CorporateResponsibility.Net

Many Americans misunderstand key phrases used in environmental marketing and advertising and believe products are more environmentally friendly than they really are, a survey has found.

The Boston College Centre for Corporate Citizenship’s 2008 Green Gap Survey found almost half of those surveyed thought products marketed as green or environmentally friendly had a positive impact on the environment.

Only 22% understood that the terms are used to describe products with less negative environmental impact than similar products.

With just days until a US Federal Trade Commission is to hold a workshop to review guidance on green marketing, the survey also revealed 59% of Americans support government regulation of such messages.

Other bodies can also play an important role to ensure accurate marketing, according to those questioned, including third-party organisations, the media, and industry groups.

“The fact that Americans are so primed to trust companies may suggest the lack of control they feel around complex environmental issues,” said Bradley Googins, executive director of the Boston College Centre for Corporate Citizenship.

“So it is not surprising that they also seek a third-party gatekeeper to help ensure the messages they see and hear are accurate.

“The motto really could be ‘trust, but verify’. Maintaining the trust of consumers needs to be a top priority for companies.”

The survey found 47% of people said they trust companies to tell them the truth in environmental messages.

A similar percentage also believe companies are accurately communicating information about their impact on the environment.

Four in ten of those questioned said they choose to buy products they believe are environmentally friendly over the standard alternative.

Almost three quarters say that providing a clear connection between the product or service and the environmental issue – such as a hybrid car and lower emissions – influences their purchasing decisions.

Source: Edie News

Nick Venning is a founding member of Thrive and co-chairs the Thrive Forum. In this interview he challenges the driving forces behind Corporate Social Responsibility and what will lead to sustainable best practice.
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Someone told me the other day that I shouldn’t talk about corporate social responsibility any more. Even plain corporate responsibility is old hat. Apparently, now we should only think in terms of sustainability or, more specifically, business sustainability.

Well, I’m not so sure.

It is quite clear that there is a strong commercial case for investing in social and community programmes. Over the past 50 years business has become a dirty word associated with perennial fat cat scandals and commerce ravaging the planet’s scarce resources; CSR allows us to make recompense and polish up tarnished brands. CSR provides us with a platform to recruit, develop and retain the best people in our businesses who are essential to our success. And, if managed well, CSR will allow us to reduce costs.

The business case is well rehearsed and, undeniably, makes sense. But is it commercial viability that makes CSR truly sustainable?

There are those who believe that the business case – the profit motive – is the only ultimately sustainable platform for CSR.

I believe that this is an unfortunate, and possibly misjudged, view; and, if profit were the only motive that counts, I believe that CSR would have a limited prognosis. Successful business is a dynamic environment always seeking new methods and continuous self improvement. If profit is the sole driver of CSR, it will, sooner or later, become absorbed into the archives of outmoded ‘gurudom’. We will move on to more effective practices and there is a very real danger that CSR will become forgotten.

However, this does not make the current vogue for CSR some sort of illicit evil. Far from it, CSR is one of the greatest assets on the corporate sector’s ’00s balance sheet! But we must seek, understand and adopt a deeper underlying motive for long term CSR.

The point is simply that George Cadbury did not build Bournville Village for profit, Andrew Carnegie didn’t found libraries to make more steel and John Howard certainly sought no personal advancement in prison reform.

So, if not commercialism, what is it that drove our trio of social reformers? Nothing is without motive of some sort!

It’s possible that such acts are pure philanthropy towards their fellow men. It may be that these men sought to widen the eye of the needle, and two of them were certainly wealthy! Or perhaps we are looking at what Maslow and Herzberg would describe strides for self-actualisation, the motive to do things because we can?

These things, the moral imperatives if you like, are nothing new. They have been characteristics common to all humanity since the undignified exit from the Garden of Eden!

If CSR is to be sustainable beyond commercial motives, we must put the moral imperative alongside, or ahead of, commercial sustainability.

I believe that it is the actions of people -many people – that really make the difference. There are community entrepreneurs all around the country solving acute social problems. It is the actions of these dedicated people that make the real difference, succeeding where corporations and, dare I say it, Governments are demonstrably ineffective.
What we have to do is emulate them by the hundred, making this best practice into “one nation” common practice.
We must engage in these things because we can and because it’s right! Do you believe Nick Venning’s standpoint is right or should business people take another approach? Share your views on the Thrive page – call Annie Roberts on 07872 642310 to discuss or email her at annr@dircon.co.uk
Source: Birmingham Post

New BSR Report Calls for Industry-Wide Collaboration

(CSRwire) SAN FRANCISCO, CA – April 29, 2008 – The Global eSustainability Initiative (GeSI) – a global partnership of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) companies formed to promote sustainable technology and policy for the ICT industry – today announced a new report, “The Contribution the ICT Industry Can Make to Sustainable Development: A Materiality Assessment” which identifies the most material social and environmental issues for the sector.

While companies leading corporate responsibility efforts seek to maximize their sustainability contribution by prioritizing their most material issues, there is currently a lack of consensus for identifying issues that are most important for the ICT industry as a whole. GeSI’s latest report provides a consensus-driven rallying point for the industry.

Identifying material issues in the ICT sector is more important than ever given the industry’s rapid move toward convergence of previously separate ICT products and services – such as mobile web surfing, Internet TV and VoIP.

“In the highly integrated and fast-paced world of technology, no company can act alone to bring about comprehensive change,” said Luis Neves, chair of GeSI. “This report provides a road map for the entire ICT industry to continue delivering on the promise of the information and communications revolution in a way that maximizes sustainability and minimizes negative environmental and social impact.”

GeSI commissioned Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) to oversee the materiality process, a method by which the most important and consequential activities and issues are identified and prioritized. “The decision by GeSI to take an industry-wide approach to materiality is a significant innovation,” said Dunstan Hope, director of BSR’s ICT practice. “As well as prioritizing material issues, we hope that further opportunities for deeper multi-stakeholder collaboration will arise as a result.”

The outcome of the process is a list of issues that are potentially material for all companies in the ICT sector. The issues include climate change, waste and materials use, access to ICT, economic development, supply chain, product use issues, freedom of expression, privacy and security, and employee relationships.

The outcome is intended to deliver the following benefits:

• Companies can support their own materiality processes and develop sustainability reports and strategies that focus on the issues that matter most
• Investment analysts can gain an understanding of the issues considered most material to companies in the ICT sector, leading to an improved engagement with ICT companies
• GeSI can focus the development of its own future strategy and work plan to cover those issues most material to the ICT sector.

The result of the materiality process, “The Contribution the ICT Industry Can Make to Sustainable Development: A Materiality Assessment” is available at http://www.bsr.org/reports/BSR_GeSI Report_4-29-08.pdf.

About BSR

Since 1992, Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) has been providing socially responsible business solutions to many of the world’s leading corporations. Headquartered in San Francisco and with offices in New York, Paris, Guangzhou, Beijing and Hong Kong, BSR is a nonprofit business association that serves its 250 member companies and other Global 1000 enterprises. Through advisory services, convenings and research, BSR works with corporations and concerned stakeholders of all types to create a more just and sustainable global economy. For more information, visit www.bsr.org.

About Global eSustainability Initiative (GeSI)

GeSI is an initiative of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) companies, with the support of the United Nations Environment Programme and International Telecommunication Union. As the collective voice of its members, GeSI aims to influence the sustainability debate, inform the public of its members’ voluntary actions to improve their sustainability performance, and prompt information and communicate technologies that foster sustainable development. For more information, visit http://www.gesi.org.

SOurce: CSR Wire

According to a new report by Transparency International, Exxon Mobil, Lukoil and CNOOC are all in the bottom group for transparency amongst the oil and gas majors. The result came from a survey carried out of 42 such firms.

The report found that others, including Shell, BHP Billiton, Petrobas and Talisman Energy scored highly in the transparency stakes, with BP coming in amidst the middle group.

According to Transparency International, lack of transparency in how companies operate, particularly in countries with weak standards of governance, can cause corruption and harm the poor. The organisation has said that oil companies should report more detail around moneys paid to governments for oil rights.

Exxon said that it rejected the report’s conclusions, and that it disagreed with the methodology used to come to the final results.

Source: Mallenbaker.net

By Jay Boehmer

APRIL 28, 2008 — Though some corporations continue to advance green travel practices, the majority of respondents to a recent Business Travel News survey said their companies do not take environmental issues into consideration when making travel-buying decisions.

Many in the industry have said environmental questions are becoming commonplace on travel supplier requests for proposals, and 29 percent of 196 respondents said they actually evaluate green criteria when selecting travel suppliers, although only 11 percent said a supplier’s green credentials led to its selection.

However, the rising tide of environmental consciousness and corporate responsibility initiatives is expected to increase those numbers in coming years as many companies begin to expand green initiatives.

“It’s still in the early stages, but is moving forward,” said Bob Brindley, vice president of the Americas for Advito, BCD Travel’s consulting division. “It’s becoming a standard question in RFPs, both from a hotel and air perspective.” Still, he said, by and large any indications of an airline’s green cred are “not overriding any fare differentials” in the course of negotiations.

A growing number of large corporations, including Cisco, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, News Corp., Nike and Sun Microsystems, have adopted a greener travel stance in recent years, in many cases as part of a companywide social responsibility initiative. Many other companies increasingly are exploring travel alternatives, setting green policies, taking stock of their carbon footprint and in some cases selecting vendors based on green criteria.

“Within our policy practice, it’s being addressed more and more,” said Mitch Cwanger, American Express Advisory Services senior practice leader for air. “Companies are talking green in travel polices, but whether they are making changes as far as the buying decision is concerned, it’s still in its infancy.”

Sun Microsystems, like many other companies, said it has included environmental questions in its requests for proposals, but by year-end the company will take the next step as it intends to incorporate environmental evaluations into buying decisions.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun already asks suppliers to detail “information about the environmental benefits of their products and evidence of corporate responsibility initiatives within their own operations,” according to its 2007 social responsibility report. By the end of 2008, the report said Sun would “incorporate corporate social responsibility into procurement decisions and develop metrics to track our progress.”

Though the green travel movement in the United States remains in its infancy, an environment of higher fuel prices, more environmental policy from the government and a culture where “there’s more balance between economic concerns and environmental concerns” have enabled European corporations to take the lead in recent years, according to Herman Mensink, vice president of Europe, Middle East and Africa for airline data consolidator Prism Group.

“I have not seen any corporate that does not have a green paragraph in their RFPs,” Mensink said of European companies. Mensink said in most cases such considerations as aircraft type and age of fleet are at least evaluated in the course of airline negotiations, and in some cases such factors have become deal-breakers.

“I have known two corporates that say it is a make-or-break issue. Often, those airlines [without green credentials] don’t even get past the first round of negotiations because of the fact that this is among the first criteria being discussed,” Mensink said. “Sometimes there’s no choice, if your volume is automatically tied to a specific airline because of the origins and destinations you’re using, but if [European] corporations have a choice, it’s part of the consideration.”

Mensink said many companies in Europe continue to refine policies to encourage the use of rail over airlines on short-haul trips, in many cases setting a kilometer threshold. American Express’ Cwanger said some companies in the United States also are putting in place policies to encourage alternate transportation, such as trains in the Northeast Corridor, to minimize carbon emissions.

Meanwhile, 19 percent of the respondents to the BTN survey said they already measure the corporate travel contribution to their corporate carbon footprint.

“It’s not as common as it is to include green questions in the RFP, but measuring carbon footprints, especially with the multinational companies more so than the smaller companies, is absolutely taking hold,” Mensink said.

As part of its corporate social responsibility initiatives, Sun Microsystems said it is working with American Express on a carbon emissions reporting system, so the company can track emissions from all travel categories, including air, car, rail and hotel.

Source: BTN Online

KUALA LUMPUR: The CSR 2007 status report commissioned by Bursa Malaysia reveals that Malaysian private listed companies (PLCs) generally lag behind international best practices in corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure and approach.

Chief executive officer Datuk Yusli Mohamed Yusoff said the stock exchange operator was “not surprised” by the findings.

“We are at the beginning of this journey. We introduced our CSR framework in late 2006. We are still a developing nation and so would expect that our practices would most probably lag behind the best international practice.

“So, I think we need to take the results of the survey within that context,” he told a briefing after announcing the survey results yesterday.

Yusli said although the results confirmed that Malaysian companies still had some way to go, they also showed that about one third of the companies in the sample of 200 “came out reasonably good.”

“For the other two-thirds, we think there is a lot of room for improvement. We will try and do as much as we can in terms of raising the level of awareness and knowledge of CSR among our listed companies.”

According to the survey, high risk PLCs scored the best results. These included companies in industries that are more regulated because of the nature of their business and their inherent social and environmental impact such as tobacco, alcohol and gaming.

The survey also found poor CSR engagement by Malaysian PLCs and on average, the companies surveyed demonstrated a lack of knowledge and awareness of CSR.

The report said the two key areas that required more attention were environment and diversity.

The survey found that only 32.5% of PLCs was either in the above average, good, or leading categories for CSR practices.

At the other end of the spectrum, two-thirds of PLCs ranked either average (27.5%), below average (28.5%) or poor (11.5%). Only 4.5% were in the leading category, with 67% of them being multinational companies.

Adoption of CSR activities were measured based on the four dimensions defined in the Bursa Malaysia CSR framework – marketplace, workplace, environment and community.

Yusli said the CSR framework would serve as a guide for companies and the CSR survey, which Bursa intends to run on a yearly basis, would enable the stock exchange to monitor the progress of CSR practices of listed companies.

On the idea of a CSR index, Yusli said: “It’s something that is (being) done in many developed markets. We would like to create our own CSR index over time, but for us to do so, we need to compile data so the survey is one of the steps we can take to compile a database of what our companies do in terms of CSR.”

He added that it would take one to two years to develop the index.

Bursa engaged CSR Asia to assist in analysing the survey results.

Source: The Star Online

This is the latest ITV Corporate Responsibility Report:

ITV 2007 Report

About ITV:

ITV is the biggest commercial television network in the UK, broadcasting the most talked about television and making a major contribution to the UK’s culture, economy and communities.

The European Commission intends to announce a package of measures next month to stimulate sustainable industrial development across the EU.

The proposals would set framework conditions needed to eliminate market failures and deal with environmental externalities, Didier Herbert, head of the sustainable industrial policy unit of the Commission told a conference organised by the UK’s Environmental Industries Commission in London today.

But, he added, they would aim to avoid prescriptive measures and to minimise any additional ‘red tape’.

The measures would have three main aims, he said: to help bring better products to market; to promote the EU’s fast-growing ‘eco-industries’; and to ensure the EU’s energy-intensive industries remain competitive with their overseas rivals.

At present, he noted, there are several pieces of EU legislation that aim to foster energy-efficient or environmentally friendly products, but an integrated approach is now needed. The new proposals will set ambitious voluntary performance standards and include incentives to reward the best products. Incentives could include public procurement policies, he suggested.

Among the sectors classed as ‘eco-industries’, Herbert cited waste management, renewable energy, environmental consulting, environmentally friendly construction, and air pollution control. Together, such industries employ 3.4 million across the EU and their turnover represents 2.2% of the bloc’s GDP. It is already bigger than the pharmaceutical sector, he noted, yet it is “not yet on the radar screen of the policy-makers”. The new measures would try to identify obstacles facing the sector — in terms of internal market barriers or access to finance, for example — and set framework conditions to overcome them.

In terms of the EU’s climate change policies, Herbert said it was essential that these were matched by measures to preserve Europe’s industrial competitiveness. He acknowledged industry fears that the EU’s mandatory Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) might affect its ability to compete against companies outside the region that face no such constraints on their emissions.

He said voluntary agreements on emissions targets within particular global industry sectors could have a role to play and the Commission would examine how such sectoral agreements might be linked to the EU ETS. He noted that the Commission would report on the risks of ‘carbon leakage’ — industrial emissions being displaced out of the EU because of the ETS — by 2011. In the light of this review, it would then review the level of emission allocations and, perhaps, introduce measures “to neutralise any distortive effects”. But, he stressed that emission reduction commitments for energy-intensive industries would stay.

Source: Environmental Finance

Bloggers have increasingly switched the focus of their online musings to environmental sustainability – and are taking a particular interest in companies’ actions.
Consumers are increasingly using the internet to voice their greenwash concerns. A report from US market research firm Nielsen Online shows the online buzz about sustainability grew 50% in 2007.
Consumers were quick to use the web to condemn greenwashing and voice their scepticism about corporations, researchers found.
“When it comes to the environment, consumers are insisting on both transparency and consistency from the corporations they patronise,” said Jessica Hogue, research director for Nielsen Online.
“Consumer support depends on action as well as perceived sincerity and commitment.”
The most popular greenwashing topics included contradictory actions and false or misleading comments.
Researchers found consumers also took a different view of the same CSR actions depending on the company’s reputation and history.
For example, competitors Wal-Mart and Target both introduced reusable shopping bags, but shoppers were more sceptical of Wal-Mart’s actions because of its association with environmental, labour, and health care issues, the report said.
Blogs from the beginning of last year were dominated by climate change, but as the year progressed, discussions of this and other traditional green topics such as organics and carbon emissions actually declined.
However, bloggers increasingly turned their attention to other environmental topics, such as renewable energy, pollution and sustainable transport.
Ms Hogue said: “As in many sectors, consumers are becoming increasingly vocal online about the issue of sustainability.
“Blogger attention to related issues like pollution, toxins and sustainable agriculture reveal an important intersection between personal health and environmental wellness.”
The most used sustainability blog in 2007 was the Discovery Channel’s TreeHugger site, which posted 4,612 messages related specifically to sustainability last year.
The number two site, Worldchanging, had just 738 by comparison.
Source: Kate Martin from Edie News

The UK’s Office of Fair Trading has suggested that tobacco firms and supermarkets including Asda-Walmart, Sainsbury and Tesco, have been involved in an arrangement to swap information on future tobacco pricing which, whilst falling short of price-fixing, had the same effect for customers and would be, if proved, illegal.

A further allegation, which also involved tobacco firms Imperial Tobacco and Gallaher, was that the companies had an understanding that the price of some brands would be linked to rival brands, hence hampering true price competition.

Tesco responded to the charge saying that it did not believe it had acted in any way that would harm consumers and it looked forward to seeing the detail of the allegations. Imperial Tobacco likewise rejected the charge that it had acted contrary to competition law.

The OFT has said that there should be no assumption that any of the named companies have broken the law, but it would act with heavy fines if any of them were found to do so. The OFT’s caution may have been prompted by the recent payout it was forced to make to supermarket Morrisons after it had incorrectly suggested the company had broken rules over milk pricing and found itself sued for defamation.

Source: Mallenbaker.net