Six sustainability stories from 2022 you don't want to miss
- Date: 30 December 2022
- Author: Susan McCarthy and Lorin Hancock, WWF
Your editors of Sustainability Works are once again stepping out of the shadows to deliver a few words to close out 2022.
It’s a privilege to work at WWF and be surrounded by incredible people whose work is literally changing the world for the better (you can meet a few of them in our Behind the Scenes series). In fact, there is so much work going on that you would be forgiven for missing a few great stories, projects, or research results—sometimes we have trouble keeping up with it ourselves! And so we bring you our recap blog, highlighting some stories from the past year that we want to make sure you catch.
Scroll through the gallery to see just a few examples of how sustainability worked in 2022:
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Despite Rising Food Prices, Commodity Crops Get Left in the Field
WWF published No Grain Left Behind, a report that revealed that the average post-harvest loss for corn and soybeans in the US is higher than both grower estimates, and extension accepted levels. This scale of potential loss shows how vital it is to work towards more consistent, accurate, and global measurements of post-harvest loss.
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A Journey Toward Deforestation Free Leather
Brazil is one of the world’s largest beef producers – and because of that, it also produces a lot of leather. Beginning with support from the Moore Foundation and now with an additional grant from the Tapestry Foundation, World Wildlife Fund is working with brands and tanneries in Brazil to develop Deforestation and Conversion Free sources of hides, catalyzing efforts to ensure that hides don’t come from deforested land.
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Grassland Loss Continues in the Great Plains
In its seventh year, WWF’s Plowprint Report analyzes the rate of grasslands plow-up across the US, Canadian, and Mexican portions of the Great Plains. The 2022 report shows that nearly 1.8 million acres of grasslands were still destroyed across the US and Canadian Great Plains in 2020 alone, contributing to a total of nearly 10 million acres plowed across the region since 2016.
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Whoever says there’s no use crying over spilled milk obviously hasn’t seen a recent study by Triangle Associates and WWF, which found that K-12 schools in the US waste 45 million gallons of milk annually, at great cost to taxpayers and the planet. Fortunately, we’ve identified a way to lower costs to people and the planet, while also addressing nutrition intake: transition from individual milk cartons to bulk milk dispensers.
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Expanding Conservation Efforts to Protect Vital Forests Across the Globe
As a part of WWF and HP Inc.’s expanded forest conservation partnership to help protect, restore and improve the management of nearly 1 million acres of forest, our collaboration will accelerate forest protection and restoration efforts in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest and two new landscapes: Madre de Dios in Peru, near the headwaters of the Amazon River basin, and the forests of eastern Australia, home to endangered koalas and other species that have been severely impacted by recent wildfires.
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Unlocking the Potential of Reuse Systems
Just imagine if the products you relied on every day were designed with high-quality materials and the durability to be used time and time again – rather than crafted with the intention of becoming trash. The wide-scale adoption of innovative reuse models could reverse the harmful throwaway culture that has plagued our society for decades.
Thank you for reading. It’s been an incredible joy and honor to see our audience continue to grow. We look forward to bringing you more great stories in 2023.
Happy holidays to you and yours!
-Susan and Lorin