Enviance Blog

We Have Our Environmental Eight!

As the teams in the NCAA’s Sweet Sixteen hit the hardwood this weekend to determine the Elite Eight, we announced our own “Environmental Eight” yesterday, the eight schools remaining in our Second Annual Environmental March Madness tournament.

To advance, the previously announced “Sustainable 16” were asked to submit photos, videos and essays, both from students and faculty, to further demonstrate the strength of their environmental academics and their commitment to on-campus sustainability practices.

We were positively overwhelmed by the quantity and quality of submissions. In total, we received more than 800 photos, 150 essays and 30 videos from the “Sustainable 16.”

We were happy with the output of the entire “Sustainable 16,” but the eight schools that have advanced truly went above and beyond. The “Environmental Eight” are (alphabetically):

• Colorado State University
• George Mason University
• Michigan State University
• Middlebury College
• Ohio State University
• University of California Santa Barbara
• University of Virginia
• University of Washington

Who will cut down the nets and take the title of “National Champion”? Stay tuned to find out. It could be one of the NCAA powerhouses, like Michigan or Ohio State, or it could be a smaller college like last year’s winner, Colby College.

For more information on the Environmental March Madness Tournament, please email Enviance@schwartzmsl.com, or visit http://www.enviance.com/march-madness. You can also receive real-time updates on Twitter by following @enviance and #EnviroU.

Three of Enviance’s “Sustainable 16” also competing in NCAA Sweet Sixteen!

Enviance would like to congratulate those schools that made it to the NCAA Sweet Sixteen this week. While University of Florida, Michigan State University and Ohio State University compete for college basketball’s biggest prize, they are also competing for a “National Championship” title in our Second Annual Environmental March Madness tournament!

The Environmental March Madness tournament gives colleges and universities across the country an opportunity to prove that they are unparalleled at preparing students to live environmentally sustainable lives and, if they so choose, to make a profession out of  coaching others on how to do the same.  This year’s “Sustainable 16” schools have been recognized by the tournament judges for excellence in environmental academics and strength of on-campus sustainability practices. The schools that will advance to the next round of the tournament, the “Environmental Eight,” are set to be announced on Thursday, March 28. The “National Champion” will be announced on April 9.

For more information on the Environmental March Madness Tournament, please email Enviance@schwartzmsl.com, or visit http://www.enviance.com/march-madness. You can also receive real-time updates on Twitter by following @enviance and #EnviroU.

 

 

How will you celebrate Earth Hour 2013?

Tomorrow night for Earth Hour, the Enviance team, along with millions of individuals, businesses, governments and other organizations around the world will go dark for one hour, uniting in the common goal to show support and commitment for a brighter environmental future. Earth hour is more than the symbolic action of switching off lights for an hour: it’s an ongoing movement, raising awareness and driving real action to bring about persistent change. It’s a real opportunity to demonstrate solidarity as part of an interconnected global community.

According to their website, Earth Hour has become the “single, largest, symbolic mass participation event in the world.”  Originally started nine years ago by a small team hoping to mobilize people to take action on climate change, Earth Hour now inspires a global community of millions of people in 7,001 cities and towns across 152 countries and territories to switch lights off for an hour as a massive show of concern for the environment.

This year’s Earth Hour will be held on March 23 from 8:30-9:30pm (your local time). Will you participate?

For more information or to join the movement, please visit www.earthhour.org. You can also follow Earth Hour live on Twitter: @EarthHour

Submissions Now Closed – Which Schools Will Progress to the “Environmental Eight”?

Two weeks ago Enviance, in partnership with GreenBiz Group and Qualtrics,  invited students and staff of the recently announced “Sustainable Sixteen” schools to submit supplementary materials demonstrating why their school deserves to advance to the next round of Enviance’s Second Annual Environmental March Madness (#EnviroU) Tournament. 

Since then we have received an unprecedented number of outstanding submissions – all told, students and staff sent in more than 800 photos, 150 essays and 30 videos! Now that the submissions period is closed, our expert panel of judges are busy going through all of the materials in order to determine which of the remaining sixteen schools will advance to the next stage in the competition.

We will be announcing the “Environmental Eight” on March 28, so stay tuned! You can also receive real-time updates on Twitter by following @enviance and #EnviroU.

 

March Monthly Poll

It's time again for our monthly poll, where we ask your opinion on a wide range of pressing environmental regulation issues. Our goal is to identify what matters most to you and present your unfiltered opinions on a host of hot button topics.

Springtime is here! And as you're out and about enjoying the first months of sunshine, give this food for thought a try! Get involved and tell us what you think!

Competition Heating Up: Which Schools Have What it Takes to Make it to the “Environmental Eight”?

Two weks ago, Enviance, in partnership with GreenBiz Group and Qualtrics, introduced the “Sustainable 16,” the country’s top environmental universities as determined by an expert panel of judges in the Second Annual Environmental March Madness (#EnviroU) tournament.

Now, these 16 schools are competing to move on to the next round. We have already received many outstanding submissions from students in the form of essays, photos and videos highlighting why their school deserves to be part of the “Environmental Eight.”

Although many schools have already submitted, a few have gone that extra mile that will definitely be recognized the judges. We've received over 100 pictures with one school leading the pack at 28, and another two not far behind. We’ve also received multiple detailed essays from students and faculty at several institutions, and one school already submitted three unique videos.

Submissions are being accepted until next Friday - March 8, so if you’re a member of the student body or faculty at one of the “Sustainable 16” schools, be sure to get involved and encourage your peers to do so as well.

For everyone following the competition, be sure to check back on March 22 to find out who made it to the next round! You can also receive real-time updates on Twitter by following @enviance and #EnviroU.

For details on how to send supporting materials to the judges, please read our FAQs page.

Key Takeaways from the GreenBiz State of Green Business 2013 Webcast

Last week GreenBiz hosted its 6^th annual State of Green Business webcast, based on the 2013 report. For those of you who were unable to participate, we wanted to share a few of the key takeaways. If you’d like to watch the webcast for yourself, the recording is still available online here.

Published by GreenBiz and Trucost, the report used a set of predetermined indicators to examine key trends in business sustainability – looking at environmental impacts through the lens of natural capital and examining them in terms of risks and opportunities. From a business perspective natural resources have always been viewed as free, but they are not free to the planet or society at large. The report highlights how measuring environmental impacts in financial terms can provide business context to spur sustainability progress.

The webcast, hosted by Joel Makower, executive editor at GreenBiz and Richard Matteson, CEO of Trucost, focused on the big picture given by these indicators, what trends they point to, and what companies are actually doing. The overarching message from the webcast is that the time is right for forward-thinking executives to take the lead in remaining competitive in our current resource-constrained, volatile economy. Here are a few of the key takeaways:

• Natural capital: The big picture is that most companies are still not accurately valuating their environmental impacts. Many are starting to realize what their impacts are but they are not correlating them to economic costs. Most companies still don’t realize what paying the true cost of impacts on air, water and other resources will have on their bottom line. If companies had to pay the true cost of their impacts, it would amount to 40-50 percent of their profits.

• Investing: Sustainability and risk issues are starting to rise up in investor communities as it pertains to water, raw materials and energy requirements.

• Reporting: One recent trend is a big push for integrated corporate, sustainability and financial reporting. There has also been an increase in companies using third party assurance for sustainability reporting. It has been shown that companies that quantify environmental performance and assure their sustainability reports create more trustworthy and credible communications.

• Improvements: For most of the companies making sustainability improvements, the changes have thus far been incremental with very few big swings. However, new technologies are on the horizon that promise to shift the rate of progress.

• Supply Chain Sustainability: Companies that understand where their operational and supply chain environmental costs are embedded will be best positioned to identify opportunities from natural resource constraints, depletion and volatile commodity prices. Companies should make environmental costs a key decision factor in selecting more sustainable suppliers and developing more sustainable products and supply chains.

If you have questions for the authors, Makower and Mattison will also be talking about the report at the GreenBiz Forum this week in New York and next week in San Francisco. If you’d like to read the report, it’s available for download on the GreenBiz website, and again, if you’d like to view the recording for yourself, the entire webcast is available online.

New Date and Time: Join us for the GreenBiz State of Green Business Live Webcast

UPDATE! New date and time for GreenBiz's sixth annual State of Green Business Live webcast

Date: Friday, February 15, 2012

Time: 10am/2pm

Sign up: http://info.greenbiz.com/state-green-business-webcast-01.html

Download free report!

 

Introducing the Sustainable 16: America’s Top Environmental Studies Programs

This morning Enviance, in partnership with GreenBiz Group and Qualtrics, introduced the “Sustainable 16,” the country’s top undergraduate environmental studies programs as determined by an expert panel of judges in the Second Annual Environmental March Madness (#EnviroU) tournament.

The panel of judges — comprised of an education author and expert, as well as representatives from the Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense Fund, Walmart, Forbes, Norfolk Southern and Enviance—­ chose the “Sustainable 16” schools from a competitive group of institutions that showed commitment to the environment through both their environmental studies programs and on-campus initiatives.

The contenders are, in alphabetical order:

• Arizona State University
• Colorado State University
• Emory University
• George Mason University
• Michigan State University
• Middlebury College
• Montana State University
• Ohio State University School of Environment and Natural Resources
• Rochester Institute of Technology
• University of California Santa Barbara
• University of Florida
• University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
• University of the Pacific
• University of Virginia
• University of Washington
• University of Wisconsin-Madison

These 16 schools will now battle to move up into the Environmental Eight, then the Finest Four and finally, one deserving school with then be named National Champion, announced on April 8. To move on in the tournament, faculty and students must submit essays, photos and videos highlighting their best environmental “plays” between today and March 8.

It’s still too early to tell just how closely our tournament matches up with the men’s NCAA March Madness Tournament, but comparing it to bracketology expert Jerry Palm’s predictions on his Bracketology Blog, our tournament will also have underdogs, returning top schools and of course plenty of school spirit.

The National Champion takes home $5,000 for its environmental and sustainability department, and is awarded an all-expenses-paid trip for its department chair or faculty member to San Diego to attend the Enviance User Conference, April 22-26. While there, the winner will lead a panel on educating future environmental professionals.

Check back on March 22 to find out who made it to the next round! You can also receive real-time updates on Twitter by following @enviance and #EnviroU.

For schools in the ‘Sustainable 16,’ please follow this link for details on how to send supporting materials to the judges: http://www.enviance.com/march-madness/

The Results are in from our Annual EUEC Survey!

Now that EUEC 2013 has wrapped, we wanted to share with you some revealing feedback from the show floor.  We surveyed the environmental professionals at the show about how regulation and sustainability issues are affecting their companies and organizations – and wound up with some surprising results.

Here are the key takeaways from our 2013 survey:

• Carbon Tax: This year’s survey showed that two-thirds of respondents do not have a plan in place to manage the financial risk associated with the imposition of a cost on carbon, either through cap and trade or a tax.  In last year’s survey, more than three-fifths of respondents said they thought the imposition of a carbon tax would impact their organization.

• AB 32: Is AB 32—under which California initiated its first carbon credit auction in November 2012—a paper tiger or is it simply too early in its implementation for companies to feel its impact? At EUEC, 72 percent of those surveyed said they thought AB 32 would not have any sort of impact on their organization.

• Regulation Reporting Systems: Nearly half of respondents with emission reporting requirements indicated that they had no actual reporting system in place. Of the group without any reporting system, about one-third reported that they were not currently evaluating any systems to help them meet their reporting requirements.

• Water Management: Two-thirds of respondents said that water management is of equal or greater value to them as managing carbon emissions. This is a big increase from 2012 when more than half of respondents indicated that water management was either of no importance, or less important than carbon emission reporting.

• Election Results: 77 percent of attendees said they believe the results of the presidential election will mean an increase in environmental regulations over the next four years.

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