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Recent news, research, and insights

Climate neutrality, or “net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions,” means reducing and/or offsetting your company’s carbon footprint so your company has a neutral or net-zero effect on climate change. According to the United Nation Environment Programme, ensuring a safe future below the 1.5°C mark aligning with the Paris Agreement requires the world to cut 30 gigatonnes GHG emissions annually by 2030. Thus, global governments and international organizations are encouraging companies to consider becoming carbon neutral. In this blog post, Ecolytics will guide you through five reasons why businesses should start planning on carbon neutrality.

Many companies are considering B Corp certification as they strive to generate social impact through their business. For a socially-conscious business, the B Corp certification is a strong credential presenting a company’s determination to pursue a sustainable, inclusive, and equitable business and social environment.

In 2019, Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge with Global Optimism, an advisory organization that advocates for climate solutions, committing to net-zero carbon emissions across businesses by 2040. The three principles Amazon presents in The Climate Pledge are regular reporting, carbon elimination, and credit offsets. Amazon has promised to periodically measure and report greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, implement decarbonization strategies through business changes and innovations, and execute quantifiable and socially beneficial offsets to achieve its 2040 Net-Zero target.

In April 2022, the Sixth Assessment Report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its third report, conducted by Working Group III, on the mitigation of climate change. The report, the last one to be published by the three working groups before the final synthesis report is due by early 2023, provides an updated global assessment of climate change mitigation progress and pledges and examines the sources of global emissions. It explains recent developments in emission reduction and mitigation efforts, assessing the impact of national climate pledges in relation to long-term emissions goals.

We are thrilled to announce we've been selected as one of The Understory's 2021 Startup Spotlight Award winners!

80% of top companies now report on sustainability. While this is great news, that number is misleading when it comes to conveying efficacy. The main problem: companies often report very different metrics in very different ways. Compared to financial reporting, in which all companies follow SEC guidance and utilize the same disclosure methods, the variety of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting types complicates the comparison of different companies’ impact and creates room for businesses to only report their best metrics. And as the climate crisis worsens, reliable sustainability reporting is more important than ever.

The climate has been a major focus of environmental advocates for years. As a result, the terminology has evolved over time, with each successive term demonstrating a more complete understanding of rising global temperatures. This blog will walk through notable climate terminology over time, define each term, and examine the evolution of climate change discourse as the situation becomes more dire.

On its most basic level, CSR is a manifestation of a business’ recognition of a duty to the world and the potential to be a power for good.

Carbon offsets are a cost-effective way for a company to reduce its emissions by paying to invest in green projects such as methane capture, reforestation, and green energy initiatives, which gives them carbon credits to “offset” the emissions they produce.

According to the 2017 Carbon Majors Report, over half of global industrial emissions since 1988 are attributable to a collection of just 25 corporations or state-owned businesses. While climate activism is often focused on government policy and reform, this statistic makes it clear that businesses should be an increasing concern for environmentalists given their mammoth carbon footprints.

Start to make a difference with your business for the environment with one simple and profitable action: switching to the cloud.

Walking into any retail store nowadays, odds are you will be bombarded by a storm of environmentally-charged buzzwords on all sides.

This past month, we celebrated Black History Month by sharing content from Black voices in the environmental movement. While February is over, our commitment to showing the intersectionality of environmental and equity issues is not. We saw how our commitment could go past sharing content to becoming a core capability of our product. In the coming months, we will be working on the inclusion of social and governance metrics to our API for recommendations to our clients. To truly gauge a company’s efforts towards sustainability, we must measure how the business affects people.

E-waste is becoming an increasingly dire problem in the tech industry as many consumers rely upon electronic equipment to keep their lives and businesses running.

This alarming calculation from NASA scientists is only one data point on a trend of global warming. To prevent continued warming and increase bottom lines, businesses should incorporate environmentally friendly practices into their models.