse and refill. Finally, participants heard from two start-ups that have developed innovative ways to overcome the paradox between the drive for transparency and the perils of data sharing to improve sustainability and compliance performance.

I-talks, 15-minute presentations throughout the day that took place in the vibrant exhibition area, brought insights from sponsors on sustainability challenges and solutions from across the industry. Today the focus was on specific technologies such as artificial intelligence and the metaverse, as well as practical advice for decarbonisation programs.

AI: The Future isn’t coming… it’s here

AI was in the spotlight in the day’s final plenary, which focused on generative tools like ChatGPT that are currently both fascinating and frightening users and prognosticators. While these tools may now seem like parlour tricks, President Miki Tsukasa of Microsoft Japan said that they have real potential to improve efficiency and give companies a competitive edge. “I believe that there’s more good out of generative AI than not,” she said in a panel with Chairman & CEO James Quincey of The Coca-Cola Company and President & CEO John Ross of IGA, Inc., noting that transparency, accountability, security and privacy must be taken into account before companies implement AI or “make judgement calls about whether it’s good or bad.”

The evening closed with a gala dinner where hundreds of CEOs and other C-suite executives attended the black-tie event, where they met their counterparts from around the globe and forged the connections required to build a better world for consumers.

The CGF Global Summit will resume tomorrow, 8 June at 8:30 am.

About the CGF

The Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) is the only CEO-led organisation that represents both manufacturers and retailers globally. It brings together senior leaders from more than 400 retailers, manufacturers and other stakeholders across 70 countries.

CGF accelerates change through eight Coalitions of Action: forests, human rights, plastics, healthier lives, food waste, food safety, supply chains and product data. Its member companies have combined sales of EUR 4.6 trillion and directly employ nearly 10 million people, with a further 90 million related jobs estimated along the value chain. It is governed by its Board of Directors, which comprises more than 55 manufacturer and retailer CEOs.

For more information, please contact:

Edna Ayme-Yahil 
Communications Director 
The Consumer Goods Forum

Originally published in Black & Veatch’s 2023 Sustainability Report

By Deepa Poduval, SVP Global Sustainability Leader, Black & Veatch

In today’s world, sustainability has evolved from a corporate responsibility to a critical ethical and business imperative. To achieve sustainability goals effectively, organizations must both reexamine traditional thinking of sustainability as a cost-based, zero-sum game and expand beyond traditional return-on-investment metrics and approaches. It is important to adopt a balanced approach to sustainability, allowing for adaptability and maximizing overall success.

The Rise of Sustainability as a Business Imperative 

In recent years, recognition of the urgent need to address sustainability challenges has been growing. Heightened awareness of climate change, resource depletion and social inequities has aligned consumers, investors and regulators on the ethical responsibility of businesses to operate in a way that preserves and protects critical resources. Companies that fail to prioritize sustainability risk losing customer loyalty, facing reputational damage and, potentially, encountering legal and financial consequences. By integrating sustainability into their strategies, organizations foster innovation, enhance their resilience, attract increasingly environmentally conscious customers and access new markets.

Moving Past Traditional Investment Metrics 

While making the transition toward a more sustainable business, we risk a myopic viewpoint if we focus primarily on additional costs, as if sustainability were a zero-sum game that conflicts with the bottom line. This is especially true in the early stages of any large market shift when an uneven playing field exists regarding cost recovery as new business models and use cases are discovered. In that competitive environment, it is even more important to consider how the benefits from sustainable investments are measured, rather than focusing solely on the short-term costs associated with them.

Traditional rate of return metrics often fail to capture the broader beneficial impacts of sustainable investments. For instance, an analysis by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)1 in February 2023 revealed that decarbonizing the U.S. power grid by 2035 could incur additional power system costs ranging from $330 billion to $740 billion, depending on infrastructure restrictions. However, when factoring in the avoided costs of climate change-induced damages such as floods, droughts, wildfires and hurricanes, the United States could save over $1.2 trillion. This translates to an overall net benefit to society ranging from $920 billion to $1.2 trillion. At Black & Veatch, we are working to fully estimate that value on behalf of our customers and for our own business and to capture it by designing, building and upgrading infrastructure assets to provide benefits of reliability, resilience and adaptability along with sustainability.

Making Strategic Sustainable Investments 

Selective strategic levers can make the difference between success and failure when evaluating investments for sustainability:

Identifying Cost Offsets: Numerous federal, state and local programs, along with tax credits and public/private funding, have been established to accelerate the adoption of sustainable solutions and technologies. It is essential to have the necessary resources to effectively assess and maximize these funding opportunities. Additionally, understanding customer priorities and values are important when determining how to address sustainability-related costs and whether they should be absorbed, offset or passed on to customers. 
 Accessing Ecosystems: Where feasible, companies should consider collaborating with solution partners and off-takers to structure investments that can avoid individual companies bearing the entire cost and risk of funding and implementing sustainable initiatives. Strategically broadening a company’s approach to sustainable solutions by embracing additional stakeholders can allow for sharing of risk and access to bigger opportunities. 
 Managing Multiple Priorities: Developing a robust approach to evaluating the economics of stacked energy, water, waste and land use solutions is essential. Some of these solutions may generate revenue streams rather than being solely cost items in a company’s profit and loss statement. Viewing these components in isolation can make financial performance seem uncertain. By considering the synchronized impacts of various interconnected elements, businesses can gain confidence and clarity on investment decisions and actions. Black & Veatch has experience that allows us to take a system approach to infrastructure design, looking across the nexus of energy, water and waste to structure solutions that leverage synergies that come from looking at these elements in tandem.

By embracing sustainability investments with a broader and balanced perspective, businesses not only align themselves with global goals for a better future but also ensure long-term success, resilience and relevance in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Black & Veatch leverages our expertise to create practical pathways for the success of our clients’ investments from strategy to execution.

To learn more, download the 2023 Black & Veatch Sustainability Report here.

SAINT PAUL, Minn., September 18, 2023 /3BL/ – Antea Group is proud to announce the publication of our 2022 Sustainability Report.

Intended for our employees, clients, partners, and other stakeholders, our sustainability report enables us to uphold transparency, report on progress and provide insights into our operations, impacts on people and planet, and opportunities for strategic growth and long-term resiliency.

“Every day we are inspired to build collaborative relationships, seek innovative solutions, and take an active role in shaping the future — one in which people, planet, and business all have the opportunity to thrive,” shared Brian Ricketts, CEO of Antea Group USA. “During 2022, we accomplished quite a lot, marked some important firsts, and achieved meaningful growth.”

Within the report, we share our 2022 sustainability highlights including results from our inaugural materiality assessment, and how we are using those results to launch initiatives around talent retention and development, employee engagement, and supplier expectations. The report also details our environmental impacts, and how through our operations, we are making strides to improve our GHG emissions and energy management strategy. Lastly, this report covers how we are investing in our people through health and safety, holistic wellness, leadership development, and diversity, equity, and inclusion programming.

“I want to personally thank our employees, clients, and partners for their continued support, confidence, and willingness to work in concert throughout the past year while driving towards a shared purpose of creating a cleaner, safer, and more sustainable world,” concludes Ricketts.

Download Antea Group’s 2022 Sustainability Report

About Antea Group

Antea®Group is an environment, health, safety, and sustainability consulting firm. By combining strategic thinking with technical expertise, we do more than effectively solve client challenges; we deliver sustainable results for a better future. We work in partnership with and advise many of the world’s most sustainable companies to address ESG-business challenges in a way that fits their pace and unique objectives. Our consultants equip organizations to better understand threats, capture opportunities and find their position of strength. Lastly, we maintain a global perspective on ESG issues through not only our work with multinational clients, but also through our sister organizations in Europe, Asia, and Latin America and as a founding member of the Inogen Alliance.