A growing number of companies are setting science-based targets to reduce their GHG emissions in line with the Paris Agreement goals to limit global temperature increase to well-below 2°C. Over 300 have committed to take action through the Science Based Targets initiative. These companies and others wishing to join are expected to set ambitious goals to reduce their scope 3 emissions when significant. According to data collected by CDP, about 40% of the global GHG emissions are driven – or influenced – by companies through their purchases and the products they sell. CDP’s Supply Chain Program offers companies the potential to collect valuable information from suppliers and engage with them using its unique global platform. Come to this workshop to learn about emerging trends in supplier engagement and science-based target setting. This workshop is for companies and other stakeholders interested in setting science-based targets, with an emphasis on collecting data and reducing scope 3 emissions in their supply chain.

GreenBiz 18 In-Depth Tutorials are intensive half-day sessions held prior to the start of the conference. These are designed to offer participants an opportunity to dive deeper into a topic of interest and develop tangible knowledge and skills. In addition, attendees will have a greater opportunity to network with their peers in these interactive sessions. Concurrent tutorials will be held the morning of Tuesday, February 6, and are available only to those who purchase an All Access Pass.

The move towards circular economy is gaining traction across Europe and the United States as a new approach that maximizes resource efficiency and effectiveness by closing loops in design, disposal and reuse of products and materials. An ethical circular economy emphasizes systems thinking, social values, impact and equity in addition to the traditional approach to circular economy. This workshop, offered through Arizona State University, a global leader in sustainability education, allows participants to work in groups to redesign a marketable product or service based on circular economy principles and models, apply the product to a regional circular economy strategy and complete a high-level net positive assessment against the Sustainable Development Goals.

 GreenBiz 18 In-Depth Tutorials are intensive half-day sessions held prior to the start of the conference. These are designed to offer participants an opportunity to dive deeper into a topic of interest and develop tangible knowledge and skills. In addition, attendees will have a greater opportunity to network with their peers in these interactive sessions. Concurrent tutorials will be held the morning of Tuesday, February 6, and are available only to those who purchase an All Access Pass.

Is it possible to create a circular economy in the fast fashion industry? As the apparel industry adapts to new circular models, it is posing both challenges and opportunities for how fashion is designed, sourced, manufactured and sold, and the relationships along the value chain. Learn how leading-edge initiatives like Fashion for Good are ramping up to become the catalyst for promoting circular fashion and how one brand is harnessing the power of collaboration with other brands on accelerating and scaling technologies that will be needed to advance the industry.

Setting and advancing compelling goals that stretch an organization to greater heights is a challenge across sectors, but getting it right has many benefits. Ambitious goals can accelerate an organization’s success in creating stakeholder value. Carefully crafted public goals reveal your intentions for making your organization and the world better for all stakeholders, while serving as an internal management tool and source of inspiration for employee creativity. How do you know what goals to set, how high to aim and which metrics to use? How do you overcome unforeseen obstacles to implementation? During this session, you will learn strategies for setting and advancing breakthrough goals based on the experiences of panelists from the public and private sector. Panel members will share lessons learned and educational case studies that illustrate how setting and advancing breakthrough goals is inspiring stakeholders, changing industries and creating new sources of value.

Demand for supply chain transparency and corporate accountability is surging with the public. With an increasing number of activist campaigns, new corporate sustainability measurement standards, and a growing number of shareholder requests, is your company ready to successfully engage stakeholders? If and how your company responds may make the difference. Through stakeholder engagement - the collaborative process between advocates, investors and corporate leaders influence corporate decision-making - corporations can avoid being labeled as laggards and instead become sustainability champions. This panel will outline engagement strategies built for an evolving stakeholder landscape. Experts in shareowner advocacy, stakeholder engagement, and corporate responsibility will discuss how collaboration can mitigate reputational risk and unearth win-win solutions. By examining recent trends in increasing corporate accountability, this session will examine how to avoid traps like “lawyering up”, tap external stakeholders as a resource, and how to use supply chain transparency and disclosure to your advantage.

Today, carbon dioxide is most commonly associated with emissions that pollute our atmosphere and oceans -- an expensive liability that must be mitigated. At the same time, a number of pioneering companies are turning this paradigm on its head by developing strategies for turning waste carbon into a valuable and sustainable asset throughout their supply chains. Come learn how companies across industries (including agriculture, energy, retail, manufacturing, and beyond) are working to harness waste carbon as a resource to improve their bottom line while tackling climate change. 

Coke recently announced its achievement of 100% water replenishment for its operations. Now, other beverage companies are following suit. Intel recently announced plans to restore 100% of its water use - the first tech company to do so. This workshop will share learnings from the early movers, helping participants understand how to define water replenishment, establish a program, avoid potential pitfalls, and develop effective criteria for evaluation and success.

There is a growing recognition among the mainstream investment community that ESG practices have a significant impact on a company’s financial performance. This has resulted in a growing demand for ESG performance data from companies by investors. To date, company ESG data has been inconsistent and unreliable due to a lack of clear standards and metrics. Groups like the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board provide sector-specific ESG standards that enable industry-comparable data on issue that matter most to performance management and communications with investors. As sustainability practices evolve, so does the gap between business functions, including the sustainability team, the finance department, investor relations and the investment community. This panel will look at how the sustainability team can build alignment and close the gap with the finance department, investor relations and the investment community.

GreenBiz research shows 84 percent of companies are setting targets to procure renewable electricity — often to meet corporate carbon emissions targets. But accounting for these investments is far from simple. This session will discuss ways companies can report on the "positive" impact of their renewables investments in ways that internal (finance teams and business unit managers) and external stakeholders (customers) can understand. Topics will include RECs, carbon offsets and energy equity.

Businesses manage their waste based on cost, availability of services, and sustainability goals. Sustainability goals have increasingly focused on diversion from landfill and “zero waste”. As businesses and municipalities struggle to meet their goals, it is necessary to evaluate the environmental benefits of available choices, setting aside weight-based goals to look at the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of every option for managing materials. Lifecycle thinking recognizes the importance of the potential environmental effects at each stage of a product’s life. Focusing on just one stage or one effect can be misleading; a broader look considers the use of energy, air emissions, solid waste, and more associated with product manufacture, use and end disposal. Sustainable Material Management seeks to reduce environmental impacts by managing material through all stages of their life. It identifies impacts and action to address those impacts across the full cycle of materials products as they move through the economy – from raw material extraction to product design and manufacture, transport, consumption, use, reuse, recycling and disposal.

It is a large undertaking for companies with national and international portfolios to assess waste benchmarks and obtain data to develop strategies for operations, supply chain, and guest experiences. This session will help attendees understand how to best evaluate their choices, using waste data, product suppliers, waste haulers, and any other partners they engage. The content will cover the baselining process and how to utilize this evaluation to move the needle and develop constructive material management goals.

Global consumption and production patterns must be disrupted to meet the nutrition and health needs of a growing population within planetary boundaries. Many short-term solutions already exist and need to be scaled, but a longer-term food reform is essential. Food Reform for Sustainability and Health (FReSH) was jointly launched in January 2017 by the EAT Foundation (EAT) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), with 25 founding member companies and almost 40 companies now involved in FReSH. FReSH provides its members with an opportunity for collecting learning and action to unlock the potential economic opportunities of moving to a sustainable food system. This includes work to address both food production and consumption patterns, food loss and waste from a nutrition perspective, and developing a measurement and performance framework. Join this discussion to learn more about FReSH and how the program and its member companies are shaping the future of food.

Join like-minded attendees for interactive moderated lunch discussions around a particular topic. Each table discussion will be led by an expert or thought leader, held at roundtables of up to 10 participants. These are freeform discussions, so bring your own challenges, questions, and ideas to talk through and get to know your fellow conference participants.

Farmers and ranchers manage approximately 70% of the land in the United States. To them, sustainability is an abstract concept - soil health is not.  Improving soil health can help farmers and ranchers build resilience to climate change, reduce energy use and economic risk, and increase profitability. Practices that promote soil health increase carbon sequestration, improve water quality, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and increase nutrient densities in our food supply. The Soil Health Institute is partnering with leaders in industry, scientists, producers and key stakeholders by providing them with science-based information, decision support tools, and measurement standards to increase adoption. We invite you to join us for a conversation on how to make the most of soil health in your organization and take advantage of a win-win situation for producers and the public. This discussion will be most valuable for sustainability professionals in the food and agriculture industry.

Join like-minded attendees for interactive moderated lunch discussions around a particular topic. Each table discussion will be led by an expert or thought leader, held at roundtables of up to 10 participants. These are freeform discussions, so bring your own challenges, questions, and ideas to talk through and get to know your fellow conference participants.

We are seeing increased pressure from investors for companies to enhance and standardize their climate risk disclosure to enable more effective pricing of climate risk. Pension funds are divesting from fossil fuels. City governments are suing oil companies for damage to their cities. Citizens are demanding more transparency. What will this year’s financial and sustainability reporting reveal about level of awareness and actions being taken by companies to identify and manage climate risks? How do companies move from boiler-plate disclosure to decision-useful information?

Join like-minded attendees for interactive moderated lunch discussions around a particular topic. Each table discussion will be led by an expert or thought leader, held at roundtables of up to 10 participants. These are freeform discussions, so bring your own challenges, questions, and ideas to talk through and get to know your fellow conference participants.

WBCSD has launched a project to develop a consensus-based framework for measuring circularity within companies. This discussion will share and discuss insights on what the circular metrics landscape looks like, how and why companies are measuring circularity, what links there are with emerging policy, and discuss options for the path forward.

Join like-minded attendees for interactive moderated lunch discussions around a particular topic. Each table discussion will be led by an expert or thought leader, held at roundtables of up to 10 participants. These are freeform discussions, so bring your own challenges, questions, and ideas to talk through and get to know your fellow conference participants.

Former United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres managed expectations for the 2015 Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris at the Lima negotiations by making the point that carbon neutrality is in fact what policy and regulation will have to deliver by the end of the century, if not sooner. But is setting and achieving a net zero emissions goal still relevant to business? An obvious consideration for any company publicly committing to bold climate targets is the value it will deliver for the business and its stakeholders. The company may want to showcase its leadership, engage its employees and investors, and differentiate from its competitors. But with options including carbon neutrality, net positive impact, 100% renewable energy, an internal price on carbon, and engagement with the Sustainable Development Goals among others, how can these programmes be customised to deliver the most value across the organisation?

Join like-minded attendees for interactive moderated lunch discussions around a particular topic. Each table discussion will be led by an expert or thought leader, held at roundtables of up to 10 participants. These are freeform discussions, so bring your own challenges, questions, and ideas to talk through and get to know your fellow conference participants.

Successfully integrating sustainability into culture and practice at the corporate workplace requires the commitment of every employee. While Green Teams have long occupied this space as internal drivers, companies are finding that their sustainability efforts remain somewhat siloed. Increasingly, sustainability executives are starting to tap into their company’s ERG structure to drive and integrate sustainability inside their companies. Join this luncheon discussion to explore the potential of leveraging ERGs as a powerful advancement platform for cross-functional collaboration and building support for your company’s initiatives.

Join like-minded attendees for interactive moderated lunch discussions around a particular topic. Each table discussion will be led by an expert or thought leader, held at roundtables of up to 10 participants. These are freeform discussions, so bring your own challenges, questions, and ideas to talk through and get to know your fellow conference participants.

How do we feed 9 billion people enough protein in a way that is healthy, affordable and good for the planet? It is both a huge challenge and opportunity for far-sighted businesses. Along with changing consumer tastes and expectations, there is a growing recognition of the need to transform the way we consume and produce protein in the future. Join Forum for the Future for a discussion about innovative approaches to shifting consumer diets and addressing future needs for protein and animal feed. This session will offer practical examples of how businesses are thinking about sustainable protein, as well as the business opportunities for retail, food service and food manufacturers.

Join like-minded attendees for interactive moderated lunch discussions around a particular topic. Each table discussion will be led by an expert or thought leader, held at roundtables of up to 10 participants. These are freeform discussions, so bring your own challenges, questions, and ideas to talk through and get to know your fellow conference participants.

Energy technology, from renewables to efficiency, is highly dependent on metal and minerals. But there are numerous challenges with sustainably mining these materials, from environmental degradation to human rights and geopolitical risks. The transition to a circular economy presents enormous opportunities for mining and metals, and the copper industry is emerging as a model for best practices in this space. In Europe, half of the demand for copper is already being met by recycled sources, due to attractive economic incentives and effective industry collaboration. Join this guru lunch for a discussion on the learnings this collaboration across industry and how to apply these lessons in responsible sourcing and circular economy to your own business.

Join like-minded attendees for interactive moderated lunch discussions around a particular topic. Each table discussion will be led by an expert or thought leader, held at roundtables of up to 10 participants. These are freeform discussions, so bring your own challenges, questions, and ideas to talk through and get to know your fellow conference participants.

Nature’s been there and done that. In fact, she’s really the queen of sustainability, with a track record of 3.8 billion years. Join this lunch to learn about lessons from the “field” on humans navigating sustainability challenges with nature by their side.

Join like-minded attendees for interactive moderated lunch discussions around a particular topic. Each table discussion will be led by an expert or thought leader, held at roundtables of up to 10 participants. These are freeform discussions, so bring your own challenges, questions, and ideas to talk through and get to know your fellow conference participants.

It has been recently estimated that more than half of the clothing that we buy is disposed of within a year and that in every second of every day, one full garbage truck full of clothing is landfilled or incinerated. This example of the linear economy is straining our resource systems and has a systemic impact on other industries across the globe. These facts combined with the challenge of cycling technology that is not mature and scalable presents a dilemma in creating a circular fashion industry.

There are solutions. Recently, C&A – the fashion retailer, in business for over 176 years and the world’s largest buyer of organic cotton, has embarked on a journey to both create a more circular fashion industry and help others, by sharing their learnings, to make a similar journey. Join this discussion to learn about how they are starting this journey and embodying the circular economy in their products with the first Cradle to Cradle GOLD Certified T-shirt at scale and in upcoming collections. Learn also how C&A and the C&A Foundation are working together with Fashion for Good to drive and scale innovative technologies across the fashion supply chain.

Join like-minded attendees for interactive moderated lunch discussions around a particular topic. Each table discussion will be led by an expert or thought leader, held at roundtables of up to 10 participants. These are freeform discussions, so bring your own challenges, questions, and ideas to talk through and get to know your fellow conference participants.

Do you want to create and measure social change on an issue like sustainability—from employee and consumer behavior to social norms? Building awareness and educating your audience will only get you so far. And just using metrics like advertising exposure and social media engagement won’t tell if you’re achieving long-term change. Join this guru lunch to understand how to plan, predict, and track your campaign's ability to effect real social change, with the help of a new tool, the Social Change Method. We'll link traditional thinking and recent findings about what influences individual behavioral choices and collective change, and address how to update common metrics such as message reach and awareness with newer, advanced measures of social interaction. Learn how to see what’s coming next for your issue, employ the right strategies at the right time, and create change for the greater good.

Join like-minded attendees for interactive moderated lunch discussions around a particular topic. Each table discussion will be led by an expert or thought leader, held at roundtables of up to 10 participants. These are freeform discussions, so bring your own challenges, questions, and ideas to talk through and get to know your fellow conference participants.

Senior management and boards are facing growing pressures from investors, customers, and regulators to be able to answer this question: what is climate change doing to your organization? In response, management teams will need a clear and common framework to assess and report on related risk, strategy and opportunity associated with climate resilience. This session will provide an overview of why your company needs to define its climate resilience and approaches it can adopt to assess its climate resilience, including the implications of the recommendations of the Financial Stability Board’s Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and the application of scenario stress-testing to assess climate resilience. Join this session to hear how organizations are working to apply these recommendations, the challenges they have faced in assessing climate resilience, and solutions they have developed.

What if corporations had an intelligent and automated real-time way to secure large-scale, last mile data on their CSR and Sustainability performance from across geographies? How are corporations scaling social impact without losing sight of all that goes into a citizenship or a sustainability program? Join this panel discussion with leaders from Fortune 500 companies to understand how technology is transforming impact measurement and management, by ensuring that every development dollar is made to work harder.

Every sustainability strategy requires some key components that make it successful – such as a vision, a roadmap and a clear set of targets. Equally, a sustainability campaign requires authenticity, crisp messaging, targeted communications and clear creative to cut through the clutter. Either without the other can fail. This approach is what we call Logic and Magic. We’ve seen this happen many times - Logic without the Magic stays niche and wonky. Magic without Logic becomes greenwash. So how can sustainability, marketing and communications practitioners connect the dots between the two and make sure their efforts pay off? Join Futerra to decode the sweet spot between logic and magic – and learn how to create your own map for success. We’ll begin with a brief set up on why we believe the Logic + Magic framing works, move on to a short panel discussion on the components of Logic and Magic with two-three sustainability leaders and culminate with audience questions.

High profile initiatives like Science Based Targets, RE100, Champions 12.3, and others rely on a steady drumbeat of news and content to demonstrate momentum, identify leading companies, and recruit new companies. Both companies and NGOs involved in these initiatives must contribute to the communications work, and the best campaigns play to each organization’s strengths. There is a symbiotic relationship between companies and NGOs—companies need NGOs to lend their commitments credibility, and NGOs need companies to prove viability of the sustainability commitment in question. There’s a lot that goes into a successful sustainability campaign, and this session will offer an overview of best practices and helpful tips for corporate sustainability professionals who support this work.

Are you 2° Company?  If you are not, join the crowd.  If you are, well done!  Join us for a lively discussion where we explore why this is a hot topic, how investors are thinking about this issue and using company data, and how companies can respond.

Renewable natural gas (RNG) can be an important alternative to diesel and gasoline for companies looking to lower their carbon footprint and contribute to a healthier environment. However, there are a number of myths and mistaken assumptions about RNG that may be holding back greater adoption. This workshop will help clear the air as representatives from UPS, Clean Energy, and the RNG Coalition help attendees understand the difference between fossil extracted versus renewable natural gas and why industry leaders in the transportation industry are choosing to make the switch from fossil fuels to RNG.

Many companies have ambitious goals to eliminate waste at the end of their product's lives, including ensuring their packaging is recyclable, leveraging their brands to engage consumers, ensuring consumers have access to comprehensive recycling infrastructure, investing in emerging technology to improve recycling, and incorporating PCR into their packaging and products to drive the market for recycled commodities. In this session, these companies will discuss how massive corporations like theirs intend take on these goals, how to set and achieve ambitious goals around waste, and the need for partnerships and cross-industry collaboration to solve an issue that is bigger than their company.

Sustainability risks are, at the end of the day, business risks. Although they can be new and emerging, complex and longer term, issues such as climate change, human rights or resource scarcity all have the ability to impact an organization’s profitability, success or even survival. This session will provide insights on how to leverage existing ERM activities, company processes and ESG tools and frameworks to better identify, assess, manage and report on ESG-related risks.

Coinciding with the release of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures and the updated COSO Enterprise Risk Management Framework: Integrating with Strategy and Performance, this session will be a timely launch of a WBCSD-COSO report detailing practical guidance for companies looking to integrate ESG-related risks into risk management activities. This guidance is aimed at addressing a number of issues plaguing successful management of ESG-related risks - including limited knowledge of ESG risks, lack of integration between ESG and those responsible for risk management or strategic activities, and difficulties quantifying ESG risks.

This session will focus on strategies to scale renewable energy projects for sustainability leaders at large companies. The strategies include utility bill analysis, group purchases and navigating the world of hiring consultants, brokers, project financing and developers. The session will also explore how sustainability leaders can make the business case internally to energy, finance, legal and leadership teams.

Investor demand for sustainability information continues to increase creating the need for companies to fully understand and strategically manage the disclosure of a new set of performance metrics. To overcome survey fatigue, this session will help corporate practitioners understand what investors are doing with this information. How accessible is disclosed data and how do investors incorporate it into their risk considerations and portfolio decisions?

Getting broad internal buy-in on sustainability is a challenge most companies face. Whether the impetus for sustainable business comes from the top, bottom or middle — there are good examples of each — pushing it out to the entire organization can be a significant barrier to success. Presenters at this workshop will share their strategies and experiences that took their programs to a new level. The session will conclude with an interactive exercise that will provide attendees with fresh approaches to driving engagement at their organization.

When it comes to increasing energy efficiency (and reducing greenhouse gas emissions) in buildings, changing lightbulbs is no longer enough. How do sustainability professionals and facilities managers make efficiency innovative and fun, and what are the big wins beyond just savings? A diverse group of leading building portfolio owners and the head of the Department of Energy's Better Buildings Challenge share some new strategies for tackling efficiency that take advantage of new financing models, help streamline the piloting of new technologies, and reinforce an ongoing incremental desire for change within their organizations.