Month: February 2025

Originally published in ScottsMiracle-Gro’s 2024 Corporate Responsibility Report

NATIONAL HEAD START ASSOCIATION AND THE GROMOREGOOD GARDEN GRANTS

The Scotts Miracle-Gro Foundation celebrated its fifth year of collaboration with the National Head Start Association (NHSA) to bring GroMoreGood Garden Grants and gardening resources to Head Start and Early Head Start programs across the United States. NHSA partners with local Head Start and Early Head Start grant recipients to provide opportunities for children and families to lead healthier, empowered lives through child, family and community support programs. Through our ongoing partnership, Head Start and Early Head Start programs receive access to educational garden curriculum including seasonal garden storytime webinars. Additionally, the Foundation awards GroMoreGood Garden Grants used to supplement needs of existing garden projects, to help launch new garden projects, or to supplement or launch outdoor green space projects for Head Start and Early Head Start programs across the country. These grants encourage experiential learning, foster curiosity and provide children and their families with the benefits of access to healthy foods and green spaces.

These are the achievements from the past five years:

10,000+ youth impacted

5,000+ adults benefitted

58 grant winners in 26 states and Washington, D.C.

To learn more about ScottsMiracleGro’s commitment to corporate responsibility, visit our webpage

For full details about ScottsMiracle-Gro’s 2024 Corporate Responsibility Report, visit here.

We’ve been proud partners of Children’s Specialized Hospital for almost 20 years, donating more than $7.2 million through our PSEG Foundation and PSEG Corporate Social Responsibility to support their inspiring work and help treat children with special health challenges.

This year alone, our incredible employees volunteered over 200 hours, raising over $750K in funds for CSH through their annual golf outing and Walk n’ Roll.

CSH is aligned with our passion for community, and we’re honored to support them as they help brighten children’s lives.

Read more about our work with CSH on Energize!: https://energizepseg.com/2024/11/27/building-brighter-futures-together-this-season-and-always/#season-of-giving-CSH

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Do you feel a bit lost when people refer to certain environmental sustainability topics and aren’t sure where to start when it comes to learning more? Sustainability 101 is a blog series that you can turn to for information about different environmental terms that may come up at work, during discussions with friends, and even at your annual holiday gathering.

Every product has a story. From the raw materials used to create it, to the energy it consumes, to where it ends up when it’s no longer useful— each stage impacts the environment. Life Cycle Assessments, or LCAs, help us estimate that impact and identify areas for improvement throughout a product’s life cycle.

LCAs help businesses understand the environmental footprint of their products, processes, or services across every stage of their life cycle. From energy use to water consumption, LCAs reveal critical data that can drive more sustainable decisions.

What is a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)?

A Life Cycle Assessment evaluates the entire life cycle of a product, including*:

Raw material extraction. One example is sourcing minerals, metals, or natural fibers.Materials and product manufacturing — such as converting materials into finished products.Transportation and distribution — including the journey to stores, warehouses, and customers.Usage — such as resources consumed when a product is in use.End-of-life — what happens to a product after use: for instance, recycling, reuse, or landfill disposal.

LCAs estimate the environmental impact at each stage, providing a picture of a product’s footprint. Businesses rely on LCAs to identify where the greatest impacts occur and find opportunities to reduce their environmental impact.

* Note, the examples listed above are not exhaustive and are meant to be illustrative.

What do LCAs estimate?

LCAs go beyond just evaluating a product’s carbon footprint to include topics such as water consumption, energy demand, resource depletion, waste generation, and pollution. Let’s take the example of a seemingly simple T-shirt to explore an example of what can be measured:

Global Warming Potential (GWP): LCAs estimate the greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄) that contribute to climate change. For a T-shirt, these emissions occur at every stage—from producing cotton to powering factories and transporting the finished product.

Blue Water Consumption (Water usage): LCAs estimate how much fresh water is consumed during manufacturing and product use. For example, producing enough cotton for a single T-shirt can require thousands of liters of water, with additional water used for dyeing, washing, and cleaning the shirt over its lifetime.

Primary Energy Demand (Energy consumption): LCAs evaluate the energy resources used to produce, distribute, and power a product. For a T-shirt, this includes running textile machinery in factories and transporting the shirt around the globe.

Ecotoxicity (Waste and pollution): LCAs estimate pollutants that affect air, water, and land. In T-shirt production, chemical dyes and by products can potentially pollute water sources, and the shirt itself could eventually end up in a landfill.

Abiotic Depletion Potential (Resource depletion): LCAs estimate the use of finite resources like metals, minerals, and fossil fuels. In our T-shirt example, growing cotton depletes soil nutrients, while producing synthetic fibers like polyester relies on fossil fuels.

By capturing this full range of environmental impacts, LCAs empower businesses to prioritize more sustainable actions across their operations and product design.

Why LCAs matter for businesses

LCAs can be a powerful tool for driving innovation and reducing environmental impact.

They can offer tangible benefits for businesses aiming to meet their sustainability goals. By identifying the most resource-intensive phases of a product’s life, companies can target environmental “hotspots” and implement changes such as using renewable energy to power manufacturing sites or switching to more sustainable materials that reduce their overall impact. These insights can drive innovation, enabling the design of products that are more energy-efficient, durable, and circular with reduced resource-intensiveness and environmental impact.

For example, it’s estimated that over 80% of product-related environmental impacts are determined during the design phase.1 LCAs can help compare alternatives and understand trade-offs when selecting components, process steps or disposal types. By integrating LCAs early in the design process, companies can improve sustainability outcomes.

Publishing LCA results helps to enhance corporate transparency and support environmental reporting. Sharing these reports builds trust with customers, employees, investors, and other stakeholders, while ensuring compliance with global sustainability standards and reporting frameworks.

How are LCAs conducted?

Conducting an LCA is a structured process that involves gathering data across every phase of the product lifecycle, assessing environmental impacts, and interpreting the results to support initiatives like net-zero goals and circular product design.

LCAs follow globally accepted standards, such as the International Organization for Standardization’s (ISO) 14040 and 14044. There are other standards that are also based on ISO’s framework.

Cisco’s approach to Life Cycle Assessments

At Cisco, LCAs play a key role in our efforts to estimate and minimize the environmental impact of our products.

Recently, we announced that Cisco has made these assessments publicly available, sharing LCAs for a number of our products on the Sustainability Resources section of our website. Cisco has already completed 23 LCAs across 8 business units in the past two years and plans to publish additional assessments across key product lines in 2025. Sharing these results supports transparency and demonstrates our commitment to measurable progress.

While many technology companies publish LCAs, Cisco is one of the first to produce them for networking equipment, such as Catalyst switches. Cisco’s Chief Sustainability Office and Supply Chain Sustainability teams continue to partner with our colleagues across the company to produce these reports, and we plan to continue publishing them as they become available.

LCAs are part of how we approach sustainability holistically. LCA data supports our circular design strategy— to develop products and resources that are reused, repurposed, and kept in circulation for as long as possible. By evaluating everything from material sourcing to end-of-life disposal, we gain critical insights that guide our product design and innovation.

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ATLANTA, February 6, 2025 /3BL/ – Renaissance94 (Ren94) is a leading social impact organization dedicated to advancing climate resilience and a just and equitable energy transition. Ren94 was founded by Daniel Blackman, former Regional Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The organization is proud to announce its partnership with 3BL, the leading communications partner for sustainability and social impact. This alliance will spotlight progress and intentional impact at the intersection of climate solutions, equity, and cross-sector collaboration. 

The partnership will elevate Renaissance94’s work through 3BL’s powerful news distribution network and feature opportunities on 3BL’s digital media platform, TriplePundit. Additionally, the partnership envisions hosting dynamic networking events throughout 2025 that will bring together business leaders, influencers, artists, athletes, and philanthropists for intentional conversations that inspire action. Their first event will be held in Atlanta this coming spring.  

Click here to sign up for events, content, and insights from Ren94 and 3BL. 

“Renaissance94’s commitment to climate resilience and equity aligns perfectly with our mission of driving impactful storytelling that inspires change,” said Margie Kuchinski, Head of Brand & Marketing at 3BL. “We’re very pleased to once again be collaborating with Lynne Filderman as this partnership represents a unique opportunity to engage diverse stakeholders for solutions-driven conversations.” 

Lynne D. Filderman, Senior Advisor of Public-Private Partnerships at Renaissance94, shared her vision for the partnership: “With Daniel Blackman’s leadership at Renaissance94, we believe that intentional conversations lead to intentional impact. Collaborating with 3BL allows us to expand our reach and amplify critical narratives about climate resilience and innovation. And, we can bring unlikely allies together to drive meaningful change.”

About Renaissance94
Renaissance94 is a global social impact organization dedicated to advancing climate resilience and a just transition to a sustainable future. Led by environmentalist and civil rights advocate Daniel Blackman, Ren94 serves as the driving force for transformational impact and the catalyst for cross-sector collaborations, bringing together corporations, nonprofits, philanthropists, activists, artists and athletes, civic and community organizations, media and citizens to deliver real, measurable, and permanent change. Follow Renaissance94 on LinkedIn and Instagram.

About 3BL
3BL is the leading sustainability and social impact communications partner, connecting organizations’ stories of purpose and progress with the audiences who matter most. Partnering with over 1,500 companies – from global corporations and mid-sized enterprises to NGOs and nonprofits – 3BL elevates their reputations as players in the world of responsible business through unrivaled news and content distribution, bespoke storytelling support, and their digital media division, TriplePundit.

For more information, please contact:

Rosa Waite
Creative Director, Renaissance94
rosa@r94.org
+1 404.538.2284

NORTHAMPTON, Mass., February 6, 2025 /3BL/ – 3BL, the leading partner for sustainability and social impact communications, is proud to announce its partnership with Renaissance94 (Ren94). This alliance will spotlight progress and intentional impact at the intersection of climate solutions, equity, and cross-sector collaboration. Ren94 is a leading social impact organization dedicated to advancing climate resilience and a just and equitable energy transition. Ren94 was founded by Daniel Blackman, former Regional Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The partnership will elevate Ren94’s work through 3BL’s powerful news distribution network and feature opportunities on 3BL’s digital media platform, TriplePundit. Additionally, the partnership envisions hosting dynamic networking events throughout 2025 that will bring together business and civic leaders, influencers, artists, athletes, and philanthropists for intentional conversations that inspire action. Their first event will be held in Atlanta this coming spring.

Click here to sign up for events, content, and insights from Ren94 and 3BL. 

“Renaissance94’s commitment to climate resilience and equity aligns perfectly with our mission of driving impactful storytelling that inspires change,” said Margie Kuchinski, Head of Brand & Marketing at 3BL. “We’re very pleased to once again be collaborating with Lynne Filderman as this partnership represents a unique opportunity to engage a broad range of stakeholders for solutions-driven conversations.”

Lynne D. Filderman, Senior Advisor of Public-Private Partnerships at Renaissance94, shared her vision for the partnership: “With Daniel Blackman’s leadership at Renaissance94, we believe that intentional conversations lead to intentional impact. Collaborating with 3BL allows us to expand our reach and amplify critical narratives about climate resilience and innovation. And, we can bring unlikely allies together to drive meaningful change.”

About 3BL
3BL is the leading sustainability and social impact communications partner, connecting organizations’ stories of purpose and progress with the audiences who matter most. Partnering with over 1,500 companies – from global corporations and mid-sized enterprises to NGOs and nonprofits – 3BL elevates their reputations as players in the world of responsible business through unrivaled news and content distribution, bespoke storytelling support, and their digital media division, TriplePundit.

Learn more at www.3bl.com.

About Renaissance94
Renaissance94 is a global social impact organization dedicated to advancing climate resilience and a just transition to a sustainable future. Led by environmentalist and civil rights advocate Daniel Blackman, Ren94 serves as the driving force for transformational impact and the catalyst for cross-sector collaborations, bringing together corporations, nonprofits, philanthropists, activists, artists and athletes, civic and community organizations, media and citizens to deliver real, measurable, and permanent change. 

To learn more, contact Rosa Waite, Creative Director, Renaissance94 and follow Ren94 on LinkedIn and Instagram.

For more information, please contact: 
Rosa Waite 
Creative Director, Renaissance94 
rosa@r94.org 
404-5382284