Imagine the challenge; design, build and test an energy efficient vehicle to go as far as possible on the least amount of gas.
Now imagine achieving such a feat, how far do you think a car could get? 80 miles? 200 miles?
Try 2564.8 mpg! At least this is what this year’s winning team from Canada achieved in the 2011 Shell Eco-Marathon Americas.
Do more with less – It's a challenge that speaks to the reality that many corporate sustainability professionals face.
At the spring meeting of CI’s Business & Sustainability Council hosted by Shell in Houston, TX, Council members and guests took up the issue of how to address global challenges and streamline effectiveness in sustainability through technology.
Technology offers the opportunity to collect data more efficiently and effectively than ever before, manage that data to inform decision making, establish reduction targets, and report on performance.
The key, of course, is measuring data and using technologies to solve the critical environmental and sustainability challenges ahead: reducing carbon emissions and pollution; enhancing efficiency for food and fuel for a growing population; and maintaining the natural resources critical for a sustainable supply chain, economic growth and human welfare.
Jen Morris, CI’s Executive Vice President for Ecosystem Finance and Markets, spoke of the need to fully account for nature – because until ecosystem services have a price tag, they won’t be valued and protected as they should.
Andrew Winston, the opening keynote speaker and author of “Green Recovery,” argued that companies have committed sheer “heresy” by developing products and strategies that do more with less. Examples include Waste Management working to reduce the amount of waste going to landfills to help the growing number of companies, such as Walmart and The Walt Disney Company, meet their zero waste commitments.
CI's Conrad Savy spoke on how data that can be integrated in a standard application, like the Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool (IBAT) offers an opportunity to look at the whole picture when companies are siting new areas for development and determining potential tradeoffs.
CI Board Member Andy Karsner, former Assistant Secretary of Energy and CEO and Founder, Manifest Energy, LLC, discussed the interlinked issues of economic competitiveness, global security and environmental sustainability.
Tackling global challenges such as the changing climate, competition for rich agricultural lands, and declining access to clean water is driving volatility along a company’s supply chain. Companies large and small will need to find innovative solutions in which green and growth are not competing.
Now imagine that!