German forest certification system submitted for endorsement

Bloomberg, Cox Enterprises, Gap Inc., Salesforce, and Workday, with guidance from LevelTen Energy and its renewable energy procurement platform, closed 42.5 megawatts of a 100 megawatt North Carolina solar project by global renewable energy developer, service provider and wholesaler, BayWa r.e. This group of companies, coming together as the Corporate Renewable Energy Aggregation Group, is the first example of companies aggregating similar, relatively small amounts of renewable energy demand to collaboratively enter into a virtual power purchase agreement (VPPA), collectively acting as the anchor tenant for a large offsite renewable energy project. The unprecedented coordination between five international businesses lays the groundwork for other corporates to procure renewable energy cooperatively, maximizing value and reducing risk. The five members of the group, with support from the Business Council on Climate Change (BC3) and the Business Renewables Center (BRC), began collaborating in late 2017. Many potential renewable energy purchasers have historically been faced with a key problem: businesses looking to procure smaller energy loads have been unable to contract directly with large offsite renewable energy projects due to limited energy demand. This has so far restricted business’s ability to catalyze the development of new renewable energy projects. To solve this problem, the group evaluated several mechanisms for aggregating smaller amounts of renewable energy demand to afford them the collective buying power that is typically necessary to contract directly with a large offsite renewable energy project. Click read more below for additional detail.

PEFC-certified cardboard has replaced plastic packaging around the cider can packs by UK cider maker Thatchers, significantly reducing the company’s use of plastic. Thatchers has introduced PEFC-certified board for its four and ten-can packs of ciders. Using certified cardboard for packaging is one more important step in Thatchers’ commitment to the environment. The company first started its ground-breaking initiative five years ago, introducing new duo-wing cardboard packs for its best-selling ciders. Around 100 tonnes of plastic have been saved during this time. Through this innovation, Thatchers has also been able to wipe out its use of the much-maligned plastic rings. In the last twelve months, Thatchers has saved around 20 million plastic rings from being discarded, eliminating their potential harm to the environment.

Five of the most exciting new advances in paper and pulp, from wallpaper that blocks Wi-Fi to a test that can detect cancer. Paper has a great number of advantages when it comes to communication – it’s portable, light, accessible and easy on the eye. But great strides are being made in medicine, technology and construction using this most humble of materials. People may have been reading and writing with it for over two thousand years, but it seems that paper has a lot more to offer. Click "read more" below for additional information.