How do we solve billion-dollar climate equity problems with $5-$25M budgets? Whether your focus is developing climate solutions or solving for worker wealth inequality, this interactive tutorial is designed to invite participants to shift their mindset and develop the sources of financial capital to solve the climate equity solutions of our time. Participants will learn about both Full Spectrum Capital and how you can leverage Full Spectrum Capital by mixing and matching it with other capital within and outside the company. Stephanie and Antoinette will provide an overview of Full Spectrum Capital and outline strategies you can implement to partner with your other divisions to increase impact, increase return, and reduce risk to achieve your goals. 

The information and strategies from this tutorial can be applied to:

• Developing financial products to support your suppliers achieving their sustainability goals

• Developing financial products to attract and retain the workforce by refinancing debt, increasing wages, and providing wealth-building opportunities via asset ownership

• Developing a social enterprises strategy

• Developing a Full Spectrum Capital corporate education strategy using Impact Investing Giving Circles

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. An all-access pass is required to participate.

Targeting net-zero emissions is the new North Star for climate policy, yet doubts remain about the integrity of many corporate targets. Sadly, accusations of greenwashing are too often justified. Some companies are focusing on 2050 instead of taking immediate action. Others are over-investing in carbon offsets. So how can your organization craft a net-zero strategy that brings real climate benefits while also advancing other business objectives? Leading experts from the public and private sectors will unpack the criteria behind high-quality targets and present case studies on how to simultaneously deliver profits and emissions reductions.

How should your sustainability strategy incorporate and align with circular principles? The circular economy is a powerful lens through which a company can reduce waste, emissions and material consumption while transforming their business strategy and regenerating natural systems. Yet circular initiatives are often siloed from sustainability strategy, if they are leveraged at all. How could a robust sustainability strategy incorporate circular principles, and how should these cross-sectional strategies align to advance sustainable business goals? Hear from companies leading the charge in sustainable, circular initiatives as they discuss their comprehensive sustainability strategies.

Join this breakout session with sustainable business visionary Paul Polman, in conversation with GreenBiz Founder Joel Makower, to explore the role of the CSO in this moment and what it means to approach business with a disruptive and transformative mindset, rather than addressing challenges through the lens of incrementalism. What does it take to lead from your position in your organization? What does it mean to be a net positive leader? How can the GreenBiz community of sustainability professionals work together and leverage each other to be more than individuals, as the climate crisis becomes ever more urgent? You’ll hear from Paul and Joel as well as have the opportunity to connect with your peers to gain insights on these questions.

The just transition is one of the most important priorities of the climate change agenda going forward post COP-26. This session will explore key elements of the just transition and how leading companies are working to not only decarbonize and achieve net zero but to do this in a way that is responsible and equitable to all. Please join us for a crackling discussion on this challenging topic and hear from corporate leaders deep in how to operationalize a just transition.

What does it mean for packaging to be recyclable, and what process is needed to confirm recyclability and avoid liability? Between contentious legal battles and stringent, newly passed regulation, recyclability claims have come under scrutiny in recent months. Is a piece of packaging recyclable when it’s theoretically feasible to recycle it, or only when it’s recycled in practice? How often are specific packaging designs recycled in practice, and can this data truly be collected? When is the chasing arrows symbol instructive, and when is it false advertising? Join this session as we unravel these questions and more to demystify the confusing world of recyclability claims.  

As business continues to respond to the impacts of COVID-19, the need to consider the impacts of climate change, biodiversity loss, and rising inequality as a set of interconnected and systemic issues is more critical than ever. The pandemic has highlighted the fragility of supply chains, but both reputational and legal risk pose increased threats to business models for companies that fail to take account of the  potential risks across their supply chain. This discussion will explore how companies can build resilience, manage risk  and explore opportunity by considering the interconnectivity of risks and the impact across their supply chains to create and preserve value for all stakeholders. Business representatives, legal experts and thought leaders will share insights on what business can do to address supply chain risk against the background of an evolving operating environment, changing regulatory landscape and advancing disclosure expectations.

You’ve set audacious carbon neutrality and renewable energy goals. Now what? If you are asking yourself, “How do we actually get there?” this session is for you. We will cover why employees hold the key to achieving net zero and how to engage them to unlock greater impact across the organization on scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, including their personal footprint in hybrid workplaces. 

All of us can admit to sometimes feeling overwhelmed given the scale of the climate crisis. However, many of our employees know that even small actions - taken by many - can make a difference. There’s a hunger for knowledge by our employees to live more sustainable lives – at work, at home and in the community. How can employers help? Join us for this exchange to share and learn best practices to engage employees - creating impact and driving employee satisfaction. 

Roundtable Lunches are 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 are first-come, first-served.

30% of the energy used by commercial and industrial buildings is wasted through inefficiency. Here’s the good news. Companies can start saving energy and reduce their carbon footprint today. The solution is a simple one: Prioritize the implementation of energy efficiency, monitoring, measurement, and verification complemented with sustainable solutions. Pete Shimkus, Vice-President of Commercial Solutions from Redaptive will share their top tips on how to get started.

Roundtable Lunches are 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 are first-come, first-served.

Across the globe, we see that no two communities are impacted by climate change the same way. That’s why equitable climate action is essential to sustainable change. Join Kristen Siemen, Chief Sustainability Officer and Vice President, Sustainable Workplaces at General Motors for a discussion about how, in the pursuit of achieving carbon neutral commitments, the public and private sectors can integrate goals for a more inclusive, sustainable world for all.

Roundtable Lunches are 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 are first-come, first-served.

Join this lunch roundtable with Patrick Flynn, Global Head of Sustainability at Salesforce, for a discussion on how to create a unique climate action plan for your company and leverage your business as the greatest platform for change. Salesforce is Net Zero across its value chain and released its Climate Action Plan (https://sfdc.co/climate-action) to offer a blueprint for others to accelerate their journeys to Net Zero.

Roundtable Lunches are 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 are first-come, first-served.

As company commitments to net-zero have tripled over the past two years, so have the number of carbon accounting and optimization tools.  According to a recent CNBC report, this $10B business will more than double by 2026. 

This roundtable will explore how sustainability leaders make sense of carbon accounting’s exploding marketplace.  We will discuss:

• Which tools are best suited to diagnosing a company’s more complex carbon output.
• How to pin down the Scope 3 attributes of supply chain and client produced emissions.
• Which tools recommend climate transition solutions once the footprint has been established.
• The ever-evolving alphabet of climate protocols and standards (TCFD, VRF, CDP, SBTi, etc.).   What solutions are best designed to deliver accurate and flexible reporting.

Roundtable participants will be able to share their insights, questions, and best practices on how accounting and optimization tools can lead to attaining carbon transition goals and reporting  progress.

Roundtable Lunches are 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 are first-come, first-served.

It’s time to confront the elephant at your company’s lunch table: animal products. They are food’s carbon heavyweights and should be featured much more sparingly at events and in cafeterias. Greener by Default is using smart behavioral science strategies to make this task less daunting and more impactful. Join the chat to learn what sustainable menus can look like and how to introduce them to your company.

Roundtable Lunches are 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 are first-come, first-served.

In response to the urgency and scale of the global plastic pollution problem, communities, companies and countries alike are calling for a more coordinated and ambitious strategy to stop the flow of plastics into the environment. Following in the footsteps of the Paris Accord, at UNEA-5.2 at the end of February, the United Nations will decide whether it will commence negotiations on a global treaty on plastic pollution. Its success will require the buy-in and support of all stakeholders across the plastics value chain — especially businesses. Join this roundtable to discuss the business case for a Global Plastics Treaty, and learn what your organization can do to support these international efforts.

Roundtable Lunches are 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 are first-come, first-served.

Conserving, restoring and regenerating the life support systems of our planet is the opportunity of our time — and nature based solutions, including the burgeoning market for carbon credits, have a key role to play. Companies leading the voluntary market can incentivize growth in ways that ensure high quality credits are generated. But how do we understand the difference in value between carbon credits, including quantifying the added co-benefits — from ecosystem services to ensured permanence? Join us for a conversation about this, and more!

Roundtable Lunches are 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 are first-come, first-served.

SEC Chair Gary Gensler has been unequivocal in his intention to bring transparency and credibility to ESG investments in the U.S. How might companies be able to adopt the new disclosure requirements into existing frameworks, and what needs to be done to meet new climate disclosure requirements?

Oliver Wyman and the Climate Group recently proposed a “blueprint” for a commercially smart climate transition, built from the experiences of 27 corporates in turning their commitments into action. Join this interactive session, hosted by Oliver Wyman, to explore, apply and further develop that blueprint, looking across the domains of leadership, the business system, customers and finance. The session will draw on insights and corporate case study interviews on setting and executing transition plans from the report Getting Real: A blueprint for a commercially smart climate transition.

Sponsored sessions are sponsor-created and hosted breakouts, created independently by the sponsor without input from GreenBiz.

Regenerative agriculture has moved from niche to mainstream over the past years, with countless companies pledging to adopt practices that support climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation. A breadth of approaches will be required to transparently translate these commitments into results, adapt practices to local ecosystems and ensure the risks and benefits are equally distributed across the supply chain. Learn about distinct regenerative agriculture frameworks companies are using and get insights into the latest results from pilot programs.

How can organizations go further and faster to embed ESG as a central framework to guide priorities and decision-making, at any stage in their sustainability journey? Our panelists will share their stories around activating ESG throughout the organization. Panelists will speak to the process of how they’re involving key stakeholders and ensuring board-level support for the ESG agenda, the drivers behind rapidly activating the program, motivators for escalating the ESG agenda within the business, and challenges and learnings along the way, with recommendations for other businesses.

Corporations can have a positive impact on the communities in which they operate and that goes beyond donating philanthropic dollars and volunteer hours. Measurable impact results from an intentional approach to community engagement, whether it’s analyzing opportunities before moving operations to a new town, successfully partnering with NGOs and other non-profit organizations, and lessening impact when transforming operations. Representatives from three different industries will describe their approaches for effective community impact. During this session, Microsoft will discuss the use of analytics to quantify community prosperity and measure the impacts of the company’s investments on community prosperity and total cost of ownership of their datacenters, Kohler will describe their microgrant program with DigDeep, a human rights non-profit working to bring clean water to families living on the Navajo Nation, and DTE will share how their “Retire With Pride” strategy helps ensure employees and communities are taken care of during the transition to clean energy.

Once your organization has set sustainability goals, net-zero climate commitments, and committed to sustainability reporting, how should you streamline your processes? In this session, we’ll cover how to leverage technology to accelerate your ESG program and initiatives, automate data gathering for reports, and bring scale to your mission to have the highest potential impact.

Sponsored sessions are sponsor-created and hosted breakouts, created independently by the sponsor without input from GreenBiz.

For years, businesses have focused on tracking, measuring and reducing their own direct carbon emissions — and for good reason. That’s where change starts. But in this vital decade of climate action, it’s imperative for companies to accelerate progress by looking beyond their own walls. To achieve a net zero future, today’s companies must use their platform to build a more sustainable business ecosystem. This means not only leading by example but providing partners, suppliers and other stakeholders with the tools to activate data-driven climate action strategies of their own. This session will explore how companies can broaden their scope by driving climate action and transparency throughout the entire value chain. Executives from Salesforce and other leading companies will explore the growing importance of the customer-supplier relationship in fighting climate change and share insights and learnings from leading supply chain solutions like Salesforce’s Sustainability Exhibit, a newly launched program that integrates climate commitments into supply chain contracts.

The explosion of interest in carbon offsets has helped drive a proliferation of different nature-based solutions. Companies can buy credits that promote sustainable forestry, delay timber harvesting, create new forests, sequester carbon in farmland soils or even grow kelp. 

To help figure out which of these options is right for your business, we’ve assembled leaders from the companies behind some of the highest-quality nature-based solutions available. In this interactive session, short presentations on the offsets will be followed by an opportunity for small-group discussion with each of the companies.

CEOs across the globe face a set of common and interrelated challenges in their sustainability efforts: determining what issues to focus on; integrating sustainability into the business; setting appropriate goals; organizing to execute their strategy and achieve goals; and telling their sustainability story amid a complex dynamic of ESG regulations, reporting frameworks, and ranking agencies. This session highlights new research by The Conference Board that will be complemented by practitioners who will share how their organizations are structured to achieve successful results and communicate effectively from the boardroom to frontline operations and beyond.

Communicating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices has never been more business-critical. With investors, customers, suppliers, employees and other stakeholders demanding more ESG disclosure than ever before, companies are struggling to effectively translate their strategy into stories that engage multiple and disparate audiences. Some companies are finding that they don’t always need to lead with “ESG” terminology to communicate these issues to certain stakeholder groups. With no handbook to follow, many companies are unclear when it’s best to lead with ESG, impact, sustainability or other buzzwords in their communications. In this panel discussion, ESG leaders from four consumer-facing brands will discuss their strategies for effective sustainability communication.

Over the last four years, recycling programs across the United States have struggled under the weight of COVID-19, China’s National Sword policy and an underfunded patchwork of laws and regulations across cities and states. The time for dramatic change is now: President Biden has made fighting climate change and boosting environmental protection a crucial focus of the new administration. The EPA has set a recycling goal of 50 percent by 2030 and recently appropriated $1.5 million to collecting detailed data on the recycling system nationwide.

At the same time, two states – Maine and Oregon – were the first in the country to pass extended producer responsibility laws covering packaging and California passed a labeling law that will change the way recyclability can be communicated to consumers in our largest state. And the legislative efforts are just beginning, with new bills under consideration and debate, the state of packaging and recycling policy at the state and federal levels is in flux. Join this session to uncover the state of national policy, its implications for industry now and how your company can engage in the policymaking process and advance our national recycling system in the future.

The S in ESG has continued to rise in importance for companies and investors, and is increasingly contributing to assessments of corporate value. What does it take to develop and implement a robust social strategy?

Two words of advice for any carbon credit buyer: caveat emptor. Carbon credits can deliver emissions reductions and removals that are critical to the fight against climate change. Yet over the past few years, academic studies and investigative reporting have revealed that some carbon credits have little or no impact on greenhouse gas levels. How can your company make sure that the credits it buys are of the highest quality? 

Thankfully, help is at hand. Carbon market experts at the World Wildlife Fund, Environmental Defense Fund and Okeo Institut have developed an advanced, open-source methodology for evaluating the integrity of carbon credits. Come to learn what their early assessments are telling us about the quality of the carbon credits in the market and how you can use their guidelines to purchase a portfolio of credits that has real impact.

The era of the “great resignation” — in which virtually every working adult is reevaluating their professional priorities — is forcing companies to rethink their strategies for career development and hands-on mentoring. How can approaches optimized for “in person” coaching be adapted for hybrid workplaces? What’s the best way to match mentors and mentees? How can mentors help their companies deliver on corporate diversity and inclusion commitments? This session will feature practical suggestions from past winners of the Women in Sustainability Leadership Awards, who will explore how sustainability leaders can act quickly to identify and cultivate promising talent.

While much of the world is busy fleshing out its net-zero strategies, a handful of companies have stepped up to the next challenge: biodiversity. From agriculture to tourism, textiles and construction – ecosystem degradation is putting the sectors most dependent on the natural environment at risk. But when treated right, nature is an asset rather than a threat, as case studies building biodiversity into their bottom line demonstrate.