Marrone Bio Innovations Inc (NASDAQ:MBII) announced Monday that it has joined the United Nations (UN) Global Compact, the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative committed to aligning business strategy and operations with universal principles on human rights, labor, environment and anti-corruption.
MBI said it has been actively implementing and tracking corporate performance on a number of the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) including those around sustainability (water, land, energy and climate change), gender equality and global partnerships.
“Sustainability has been one of the cornerstones of Marrone Bio Innovations since our beginning in 2006,” CEO Kevin Helash said in a statement. “We look forward to linking arms with many other like-minded companies through our involvement with the UN Global Compact and are committed to further aligning our corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategy with the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals.”
READ: Marrone Bio Innovations sees its FY2020 revenue climb 31% on its improved product line and international presence
In January 2020, MBI released a comparative greenhouse gas impact study to determine the effects of its biopesticides. The study, conducted in cooperation with UC-Davis Graduate School of Management, determined that switching from conventional crop protection products to current MBI bioprotectants would, on average, likely result in net reductions of greenhouse gas emissions of 69% to 91%, 39 to 46 kilograms of CO2 equivalents per acre per year.
“We know our products offer tremendous value to growers and the environment,” Chief Sustainability Officer Keith Pitts said. “Conducting additional third-party studies to evaluate and quantify the climate and environmental impact and the carbon trading potential of our products are a key component of our ESG initiative and MBI’s alignment with the UN’s SDGs.”
MBI also plans to release findings for an independent analysis conducted by Boundless Impact Research and Analytics assessing the climate impact for one its core products. The study evaluates the impact the product has on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, environmental and human toxicity, and ecosystem degradation.
“The results are very exciting and affirm what we’ve known all along, using biological products is a critical part of the future of sustainable agriculture and reducing our climate impact,” Pitts said. “We are in the final stages of wrapping up the study and anticipate it will be available to the public shortly.”
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