The Center for Responsible Business at the Haas School at the University of California at Berkeley will expand its research efforts to include a focus on consumer packaging and waste processing thanks to two new gifts from companies in those industries, the school reported earlier this month.
The companies – Kimberly-Clark, which makes well-known consumer packaged goods brands such as Kleenex and Huggies, and Waste Management, Inc,, the country’s largest provider of waste, recycling and environmental services – have each agreed to contribute $100,000, renewable over three years, to the Sustainable Products and Solutions (SPS) Program at Haas’s Center for Responsible Business. The SPS Program was initially launched in 2007 with a multi-million-dollar commitment from the Dow Chemical Co. Foundation.
“These gifts will help us develop leaders who define what’s next for our markets and our societies,” Haas School Dean Rich Lyons said in a statement announcing the news. “This kind of path-bending leader is more critical than ever to our future because straight-line paths in areas such as energy and raw materials are simply unsustainable,” he continued.
The money willfund faculty and graduate student research, fellowships, conferences and seminars, and a steering committee made up of university faculty and staff will make all funding decisions.
Projects under consideration include studying zero-waste trends and their public policy implications, conducting scientific and financial assessments of waste-processing technologies and analyzing end-of-life scenarios – including recycling, waste-to-energy and composting – for a range of products.
To learn more, visit the SPS website.
Read the full article: UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business to Expand Its Sustainability Program