SustainabilityBlog.org

Welcome to our first blog post in 2008.
We would like to start this year with a question and your opinion.

What will change in the sustainability world in 2008 in your opinion?

Will companies act more responsibly? Will the US government finally accept that Climate Change is happening? Will the next US government be different when it comes to sustainability? What do we in Europe do to be more sustainable?

What do you think?

This is what I think.

1. Companies will feel an even stronger need to act more responsible when it comes to their actions and will see a stronger demand from their stakeholders to do more on all sustainability topics they are involved in.
2. The internet and all electronic communication channels will become even more important for companies as well as individuals to communicate sustainability topics and problems.
3. On the topic of climate change many countries around the world will begin to feel through an increasing frequency of natural disasters, etc that our world is really changing and there is only a very limited amount of time left before the “tipping point” is surpassed.
4. The concept of Sustainable Living will be even more popular then in 2007. Sustainable building, organic products, fairtrade products and all related products and services will continue to see an above average growth during 2008.
5. The whole topic of energy will be discussed very intensively during 2008. In the UK we will see the nuclear discussion taking off, in the US and worldwide petrol prices will continue to increase and plunge the world economy deeper into recession. At the same time the rich Middle Eastern countries will continue to heavily invest in renewable energy technology to increase their chances of survival after the era of cheap oil. But we in Europe and North America still do not act convincingly to change our looming future energy crisis.

These are just five points I see as important developments and changes during 2008.

But what do you think?

All the best,
Fabian

Last week the CSR world in the UK celebrated the 2007 at ACCA’s (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) annual UK Awards for CSR or also called Sustainability Reporting.

These where the winners:

• Winner, Best report – British Telecom (BT)
• Runner up – Unilever
• Commendation for disclosure on public policy, lobbying and taxation - Vodafone
• Commendation for transparency in approach to assurance - BP
• Joint Commendation for SME reporting - Traidcraft and Shared Interest Ltd
• Winner, Electronic media Commendation - BHP Billiton
• Runner up – Centrica

Excerpts from the official press release on BT :

The judges, selected for their diverse stakeholder representation, said BT won the first prize for a number of reasons, including its transparent disclosures on its overall strategy along with the key CSR risks and opportunities for the business. The Group was also praised for its efforts to outline the business case for CSR, describe how key material issues are selected for reporting and include stakeholder feedback in the form of a detailed statement from its stakeholder panel.

For further information please see the official ACCA press release:

ACCA Sustainability Awards

Everyone is talking about Climate Change, recycling, Corporate Social Responsibility and so on. But sustainability as we have discussed in this blog before is the outcome if we master all these initiatives, concepts and ways of managing our organisations and society to create a sustained change in our world.

So if we would take a closer look at how our way towards a sustainable future is looking in 2007/08 what would we say? Positive, negative, confusing, disastrous or are we on the way towards sustainability in the 20th century? And how sustainable have we become over the last 10 years?

I have tried to come up with a top ten list where I think we have moved more towards and backwards on a more sustainable future in the last ten years. This top ten is not meant as ranking but solely as a listing of current hot topics.

Successes

1. Recycling in many countries is successful in that sense that recycling rates per person are constantly going up and the awareness is also growing
2. Renewable energy percentage is picking up constantly and governments encourage companies to do large future investments to make renewable energy much more efficient then the current technology
3. More and more international treaties on environmental protection have come into action to help protect our planet although much more is needed.
4. Increasing power of non governmental organisations (NGOs) has led to increased pressure on companies, governments and other interest groups to start to do the right thing in order to move closer to Sustainability
5. Water and sanitation has made huge progress to enable the majority of this world to have clean drinking water and sanitation possibilities.

But obviously have we made several steps backwards on some other topics.

Failures

1. Climate Change is getting worse and still not much progress on the Climate Change agenda has been made.
2. There are to many Climate Change sceptics in this world trying to convince everyone that Climate Change is not real and not the biggest threat for humanity
3. Due to the still increasing pollution across our globe the problem of Acid Rain has only worsened
4. The emergence of low-cost travelling via planes, cars and other modes of transport has only made our air pollution worse
5. Rain forest deforestation is still not slowing down and countries such as Brazil, etc still put company profit interests before environmental interests.

Every of these ten points is debateable of course but I think it useful to also show what successes we have had so far and not always what we are still not doing or not taking care of.

After all are we only humans and need to have some encouragement every now and then to take on the challenges life or fellow humans throw at us.

All the best,
Fabian

This is a follow up on the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Reporting post due to the high number of emails I got asking me for the best resources on the web on this topic.

These are my top four resources on CSR Reporting:

Huge database of all kind of environmental and CSR reports
www.corporateregister.com

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)- A NGO working on the establishment of a global standard in CSR reporting.
www.globalreporting.org

ACCA the world’s largest accounting body. They are also involved in the CSR reporting debate with the sponsorship a annual CSR Reporting awards.
http://www.accaglobal.com/publicinterest/activities/subjects/sustainability/

CERES is a national network of investors, environmental organizations and other public interest groups working with companies and investors to address sustainability challenges such as global climate change
http://www.ceres.org/sustreporting/

Have a good weekend everyone.

Regards,
Fabian

This is the next blog post in the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Series.

CSR Reporting is also sometimes called Sustainability Reporting and is currently a hot topic for many organisations around the world. The so called CSR Report evolved out of the environmental reporting era in the 1980s. These CSR Reports now not only include the environmental performance of the organisation but also the most important organisational social issues and non-financial key performance indicators.

These activities can include issues such as community involvement, employee relations, customer information and environmental performance, progress against last year’s commitments and more. Here are some interesting resources on CSR reporting to get a better overview.

Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability_Reporting

Journal of Accountancy:
http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/dec2006/ballou.htm

But critics of CSR Reporting have always argued that this kind of reporting is only window dressing and does not really represent a fair and balanced view of the activities of the particular company.
And to be fair, they are right in many cases. There is a clear danger that these reports will be used a marketing tools and nothing more. But these reports could be so much more in my opinion.
Fortunately there are also other organisations which have given CSR reporting a whole new meaning in the last few years. Their reports show that an organisation can be as open and honest and to not use this report as marketing tool. These new reports have the aim to encourage the debate on CSR topics inside and outside of their organisation and to address as many stakeholders as possible.
Take a look at some of these reports and make up your own mind. I think they are really good and an example of how a company can be open and transparent and not use it as a marketing tool.

The Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk:
http://www.novonordisk.com/sustainability/reports/reports.asp

Vodafone’s Corporate Responsibility Report:
http://www.vodafone.com/start/responsibility/publications_faqs.html

BHP Billiton’s Sustainability Reporting:
http://www.bhpbilliton.com/bb/sustainableDevelopment.jsp

CSR reporting has really evolved over the last 5 years and now these companies like the ones above set the standard on how to communicate to your stakeholders and show that an organisation can be a responsible citizen of our society as well.
The key message we as stakeholders can get out of CSR reporting in my opinion is:

Beware of corporate spin in fancy and flashy reports and take a closer look at these reports that to you convey a feeling of simplicity and honesty. Nothing more and nothing less.

Our next blog post will be on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Framework. The GRI provides guidance for organizations to use as the basis for disclosure about their sustainability performance, and also provides stakeholders a universally-applicable, comparable framework in which to understand disclosed information.

See you then.

Fabian

Following up on our first Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) discussion here are the top 5 news websites all relating to CSR in my opinion:

What is CSR? Check out our previous blog entry for more information:
What is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)?

CSR News Websites:

1. The biggest CSR news website:
   CSR Wire
2. New CSR News Portal:
   CSR News.net
3. News section of a CSR consultancy:
   CSR Europe
4. Edie News. Keyword CSR
   Edie News on CSR
5. CSR News from China:
   CSR News China

The next CSR blog entry will be on CSR Reporting.

Have a good weekend everyone.
Fabian

This is the question I am starting to discuss with this first blog entry dedicated to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). I will only give a short introduction and follow this up with further posts on this in the future. That is why will call this post Part 1.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a concept whereby organizations consider the interests of society by taking responsibility for the impact of their activities on customers, employees, shareholders, communities and the environment in all aspects of their operations. This obligation is seen to extend beyond the statutory obligation to comply with legislation and sees organizations voluntarily taking further steps to improve the quality of life for employees and their families as well as for the local community and society at large (CSR - Wikipedia).

I think it is fair to say that organisations mostly started to think about CSR 10-15 years ago when they began to be increasingly criticised from other groups like Greenpeace, WWF or other pressure groups to change their ways of doing business or at least change some of their ways of managing their environmental and social impacts.

CSR then really jumped on top of the global agenda when Shell was boycotted for the way it dealt with the disposal of the Brent Spar (Brent Spar).

After this boycott nearly bankrupted Shell, organisations all around the world started to take notice and developed their Plan B for public relations disasters like this.

This was when CSR was born.

This Plan B called CSR quickly developed into a more comprehensive list of actions and responsibilities and in the end to a complete management framework on how to (1) manage the expectations of your stakeholder, (2) change and manage the way you do business more responsibly and (3) take care of your environmental impacts. There are more areas to CSR but I think these three are the most known ones and good to start with when first reading about CSR.

CSR since then has grown continuously into a-must-have for organisations around the globe. No matter whether they have a complete management framework for CSR in place or a policy of some kind, CSR is different from one company to the other and needs to be a tailored approach to managing the responsibility within our society of this particular organisation. There are obviously good and bad examples in the world but overall one can say that CSR been promoting responsible business practice in the world. And this is a good thing.

This is enough for now with regards to CSR but one of the next posts will discuss the topics of CSR Reporting. CSR Reporting is in that way linked to CSR as these are the reports companies publish to communicate the their CSR activities.

All the best,

Fabian

Some more CSR definition resources (not many but the best I could find):
CSR - Wikipedia
CSR Definition

Celebrating innovation and achievement among green and ethical companies. The nominations are in, and the finalists have been selected. The Green England Awards are an opportunity to celebrate success and innovation within green and ethical companies across the country. All the organisations below have demonstrated a genuine commitment to environmental issues, as well as providing a top-notch service.

Please visit the Green England website to vote:
http://www.green-england.co.uk/greenawards