Communicating a clear and concise message that delivers not only your intent but your call to action is essential for any sustainability professional at any level. Whether you are going for C-suite buy-in, consumer action or stakeholder behavior change, the ability to develop a strong narrative will be the most powerful tool you can wield. At this tutorial, join three of the world’s most respected sustainability communicators from Arizona State University, the nation’s most innovative university, to learn about and engage in exercises focused on the art and the science of storytelling.

The vast resources of business are being harnessed to finance programs which combine emission reduction activities with clean water access, biodiversity conservation, protection of blue carbon systems and restoration of forests: We need to use all the solutions available to meet our global climate goals and restore a thriving planet. Join us to find out more about projects which deliver clean water in Guatemala, conserve forests in Canada, build water infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa and restore mangroves in Kenya.

Climate action is needed, but what will it take to tackle the problem? How can we understand whether our actions will be enough to get the job done? Join leaders from Climate Interactive and HSBC for a fast-paced, interactive exercise where you get to test your strategies and assumptions for combating climate change. Built by MIT Sloan School of Business and the NGO, Climate Interactive, over the past seven years, and building on models that go back 30 years, EN-ROADS lets users test assumptions around renewable energy, afforestation, efficiency, transportation electrification, and a dozen other climate strategies. The resulting experience is hopeful, scientifically-grounded, action-oriented, and eye-opening. Please bring your laptop to create your own 2° scenario during the session (Chrome 57+, Firefox 52+ or Safari 11+ browsers).

We live in a world of complex tensions that can have significant impact on our communities, and on us as individuals. This naturally leads to passionate, deeply held beliefs and identities. But when we come to work — where we spend the majority of our time — we often don’t openly address these topics. But doesn't that run counter to our desire to bring our "whole self" to work? This interactive session will explore how to address these challenges and create a safe, open culture that builds trust, celebrates identity and fosters a community of belonging.

We often talk about employee engagement in the corporate office, but engaging hourly employees on the frontlines is essential to an impactful program. Join this session to learn effective strategies for activating this critical group, featuring learnings from International Paper and the National Environmental Education Foundation’s (NEEF) collaboration to rally manufacturing employees around the company’s community sustainability commitments. This workshop will explore the process of design thinking for creative problem solving, applied to understanding what matters most to employees across a variety of industrial work environments. The goal: Engage employees in localized activities that meet the needs of employees, communities and their environments.

Hands on and outdoor-based programs can disrupt thinking, encourage innovation, and build sustainability leaders. Join us to get a taste of what it is like to help solve an important environmental challenge by collecting critical scientific data alongside leading scientist Dr. Thomas Meixner in the desert landscape of Mummy Mountain. You will learn about desert ecology, climate change, citizen science, and the benefit of corporations engaging in natural spaces like these. Earthwatch creates immersive and inspirational experiences around the world for corporate employees to learn about environmental challenges first hand and use that as foundation to take action on sustainability in their day jobs. Please dress appropriately for the outdoors and bring your (reusable) water bottle.

The climate crisis requires us to act fast and collectively, but how? As more companies are beginning to declare carbon neutral and net zero strategies and goals, it’s become clear that companies going down this path need to align on these definitions, set science-based goals, and balance residual emissions with insetting. Without clear direction to reach 1.5C, these goals and climate strategies can easily become muddled, irrelevant and risk deviating from sound scientific standards. 

In this session, Quantis will use visualization exercises, audience engagement and peer-to-peer collaboration to explain:

• Why companies are starting to move now even though we have known about climate issues for 50 years
• What climate strategies are relevant to meet the 1.5C threshold for science-based targets and stay relevant for the long-term
• What is the secret key to making the impossible possible

There are more strategies to use clean energy and become more efficient than ever. If your company wants to explore options for procuring renewables and increasing energy productivity, where do you start? In your own organization! This session outlines how the different parts of an organization can work together — from finance to sustainability to energy — to get internal buy-in and reset how your organization can think about decarbonizing. 

Join this session to explore creative approaches to advancing the SDGs centered in design-thinking and innovation. Learn from this year's cohort of the sustainability accelerator Young SDG Innovators Programme, future leaders who are developing and driving solutions through new technologies, initiatives, and business models, and delivering on their company’s sustainability objectives.

Climate strategies can take many forms, from setting science-based targets, plans for 100% renewable energy, and goals that are carbon neutral, climate positive, or carbon negative. How do companies select where to invest their money in order to deliver the speed, scale and impact required to meet the urgency of the climate challenge and harness the business opportunities? Join this roundtable lunch for a frank discussion about internal reductions, the value of offsetting, carbon sinks, drawdown and avoided emissions, and what a business can do to focus and prioritise.

About Roundtable Lunches: Join interactive lunch discussions, moderated 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. All roundtable lunches do not have advanced sign-up — participation is first-come, first-served.

Join your peers to learn about and share your leading strategies and methods for setting and accounting for SBTs for scope 3 emissions. Josh Whitney, Anthesis Group Executive Director will facilitate a discussion around the challenges and opportunities of tracking absolute emissions reductions in the supply chain, as well as leading methods for engaging suppliers and building their capacity to set their own SBTs.

About Roundtable Lunches: Join interactive lunch discussions, moderated 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. All roundtable lunches do not have advanced sign-up — participation is first-come, first-served.

Did you know that, on average, humans ingest the equivalent of one credit card (5 grams) of microplastics in a week? While we don’t fully understand the scale and long-term impacts of microplastic contamination in the environment and on human health, consumers are becoming more aware and concerned about the issue. Consumer concern will drive decisions and demand for products and supply chains that no longer add to environmental microplastic contamination. Which industries can have the greatest impact in reducing microplastic contamination through redesigning their products and supply chains? Join the discussion with Conservation X Labs as we build a coalition of partners to lead a global Grand Challenge competition with the Flotilla Foundation to source scalable solutions and tackle this growing crisis.

About Roundtable Lunches: Join interactive lunch discussions, moderated 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. All roundtable lunches do not have advanced sign-up — participation is first-come, first-served.

Women’s lack of representation in positions of leadership is broadly acknowledged throughout the business world. Yet business is falling short in rising to this challenge and considerable barriers still hold women back. Only 4% of leadership positions in Fortune 500 companies are held by women. 9 out of 10 Americans are convinced that pervasive preconceptions and a lack of support from mentors are key contributors to women’s lack of representation in top positions. Increasing the representation of women at the top of companies helps business not only to become more successful but also more sustainable. Join WBCSD for a discussion on empowering women to lead, featuring their new LEAP initiative (Leading Women for Sustainable Development) that aims to help women reach senior positions in their company and ensure that sustainability is embedded both in their leadership and their company’s strategy.

About Roundtable Lunches: Join interactive lunch discussions, moderated by an expert or thought leader, held at a roundtable 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. All roundtable lunches do not have advanced sign-up — participation is first-come, first-served.

The Task Force on Climate-Related Disclosures has helped motivate many companies to think about climate risk from a investor relations angle – “disclosure” is in the name. Yet, most of the value comes from the risk and strategic processes it encourages. Many processes only end up generating a limited amount of transparency for no real benefit to the firm or investors. At this session we will discuss the challenges and some of the solutions of getting TCFD to deliver value, rather than being just a another reporting burden.

About Roundtable Lunches: Join interactive lunch discussions, moderated 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. All roundtable lunches do not have advanced sign-up — participation is first-come, first-served.

The efficiency market is highly fragmented by both improvement measures and property types; one of the key limiting factors in efficiency realizing its full potential in helping to mitigate climate change. Hydrocarbon markets are the exact opposite. This session will consider how to structure efficiency opportunities in ways that mobilize and incentivize energy efficiency “explorers and producers”. What drives fragmentation and how can the market more effectively standardize and aggregate activity? What informs both the limits of using capex for energy efficiency and the quest for alternatives? How might an efficiency explorer and producer structure its business model and solutions?

About Roundtable Lunches: Join interactive lunch discussions, moderated 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. All roundtable lunches do not have advanced sign-up — participation is first-come, first-served.

In this interactive discussion, participants will explore why setting targets aligned with 1.5°Celsius is important, highlight examples from the business community on how this can be done and lessons learned from those who have gone before, explore the critical gaps or needs companies have to overcome in setting and achieving 1.5°C targets, and outline some of the specific actions or steps companies can take to align their business strategies with 1.5°C.

About Roundtable Lunches: Join interactive lunch discussions, moderated 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. All roundtable lunches do not have advanced sign-up — participation is first-come, first-served.

Do you want to create measurable change on sustainability issues — from employee and consumer behavior to social norms? Building awareness and educating your audience will only get you so far. And just using metrics such as advertising exposure and social media engagement won’t tell if you’re achieving long-term change. Join this roundtable to understand how to plan, predict and track your campaign's ability to effect real behavior and social change. 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.

About Roundtable Lunches: Join interactive lunch discussions, moderated 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. All roundtable lunches do not have advanced sign-up — participation is first-come, first-served.

Share your communication challenge and receive strategic insights and practical tips to increase issue urgency, relevancy, and solvability with key internal and external stakeholders at this interactive problem-solving session. Cara Pike from Climate Access will lead the roundtable, drawing on more than 25 years in environmental communications and behavior change.

About Roundtable Lunches: Join interactive lunch discussions, moderated 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. All roundtable lunches do not have advanced sign-up — participation is first-come, first-served.

Join us as we discuss the context around TCFD and what this means for CSR professionals. We will share insights from commonly asked questions and examples of how companies have started to holistically transform their businesses and value chains. In addition, we will touch on some emerging aspects of this generational and geographical issue and how to consider "what would Greta say?" as part of your stakeholder audiences.

About Roundtable Lunches: Join interactive lunch discussions, moderated 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. All roundtable lunches do not have advanced sign-up — participation is first-come, first-served.

Sustainability is an inherently cross-functional role inside any organization — often partnering with operations, product development, corporate strategy and beyond. As companies increasingly seek to amplify their sustainability strategies with investors, sustainability professionals are navigating new conversations with treasury and investor relations. At this roundtable discussion, we will explore ways in which the capital markets can present opportunities for sustainability professionals to advance their strategic priorities.

About Roundtable Lunches: Join interactive lunch discussions, moderated 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. All roundtable lunches do not have advanced sign-up — participation is first-come, first-served.

It’s become well known that about a third of the world’s food  — worth roughly $1 trillion annually — is never eaten. And while you may be thinking about far-off farms and factories as the source of that waste, nearly 85 percent of food in the United States is wasted and lost at consumer-facing businesses and homes. But a growing number of foodservice operators are finding that curbing food waste simultaneously can keep edible food out of landfills and keep money in their pockets. In alignment with Target 12.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals, which focuses on cutting food waste and loss in half by 2030, restaurants save on average $7 in operating costs on average for every $1 they invested in reducing kitchen food waste, according to recent analysis. So what will it take for your campus to take a bite out of its food waste problem? From procurement strategy, data collection and menu planning to shifting kitchen and "eater" culture, food rescue and composting, this solutions-oriented breakout will help you get started on cutting down on campus food waste. 

Over 8000 companies self-report environmental data to CDP, feeding into an ecosystem of ESG data which is used widely by investment, business, city and policy communities to make important decisions, manage risk and capitalize on opportunities. During this session, you’ll hear how these stakeholders harness and apply this corporate environmental data, understand current trends of ESG data, as well as learn the unexpected ways in which your data might be used by others.

Over 1,000 organizations have now completed their review of the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and are issuing responses to enhance their financial disclosures.  However, many responses are being siloed within corporate sustainability teams, and the involvement of other senior financial leaders is the exception when it should be the new normal.  Similarly, risk analysis work is often performed outside of traditional risk pathways. This panel will provide practical advice for sustainability teams on how best to engage the CFO, corporate secretaries and other financial executives in the development of TCFD-compliant financial and sustainability disclosures.

Recent changes in disclosure standards have given customers and consumers more information than ever about the ingredients in the products they use, but this information doesn’t always tell the whole story. Join Ecolab, Dow, and other corporate leaders for a discussion on driving positive business, human health, and environmental outcomes in an era focused on chemical ingredients.

Governments and businesses must consider water use, GHG emissions and biodiversity indicators in order to achieve sustainable development. For two of the three, society has been able to develop metrics and SMART targets. The last, biodiversity, has proved more difficult to measure due of its unique inherent place-based complexity and variability. But protecting the biodiversity that makes up Earth’s environment is essential for ensuring a healthy and productive planet. This session will share a new multi-step framework developed through a collaborative partnership comprised of three environmental organizations, Conservation International, Flora and Fauna International, UNEP-WCMC, as well as multiple extractive-sector companies engaged in piloting the approach. The partnership will identify and develop indicators that track from site-level impact upwards to a company dashboard. These indicators will allow companies to better measure and address their direct impact on biodiversity and make more informed decisions, while also being able to report on their contribution toward global biodiversity targets, such as the Sustainable Development Goals.

With 10 years left to meet the deadline of achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, a new web-based impact management tool for the global business community is here. Co-developed by the United Nations Global Compact and B Lab, the SDG Action Manager brings together B Lab’s B Impact Assessment, the Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact, and the SDGs, to enable meaningful business action through dynamic self-assessment, benchmarking, and improvement. Join us at the UN Global Compact booth for a live demonstration of the new tool and to learn how it can enable your company to take meaningful action and track progress on the Sustainable Development Goals.

An inclusive business is a commercially viable enterprise that has a positive social and environmental impact. It brings value to unserved communities, either by employing them directly as producers or service providers, or by giving them access to sustainable goods and services as consumers. This session will help attendees:

• Understand the concepts of inclusive business models and intrapreneurship

• Get to know cutting-edge approaches to social and environmental challenges from three leading brands

• Deep dive into five steps to drive sustainable innovation with commercial impact within a company

We are entering a new era of sustainability leadership — given the scale of the issues we face and the very limited timeframe we have to solve them, we need to challenge business as usual and sustainability models of old that enable business to do less harm rather than doing more good. An approach of regeneration and restoration provides a compelling model to show how business can truly be a force for good.

Despite the Sustainable Development Goals and a multitude of well resourced ESG initiatives, we are still not bending the curve to address society’s global sustainability imperative.  Although stakeholders want to transition towards a sustainable future they do not know how, in part because decision makers often focus solely on financial information and ignore the value of our essential relationships with nature and people. The session will point the way on how to sustainability executives can pivot business models towards a more sustainable and prosperous future.

Why are brands investing in the kind of consumer behavior change — such as reducing plastic, packaging and water use — once left to government and nonprofits? And how are they switching their marketing strategies to get people to use less, not just buy more? Learn from those at the forefront of these behavior change "social marketing" campaigns how you can advance the same strategies that are not only good for people and the environment, but also good for business.

All retail sectors are seeing increased attention from consumers and NGOs on chemically related human health and environmental impacts. Green chemistry principles can mitigate these hotspots in all life cycle phases; however, widely adopted green chemistry innovation by consumer product manufacturers and suppliers has yet to occur due to uncommon definitions, unshared priorities and unclear goals. Hear from a diverse set of organizations from the consumer product and chemical landscapes that are developing, promoting and adopting green chemistry principles and understand how their work can contribute to a common vision that drives innovation in green chemistry towards safe consumer products.

This session will explore how blockchain — an electronic "ledger" system that manages and authorizes transactions across a distributed network of participants — can improve transparency, monitor safety and compliance, and create new sources of income across complex supply chains for food and electronics. Our subject matter experts will discuss early real-world projects to verify sourcing along with the economic and sustainability benefits for both large multinational businesses and smaller suppliers.