Sustainability & Environment

Office foodservice — coffee bars, lunch options, snacks, catering — is a high-volume area where sustainability decisions accumulate quickly. A 500-person office producing five tons of foodservice waste per year can dramatically reduce environmental footprint through specific changes. Here’s the practical playbook.

About 145 million Valentine’s Day cards are exchanged in the US each year, second only to Christmas in card volume. The vast majority end up in trash within a month. Plantable and compostable alternatives let the card become flowers, compost, or both — without sacrificing the sentiment.

The conservative gardening advice has long been: never compost diseased plant material. The reality is more nuanced — some diseases can be safely composted in hot systems, others must be excluded under any conditions. Here’s the practical guide, disease by disease.

Dia de los Muertos altars use enormous quantities of cempasúchil (Mexican marigold), candles, papel picado, fruit, and food offerings. Almost all of the traditional materials are compostable — what to do with the altar after Nov 2 has a clean answer that connects the holiday’s symbolism to soil renewal.

Cyber Monday and the broader December holiday e-commerce surge produces the largest single-week pulse of shipping packaging in the United States. Compostable packaging is gaining traction for e-commerce, but the economics and operational details are more complicated than the retail shipping case suggests.

Earth Day works best when it’s a starting line for new household habits, not a one-day cleanup. Here are 22 specific things you can do at home — most under 30 minutes, several under five — that actually shift your household’s footprint.

Carbon accounting methodologies — the standardized approaches for measuring greenhouse gas emissions across operations and supply chains — provide the technical foundation for credible climate programs. Understanding methodology fundamentals supports informed B2B sustainability strategy.

Circular economy frameworks aim to eliminate waste and reuse resources by designing systems that keep materials in productive use rather than disposing of them. For B2B foodservice operations, circular economy concepts shape sustainability strategy, packaging procurement, and customer-facing communication.

Compost and mulch get confused constantly. They look similar, they’re often sold together, and people use the words interchangeably — but they’re functionally different and used differently in the garden. Here’s how to tell them apart and when to use each.

Landfills are the third-largest source of US methane emissions, and organic waste is the cause. Composting diverts that organic waste from anaerobic landfill conditions to aerobic decomposition. Here’s how the mechanism actually works, with numbers.

A simple, visual family compost chart that kids ages 6+ can use to sort waste correctly. The design principles behind it, what makes kids follow charts and what makes them ignore them.

Composting can save households $50-200 per year on garden inputs and reduce trash hauling costs. For businesses, the math is more complex but often favorable. Here’s the honest cost-benefit picture.