Europe must focus on a Green New Deal (not Brexit)

Jay OwenGreen Prosperity, Trendspotting

Welcome to the latest Innovation Forum business brief. This week: is there a growing momentum behind a Green New Deal?
In this week’s podcast: Veja co-founder François-Ghislain Morillion on sourcing innovations, and SUSA’s Sebastian Siegele on developing apparel factory best practices. Plus: food supply, Global Forest Watch data, and PepsiCo’s new bottle recycling technology, in the news digest. Europe must focus on a Green New Deal (not Brexit)
 
Political leaders and others should build on the gathering momentum towards building a truly robust new economy, argues Paul Hohnen 
 

The Green New Deal (GND) concept, as I raised via Innovation Forum earlier in the year, has only acquired greater media and political debate since.

Predictably, most of the media attention in the past four months has been on the highly politically-polarised discussion in the US.

There, GND has inevitably been cast as either as a socialist, big government anti-capitalist conspiracy, or an ambitious “moon shot” style programme to give the US the clean energy, jobs and infrastructure it needs.

In Europe, too, the issue has risen up the political agenda. This has been prompted by diverse factors, including the upcoming European parliament elections, the impact of Greta Thunberg and the student climate marches, and the Extinction Rebellion protests.

Most recently, GND received the imprimatur of  … click here for the full story
  The latest from Innovation Forum’s audio stream

How Nestlé links social and environmental supply chain goals
Anna Tyrell, head of sustainability for UK and Ireland at Nestlé, talks with about the challenges in tackling modern slavery issues, and why the business’s first step was to align, as far as possible, with the UN guiding principles on business and human rights. She discusses why different supply chains, including palm oil and cocoa, can require very specific approaches – and that a holistic approach encompassing environmental and social goals is typically what works best.
 
Why sustainable supply chains need thriving supplier communities  
Alison Ward CEO of CottonConnect discusses the benefits of transparency in helping monitor corporate impacts in apparel supply chains. Ward also highlights how better story-telling in communications with consumers leads to more engagement and points out the benefits of actually introducing a brand board director to the company’s supplier-farmers.