K. Nicole Kindred – Sustainability Consultant

Presentations from last year’s Annual Corporate Responsibility Reporting & Communications Summit are available on the Ethical Corporations website.

The presentations are from a wide variety of sectors discussing reporting and communicating corporate social responsibility including:

• LEGO’s VP of Sustainability on ‘No one reads our CSR reports, what are we going to do now?’
• Vodafone’s Head of CR on ‘How to strike a useful balance between global strategy and local issues.”
• Presentations from ArcelorMittal and Henkel are also available

Ethical Corporations aim is to encourage debate and discussion on responsible business through publishing, conferences and independent research and advisory work.

In addition to the annual conference, they also host a variety of training workshops and publish a magazine.

The current oil spill which is spreading across the Gulf of Mexico has already been an enormous environmental and social tragedy, with the most recent news declaring that the spill is now five times larger than originally believed.

The Guardian has a slideshow which gives a good visual representation of the damage that is currently underway.

As with most oil spills, environmentalists are mostly concerned about the surrounding wildlife that will be impacted by the damage. As this spill is very near the Breton National Wildlife Reserve, a number of wildlife are at risk. The New York Times have set up a map outlining the various birds and marine animals who are threatened by the spill.

This tragic oil spill definitely displays all the costs, including the social and environmental, that are associated with our current reliance on oil.

Engineer’s Without Borders Bridging the Gap 2010 conference is happening on March 27. The conference is a chance for passionate students and professionals to explore how local actions impact extreme poverty. This year’s conference will be held at the Life Sciences Institute on the University of British Columbia Campus.

With the theme “Local Action to Global Impact: Vision, Action, Voice” professional and student delegates will examine the influence of our choices at home, on the development field, in parliament and in boardrooms. The attendees will have a full day of discussion, debate, collaboration and learning, with workshops and sessions led by an engaging line-up of speakers. The conference will close with a keynote address from Dr. Hans Rosling, professor of International Health in Stockholm, Sweden, co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières in Sweden and Director of Gapminder Foundation.

To learn more about the conference, visit bridgingthegap.ewb.ca.

If you haven’t seen Hans Rosling’s TED talk, it is definitely worth watching.

Yesterday, Metro Vancouver, hosted a sustainability community breakfast on Eco-certifications, Eco-labels and Eco-logos in the Food Sector.

The three speakers included Mike McDermid with Ocean Wise at the Vancouver Aquarium, Brad Reid from Certified Organic Associations of BC, and Lloyd Bernhardt with Ethical Bean Fair Trade Coffee.

All three speakers discussed how eco-labelling and certification have become an integral part of their industry and present a number of challenges and opportunities. While there is much confusion around eco-certification and the ensuring of a reliable standard with consistent monitoring, all of the presenters noted that in the end, it is the consumer who has the greatest power in creating change.

One of these examples came from Mike McDermid with Ocean Wise. Ocean Wise was created in 2005 in Vancouver when 16 restaurants signed on to sell sustainable seafood products. This has now spread across Canada with over 300 restaurants on board. When they first started the program, they approached suppliers directly to see if they would like to sign on to promise sustainable fishing. At that time, none of the suppliers were willing to participate; however, since 2005, the number of suppliers that provide sustainably fished seafood has increased from an average of 47.50% sustainable product to 75.26% sustainable. This has been credited to the pressure of chefs and consumers who have demanded more sustainable goods.

 The power of the consumer is the keystone to sustainable business. One of the reason that business has become so unsustainable is because consumers have demanded the cheapest products without considering the impact of these products on the environment, society, and resources. By creating standards and certification processes, consumers now have a way of determining where their products come from and if they are sustainable. It is this increased demand for environmentally and socially sustainable products which has led industry to become more responsible.

As part of the question and answer portion of the breakfast, one of the participants invited the audience to participate in a 90 day challenge to only consume sustainably certified products. By participating in this challenge, it is hoped that consumers, in considering where their products come from, will realize the value of sustainable goods.

Vancity Theatre in Vancouver is currently showing the movies “Blue Gold” and “Flow: For Love of Water” from December 12 to 18.

Both films explore the pressing issue of water as an environmental, social and economic problem that is developing globally.

I saw Flow a couple months ago and Blue Gold last night. I found Blue Gold to be more focused and informative than Flow.

“Blue Gold” is based on a book by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke.

Companies in the U.S. and Western Europe once had unfettered access to the world’s resources, such as raw materials, capital and talent. However, with increasing demand from India, China, Brazil, Russia and other rapidly developing economies, access is no longer assured.

This report from Wharton and The Boston Consulting Group discusses the ways in which the ‘race’ for resources is reshaping global business and how key political and financial trends in emerging economies are likely to affect companies doing business anywhere in the world.

AmEx Members Project was set up by American Express as a way to learn about and donate to community projects.

The site currently allows you to browse a number of different projects in different categories (community development, arts, environment, health, education) and nominate your favorite project for funding.

Not only is it interesting to browse all of the projects that people are involved in, but it is also an interesting example of corporate social responsibility and how a business is interacting with the local community and getting people involved in development projects.

In the 1990′s Saturn had created and was leasing to the public the very first modern electric car in California. However, it was shortly shut down and all the cars were destroyed, not because of safety standards, but it was instead speculated to be pressure from big oil companies and the government. This has all been documented in the film “Who Killed the Electric Car”.

Since the release of that movie, petrol prices have now soared to close to $150/barrel and this in turn has stimulated discussion on the future of our automobiles. The New York Times today released an article “Designing Cars for Low-Carbon Chic”. An idea I liked from this article stresses how “instead of selling cars based on the size of the engine, the car’s relationship with its surroundings and how it interacts with people should be increasingly important”.

While I think it’s sad that we had and destroyed the technology over 10 years ago that could deal with cleaner emissions and the rising cost of fuel, I believe that we now have it in us to continue to pursue these technologies and create a new transport economy that is not dependent on fuel. Returning back to the quote, “the stone age did not end, because we ran out of stone.”. Whether one agrees that there is an oil crises or not, creating more efficient technologies can only be beneficial all around in the long run.

The NY Times recently published an interesting editorial on sustainability and business.

Terms such as “Green”, “Sustainability” and “Eco-friendly” are thrown around a lot by corporations, the government and the general public. While this is encouraging because people are becoming more aware of what is happening in the world, it is also dangerous because there is a greater risk of mis-information and ‘greenwashing’.

Greenwashing, while itself very much a ‘pop phrase’, refers to businesses, government or people misleading others of the environmental benefits of services or products. As being ‘environmental’ becomes more popular ‘greenwashing’ is more likely to occur. If people become more educated and aware, this can be avoided.