‘Sustainability has become big business,’ said Ken Pucker, senior lecturer on sustainable business dynamics at The Fletcher School at Tufts University.
As Brands Lurch Towards Green Goals, a Booming Business of Climate Change Is Emerging-
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Nike Pledged to Shrink Its Carbon Footprint. It Just Slashed the Staff Charged With Making That Happen
Since December, Nike has lost about 30% of employees who worked primarily on sustainability initiatives, due to layoffs, voluntary departures or transfers to other duties. Already, the company was missing its targets for reducing emissions.https://www.propublica.org/article/nike-layoffs-sustainability-climate-change
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Climate Change is Heating Up the Global Business World
We sat down with Kenneth Pucker, sustainability, fashion, and ESG (Environment, Sustainability, and Governance) expert and professor of the practice in the online Master of Global Business Administration (GBA) at The Fletcher School at Tufts University. We discussed how sustainability, ESG, and businesses’ bottom lines collide with the expanding global warming crisis.
Pucker is an accomplished writer, with articles appearing in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Institutional Investor and the Harvard Business Review. Prior to his professorship at Tufts, he worked at Timberland, serving as chief operating officer from 2000 to 2007.
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The fizz firm fudging its footprint
How can Keurig Dr Pepper report a 12% reduction in scope 3 emissions when they’ve actually increased by 14%? David Burrows reports.
If more companies commit to measuring and reporting publicly on their sustainability performance, four things should happen. ESG performance should improve; more ‘sustainable’ companies should be rewarded; a link tying companies with better ESG records to better equity returns should emerge; and the measurements and reporting should become more rigorous. “Over time, this virtuous cycle would result in a more sustainable form of capitalism,” wrote professor Kenneth Pucker from Tufts University, Massachusetts, in an HBR paper in June 2021.
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WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT SHEIN
Up until this point, there’s something we’ve avoided talking about almost entirely. Giving this thing extra air time, extra oxygen, felt counterintuitive to everything we stand for. Even if we were being critical – which we would be – we wouldn’t be telling people anything they didn’t already know; preaching to the converted just for clicks. And that’s not what we’re about.
That thing is SHEIN. And, try as we might, we can no longer avoid it; the fast fashion giant has inserted itself into the conversation, not by virtue of its planet-destroying practices, the ones we all know about, but by making claims at sustainability and circularity. By declaring itself a force for good. And let’s be clear: it is most certainly not that.
https://futurevvorld.com/fashion/shein-sustainability/
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Inside Shein’s plan to recycle ‘deadstock’ material into new clothing
Shein has many vocal critics such as Tufts’ Pucker, who say the company’s low prices and hyper-fast new product cycle encourage unsustainable consumption and resource use. “It’s not just that it’s more polyester, chemicals and microfibers, it’s the associated negative externalities that are unfunded and impact all of humanity.”
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/inside-sheins-plan-recycle-deadstock-material-new-clothing
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How to Grow a Fashion Brand Without Trashing the Planet
Over the last six years Puma has managed to double its revenue while shrinking its carbon footprint by almost a third. It’s an example more brands need to follow, argues Kenneth P. Pucker.
https://www.businessoffashion.com/opinions/sustainability/puma-emissions-growth-sustainable-fashion/?utm_source=newsletter_dailydigest&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily_Digest_210524&utm_content=intro
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Why It’s So Hard to Track the Fashion Industry’s Emissions
A growing number of fashion companies are talking about substantially cutting their greenhouse gas emissions. But evaluating those efforts is tricky.https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-05-16/is-your-favorite-fashion-brand-cutting-emissions-it-s-tricky?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTcxNTg2MzMxMSwiZXhwIjoxNzE2NDY4MTExLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJTREtUQUtEV1gyUFMwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJFMkUzODg2QzgzREM0NTUxOEVFM0M2MDRGN0ZBRTlGMyJ9.B64jSM_CdVSN7A39q7ZLbDr9cAb74sWGex6lDznvwLQ&sref=fnjoKOAK
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Why Fashion Should Have a Plastics Tax
The fashion industry continues to advance voluntary and unlikely solutions to its plastic problem. Only higher prices will flip the script, writes Kenneth P. Pucker.
https://www.businessoffashion.com/opinions/sustainability/why-fashion-should-have-a-plastic-tax/?utm_source=newsletter_dailydigest&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily_Digest_030524&utm_content=intro
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Will Americans Ever Get Sick of Cheap Junk?
Illustration by Matteo Giuseppe Pani. Source: Getty. In all the years I’ve spent covering American consumerism, I’ve heard one type of question from readers far more than any other: This can’t go on forever, right?
Maybe they’d learned what happens to the huge volume of online purchases that get returned, or saw one too many questionably sourced mascaras and sunscreens hawked on TikTok Shop, or realized that the newly minted e-commerce behemoth Temu is spending many millions of dollars to urge you, quite explicitly, to shop like a billionaire. Whatever the impetus, the people asking this question tend to regard the consumer landscape with a mix of exhaustion and incredulity. The ever-expanding American closet is already swollen with cheap clothes, and our junk drawers and spare rooms and storage units already overfloweth with everything else. Americans have so much excess stuff that much of it can’t even effectively be given away. Can we—the people who have bought so much already—really keep buying more, and at a hastening clip?
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/04/americans-peak-stuff-shopping-temu-shein/678224/?gift=mZJJfvLLK2-N-97mYsXvt5j5Hty0oatfqOoAPrpRKTM&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share