SustainabilityBlog.org

I guess some of you know what sustainability reports are. I previously wrote a post about the topic if you want to know more about sustainability reports.

Following up on this post I looked at some of the most interesting sustainability reports of the previous year. These reports include reports that are not called sustainability reports but rather CSR reports, Corporate Responsibility reports or Corporate Citizenship reports. I have tried to judge them on these factors. 1) Readability, 2) useful and relevant content, 3) stakeholder engagement approach, 4) amount of advertising to promote this publication (the less the better) and some smaller factors I usually judge reports on.

These are my top 5 Sustainability Reports:

1. Novo Nordisk – A Danish pharmaceutical company
2. British Telecom (BT) – UK Telecom Company
3. Camelot Group – Runs the UK Lottery
4. Vodafone – Global Communications Company
5. Alliance Boots – UK phamaceutical retail company

The ones that particularly stand out are the first three in my opinion.

Do you agree? If not what report was really good?

Today’s post will start a series of posts on more information about how to find a job in the Sustainability field.

I get a lot of emails asking me how to find a job in the sustainability field. And by sustainability field I mean a job or internship in the environmental field, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and related fields.

So let’s start.

Environmental and CSR Recruitment agencies:

1. Acre Resources Great UK, Europe and US recruitment company
2. Bright Green Talent Young company also doing recruitment in the UK, Europe and US
3. Recluta Search and Selection UK specific recruitment company
4. Ruston WHEB Specialist recruitment company (more senior vacancies)

Great environmental job websites:

1. Edie- the biggest on the web: Edie
2. Earthworks Jobs: Earthworks Jobs
3. The Green Directory: Green Directory
4. Sustainable Business.com : Sustainable Business
5. Grist: Grist Jobs
6. EcoEmploy: EcoEmploy
7. Environmental Career: Environmental Career

Please feel free to suggest other recruitment companies/agencies and websites if they are not on list.
I am sure there are a lot more out there.

Regards,
Fabian

Several months ago with one of our first posts we elaborated on the question “What is sustainability?”
While browsing the net I came across these videos on the exact question.

Have fun watching!
Short interesting video:

Sustain Us: A Documentary On Sustainability (part 1 of 4):

All the best,

Fabian

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

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

Today’s discussion is about the question you might ask yourself after reading about the meaning of sustainability discussed in this blog entry http://www.sustainabilityblog.org/2007/10/30/what-is-sustainability/.

How can we make sustainability a reality?

I have asked myself this question many times before have always hit a wall because this question sounds so big. I found it very useful to identify the groups that in my opinion have the responsibility to make sustainability a reality.
The groups are:

1) Companies
2) Governments
3) Local communities
4) Us as individuals

Companies: Companies have the responsibility to be more responsible and therefore take more ownership of their actions and various opinions of their stakeholder. This concept is called Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). My next entry will be on CSR.

Governments: Our governments have a responsibility to lead us on the way towards sustainability. This might sound unrealistic now with the political idiots in power at some of the most power countries but governments own the largest part of the responsibility.

Local Communities: Sometimes called the DNA of our culture today local communities in general already do a lot to be more sustainable but there is so much more they can do.

Us as Individuals: But in the end it all depends on us as individuals and who sustainable we want and can live. We as individuals need to find out how our individual sustainability challenge of living a more sustainable life is and what works for us best.

So come on, make a difference today and start by doing just one thing in your daily routine differently, but in a more environmentally friendly way please!

You will see it is not that hard to do!

What are good websites discussing the topic of sustainability?

I have had a look and have tried to provide you with a selection of the websites I found very useful. I hope you like them.

The ever great Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability

An introduction to sustainability:
http://www.sustainablemeasures.com/Sustainability/index.html

Shropshire Council in the UK has a great article on what sustainability is:
http://www.shropshire.gov.uk/sustainability.nsf/open/A46F57EAF110600A80257092003543DF

The National Centre for Sustainability
http://www.swinburne.edu.au/ncs/sustainability.htm

What Is Sustainability & How Do We Get There?
http://www.uwsp.edu/cnr/GEM/ambassador/What_is_sustainability.htm
These are just the 5 top I have come across.

Please also feel free to suggest other interesting and information sustainability websites if you like.

The first blog entry will try to make more sense of what the concept of sustainability is and what in my opinion the three main components of it are.Please bear in mind that this is based on my experience working in the sustainability field and what I consider as the main components of sustainability as we see it today. Other people may have a different opinion, but I guess that happens with every subject.

So what is Sustainability?

Well, there are many definitions and different opinions out there. But for me sustainability is the end product or result of a combination of the following areas (no worries I will keep it short.

1. Sustainable Development
2. Corporate Social Responsibility
3. Environmental Responsibility

1) Sustainable Development:

The term sustainable development really came into the spotlight when in 1987 a UN commission, formally the World Commission on Environment and Development headed by Gro Harlem Brundtland former PM of published the so called Brundtland Report (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brundtland_Commission. The report sets sustainable development in the context of the 19^th century and changes need to be done to achieve a higher degree of sustainable development. The definition of this term in the report is quite well known and often cited in the sustainability field:

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Now sustainable development as a subject comprises many different elements such as third world country aid and development, etc (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_development). The UN has been the main driver in sustainable development in the past 30 years with major outcomes such as the Agenda21 and more many more(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_21). Its popularity has varied significantly and is sometimes now being overpowered by the next component of the sustainability concept, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

2) Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

Corporate Social Responsibility also known as CSR is a fairly new concept (10-15 years) where companies are demanded mainly by government and stakeholders to take more responsibility of their own actions and to consider their impact of their business practices on the broad range of their stakeholders. Stakeholders are all people, communities and organisations that are in a shape or form involved or affected by the decisions of this company.

Well but how do companies do that? A main part of this “taking more responsibility is the preparation and publication of the annual CSR report. This report is intended to be a reflection of the company’s actions to be more responsible. Or the course of the last 10 years these reports have become the norm for companies with a wide range of stakeholders and for those that are listed on the stock exchange. A great resource for thousands of reports is corporateregister.com (http://www.corporateregister.com if you want to take look a sample report.Other ways is the as they call it, Stakeholder Engagement. Stakeholder engagement is essentially making sure that you as the company talk to all of your stakeholders and take their opinions and views into account as best as you can when make making present and future business decisions. For a energy company that for example means that need to be aware of their impact they have on the environment and that they have a responsibility to keep the prices as low as possible to ensure a secure supply of energy to everyone (sorry everyone, I had to bring this example as I work for a energy company).

3) Environmental Responsibility:

This is really so to say classical part of sustainability….caring about the environment. The past ten have really shown us that our earth will not sustain our constant over consumption and pollution for much longer. That is why we need to start taking better care of our environment and need to convince others that we need to change our ways of living to suit the current and future constraints of our earth’s resources. I am of the opinion that everyone can make a difference and that we need to start in our own lives to make changes to minimize the impact we have on the environment. If this is recycling, less CO2 emissions or buying organic it is really up to us to make a difference now.

All of these three parts together in my opinion form the concept of sustainability.

This is all for my first entry but there is more to follow in the next few weeks on this basic discussion of sustainability. I am trying to post a new blog entry at least once a week always covering what I feel is a logical next step to further get to grips with the concept of sustainability or writing about something other related to sustainability.

I might even write something about myself and what I am currently do. There are a lot of changes coming in my short term future and I would like to share of these events and experiences if you don’t mind!

Back to the subject: Please let me know what you opinion of this categorization is or any other matter and get in touch by sending an email to fabian@sustainabilityblog.org or post comment here underneath this post.

Until next time then my friends.
Regards,
Fabian