About Daniel Aronson

Daniel Aronson is the founder of Valutus (Latin: value, values), which specializes in creating value through sustainability and responsibility and is the creator of True Plastic Impact and PlasticStandard.com. Daniel has been researching, writing, and consulting on the environment, social responsibility, and innovation for 25 years. During his consulting career, he has led sustainability strategy consulting for Deloitte and IBM and has worked with global leaders in the field—from Nike to Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, Novartis, Autodesk, Interface, Biogen, and Philips.

Daniel focuses on innovative solutions to the most strategic, most difficult issues surrounding sustainability / responsibility, such as:

• Measuring the true impact of plastic
• How to measure and value sustainability’s benefits
• How firms and individuals can go beyond raising their own performance and catalyze improvement in others

Over his career, Daniel has:

• Created the first full impact measure for plastic, True Plastic Impact
• Conducted the first research that examined which sustainable value chain practices actually work
• Created tools that, for example, make it possible for cities to set science-based carbon targets in hours instead of months
• Quantified for the first time the effect of sustainability leadership on innovation
• Cataloged dozens of different sustainability techniques (and their pros and cons), from common ones (e.g., substitution) to rare (e.g., transport-to-trade).

Daniel has been a guest lecturer at Harvard Business School’s class on strategic corporate citizenship and MIT’s Sustainability Lab, and he has also authored and been interviewed for numerous publications (examples include how sustainability drives innovation, what sustainable value chain practices lead to success, and ‘hard wiring’ sustainability into organizations). He serves as Chair of the Award Committee for the Spencer Hutchens Social Responsibility Medal and served as Chair of the Ratings & Rankings Thought Leadership Council and the Responsible Supply Chain Thought Leadership Council of the Corporate Responsibility Association. And if you’ve read this far in his bio, let him know and he’ll buy you a drink.

Daniel holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a BA with High Honors from UC Berkeley. He lives in the New York City area.