Happy New Year! I hope you've had a restful holiday. As we look toward tackling a new year and a new decade, I'm heartened to see that climate change is already at the forefront of so many conversations--from policy to corporate action and grassroots movements--and looking forward, I'm hopeful about what we can accomplish as a community.

Closing out 2019, 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg was just named Time's Person of the Year, putting the climate crisis--and the enormous youth movement for climate action--at the center of public attention like never before.

Here at the Climate Collaborative, we grew our network to well over 450 companies--representing farmers, producers, distributors, ingredients manufacturers, and more--and launched exciting new projects on consumer engagement, food waste, and more. We can't wait to work with all of you in 2020, to create meaningful pathways to policy advocacy, as well as new collaborative opportunities on regenerative agriculture and packaging. 

We hope you'll bring us your ideas, energy, and a willingness to collaborate. We look forward to working with you in the new year.

Warmly,

Erin

As we head into a holiday this week, I want to send out thanks to YOU and to everyone in our community. I'm so grateful you're committed to working with your peers and the industry on climate change.

From packaging to food waste, consumer engagement, policy work and more, there is a lot we plan to accomplish in the next year. And we hope you'll be there every step of the way. We are trying to close a funding gap to enable this work, and we need you to help us get there! We'll announce any new donors on stage at Climate Day 2020. And as ever, thank you to our current donors for enabling everything we do.

You can also RSVP for Climate Day 2020--let us know you'll be there! We still have speaking roles available; join our Dec. 11 call to learn more, especially if you have a story of climate innovation.

Happy Thanksgiving!

- Erin

All our thoughts this week are with the members of our community who are currently evacuated and/or without power due to the wildfires in California. The now annual, tragic reminder of the impact climate change is already having in CA is maddening and scary for all of us.

It also makes me energized and resolved to keep working with all of you to push forward industry solutions to climate change. And I want to thank you for being on the journey with us.

To that end, we need your help to keep improving our programming to be as effective and actionable as possible. If you haven't already, please fill out our short survey to help inform our 2020 planning. Thank you to those of you who have given us your input!

We also hope you'll give us a new reason to celebrate at Climate Day 2020: Nominate your own company or a peer for the 2020 National Co+op Grocers Climate Collaborative awards! The deadline for applying is next Friday, November 8. You can also check out an interview with one of last year's winners, Glen's Garden Market, below. 

Best,

Erin

This month we have a huge slate of announcements, so I hope you'll read to the end! Last month proved to be our busiest month ever, with 40+ new companies making over 160 commitments to act! We also released this year's Tracking Progress survey results, showing 71% of companies are making active progress on their climate commitments. Read our Expo East roundup to learn more.

We also launched the 2020 National Co+op Grocers Climate Collaborative Awards nomination form--we encourage you to nominate yourselves and any peers that have great stories of leadership!

The momentum we see is heartening amid Climate Week and the UN talks last week, where millions of young people came out in a massive climate strike, and companies and governments gathered as part of a climate summit. A major takeaway is that we all need to be doing more, faster.

I hope over the coming days, all of us can ask ourselves what we can do to deepen our commitment to tackling climate change. If you haven't made a commitment, do so today! If you have, consider taking a new step to support the vital work our industry is doing. For those of you that do support us, thank you so much for helping usher in a new wave of industry action, knowledge sharing, and leadership. 

Best,

Erin

This month the IPCC published its first-ever comprehensive report on land use and climate change, drawing out the crucial role land-use plays as both a cause and a solution to climate change.

It makes me so grateful for the momentum I see in this industry--and to that end, we'll be announcing exciting progress in two weeks at Expo East, including the findings of this year's Tracking Progress Update.

We hope to see all of you all there! If you haven't yet, RSVP here to save your spot. We'll also be hosting two panels at Supply Side, so join us there if you won't be in Baltimore!

Best,

Erin

This month we have a great example of how industry can come together to move the needle on responding to climate change: Four major auto companies have made a deal with California to reduce auto emissions in the face of larger federal regulatory rollback.

Our community has a similar opportunity to come together and drive meaningful change in our own sector. I hope you'll help us do this, by bringing your ideas and will to collaborate to each of our upcoming events! We have a lot of them--make sure to check out them out at the bottom of this email.

I hope you'll join us in Baltimore for our Expo East session on Sept. 12--we've got a great lineup of speakers this year, including Seventh Generation, Stonyfield, and climate solutions leader Jurriaan Kamp. Hope to see you there!

Best,

Erin

Two pieces of good news on the climate front: Earlier this month, New York State passed the most ambitious state-level climate goals to date and a new study shows that one-sixth of the global economy is covered by net zero carbon goals. 

We are so proud of the leading role the natural products industry is taking on climate and we hope that YOU can help us grow this movement!

Our request is simple – just send this letter to 3-5 of your industry peers and/or suppliers and ask them to join you. Just let me know if you need this letter in another format.

We're looking forward to spotlighting anyone who joins us at Expo East during our Collaborating on Climate session with Stonyfield, Seventh Generation and Glen’s Garden market on Thursday, September 12. We hope to see you there--RSVP here!

Best,

Erin

This month at the Climate Collaborative, we're thinking about ways we can start to broaden the impact of our community's work on climate change beyond our industry through critical work to bolster climate commitments through climate policy work and consumer engagement efforts.

On the policy front, last week more than 75 businesses gathered in Washington, D.C. to advocate for a federal carbon pricing policy. The group included major consumer brands like Mars, Unilever, Levi Strauss, and Gap, but also featured BP, PG&E and Shell, in the largest gathering on carbon pricing in a decade. We're especially grateful to Climate Collaborative committed companies that showed up on the hill to voice their support for these policies. If you're looking for ways to deepen your policy engagement, here are a few ways you can get started.

We're also really thrilled to announce we're launching a consumer engagement working group this year to support companies in building effective consumer dialogues on climate change. You can learn more about that and our other upcoming events and resources below. We're looking forward to working with you on all of it!

Best,

Erin

Sixteen-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the UK Parliament last week--one of the latest stops in her tireless efforts to galvanize people into action. Her approach is extremely powerful because there's absolutely no flummery, no politics, no sugarcoating--she is blunt and direct. See her closing remarks below:

"We children are doing this to wake the adults up. We children are doing this for you to put your differences aside and start acting as you would in a crisis. We children are doing this because we want our hopes and dreams back. I hope my microphone was on. I hope you could all hear me."

A week out from Earth Day and from Greta's starkly honest prod, I want to thank YOU for being part of this community. I'm inspired and heartened by all the energy and momentum I've witnessed since Climate Day. I am also deeply grateful to the generous donors that make all our work possible. 

I'm excited to continue this journey with you as we find new ways to do even more to create the world we want to live in and pass on to the next generation. 

We've certainly got a busy month ahead - details below! 

Best,

Erin

We're two weeks out from our biggest Climate Day yet, and I'm still hugely energized, inspired and more confident than ever about the potential for the natural products industry to come together to act on climate change at scale. 

What gives me hope? In just two years since we launched, 360 companies have made over 1,300 commitments to act on climate—an average of one company committing every two days. Two-thirds of them are already making good progress in implementing their commitments, including 16 leaders we've now recognized through the National Co+op Grocers Climate Collaborative Awards.

It's also clear that the industry is serious about focusing on taking action around key areas that can unlock serious climate impacts, including value chain and policy engagement, breaking down silos in companies and industry collaboration, and focusing relentlessly on progress through audacious, scary goal setting.

We closed out Climate Day with Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia and Patagonia Provisions, who emphasized their mission that “Patagonia is in business to save our home planet.” He urged every company in the room to do the same, and I hope we can help make that happen over the coming months, as we go deeper in supporting companies on policy and value chain engagement.

We hope you'll be part of making this happen! If you haven't already, you can make a commitment to action, or support the work we do by becoming a Climate Collaborative donor. We're so happy to have you on this journey with us.

Warmly,

Erin