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Category Archives - Sustainability & CSR News

Unilever and the upcoming Sustainability ads

April 25, 201211:44 am

Unilever seems to take sustainability a lot more serious then other organisations it seems. Why? The marketing activities and communications around their Sustainability efforts are enourmous at the moment. Two days ago I reported on the Unilever Sustainable Living Dialogue and now Marketing Week reports on Unilever’s plans for corporate sustainability ads.

Unilever can only be praised for all of their efforts to promote CSR / Sustainability best practice but I hope that this is a long term effort from Unilever and not just an eruption of efforts over the next weeks. What we need is a long-term stakeholder engagement. Nothing else works in my view.

But let’s give them a chance to try it out and to prove us as their stakeholder wrong. The Unilever Sustainable Living Dialogue also has a Twitter hashtag: #sustliving if you want to follow the tweets on the topic.

How did you participate in Earth Day 2012?

April 24, 201212:53 pm

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I would be interested in your feedback on what Earth Day 2012 actually accomplished this year and how you did participate. I did not participate in any kind of environmental activities on the day I have to admit but I am sure there where some amazing events across the globe.

On the Earth Day Network website I found a list of news items Earth Day Network News items. But I am sure there is a lot more. This is what a search on Google News brings up: Google News “Earth Day”.

I am also not sure on the impact it made this year. For some reason 2011 had a lot more coverage across the globe it seems to me. I am not pessimistic here but simply am looking to get a feel for the overall mood. In my wider environment it seems that people are definitely less switched on with regards to environmental topics this year. It would be an interesting exercise to compare your experience with the 2012 Earth Day overall coverage across the globe.

The Unilever Sustainable Living Dialogue

April 23, 20125:49 pm

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About 1 hour ago I got a reminder to register the upcoming Sustainable Living Lab hosted by Unilever. I totally forgot about that event this Wednesday. So this is a reminder for my readers to register for this quite unique stakeholder engagement event.

I am usually not the kind of person to promote a corporate CSR / Sustainability event but I must admit that I am very curious about the actual value of the event on Wednesday. It promises to be a very useful 24 hour CSR / Sustainability engagement looking at the information provided so far.

This is what the event is all about:

More than 1200 of the most influential thought leaders on sustainability from government, NGOs and business across more than 60 countries have already signed up to take part in the Sustainable Living Lab.

The Sustainable Living Lab is a web forum. Across 24 hours, multiple time zones and within four themed rooms, we’ll be hosting live dialogue to drive solutions on sustainable living. The full schedule has now been confirmed and includes contributors and topics such as;

Randall Krantz, World Economic Forum on consumer behaviour change (09:00-10:00 BST)
Christiana Figueres, UNFCC on reducing greenhouse gases in Supply Chain (14.00-15.00 BST)
David Nabarro, Special Representative of the Secretary General of the UN for Food security and Nutrition on consumer behaviour change (14:00-16:00 BST)
Georg Kell, UN Global Compact on the role of government to drive more sustainable lifestyles (18.00-19.00 BST)
Jason Clay, WWF on what collaborations are needed for scale in sustainable agriculture (20.00-21.00)

Click here to view the full schedule of topics and guest contributors.

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Will you be joining? Why not? It is free of charge and promises to bring something new to the CSR / Sustainability best-practice table. Register here.

Interesting viewpoint: Has London 2012 been greenwashed?

April 22, 20121:46 pm

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Today I have come across this interesting article from the Guardian blogger Jules Boykoff titled: Has London 2012 been greenwashed? | Jules Boykoff | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

In the article he clearly states that in his view the sponsorship deals with Dow Chemical and BP are “a clash between Olympic-style environmentalism and the corporate commercialism of the Games.” To him their involvement as sponsors is purely to serve as greenwash of their business practice. It is a very opinionated article which in my view addresses a very important aspect of CSR / Sustainability and sponsoring.

My view

When I read the article I was positively surprised initially. I like a strong opinion and the courage to express this. But I do not agree with the complete authors assessment of BP’s and Dow Chemicals’s involvement in the Olympic Games. For me the whole purpose of the Olympic Games as a global sports event is something extraordinary and an event which are all looking forward to. It is my sports event highlight in 2012. And sponsorships and partnerships are a part of the whole setup and help fund the Games.

But I also do not agree with the ever increasing commercialisation of the Olympic Games. And this has been a trend over the past Games which I have found very irritating. Sometimes I wish that I there would be something similar to an ad-blocker for TV programmes.

I certainly hope that the organisers will find the right mix between using the partners and sponsors to help promote the Olympic Games and at the same time making sure that the sport and amazing global diversity will be the focal-point in the weeks to come.

TheEnvironmentSite.org is back

March 29, 20121:15 pm

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Some of you might have wondered where the my environmental website and discussion forum, TheEnvironmentSite.org, has been over the past weeks.

Long story, here is the short version: At the beginning of March from one day to the next, hackers attacked the site and managed to inject one of websites styles (determines how the forum looks visually) with malware and a virus which was forwarding visitors to another site away from TheEnvironmentSite.org and pretty much prohibited any participation on the site. I investigated and in the end had to close down the complete forum altogether until I had this fixed.

But it now turns out that this was a blessing in disguise. The break of 3 weeks altogether gave me the chance to update the software, cleanup the old membership base and delete spammy threads in had overlooked in the past. Now TheEnvironmentSite.org is back and stronger then ever with a brand new forum look and much heightened security measures to ensure that any future hacker attacks will be unsuccessful.

Have you checked us out yet? TheEnvironmentSite.org Forum

CSR / Sustainability angle of the Goldman Sachs New York Times letter

March 14, 20121:47 pm

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Today’s post is about a resignation letter from the former Goldman Sachs executive director, Greg Smith. This is nothing out the ordinary by itself. What is special about this resignation is the way he did this and a clear sign how much of a challenge CSR / Sustainability activities and best practice within the finance sector are. But let’s start with the way Greg Smith resigned.

This is the article in the New York Times (NYT): Why I am leaving Goldman Sachs

It is a great but very sad read at the same time. A gripping account of how much his company but also the corporate culture has changed for the worst since he joined. If only half of his description is true then customers at Goldman Sachs are not being treated how they should be and the overall culture in the business is in need of a complete overhaul to put it mildly!

The CSR / Sustainability angle
This story has an interesting CSR / Sustainability in my view as well. It just shows how much of a mindset-change is needed within the financial sector. In this situation CSR / Sustainability practices can only be then a side-act. It seems to me that not even the basics of good business leadership exist at Goldman Sachs taking Greg Smith’s description into account. What possibilities to make a difference does a CSR / Sustainability specialist have in this kind of business environment? NONE.

We might just witness a good example of how a business sector can be pre-CSR / Sustainability capabilities at the moment. The first rule for Goldman Sachs now can only be to get their house in order first. And when this is done, CSR / Sustainability could be back on their agenda. What a fascinating case study that will be!

Good CSR / Sustainability posts from this week

March 4, 20126:26 pm

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Today I wanted to share some of the interesting CSR / Sustainability posts I have been reading over the past days. I am a little bit like this woman here in the picture on the right. Despite all the turbulence around me, am I desperate for some good CSR / Sustainability or related literature each week. I hope you will enjoy these good posts as well.

Elaine Cohen’s latest CSR Reporting posts:

Thanks Elaine for sharing such great content.

HBR Blogs

Guardian Sustainable Business section

And finally from Forbes

Foxconn scandal offers supply chain lessons

What other interesting posts have you come across this or the previous week?

Picture Credit: Moriza

Is Facebook mutating into a money-making machine?

February 2, 201212:31 am

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I just heard about the upcoming Facebook IPO via mashable and needed to write a quick post about it as I feel that this development has a significant CSR angle to it.

The CSR angle of the Facebook IPO

The big problem I see is that Facebook is getting to powerful and influential due to its extreme high valuation ($15 billion USD+) and the consequential interest of global investors that are after one thing only: Making lots of money.

Facebook’s purpose in my view, is to provide us with a platform to connect with our friends and family. And to me it seems that an IPO will in a way sell our personal information and relationships to the shareholders of Facebook. And this is not right. It is actually very wrong.

As a responsible business Facebook should focus on providing us with the best possible personal global social networking site and not mutate into a global money-making machine out to let us pay for premium features or inundating us with the latest PR exercise of a global car manufacturer for example.

I really like Facebook don’t get me wrong but if Facebook will mutuate into this money-making machine once it is a publicly-listed company, then I am surely leaving it for good as I do not want to be part of this website anyone.

This is my view on this. What is yours?