Economy, Ecology, and Sustainable Development

Sustainable Development | Kendra Pierre-Louis | Saturday 20th March 2010

The other day I met a coal analyst for the financial industry. Upon discovering his profession I joked that I spend my life trying to put him out of work.

He promptly informed me of three things. First that, mountaintop coal removal has maybe another ten years left in it, before the market goes bust. He didn't explain why, but I'm guessing they're running out of mountain tops that a

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	Go Green with Eco-Labels: Biodegradable Product Certification Ethical Consumption \| Tiffany F \| Friday 19th March 2010 There are a smattering of products on the market listed as 'biodegradable' but how do you know what's legitimate? Companies may provide detailed information on the composting abilities of their products, but scientific research has proven many of these false. This is where the Biodegradable Product Institute (BPI) comes into play. They are a non-profit organization that provides a third-party certification for biodegradable products globally. For the true go green shopper out there, look for this logo on compostable bags, food wares (plates, silverware, cups, and bowls), and the like! Down to the nitty-gritty… The certification has two components: compostable and bio-based content. The compostability factors are tested based on scientific standards, reviewing the product breakdown under various conditions. The bio-based content reviews the amount of 'organic carbon from renewable resources.' Both of these testing procedures follow international standards, so the logo will appear in Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America with a slight presence in Africa. Why should I care? According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 68 milli...

	Is the Press Release Dead? - and other new media challenges Sustainable Development \| Sara Wolcott \| Friday 19th March 2010 In the fifth session of the day - post tea with cream scones - JM's own Deb Berman discussed moving beyond the press release - and integrating social media more seriously into any company or NGO. Which is, essentially, what JustMeans does. Among other ideas, she suggests bringing in the young people's knowledge to the top manager's boardroom. For larger companies, she suggests the answers are all in front of you: the programs tend to exist already in your company, its just a question of blowing it out of the water to an entire new level. Use competitions to bring people in - and to open up company CSR reports. Press releases aren't exactly the most popular forms of corporate communication. Neville Hobson of WeisComm Group discussed the 'social media press release' - taking the traditional press release, slicing and dicing it in different ways that are useful in an online world. That means it can easily be cut and pasted in an easy way for the recipient of the content who might decide they want to do write about it. Links to multimedia - from youtube to delicious to twitter - make it that much easier. He suggests the press release still has a rol...

	New CSR Report: Doing Climate Change Business Better Climate Change \| Brian Kahn \| Friday 19th March 2010 There have been some high profile companies recently, including energy heavy hitter BP, that have stepped away from dealing with climate change. However, corporate engagement with climate change is not dead. Not even close. Just this week, Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) has just released a report providing guidelines on how companies can improve their engagement with climate change and public policy. The report identifies three areas of climate reporting businesses can do better. The first two are the usual suspects: greenhouse gas accounting and areas that present both risks and opportunities related to climate change. The third, and increasingly important area, is engaging national and state level politicians on climate policy. At this point, climate legislation is inevitable. When it will happen isn't very clear, but when it does, it will very much define what kinds of action companies have to take to reduce emissions and increase efficiency. The earlier the legislation, the less strict the caps will be on greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, its in businesses' best interest to get a framewor...

	How Social Media is Redefining Activism? Live Blogging from JM Conference Sustainable Development \| Sara Wolcott \| Friday 19th March 2010 JM's very own Marcia Stepanek is hosting the panel on how social media is redefining activism, at JM's Stakeholder Conference in doing so, she's bringing us down to one of the main challenges of this 'new' field: an abundance of information (in a time when there is a scarcity of formally abundant natural resources) - which managers and others don't know how to handle. And both the collaboration and the confrontation is just beginning. She talked about the challenges - especially as advocacy groups increasingly take on the role of the media. And that power sharing is essential in a hyper-connected world. This is Part 3 of my Series on this fascinating conference. One of her panelist, Dr Dan McQuillan, co-founder of Social Innovation Camp, talked about neither collaboration and confrontation but construction. He suggested that it's not really about engagement -its about social deficit. People 'engage' on issues on which there is a 'deficit' - one's overall impact on the world. He challenged organisations to realise its not about the organisations in the first place - its about why the organisation are there - the issues that people care about - which most of...

	Sizzle your sustainability by engaging with your employees Sustainable Development \| Sara Wolcott \| Friday 19th March 2010 Face it: we all know how to ignore our bosses - just like we knew how to ignore our parents. But most companies have developed communication strategies that try to control communications and are still in the 'tell them' attitude. At Justmeans' Social Networking Conference, Tim Johns from Unilever is talking about the need to change that 'tell them' attitude within the organisation as well as between organisations and the external world. This is Part III of my series on one of the most exciting conferences about how to engage stakeholders with social media - and develop with a quickly developing world. Tim Johns says that current engagement with employees is at an all time low - a result of a lack of trust and inappropriate IT. What he's done is having internal platforms including 'my site zones' which work like internal fbs, giving them the ability to self-find the people they want. This is flattening the hierarchy of the organisations. Giving the information back to the people, and helping them to use it. There's often some 'senior management nervousness' in this process. Senior management too often thinks that they can control what's happening. He empha...

	Help!! How can we improve sustainability reporting? Social Enterprise \| Jo Confino \| Friday 19th March 2010 Last summer the Guardian launched an interactive sustainability reporting website that attempts to rethink stakeholder accountability by providing regular updates, a forum for debate as well as being honest about difficult issues being faced by our company and the sector in general. We have also become the first company in the world to have our stories regularly audited. This provides us with constant challenge, rather than waiting for an independent review once a year. We are now looking at how to develop the website further and would love some feedback about what you like and what you feel is missing. I will be writing a blog about the comments, so the more, the merrier! Thanks in advance. Jo Confino is Executive Editor and the Head of Sustainable Development for the Guardian.

	Live from Social Media & Stakeholder Engagement Conference: M&S's Plan A Sustainable Development \| Sara Wolcott \| Friday 19th March 2010 So after an interesting first panel of speakers, some of which I captured in my first blog of the morning, the conference is now moving on to a great case study highlighted at today's Social Media & Stakeholder Engagement Conference - Session 2. Several years ago, Marks & Spencer realised that its customers were not clear why they trusted M&S. So their director of Internal Communications, Robert Nuttall, figured out what were the great things that M&S did - and they started telling the stories, from 'were reducing salt in our food faster than you can say 'sodium chloride' - and were amazed by the positive response. And they started the process of starting Plan A - 'because there is no plan B'. It was supposed to be bold -somewhere where they've never been before. It was a 'scary' process, where managers were asked to put ideas out that they had no idea how to achieve but that was, somehow, achievable. Their goals: efficiency, motivation, innovation and customers who are proud to shop at M&S. At the time, they had no idea how it would work. Their areas: climate change, waste, raw materials, fair partner and health. You know, the small stuff. <...

	Live from Social Media & Stakeholder Engagement: moving away from phony Sustainable Development \| Sara Wolcott \| Friday 19th March 2010 I knew he was coming, but I was still impressed to see Bjorn Edlund, former Executive VP of Royal Dutch Shell speaking at today's Social Media and Stakeholder Engagement Conference (network online!). He got involved with Justmeans in part because of the fascinating and long conversation about Ken Saro-Wiwa. He clearly approved of the chance to engage with the new social media. I remember when he first joined the conversation; it was a bit thrilling, being able to actually 'talk' with a senior level manager about sustainable development and other issues that we cared about. He reflected on the struggles that the organisations went through as it tried to understand and decide how to work with social media. He defined the different types of media - old media: corporate sites, publications. Bought media: advertisements, billboards, etc. Earned Media: interactions with journalists and other 'traditional' media. Social Media: overlays all of this, whether it is consumers who are filling up their car or citizens outraged about tar sands. There's a tension - in the 'old days', the technology and the finance is what matters. But in the 'new world', the '...

	Social Media and Stakeholder Engagement: Justmeans Conference Social Enterprise \| Marcia Stepanek \| Friday 19th March 2010 Customers, employees, activists and other business stakeholders are demanding far more from companies than ever before, and social media are helping to empower these stakeholders to foster new forms of engagement. I'm at Justmeans' Social Media and Stakeholder Engagement conference in London today to hear some of the UK's top businesspeople compare notes on what works and what doesn't in their early efforts to use and build online communities to engage employees and customers in more meaningful ways. "There's a new revolution in the way business is being done," Justmeans Founder and CEO Martin Smith said in kicking off the conference today at The Brewery in central London. "Companies cannot adapt to the challenges of 21st century without engaging their stakeholders. A wider array of issues will be put on companies over the next decade, and customers, employees, activists and others will be demanding more. We're entering a time of immense challenges. We need to have an all-hands-on deck approach to solving global problems; social media and stakeholder engagement is the best way, we believe, to catalyze action." Among highlights (see also ...

	Second hand smoke more harmful to kids' health than thought Health \| Alisa Ulferts \| Friday 19th March 2010 If you live in New York City, you are treated every couple of weeks to a powerful new television ad highlighting the different ways smoking harms your health. The most visceral ad, the one that really makes my stomach turn, is the one where surgeons remove a piece of plaque build-up from a smoker's artery. Grasping the eggshell-colored gristle with a metal tong, the surgeon's gloved hand wiggles the bloody plaque free and turns it so the camera can get a better shot. That commercial has always hit me in the gut, but the results of a new study give me even more reason to feel sick when I see it: the arterial damage depicted is happening to kids who inhale the second-hand smoke of their parents. A group of Finnish researchers has found that the health of kids as young as 13 can be seriously harmed: They can develop early signs of hardened and clogged arteries as a result of second-hand smoke exposure. Those kids are also more likely to have other health risk factors, such as for heart disease, the researchers said. The authors of the new study examined 494 children and found that those exposed to secondhand smoke between the ages of 8 and 13 were more likely to show th...

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	Go Green with Eco-Labels: Biodegradable Product Certification Ethical Consumption \| Tiffany F \| Friday 19th March 2010 There are a smattering of products on the market listed as 'biodegradable' but how do you know what's legitimate? Companies may provide detailed information on the composting abilities of their products, but scientific research has proven many of these false. This is where the Biodegradable Product Institute (BPI) comes into play. They are a non-profit organization that provides a third-party certification for biodegradable products globally. For the true go green shopper out there, look for this logo on compostable bags, food wares (plates, silverware, cups, and bowls), and the like! Down to the nitty-gritty… The certification has two components: compostable and bio-based content. The compostability factors are tested based on scientific standards, reviewing the product breakdown under various conditions. The bio-based content reviews the amount of 'organic carbon from renewable resources.' Both of these testing procedures follow international standards, so the logo will appear in Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America with a slight presence in Africa. Why should I care? According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 68 milli...

	Is the Press Release Dead? - and other new media challenges Sustainable Development \| Sara Wolcott \| Friday 19th March 2010 In the fifth session of the day - post tea with cream scones - JM's own Deb Berman discussed moving beyond the press release - and integrating social media more seriously into any company or NGO. Which is, essentially, what JustMeans does. Among other ideas, she suggests bringing in the young people's knowledge to the top manager's boardroom. For larger companies, she suggests the answers are all in front of you: the programs tend to exist already in your company, its just a question of blowing it out of the water to an entire new level. Use competitions to bring people in - and to open up company CSR reports. Press releases aren't exactly the most popular forms of corporate communication. Neville Hobson of WeisComm Group discussed the 'social media press release' - taking the traditional press release, slicing and dicing it in different ways that are useful in an online world. That means it can easily be cut and pasted in an easy way for the recipient of the content who might decide they want to do write about it. Links to multimedia - from youtube to delicious to twitter - make it that much easier. He suggests the press release still has a rol...

	New CSR Report: Doing Climate Change Business Better Climate Change \| Brian Kahn \| Friday 19th March 2010 There have been some high profile companies recently, including energy heavy hitter BP, that have stepped away from dealing with climate change. However, corporate engagement with climate change is not dead. Not even close. Just this week, Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) has just released a report providing guidelines on how companies can improve their engagement with climate change and public policy. The report identifies three areas of climate reporting businesses can do better. The first two are the usual suspects: greenhouse gas accounting and areas that present both risks and opportunities related to climate change. The third, and increasingly important area, is engaging national and state level politicians on climate policy. At this point, climate legislation is inevitable. When it will happen isn't very clear, but when it does, it will very much define what kinds of action companies have to take to reduce emissions and increase efficiency. The earlier the legislation, the less strict the caps will be on greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, its in businesses' best interest to get a framewor...

	How Social Media is Redefining Activism? Live Blogging from JM Conference Sustainable Development \| Sara Wolcott \| Friday 19th March 2010 JM's very own Marcia Stepanek is hosting the panel on how social media is redefining activism, at JM's Stakeholder Conference in doing so, she's bringing us down to one of the main challenges of this 'new' field: an abundance of information (in a time when there is a scarcity of formally abundant natural resources) - which managers and others don't know how to handle. And both the collaboration and the confrontation is just beginning. She talked about the challenges - especially as advocacy groups increasingly take on the role of the media. And that power sharing is essential in a hyper-connected world. This is Part 3 of my Series on this fascinating conference. One of her panelist, Dr Dan McQuillan, co-founder of Social Innovation Camp, talked about neither collaboration and confrontation but construction. He suggested that it's not really about engagement -its about social deficit. People 'engage' on issues on which there is a 'deficit' - one's overall impact on the world. He challenged organisations to realise its not about the organisations in the first place - its about why the organisation are there - the issues that people care about - which most of...

	Sizzle your sustainability by engaging with your employees Sustainable Development \| Sara Wolcott \| Friday 19th March 2010 Face it: we all know how to ignore our bosses - just like we knew how to ignore our parents. But most companies have developed communication strategies that try to control communications and are still in the 'tell them' attitude. At Justmeans' Social Networking Conference, Tim Johns from Unilever is talking about the need to change that 'tell them' attitude within the organisation as well as between organisations and the external world. This is Part III of my series on one of the most exciting conferences about how to engage stakeholders with social media - and develop with a quickly developing world. Tim Johns says that current engagement with employees is at an all time low - a result of a lack of trust and inappropriate IT. What he's done is having internal platforms including 'my site zones' which work like internal fbs, giving them the ability to self-find the people they want. This is flattening the hierarchy of the organisations. Giving the information back to the people, and helping them to use it. There's often some 'senior management nervousness' in this process. Senior management too often thinks that they can control what's happening. He empha...

	Help!! How can we improve sustainability reporting? Social Enterprise \| Jo Confino \| Friday 19th March 2010 Last summer the Guardian launched an interactive sustainability reporting website that attempts to rethink stakeholder accountability by providing regular updates, a forum for debate as well as being honest about difficult issues being faced by our company and the sector in general. We have also become the first company in the world to have our stories regularly audited. This provides us with constant challenge, rather than waiting for an independent review once a year. We are now looking at how to develop the website further and would love some feedback about what you like and what you feel is missing. I will be writing a blog about the comments, so the more, the merrier! Thanks in advance. Jo Confino is Executive Editor and the Head of Sustainable Development for the Guardian.

	Live from Social Media & Stakeholder Engagement Conference: M&S's Plan A Sustainable Development \| Sara Wolcott \| Friday 19th March 2010 So after an interesting first panel of speakers, some of which I captured in my first blog of the morning, the conference is now moving on to a great case study highlighted at today's Social Media & Stakeholder Engagement Conference - Session 2. Several years ago, Marks & Spencer realised that its customers were not clear why they trusted M&S. So their director of Internal Communications, Robert Nuttall, figured out what were the great things that M&S did - and they started telling the stories, from 'were reducing salt in our food faster than you can say 'sodium chloride' - and were amazed by the positive response. And they started the process of starting Plan A - 'because there is no plan B'. It was supposed to be bold -somewhere where they've never been before. It was a 'scary' process, where managers were asked to put ideas out that they had no idea how to achieve but that was, somehow, achievable. Their goals: efficiency, motivation, innovation and customers who are proud to shop at M&S. At the time, they had no idea how it would work. Their areas: climate change, waste, raw materials, fair partner and health. You know, the small stuff. <...

	Live from Social Media & Stakeholder Engagement: moving away from phony Sustainable Development \| Sara Wolcott \| Friday 19th March 2010 I knew he was coming, but I was still impressed to see Bjorn Edlund, former Executive VP of Royal Dutch Shell speaking at today's Social Media and Stakeholder Engagement Conference (network online!). He got involved with Justmeans in part because of the fascinating and long conversation about Ken Saro-Wiwa. He clearly approved of the chance to engage with the new social media. I remember when he first joined the conversation; it was a bit thrilling, being able to actually 'talk' with a senior level manager about sustainable development and other issues that we cared about. He reflected on the struggles that the organisations went through as it tried to understand and decide how to work with social media. He defined the different types of media - old media: corporate sites, publications. Bought media: advertisements, billboards, etc. Earned Media: interactions with journalists and other 'traditional' media. Social Media: overlays all of this, whether it is consumers who are filling up their car or citizens outraged about tar sands. There's a tension - in the 'old days', the technology and the finance is what matters. But in the 'new world', the '...

	Social Media and Stakeholder Engagement: Justmeans Conference Social Enterprise \| Marcia Stepanek \| Friday 19th March 2010 Customers, employees, activists and other business stakeholders are demanding far more from companies than ever before, and social media are helping to empower these stakeholders to foster new forms of engagement. I'm at Justmeans' Social Media and Stakeholder Engagement conference in London today to hear some of the UK's top businesspeople compare notes on what works and what doesn't in their early efforts to use and build online communities to engage employees and customers in more meaningful ways. "There's a new revolution in the way business is being done," Justmeans Founder and CEO Martin Smith said in kicking off the conference today at The Brewery in central London. "Companies cannot adapt to the challenges of 21st century without engaging their stakeholders. A wider array of issues will be put on companies over the next decade, and customers, employees, activists and others will be demanding more. We're entering a time of immense challenges. We need to have an all-hands-on deck approach to solving global problems; social media and stakeholder engagement is the best way, we believe, to catalyze action." Among highlights (see also ...

	Second hand smoke more harmful to kids' health than thought Health \| Alisa Ulferts \| Friday 19th March 2010 If you live in New York City, you are treated every couple of weeks to a powerful new television ad highlighting the different ways smoking harms your health. The most visceral ad, the one that really makes my stomach turn, is the one where surgeons remove a piece of plaque build-up from a smoker's artery. Grasping the eggshell-colored gristle with a metal tong, the surgeon's gloved hand wiggles the bloody plaque free and turns it so the camera can get a better shot. That commercial has always hit me in the gut, but the results of a new study give me even more reason to feel sick when I see it: the arterial damage depicted is happening to kids who inhale the second-hand smoke of their parents. A group of Finnish researchers has found that the health of kids as young as 13 can be seriously harmed: They can develop early signs of hardened and clogged arteries as a result of second-hand smoke exposure. Those kids are also more likely to have other health risk factors, such as for heart disease, the researchers said. The authors of the new study examined 494 children and found that those exposed to secondhand smoke between the ages of 8 and 13 were more likely to show th...