Fabian Pattberg



Tag Archives - sustainability

Closing the forum: Learning what works and what does not

I recently added a discussion forum to my site with the intention to provide a community for sustainability practitioners across the globe a place where we can be sure to have quality content and meet verified fellow sustainability practitioners.

I thought this discussion forum was a great idea. But after 2 months and numerous conversations and useful feedback I have to admit that for some reason this kind of a discussion forum is not needed anymore. Why is that?

The reason is social media and the fact that online engagement has moved beyond discussion forums these days. Which in my view is good and bad at the same time. It seems that people working in the sustainability field are just to busy with the numerous engagement possibilities using social media. We are not able to “do a even more” (as a person I talked to expressed it) in terms of online engagement with a discussion forum. Twitter, Google+ and all the other social media channels already provide us with everything we need to engage and discuss with fellow Sustainability practitioners across the globe.

This is what I learned from the last weeks. I will therefore close and delete the discussion in a few days and focus on my blog again. The learning curve has been a steep one on what works and what does not work for my readers and practitioners  network.

But one of my life mantras is and always will be: “If you do not try, you will never know.”

What is your favorite Social Media Channel for CSR / Sustainability topics in 2013?

Back in 2012 I did a poll asking you what your favorite social media channel was. The results where pretty clear with Twitter being by far the most popular channel.

Today I would to repeat this poll with the intention to see whether the results will change 12 months on. Has Google+ now become more popular or has the social media push by LinkedIn helped to convince more people that LinkedIn is the best social media channel? Or does Twitter still rule the pack?

So please take am moment and vote. The poll closes in 2 weeks and I will post the results a few days after that. Many thanks.

Moving Sustainability best practice to the next level of development

The last year has been very busy in my life and I did not spend as much time working on Sustainability topics as I would like to have done.

During 2013 I started to refocus on Sustainability topics. Today’s post is meant to be a short resume post about what I believe is happening in the Sustainability field at the moment and how I could see the Sustainability best practice future.

steps Moving Sustainability best practice to the next level of development

Key learning for me over the past months has been that Sustainability best practice desperately needs to move to the next development level. Too many professionals still have a nostalgic view of Sustainability best practice and this reflects current organisation best practice. This is not the ideal way to move forward in my view and needs to be addressed by all of us.

I strongly believe that all of us as Sustainability professionals need to leave the past behind us as quickly as possible and change our view of how Sustainability should look like in 10 years time. We do not have the time to rest on our past achievements anymore. It was a great time back when Sustainability was the new business trend but lets us all now move on to integrate Sustainability best practice into normal business practice. Our goal should be to not be needed as internal or external Sustainability experts. That is how I see it.

The example of Sustainability reporting:

Roughly 10 years ago more and more organisations realized that a complete-as-can-be Sustainability report was the goal. Complete Sustainability reporting was hailed as the process and communication tool by Sustainability reporters. Fast forward to today: Sustainability reporting has evolved yes, it is more direct and user-friendly, yes but in itself I always feel that Sustainability reporting is a practice that needs to be integrated into overall Sustainability communication and stakeholder engagement activities. Not as a separate practice just for the sake of keeping some powerful Sustainability reporting specialists’ organisations alive. Now this goal of sustainability reporting is still a very important goal for organisations but Sustainability reporting is just not enough anymore for an organisation to show that it is a responsible business.

These days Sustainability within an organisation is changing to be much more integrated into the overall fabric of daily business.

Sustainability related memberships to boost the acceptance of your Sustainability best practice,Other examples of over-rated Sustainability activities are:

  • GRI reporting to be part of an elite group of reporters,
  • Independent assurance to show how transparent an organization is and
  • mandatory participation in Sustainability conferences to “belong” to the Sustainability crowd.

Do not get me wrong. These are all important aspects/activities of Sustainability best practice but it seems that we professionals (myself included sometimes) are still trying to promote the old Sustainability concepts in favor of revolutionizing best-practice once again.

This post is already long enough in my view but one of my next posts will tackle this exact topic. I will try to explain to you what I see as a possible next step in Sustainability best-practice. All according to my experience and my view on new developments in the Sustainability field.

I do not have all the answers what the next development level for Sustainability best practice looks like in detail but what I know is that we need to look beyond the successes of the past to be ready for the future.

This is what I think. What is your view?

Picture Credit: foilman

The Global 100 ranking: Yet another ranking?

Through a tweet from a person I follow on Twitter I came across this new ranking today called: ‘Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World’.

The Toronto based research company Corporate Knights published this list during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland several days ago. This is the global press release as a download if you are interested: PDF Version of the ranking.

So is this yet another ranking?

So is this yet another ranking for us Sustainability professionals to consider? Here are several links to what other bloggers and journalists thought:

So is this ranking any good? This is what I think.

To be absolutely clear from the start. This is a ranking that is very well researched and ticks all the boxes in terms of methodology. But there is one big question mark. How well can you actually compare the wide variety of businesses included in this top 100 with each other. This report would have gained a broader acceptance when it introduced a clearer categorization by business sector in my view. Similar to the BITC Index for example. In this way the results would have been a lot more understandable and convey a much stronger story for us as stakeholders to make sense of.

Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World is a good report but in my view they missed a trick to make the report stand out from the crowd of recent reports. A shame but hey we have enough similar rankings out there to tell us what companies are good things and which do not.

How do you encourage our children to be more sustainable people?

My wife and I where pretty busy this week organising all there is to organise for our newest addition to the family. This is such great fun but I also wondered what the future of our little will be like when she grows up. In what kind of world will she live in terms of environmental diversity and freedom to do what she likes with her life. Obviously it is impossible to look into the future but I would like to see her being open to sustainability ideas and being an open minded person that does not judge a person after a first impression. This is a very big topic and not easy to answer in a single blog post. So lets tackle this by looking at sustainability ideas today. childrenstoes How do you encourage our children to be more sustainable people?

So what is your view on how we could encourage our children to be more sustainable people then we are today? What experiences did you make raising a child and providing it/them with access to sustainability idea and a more sustainable way of living?

This is where I will start
I will try to be a very good role-model for our little girl and I am sure my wife and I will try to raise in the most sustainable way possible for us. But one of biggest fears is that I would take away her own personal way of making up her view of the world. This is what really helped me to go where I am today and I believe that this is a key element of each individuals personal development.
Obviously this is very early to worry about these kind of topics but I wanted to raise this topic you my readers and ask for your comments if you have any.
Picture Credit: sabianmaggy

Reorganizing my Twitter lists for 2013

I am a big Twitter fan. I always have been. And ever since Twitter introduced the “List” feature I use Twitter lists as a good way of structuring the number of people and organizations I am following.

But over the last months I noticed that I have not been as consistent as I should have been in following people back and adding them to a list when they start following me.

I just changed this by following all people I have on a Twitter list at the moment and reorganizing the members of my lists. I also had to add several new lists due to the fact that Twitter only allows a maximum of 500 members per list. But the logic of my list categorization will stay the same.

These are my updated Twitter lists and their corresponding links. Please feel free to subscribe to the various lists if they are of interest to you.

My current Twitter lists:

  1. Sustainability Friends 1 – List one of the people I follow with interesting tweets on CSR / Sustainability
  2. Sustainability Friends 2 – List two of the people I follow with interesting tweets on CSR / Sustainability
  3. Sustainability Organizations 1 – List one of the organizations I follow with interesting tweets on CSR / Sustainability
  4. Sustainability Organizations 2 – List two of the organizations I follow with interesting tweets on CSR / Sustainability
  5. Various Tweeps – List of people and organizations I also follow that do not tweet about CSR / Sustainability

I know whom I would vote for my US friends

On the eve of the US presidential election I wanted to share this video put together by the great people at ClimateSilence.org about the alternative to President Obama, Mitt Romney.

Hurricane Sandy has shown us all what nature has most likely in store for us over the next decades if we do not start to take our changing environment seriously and do something about it.

Do you really want to have a president, my dear US friends, that has no real leadership record other than being a business leader? I know I would not want to have someone like Mitt Romney represent me if I were an US citizen.

Please vote for Barack Obama tomorrow and help us all across the globe to create the future we need to create to leave our children a planet that is worth living on.

Video: The story of Sustainability at Harvard University

The last few weeks have been manic in terms of workload and private commitments. I will start blogging on a more regular basis from now on. Promised!

Today I wanted to present you a video I have recently come across about the Sustainability efforts at Harvard University in the US. In this very short but at the same time information-rich video where Harvard University is outlining its Sustainability approach.

My first reaction 

I will not comment on the Sustainability efforts of Harvard University in this post (maybe in a future blog post) but wanted to make an important point about this video having seen it once. What do you think about the length of this video? For me this video is far to short considering how much Sustainability information it wants communicate. I would have preferred a series of 4 minute videos about the different “SHIFT” elements. But this is too much information for me to take in during such a short timeframe.

Harvard University, I am sure you could do better.

If you are interested in more information about the Harvard University Sustainability efforts you should visit the Impact Report website of the Harvard University.

Why we as stakeholders should stop buying Apple products

Before I start this blog post I have to say that I am a current iPhone 4 and MacBook Pro user and love my Apple products. I have been using Apple products for many years now and love their design and user-friendliness. But the main message of this post today is to ask you to not buy yourself a new iPhone 5 or any other new Apple product at this point in time. Why?

Here are my reasons from a CSR / Sustainability and individual stakeholder perspective:

mymacbookpro Why we as stakeholders should stop buying Apple products

1) Apple as a company is too powerful these days. It is the same argument as with Microsoft or IBM several years ago. Once a business is getting too big and its products too popular, is it very likely that  the leadership at this business will try to take advantage of this situation by acting in a monopolistic way. This is just the nature of business in a free market economy. The maximisation of profits and shareholder value is still the most important maxime these days. My experience working in the CSR / Sustainability tells me that CSR / Sustainability is playing a role for business but nowhere near as much as rising profits and a constant increase of shareholder value. Sad as it might sound but this is the reality.

2) The marketing hype for their new products is just too intense and focusing on consuming more instead of less. Apple Inc. has evolved into a huge global marketing machine these days. Everywhere you go you see Apple branding and marketing. We are bombarded with encouragement to consume more. But our current environmental situation on this Earth does not really allow us to consume more. We need to look into possibilities to consume less instead. The current marketing approach from Apple is more like a giant hammer knocking you down to the ground and telling you that it is okay to consume more. This is just wrong.

3) The way these Apple products are being produced is not acceptable and Apple had their opportunity to fix it over the years but simply did not do enough. Just read this latest Forbes article from today: Apple’s New Foxconn Embarrassment. It seems to me that, through its ongoing business with Foxconn ,Apple have decided that they will do everything to produce as many devices as they possibly can to cover the demand for their products taking whatever possibilities they can get. This is not proper responsible business practice. Quite the opposite really.

My personal decision on Apple products

At some point something needs to change when we look at these three points mentioned above. Do not get me wrong, tt is not all bad and I am an optimist generally but we as the stakeholders of Apple have given this organisation too much power in my view. I believe that we as stakeholders now need to take steps to correct this imbalance of market power in order for Apple to change its ways towards being more responsible as a business.

I personally will make a change starting today. I will no longer buy new or another related Apple products as long as they are not changing their way of doing business and move towards being a more transparent and responsible business.

Sorry Apple, you just lost a customer.