When It Comes to Sustainability, Wording Matters: Five Minutes With Edwin Keh

oikos Penn student reporter SarahBeth Vaughn took the opportunity to speak with Edwin Keh, Lecturer at The Wharton School and former Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice-President at Walmart Global Procurement. With experience ranging from multinationals to NGOs to academia, Edwin discusses the responsibilities of  these three stakeholders and how these interact with each other. He also emphasises the importance of the consumer and the need to give them more information and visibility about what’s happening in the supply chain to help create opportunities to make the right sustainable choice.

Avoid Waste, Avoid Cost: An Interview with Sarene Marshall

Sarene Marshall gave oikos Penn student reporter SarahBeth Vaughn an insight into how different organisations – whether business or NGO – view sustainability. As the Managing Director of The Nature Conservancy, Sarene brings first-hand experience of showing companies such as Dow Chemicals just how much nature is worth to them and how to integrate sustainable business models into day-to-day working. She also discusses why environmentalism isn’t making the same headway it did in the 1970s, how to change it and why Walmart’s green supply chain initiatives might be one of the smartest moves in the business world.

Supply Chains: Recycling is Great But Could It Be Time to Go Back to the Drawing Board?

Following his presentation on the subject at the 2012 IGEL conference, Dr. Dan Guide of Penn State University sat down with oikos Penn student reporter Yaowen Ma to delve deeper into closed loop supply chains. Distinguishing between primary and secondary closed loop supply chains, Dr Guide walks his listeners through what it really means to save a product from a landfill, especially if we consider that we don’t buy the product for its physical aspects, but rather for the service it delivers. Dr. Guide also speculates on the notion floated at the conference that our current business model is broken, and what is needed to change it in the future.

Lessons in LEED from California with Josh Gellers

The sun, sand and shores of California entrances more than just beach lovers. Known for its enormous drive for greener lifestyles, it is no surprise that last year UC Irvine received The Sierra Club’s accolade as one of America’s Top 10 “Cool Schools” for LEED buildings and student-driven green fund projects. Josh Gellers, a PhD candidate in political science at UC Irvine, is a leader at the campus in sustainability research and student environmental organizations. oikos Penn reporter Marissa Rosen sat down with Josh to hear more about his involvement on his campus and the university’s goals of raising awareness, producing zero-waste and creating its own energy.

The Future of Supply Chain Management: An Interview with Gil Friend

When before data management was bulky, complex and prone to errors, the Open Data Registry team has worked to develop the next generation of information infrastructure that makes the process of gathering, synthesizing and analysing infinitely more efficient while protecting business confidentiality. Gil Friend, CEO of Natural Logic and Chairman at Open Data Registry, took some time out to talk with oikos Penn student reporter Sharon Muli about this new tool, where it’s going in the future and what it could mean for businesses.

Chatting with Ruben Lobel about Subsidies in the Solar Industry

oikos Penn Student Reporter Yaowen Ma got a chance to catch up with Ruben Lobel, Assistant Professor at The Wharton School, during the 5th Annual IGEL Conference. Following his presentation, Professor Lobel sat down with Yaowen to give a pithy overview of the meaning of overcomplicated subsidies and their effect on the solar panel industry from both the consumer’s and producer’s perspective. Ruminating on what happened in Spain and in Germany, Ruben discusses what we could expect from the Chinese solar market. Dr. Lobel also stressed on the importance of forecasted phasing out of government policies so as to strengthen incoming investment from the private sector as well as to help send positive price signals to firms for future trends.