Fabian Pattberg

Tag Archives - sustainability

How many CSR / Sustainability rankings do we really need?

May 2, 20122:21 pm

1 Comment

This is the question asked myself today after reading yet another article on yet another ranking. This last one being the Eiris Sustainability ranking (PDF). This is a good useful piece of research but it seems to me that we are being bombarded with all of those rankings intended to provide us with more insights to the CSR / Sustainability best-practice or related subjects. But do we really need all of these different rankings? I am not so sure.

My impression: Rankings are primarily a marketing tool these days

To me it seems that most rankings are primarily used as a marketing tool these days. Nothing more unfortunately. I also believe it would be most useful to have a very limited but at the same time diverse amount of CSR / Sustainability rankings across the globe that are carefully managed. One option would be to create overarching non-for-profit organisation that makes sure that these rankings stay as objective and consistent as possible. If this kind of body would be the in place, I am sure CSR / Sustainability practitioners would really appreciate this structure and the rest of us would not feel overwhelmed with the wide variety of rankings around.

Interesting presentation: Capitalism as a Force for Good

May 1, 20122:28 pm

1 Comment

Today I wanted to point you to an interesting CSR / Sustainability presentation uploaded to SlideShare over the past week. Although this presentation is by a strategy consultancy (I am always trying to avoid any kind of endorsement for an organisation selling services in the field), the different CSR / Sustainability elements and the information provided here is quite good. Let me know what you think.

Capitalism as a Force for Good

View more presentations from PollenStrategy

Stay sceptical on stakeholder engagement

April 29, 201211:06 am

0 Comments

This week was the Unilever week as Toby Webb rightly predicted last week. Unilever needs to be congratulated on the very open and direct stakeholder engagement this week. I did not direcly participate due to other commitments but the overall feedback I have seen was very positive.

Stay sceptical on CSR / Sustainability stakeholder engagement

sceptical Stay sceptical on stakeholder engagement

Despite all the these great efforts do I have a simple but in my view important message today: Always stay sceptical when you come across stakeholder engagement campaigns. Most of the campaigns have only two goals unfortunately, (1) to increase sales and (2) to enhance the reputation of this particular corporation or brand.

Local stakeholder engagement is true stakeholder engagement

Is all stakeholder engagement spin? The clear answer is NO. If you are interested in finding true stakeholder engagement examples then you need to have a closer look at the local stakeholder engagement activities of corporations in your community. Take the time to look through corporate websites of businesses in your community and identify the kind of engagement you find you can agree with. Successful stakeholder engagement is not meant to be a big splash with millions spent on it. Successful stakeholder engagement is meant to be resonating with you the individual stakeholder in your own context. I am sure you will find some great examples of stakeholder engagement resonating 100% with you and your community.

Stakeholder engagement best practice has two sides to it these days . 1) Global and 2) local stakeholder engagement. Unilever has shown us how to conduct useful global stakeholder engagement this week but let us not forget about the local community stakeholder engagement. For me local community stakeholder engagement is the true engagement and it always will.

Picture Credit: Ramon Azofra

Results of the Social Innovation Awards 2012 are out

April 28, 20127:02 am

3 Comments

I usually use the weekend to brush up on the other interesting CSR / Sustainability news from the week. Today I wanted to bring your attention to the winners of the Social Innovation Awards 2012. I believe it is worth a look checking out the winners of 2012.

These are the CSR / Sustainability winners from 2012:

Here is the link to the full press release on 3blMedia: Social Innovation Awards 2012

Two new Sustainability videos this week

April 26, 201212:40 pm

0 Comments

Every now and then will I present my favourite new Sustainability-related videos on the various videos sites across the net. Here are two new videos uploaded to YouTube on the topic of Sustainability this week.

H&M and their Sustainable Efforts for Earth Day

Andy Sharpless, CEO Oceana, on how desperate our oceans need our help – now

Unilever and the upcoming Sustainability ads

April 25, 201211:44 am

1 Comment

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

0 Comments

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

3 Comments

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.

———-

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.

New topic series: Profit and Sustainability

April 23, 20129:11 am

2 Comments

How to profit from being sustainable as a business? Are Profit and Sustainability really going together? This will be the topic in a new series over the next months.

Let us get started with a quick review of the Google search results in order to get a first look at what other bloggers have written about Profit and Sustainability: Google search Profit and Sustainability

Here is a list of the search results I found interesting:

I am currently researching the topic in more detail and would appreciate if you had any other interesting links to blogger that have written about this relationship of Profit and Sustainability. I will also look into more formal research on this over the next few days.

Thanks a million.

Interesting viewpoint: Has London 2012 been greenwashed?

April 22, 20121:46 pm

0 Comments

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.