Tag: 3BL

Originally published on TriplePundit

Recently there has been a troubling downturn in diversity, equity, and inclusion roles and programs as companies begin to divest from these efforts due to looming market trends following the sharp increase in similar programs in 2020. However, there are companies that continue to accelerate their diversity efforts despite the current landscape. Financial services company Northwestern Mutual saw the importance of DEI long before corporations pledged to make it a priority in 2020 — launching the first iteration of its companywide diversity and inclusion (D&I) roadmap over a decade ago.

“There is so much data available to demonstrate that the companies that are more diverse perform far better than the companies that are not,” Grady Crosby, vice president of enterprise Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) at Northwestern Mutual, told TriplePundit. “For us, having a diverse and inclusive culture is a business imperative. It’s foundational to what we do.”

Northwestern Mutual’s D&I roadmap seeks to ensure that diversity, equity and inclusion are woven throughout the company’s operations as a pillar under its wider ESG and social impact work. That includes representation, recruitment and retention of every kind of talent, as well as philanthropic strategies, socio-economic investments, employee resource groups, external supplier relationships, and more, Crosby said. The company has since reached the third stage of its roadmap in which it’s looking to become a “recognized leader” in diversity and inclusion. That means having a positive impact in communities, influencing the marketplace and creating a world-class culture of belonging for its people.

“As an insurer for 166-years, Northwestern Mutual is known for delivering on very long-term promises and being there when people need us most,” Crosby said. “To deliver on those promises, we need to make sure our employees can thrive in the organization and that they’re in an environment where they can continue to advance in their careers and contribute to our company and community in an equitable and meaningful way.”

That also requires the company to look toward the communities outside its doors, he added. For the last 10 years, Northwestern Mutual has been working on social justice initiatives through its neighborhood revitalization work. In 2021, the company announced a $100 million impact investing fund to deliver on the company’s commitment to address inequality and the racial wealth gap in the U.S. 

The fund directs investments to communities of color both locally in the Milwaukee, WI area, home of the company’s headquarters, and nationally. The investments focus on physical and social infrastructure, healthy and sustainable neighborhoods, and access to capital for individuals and businesses. To date, 45 businesses have benefited from the investment fund, and another 63 are expected to receive support in 2023.

“Although we are in the early stages of our investments, we know these investments will have a long-term, tangible impact on job creation, wealth creation, expanded access to services such as healthcare, eliminating food deserts and building affordable housing, for example,” Crosby explained. “All of that information is going to continue to be aggregated over the life of these investments so, as these investments mature, we’ll be able to report out even more real impact data, which we’re really excited about.”

The idea for the fund originated from the company’s Sustained Action for Racial Equity (SARE) task force, which is headed by chairman, president and CEO John Schlifske. Schlifske’s direct involvement reflects a commitment to diversity and inclusion that starts at the top.

“Leadership is key to the long-term success and flow-down adoption of your D&I strategy across all levels of the organization — they need to message it, show up to the events, lead the meetings, demand to see the data each month, hold leaders accountable, and drive the results over the goal line year after year,” said Amy Hanneman, vice president of diversity and inclusion at Northwestern Mutual. “Our CEO and senior leadership are committed to this long-term, as evidenced by D&I being front and center in our goals and how we invest in our people and communities.”

Northwestern Mutual’s website includes a 2020 statement on its commitment to “diversity and addressing racism” signed by senior leadership, as well as members of the SARE task force, employee resource groups, field advisory groups and other stakeholders.

“We are a stronger company because of the value we place on inclusivity and the behaviors we exhibit to advance it,” the statement reads. “We know we have work to do and we are committed to continuously getting better, not only because it is the right thing to do, but also because it is the promise we make to our people and to our clients. It is clear that inclusivity and equity are neither uniformly respected nor applied to all people across the communities in which we live and work, and that racism continues to divide our country. This is not a political
issue — this is a human issue. As such, we cannot and will not be silent in the face of such injustice.”

Putting those words into action means staying humble and listening to both employees and communities, said Hanneman. “Our people know what’s going on and what needs to be addressed,” Hanneman told us. “When your people feel heard, and more important feel like what matters to them matters to the company — everybody wins.” 

Northwestern Mutual’s success in encouraging the development of an inclusive internal culture also stands to benefit the business long-term in the form of attracting and retaining talent. “Inclusion drives better everything — better attraction and retention of our people, a stronger, legitimate brand that represents the diversity of our clients — all of this impacts our bottom line,” Hanneman said. “It’s no coincidence that our most profitable years have also been our most diverse, where we’ve had our highest numbers of women and people of color in our history, especially in leadership roles. That’s how we’ve gotten here and we’ll stay here by focusing on the power of our inclusive culture, our people, and the people we serve.” 

This article series is sponsored by Northwestern Mutual and produced by the TriplePundit editorial team.

Image credit: Kampus Production/Pexels

FORT WAYNE, Ind., April 26, 2023 /3BL Media/ – Steel Dynamics, Inc. (NASDAQ/GS: STLD) today announced that the company supports The Steel Climate Standard. The Steel Climate Standard was published by the Global Steel Climate Council (GSCC) to provide a technology-agnostic global standard to measure and report steel product greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and provide a science-based target-setting framework to enable the industry to reduce carbon emissions.

In publishing its standard, the GSCC invited interested organizations to review The Steel Climate Standard and submit comments, which are due by May 17, 2023. The full text of the standard and guidelines on submitting comments can be found at: https://globalsteelclimatecouncil.org.

“We are proud to be a founding member of the Global Steel Climate Council,” said Mark D. Millett, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. “Steel is an integral component of the global economy and foundational to the world’s essential infrastructure. Specifically, lower-carbon steel is necessary for the transition to a lower-carbon global economy. This new standard will accelerate the actual reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and provide key decisionmakers with transparent and consistent data to make informed decisions. Steel Dynamics is already a leader in producing lower-carbon steel products. We continue to identify decarbonization opportunities, building on our entrepreneurial, innovative spirit.”

GSCC’s proposed standard is comprised of two main components: (1) product certification criteria that allows customers to know if the steel they are buying is on the glidepath to achieve the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement; and (2) a science-based target-setting framework based on a 1.5°C scenario glidepath for net zero GHG emissions by 2050. The GSCC standard will measure all key GHG emissions from Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 categories.

“The Steel Climate Standard is a simple and understandable benchmark for reducing the steel industry’s greenhouse gas emissions and encourages innovation and investments in lower emission technology,” said Jeff Hansen, Vice President Environmental Sustainability and GSCC Board Member. “We are excited to help develop and launch this important standard for the industry, and for the investment and innovation that will surely follow.”

About the Global Steel Climate Council 

GSCC is a non-profit organization created to lead an effort to reduce steel carbon emissions and encourage investments in lower emission technology as part of the global effort to decarbonize economies and societies. GSCC members are steel manufacturers, associations and other organizations in the steel supply chain that have a presence in 79 countries around the world.

About Steel Dynamics, Inc.

Steel Dynamics is one of the largest domestic steel producers and metals recyclers in the United States, based on estimated annual steelmaking and metals recycling capability, with facilities located throughout the United States, and in Mexico. Steel Dynamics produces steel products, including hot roll, cold roll, and coated sheet steel, structural steel beams and shapes, rail, engineered special-bar-quality steel, cold finished steel, merchant bar products, specialty steel sections and steel joists and deck. In addition, the company produces liquid pig iron and processes and sells ferrous and nonferrous scrap.

Forward-Looking Statements

This report contains some predictive statements about future events, including statements related to conditions in domestic or global economies, conditions in steel, aluminum, and recycled metals market places, Steel Dynamics’ revenues, costs of purchased materials, future profitability and earnings, and the operation of new, existing or planned facilities. These statements, which we generally precede or accompany by such typical conditional words as “anticipate”, “intend”, “believe”, “estimate”, “plan”, “seek”, “project”, or “expect”, or by the words “may”, “will”, or “should”, are intended to be made as “forward-looking”, subject to many risks and uncertainties, within the safe harbor protections of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements speak only as of this date and are based upon information and assumptions, which we consider reasonable as of this date, concerning our businesses and the environments in which they operate. Such predictive statements are not guarantees of future performance, and we undertake no duty to update or revise any such statements. Some factors that could cause such forward-looking statements to turn out differently than anticipated include: (1) domestic and global economic factors; (2) global steelmaking overcapacity and imports of steel, together with increased scrap prices; (3) pandemics, epidemics, widespread illness or other health issues, such as COVID-19 or its variants; (4) the cyclical nature of the steel industry and the industries we serve; (5) volatility and major fluctuations in prices and availability of scrap metal, scrap substitutes and supplies, and our potential inability to pass higher costs on to our customers; (6) cost and availability of electricity, natural gas, oil, or other energy resources are subject to volatile market conditions; (7) increased environmental, greenhouse gas emissions and sustainability considerations or regulations; (8) compliance with and changes in environmental and remediation requirements; (9) significant price and other forms of competition from other steel and aluminum producers, scrap processors and alternative materials; (10) availability of an adequate source of supply of scrap for our metals recycling operations; (11) cybersecurity threats and risks to the security of our sensitive data and information technology; (12) the implementation of our growth strategy; (13) litigation and legal compliance; (14) unexpected equipment downtime or shutdowns; (15) governmental agencies may refuse to grant or renew some of our licenses and permits; (16) our senior unsecured credit facility contains, and any future financing agreements may contain, restrictive covenants that may limit our flexibility; and (17) the impacts of impairment charges.

More specifically, we refer you to our more detailed explanation of these and other factors and risks that may cause such predictive statements to turn out differently, as set forth in our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K under the headings Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements and Risk Factors, in our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, or in other reports we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These reports are available publicly on the Securities and Exchange Commission website, www.sec.gov, and on our website, www.steeldynamics.com under “Investors – SEC Filings.”

Contact: Investor Relations — +1.260.969.3500

Only half of the largest listed companies’ green generals came from previous sustainability roles, with many preferring operations and strategy experience.

​​​​In a recent article for the Business Times, Acre’s Head of Sustainable Business, APAC, Greg Brittian, discusses the different paths companies can take when hiring sustainability leaders, as well as the trending skills associated with CSOs. The article looks at the largest listed companies in Singapore, and analyses sustainability-related expertise, hiring backgrounds, and challenges.

​”CSOs should possess both relevant sustainability qualifications – even if they do not have a technical sustainability background – as well as exhibit strong leadership and strategic skills.”

​To read the full article, please click here.

Original Source: The Business Times| Written by Wong Pei Ting and Janice Lim | Published on 03/04/23

About Acre

At Acre, we work with the most aspirational businesses with potential to make real change; from those who are just starting out to those who are well on the journey to crafting a legacy.

Our 18 years’ experience in sustainability recruitment, combined with our extensive global network, enables us to provide talent solutions that are designed to deliver this change.

Through our unique behavioural assessment technology, we understand the types of people, skills and behaviours required to create impact. We can develop these qualities within your existing teams too.

We find talented people and develop their skills to ensure they make a true impact in ambitious, progressive organisations.

Acre. Making companies ready for tomorrow.

The World Intellectual Property Organization marks April 26, 2023, as World Intellectual Property DayO-I Glass, as a leader in the global packaging market, has a portfolio of more than 3,600 active patentsO-I celebrates its women inventors embodying the spirit of innovation that drives the Company

PERRYSBURG, Ohio, April 26, 2023 /3BL Media/ – O-I Glass, Inc. (“O-I Glass” or “O-I”) joins the World Intellectual Property Organization in recognizing the vital role of innovators worldwide that create economic and social benefits through their ideas. April 26 marks World Intellectual Property Day with this year’s theme being “Women and IP: Accelerating innovation and creativity”. O-I applauds the innovative spirit of its female inventors and all creators company wide. 

In 1903, the Owens Bottle Machine Company was founded around Michael Owens’ patent for a bottle making machine, which is recognized for mechanically producing bottles at a rate of 240 per minute. This innovation set the foundation for becoming today’s O-I Glass, employing more than 24,000 employees and operating at 69 plants in 19 countries. Innovation is at the heart of O-I’s portfolio of more than 3,600 active patents that are transforming the packaging industry. 

Last year, 19 O-I employees were granted U.S. patents that advance the production, design, and overall sustainability of glass packaging. Among those granted patents were Jessica Bryant, Manufacturing Intelligence & Controls Squad Lead Research and Development (R&D), and Sutapa Bhaduri, Technology Strategist and Global Sustainability Lead, while three other female O-I employees filed U.S. patent applications last year. 

“Innovation is in our DNA at O-I, and we are harnessing the power of our innovators and creators to transform glass packaging and to shape a more sustainable world,” said Ludovic Valette, Vice President, Chief Technology Officer for O-I. “These innovators drive new technology such as our proprietary MAGMA glass-making approach which is set to revolutionize glass production.”

O-I’s MAGMA technology is designed for flexible, modular glass production. Facilities built for MAGMA will feature a smaller melter and enable advanced technologies.

O-I recently broke ground for a state-of-the-art greenfield glass plant in Bowling Green, KY that will be purpose-built around MAGMA technology. 

“Our people and their ideas drive the company’s leadership in innovation, transformation and sustainability,” said Randy Burns, Chief Sustainability and Corporate Affairs Officer for O-I. “With 24,000 passionate glassmakers around the world, each of us is a driving force in achieving our vision of becoming the most sustainable producer of brand-building rigid packaging, and that spirit of innovation and creativity will continue to transform O-I and glass packaging into the future.”

About O-I  

At O-I Glass, Inc. (NYSE: OI), we love glass and we’re proud to be one of the leading producers of glass bottles and jars around the globe. Glass is not only beautiful, it’s also pure, healthy and completely recyclable, making it the most sustainable rigid packaging material. Headquartered in Perrysburg, Ohio (USA), O-I is the preferred partner for many of the world’s leading food and beverage brands. We innovate in line with customers’ needs to create iconic packaging that builds brands around the world. Led by our diverse team of approximately 24,000 people across 69 plants in 19 countries, O-I achieved revenues of $6.9 billion in 2022.  Learn more about us:  o-i.com / Facebook / Twitter / Instagram / LinkedIn

contact:

JIM WOODS
Public Relations Lead 
James.Woods@o-i.com
724.732.5748

As more industries seek digital transformation — adopting conveniences such as cloud-based connectivity, frictionless operations, and more — their vulnerability to potential threats increases. When it comes to protecting sensitive information, is your company well-equipped to prevent email phishing scams, cybersecurity threats, and other attacks by bad actors?

While sharing and collaborating on information assets is essential to streamline workflow within an organization, it’s imperative to ensure that any shared information is only accessible by people who need to see it and that it is managed correctly. An information governance policy assures that not only is your company’s most confidential data protected, but also that of every department and individual employee.

What factors must be considered when defining an organization’s information governance (IG) policy? There are three main considerations that go into a strong IG policy approach:

1. WHAT needs to be protected? 

Information that needs to be protected can be placed in one of two categories:

Personally identifiable information (PII)Company confidential information (CCI)

Both sets must be protected, but for different reasons.

PII: It is a company’s responsibility to protect the personal data of their employees and customers. There are now laws, such as Europe’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA) that require such PII protections, safeguarding individual’s interests and privacy.

CCI: It is a company’s responsibility to protect its own sensitive data. There are myriad reasons that a company’s private information stay in-house, the most important being to keep that data away from competitors or those looking to hurt the company. CII protections work to guard company interests.

2. WHO can access the protected data?

Locking away data certainly secures it, but the data serves very little purpose if need-to-know users cannot properly access it. This is where group access lists and Digital Rights Management (DRM) come in handy. Ensuring only true stakeholders have access minimizes the chances that private company information ends up in the wrong hands.

3. HOW can the protected data be accessed?

Policy creators must consider the following questions: Can the users only review the information, or can they also alter the information? Can they download the information locally? Administering user roles can help with this — certain users can read, other users can modify, and so on.

Implementing a sustainable information governance policy

Once an IG policy has been defined, it’s up to those implementing it to choose workflow solutions that meet the requirements of the policy. Weighing the usability of these solutions against how closely they adhere to the IG policy can be a bit of a give and take. The more secure a solution is, the more complicated it might be to administer or the more difficult it might be to use productively.

One area where solutions can offer both information security and solution usability is document viewing. Both CCI and PII are often found in Microsoft Office documents. Think about a financial spreadsheet, an applicant resume, and a product design document. These three documents are from three different areas — finance, human resources, and product development — but all contain CCI and/or PII. Selecting solutions that allow for secure storage of these kinds of documents, while limiting the access to these documents only to those who need to see them, certainly supports any well-defined IG policy. And if these solutions also provide a consistent way to view and work within these documents, that’s also a usability win.

On the other hand, solutions that store documents, but don’t provide a way to view them, not only impact productivity, but may encourage violating the IG policy. For instance, consider a Microsoft Word document containing patent submission information saved securely within a product lifecycle management solution in the cloud. This information is safe — access to the document within the solution is limited. But what happens when someone with access wants to see the information?

They click on the file within the solution and instead of opening a viewer, a copy of the file is downloaded locally to their personal computer so they can open it. If this process is repeated by everyone who needs to access this document, that is a tremendous waste of time. But worse yet, there are now dozens of copies of this document and the information contained therein on different systems. Is the information still secure? What if someone prints the document? Or sends it to personal email or personal cloud storage? Now that there are dozens of digital duplicates, the chances of this information leaking are now a lot higher. This can be avoided with a single solution that not only stores data, but also manages access among users.

Considering solutions that support information governance

The fact is that every day, Microsoft Office files are shared by millions across all vertical industries and markets — and these files frequently contain sensitive data. Setting an IG policy that moves these kinds of documents to limited distribution within workflow tools is a start. But from there, organizations must consider how users are allowed to access the documents to further limit the number of copies of these files. These documents must also be viewable within the solution to prevent users downloading them or attempting to access them by any other means.

Workflow solution providers can feel confident their products meet customer expectations around protecting CCI and PPI by implementing an inline viewer like Qualcomm DirectOffice Document Conversion Software, which ensures that documents are quickly converted and accurately displayed right within the solution.

Check out Qualcomm DirectOffice to see for yourself how it works

Cummins

Cummins Inc. has been named to Ethisphere’s list of the World’s Most Ethical Companies for a 16th consecutive year.

The list honors companies demonstrating business integrity through best-in-class ethics, compliance and governance practices. Ethisphere is a global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices.

“We continue to be inspired by the World’s Most Ethical Companies honorees and their dedication to making real impact for their stakeholders and displaying exemplary values-based leadership,” said Ethisphere CEO Erica Salmon Byrne. “Congratulations to Cummins for earning a place in the World’s Most Ethical Companies Community.”

Cummins was one of 135 honorees on the 2023 list, spanning 19 countries and 49 industries. The list is grounded in Ethisphere’s proprietary Ethics Quotient, the World’s Most Ethical Companies’ assessment process, which includes a more than 200-question survey on the company’s ethical and social practices.

Ethics and the importance of ethical behavior have been emphasized at Cummins since the earliest days of the more than 103-year-old global power technology leader. Today, the Cummins Code of Business Conduct guides employees on ethical behavior around issues ranging from diversity, equity and inclusion; to competing fairly and honestly and avoiding conflicts of interest.

Employees worldwide are required to comply with the code, which is built around 10 ethical principles starting with “We will follow the law everywhere” and ending with the 10th principle, “We will create a culture where employees take responsibility for ethical behavior.”

Employees can report potential code or policy violations in multiple ways. They can use Cummins’ external Ethics website, call the company’s Ethics Helpline, send an email to the Ethics and Compliance function or simply talk to their supervisor, Human Resources representative or a member of the company’s Legal function.

The company has a strict no-retaliation policy for employees reporting potential code violations in good faith.

Cummins’ Ethics and Compliance Function in 2022 oversaw mandatory ethics training in 10 different areas, including anti-bribery, avoiding conflicts of interest, preventing money laundering and more.

Originally published on GoDaddy For Good

By Aman Bhutani
Chief Executive Officer, GoDaddy

I joined GoDaddy in 2019 because I was inspired by its mission. I am not alone. Everyone working here feels the importance of GoDaddy’s mission: to empower entrepreneurs everywhere, making opportunity more inclusive for all.

Every member of our team can share a story about a customer GoDaddy helped. That’s why we really feel a sense of accomplishment and meaning in the work we do. We take pride in being there and advocating for entrepreneurs at every step of their journey, even when they face very personal challenges caused by global pandemics and conflicts, supply chain disruptions and inflationary pressures.

We also take very seriously our role as a corporate citizen. Making a difference in our communities through good governance is core to GoDaddy’s mission and DNA. This report shares our 2022 progress, including highlights like our progress against the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals most meaningful to our business, our momentum against our greenhouse gas emissions reduction goal announced last year and for achieving pay parity for gender equality globally for the eighth consecutive year.1

We believe commerce on the internet offers the greatest opportunity to small businesses to reach more people in their community and all over the world. Our job at GoDaddy is to provide solutions and human-centered guidance that helps entrepreneurs securely unify their digital identity and presence, show up everywhere customers might find them and grow via connected commerce. As we work to execute our mission and strategy, we prioritize our efforts across three pillars — customers, employees and operations — identifying and concentrating our efforts on areas where we can make the greatest positive impact for stakeholders.

Despite our achievements, we have more work to do and continually seek ways to make progress. That intent was evident when I signed the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion pledge in March 2023. This public commitment aligns with three of our corporate sustainability priorities: inclusive entrepreneurship; diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging; and talent management and engagement. I am eager to partner with and learn from this community of more than 2,400 CEOs.

With our almost 21 million customers, international footprint and nearly 84 million domains under management, we have the scale to make a difference globally yet are agile and focused enough to help entrepreneurs overcome obstacles and realize their dreams.

Here’s to the next stages of progress on our journey.

About This Report
Unless otherwise noted, the GoDaddy 2022 Sustainability Report outlines our environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategies, activities, progress, metrics and performance for the fiscal year that ended on December 31, 2022. This report references the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards and includes select Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) Standards metrics for the Internet Media and Services sector.

GoDaddy is committed to regular, transparent communication about our sustainability progress, and to that end, we will share updates on an ongoing basis through our website and will continue to publish an annual Sustainability Report.

1We define achievement of pay parity as pay that is equal to, or a few cents on either side of, a dollar. Please read our 2022 Diversity and Pay Parity Annual Report for more information.

by Keisha Bolden of Self-Help Credit Union

Sustainable investing has gained momentum over the past decade with both financial professionals and casual investors, and in 2023 it’s more relevant than ever. Growing social, economic, and environmental concerns have fueled an increase in socially responsible investments as more people realize the positive impact their investments can make.

CDFIs (Community Development Financial Institutions) are critical players in sustainable investing, leveraging specialized knowledge and resources to create innovative financial products with a positive social return. As we look ahead to the rest of 2023 and beyond, these key CDFI investing trends are likely to play a crucial role in the sustainable investing movement.

Investing in Gender Equity – CDFIs are increasingly emphasizing women-led projects, helping to counter the substantial barriers that female entrepreneurs still face. According to research from the Kaufman Foundation and the PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, women make up 40% of founders, yet received only 2% of total venture capital allocations in 2022. Additional collective research by ICA and CNote has found noteworthy challenges for women, particularly women of color. Although women entrepreneurs are approved for lower loan amounts with higher interest rates, the probability of them defaulting on loans is 2 to 4.5% lower than that of men founders. CDFIs are leading the charge to change these inequities. 

Read the rest of Keisha’s very informative article here – https://greenmoney.com/2023-cdfi-sustainable-investing-trends

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Originally published on Built From Scratch

By making our supply chain more efficient, we reduce business costs and the impact that our product distribution has on the environment.

We continue to make progress on our multi-year supply chain initiative to create the fastest, most efficient and reliable delivery network for home improvement products.

When we announced our approximately $1.2 billion supply chain initiative in 2017, we could have never envisioned the disruption to the global supply chain because of the pandemic. Due to our supply chain investments, however, we have demonstrated our ability to navigate any environment.

In addition, our supply chain investments have helped us move record amounts of product more efficiently. Despite seeing another year of record product volume move through our business, our new supply chain facilities helped us reduce the miles driven to get products from our vendors to our customers.

Even as supply chain volume increased, the efficiencies we gained in our operations and our investments in green energy helped us reduce our carbon intensity.

WAYS WE’RE DRIVING SUPPLY CHAIN IMPROVEMENTS

In 2021, we installed hydrogen fuel cells at three U.S. supply chain facilities, giving us 15 locations with emissions- free fuel for forklifts. We estimate these fuel cells helped us reduce electricity consumption by about 21 million kilowatt hours in 2021.We do a technology-assisted assessment of scheduled pickups and deliveries, then recommend optimized routes to reduce miles traveled, fuel consumed and trucks on the road.By partnering with suppliers to forgo pallets, we can stack products to the top of trailers, resulting in a reduction in the number of truckloads needed to transport some goods.As we roll out our new distribution facilities, we’ve partnered with Plug Power to fuel some of our new facility’s material handling fleets, like forklifts, with zero-emission hydrogen fuel. This is another way we are reducing our environmental impact while building a best-in-class supply chain.We sell available space on our trucks and buy space from other companies, ensuring fewer underloaded trailers hit the road. That space sharing saves about 2 million driven miles a year.Optimization technology guides how we pack trucks or ocean-bound containers. We maximize the product load, reducing the number of truckloads and containers – and overall emissions.

Keep up with all the latest Home Depot news! Subscribe to our bi-weekly news update and get the top Built from Scratch stories delivered straight to your inbox.

By: Jamie Tolan, Camille Couprie, and Tracy Johns

The increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and associated climate change has had a dramatic impact on the Earth’s biosphere, ranging from drought and wildfires to the loss of biodiversity. Forests play a central role in the carbon dioxide cycle, pulling carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing the carbon in their biomass. Forests also contain the majority of Earth’s terrestrial biodiversity. Despite this central role, the magnitude of the carbon dioxide absorbed every year by forests around the world is still largely unclear, due in part to the coarse resolution of global carbon models.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has clarified that carbon removal is a crucial part of limiting global warming to levels of 1.5º C in comparison with pre-industrial temperatures. Forest management is recognized by the IPCC as one of the most important ways to achieve carbon removal at scale, and over the past decade, forest management has become the main source of carbon offsets in the voluntary market.

In 2020, Meta set a goal to reach net zero emissions across our value chain in 2030. As part of this, we are developing new technology solutions to mitigate our own carbon footprint and making these openly available to enable a broader impact on climate change (for example, read more on how we use AI to reduce concrete’s carbon footprint). In this article, we describe how we leveraged internal state-of-the-art AI technology and collaborated with the World Resources Institute (WRI) to develop a method to map forests, tree by tree, across areas the size of continents. As an example, we mapped the U.S. state of California and São Paulo, Brazil, and are making the data public and freely available.

How improved mapping helps achieve net zero

To achieve net zero emissions, Meta is focused on reducing our emissions by prioritizing efficiency and circularity in our business decisions, embracing low-carbon technology, and engaging with our suppliers to help them set climate targets. Some emissions from hard-to-abate sectors will remain difficult to completely eliminate by the end of this decade. For those emissions we cannot avoid, we will remove an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide by purchasing credits from carbon removal projects, including nature-based solutions that can be deployed now, as well as emerging technologies that need our support to scale. Forests are critical to achieving the global scale of carbon removal needed as outlined by the IPCC, and the market for high-quality, forest-based carbon removal needs to grow significantly to achieve this scale.

We believe that by improving measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) of forest-based carbon removal projects, we can improve the quality and accelerate the growth of nature-based climate solutions. First, by lowering the barrier to forest monitoring solutions, we can enable small landowners to access carbon markets and increase the number of community-led carbon removal projects. Smaller, distributed tree growth (e.g., in agroforestry) lacks affordable and scalable monitoring solutions, which can hamper the development of such projects in smaller communities. Second, nature-based solutions can use more reliable data of the carbon stock in forests for both the baselining and the monitoring of forest carbon. Improved, freely available high-resolution data could potentially be used in standardized verification methodologies for certain projects. Both of these challenges can be addressed by improving fine-grained knowledge of forests at a global scale and making the data publicly available.

Description of our method

In order to make our mapping methodology useful for MRV of carbon projects, we set the following criteria: detect single trees (as small trees as possible) and be globally applicable. We also require that the method be applicable to different sources of imagery to allow for frequent updates of the canopy height maps.

Leveraging recent advances in self-supervised learning, namely the DINOv2 model we announced today, and our expertise in AI-based global mapping from high-resolution imagery, we have developed a machine learning approach that can detect canopy height with high fidelity from RGB imagery with a resolution of 0.5 m. We describe our model in detail in the preprint (link), which has been submitted for peer review. DINOv2 provides a self-supervised framework that’s trainable on any collection of licensed photos without needing any associated metadata. In this work, a DINOv2 model is trained on high-resolution (0.5 m) RGB satellite imagery from MAXAR Technologies in a self-supervised fashion. We then use aerial LIDAR data as a ground truth to learn canopy height maps (CHM). Since our ground truth is in North America and high-quality aerial LIDAR imagery is not globally available, we use spaceborne LIDAR data as a low-resolution and sparse but global data source to calibrate our model for global applicability.

Choosing the DINOv2’s self-supervised neural network learning allows for universal and generalizable features, which we believe facilitates global applicability of the model. The 0.5 m resolution allows us to map the canopy height of individual trees regardless of sparsity, undergrowth type, or species, which is crucial in achieving accurate biomass estimates. Leveraging our model, we create canopy height maps of California and São Paulo, Brazil (download the data here and view map here). We find that the model performs qualitatively well in Brazil, even though the high-resolution training data was from North America.

Since the model is trained on RGB imagery, it allows the analysis of generic RGB imagery resampled to the same 0.5 m resolution that the model has been trained on, so imagery collected by planes or drones, rather than by satellites, can also be used as input. This is particularly important since aerial RGB data is more widely available and allows for simple, cost-effective tracking of changes in canopy height over time.

As an example, we demonstrate that our model performs well on the aerial imagery of the NEON dataset, as shown in the figure above.

Conclusion

Our method enables large-scale analysis of high-resolution imagery, determining forest canopy height with sub-meter resolution. Accurate forest mapping in space and time will lead to more accountable forest-based carbon offsets and enable the development of more carbon projects, especially those on smaller pieces of land — two requirements for nature-based carbon offsets to achieve the scale and quality needed to meet net zero goals at a global scale.