Sustainable Business Podcast by Innovation Forum

Weekly podcast: The road to COP26, and apparel’s upcycling opportunities

This week: Textile Exchange’s COO Claire Bergkamp on how to prepare for this year’s COP26 meeting, the outcomes that are likely, and her hopes for the apparel sector. Plus Steven Bethell, co-founder of Bank & Vogue and Beyond Retro, on the huge resource potential in post-consumer textiles. In parallel with maximising resale and upcycling, he outlines how chemical recycling techniques and better data analysis of fabrics, can lead to fibre-to-fibre recycling at scale.

Host: Ian Welsh

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How to operationalise your approach to deforestation

National Wildlife Federation’s Simon Hall, senior manager for tropical forests and agriculture, talks with Ian Welsh about what the route to getting to grips with deforestation risks can look like. The first step is to get away the reactionary crisis management approach and, rather, take a more mature approach with a supplier engagement programme that includes thoughtful incentives to drive behaviour change.

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Real rural resilience: How to connect smallholder farmers directly to global markets

Innovation Forum’s “Innovation Accelerator” action research programme recently published ground-breaking research on how companies can enable smallholder development beyond siloed purchasing and initiatives.

Through 80+ interviews with those on the front lines of smallholder engagement, we uncovered opportunities for sourcing companies to link directly with smallholders growing a variety of crops.

Many of these, beyond those sold as commodities, can help lift communities out of poverty if market access can be enabled. This is linked with the increasing interest in “decommoditisation” and how that can deliver the transparency needed in supply chains.

Using a sustainable commodities marketplace approach, the discussions in this 60-minute webinar focus on how buyers can increase broad based economic development in supplier countries by sourcing multiple crops and collaborating on sourcing opportunities for smallholder communities.

Speakers:

• Goetz Martin, head of sustainability implementation, Golden Agri-Resources
• Alison Ward, CEO, CottonConnect
• Ruth Thomas, director, Global Agribusiness Action on Equitable Livelihoods (GAA-EL)
• Silke Peters, team leader, sustainable agricultural supply chains initiative, GIZ
• Lea Rankinen, director, sustainability and public affairs, Paulig Group
• Dr Peter Stanbury, senior associate, Innovation Forum

Moderated by: Toby Webb, founder, Innovation Forum

For the recent report, see here: https://www.innovationforum.co.uk/research/innovation-accelerator

And for a summary article and podcast see here:  http://sustainablesmartbusiness.com/smallholder-supply-chains-how-to-make-sustainability-sustainable/

Weekly podcast: How the right data can help producers access carbon credits

This week: Anastasia Volkova, CEO of Regrow, talks about the challenges for producers to be able to demonstrate implementation of regenerative agricultural practices, and other improvements, to the rest of the value chain, and why this will increase in importance as carbon markets develop.

Plus: US to cut emissions by 50% this decade, UK to cut 78% by 2035; Land O’Lakes, McDonald’s, General Mills and Cargill getting in on carbon markets; and PepsiCo to roll out regenerative agriculture techniques over 7m acres, in the news digest.

Host: Ian Welsh

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Shining a spotlight: food sector still lacks progress on the ground

Five years on from the Behind the Brands campaign, Oxfam America’s Matt Hamilton talks with Ian Welsh about progress in the food and beverage sector. They talk about the contrasts between the stretching targets companies set at the top and the difficulties implementing those at the local level. Their discussion includes land rights, climate change, the locations where companies are doing well and less well, and the move from reactivity to proactivity.

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Beefing up approaches to cattle methane emissions

Cargill’s sustainability director for animal nutrition and health, Heather Tansey, talks with Innovation Forum’s Ian Welsh about how methane emissions from cattle can be mitigated and controlled. There are a number of techniques that can help, including rumen modifiers added to cattle diets that significantly reduce the methane – a highly potent greenhouse gas – that cattle belch while eating.

Cargill is a sponsor of Innovation Forum’s Future of Food conference series.

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Weekly podcast – Route to net zero: why vehicle electrification is the vital spark

This week: To eliminate emissions in operations – and to tackle scope 3 supply chain emissions – widespread electrification of corporate fleets is pretty much essential. Jim Gawron, from Ford’s electric commercial vehicles team, talks about the potential for the new products coming to the market. Companies think in terms of total cost of ownership – and electric trucks and vans have low on-going costs over entire vehicle life. He argues that the route map to full electrification requires progress on enabling vehicle supply, significantly more charging facilities, public education about the practicalities of electric vehicles and appropriate public policy incentives.

Plus: Unilever, Microsoft and Walmart CEOs among the 300 backing Biden’s new environmental commitment; New Zealand to make the finance sector report on climate risks; as little as 3% of land has healthy biodiversity; and, Nike’s new sneaker take-back and refurbish scheme, in the news digest.

Host: Ian Welsh

Palm oil: it’s all about viable producer communities

Gotz Martin from Golden Agri-Resources catches up with Ian Welsh about some of the big palm oil sector's challenges and reflects on the findings from the recent Innovation Forum led research into smallholder farmers.

Martin argues that smallholder farming remains stuck in a poverty trap because demands for low costs at buyer companies are not sufficiently linked to sustainability targets, and they discuss some of the funding models and new market models that can help.

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Weekly podcast – Deforestation risks: much more than just putting out fires

This week: Simon Hall, senior manager for tropical forests and agriculture at the National Wildlife Federation, discusses why the best approach to company deforestation risks have evolved from dealing with immediate reputation crises into a more thoughtful and strategic approach. There’s a need to think about units of production, traceability through supply chains, reporting and providing information, and verification of the process.

Plus: tree loss up 12% in 2020 says Global Forest Watch; carbon offsets review at the Nature Conservancy; and, H+M launches new Innovation Stories series, in the news digest.

Host: Ian Welsh

 

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Chemical complexity: Why we need to move beyond organic versus synthetic

Jon Entine, who leads the Genetic Literacy Project, a science communication non-profit, joins Innovation Forum’s Toby Webb to discuss chemicals and science in agriculture. Their robust discussion covers topics such as glyphosate, copper sulphate, gene editing and the science and impacts of both synthetic and organic chemicals in food and wine.

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