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NBB Sustainability Task Force Mission: To guide and support the US Biodiesel industry’s ongoing efforts to assess and improve business practices related to environmentally, economically, and socially responsible biodiesel production.
Sustainability: Meeting today’s needs for environmental stewardship, economic prosperity, and quality of life without compromising future generations’ ability to meet these needs for themselves.
Sustainable Biodiesel: Demonstrates environmental stewardship across its lifecycle by maximizing net energy balance and minimizing negative impacts on natural ecosystems, globally and locally; Adds value, creates wealth, and enhances quality of life for the entire community of stakeholders. |
Sustainability Task Force
The past couple weeks have been busy ones. We selected the taskforce members from an extremely competitive pool of qualified and motivated colleagues. No sooner did we have our first meeting than unforeseen circumstances forced Doug Hanson, farmer from South Dakota, to step off the task force. He explained that a petroleum refinery being built to process tar sands from Canada may develop some of the land he’s been renting and farming, endangering his livelihood. So he stepped off the biodiesel sustainability task force in order to focus on preserving his farming lifestyle, but not before we could all comment on the poignant irony.
Seeking another farmer representative, we gladly welcomed Darryl Brinkmann to the task force, also a farmer and no stranger to industry leadership. And while we were making changes, Ed Hegland and I determined that a 10th task force seat would be an asset given the group’s workload. We invited Brian Young onboard, a member of the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil from Imperium Renewables. The confluence of the change in composition and the early stage of the initiative made it an opportune time to make this addition.
As you can see from the minutes, the task force has been holding weekly conference calls and working via email between calls. It’s a challenging time – so, so much to do. How can you triage when everything is urgent? With limited resources, it’s difficult to balance the need to react to real-time issues with the need to develop a strong foundation in order to be pro-active in the future. While recent studies and media articles require swift and pointed attention, the most meaningful work the task force can do right now is to focus on developing the big-picture, comprehensive framework and resources that will serve us over the long-term.
Our most immediate priorities are to develop a common vision as a task force (which includes a definition of sustainability, a mission, and a very preliminary working draft of objectives), and to enable a broader audience to participate in this process. Once we’re able to accept and organize more feedback we’ll work together to solidify a formal work plan for the task force. We’re currently developing parameters for the Advisory Committee and evaluating different technologies that will provide a forum for the Task Force, Advisory Committee, and public to engage. In addition to the meeting minutes, I will continue to post periodic updates on our progress on this site. As always, you can contact me individually or the task force as a whole through the sustainability@biodiesel.org email address. We look forward to hearing from you.
Emily
Emily Bockian Landsburg
Chairman, Sustainability Task Force
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Minutes, Notices and Announcements
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