The US Business Council for Sustainable Development (US BCSD) is pleased to introduce its new executive director, Claude Griffin. He succeeds Andrew Mangan, who founded the council in 1992 and developed it into a globally recognized leader in sustainable development solutions, collaboration and innovation.

Built to facilitate cross-sector engagement across sectors, customers, and suppliers up and down the value stream, the GLCC, modeled on the US BCSD’s successful Gulf Coast Carbon Collaborative, will be driven by business and focused on developing and implementing initiatives that reduce carbon emissions across the economy while minimizing business impacts.

The City of Tacoma, Seattle Good Business Network, and the US Business Council for Sustainable Development today announced the launch of a new program that allows for circular reuse of products and materials that might otherwise be destined for disposal in landfills. Through the Washington Materials Marketplace, traditional and non-traditional waste streams are matched with new reuse and recycling opportunities that result in landfill diversion, carbon reduction, cost savings, energy savings, and new job opportunities. This platform will aid both public and private sectors in reaching our region’s climate action and equity goals.This approach to enhancing recycling and reuse is quite different from previous approaches.

Fine Tune, a provider of indirect expense management services, has joined the US Business Council for Sustainable Development (US BCSD), an action-oriented and member-led nonprofit business association, founded in 1992 to give leading US businesses a platform to work together to design, implement and scale sustainability solutions. US BCSD-led platforms, projects and partnerships help leading companies scale solutions to ecosystems, climate, circular economy and water challenges.

Delivering hard-dollar savings, Fine Tune manages clients’ complex tail spend expense categories – including waste and recycling, uniform rental, facility services, security services, and pest control – throughout their full contract life cycle from sourcing to negotiating to auditing and service issue resolution. Sustainability and supply are inevitably intertwined, and Fine Tune is thus leading the charge to integrate the two from an expense management perspective, providing solutions that not only advance clients’ sustainability efforts but improve bottom lines as well.

The City of Austin is accepting applications from local businesses and institutions to participate in the sixth annual [Re]Verse Pitch Competition, a program that aims to reduce waste in Austin and within the business community.

Members of the Gulf Coast Carbon Collaborative and invited guests are meeting on April 8, 2020 in Houston, Texas for the group’s first quarterly working meeting.

The day will include presentations, facilitated discussion and working group breakout sessions focusing on project development around key content areas defined at the December launch meeting in New Orleans. These include land-based sequestration, CCUS, electrification, strategy/technology information sharing, and barriers and enablers related to policy and regulation, education and communications.

Learn more on our newly launched website, carbon-collaborative.org.

The US Business Council for Sustainable Development (US BCSD) has entered into an agreement with UL to support the expansion of the Materials Marketplace and help companies secure recognition for reuse through third-party certification.

Nearly five dozen Gulf Coast industry representatives from the automotive, power, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, chemical, refining, and transportation sectors came together this week to share and scale decarbonization strategies at the inaugural meeting of the Gulf Coast Carbon Collaborative. The Collaborative is the first-of-its-kind industry initiative focused on cross-sector solutions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The Vietnam Materials Marketplace is a materials trading system that directs Vietnam’s booming manufacturing industries towards the circular economy. Vietnam is one of the fastest growing countries in Asia, hosting a thriving manufacturing economy and serving as a hub for much of the world’s material flows. But the amount of materials deposited in Vietnam’s landfills is a significant health and environmental challenge. In fact, material production and use drive the largest amount of greenhouse gas emissions globally.

Americans dispose of some 10 million metric tons of reusable materials, like glass, annually. Most of it ends up in the landfill, and only about one-third gets recycled. That’s not because of some intrinsic materials or chemical property that makes materials like plastic and glass difficult to recycle, but rather a reflection of a very challenging interplay between collection processes, market supply and demand, and rising freight costs to move material in the US.

Members of the US BCSD and leading companies - including Dow, Schlumberger, Ingersoll Rand, and others - and organizations from around the US gathered in New Orleans, LA at the end of January 2019 for our first National Meeting of 2019.

Meeting attendees discussed a range of water, circular economy, cities, and ecosystems challenges; and identified actionable opportunities to work together in existing or emerging US BCSD projects. A high-level summary of outcomes can be found here.

The Ohio Materials Marketplace ended year one with 3,362,000 pounds of material diverted from Ohio’s landfills and saved participating companies more than $153,000 through virgin material substitution costs and avoided landfill costs.

In September 2017 US BCSD staff kicked off a deep review of our strategy and priorities. Over three months we interviewed members, project participants, partner organizations and other key stakeholders; asking questions about business sustainability challenges they’re facing, areas they’d like the US BCSD to focus on, brainstorming specific project ideas, and discussing operational enhancements that could help grow our effectiveness and scale.

Early 2018 was been dedicated to reviewing and processing this data, with input and oversight from our US BCSD Executive Committee. A number of key decision points and opportunities for future platform and project development were identified and brought to US BCSD members at a Strategic Planning Workshop in late-March 2018. Below is a summary of outcomes of that workshop, and some important steps in our path forward.

Registration is now open for two very important March 2018 events - our Strategic Planning Workshop on the 27th (limited to US BCSD members and invited guests only) and South Central Regional Meeting on the 28th. Click the graphic to learn more.

Happy holidays from the US BCSD team! Thank you for your support and engagement in 2017; we're looking forward to our continued work together in the new year.

General Motors thinks of waste as a resource out of place. To help make the zero-waste mindset more mainstream, the company engages others in its mission, including students. Most recently it was Texas A&M University’s College of Architecture helping reimagine waste materials to keep them in use.   

The United States Business Council for Sustainable Development (US BCSD) is pleased to announce that Edwin (Ed) Piñero is joining the Council as Director, Water Projects. Ed is joining the Business Council team to fill Susan Fernandes' role as the Water Program Director and Project Manager of the Louisiana Water Synergy Project. After seven years of dedicated work, Susan is retiring from the US BCSD, effective November 30th.

CINCINNATI - Materials lacking end-of-life solutions don’t just end up in the landfill - some find their way into rivers and waterways, too. In September, a dedicated group of company leaders, representatives from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, and materials technology innovators from the US Business Council for Sustainable Development and the Materials Marketplace, gathered on the Living Lands & Waters (LL&W) barge to help solve the problem.

Our thoughts go out to our friends and colleagues along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast who continue to be impacted by Hurricane Harvey. Houston is an incredible city; and we hope for a speedy return to dry homes, safe conditions, and normal operations for our US BCSD members and partners in the area.

Franklin, Tennessee - August 14, 2017: The US Business Council for Sustainable Development and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation today announced the launch of a new online platform that allows for circular reuse of products and materials that might otherwise be destined for disposal in landfills. Through the cloud-based Tennessee Materials Marketplace, traditional and non-traditional waste streams are matched with new product and revenue opportunities, ultimately enabling the culture shift to a circular, closed-loop economy. 

On June 8, 2017 the Louisiana State Legislature passed HB423 authorizing the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) to establish and administer a water quality trading program. This is a major milestone for the Louisiana Water Synergy Project, which has an active working group dedicated to designing a voluntary, market-based water quality trading program to improve water quality in Louisiana. 

The City of Austin’s Universal Recycling Ordinance supports Austin’s Zero Waste goal by requiring affected property owners to ensure that tenants and employees have access to convenient recycling. The ordinance also includes an Organics Diversion component which requires food permitted businesses to reduce or divert organic material away from the landfill. Businesses can meet this requirement through various approaches including leaner supply-chain management, composting organic materials, donating edible organics, or by finding reuse opportunities, a specialty for the Austin Materials Marketplace team.

Sandusky, Ohio - April 4, 2017: Ohio EPA Director Craig W. Butler today announced the launch of a new online platform that allows continuous reuse of products and materials that might otherwise be destined for disposal in landfills. Through the cloud-based Ohio Materials Marketplace, traditional and non-traditional industrial waste streams are matched with new product and revenue opportunities, ultimately enabling the culture shift to a circular, closed-loop economy.