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Plastic carrier bag use in Britain rose slightly last year despite environmental appeals to reduce the practice.

The overall number of bags issued to customers by the main supermarkets rose from 8.4bn in 2011 to 8.5bn, representing a 1.2% increase. However, the 2012 figure is 32% below the number for the 2006 baseline year. 

The statistics were compiled by the Water and Resources Action Programme, better known as Wrap, a publicly funded but independent non-profit company.

A significant fall in use was recorded in Wales, where a compulsory charge was introduced in October 2011. Charging brought about a 76% reduction and some retailers were able to eliminate plastic bag use altogether.

A compulsory charge was introduced in Northern Ireland in April this year and Scotland is due to follow suit in October next year. The UK government has been criticised for failing so far to extend the charging to England.

The increase in UK plastic bag use is due to changing consumer habits, explains the British Retail Consortium. It says more customers are now topping up between their larger weekly shopping trips, resulting in more visits overall.

Andrew Opie, the consortium’s food and sustainability director, said: “Bag usage may not have fallen, but that doesn’t mean that supermarkets’ progress has stalled on addressing this and wider environmental issues.”

In June Italy banned carrier bags made of non-biodegradable material. This follows reports that three years ago 72% of the waste washed up on Italy’s coasts consisted of plastic bags.

The EU is now considering legislation that could impose an EU-wide levy on plastic bags, a total ban, or measures to promote the use of biodegradable bags or limit their weight.

Another report from Wrap shows local authorities in England are recycling, composting or re-using 10.7mn tonnes of waste – more than they are sending to landfill. About 43% of the country’s household waste and 52% of business refuse are now being collected for recycling.

Altogether 98% of the 10.7mn tonnes collected is reported as being successfully recycled.

Wrap says the progress made is “due largely to the work done by local authorities, householders, the waste management sector and the UK’s reprocessing industry”.

Submitted by Guest Contributor

Part of the Consumer Research: Turning Insights into Action series

By Alison DaSilva

Rising economies such as those in Brazil, China and India are undeniably growing global powerhouses with combined GDPs (plus Russia) expected to exceed those represented by the G7 by 2050. 

As business booms, the spotlight on pressing issues, including human rights, education and wealth gaps, shines ever brighter. With societal and environmental needs both poignant and urgent, all eyes are on multinational corporations to play a role in addressing critical issues where government cannot or has not.

In stark contrast to industrialized nations such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and France, where government regulations at least ostensibly standardize good operating principles, Brazil, China and India are nascent yet burgeoning CSR greenfields.

Acute Needs Create Hyper-Engaged Consumers

Perhaps because of those very acute and tangible needs, these markets are home to some of the most passionate and engaged consumers the world has ever seen. The unbridled and near unanimous consumer support and enthusiasm for corporate social responsibility efforts is striking. They welcome corporate involvement with open arms, not only encouraging companies to be involved in issues outside their manufacturing walls, but ready and excited to join those efforts.

Consider these findings from our recent 2013 Cone Communications/Echo Global CSR Study:

Nearly all consumers in Brazil, China and India state they are more likely to have a positive image, trust and be loyal to companies that engage in CSR. More so than other countries examined in our research, including most of the G7, citizens in these emerging markets are walking their talk.

Further, Brazilian, Chinese and Indian consumers are far more likely than their global peers to not only say they would get involved with corporate efforts, from educating themselves on corporate behavior to volunteering, but to actually do so:

• Bought a product with a social/environmental benefit:
  • Brazil: 79%
  • China: 86%
  • India: 88%
  • Global average: 67%

• Researched a company’s business practices or support of social and environmental issues:
  • Brazil: 52%
  • China: 43%
  • India: 56%
  • Global average: 34%

• Donated:
  • Brazil: 65%
  • China: 69%
  • India: 67%
  • Global average: 60%

• Volunteered:
  • Brazil: 46%
  • China: 45%
  • India: 48%
  • Global average: 37%

Consumers in Brazil, China and India Demand Responsibility

These consumers are trumpeting CSR through their personal networks as well, and nowhere more than in social media. But they’re not just talking amongst themselves – they’re raising their voices directly to companies.

Nearly two-thirds (62 percent) of global consumers report using social media to engage with companies around social and environmental issues – but the majority of that usage is happening in these highly mobile-savvy countries:

• Told friends or family about a company’s CSR efforts:
  • Brazil: 64%
  • China: 75%
  • India: 77%
  • Global average: 50%
  
  
• Use social media to engage with companies around CSR efforts:
  • Brazil: 85%
  • China: 90%
  • India: 89%
  • Global average: 62%

But companies be warned – this enthusiasm can just as quickly work against you. Consumers in emerging markets are not shy about calling out bad behavior, boycotting or sharing negative information with friends and family – meaning these potential brand advocates can also be powerful adversaries. In the past year alone, these citizens say they have:

• Boycotted a company’s products/services upon learning it behaved irresponsibly
  • Brazil 69%
  • China 84%
  • India 65%
  • Global average: 55%
  
  
• Shared negative information about companies CSR practices via social media
  • Brazil 35%
  • China 49%
  • India 35%
  • Global average: 26%

The tremendous gusto with which consumers in Brazil, China and India not only engage in but propagate CSR issues and efforts is at least in large part a result of a remarkable sense of personal empowerment. More so than other markets, citizens in these countries possess a keen sense of their own ability to drive change and positively influence corporate behavior.

Belief in individual impact varies by market, with emerging countries such as Brazil (57 percent) and India (52 percent) indicating a strong conviction of substantial personal impact through purchasing, versus only 14 percent in the U.K.

Turning Insights into Action: Harnessing the Emerging Opportunity

Emerging markets represent the greatest CSR opportunity for companies because of their vibrant and avid consumers. Not only are these citizens ready for companies to play leading roles in critical issues – they’re ready to work with companies to bring about positive change. So where to begin?

• Leverage CSR to Differentiate: If your company is already established in these markets, look to your CSR efforts to serve as a powerful brand differentiator. More than offering a license to operate, authentic CSR engagement will build your reputation and almost certainly drive sales.

• Give Them a Job: These consumers are ready to work – so give them a job. Adept communicators, they will influence their personal networks for or against companies. Give them the information they need and a tangible call-to-action to make sure their influence works in your favor.

• Demonstrate Return: Reward their teamwork by clearly articulating how they’re personally making a difference, as well as your collective impact. Failure to define return on engagement may convert your advocates into adversaries.

• Get Social: The importance of social media in these markets cannot be emphasized enough. Consumers are using these channels not only to communicate with friends and family about CSR issues but also to call out corporate behavior and rally for change. Ensure social media is a core part of your communications and engagement strategy, and watch it closely for any rising issues.

Next: As many communities around the world struggle to recover from natural disasters, what do consumers expect from corporations?  

About the Author:

As executive vice president of Cone Communications’ Research & Insights group, Alison tracks and identifies trends to keep clients on the leading edge within the rapidly evolving landscape of CSR. She loves to fill the information gaps with proprietary research on stakeholder expectations, attitudes and behaviors with corporate CSR efforts. During her 15 year tenure at Cone, Alison has led the development of more than 35 studies, including: 2013 Cone Communications/Echo Global CSR Study, 2013 Cone Communications Green Gap Trend Tracker, 2012 Cone Communications Corporate Social Return Trend Tracker, 2010 Cone Cause Evolution Study, and the Cone Nonprofit Power Brand 100.

Alison has also served as strategic counsel for several key accounts, such as NARS Cosmetics, Neiman Marcus, Walgreens, Target, American Cancer Society and Deloitte. To further keep Cone on the pulse of the industry, Alison serves as a regular contact for the media and a speaker at many leading conferences.

Submitted by Guest Contributor

By Heidi Paul

In my final post responding to the questions that came up during our recent Twitter Chat about Creating Shared Value or #SharedValue, I will address the following topics:

• Privatization of water
• Sustainability/Water as a vital resource

Privatization of Water

Along with the questions, it was exciting to see several of you participate with valuable comments and suggestions about water as a resource as well as debating how water should be best used.

For example, @solarmelissa said: "Water is necessary for survival, and @NestleWatersNA  has chosen to privatize it. What's next for consumers-- bottled air?" @foodandwater replied: "Recycling is great and has its place, but not commodifying water is the true solution" and @CleanWaterforNC added "Those who need safe water the most are also the ones least able to afford it."

NWNA uses water like most food and beverage businesses: as an ingredient and in our processes. 

The drinking and utility water sources we use can either be municipal, where we are a customer, or permitted wells on private land. When we buy water from public suppliers, we pay market rates established by the public water authority just like any other business customer.

For our spring waters, we pay for permitting and licensing fees, as well as the cost of infrastructure needed to serve our operations. Drop for drop, bottled spring water is one of the most efficient users of water in the beverage market.

Sustainability/Water as a Vital Resource

@SusanHeaney tweeted a good point on this issue, noting that the sustainability “issue [is] bigger than bottles. We waste so much water, especially in U.S. Water is seen as free commodity, not precious resource.”

We agree, which is why at an operational level, we have a long history of reducing our water use where possible.

To @Francavilla, who asked how we are creating shared value when ground water is non-renewable, in fact, ground water is renewable when managed sustainably in the long term. This also goes back to a question from @LemonadebyLaura, who asked how we justify removal of water during droughts.

As I said during the chat, NWNA regularly monitors environmental conditions and precipitation patterns to manage its sources for long-term sustainability. Our geologists use that data to determine when and if it's necessary to modify water collection activities at any of our sites. Additionally, spring water for bottled water has an additional governor on its use that other groundwater users do not. 

To be labeled spring water, the spring has to have water emerging out of the ground, which is an indication that the water continues to be available.

Today, we manage 40 spring sites and spend millions of dollars each year maintaining them and more than 14,000 acres of watershed land as open space, helping to safeguard the local ecosystems.

To @Missangiemolina, who asked how are we addressing production with the depleting of water resources worldwide, Nestlé Waters only uses .0009 percent of the total fresh water withdrawn globally. We also only use water that is naturally replenished over the long-term.

Which brings me to a question from @egerdt: When are we going to see global agreements or policies relating resources like water?

On a global level, Nestlé SA is a founding member of the CEO Water Mandate, a United Nations Global Compact initiative with a focus on developing strategies and solutions to contribute positively to the emerging global water crisis, including disclosing water sustainability and management practices.

Nestlé also takes on global water issues through funding and operational support and training, helping communities better their water supply using their own resources.

On a local scale, NWNA collaborates with local governments and other stakeholders to advocate for comprehensive, science-based laws that seek to protect water resources. We have actively worked to support groundwater protection laws in Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, and the Great Lakes basin. For example, we supported Michigan House Bill 5067-5072 and Maine P.L. 2007, Chapter 399, both groundwater use laws that are critical for protecting groundwater sources in those areas. We will continue to work with stakeholders to pass fair groundwater protection legislation.

So, thank you once again to everyone who participated in the Twitter chat about our Creating Shared Value report.

As a natural resources company, CSV is our core business strategy and our business depends on our commitment to environmental stewardship. Water efficiency and sustainable water management practices are key to our long-term success. We believe transparency is critical to building trust, and producing a CSV report and participating in this Twitter chat are just two examples of the various ways we engage in dialogue with stakeholders.

NWNA will continue to work on its challenges and delivering where value can best be created for both society and shareholders. We hope you will continue to engage with us @NestleWatersNA.

____________________

Part II: Packaging, Waste & The Contest Between Bottled vs. Tap Water & Soda: Nestlé Waters Responds to Critics

Part I: Creating Shared Value through Transparency: Nestlé Waters North America Answers Its Stakeholders

By Michael Gutman, Founder of REACH The Future

Over the last month I have been comparing and contrasting corporate social responsibility reports from six major San Francisco Bay Area companies across different sectors.  Gap, eBay, Wells Fargo, SunPower, Chevron & Salesforce all make an effort to show their efforts to invest in environmental and community stewardship.  Now is my chance to share the insights and tips I've learned through this review process, including what a CSR report should include & exclude.

But first... this question must be asked.

Why develop a corporate social responsibility report in the first place?

I offer two main reasons.

• To benchmark a company's current operations and impact on society and the environment in order to know how and where they can improve.


• To show stakeholders that a company is investing in community and environmental stewardship.

With these motives in mind here are 5 things a good CSR report will do

1. Focus more on future goals, less on past successes:  The whole point of a CSR report should be to understand and showcase how business was conducted in the past so a company can plot a course to do better in the future.  While sharing the success of your CSR strategy is good, don’t make the mistake of dwelling on the past CSR successes and forget to focus on future goals. A CSR report without clear goals for the next year is like a boat with no compass.  If people are going to jump on board with your company, they will want to see where the ship is headed.

In addition, be absolutely clear about your future goals and how you plan to achieve them.  This helps you and your stakeholders measure the success of that plan.

Example of some measurable goals:

• 30 percent reduction in green house gas emissions in the next 10 years by putting solar on our buildings.


• Converting all office paper to 100% recycled paper within the next year by developing an environmentally preferable purchasing policy.

Set goals that are cautiously optimistic and still obtainable. This way, year after year your company can report progress and avoid setting goals that are weak.

2. Discuss the elephant in the room:  Every business, regardless of how irresponsible they are now, can move towards operating more sustainability.  But how should that company talk about their efforts when people know that the manufacturing process of their products leads to environmental devastation?  The question will always come up for any business that consumes more natural resources and produces more waste than it recovers.  It is important for a company to address these issues first.

This can be accomplished with a simple statement like:

"We are providing a valuable product or service that helps people with XYZ and while we acknowledge that the creation and the consumption of our product or service does have consequences on the environment and communities, we are looking at behaviors and technologies we can adopt and invest in to reduce our negative impact."

If you don’t feel comfortable acknowledging the negative impact of your business, then I would take another look at your motives for writing a CSR report.

3. Avoid a PR nightmare: Focus on sustainable business practices and responsible workplace conditions as opposed to philanthropy.  Corporate social responsibility is more about how a company makes a profit than what it does with its profit.  Don't get me wrong. Philanthropy is definitely part of the CSR story and my business, REACH The Future, or organizations like Universal Giving would not be in business if it weren’t. However, if a company focuses its CSR efforts on the donations it made and ignores its toxic chemical pollution and child labor practices, the media will have a field day.

4. Gain 3rd party credibility: Nothing will help build integrity, credibility and transparency to a company's CSR efforts like 3rd party reporting or certifications.  Many industries have unique reporting tools designed for a specific industry.  Here are some tools that work across industries.

-Global Reporting Initiative

-Greenhouse Gas Protocol

-Carbon Disclosure Project

5. Share stats and stories: Stories do a great job of showing the types of relationships CSR efforts have with community and the environment.  However, they don't give a company and its stakeholders baseline metrics to test against and evaluate the success of future CSR efforts.  A CSR report that is heavy on stories and light on stats comes across as more of a PR initiative than a sincere effort to invest in measurable results.  It is good to have both, but go heavier on the stats than the stories.

Here is a helpful tool from Boston College’s Center for Corporate Citizenship that will help guide the creation of a CSR report.   How to read a corporate social responsibility report - a user's guide

Conclusions: Creating a CSR reports takes the effort of many to get all the data, discuss a communications strategy and get the sign off from everyone involved.  In the end it all comes back to why.  Why is any organization creating this report in the first place?  If your intentions are genuine, then people will be OK with your faults and interested in your efforts and strategy to do better.  This position yields a brand that is honest and has integrity. If your efforts are motivated by PR, than your CSR report could open up a can of worms that creates negative press and backfires.

These are just some of my insights and I would love to hear from people who have written CSR reports and/or have been part of the process.  Share a comment or let us know some best practices or strategies you have used when creating this type of a document.

Feel free to continue this conversation with REACH The Future’s Founder, Michael Gutman, by commenting below, or on Twitter & Facebook.

Image credit: Carl Heyerdahl/Unsplash 

The push for farmland by foreign investors engaged in industrial-scale plantation agriculture in Sierra Leone has increased poverty and food shortages among communities who have lost their access to land, new research shows.

An estimated fifth of the country’s arable land has been leased since 2009 to industrial farming concerns, many of them foreign companies producing biofuels from crops such as oil palm and sugar cane.

A report published today, ‘Who Is Benefitting? examines the impact large land leases held by three investors has had on local communities. It was commissioned by local joint initiative Action for Large-scale Land Acquisition Transparency, with support from Christian Aid and other agencies.? ?

The leases examined are held by Addax Bioenergy (SL) Ltd, Sierra Leone Agriculture and Socfin Agricultural Company Ltd.

As a result of its findings, the report calls for a review of all existing contracts, and a moratorium on further large scale land investment until existing concerns are addressed, and future contracts can be independently monitored.??The report says that in particular, government contracts with large investors, some who have been granted 99-year leases, need to be more transparent and respect the country’s laws, and government and companies must implement international guidelines that emphasise the protection of local people and the environment.

The report also criticises the tax breaks offered to foreign companies to persuade them to invest, which it says costs Sierra Leone many millions of dollars each year in lost revenue.

Kato Lambrechts of Christian Aid identified as a key problem government claims that just 11-15 per cent of the country’s arable land is being ‘used’ and that there is plenty of room for foreign investors.

"This shows a lack of understanding of the way the country’s smallholder farmers, who account for nearly half of working age Sierra Leoneans, use the land," she said.

"They rely on an extremely diverse and complex mosaic of land types - upland farms, land depressions prone to flooding, swamps, tree-crop plantations, fallow bush and riverine grass areas to grow a wide variety of crops.

"Much of this land is deemed ‘unused’ – but that is far from the case. Communities are promised development in various forms such as jobs and services if they sign over land, but only a few ever see real benefits."
 

In a new collaboration, the IKEA Foundation is donating a range of toys to UNICEF’s Early Childhood Development (ECD) kits to help meet the needs of some of the most vulnerable young children in the world.

The IKEA Foundation is the charitable arm of the Swedish home furnishings retailer.

Over the next two years, the kits will be distributed to an estimated 1.2m children living in emergency or post-conflict settings.

UNICEF’s ECD kit was designed for children under the age of six living in these difficult circumstances. It aims to focus attention on the needs of young children and to support the development of play and learning under extreme conditions.

The toys, with an estimated value of US$2 million, are a donation to UNICEF and will be used in 24,000 ECD kits that will be distributed around the world over the next two years. 

Each of the IKEA products was chosen by UNICEF’s educational specialists. The items include a shape sorter, a sort and stack set, finger puppets, hand puppets, school scissors, coloured building blocks, a paper pad and paper roll. It is estimated that 12,000 kits will be required annually by the UNICEF offices that implement programmes for children in conflict situations and emergencies.
 

The Salmon & Trout Association (Scotland) has called on Sainsbury’s to explain why it is still selling mainland farmed salmon labeled as being from Skye, Lewis or Uist, almost eight weeks after apologising publicly for the error.

Hughie Campbell-Adamson, Chairman of S&TA(S), said: “The almost unbelievable state of affairs, whereby Sainsbury’s is continuing to pass off mainland farm-reared salmon as having come from the Hebrides, is bad enough. The claims of responsible management at the farms concerned, as Sainsbury’s puts it, to protect and maintain the natural environment, need to be justified. If Sainsbury’s cannot justify their claims, then they must stop making them.”

Earlier this year the S&TA (S) made a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority and Trading Standards concerning claims made on Sainsbury’s ‘Taste the Difference’ Scottish salmon in relation to the geographical origins of the product and the unsubstantiated claims of “responsible management to protect and maintain the natural environment” at the farms concerned.

Sainsbury’s admitted errors in attributing their product to the “fast flowing sea water locations around the Isles of Skye, Lewis and Uist”, but the S&TA (S) has found that Sainsbury’s in England are still stocking ‘Taste the Difference’ smoked salmon from mainland fish-farms in Argyll labeled as being from Uist, Lewis or Skye.

Today, Sainsbury issued the following response: “We would never seek to mislead our customers and would like to reassure them that this error has had no impact on our industry-leading sourcing standards. All our salmon suppliers have environmental management systems in place and are independently certified to the GlobalGAP standard for good agricultural practice. They also all participate voluntarily in the scheme relating to the Code of Good Practice for Scottish Finfish Aquaculture. 

"We have changed the design of the packaging and this new packaging will be in store from the beginning of next week.”
 

Picture credit: © Crp | Dreamstime Stock Photos

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Action Plan tackling multinationals’ tax dodging is a step forward but fails developing countries, the Global Alliance for Tax Justice, Christian Aid and Oxfam have warned.

The OECD’s just published Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) Action Plan will be presented to G20 finance ministers’ meeting in Moscow this weekend.

Alex Prats, Principal Economic Justice Advisor at Christian Aid, said: “The Plan is a welcome and long overdue step towards tackling tax dodging by unscrupulous multinationals. The OECD clearly acknowledges that existing international tax rules make it easy for multinational corporations to avoid paying their fair share of tax – as shown by the recent Google and Amazon scandals. We all now agree – with the possible exception of some multinationals and tax havens - that the current situation is unfair and requires urgent reform.”

However, the NGOs point out that developing countries’ inability to participate in the reform process as equal partners is not acceptable.

Oxfam’s senior policy advisor Claire Godfrey commented: “International tax rules affect everyone and it is often the poorest countries that suffer the greatest losses due to tax abuse. Negotiations on new international tax rules must include all countries, including those that are not OECD or G20 members – from the very start.”

The OECD expects the United Nations Tax Committee to help facilitate the contribution of developing countries but Alex Prats warned: “This will only happen if there is a firm commitment to strengthen the UN Tax Committee. With the current level of resources, the UN Tax Committee will most likely not be able to meet the expectations.”

Picture credit © Andres Rodriguez | Dreamstime Stock Photos
 

Submitted by Guest Contributor

By Gail Klintworth, Chief Sustainability, Unilever

In this third and last blog post responding to the many questions that came up during our recent Twitter chat, I will focus on questions related to partnerships and policies. Some questions that I will cover: 

• You can’t do it alone, so which partners are most instrumental to helping you achieve your Sustainable Living goals? [From @mccaffreymike]
• How have you been able to engage your supply chain in your Sustainability Living Plan goals? [From @csrconsultant]
• Have you shared #SustLiving secrets with competitors to magnify impact? [From @csrconsultant]
• What is Unilever's point of view for influencing government/regulatory to raise the bar? CO2? [From @howardconnell]

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, we see considerable progress.

However, we also face challenges, which we cannot solve alone. To reach our goals and achieve large-scale change, Unilever believes even more collaboration is needed between companies, governments, NGOs and consumers. We firmly believe business has a big role to play in striving for more equitable and sustainable growth, but large-scale change will only come about if there is real collaboration between companies, governments and NGOs across all these areas.

Partnerships

This is exactly why we continue to work with others – governments, NGOs, customers, suppliers and other businesses – to drive progress in:

• Sustainable forestry and agriculture
• Improving smallholder farmers’ livelihoods
• Providing more safe drinking water
• Sanitation and hygiene (WASH), and
• Encouraging sustainable consumption

Sustainable Forestry and Agriculture

One example, which also answers the question of sharing ideas with competitors and working with peers is related to our work in sustainable forestry and agriculture. Unilever has actively led the process of building a public-private partnership between the U.S. government and the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF), a large industry body made up of almost all the world’s major retail and consumer goods companies, to reduce and eventually eliminate deforestation associated with the sourcing of palm oil and pulp and paper in the first instance.

The Tropical Forest Alliance 2020 was announced at the Rio+20 Summit and, in addition to the CGF and U.S. Government, the Dutch and Norwegian governments have signed up and we held our first Summit in July hosted by the Indonesian government in Jakarta. Many companies and NGOs came together with governments to agree a set of actions that will enable the scaling up of solutions to enable zero deforestation in Indonesia.

Improving Smallholder Farmers’ Livelihoods

Another example relates to improving smallholder livelihoods: Unilever, the Netherlands-based Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH) and the Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA) co-fund farmer field schools. Between 2007 and 2012, 450,000 farmers have been trained to the Rainforest Alliance standard [in preparation for certification].

In 2012, Unilever, IDH and partners agreed to invest a further €4 million to take our sustainability initiatives to scale. This training will benefit not only Unilever but the tea industry as a whole.

Water, Sanitation and Hygiene

On water, sanitation and hygiene, Unilever and Domestos are working with UNICEF, the World Toilet Organisation and others to make toilets more accessible and affordable to those who need them through the Unilever Foundation. The Foundation’s mission is to improve quality of life through the provision of hygiene, sanitation, access to clean drinking water, basic nutrition and enhancing self-esteem. 

Sustainable Consumption

To encourage sustainable consumption, we have worked on ‘A Better Future Starts at Home,’ a joint shopper program with Tesco for the last three years. It combines advice on sustainable living with promotions of sustainable products. Nine countries including the U.K. and China have run the program.

In 2012, we launched a joint program "The Living Project" with Walmart to help 200 million shoppers every week make sustainable choices. So far it has been implemented in Brazil, China and the U.S. Looking ahead, partnering with governments, kitchen and bathroom appliance manufacturers, retail customers and consumers will be key to making progress.

Policies: The Role of Business in Driving Legislation

I was pleased to see the questions on the role of polices and how these are part of driving the much needed large-scale change. Especially if you remember the outcome of Rio+20 and the recent vote in the European Parliament on addressing the carbon emission trading.

It is crucial that we actively engage with governments and regulators to create an environment that can help us achieve the commitments set out in the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan. The private sector, governments and NGOs can achieve a lot more if they work together in partnerships.

We believe that Unilever should play an active role in shaping legislation and regulations that enhance positive social and environmental outcomes. For example, the biggest contribution we can make toward tackling climate change is through supporting the call for ambitious reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions – as we did at the UNFCCC Conference in Durban in 2011 and the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio in 2012, and as we will continue to do in preparation for future sustainability summits.

During 2011, we implemented a new approach to advocacy.

We created a new advocacy team with the aim of working together with other stakeholders to bring about changes in public policy in key areas of health and sustainability. We chose areas where we can make the biggest difference and which are most relevant to achieving the ambitious targets in our Plan.

These include:

• Influencing greenhouse gas policy to achieve a policy environment which promotes low carbon
• Promoting the importance of washing hands with soap in countries where this issue is not high on the public health agenda
• Improving recycling and waste infrastructures to increase national recycling rates, and
• Enhancing trade policy terms for sustainably sourced agricultural commodities to encourage a more systemic shift towards sustainable agricultural practices.

We are now actively engaged in these areas and working with a wide range of NGOs, experts, practitioners and intergovernmental institutions. We are also encouraging our companies to engage with local governments and other organisations to help inform public policy.

Post-2015: Looking Beyond the Millennium Development Goals

[@steveacohen asked: What policies would advance aggressive #sustainability strategies?] Last but not least, our CEO Paul Polman was invited by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to become a member of the UN High Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda (HLP). The group comprised of 27 representatives from government, civil society and business was tasked with advising the Secretary-General on the future development agenda when the current UN Millennium Development Goals expire in 2015.

Their recommendations were presented in May in a report called A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies through Sustainable Development. This report sets out a universal agenda to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030, and deliver on the promise of sustainable development. The report also calls upon the world to rally around a new Global Partnership that offers hope and a role to every person in the world.

Well that wraps it up!

What started as an hour-long conversation on Twitter has evolved into an ongoing dialogue, thanks to your valuable questions and feedback. We believe in the power of engagement and I hope my posts gave you insights into how we are driving sustainability at the heart of our business.

I have no doubt that with resolve and inspiration we can together create solutions at scale that will enable sustainable living so that nine billion people will be able to live a quality life within the natural planetary boundaries. 

Keep an eye on the World Business Council for Sustainable Development Action 2020 process, this will also give you some ideas on the must-haves for 2020 and the initiatives that business can take to contribute to our bold ambition of ‘making sustainable living commonplace’.

Please continue to share your ideas on Twitter at #SustLiving.

_______________

Part II: Accounting for Impact: A Closer Look At Unilever's Value Chain

Part 1: Embedding & Measuring Sustainability: Unilever's Sustainability Chief Addresses Its Stakeholders

Dutch airline KLM has been recognised for its commitment to sustainability by scooping the Environment Award at the Airline Strategy Awards.

Taking home the accolade for the second time - having won in 2009 - KLM beat off stiff competition as a result of its efforts to become more sustainable as well as reduce its environmental footprint both on the ground and in the air.

At the heart of KLM’s environmental strategy is the airline’s Climate Change Action Plan which aims to reduce carbon emissions by 20% by 2020.

Key achievements include the airline’s biofuel programme which earlier this year expanded to weekly long haul flights from John F. Kennedy Airport in New York to Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam.

Vincent Kas, commercial director, Air France KLM UK & Ireland, commented: “Our hard work and continued commitment has been recognised, after earlier validation from the Dow Jones Sustainability Index in which we have been, together with Air France, the highest ranking airline for eight years running.”