This month’s Climate Collaborative webinar welcomed BSR’s Nico De Golia for a dive into how companies can work to decarbonize their transportation supply chains. We wanted to share some of his takeaways below. To learn more visit here.

If the United States went shopping in your store, it would leave with five bags, drop two in the parking lot, and leave them there. This may seem crazy, but as a country, we leave a full 40 percent of our food uneaten. And it’s not just food going in the trash: Up to about one-fifth of U.S. cropland, fertilizers, and agricultural water go towards growing food that’s ultimately wasted. Food waste is responsible for at least 2.6 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (equivalent to more than that of 37 million cars), and wasting less food was ranked third of 100 solutions to climate change by Project Drawdown.

Last week, the Climate Collaborative hosted an introductory webinar on how companies can begin addressing climate change. We were lucky to have Pure Strategies’ Managing Director, Tim Greiner and Happy Family Organics’ Sustainability Director, Katie Clark join us to share their insights on why climate action matters within companies and their expert advice on how companies can create a strategic approach to climate action and which tactics can set them up for success.

Trayak is offering an opportunity for Climate Collaborative packaging-committed companies to engage in two package climate optimization studies. Each study will focus on working directly with one company to optimize an identified packaging type to reduce climate-related impacts; these two projects include:

• A short packaging optimization engagement to be completed by October 2019.
• A longer packaging optimization engagement to be completed by the summer of 2020.

Today is Earth Day, a day that causes all of us working on climate to pause, assess how we are doing, celebrate wins, and challenge ourselves to do more. Three years ago on Earth Day, the historic Paris Climate Accords were signed, setting out the first truly global effort to drawdown emissions; and next year marks the 50^th anniversary of the Earth Day holiday.

If one thing has excited me this past month, it’s been seeing climate policy take center stage in the platforms of numerous candidates on the campaign trail and watching the companies in our network enthusiastically embrace the next frontier -- climate policy.

Two years into the Climate Collaborative’s work, the natural products industry truly feels energized. I felt this palpably a few days ago at Climate Day, from the way people stood up one after the other to commit to climate action during the session to the sea of commitments companies proudly displayed at their booths to the tenor of people’s remarks throughout the day.

In anticipation of the 2019 National Co+op Grocers Climate Collaborative Awards, we're talking with the leaders of our 2018 award-winning companies to learn a little bit more about what drives their climate leadership.

Our eighth interview is with Gary Erickson and Kit Crawford, Co-CEOs of Clif Bar & Company, winner of the 2018 Outstanding Influencer Award (View our previous interviews with Straus Family Creamery, Alter Eco, Veritable Vegetable, Guayaki, Organic Valley, Lotus Foods and Community Food Co-op).

Nominations for the 2019 National Co+op Grocers Climate Collaborative Awards are open now through November 30. In anticipation of next year's awards, we're talking with the leaders of our 2018 award-winning companies to learn a little bit more about what drives their climate leadership.

Our second interview is with Melissa Elkins, Sustainability Coordinator for Community Food Co-op, winner of the 2018 Outstanding Company Award (View our previous interview with Lotus Foods here).

Nominations for the 2019 National Co+op Grocers Climate Collaborative Awards are open now through November 30. In anticipation of next year's awards, we're talking with the leaders of our 2018 award-winning companies to learn a little bit more about what drives their climate leadership. You can read more here.