Intel's new $1 billion chip factory in Vietnam, about 10 miles from downtown Ho Chi Minh City, embraces environmental and sustainability measures far beyond those required by Vietnam's laws. Intel didn't have to go to these lengths, but the motivation for these measures is simple, said the complex's general manager: "It turns out, what's good for the environment is also good for business."
The definition of what it means to be sustainable in the 21st century needs to be broadened to include a skyscraper's ability to sustain the human spirit, says a design director at Gensler. Imagine energy efficient towers whose walls might slide open, allowing office workers to step outside, into the sky, for a breath of fresh air. Towers where seasonal gardens grow vertically and where friends might meet by a kumquat tree on the 68th floor for a cup of coffee on a beautiful spring day.
Since 2003, the United States Postal Service has reduced its energy use by 26 percent. Energy efficiency improvements at the USPS's 33,000 buildings have saved enough energy to meet the power needs of 90,000 households for a year. In 2011, alone, the USPS saved $22 million with its 1 trillion BTU reduction in energy use.
3M announced this week a new sourcing policy that ensures all the virgin wood fiber going into its paper-based products and packaging comes from sources that protect forests and respect human rights.
Keurig coffee fans might love the convenience of the single-cup system, but the amount of plastic being thrown into landfills was worrying the rest of us. Now the coffee-selling giant has announced a recyclable coffee pod that may ease customers' guilt.
The latest data pointing to an economic recovery includes encouraging manufacturing news in the U.S. and Europe, propelling stocks higher worldwide.
The Dow Jones industrial average, powered higher all year by optimism that the economic recovery is finally for real, crossed 13,000 today for the first time since May 2008 -- a number with symbolic power that couldn't be dismissed.
Today, Harvard University is among more than 30 business schools offering courses on social responsibility.* This is illustrative of many postive trends in business, as exemplified by the growth of Business for Social Responsibility.
In a record-setting accomplishment for tropical forest conservation, Barama Company announced that 570,000 hectares (about 2,200 square miles) of Barama's forests in Guyana is being certified as meeting the rigorous environmental, social, and economic standards.
In place of a holiday party, computer technology company NVIDIA conducted one of Silicon Valley's largest-ever employee volunteer events, with 1,500 employees and community members gathering to bolster a local farm's ability to continue providing students and families with access to fresh local produce. NVIDIA's annual holiday initiative called Project Inspire began on December 9 and in two days transformed Full Circle Farm's operations, building structures to enable it to become financially self-sustaining and to expand its ability to provide nutrition education to students and families in Silicon Valley.
Hilton Hotels has launched a program to collect safe, surplus food from conferences and daily restaurant operations that would otherwise be thrown away, and providing it to those in need. A multi-year partnership with two hunger organizations began a month ago to ensure that hotel food, instead of being wasted, is distributed to local food banks, soup kitchens, and school programs in Egypt and the US.
At the age of 66, Walter Lange was setting out to prove great luxury watches do not have to be Swiss. In a remote corner of what was East Germany, Lange aimed to rebuild a venerable watchmaking business whose history reads like a chronicle of 20th century Europe.
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