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In the third CSR Breakfast roundtable, hosted by Ethical Performance and London-based consultancy Lumina CR, an invited group of senior media industry professionals discussed the ethical issues facing their companies. Chatham House rules applied and none of their quotes are attributed. Reporter: Nick Spencer

The media, in all its manifestations, is playing an increasingly dominant role in all our lives. Sometimes visibly, whether via apps, 4G mobile phone technology or the streaming of films and TV programmes. And, occasionally, as in the case of certain phone-hacking News of the World journalists, so subtly that their exploits remained undetected for years.

When Lord Justice Leveson was charged with examining ‘the culture, practice and ethics’ of the press, some may have wondered whether he would find any. But while arguments rage over Leveson’s recommendation for statutory regulation of the press, CSR professionals in the wider media world have a raft of ethical issues to consider.

Media companies hold vast amounts of data on their customers – with potential to use it for good or ill. Should their programmes attempt to lead society or reflect it?  And where does that leave questions of editorial independence, responsibility and sustainability?

Meanwhile, the proliferation of media platforms has resulted in a fragmentation of audiences, while Twitter and the explosion in social media begs the question as to how one actually defines what a journalist is any more.

As one speaker noted, the media’s role in the digital age – with implications for regulation – is a conversation for the whole of society to have. And it is a conversation that is only just beginning.

‘The only way is Ethics’
The sanctity of editorial independence is a good starting point, with one head of CSR outlining the problems of telling programme makers what to do – even if the subject is something as important as, say, climate change.

“It’s very hard for a company to say, ‘you will devote five per cent of airtime to environmental issues’,” he said. “I can’t change editorial policy but I can educate staff about what they can do here or at home. So what I’ve tried to do is put our house in order here.

“When I started, we didn’t recycle anything but I have seen instances where the ideas we have here do end up on screen.”

A stakeholder engagement manager at a TV company said the question of whether media companies should promote sustainability on their channels polarised opinion, both for and against.

“We have been doing programmes around rainforests and climate change for over three years. We have been trying to learn what makes a programme watchable and how it inspires people in a way that doesn’t make them switch over to the sport because it’s all doom and gloom.

“We are still learning about how you make the subject entertaining and inspiring but we are getting better at lifting our ratings.”

There was no dissenting from the view that a celebrity name was a good way to attract viewers but it was pointed out that important issues can be included subtly – there is no need for a sledgehammer.

One speaker said: “You can’t switch one of those house building programmes on without hearing about solar panels, so I think those issues are very well covered.”

The head of sustainability at an advertising company indicated a way in which his business, which is all about aspiration, could help.

“It’s not about raising awareness among the public – which is already significant – it is about how we move them on to a certain way of behaving. The media has always led in this. It has made smoking uncool while it is really cool to put your seatbelt on.

“It is no good if Sky has fantastic programmes about, say, rainforests and all we do around it is sell cars that pollute the environment. Quite often good work by programming is undone when it is embedded in advertising encouraging a more unsustainable way of living.

“Ultimately we make stuff cool and sexy so we can sell it, and we can surely also do it around this topic.”

It sounded, said another speaker, like a risky strategy for advertisers. “Absolutely,” he agreed, “but I wasn’t hired to be boring. We are here to change these organisations, not to improve our recycling by one per cent!

“The big impact of media is on the attitudes and behaviour of people. If all we did was reflect society, that would be a sorry state of affairs.”

Mention of a successful project between Homebase and the Eden Project prompted an interesting exchange on the gap between consumers’ awareness and their behaviour.

Homeowners were given £1,000 to insulate their homes but subsequent research indicated that people from the lowest socio-economic groups made the biggest changes to their lifestyles, while people with the greenest values changed their behaviour the least.

According to the advertising company’s head of sustainability, the two biggest obstacles to change are routine and money/affordability. But routine is king: human beings are creatures of habit.

Supermarkets were full of greener and more ethical alternatives, he said. “Our task is to try to make sure it’s not more expensive to live slightly better and slightly greener, which it currently is. Ethical media should be about offering opportunities for behaviour change.”

The ways in which media companies can reach their audience has never been greater, so what is the trick to engaging consumers? “Make it normal, fun,” and “It all follows from education” were two comments.

More controversially, companies hold a lot of sensitive information on consumers. What they do with that data will be one of the big challenges of the next couple of years, according to one head of sustainability.

“For example, can we use the data to influence, guide or even sell to advertisers. We could help to influence content. As the landscape changes and consumers do more online, it is going to throw up all sorts of challenges.

“There are commercial opportunities but if there is some bad stuff on our network, we can use that data [such as IP addresses] to help solve crimes.”

‘Churnalism’
One consequence of the digital age is the advent of the citizen journalist, with implications for understanding where a message originated and a blurring of the line between fact and opinion. Does anyone know how to define journalism these days? And can anyone be one?

“The rise of new media and new technology means that we are constantly having to redefine what journalism and media is,” said a policy analyst from a business publisher.

“You may have journalist exemptions [under proposed EU legislation] regarding freedom of expression, but then what is a journalist? A blogger? Someone writing for a newspaper?”

She added: “If people come to trust advertising more, because they are being marketed to in a better way, through profiling, maybe they will be open to other advertising campaigns with, say, environmental points of view.’’

However, there are practical difficulties in actually reaching an audience when the number of TV stations has expanded from three to many hundred in the past 30 years. A media consultant said the reach of nightly news bulletins had almost halved, from a high of 25million.

“As a society, we don’t get stories framed in a single, collective way any more. We can seek out stories that are pre-digested into our particular framing.

“That sounds great on one level, but it means the debate becomes increasingly polarised, which I don’t think policymakers and media companies have quite got their heads round yet.

“We don’t have a national water cooler any more around which we all meet and talk.”

Meanwhile, research has shown that, over time, the number of print journalists had halved while the quantity of news stories had gone up by a factor of three. The implications for accuracy and “churnalism”  – journalism by press release – were obvious.

Lord McAlpine’s numerous libel actions – including against Twitter users - after a defamatory Newsnight report prompted a Project & Communications Manager to say: “We now have to think about what people want to do with the stories we produce, not just the stories themselves.”

When the discussion turned to practical examples of sustainable policies, there were several positive stories: Sky’s Sky Ride scheme, for instance. This has prompted one million more people to cycle regularly and complements their sponsorship of a successful professional team.

“It was about inspiring people to take action because we recognise that, as a media company, we had a broader role to play,” said a Sky representative. “We don’t talk about getting fit and losing weight because we know that it doesn’t inspire people, but we talk about getting on your bike and having fun and creating opportunities for people to do that. We know that it has resulted in change but it is fundamentally addressing sustainability in society.”

Today, people are as likely to be connected, digitally, to someone on the other side of the world as they are to talk to their neighbour. It is an exhilarating though unnerving thought. “People are now starting to think about the impact of the digital world on their families,” said one head of sustainability. “Child protection, sure, but also cultural changes: telly health, obesity, families not talking around the dinner table. People want to really understand what all this means for the families of tomorrow.”

A media consultant concluded: “We are at the beginning of a very complicated societal debate which is going to involve not just the media companies, but policymakers, commentators and society at large. It involves regulation, editorial independence and transparency, but we are right at the very start.”

CSR Breakfast is an invitation-only roundtable discussion of ethical issues. This report reflects the discussions at the third event, on the media industry, in February. For details, visit the CSR Breakfast LinkedIn group at www.linkedin.com

It’s been said that teaching is an act of love. For teachers who enjoy teaching privately, the proof of that truism is in the hours of extra work they do each week to prepare for the class. Those evening classes in cooking techniques, Spanish conversation and relaxing Hatha yoga come with their own share of after-hours paperwork … as well as student enrollment duties, door-to-door marketing, sales phone calls, student consults about payment schedules, and the many other potential headaches that makes it possible for teachers to offer great courses.

Meet WeTeachMe

WeTeachMe, a new Melbourne-based company, provides an innovative online method to schedule, promote and manage the booking of private courses. It fills those areas that self-employed teachers often find the most challenging and energy draining, by automating the process from a website that potential students can access freely.

According to co-founder Kym Huynh, the company was launched in December 2012 after some soul-searching reflections by several of its founders.

“One of my co-founders woke up and decided one day that he needed to change the oil in his car. The problem was, he actually wanted someone (else) to teach him how to do it, so he could have that experience. But finding someone who could do that was actually very difficult. So he thought, OK, wouldn’t it be good to connect with someone who could?”

At the same time says Huynh, a friend of his who showed great promise as an artist wanted to start a business, but had no idea how to handle the administrative end of the daunting process.

“I thought, if we could structure something that would help her share her passion, that would be rewarding both intrinsically and financially, then that could be a really powerful message we could send to the community.”

Interactive program for teachers and students

The WeTeachMe concept says Huynh, thrives not only because it fills a niche, but because of the interactive characteristics they’ve been able to build into the platform, and which complement both the teacher and the potential student, such as maintaining a list of students’ interests and preferences, and which of the instructor’s courses are the most attended.

“We found most people were running into the same problems over and over again, such as payment handling, how to market their courses, how to efficiently manage all the admin processes so they could just focus on what they love, which is sharing their knowledge.”

At the same time, the website makes it easier for students to find classes and to network with professionals within their areas of interest. The Melbourne WeTeachMe page for example, provides classes ranging from walking tours to self defense instruction, although its most popular topics generally focus on cooking and the arts. Huynh points out that WeTeachMe is designed to accommodate just about any interest or venue there is, making it suitable for a wide range of student interests. This can be a powerful feature for independent teachers with niche specialties.

The Sharing Economy

The WeTeachMe concept also complements the goals of the sharing economy movement, which Huynh says has been gaining momentum in Melbourne.

“In Australia, what we’re seeing is there is a (shift) in collaborative consumption types of businesses where people share knowledge, people share resources. Rather than focus on the consumption of resources now, which can be seen as a selfish thing, what we see now is we can actually consume resources and share the resources at the same time. At least part of this movement is gaining quite a bit of traction in Australia, particularly with the number of companies launching under this (concept).”

But Huynh says that isn’t the only reason he’s put his support behind WeTeachMe.

“More generally why I work on WeTeachMe, and why I believe in it so much, is that in any instance in an economy where there has been significant improvement or advancement has always been underepinned by a free flow of knowledge and education in the community itself.

“And what we’ve seen is when people in the community are educated and are actively learning, and are actively passionate, are actively curious, what you see is this uplift effect. And now more than ever, we have the opportunity to empower individual members in the community to share their pockets of knowledge.”

United States and Canada markets

Since the launch last year, the four founding members, Cheng Zhu, Martin Kemka, Demi Markogiannaki and Huynh, have realized  that there is potential demand for their program not only in Australia (where it has already launched in more than four cities), but in North America. Huynh says he expects they will be able to open business in the U.S. in 2013.

As to cost, Huynh says the company takes a small administrative fee that is incrementally set according to the size of a course fee. A class that costs $50 AU per student for example, has an administrative charge of $2, whereas a class that costs $500 AU per student is charged $10. Huynh says the fees are deliberately kept low to be fair to beginning instructors who are just launching their careers.

“We're not doing it for the money itself. The reason we’re doing it is essentially changing the way knowledge is shared within our communities.”

He adds that as instructors gain more students and their revenue increases, he hopes that repeat users will keep the fledgling company in mind, and agree to increase their fees. It’s an attitude that is meant to reflect the ethics of the sharing economy, what he calls “paying it forward.”

It will be interesting to see how WeTeachMe fares when it debuts in North America. As one who has taught in both the public and private arenas, this writer can appreciate the challenges of the private marketplace, especially when it comes to teaching something you love to share. WeTeachMe’s first hurdle may be its financial conversion system: At present, fees are calculated in Australian dollars, something that may be a stumbling block to U.S.-based teachers and students.

Still, WeTeachMe offers a service that may be valuable to hard-to-market courses, and makes it easier for teachers who teach engaging courses to focus on what they do best. And that, as Huynh points out, gets to the core of what a functioning sharing economy is all about.

Image credit: Pexels

Submitted by Guest Contributor

By Carol Cone, Edelman Business + Social Purpose Global Practice Chair with Larry Koffler, EVP Business + Social Purpose

Dan Edelman’s passing had a profound effect on so many – his family, friends, colleagues, and our industry. While I have only been at the firm for two and a half years, it deeply touched me too.

I was extremely fortunate to have met Dan, as well as his lovely wife Ruth, a few times in recent years.  The most memorable was an intimate “interview” lunch at his home where we had a dynamic conversation to vet my joining the firm.

Dan peppered me with questions: How much did I believe in the strategy of business being a positive force in the world?  What were my greatest career achievements and what were my aspirations at Edelman? What was my work style? My biggest failure and what did I learn from it? My values?

After a half hour, Richard “rescued” me. While he knew his dad would be charming, he also knew he would relentlessly probe to see if I would be a strong fit for the firm. In his late 80’s at the time, Dan never missed a beat.

The Demanding Entrepreneur

That luncheon experience was pure Dan Edelman. He was demanding, tough and direct. He wanted to see if my values and work ethic, love of knowledge and events, matched those of the firm: collaboration, hard work, entrepreneurial spirit, imaginative thinking, courage, integrity and a singular focus on the client. 

When my colleague Larry Koffler, started as an intern 20 years ago, Edelman was an entrepreneurial, creative, hard-working family-owned mid-sized agency. The patriarch was firmly in charge.

Most memorable for him, he says, was Dan’s ability to articulate his vision for both the agency and the public relations industry while demonstrating the importance of sweating the details. His memos would highlight the big picture: observations from his global travels, how our independence would enable us to best serve our clients, and how our aspirations were always to be the best, regardless of size.

They would also outline in great detail what we were doing well and where we needed improve - from prospecting to pitching.

Dan was especially interested in why I had sold my company. He loved founders and entrepreneurs.  Persistence and curiosity were key attributes he sought in potential hires.

Staying True to Truth: From the Big Picture to the Finer Points

Core to his values and Edelman’s success was independence:

“Our major goal is client service not service to Wall Street. Our independence allows us to be feisty, hard hitting, creative and honest. We are the only ones in the position to tell our clients the truth,” versus an ad agency or holding company’s PR division, he added. “Public relations is a field onto its own. It can only be practiced properly from a position of independence.”

When Edelman became the world's largest PR firm, Jack O’Dwyer declared:  “Independence won. Edelman was the only big firm that stayed true to the craft and didn’t sell out.”

In 1997, recalls Koffler:

“Edelman won the United States Tennis Association account and part of our initial remit was counsel surrounding the naming and announcement of the new stadium at the USTA National Tennis Center. There were two major factions for the name of the stadium – one advocating for a corporate naming deal to help bring in revenue and one for the former US Open champion and humanitarian Arthur Ashe.

While we were strongly in favor of the latter, the momentum was drifting toward the former. The final decision was to be taken at a board meeting, which Dan was invited to attend. At the meeting, he made the big picture case for naming it after Arthur Ashe, successfully swaying the board members.

Several weeks later, during the US Open, Dan sent us a note diving into the details of the account, which included a summary of what John McEnroe could be doing better in the announcer’s booth! We treaded very carefully on that one.”

Leading with Love: Dan Edelman's Values for Work and Life

Dan was always available and extremely generous with advice to aspiring and young PR practitioners. His approach to life was grounded in a commitment to be the very best he could be at work, as a father, husband and community member. His advice to be the very best included:

• Read everyday. Devour important books, newspapers, magazines, blogs.
• Learn to write. Well.
• Remember the importance of networking.
• Volunteer for a hospital, museum or nonprofit.
• Continue your education throughout your life.
• Keep in shape and exercise regularly.
• Be creative. Strive for the big idea. Be realistic but dare to be different.
• Every good answer begins with proper research. Start with penetrating analysis of the problem and objectives.
• Work hard. There is no such thing as a shortcut.
• Work hard, but don’t be a workaholic. Be sure you have a rich and balanced social life.
• Love and be loved.  That experience keeps refreshing you and helps you to reach even higher levels of achievement.
• Have fun.

These words of wisdom permeate the company’s culture, which has become a magnet for amazing and dedicated people, as well as outstanding and longstanding clients.  Sure, Edelman is a hard driving business with high goals, but it also has a special global family feeling.

“Dan had a code of ethics and values that were unshakable,” stated Richard in the book he commissioned to celebrate the firm’s 60^th anniversary, Edelman and the Rise of Public Relations. It is a book I would highly recommend for those working in communications.

“Hire the best talent and retain them by giving them the chance to be entrepreneurial. Invest in proprietary IP and give clients access to it. Expand in new markets by reinvesting all earnings each year.”

“Dan was indomitable,” Richard continued. “He continually strived to be better, always humble, one client at a time, one office at a time.”

In the words of Pam Talbot, Edelman’s U.S. CEO from 1996 – 2008:

“Oddly business is about love.  You can’t lead without loving the people you are leading and loving the work that you do.”

Edelman has certainly changed over the past couple of decades – but most notably, it is now the world’s largest public relations agency with 66 offices and 4,500 employees. It remains, however, entrepreneurial, creative and hard working – just like Dan.

Dignity is a driving force for sanitation in India, alongside public health and convenience.

When former Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh complained, with characteristic pithiness, that there were “more temples than toilets” in India, he sparked a political storm with Hindu nationalists. But he also put his finger on one of the country’s most stubborn problems. Decent sanitation is far from a given: only 14 percent of the rural population have access to a latrine, and diarrhoea kills 1,600 people a day, mainly children.

“This is not just a public health problem,” says Chandrashekhar Dasgupta, Distinguished Fellow at TERI. “It’s a human rights issue.” Public education programmes can help, but they stand more of a chance of making a difference if there are public toilets too. Dasgupta points to the success of the Sulabh composting toilet, which captures and processes the waste so it can be reused as a fertiliser. Over 7,000 installations are in place around the country: typically men pay half a rupee, while women and children go free. Persuading people to pay has been less of an issue than some predicted, says Dasgupta: “I think it’s not simply a question of convenience but of dignity. People are prepared to pay for dignity.”

Clean water, too, is far from a given in India: over half the population lack access to it. This leaves them vulnerable to diseases such as dysentery, cholera and typhoid. Which means that effective, affordable water purification is a vital step in improving the health of hundreds of millions of Indians. The Pureit device, produced by Unilever, provides “as safe as boiled” water at a cost of around 26 paisa (about a quarter of a rupee) per litre. It does so through an innovative combination of a microfibre mesh, carbon trap and programmed chlorine release to kill germs and bacteria and clean water to international drinking quality standards. The water then goes through a ‘polisher’ to remove chlorine traces and and other odours.

A study by the National Institute of Epidemiology in the slums of Chennai showed that households with a Pureit had 50 percent less incidence of diarrhoea than ones without. Around 30 million people have gained access to safe drinking water by using Pureit since 2005.

Meanwhile, Unilever is extending its programme to encourage hand-washing, while simultaneously marketing its Lifebuoy products range. Health workers travel round schools staging demonstrations using a powder called ‘glo-germ.’ It works like this. The children wash their hands with water alone, and then the powder is sprinkled on their palms. The health worker shines an ultraviolet (UV) light, and the hands ‘glow’ where traces of dirt remain. Then they repeat the process with the soap, and the UV test comes up clear. It has proved a persuasive tool for people who had assumed that no visible dirt means no germs.

Make it easy, make it desirable, make it a habit

The scheme focuses particularly on children on the basis that they will ‘infect’ their families with good practice. It uses a range of tried and tested behavioural techniques (‘make it easy, make it desirable, make it a habit’) to help hand-washing become second nature, and so far the evidence suggests it does indeed take hold. Follow-up studies show that pursuing good hand hygiene practices can result in 25 percent fewer cases of diarrhoea and 46 percent fewer eye infections, compared with a control group. And children who do so miss over 25 percent fewer days from school due to illness.

The initiative has its distant roots in the early days of Lifebuoy in the 19th century, when William Lever, one of the company’s founders, launched it as a means of eradicating cholera from the slums of British cities. During 2010-2011, a new rural outreach programme known as ‘Khushiyon Ki Doli’ (‘Caravan of Happiness’), took hand-washing messages to remote areas, reaching around 30 million people. – Martin Wright

Submitted by Aman Singh

This series is about Earthwards, a Johnson & Johnson program. In part four, CSRwire's Editorial Director Aman Singh explores the right roadmap to become a fully sustainable company -- and what role programs like Earthwards play in shifting the entire culture -- from R&D and product development to marketing and sales -- of a complex organization like J&J.

A "fully sustainable company" remains an aspirational goal for many organizations - yet the road to this ambitious endpoint is filled with challenges waiting for innovative solutions.

To get started, a company must assess its environmental impacts and consistently work to minimize them. But can a company ever become a "fully sustainable company" and, if so, what’s the right roadmap to getting there? 

In last week’s post, Al Iannuzzi, Senior Director for Worldwide Environment Health and Safety at J&J wrote, "We believe in greener products." He was instrumental in mapping out Johnson & Johnson’s EARTHWARDS process to improve product sustainability and its successful adoption across the business units.

Earthwards is a proprietary process that guides Johnson & Johnson teams to holistically identify, address and improve their products’ biggest environmental impacts across a broad range of areas. For Johnson & Johnson, this accounts for a major leap in its journey to becoming a more sustainable enterprise.

Earthwards & GAIA: The Need For Tools

While Earthwards is now the criteria used to assess the sustainability of Johnson & Johnson products, it also requires business specific tools to help make products greener. A key tool for the Consumer Products division is the Global Aquatic Ingredient Assessment, or GAIA for short. 

I sat down with Ray Sharples, Manager of EHS & Product Stewardship for Johnson & Johnson’s Consumer Division, to discuss the impetus for GAIA.

According to Sharples, there was a need to develop a tool to measure the environmental impacts of the products Johnson & Johnson puts into the marketplace. To address this need, in 2010, the Johnson & Johnson Consumer Product Stewardship team set out to create a new tool to quantify the impacts of various formulas.

"We needed a way to assess which materials were “better” among our ingredients so we could make improvements in the environmental attributes of our products," Sharples said.

Interestingly, this technical and scientific process at Johnson & Johnson spurred opportunities for innovation and got employees engaged in the development of greener products. As part of the Earthwards lifecycle thinking, GAIA now plays a role in helping products achieve Earthwards recognition.

Johnson & Johnson started the GAIA scoring system in 2010.  GAIA rates the ingredients in a Johnson & Johnson product. GAIA scores are primarily based on scientific issues such as persistence, bioaccumulation and toxicity along with other factors, which, in some cases, can reduce the score of an ingredient.

"The intent behind GAIA was to guide product developers around the world to choose environmentally preferred ingredients," Sharples said.

“The use of ingredients that are readily biodegradable and have minimal environmental impact to the ecosystem allows us to reduce our global environmental footprint. By making this process more streamlined and quantifiable, we’re not only increasing our environmental successes, we’re making it a part of everyday life,” he explained.

Getting a Lift From Earthwards

GAIA was operating almost exclusively with R&D because it was a science-based tool with specific emphasis on measuring downstream ecosystem impacts, but Earthwards changed that.  

"Incorporating GAIA as one of the tools within the lifecycle thinking of Earthwards has been really important in mainstreaming GAIA across Johnson & Johnson Consumer group," Sharples said, pointing to the much broader implementation of Earthwards across the company's various business units and divisions. 

“GAIA soon took off in the Consumer group, as brand teams tried to obtain Earthwards recognition.  We're now using GAIA as a way of educating and engaging our employees on key considerations for sustainable product development," he added. 

Under the GAIA tool, a product with a score between 80 and 100 is considered environmentally preferred, which means the product consists primarily of biodegradable ingredients that minimize its impact on the ecosystem. "Sixty-five percent of our new formulations today achieve a GAIA score of 80 or higher. Our goal is to ensure that 80 percent of all new Johnson & Johnson consumer products score between 80 and 100 by 2017," said Sharples.

Why stop at 80 percent?

"One-hundred percent is just very, very difficult to reach. Even reaching 80 percent will be challenging because of the complexity involved in our formulations,” Sharples explained.

GAIA: Hidden Opportunity?

GAIA offers obvious benefits and some less obvious ones. The tool, for example, has often led formulators and R&D teams to find opportunities that they would have previously missed. And making product improvements first through GAIA can help a product development team uncover other lifecycle improvements towards an Earthwards recognition.

Examples of products that first went through the GAIA process and then advanced to achieve Earthwards recognition include Johnson & Johnson’s Baby First Touch Zinksalva (Nappy Cream) and Baby First Touch Shampoo, both marketed under the Natusan brand in Europe.

Creating Change

Sharples’ comments reminded me of a keynote speech by Jeff Swartz, Timberland's former CEO:

"Sometimes you have to stop wanting the consumer to dictate market trends, innovations and movements. Sometimes you have to take a stand and lead the market."

But not all issues are as easy to remedy.

For example, zinc oxide is a “red” ingredient under GAIA and therefore, one that Johnson & Johnson aims to avoid. But when it comes to sunscreen, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration [FDA] has approved zinc oxide as an active ingredient in these products and alternative sunscreen active ingredients have other potential environmental concerns.

So how does the company choose its next step?

Challenge the FDA? Continue with the status quo? Change its product formulation? And who takes on the cost burden of changing the formulation of a successfully tested product? The company? The government? The hospitals and health care institutions? Consumers?

These questions are complicated and require equally complicated solutions.

Like Johnson & Johnson, there are numerous companies aspiring to produce sustainable products, using renewable energy, pursuing zero waste and achieving other targets to ensure their impact on the planet and society is a net positive. 

So far, their responses have been piecemeal with Johnson & Johnson’s Earthwards serving as an excellent example of the holistic approach needed in the marketplace. But is there a truly “fully sustainable company” that has figured it all out? If you know one, drop me an email.

Next: Adam Cornfield, Product Manager for Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics, Inc., explores how Earthwards is responding to the evolving demand for more sustainable health care products.

Previously:

Toward Greener Products: The Complex Journey of Product Innovation

Earthwards: A Front Row Seat to Sustainability in Action at Johnson & Johnson

Earthwards: Johnson & Johnson’s Drive Toward a Healthy Future

Submitted by Guest Contributor

By Dr. Thomas Osburg, Director Europe Corporate Affairs, Intel Corp. and Board of Director, CSR Europe and EABIS

Looking at the current issues in Europe, we might be a little misled by day-to-day news.

Undoubtedly, the ongoing financial instability in the Eurozone remains a serious issue for most European countries. However, the real long-term burning problems are in two areas, which are ultimately more interlinked than what one might think. And which CSR Europe aims to tackle in its new 2013-2015 work program:

Challenge 1: Europe's Unemployment Rate

First, the unemployment rate in Europe has hit record levels. In particular, the unemployment rate of people under the age of 25 is alarming and unacceptable with more than 50 percent of young people failing to find a job in countries like Greece and Spain.

At the same time, we witness an increasing dropout rate in schools and a declining interest among youth in STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). This is particularly worrying because Europe is missing more than 100,000 engineers and IT specialists; jobs, which could be filled if people had the appropriate qualification.

Challenge 2: Sustainable Living & the Urban Landscape

A second area of major concern is the challenge of sustainable living in cities. This is driven by a growing population and more people leaving the countryside to live in urban areas. This poses a significant challenge for housing, social welfare, energy consumption and related issues. It is no surprise then that businesses are being asked more and more to make a contribution to solving these problems.

The new Work program for CSR Europe that will officially kick off in April will address these sustainability problems in a much more focused way than before.

CSR Europe’s Board of Directors, which is composed of representatives from major companies globally, were clear that we need to support the EU and national governments in helping them to find and implement solutions to long-term challenges.

Shared Value, not CSR: The Potential of Social Innovation

One of the most promising approaches we've seen is the concept of Social Innovation. While it is broadly understood as a new form of cross-sectorial collaboration between governments, NGOs and private companies to create shared value for all stakeholders, the concept builds on the belief that the potential to tackle sustainability issues lies in the power of collaboration.

Explored with those nuances in mind, social innovation instead of becoming the next generation of CSR, takes on a different approach from the very beginning. Social innovation focuses on finding a joint, innovative solution to a societal problem and its subsequent implementation.

Happily, a lot of companies have already embarked on this endeavor.

Yet, taking a path of Social Innovation is not a mission with a guaranteed results; a number of companies aiming at delivering good results fail to do so by not generating a targeted impact or lacking long term viability. In particular, social innovations, which often get started with an enthusiastic but narrow, focus on the problem itself. Such an Invention-centred approach, without long term perspective planning fails to deliver a scalable Innovation.  

How Does Your Organization Approach Innovation?

To overcome this shortfall and advance social innovation concepts, it seems more promising to first investigate companies’ innovation concepts. The traditional process predominantly focuses on economic sustainability for the firm, which means it should help the company to stay in business.

For many years, this was sufficient and doing good was an add-on to gain reputation or secure the license to operate.

Today, true Social Innovation is supplemented with a solution driven approach with every successful enterprise establishing a well thought-through process. This is key for continued competitiveness.

However, this too is changing now.

Following requests to companies for Triple Bottom Line reporting, that requires communication of economic, ecological and social sustainability; a pure economic focus of the innovation process is not sufficient anymore. In order to achieve the necessary ecological and societal sustainability, the Innovation process needs to change to allow for solutions contributing to the Triple Bottom Line and thus bearing potential for shared value creation, both for companies and society.

The European Business Campaign on Skills for Jobs and its reference initiative Enterprise 2020 strategy aim at including Social Innovation into the innovation process to help companies increase their own sustainability or – in other words - their capacity to endure. It is the dedication to social innovation, and shared value creation that made Enterprise 2020 the leading European movement for companies committed to developing innovative business practices and working together with their stakeholders to provide solutions to existing and emerging societal needs.

The next step: Evolving social innovation to create shared value for our organizations, community and the environment.

As we begin to move away from fossil fuels, it is important to recognize that those fuels provided two functions in one. They were both energy sources and energy storage systems. In the new world of renewables, those two functions will have to be provided separately.

The ability to store energy at times when the supply exceeds demands will be a key to the effective utilization of renewable energy. Because many renewable sources (e.g. wind, solar, tidal) are intermittent in nature, storage is useful, both for the times it is available, and not needed, as well as those times it is needed, but not available.

The basic idea is to keep harvesting the energy resource at a steady rate, regardless of the demand. Usually, this results in the most efficient operation. If the demand is less than full capacity, the excess is diverted into some kind of storage medium. Storage could take the form of charged electric batteries, compressed air, mechanical springs or rotating flywheels, pumped water, heat, ice, electrolytic production of hydrogen, or numerous other methods.

This DOE database contains 409 projects from 34 countries. The total represents 121,89GW of energy storage. The aim is to track all energy storage projects worldwide within the next year. [ed note: numbers updated as of October 2013]

Probably the first major modern application of energy storage was pumped storage hydro. In this scheme, excess energy that is available during off-peak hours is used to pump water back up the hill to an upper reservoir, where it can be added to the regular flow during periods of peak demand. Pump storage is one of the more efficient methods of energy storage (around 75 percent) though it has the drawback of not being instantaneously available.

Hydrogen storage utilizes excess electric power to produce hydrogen and oxygen from water by means of electrolysis. Energy can be retrieved by running them back through a fuel cell, or by direct combustion of the hydrogen-oxygen combination to power a gas turbine or other type of engine.

Energy can also be stored in compressed air, in which a motor-compressor is used to pump air into a tank, which is then reversed when the energy is needed, turning the motor into a generator, and the compressor into a turbine. Recent advances, such as the new regenerative device from Lightsail Energy, manages and utilizes the heat generated by the process, which has improved “round-trip” efficiencies into the 70 percent range.

Flywheel energy storage puts excess energy into a heavy spinning rotor, which, due to its large inertia, maintains a very constant speed. These are often used in a vacuum enclosure which eliminates air resistance, resulting in higher efficiency. Systems like this can be used to maintain frequency regulation in conventional fossil fuel plants, eliminating the need for additional fossil “peaker" plants, which are usually among the dirtiest, to perform this function.

Thermal energy storage involves storing the energy in a storage medium at a temperature that will be useful a later time. This is often stored as hot water, or heated rocks or gravel, molten salts or concrete slabs in solar heating applications. Some companies, like Calmac, use off peak energy at night to create ice, which is then stored and used to provide air conditioning in large buildings during the summer. Not only is the electricity cheaper at night, but it often contains a higher mix of wind power, making it cleaner as well. Thermal energy storage is currently second only to pumped storage in U.S. capacity. And is expected to keep going given the growth in solar energy.

Finally, perhaps the holy grail of energy storage is the quest for the perfect battery. Batteries are best because not only are they clean and extremely efficient, but they can provide the stored energy instantaneously. The development of new, very large, highly efficient batteries, suitable for utility scale storage, has become very big business. AES Energy Storage, for example, has, at this writing, some 76 MW of storage in operation or construction, with 500 MW more in development. EOS is another such company, just bringing their first products to the market this year. Their website claims the following elements in their value proposition:

• Electricity off-peak/peak time shifting


• Frequency regulation, spinning reserve and other ancillary services


• Capacity payments (reliability incentive)


• Load firming for renewables


• Transmission and distribution capital expenditure deferred

Like many facets of the emerging new energy economy, the biggest payoff comes as the result of the synergy of putting these elements together in a deliberately and carefully designed system: distributed renewable power generation, flexible baseload infrastructure, smart grid, demand response and rapid response energy storage. When combined properly, these elements will perform together like discrete components in an integrated circuit whose primary function is to reliably provide the cleanest and most efficient form of power possible, round the clock, day after day.

But there is one more component in this equation that we dare not leave out, for to do so would be to miss a great opportunity. That would be electric vehicles. EVs could eventually form, as a collective entity, the largest energy storage system of all. At night, when the windmills are turning and the EVs are parked in their garages, they could be using the EV batteries to gobble up all that carbon-free, clean output, while offsetting what had once been the exclusive domain of gasoline. During the day, these same cars and trucks could be connected to smart charging stations that can facilitate the give and take that will become the hallmark of communities that are interconnected by smart networks.

Examples of this vision in action have already been demonstrated in Japan’s Smart Cities program, Ford and Whirlpool’s MyEnergi Lifestyle collaboration as well as a multitude of efforts under the banner of vehicle-to-grid or V2G. A recent report found that these types of "machine to machine" synergies could cut as much as 9 billion tons of CO2 by 2020.

Energy Storage

Pros                                                                

• Facilitates effective utilization of intermittent renewable sources


• Can be combined into smart integrated energy system


• Reduces need for increased peak generation capacity


• Enhances grid reliability


• Performance and cost are continually improving


• Allows renewable and fossil source to integrate

Cons

• Energy lost in “round trip” inefficiencies


• Additional cost and complexity


• Additional infrastructure and space requirements

 

[Image credit: Radio Rover: Flickr Creative Commons]

RP Siegel, PE, is an inventor, consultant and author. He co-wrote the eco-thriller Vapor Trails, the first in a series covering the human side of various sustainability issues including energy, food, and water in an exciting and entertaining format. Now available on Kindle.

Follow RP Siegel on Twitter.

Submitted by Guest Contributor

By Scott Jackson, CEO, Global Impact

In the more than 20 years I have spent working in the nonprofit sector, I have seen corporate giving transform from individual philanthropic acts to one aspect of a larger corporate social responsibility (CSR) program. Indeed, there have been many shifts and changes that have shaped contemporary CSR.

Today, CSR is a respected tool that allows businesses to make a deeper impact on society, while creating value for the company by creating potential revenue sources and/or reducing risks or operational costs. CEOs understand the value of incorporating CSR into business strategy.

According to a 2010 survey by the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy (CECP), 77 percent of CEOs said the most important action they can initiate today to address societal problems that will impact their company in 2020 is to “embed social engagement into business strategy and organizational structure.”

1. Creating Shared Value: CSR Gets Branded

One significant change I have seen as a part of this shift from philanthropy to integrated CSR is the branding of CSR programs to increase awareness among employees and the community.

Internally, companies have taken ownership of their formerly fragmented employee engagement programs (volunteerism, workplace giving, matching grants, etc.) and combined them to create an integrated program. This helps them better communicate their goals to employees and to leverage employee giving to align with business interests.

Externally, companies align themselves with fewer, more strategic social issues and dedicate more resources to identified targets. According to the CECP, although the median number of corporate grants declined by 26 percent between 2009 and 2011, the median grant size increased by 31 percent during the same time period. By targeting strategic issues, a company can better market their CSR efforts and integrate their business and social value. 

2. International Giving on the Rise

A second change is an increase in international giving. Businesses are targeting their CSR efforts in communities in which they operate or have a customer base. Countries with emerging markets such as Brazil, India, China and many African nations, are seeing positive changes in their giving landscapes thanks in large part to major corporations looking at CSR activities in these regions as long term business investments, rather than simple philanthropy.

Last year, for example, companies that generated more than half their total revenue from outside the U.S. gave more than 20 percent of their total contributions to international programs. As globalization makes the world smaller, supply chains, a diverse employee base and international customers make it important for even U.S.-based companies with no direct international presence to think globally about their philanthropic efforts.

Branding and a rise in international giving are just two of the many ways corporate philanthropy has changed over the past few decades. While these trends are of particular interest to me because I work with both corporations and international charities, there are many more fascinating ways in which CSR has evolved. The bottom line is that it is no longer enough for companies to simply offer a workplace-giving plan as their sole philanthropic activity.

Today’s consumers expect corporations to be more engaged in their philanthropic practices. Companies are being asked to drastically and quickly change core parts of their philosophies and businesses are responding by finding ways to fulfill these expectations while creating value for themselves.

Corporate philanthropy has come a long way in a relatively short time—in just a few decades, it has gone from a standalone activity to an integrated platform with clear strategic goals. It will be exciting to see what happens to CSR in the future.

Even more trends in CSR and employee engagement will be discussed in depth at the only conference dedicated solely to employee engagement – the Charities@Work best Practices Summit taking place on April 3 and 4 in Manhattan.  Learn more about the conference and register.

About the Author:

Scott Jackson is the Chief Executive Officer of Global Impact. A veteran of the nonprofit community, Jackson has more than 20 years of experience working in this field for organizations such as PATH and World Vision. He received an MBA from the University of Edinburgh School of International Business and an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the University of Puget Sound, where he also earned a BA in history.

By Michael Solomon, Profit Through Ethics

The sharing economy is taking root and growing fast the world over. This is extremely welcome.

While it will undoubtedly influence the mainstream economy, can it ever replace it? At this stage, only the most fervent believers imagine so. However, if you use a slightly wider concept of a "sharing society," then we believe sharing can become a mainstream phenomenon.

This is because, against a backdrop of enormous challenges (e.g. scarcity of natural resources, an imperiled environment, faltering prosperity and a widening wealth gap between the winners and the losers), businesses which support the sharing economy or exhibit a culture of sharing stand out.

Further, by sharing resources, ideas, opportunities, or by sharing responsibility in creating and being part of a better economic system, by contributing to the common good, businesses can gain commercial advantage. For compelling business reasons, sharing makes sense.

Sharing informs decision making

More and more we will see sharing-minded individuals seek out and buy from (and work for) sharing-minded businesses. Even where the majority of transactions see goods and services sold and consumed in traditional, single-owner/user ways, an increasing number of relationships between businesses and individuals are being founded upon shared values and shared ethics.

Your attitude, ethos and values matter. They are part of your identity and your brand. They enable others to compile and sort their various options and to choose you to buy from or work for. Profit Through Ethics Ltd is one of a growing number of businesses which consider a willingness to share to be a badge of honour. Sharing is a strong proxy for community and responsibility, and it really counts.

For example, in our first year or two in business we were reluctant to share and were protective of our intellectual property. But we came to learn that by talking to anyone and everyone about our philosophy and what we were striving to achieve, and by adopting a default position of "collaborate," we achieved much greater success. Our approach and attitude said important things about us, it indicated other values our collaborators considered important.

Conversely, businesses that are unable or unwilling to share are ever more visible and challengeable. Starbucks is currently being pilloried in the UK media for its apparent reluctance to share the costs of the roads, schools, hospitals and other key infrastructure that an economy requires to function.  The world's biggest coffee chain is reported to have paid just £8.6m in total UK tax over 13 years of trading here. During this time it has recorded sales of £3.1bn. Behaviour and values matter. Starbucks’ aggressive tax avoidance practices are forecast to cost the company up to 24 percent of sales when coffee drinkers make their purchases elsewhere.

Sharing builds knowledge, learning and bridges

Sharing is powerful and useful in many ways. Greater openness and a desire to share lead to building knowledge and learning. We work with both the voluntary and private sector and have witnessed a change where previously neither had been particularly inclined to listen to or engage with the other side.

Business is part of the solution but it can be difficult for it to acknowledge challenges or problems it struggles to fix. Similarly, NGOs are part of the solution, but taking the moral high ground and campaigning against business is much easier and more familiar than offering help, resources or ideas and exploring the possibilities collaboration affords.

From entrenched positions, little is ever achieved. Many businesses and NGOs we work with are beginning to recognise that by assuming shared responsibility to make the world a better place and by proving this is more than mere talk, new and valuable opportunities can arise.

Sharing creates new resources

The barriers to a sustainable future are many and complex, and no single entity has all the answers. In a sharing society, organisations and individuals alike can pool the vast wealth of collective know-how, ideas and experiences and put them to excellent use.

By sharing knowledge and sharing a variety of different perspectives, we are better placed to identify and address the wide range of social, environmental and ethical issues affecting business and wider society.

Sharing is good for you, good for me, good for everyone

Responsible 100 is, in effect, a platform and catalyst for sharing. We have created a means for various members of the sharing society to enjoy some of the benefits described above. And crucially, participants are able to benefit themselves while benefiting others.

NGOs and campaign group participants work with us to develop questions which cover a wide range of responsibility issues affecting business and society. In doing this, they help ensure their areas of focus and campaigning remain firmly on the business agenda.

Business participants gain commercial advantage. We mentor them through a process of providing complete, accurate and verifiable answers to these questions. By publishing their answers on the platform and appearing in the rankings, they are able to use the Responsible 100 logo to demonstrate they are open, honest and proving their responsibility commitments.

At the same time, Responsible 100 empowers individuals. Consumers, employees, members of the local community, indeed all stakeholders, gain real influence. Individuals comment on and rate answers to let businesses know where they meet expectations and where they need to do more.

Responsible 100 champions sharing businesses. Businesses which welcome transparency and accountability as means to prove their values and to gain public trust. It helps them balance their pursuit of profit with the interests of society at large. At the same time, it empowers people by enabling everyone to identify and support such businesses.

In this dynamic new society, sharing will increasingly become, to use the technical parlance, the rational economic choice.

[image credit: MyTudut: Flickr cc]

The rise of the sharing economy has disrupted our relationships with objects, services, energy and spaces. And when it comes to the workspace, innovative work environments such as Hub Bay Area are saving young entrepreneurs money while exposing them to new ideas traditional office spaces cannot offer. Now a Silicon Valley start-up, with its new app on the loose, makes it easier for any freelancer or group of professionals to score a co-working space or conference room rental quickly and efficiently.

LiquidSpace offers various types of spaces that helps its members find workspaces on the fly. While co-working has changed the nature of the relationship between tenants and offices, they can still be out of reach for solo practitioners, non-profits or very young companies. Sometimes a group of people need a space such as a conference room quickly. And while coffee chains such as Starbucks have had a role in giving working people more flexibility with scheduling, sometimes that giant sucking sound of milk being steamed does not foster a creative working environment. To that end, LiquidSpace now parters with Marriott to give its members even more options to hold meetings or brainstorming sessions.

Hotel conference spaces are part of the offerings Marriott provides to LiquidSpace users. Traditionally, booking a conference room at a hotel was a hassle, with all the negotiating and telephone back-and-forth. Meanwhile, like those spare bedrooms available on Airbnb.com, many of those rooms sit empty for most of the day. Those rooms, and spaces in hotel business centers, are now available for a term as short as an hour on LiquidSpace.

And in a move that shows other multinational corporations how it is done, Marriott offers a bevy of spaces for free: sofas in lobbies, long tables in a dining area, pods or nooks in a hotel’s public spaces. Most of the free spaces are at Marriott’s Courtyard properties: and most of the spaces are brightly lit and adorned with modern furniture--these Courtyard properties, mind you, no longer look like a Barbie Doll funeral parlor on the inside. So for a group of “collaborators” who have got to meet but just do not have the coin to shell out for a meeting space, this makes for a much better option than a table at the local Peet’s--if there even is a table. On the flip side, for those with more of a budget, conference rooms at high-end Marriott properties in the Bay Area run from $20 to $50 an hour, a few hundred bucks for the half-day or day--not a bad deal when that last minute meeting has got to be arranged. Marriott also benefits with earning revenues from spaces that otherwise would have remained empty.

In addition to California, Marriott offers this “Workspace on Demand” program in six other states and Washington, DC. Booking is even easier than choosing a hotel room, though each property has various policies on cancellation policies and how much time in advance before a space can be reserved. For now the Marriott-LiquidSpace portal is in beta; watch for it to become as robust as LiquidSpace’s main site, complete with user reviews and even the ability to see who is at a space in real time. Partnerships like this one show that there is plenty of office space ripe for the taking; it is now a different world where people do not need it for eight to 10 hours day after day.

Image credit: Unsplash