Bevan Shares LP50, Closing the Transparency Loop Insights

This excerpt is republished with permission of the International Living Future Institute (ILFI). It was orginally written by Shawn Fisher Hesse for Trim Tab Magazine and is available on the organization website. 

The work of passionate practitioners and organizations in our community is vital to the realization of a Living Future. Those practitioners dedicate their careers to elevate conversations about our regenerative design programs with their clients and peers, share our inspiring vision of socially just, culturally rich, and ecologically restorative communities, and are committed to making that vision a reality. Those helping this happen are at all stages in their careers, from senior leadership to recent graduates, and they represent well-known organizations, small start-ups and consultancies.

Over the last several years, we have begun convening stakeholder groups of these leaders and influencers into cohort who are leading the growth and adoption of Living Future programs in their sectors. This stakeholder ecosystem creates a space to build relationships between ILFI and these senior leaders as well as facilitate peer-to-peer learning and sharing.

We work together to grow adoption of Living Future programs in new industries and market segments, and support one another in advocating for the work that we all know is right.  Participants in these stakeholder cohorts are able to provide direct feedback on the programs and tools needed from their perspectives in the marketplace, and help us to lead a shift in thinking for entire industries and market sectors.

We have convened a dozen different stakeholder groups, including:

• Tech Leaders, made up of some of the leading technology providers in the world, including Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Facebook, and more, who are working together to leverage their global impact to mainstream regenerative design.
• Living Building Leaders, made up of architects at the largest firms in the country, meet to support each other in scaling adoption of the Living Building Challenge by bringing it to more clients, and embedding it as a philosophy into the fabric of their firms.
• Living Product 50 (LP50) is a collaboration among fifty leading manufacturers that are working to create the world’s first Living Products.
• Paris Solutions Campaign brings together a cross-disciplinary group of organizations committed to exceeding the Paris Accord carbon reductions by making zero energy and zero carbon buildings and communities the norm.

Among those included was Superior Essex Communications Global Head of Sustainability, Annie Bevan.

The excerpt on the site was taken from the Living Product 50 (LP50) section and read as follows:

Featuring Annie Bevan of Superior Essex:

“One of the most inspirational aspects of the normalization of sustainability in business has been seeing so many companies, across multiple plains of the vale chain, working together towards a common goal. The increased transparency, the collaboration and the dialogue that has opened up in recent months are all positive steps which motivate me and many others to keep pushing towards a better tomorrow.

“I find value in ideating and helping to create as well as share best practices. Those interactions can be with a peer or a competitor, so long as there is a mutual respect and an understanding that we are all in this together. We believe that a rising tide will lift all boats. The LP50 Letter to the A&D community [have been a positive and valuable outcome of the group.] The LP50 is where the Closing the Transparency loop movement started. We looked around the room and asked the question, “has anyone really heard that us investing in sustainability has mattered?” — the answer was no. So we came together to write a letter that sent a very powerful signal to the marketplace that we are here and [we are] invested, but we need to know that it matters—it has been amazing to see this collaboration and response from the market unfold.

“I think that anytime you can have repeated, positive, interactions with like-minded individuals it will present natural growth opportunities. We, together, as 45 manufacturers, created and signed a letter that sent a signal to the market. The response was a Materials Pledge that has now been signed by over 70 A&D firms. The next phase is working to grow the Closing the Transparency Loop movement, the LP50 [as the] place where manufacturers collaborate to create a louder voice together. I am very excited to see the growth of this program and the LP50 overall as we can do so much more together than we can separately.”

Annie Bevan is a sustainability professional with over 10 years of experience working with organizations to develop processes, procedures, and standards to analyze and certify various sustainability claims in products, supply chains, buildings, and within manufacturing operations. She is widely regarded in the industry as an expert in sustainability program development, corporate social responsibility and third-party verification. In her role as the Global Head of Sustainability, she oversees Superior Essex market leading sustainability program, working to collaborate and accelerate their sustainability platform through engagement with both customers and suppliers. She is driven by a passion to create positive change through collaboration and is inspired by the interconnectivity of all things in both nature and business.

In addition to her work at Superior Essex, she sits as a technical advisor and collaborator with: the US Green Building Council’s Materials and Resources TAG for the LEED rating system, the International Living Future Institute (ILFI), my green lab, the Department of Defense, the General Services Administration, Clean Production Action and the GreenScreen Program, the Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council, and the Collaborative for High Performing Schools, among other programs and efforts.

To read about the others identified by Living Future, please visit its website by clicking here.