Gem of the day

Industry stalwart Greenbiz published their annual State of Green Business Report this week. With a focus on the US, the report usually provides a good overview of how the corporate landscape of sustainability commitments is looking, if not a demanding assessment of what they actually mean. Here's the four corporate commitments they highlighted this year as evidence of progress:

• Proctor & Gamble made a commitment to power all of their factories with renewable energy within the next ten years;
• FedEx committed to improve vehicle fuel efficiency by 20 percent by 2020;
• Walmart pledged to sell $1 billion of fresh produce sourced from 1000 small- and medium-sized farmers;
• Hasbro promised that 75 percent of its paperboard packaging will come from recycled materials in 2011

The problem is that none of these approach transformational innovation. They all represent laudable ways to do better within their current business models, but just cutting emissions, improving packaging and using renewables ain't gonna cut it in the future given the global challenges we're facing.