Stories from the Living Lab, 2017–2018: A Look at Sustainability in Waste Management, Bike Commuting, and Investments
This report shares journeys from three WRI Sustainability Initiative projects focused on waste and plastics reduction, bike and active commutes, and sustainability of WRI's endowment. Each journey is authored by a different project lead and shares the implementation challenges, data, and outcomes, as well as relevant research and case studies that informed the project design and development.
Organizations and businesses play a critical role in advancing climate action by reporting and mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emitting activities within their operations. WRI has been tracking GHG emissions for over 10 years and has recently launched an interactive dashboard to publicly share data and methods. The data has helped WRI to drive internal projects and policies to reduce emissions in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
The GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard sets a consistent and transparent approach to measuring emissions up and down WRI's value chain, this data helps track the impact of various sustainability projects and WRI's progress towards science-based targets, which seek to drive down energy emissions by 50% and business travel and purchasing by 20% (2010-2020) in this reporting period. Recently, in 2020, WRI launched its Sustainability Dashboard that helps to further transparency goals by making WRI's GHG data and methods more accessible. Alongside this data, this report shares WRI's journeys on three projects focused on reducing waste, increasing bike commuting, and aligning WRI's endowment with sustainability goals.
The first story shares how organizations can build consistency and ease-of-use into program designs and employ positive elements like humor and fun to target specific waste problems. An approach using lessons from behavioral science helped WRI’s U.S. office to improve diversion-from-landfill levels from 27 percent to nearly 80 percent of total waste, as well as achieve progress toward reducing single-use plastics.
Learning from WRI’s bike campaign in the U.S. and Brazil, the second story shares how combining multiple supports like bike infrastructure, financial incentives, and social and cultural engagement may be important to shifting long-term commuting habits among employees.
Finally, the third story shares how WRI and any organization with a moderate-sized endowment can integrate sustainability into investment strategies to achieve greater mission alignment, while maintaining or enhancing risk-adjusted returns.
Each story within this 2017-2018 report is authored by several different WRI experts and sustainability champions and reflects work from an ongoing sustainability reporting process. A series of sustainability reports dating back to 2002 have been sharing WRI’s experiences in tracking operational GHG emissions and reducing emissions in-line with the Paris Agreement. These reports share a range of project types, are authored by many sustainability champions over time, and all contribute towards the goal of promoting knowledge sharing across organizations. As WRI learns by doing, we hope other organizations will adopt a similar ambition and share their sustainability stories and journeys as well.
