Sustainability conversations can get technical — fast. With so many acronyms and specialized terms, it’s easy to feel lost or overwhelmed. Whether you're conducting a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) or preparing an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), this glossary will help you decode key concepts and confidently lead the conversation.
Deep Dive into LCA, EPD, and PCF with LCA Experts Nicole Meyer and Marquis Miller from Sustainable Solutions Corporation
Life Cycle Assessments (LCA), Environmental Product Declarations (EPD), and Product Carbon Footprints (PCF) are essential to reducing your company’s carbon footprint, but many companies have unanswered questions about the process for completing them. In this episode, Tad and Julianna sit down with LCA experts Nicole Meyer and Marquis Miller from Sustainable Solutions Corporation to answer some of the most frequently asked questions they receive about LCA, EPD, and PCF. They discuss the data collection process, timelines, what to include in your LCA, relevant standards and frameworks, Product Category Rules, functional units, how LCA, EPD, and PCF relate to carbon footprint, and more.
Consumer Perception: How to Craft a Credible Sustainability Message in a Complex Marketing with Suzanne Shelton from Shelton Group
A good marketing plan should include communication about your company’s sustainability efforts. In this episode, Tad and Julianna sit down with Suzanne Shelton, CEO of Shelton Group, an ERM Group Company, to discuss the consumer research studies Shelton Group has been conducting for the past 17 years, the results of their recently published report The Buzz on Buzzwords: Seven Years Later, the biggest challenges companies have in marketing their sustainability efforts, best practices for communicating sustainability goals and achievements such as third-party certified products and facilities, how companies should handle not hitting a goal, and more.
An Overview of Carbon Offsets: Are They Right For Your Company?
Many companies have been purchasing carbon offsets to achieve their Net Zero goals. Are carbon offsets right for you and your company? Are carbon offsets actually effective and how should they be used? In this episode, Tad and Julianna answer these questions and discuss decarbonization, science-based targets, and the steps in the decarbonization roadmap. Tad also explains what carbon offsets are, the standards and requirements for carbon offsets, and what the future could look like for carbon offsets.
Using Sustainable Operations Assessments to Set Your Decarbonization Strategy with Lora Urbaniak from SSC
Setting a decarbonization strategy requires an understanding of your operations. Sustainable Solutions Corporation (SSC) conducts Sustainable Operations Assessments (SOA) to help companies understand how to reduce their energy, water and waste. In this episode, Tad and Julianna sit down with Lora Urbaniak, Senior Project Manager at SSC, to discuss what an SOA is, how SSC uses SOA to help companies set their decarbonization strategy, the cost savings and benefits of an SOA, areas where SSC usually finds the biggest potential for dollar savings, and how SOA can help a company meet their sustainability goals or science-based targets.
How to Revolutionize Your New Product Development Process with Sustainable Product Innovation
Sustainable Product Innovation (SPI) is the key to driving new product development teams toward developing more sustainable products. In this episode, Tad and Julianna discuss an overview of the new product development process that most companies go through, explain how SPI works, the steps companies need to take to integrate SPI into their new product development process, and examples of companies that have had success with SPI.
Circularity 101
Have you ever wondered if we can actually achieve circularity? In this episode, Tad and Julianna discuss the basics of the circular economy, whether or not it is actually achievable, if it is possible for a product to be 100% closed loop, and what changes need to be made in order to achieve the circular economy on a large scale.