The Five Hot Topics of Sustainability – Takeaways from Sustainable Brands 2019

This year’s Sustainable Brands conference offered the Vinyl Institute team the opportunity to see and anticipate what’s on the horizon for sustainability. It was interesting to capture what other industries, companies, and brands consider most important for a more sustainable future and how they can contribute. Based on what he heard and learned, here are some of the major trends in sustainability we can or should expect as a future focus.

Circularity

Although we face an increasing number of people on the planet and continuous depletion of resources, humans continue to waste. According to the most recent Environmental Protection Agency national overview , there were 262.4 million tons of municipal solid waste generated in 2015. But a significant amount of this waste could instead be used as feedstock for new products, put into a second use, or a different use altogether. This is where circularity comes in. Circularity is more than recycling, reusing, and reutilizing; it is sharing in a deep sense of product lifestyle ownership. True circularity action should include periodical assessments of solid life-cycle analysis and sustainable materials management data to ensure a continuous sustainability benefit.

Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, United Nations Member States adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To accomplish these goals, we need to be able to quantify and track them to individual organization and industry contributions. Organizations such as Trucost (Standard & Poor) are working on methodologies that help map and quantify individual sustainability efforts. While any organization or industry can contribute to a certain extent to all 17 SDGs, it’s critical to focus on the specific SDG where contributions makes the most sense and can be most tangibly measured for an organization. For the vinyl industry, we are focusing on resource efficiency and recycling, emissions, and health and safety through our +Vantage Vinyl program. Action in these three impact categories significantly support SDGs 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), 9 (Industry Innovation and Infrastructure), and 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production).

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

With the latest developments in technology, cloud computing, data accessibility, blockchain concepts, and information flow, the importance of AI has been elevated in the sustainability space, such as whole-chain traceability. Contributions to sustainable development include collaboration across an entire supply chain, collecting information, summarizing it, triggering appropriate action and raising awareness—and all can be done through AI. As just one example, the pioneers of AI technologies are using sensors in pipe systems to show where water is being lost through small cracks in the pip pipe, triggering the replacement of pipes with more sustainable alternatives, such as PVC pipe, to prevent massive breaks and clean water availability losses.

Water Conservation & Clean Water Availability

Clean drinking water is a finite resource. While approximately 70 percent of the Earth is covered by water, less than 0.1 percent is available as clean drinking water for a population of 6.8 billion. And, an estimated 783 million people on the planet today don’t have access to clean and safe water. Every year, humans compete for water availability for drinking and cooking. . Given the continuous increase in population we can expect to see over the next three decades, conservation and expanded availability of existing clean water resources are critical. Some even consider clean water availability to be one of the top three most important SDGs that must be solved in the near future. The vinyl industry has tremendous potential to play a role in clean water availability in North America. With 45 percent of resin going to PVC water pipes, vinyl is a sustainable option that can lessen water loss, leaks, breaks and contamination.

Diversified Energy Portfolio

Traditional energy supplies have relied heavily on fossil fuel technologies, hydropower, and, to a certain extent, nuclear power. While these continue to all be viable energy sources that the world needs to rely upon for the time being, the energy portfolio needs to be diversified to meet the increase in demand from population growth and the challenges posed by depleting natural resources. While there is no one-size-fits-all solution, renewable energy resources, such as solar, wind, power, nuclear fusion, and thermal, need to be further explored, expanded, and added to the energy mix to meet our needs in the future.

Every business needs to think strategically about future impacts and where they can make a difference on the sustainability journey. Now is the time to anticipate how these coming trends will influence your company and product line.