Striking A Balance Between Growth & Ecosystem Restoration

Celebrated on June 5, every year, the theme for World Environment Day 2021 is “Ecosystem Restoration.” The United Nations General Assembly has declared the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030) subsequent to a proposal and pledge for action by more than 70 countries.

This year’s host, Pakistan, intends to contribute to “The Bonn Challenge” goal with its ‘10 Billion Tree Tsunami’ campaign spread over five-year timespan. The campaign primarily revolves around restoring mangroves and forests; and includes planting trees in urban settings, including schools, colleges, public parks and green belts, as well.

Coronavirus mayhem led work-from-home and stay-at-home trends triggered alterations in our lifestyle, making us reflect on minimalism and environment friendly habits. Practices like indoor gardening, limit on travel, cooking at home, going paperless, to mention a few, helped nature heal. As a result, earth’s ecosystem restored a great deal, which was reflected in lower air pollution levels and cleaner water bodies, worldwide.

For instance, saving on travel directly influences ecosystem restoration by bringing a reduction in air pollution levels via lower fossil fuel and energy consumption and overall drop in greenhouse gas emissions. Companies including Facebook, Twitter, Shopify, Dropbox have vouched for 100% work-from-home even after pandemic is over, while other companies are opting for a hybrid model with coworking spaces.

Interestingly, individuals, enterprises, institutions, and governments can make room for ecosystem restoration by bringing meaningful changes across various daily life activities, like growing trees, using greener technology, changing diets or volunteering to clean up rivers and coasts. To each his own!

Here we list five companies, on a growth trajectory, that cannot be overlooked while discussing ecosystem restoration.

 Beyond Meat has popularized plant-based meat to a great extent. The company primarily focuses on innovating with food, sourcing protein from plants with less saturated fat, no cholesterol, and no antibiotics or hormones.

With offerings including Beyond Burger and Beyond Sausage on board, the company intends to positively impact four growing global issues: human health, climate change, constraints on natural resources, and animal welfare.

The company collaborated with University of Michigan, in a bid to quantify the environmental impact of the Beyond Burger. Per its sustainability analysis, Beyond Meat determined their burger uses 99% less water, 93% less land, 90% fewer greenhouse gases, and 46% less energy than a traditional beef burger.

In the first quarter of 2021, the company’s net revenues were $108.2 million, an increase of 11.4% year-over-year.

 Levi Strauss & Co. has evolved from #1 jeans wear brand to an icon in sustainable fashion. Its more than 20 water-saving finish techniques via Water Less initiatives and Screened Chemistry programs, remains noteworthy in this regard.

Moreover, the company is a founding member of the Better Cotton Initiative and strives to source cotton sustainably. Markedly, 1.4 million Better Cotton farmers on an average consume 11% lesser water, 12% fewer pesticides and 16% lesser synthetic fertilizers.

Levi’s Wellthread design methodology, which prioritizes environmental sustainability in the materials used, has inspired its Spring/Summer 2021 collection with innovations in styles. The company has introduced 55% hemp-blended fabrics, expanded use of organically grown cotton and new natural-dye techniques, ensuring the recyclability of every Wellthread garment.

In the first quarter of 2021, the company’s global digital net revenues, grew nearly 41% year over year.

 DocuSign became an everyday name as going paperless was necessitated by the pandemic led remote working culture. The company offers eSignature solution as a part of the DocuSign Agreement Cloud. It enables businesses to authenticate and manage the digitally prepared agreements.

The company’s Trust Service Provider model comes to the rescue for users looking to enhance security whilst authenticating a signer by integrating blockchain-based identity provider.

DocuSign claims that the company and its customers have saved 20 billion sheets of paper. The estimates have been computed by utilizing “The Environmental Paper Network’s Paper Calculator.”

This translates to reduced consumption of over 2.5 billion gallons of water which would have been required to produce that many paper and generated 140 million pounds of waste. By saving on paper, the company states that the planet was spared of over 2 billion pounds of additional CO2.

Notably, in fourth quarter of fiscal 2021, total revenues of $430.9 million, surged 57% on a year-over-year basis.

 Xylem provides products and services which move, treat, analyze, monitor and return water to the environment in public utility, industrial, residential and commercial building service settings.

In 2020, this water and resource management technology company helped its customers to prevent 1.4 billion cubic meters of polluted water from entering local waterways.

The company is encouraged by the prospects of uptick in investment in modernizing the water infrastructure, per the U.S. administration's new infrastructure plan. Also, the company is witnessing large project deployments starting to ramp again across its clean water segment.

In the first quarter of 2021, strong commercial momentum and solid adoption of critical infrastructure products raked in double-digit orders growth across all business segments.

 First Solar offers eco-efficient photovoltaic (PV) solar energy solutions which generate more solar electricity at a competitive cost, ensuring minimal environmental impacts, on a lifecycle basis.

Notably, First Solar technology displaces 89-98% of greenhouse gas emissions while replacing energy generated by traditional generation.

The company is committed to power 100% of its global operations with renewable energy by 2028. Moreover, it has joined RE100 collaborative initiative, vowing to power U.S. based operations with renewable energy by 2026.

In the first quarter of 2021, total revenues of $803.4 million, increased 51% year over year.

What Can You Take From The Discussion?

Sustainable living, altering spending habits to support eco-friendly products, striving to save water, fuel, electricity by adopting greener technology, vouching for brands that promote recycling, waste minimization are a few ways of contributing to ecosystem restoration.

Besides, traders can invest in greener companies, that are responsibly striving to minimize environmental impacts and promote a healthy sustainable aesthetic environment.

We cannot afford to grow against mother nature. Let us participate in the goal and make the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030) worth it!