November, 2021 – Volume 14, Issue 11
Bardstown Bourbon Company presented with 2021 Douglas C. Griffin Environmental Sustainability Award
New cold chain facilities help UPS Healthcare improve supply chain efficiency and sustainability
UofL startup’s bourbon sustainability tech wins pitch competition
Kentucky founder raises $5M for sustainable supply chain startup
EPA launches a new P2 resources search tool
Premier reaches market first with revolutionary sustainable product
Environmental stewardship is vital to our workplaces
GreenBiz: Shipping and aviation plan to go net zero
Building Investor Trust and Credibility Through ESG
How to Communicate With Consumers About Chemical Recycling Solutions
Benchmarking Water & Wastewater Treatment Plants in Portfolio Manager
Achieving Water and Cost Savings in Capital Improvement Projects
Working Together to Save Energy: Employee Engagement Strategies
Mature your Energy Program for the Decisive Decade
ENERGY STAR – Portfolio Manager Webinars
Amplifying the latest sustainability news, perspectives and events
Bardstown Bourbon Company presented with 2021 Douglas C. Griffin Environmental Sustainability Award
The Bardstown Bourbon Company (BBC) has been selected as the Douglas C. Griffin Environmental Sustainability Award winner for 2021 by the Kentucky Pollution Prevention Center (KPPC). The award recognizes Kentucky entities that have demonstrated a commitment to the principles of sustainability and environmental stewardship and is presented each year in conjunction with National Pollution Prevention Week.
The Bardstown Bourbon Company team celebrate receiving the 2021 Douglas C. Griffin Environmental Sustainability Award
Bardstown Bourbon is a relatively new distillery in Bardstown, Kentucky, with a beautiful new facility housing their distillery processes, a restaurant, tasting lounge, and gift shop. The site includes aging barns, and a newly constructed bottling facility. The company has a history of success in environmental sustainability, having implemented several initiatives to conserve natural gas consumption.
Recently KPPC assisted BBC with sustainable value stream mapping to evaluate electric energy usage throughout their distillery process and to evaluate water usage. In addition, BBC has hosted engineering students from UofL’s Speed School of Engineering to evaluate thermal insulation opportunities to further conserve energy. BBC has hosted tours of their facility to demonstrate energy management in practice.
Lissa McCracken, Executive Director of the Kentucky Pollution Prevention Center, presented the award to the Bardstown Bourbon Company.
“Since KPPC began working with Bardstown Bourbon we have been so impressed by your commitment to environmental stewardship and interconnecting social, economic and environmental sustainability principles into your operations.”
Roger Henley, BBC Plant Engineer accepted the award at a recent management gathering at their Bardstown facility.
“We are honored to accept this award which recognizes our environmental sustainability achievements. We are grateful for all the BBC employees, for without their dedication and support these achievements would not have been possible. We look forward to continuing to enhance our sustainability efforts and appreciate the assistance that KPPC has provided.”
More information about the Douglas C. Griffin Environmental Sustainability Award is available at https://kppc.org/environmental-sustainability-award/.
New cold chain facilities help UPS Healthcare improve supply chain efficiency and sustainability
As the market for cold chain services continues to grow, UPS Healthcare is opening new facilities to extend its supply chain efficiency in area while enhancing sustainability goals.
The new UPS Healthcare cold chain and packaging center is in Louisville, Kentucky, is the company’s first in the United States to offer reusable cold chain packaging options. The company says it will help it increase its cold chain offerings to improve efficiency in transporting products.
UPS Healthcare’s temperature-controlled facilities are designed to handle pharmaceutical drugs and other healthcare products, regardless of temperature. The company says an example of the need for a long-range efficient cold chain system is COVID-19 vaccine delivery.
The overall market for cold chain services, including packaging, transportation and data, is expected to grow by 24% by 2024, according to UPS Healthcare, after growing 10% from 2019 to 2020. According to Biopharma Cold Chain Source Book, cold chains are expected to grow 48% from 2018 to 2024 for medicines that require at least 2 degrees Celsius to 8 degrees Celsius for storage and shipping.
UPS Healthcare says the new facility will help utilize and improve the lifecycle of temperature-controlled packages. That will also help with sustainability goals and cut down on single-use waste cold chain packaging. The company says within three years of implementing as much as 5,600 such reusable packaging could eliminate 2,000 tons of waste.
According to the International Trade Commission, more than $260 billion of bio-pharma sales are dependent on cold chains. The commission also says the food industry loses more than $750 billion a year because of proper cold chain procedures.
Cold chain issues are becoming part of a sustainable focus. Earlier in 2021 Carrier said it would invest more than $2 billion in cold chain services to help reduce lifecycle impacts on products and increase sustainable design principles.
Read the full article on the Environmental Leader website.
UofL startup’s bourbon sustainability tech wins pitch competition
BioProducts, a UofL startup based on research-born technology for reusing spent distillers’ grain, has won a bourbon sustainability pitch competition. Credit: Kirsten Delamarter, Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet
A University of Louisville research-backed startup has beaten teams from around the country in a pitch competition aimed at bourbon sustainability.
BioProducts, a UofL startup based on research-born technology for reusing spent distillers’ grain, has won a bourbon sustainability pitch competition. Credit: Kirsten Delamarter, Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet
The startup, BioProducts LLC, took the top spot at the Distillers Grains Reverse Pitch competition, backed by the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development and others.
The goal was to find innovative solutions for using distilling byproducts. According to the competition website, about 10 gallons of byproduct are generated for every gallon of bourbon produced.
BioProducts is built around UofL-patented technology that gives those distillery byproducts new life, for example, as a low-calorie sugar substitute and as specialized activated carbon suitable for a number of high-performance applications, particularly lithium ion batteries.
For the pitch competition, BioProducts teamed with Louisville-based C&I Engineering Inc. to present how the integrated technology could be applied at different types and sizes of distilleries. And, said UofL’s Jagannadh Satyavolu, who helped invent the technology and later founded the company, how this process could create activated carbon that’s more cost-effective and sustainable.
“Using this technology — invented in Kentucky and for one of Kentucky’s signature industries — we can take this otherwise waste material and turn it into a game-changer,” he said. “This could help make distilling more sustainable, reduce pollution and much more.”
The technology was invented by Satyavolu’s UofL Conn Center for Renewable Energy Research biomass conversion and biofuels group in collaboration with Michael Nantz and his team in the UofL chemistry department.
BioProducts holds an exclusive license through UofL Innovation and Commercialization, which handles intellectual property resulting from university research and helps forge partnerships with companies for commercialization.
“We feel we are the right team at the right time to solve this challenge,” said Cliff Speedy, C&I Engineering’s executive director of projects.
Because they won the pitch competition, the BioProducts team received an engraved bourbon barrel lid and will now present to 500-some distillery professionals at the James B. Beam Institute Industry Conference in March 2022.
Read the original article on the UofL News website.
Newsbits
Kentucky founder raises $5M for sustainable supply chain startup
At the start of her career, Jane Mosbacher Morris was working in counterterrorism for the U.S. Department of State, where she focused on helping women fight Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It was there where she learned that in order for women to have more influence they needed more resources, namely, money. Morris began studying developing world economies to understand what major industries were the primary employers of women, eventually recognizing both agriculture and retail manufacturing fit that bill.
But unlike the agriculture sector, Morris noticed there hadn’t been much investment into a sustainable, ethical supply chain for retail manufacturing. She set out to change that in late 2016, developing a tech-enabled solution to connect retailers with a syndicated network of apparel, accessories, home goods and personal protective equipment suppliers from around the world.
“All of that information led me to start To the Market with the vision of changing retail manufacturing to empower people and protect the planet,” Morris said. “We, as Americans in particular, have so much purchasing power. We could be a lot more thoughtful about where we send this purchasing power to make sure it’s going towards suppliers that are treating people with dignity and looking towards sustainability in their practices.”
EPA launches a new P2 resources search tool
EPA has launched a new search tool on its website to connect visitors to P2 resources such as case studies, webinars, articles about P2 solutions, practices, and technologies. The tool allows searches by keyword, sector, and even process type.
Use the EPA P2 Resources search tool today!
Premier reaches market first with revolutionary sustainable product
As world leaders discuss ways to limit global warming at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Scotland, Premier Packaging is first to market to sell and distribute a revolutionary replacement for poly products: paper packaging with all the advantages of plastic while being 100% recyclable and compostable.
The FDA-approved, patent-pending PaperLock™ technology for paper packaging could help reduce carbon emissions because plastics originate as fossil fuels—oil, gas, and coal. If current trends continue, according to the World Economic Forum, plastics will account for 20% of oil consumption by 2050. Also, a 2019 report by the Center for International Environmental Law estimated that in the United States alone 12.5 to 13.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent are emitted per year while extracting and transporting natural gas to create feedstocks for plastics.
By contrast, paper packaging with Paperlock™ technology originates from a renewable resource, plant fibers, and is easily recyclable. This West Michigan University-certified packaging is made entirely of paper—it contains no microplastics.
PaperLock™ allows the running of heat-seal paper bags on current vertical form, fill, and seal equipment and standard bagging equipment without the use of expensive upgrades, plastic coatings, tapes, or stickers. This technology allows paper to be sealed in the same manner as poly through the manufacturing process and can be printed up to 10 colors in flexographic and/or digital printing.
Just about anything shipped today in plastic can be shipped in PaperLock™-sealed paper, including produce, clothing, frozen food, flowers, hardware, and more.
“Paperlock™ technology and heat-sealable paper packaging will set a new standard for sustainability and recyclability in packaging worldwide,” said John Gaynor, President and Owner, the Louisville-based Premier Packaging. “Thanks to this technology, we can reduce the fossil fuels and carbon emissions associated with the making of plastics.”
Read the full announcement on the Business Wire website.
Environmental stewardship is vital to our workplaces
Sustainability in the context of the built environment can be a tricky thing to manage, especially when there is not a clear mandate for all offices in a portfolio. This is because sustainability is ultimately about efficiency. Efficiency in energy usage can depend on location, design, occupancy, and equipment. Efficiency in terms of space is about stuff—existing stuff (materials, furniture, and equipment) that must be maintained, re-purposed, recycled, or diverted from landfills to minimize using raw resources and prevent the release of carbon into our environment. As our need to understand environmental footprinting, especially in terms of carbon, has come into sharper focus, the role of workplace designers, engineers, contractors, facilities, and operations teams has begun to shift to one of environmental stewardship.
M Moser Associates is currently working on a grouping of offices for a large consulting firm who have a strong sustainability focus, with all of their workplaces pursuing LEED and WELL certifications. A central goal for the projects is flexibility and creating a wide range of space-types, that lend themselves to sustainable design. Careful consideration around material and furniture specifications ensure that what is included is adaptable, durable, low VOC, sustainably sourced (through certified chain-of-custody), and that considerations are made for the full lifespan of every element within the build. Perhaps counter-intuitively, offering more space types can reduce the materials and furniture used. Single areas are able to be utilized for a multitude of activities—reducing the number of traditional desks required if occupiers instead opt for different types of work areas and more open spaces.
It is crucial to select what materials and furniture will occupy the space as early in the design process as possible, as this will reduce the impact on budget. The increasing number of companies opting for agile and hybrid work, in part due to the pandemic, has also accelerated this trend of adaptable workspaces.
Another way to support the effort to decarbonize is through technology integration. Physical components such as automatic lighting controls, responsive ventilation and air quality readings, and auto-shutoff for desktops (which can also be an added security benefit) enable easier achievements in reducing energy consumption. In addition to these gadgets that help us in the workplace, the virtual built environment is quickly coming into play as a partner in meeting sustainability goals.
GreenBiz – Sustainability news and resources
GreenBiz advances the opportunities at the intersection of business, technology and sustainability. Through its websites, events, peer-to-peer network and research, GreenBiz promotes the potential to drive transformation and accelerate progress — within companies, industries and in the very nature of business. Since 1991, GreenBiz has chronicled and been a catalyst for thought leadership in aligning environmental responsibility with profitable business practices.
Currently on the GreenBiz website by Christian Roselund:
Shipping and aviation plan to go net zero. How?
October saw a seismic shift, with the global maritime shipping and aviation industries both committing to move to net zero by 2050. For the shipping industry, this is further progress on the landmark Poseidon Principles. For aviation, this shows a new level of ambition.
But both sectors are difficult to decarbonize, and a central question remains: How will they do it?
We don’t yet have all the details of the technologies that will be used — but neither do these industries. The International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) has stated that in order to reach net zero, 5 percent of the global shipping fleet will need to be zero-emissions by 2030. This means constructing and deploying thousands of vessels based on new technology that has not yet been deployed at scale, as well as building fuel supply chains to support them.
The airline industry has proposed solutions that require less disruption to the industry’s operating models — although here, too, new technologies and new types of planes are likely to play an increasing role. In both cases, more funding to research and scale solutions will be critical.
In this blog, we will look at some of the more likely potential technologies that both maritime shipping and aviation could deploy to decarbonize their fleets and operations.
Electrification for short-haul
For both ships and planes, there is a solution for short-distance trips that is already familiar from ground transportation: electrification. Since December 2019, North America’s largest seaplane airline has been taking test flights of battery-powered electric aircraft. Harbour Air, which operates in the Vancouver, B.C., region, is pursuing regulatory approval to take passengers in electric planes by 2023 and plans to convert its entire fleet of 42 planes to battery power.
And this summer, Norwegian company Yara International announced that it will transport cargo for the first time in its new, autonomous battery-powered container ship. Both developments show the promise of electrification for short-distance trips, including the airplane trips that serve as lifelines for remote communities in places such as the Australian Outback, parts of Canada and other areas not easily accessible by road.
“Short-haul for both shipping and aviation can likely be electrified,” notes Thomas Koch Blank, a senior principal in RMI’s Climate-Aligned Industries program. However, he understatedly describes the electrification of longer international and intercontinental routes for both industries as “challenging.”
For aviation, the challenge is the weight of batteries. For shipping, it is their bulk. “The volume of batteries needed is crazy,” notes Koch Blank. In both cases, the battery solutions that are revolutionizing ground transport simply don’t have the energy density to take on mid-or long-distance routes. And these longer routes are where most fuel is consumed.
Find the latest articles, videos and resources on the GreenBiz website.
Upcoming Online Events
- Building Investor Trust and Credibility Through ESG
Earning investors’ trust and taking a multi-stakeholder approach is table stakes for companies today. However, Edelman’s upcoming 2021 Trust Barometer Special Report: Institutional Investors reveals that there is skepticism amongst investors around environmental, social-impact and governance (ESG) practices and a push for greater climate action and stronger activism to win trust across stakeholder groups. During this expert panel discussion, we will look at the findings from Edelman’s annual survey of 700 institutional investors across seven regions, and discuss the implications of the report findings for issuers when it comes to building investor trust and credibility.
December 12, 2021 at 1:00 p.m. EST – Online
Register for this free webcast.
- How to Communicate With Consumers About Chemical Recycling Solutions
Consumers around the globe are craving more sustainable products, and brands are struggling to figure out how to deliver on their recycled content goals. Chemical recycling, also known as advanced or molecular recycling, will be a crucial part of the solution set for brands to meet plastics and packaging goals. But in its early days, how do those brands communicate with consumers about that process? And how do they do so in a way that’s both compelling and easy to understand? This webcast will discuss research, which includes data on more than 25,000 U.S., European, and Chinese consumers’ sustainable habits and preferences in markets such as fashion, housewares, electronics and cosmetics.
December 9, 2021 at 1:00 p.m. EST – Online
Find out more and register for this webcast.
EPA ENERGY STAR webinars:
- Benchmarking Water & Wastewater Treatment Plants in Portfolio Manager
This webinar features EPA’s ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, a powerful online tool that can help you track and manage your system’s energy usage and energy savings from efficiency projects, including related greenhouse gas emissions for your inventories. We will discuss how Portfolio Manager benefits water and wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) systems, and demonstrate how you can create an account and benchmark your systems at no cost to you.
December 2, 2021 at 12:30 p.m. EST
- Achieving Water and Cost Savings in Capital Improvement Projects
Achieving significant water savings can often require going beyond the low-hanging fruit. Find out how to take the information collected during a facility water assessment to evaluate and prioritize larger-scale projects to maximize water, energy, and cost savings. Get the information you need to include water efficiency in capital improvements through equipment retrofits and replacements during a renovation or when designing a new facility or space.
December 8, 2021 at 2:00 p.m. EST
- Working Together to Save Energy: Employee Engagement Strategies
Join us to hear from two ENERGY STAR partners and how they have successfully engaged employees in their energy management plans. Nissan will share how they educated employees about savings at home and work through a phone app, a newsletter, and videos as part of their “Save at Home! Save at Work!” campaign. JCPenney will discuss how empowering their employees with the right information on energy and environmental management, along with fostering a culture that values energy conversation and environmental stewardship, has delivered long-term sustainable results.
December 9, 2021 at 2:00 p.m. EST
- Mature your Energy Program for the Decisive Decade
In this webinar, we will be focusing on how organizations can grow their energy management program, regardless of whether they are organizations just getting started in their sustainability transformation or those that have well-established programs pushing the market forward.
December 13, 2021 at 2:00 p.m. EST
- Tracking GHG Emissions in Portfolio Manager
This webinar will provide a closer look at tracking and reporting your GHG emissions using the EPA’s Portfolio Manager tool. This is a repeat of the GHG emissions webinar that was held in May 2020.
December 15, 2021 at 2:00 p.m. EST
Portfolio Manager Series
- 101 – December 14, 2021 at 1:00 p.m. EST – Attendees will learn how to: navigate the Portfolio Manager; add a property and enter details about it; enter energy and water consumption data; share properties; generate performance reports to assess progress; and respond to data requests.
- 201 – December 16, 2021 at 1:00 p.m. EST – Learn more advanced functionalities such as: managing and tracking changes to your property uses over time; using spreadsheet templates to update property data; setting goals and targets to plan energy improvements for properties; generating and using custom reports; and using the Sustainable Buildings Checklist.
- 301 – December 22, 2021 at 1:00 p.m. EST – Learn about some advanced features, including: using spreadsheet upload templates to update property data; setting goals and targets to plan energy improvements for properties; creating custom reports; and using the Sustainable Buildings Checklist.
View these plus more ENERGY STAR training opportunities and register today.
To view these and other sustainability-related events, please visit the KPPC Events Calendar.