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News & Views From the Front Line
Monday, 23 November 2009
Interface's socially sustainable product
I had a great interview with Nigel Stansfield of Interface on Friday. I met Nigel in 2002 on Schumacher College's now sadly defunct Business & Sustainability course*, but I didn't realise at the time that he had been given two year's (nearly) complete freedom to explore and understand sustainability. Nigel's role is Senior Director of new product development - covering both incremental improvements to existing products and big step changes in product/service concepts. Note that the word sustainability doesn't feature in his job title - it is a core role of everyone at Interface.Interface's commitment to sustainability is astonishing - they have the corporate goal of a zero footprint by 2020. They have recently started to get stuck into the social side, developing a new product made from sustainable materials in India where all the actors in the supply chain are assured a fair price - it would be a FairTrade product if FairTrade had a protocol for floor coverings - it really is that cutting edge. The video below describes it better than I ever could!
* I am developing plans for a similar intensive residential course for senior sustainability practitioners, but with an emphasis on sharing experience rather than being lectured by a guru - if you would be interested in such a thing, get in touch and let me know what you would like out of it.
Labels: corporate social responsibility, fairtrade, interface
# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:00
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Thursday, 5 June 2008
New Environmental Award Launched
My friends at the Environmental Academy have just launched their new "Enviro Excellence" award to provide businesses with a framework for improving their environmental management.Participants must provide evidence that they have complied with a set of compulsory and optional criteria to progress through the Bronze, Silver and Gold awards - a bit like the Duke of Edinburgh award if you did that at school. A Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) version is in the pipeline.
I write this with a small amount of pride as Terra Infirma Ltd acted as a 'critical friend' in the development of the award to look at it from an outsider's point of view and help fine tune the criteria.
Labels: corporate social responsibility, csr, enviro excellence, environmental management, terra infirma
# posted by Gareth Kane : 11:29
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Tuesday, 3 June 2008
Co-op, Body Shop and M&S Top Ethical Poll
In yet another survey of green/ethical brands, this time of 3000 UK adults by GfK NOP, the Co-op, Body Shop and M&S held onto the top three spots, but Sainsbury's lost out to Tesco at the foot of the table.Rank 2008 Rank 2007
1 Co-op 1 Co-op
2 Body Shop 2 Body Shop
3 M&S 3 M&S
4 Green & Blacks 4 Traidcraft
5 Ecover 5 Cafédirect
6 Traidcraft 6 Ecover
7 Cafédirect 7= Green & Blacks & Tesco
8 Innocent
9 Divine 9 Oxfam
10 Tesco 10 Sainsbury’s
The surprises for me are:
1. The Body Shop's brand has survived the loss of founder Anita Roddick, who, even though she had sold the organisation to l'Oreal, was still associated with it in the press.
2. The position of Tesco on the table given the recent controversies over landbanking, competition and treatment of suppliers by the Big Four supermarkets. I wonder how much their position relates to their huge market share of the retail sector - does anyone want to admit they shop at an unethical store?
Labels: corporate social responsibility, ethical brands, green marketing, survey
# posted by Gareth Kane : 05:09
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Wednesday, 2 April 2008
Chemical Companies Cool on Communications
Worrying headline on this months ENDS Report: apparently chemical companies are backing off their former approach of publishing annual environmental and sustainability reports. Only a minority of UK companies in the Chemical Industries Association (CIA) Responsible Care programme now do so, preferring to present reports as an industry as a whole. The stats are:- 60% have no report since 2005
- 60% of those that do report do so at their parent company level
- 17% do not have an environmental policy on their website
I was quite shocked by this. When I got into this game over a decade ago, Responsible Care was held up as the great eco-saviour of the chemicals industry. Transparency and stakeholder engagement were the watchwords of the day but now that seems to have fallen by the wayside. I can only assume that the companies are now a little red-faced about what progress they have or haven't made.
Labels: chemicals, corporate social responsibility, reporting
# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:10
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Wednesday, 7 November 2007
New CSR Training Course
We're pleased to announce our new one-day Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) course. Aimed at businesses who want to understand the most pressing driver in the world today, the course explores the CSR and its underlying concept, sustainable development.We deliver our courses at our clients' sites or at a mutually agreed venue. Roughly speaking, the morning is spent on theory and the afternoon on application.
This course is based on our "An Introduction to Sustainable Development" course, but the theory, case studies and exercises are applied to the business world.
Previous Delegates’ Comments:
“Great day! Touched on the right issues in the right way. Thought provoking exercises – would recommend.”
Government Office attendee
“Facilitator very knowledgeable and confident.”
Local Authority attendee
Contact us to book a course or for more details.
Labels: corporate social responsibility, csr, training
# posted by Gareth Kane : 08:00
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Friday, 20 July 2007
What does "Corporate Social Responsibility" mean?
A couple of weeks ago I went along to an event on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Before the presentations started the chap next to me asked what I did. I explained I was an environmental and sustainability consultant and described what I did. His eyes narrowed a bit and he asked me "so why are you here?". I was a little confused by this until he explained that he thought CSR began and ended with donating sums to community groups in the localities around his company's development projects.This is a perennial problem in the sustainability industry - everybody has a different idea of what each term means, leading to misunderstandings and confusion. So here are a few definitions of CSR.
The UK Government:
[CSR] is about how business takes account of its economic, social and environmental impacts in the way it operates – maximising the benefits and minimising the downsides.
The World Business Council for Sustainable Development:
"Corporate social responsibility is the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large."
Wikipedia:
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a concept that organizations, especially (but not only) corporations, have an obligation to consider the interests of customers, employees, shareholders, communities, and ecological considerations in all aspects of their operations. This obligation is seen to extend beyond their statutory obligation to comply with legislation.
All of these are roughly the same but with differing emphasis on the environmental side of the equation. Some companies and organisations now talk about "Corporate Responsibility" instead, believing that the word "Social" is leading to confusion. But all of them are much wider than the donation-based scope that my new acquaintance had in his mind.
Of course, there is quite a bit of evidence that links good CSR performance to good financial performance, for example this rather heavy academic paper.
Labels: corporate social responsibility, csr
# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:58
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A highly accessible, practical guide to those who want to introduce sustainability into their business or organization quickly and effectively.
