With a growing concern for the environment, many schools are taking steps towards becoming more eco-friendly and promoting sustainable development. In this month's featured Webinar, we hear from noted educated Dr. Basundhara on how some schools are implementing green initiatives such as using renewable energy sources, reducing waste, and educating students on environmental responsibility. In adopting these practices, schools are not only benefiting the environment, but also creating a healthier and more productive learning environment for students. Dr. Busundhara shares a variety of valuable teaching tools and discussion topics in this captivating hour-long session.
Sustainability Packaging Trends
Packaging plays a role in everyday life and has a huge impact on climate change. Whether it’s picking up that daily coffee, carrying out lunch or dinner, or having household items and clothes shipped to the front door there is a whole lot of packaging that the world needs to contend with. And at the end of the day, what happens to the cup, the take out box, or the shipping package after they’ve served their purpose?
In the last decade there has been more focus on creating packaging that can be composted, recycled or reused. This has led to a shift away from styrofoam containers and plastic straws, but there is a clear need for companies to do more to make packaging sustainable.
As businesses race to meet the 2025 sustainable packaging goals, some states passed groundbreaking legislation in 2021 to help address issues within the recycling system that don’t seem to be working. The legislation also supports companies in their efforts to meet sustainability commitments more efficiently.
While recycling has been part of the solution when it comes to packaging, the movement toward reducing the impact of packaging on the planet is taking many directions. The concept of refill and reuse has gained a lot of movement in recent years. This is the practice of implementing reusable containers (think glass milk jugs or beer growlers) which can be cleaned, refilled, and used again. This eliminates the need to buy a new container every purchase and keeps items out of the landfill.
Another effort is moving toward flexible packaging for shipping items. This process requires less rigid materials, allowing for more space to be available during transport. These changes ultimately reduce emissions because you can move more items at one time.
And while compostable and biodegradable packaging has been around for awhile, it’s typically been used for perishable items like food take out. However, more retail brands are implementing the use of compostable packaging when it comes to shipping clothing, shoes and more in an effort to lower their carbon footprint as well.
While this wide range of efforts is being made, the overall process of reducing waste has been slow going. When it comes to making choices that may lead to lost revenue, Tom Szaky, CEO of TerraCycle, said "I haven't seen [such] sacrifice-based sustainability decisions yet and those are the ones I'm watching for. That’s the magic that's going to change our world."
The Continued Growth of Green Jobs
As we move full steam ahead into 2022, there continues to be an increase in the demand for green jobs. This focus on a green economy can, in part, be attributed to 2021 meetings including the World Economic Forum’s Sustainable Impact Development Summit, the UN General Assembly, and COP26, where discussions were focused on making a concerted shift toward a green economy around the globe. However, this push to raise standards and improve efforts to reduce climate impact cannot be reached without relying on people who have green skills. This demand is causing a dramatic increase in the rise of green jobs.
But what is “green talent?” An individual with green skills has the knowledge to prevent, monitor, or clean up pollution, as well as the capacity to optimize stewardship and conservation of the natural resources that companies use to produce goods and services. In fact, GreenBiz has recognized more than 600 green skills, and identified more than 400 green job titles that require utilizing those skills.
In December, GreenBiz noted they expect demand to create millions of new jobs worldwide by 2030. However this isn’t totally new. There has been a rising demand in the field for the past few years. Since 2017, jobs requiring green skills have been steadily increasing as government agencies and companies started to realize that they needed to step up their commitments and actions in order to achieve climate and sustainability goals.
Companies continue to understand that there is value in making meaningful sustainable changes — these efforts are good for the environment and they can also be a boost to business. Last fall, Inc. examined the variety of ways climate change is bad for business — on top of the obvious threat to civilization — extreme weather can cause damage to facilities, disrupts transportation options, and can impact employees' ability to get work. Climate change is also causing increased costs for parts, materials, and services, as well as massive increases in insurance fees.
These issues are finally prodding some companies that have been slower to see the value in investing in sustainable practices to act. And as more companies start taking these steps, they require guidance on what steps will be beneficial. In order to meet their needs, companies are increasingly shifting their focus toward green skills over a university degree in the field. An example: financial investors have started bringing on climate scientists because, despite their formal training in finance, they understand a great deal about how to assess the climate benefits of an investment project.
Making a real difference comes down to realizing that a net-zero, green economy is going to take change from every industry and those with the green skills necessary to make these changes happen are going to be leading the way.