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The automotive leader has a strong track record of water use reductions in its manufacturing operations and an aggressive goal to reduce water use even further – by 30 percent per vehicle by 2015. But many at Ford and a number of its stakeholders (including the company’s Ceres stakeholder advisory team) see growing water competition and scarcity as a potential economic game-changer – with big implications for the auto industry.

But water is critical to a number of manufacturing steps, including vehicle painting, where large volumes of water are traditionally used to rinse cars, ensuring that not a speck of dust ruins that perfect paint job. Water use also can be high in the automotive supply chain, particularly in making raw materials such as steel and aluminum. Ford also has identified that the energy sources used to power its vehicles (gasoline, electric power or biofuels) play an incredibly important role in determining the water footprint of its vehicles, because of the large amounts of water required for fuel production and power generation.

"Most of the activity that actually touches society is happening in the supply chain," says Polman, "and that's why we take responsibility from sustainable sourcing to sustainable living." The company looks to find materials from sustainable sources, but then also looks to encourage sustainable choices on the consumer end.

A similar effort is aims at ending illegal deforestation. Unilever and other companies "made a commitment not to sell anything anymore from illegal deforestation by the year 2020 -- soy, paper, pulp, beef, palm oil. And if a big association representing $3-4 trillion of consumer sales makes that commitment, it sends a very strong signal into the whole value chain," he says

Unilever and other companies "made a commitment not to sell anything anymore from illegal deforestation by the year 2020 -- soy, paper, pulp, beef, palm oil.

actually saves us time and money,”

There’s less waste [with our traceability system],” Kraft says. “It improves efficiency and our utilization of the material.”

BioBased Xorel

create the world's first bio-based interior textile that doesn't compromise performance, value or aesthetics.

In 1981, Carnegie introduced a polyethylene (PE) textile under the brand name Xorel that, at the time, was one of the few healthier alternatives to vinyl (PVC) for interior panels, wall coverings and upholstery. Thirty years later, that product has received an eco-friendly update with the launch of BioBased Xorel, an interior textile made from plants.

Recyclers can make money from selling scavenged metal from electronic

equipment,

the process to retrieve usable metals is typically extremely toxic

Today, McDonald’s announces that it will begin purchasing verified sustainable beef in 2016, the first step on a quest to purchase sustainable beef for all of its burgers worldwide.

The land management initiative led the company to commit to source-only palm oil certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil by 2015. All of its fish worldwide come from fisheries certified by the Marine Stewardship Council. McDonald’s requires its suppliers to source 100 percent Rainforest Alliance certified coffee for its espresso in the United States, for all of its coffee in Australia and New Zealand and all of it in Europe except for decaf.

Langert says McDonald’s isn’t yet ready to commit to a specific quantity it would purchase in 2016, or when it might achieve its “aspirational goal” of buying 100 percent of its beef from “verified sustainable sources.” (The company only will say, “We will focus on increasing the annual amount each year.”) Realistically, it could take a decade or more to achieve the 100-percent goal.