Perspectives on greener product development and manufacturing from Sustainable Minds, our partners, customers and contributors.

  • Sustainable Minds Transparency Report Program™ Earns Top Product of the Year Award from Environmental Leader

    by Sustainable Minds on April 24, 2015

    CAMBRIDGE, MA, APRIL 2: Sustainable Minds®, a B2B cloud provider of environmental product transparency applications, data and services, today announced that the Sustainable Minds Transparency Report™ Program received a Top Product of the Year Award in the Environmental Leader Product & Project Awards. Judges considered it to be an exemplary product.

    The Environmental Leader Product & Project Awards is a program recognizing excellence in products and services that provide companies with energy and environmental benefits, or in projects implemented by companies that improved environmental or energy management and increased the bottom line.

    “We had more entries than ever this year, and competition was tough. The winners showed innovation and the ability to help transform the fields of energy and sustainability management,” says Paul Nastu, publisher of Environmental Leader. “Entries that were awarded Top Product or Project of the Year are those that should be carefully considered by companies seeking to improve operations and boost the bottom line.”

    Categories: In the press
  • Introducing 2015 SM Transparency Report™ Framework & Program From ‘disclosure’ to brand value: Integrating product transparency into product marketing

    by Sustainable Minds on March 11, 2015

    Webcast recorded Tues, March 10, 2pm ET/11am PT

    Our intent this year is to shift mindsets and offer product manufacturers more ways to leverage their product transparency investments to create business value. Thus, our theme is: From ‘disclosure’ to brand value: Integrating product transparency into product marketing.

    Categories: Webcast
  • Sustainable Minds introduces the 2015 SM Transparency Report™ Framework and Program

    by Sustainable Minds on February 26, 2015

    Company continues to accelerate impactful innovation in product transparency reporting by integrating environmental performance and material health information into product marketing

    Cambridge MA – Feb 25, 2015 – Sustainable Minds®, a B2B cloud provider of environmental product transparency applications, services & data, introduces the 2015 SM Transparency Report™ Framework and Program bringing major advancements to the entire process of creating and delivering product transparency reports. Sustainable Minds (SM) will introduce the 2015 Program to manufacturers and industry stakeholders on Tuesday, March 3, 2015, 2:00pm EST.
    Watch the recorded webinar >
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    Categories: In the press
  • From ‘disclosure’ to brand value: Integrating product transparency into product marketing

    by Sustainable Minds on February 18, 2015

    Environmental performance and material health are rapidly becoming specification requirements. But today’s product transparency information is encoded in static reports full of technical data, which limits its use – and its potential to build business. Manufacturers who can explain what that data means and what they’re doing to make meaningful improvements, are informing greener purchase decisions and building a credibly greener brand.

    Environmental performance is the latest criteria in product design – and now in product marketing.

    Thanks to industry drivers and growing demand, environmental performance has taken its rightful place alongside functional performance, cost, aesthetics, safety and other criteria in product creation and purchasing. Manufacturers make trade-off decisions between these criteria to determine what products to make, and how to make them. To put an end to greenwashing, the market has demanded more scientific and rigorous methods to support manufacturers’ green claims. Thus, environmental performance has become part of product marketing. 

  • Webcast recording: Integrating Environmental Performance and Material Health Reporting

    by Sustainable Minds on February 16, 2015

    PARTNER SERIES WEBCAST
    Recorded Tues, February 17 | 2pm ET/11am PT

    Reporting environmental performance AND/OR material health of products is rapidly becoming a specification requirement for LEED v4 projects. Manufacturers are trying to determine:

    • which type of reporting to do first;
    • whether to do both; and
    • the value of providing this information at all.
    Categories: Webcast
  • Webcast: Creating Knowledge Workers for the Greener Product Marketplace, Part 9: Systems thinking + LCA metrics = sustainable progress

    by Sustainable Minds on November 21, 2014

    On November 18th, we held the ninth in a series of webcasts featuring educators from leading colleges and universities demonstrating how Sustainable Minds is being used in education. This webcast showcases three educators with diverse backgrounds as they discuss how they are working with students to further systems thinking, understand environmental performance and use Sustainable Minds to measure impacts, interpret results and create actionable recommendations.

  • Sustainable Minds and TOTO Accelerate Impactful Innovation in Product Transparency Reporting to Drive Greener Purchase Decisions

    by Sustainable Minds on November 4, 2014

    Emerging software company innovates a global standards process into a market-driven, user-friendly solution

    NEW ORLEANS, L.A., Oct. 22 /CSRwire/ - (Greenbuild, Booth #616) - Sustainable Minds (SM), a cloud software and services company whose mission is to operationalize environmental performance in product development and manufacturing, continued to demonstrate market leadership by launching today ten new SM Transparency Reports™ from TOTO, the largest plumbing manufacturer in the world, for select high-efficiency commercial products, showcasing 15 products across four categories. TOTO's SM Transparency Reports, verified by NSF, can be viewed in the TOTO Showroom, in the SM Manufacturers Showroom.

    With the introduction of the SM Transparency Report Program, Sustainable Minds continues to realize the intent of the ISO 14025 standard for Type III environmental declarations (aka EPDs) and the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED v4 (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design), a green building certification program that recognizes best-in-class building strategies and practices: to encourage demand and supply of products with better environmental performance communicated with verified information that stimulates potential for market-driven continuous environmental improvement – and then to reward project teams for selecting products from those manufacturers.

  • TOTO Takes The Next Step And Verifies Its Commercial Products' Environmental Performance With Sustainable Minds Transparency Reports

    by Sustainable Minds on November 4, 2014

    Company Makes Building Industry's Green Purchasing Decisions Easier by Providing Functional and Environmental Performance Information in Easy-to-Understand Cloud-Based Reports

    MORROW, Ga., Oct. 22, 2014 -- TOTO, the largest plumbing manufacturer in the world with $5.1 billion dollars in annual sales, announced today that it has strengthened its position as a leader in sustainable product design and marketing by introducing ten new Sustainable Minds (SM) Transparency Reports for select high-efficiency commercial products. The company's new SM Transparency reports showcase 15 products across four categories—toilets, sensor faucets, sensor flush valves, and ultra high-efficiency urinals.

    Harnessing the life cycle assessment (LCA) results of TOTO's new commercial products, TOTO's SM Transparency Reports are the first to demonstrate this innovation in the design of ISO 14025 Type III environmental declarations. The objective of ISO 14025 environmental declarations is "to encourage the demand for, and supply of, products that cause less stress on the environment, through communication of verifiable and accurate information that is not misleading, that stimulates the potential for market-driven continuous environmental improvement."

  • The SM Transparency Report™ Program: A step change innovation in the PCR/EPD process

    by Sustainable Minds on October 8, 2014

    With Greenbuild just around the corner and interest in LEED v4 and product transparency increasing amongst manufacturers and their customers, there’s concern that building product manufacturers won’t be ready.

    The SM Transparency Report™ Program is a step change innovation in the PCR/EPD process to standardize, harmonize and make product transparency reporting understandable and meaningful, it’s also faster, scalable, cost efficient and user-friendly.

    It is based on these fundamental ideas:

  • The SM Transparency Report™ Program – The Genesis

    by Sustainable Minds on September 17, 2014

    A step change innovation in the PCR/EPD process to standardize, harmonize and make product transparency reporting understandable and meaningful. It’s also faster, scalable, cost efficient and user-friendly.

    Now that environmental performance is a standard criteria in product design, shouldn’t greener be a standard part of how products are marketed?

    We wondered in B2B marketing, why is there typically one document describing product features and benefits—and a separate technical document ONLY about the product’s environmental performance? Don’t manufacturers have enough product literature to manage already? And don’t customers already have too many pieces of disparate information to put together to make purchase decisions?

    If environmental performance is to be operationalized into the way products are designed and marketed, it requires an integrated mindset, process and technology solution.