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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

The sharing economy is really an exciting new development that can and will continue to take on many new forms as innovation continues to broaden our horizons and break down the barriers that once stood in the way of the world becoming more like one big family.

Of course, some companies (like rental companies) have been in the sharing economy business for a long time (without being called that) and are now being updated with new models (and sometimes new players) that leverage the power of technology and social networking.

Others, have been around for just a few years, and didn’t really realize that they were part of this new movement until they read about it.

RovAir is just such a company. As all sharing economy companies do, they specialize in making valuable, under-utilized assets or services available to a large number of people who have an occasional need. In their case, the service they are providing access to is mobile broadband.

It started, back in 2008, when their founder, Tom Dolan was going on vacation for a couple of weeks and needed mobile broadband access. He purchased a two-year contract for a plug in data card, but found that after the vacation was over, he never needed the card again. That prompted him to investigate data card rentals. He soon learned that this was not something that was generally available, though there was clearly a need.

He started RovAir which targeted business travelers that occasionally needed mobile connectivity. Having been in the hotel business, he was quite familiar with this demographic.

But, they didn’t stop there. Given that moving equipment is not always that convenient, they figured out a way to perform “coordinated equipment swaps” which basically allowed multiple people to share a single access line, using their own equipment, with the caveat that only one person can be on it at a time.

Does that work?

According to Tim O’Connor, RovAir’s Senior VP of Sales and Marketing, their analytics show an average of 10 people per line. That means each user gets it for roughly three days out of each month. That’s great if that’s when he happens to be traveling, but what if it isn’t?

That is the point of RovAir’s new technology development. Until now, they had only been able to slice up the service on a per day basis, with 24-hour advanced notice required, because the transaction required manual intervention. They are just about ready to bring to market the technology that will automate the process and allow time slices on that order of minutes rather than days, and with instant on-demand access.

According to O’Connor, “We have developed a system that automatically determines what lines are available and how much data is being used on that line and can we assign it to any particular person. We are testing this today with a major carrier, but the details of that are confidential. In the past, we had a somewhat manual process, where certain information had to be entered into a computer to transfer the line. Now we have automated that process and we are now using Indiegogo to raise funds to help us accelerate that development and get it out on the market.”

He went on to note that, “What’s interesting and maybe a little ironic as that people are often willing to pay more (per minute) for a shorter time, we call them microbytes.  Say, for example, they might be happy to pay a dollar or two to send off an important email even if that only takes a couple of minutes.”

You could end up with quite a few such transactions in the course of an hour.

I found myself thinking of SETI, back in the 80s when lots of us would offer access to our computers’ processing power to assist in the search for intelligent life in the universe.

But given the increasing prevalence of wi-fi and the data capabilities of smartphones, many of which can now be configured as hot spots, I wonder if the window of opportunity might be short-lived.

But then, there could still be tremendous opportunities for this type of service in the developing world. I asked O’Connor what he thought about that.

“We actually think that is our biggest opportunity, in developing countries. When you consider offering these microbytes of access, there’s a huge, huge market for that, especially when you think about people who have never had it before. For example, they would be perfectly happy with 3G technology right now, when compared to having no access at all. We would love to move forward there, but we are small and would need certain things to be in place before we could do that.”

Perhaps what they need are the right partners.

“There is also tons of used equipment out there right now that is fully functional, that is gathering dust, because it’s not the latest and greatest, but could mean an awful lot to people in these other countries, who have no access at all.”

Sounds like a great opportunity to me. Anyone interested in learning more contact them on Twitter @Rovair.

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 Brendan May

It’s truly staggering how few companies new to the sustainability agenda understand the landscape in which they must operate.

At best, they might be aware of the pesky ‘NGO movement.’ But the lens through which they believe their company is viewed is essentially a cosy and containable quartet in which customers, investors, media and regulators rule supreme, and should be the primary focus of attention. They could not be more wrong.

The theatre of sustainable business is crowded, with a few leading actors and a vast cast of extras, some of whom matter much more to the overall plot than others.

The Stakeholders of Sustainability

These are the people and organisations that define the prevailing view of which companies are serious and credible, and which are reckless and incredible when it comes to taking on the planetary disaster we are all facing. Of course there are nuances of opinion, but in general there is consensus on the fact, for example, that Unilever is trying to lead on sustainable consumption, that Nestlé is pioneering new approaches on water, deforestation and rural development, that Sainsbury’s and M&S have serious plans to lead the retail sector, and that Shell, Trafigura, Glencore and Yum Brands will be lodging in the ethical and environmental doghouse for the foreseeable future.

This general view is effectively a collective consciousness drawn from countless opinion-forming subgroups. In no particular order, these include government, the SRI community, campaigning NGOS, solution-providing NGOs such as certification bodies, public/private partnerships, academia, employees, trade associations, traditional media, social media, key individual opinion leaders, corporate sustainability leaders, suppliers, rankings systems, advisory consultancies and, of course, customers, be they business or end consumers.

Together, these categories form the fabric of the canvas on which corporations must paint their version of environmentalism and ethics. They represent thousands of individuals, if not hundreds of thousands. Some matter more than others, and this varies considerably from one country to the next.

Stakeholder Engagement: We're Constantly Talking [Privately]

The key point to remember is that the sustainable business community (and it really is a community) is constantly talking to itself, forming judgments about your business or sector.

Retailers hate nothing more than a surprise attack from a campaigning NGO alleging their supply chains are responsible for dead orangutans, the slaughter of turtles or the destruction of the Amazon. The retail sector is, therefore, in constant dialogue with campaigning groups. Media depend on campaigners to give them good stories. Campaigners depend on good policy thinking to make their case, from think thanks and academic institutions.

Increasingly, the scientific community is finding its proper voice in these debates. Twitter is awash with CSR and green advocates, providing the perfect channel for widespread dissemination of good or bad news, not least through the medium of blogs such as this one.

Regulators, as ever caught in the headlights, try to keep up and frame policy around what others have already achieved as they sat and watched. Sometimes they become pivotal, but far too rarely. All these audiences are influencing each other, and building up a collective view about priority issues, who is leading, who is following the pack, and who is lagging far behind.

It is ignorance about all this that leads companies into woefully naïve territory.

Shell's PR Strategy: Disaster in the Making?

Thus, Shell thinks it is credible to promote green credentials on, of all things, climate change, whilst in the middle of a disastrous Arctic drilling joyride that is viewed by the kinder elements of the sustainability community as folly, and by its harsher members as morally criminal. Shell’s PR idiocy is so pronounced it regards filing pre-emptive law suits against NGOs as an intelligent idea (red rag to a bull is the reality), and instead of fessing up to the fact that its Arctic safety strategy is progressively unraveling, Shell spends time and resources making videos on YouTube boasting about how many Facebook friends the company has managed to amass in the Middle East and elsewhere.

It is almost comic to watch.

Not content with that, Shell’s brand is now so toxic that even Waitrose, a generally responsible small U.K. retailer, was dragged into a social media fuelled boycott campaign in December 2012 over a commercial tie-up with Shell that, amongst other things, rewarded its supermarket shoppers with Shell fuel vouchers. It took just two weeks for Waitrose to distance itself from its bigger, uglier corporate partner.

Just a few short years ago, Shell was respected for its Foundation, a smart climate change think tank and its commitments on renewables. Now, the company is unable to call upon any serious environmental advocates to fight its case, because it is not taking their advice. This prevailing wind against Shell will blow as hard and long as the Arctic winter. And it will take years to change direction. 

On the more positive side, some companies, like Puma and Interserve, manage to emerge fast on the sustainability scene.

Reputation in Sustainability: Easily Lost, Easily Gained

There is nothing like major innovation to get the theatre listening and applauding. Sustainability reputation is fast lost, but can be gained quickly too. The reality is that those of us who work in this global movement need good examples to encourage more companies to take the agenda seriously. We have all but given up on government, so it is to business that we turn for leadership and bold, ambitious planning.

More and more, there are brave CEOs and smart companies that are willing to lead the charge. The bolder the communication, the louder we cheer. Provided, of course, there is a solid underbelly of commitment, progress and impact.

Now I see you commodity traders, you price-obsessed discount chains, you tax-avoiding websites and yes, you, at the back – the privately-held logging firm far away from us Western hemisphere liberals. You may think that your sector or brand is immune from this ‘chatter.’

But someone, somewhere, is watching you.

They may be developing a new ranking of ethics or sustainability for your sector. You may find yourself near the top. If you’ve never engaged on these issues more likely you’re at the bottom. If your customer base is other businesses rather than direct consumers, then be aware that those customers are likely to be much closer to emerging trends and debates than you are.

It would be smart to go to them with solutions, not become their problem supplier. The less you engage with this vast landscape, the harder it will be to persuade people your business is a sustainability champion. The more you engage, the better decisions the your company will make, and the more independent voices will praise those decisions.

The old adage holds true: If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.

_________________________

About the Author:

Brendan May's [@bmay] blog draws on his new book How to Make Your Company a Recognised Sustainability Champion, published by Dō Sustainability in December 2012. The book is part of a new series of short sustainable business ebooks by experts for professionals.

Brendan May is Founder of the Robertsbridge Group, a global consultancy formed by some of the U.K.’s leading sustainability thinkers. He is on Twitter @bmay & @robertsbridge.

CSRwire Discount: For 15% off the RRP of any DōShort title, use code CSR15. Currencies will be converted, and orders can be fulfilled immediately, anywhere in the world.

Subscriptions: You can also get access to the entire DōShorts collection via individual or corporate subscription. Read more about subscriptions here.

Queries? If you would like to contact Brendan May or find out more about the DōShorts series, email gudrun@dosustainability.com or visit www.dosustainability.com.

We usually talk about the sharing economy on three levels – the company, the sector and the “change.” On the company level, we generally analyze specific companies like Airbnb or Zipcar and how they disrupt the markets they operate within. On the sector level, we look into evaluations of the size and potential growth of the sharing sector. The “change” level includes mostly qualitative observations on the extent to which the sharing economy can revolutionize our lifestyle and change the business landscape.

Today, I’d like to focus on a fourth level - the economic system. On this level, we try to evaluate not just the impact of one successful company or another, or how much the sector can grow, but the overall impact of the sharing economy on two important economic issues – consumption and growth. More specifically, we will try to figure out if the sharing economy can increase economic growth while lowering consumption, which for many seems to be a win-win outcome. On a following piece we’ll check if this outcome is actually what we should be looking for.

My first instinct when thinking about the impact of the sharing economy on consumption is that sharing reduces consumption. After all, we’re talking about better usage of underutilized resources like swapping clothes we don’t use anymore, carpooling, using a neighbor’s car, renting a room in someone’s house for the weekend, bartering, bike sharing, and so on. All of these activities seem to reduce our consumption, right?

Before answering the question, let’s make sure we know what we’re looking at. In terms of economic accounting, we refer here to household consumption expenditure as measured for calculating the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), i.e. “the market value of all goods and services, including durable products (such as cars, washing machines, and home computers), purchased by households.”

Some of the sharing activities mentioned above either have zero market value (swapping clothes or bartering for example) or a lower market value comparing to the ‘business as usual’ option – for example, renting a bike once in a while instead of buying one.

Yet, in some sharing activities the outcome might be completely different. Take, for example, Airbnb. The company reported last year that its contribution to San Francisco’s economic activity is estimated at $56 million a year. Given that an Airbnb user spends more than a hotel guest ($1,100 vs. $840 respectively) and that 14 percent of the users said they would not have visited the city if not for Airbnb, we can say that in this case, a sharing activity increased the total consumption expenditure of households.

There are also some cases where the relationship between sharing and consumption gets more complicated. Take peer-to-peer car sharing. You might expect that this sort of activity would reduce the need of families to buy a second car, which might still be true on the demand side, but not so much on the supply side. Shelby Clark of RelayRides told Tim O’Reilly that people are buying a second car just for sharing. Now, it’s not clear if the net impact here is positive or negative (i.e. whether households buy in total more or fewer second cars as a result of car sharing), but it goes to show you the complexity in the relationship between sharing and consumption.

In addition, let’s not forget that the money saved by people using the sharing economy also might go to consumption…of other stuff. Zipcar asked people in a survey what they would mostly spend the $6,000 a year they could save by not owning a car on. Interestingly, only 20-30 percent would go, according to the responders, toward spending money on things like travel and buying a house, while the rest would go to savings (40-50 percent) and paying debts.

So, can we argue that the sharing economy reduces consumption? My guesstimation is that the answer is somewhat yes on a personal level, although given the examples above the total net impact of the sharing economy on consumption might be smaller than we tend to think.

In any event, those who fear (or hope) that the sharing economy would hurt growth shouldn’t be too worried (or hopeful). There seem to be three good reasons why even though the sharing economy can reduce consumption on the personal level, it will still enhance growth.

First, this is an innovative space and if we can learn from similar innovative sectors (open-source software for example), there’s a good chance to see a real economic value created by the sharing economy. Second, there’s the local multiplier effect that helps generate more economic activity from the hundreds of dollars a month people make for renting their car on Wheelz or $50-$100 a month others make from renting their bike on Liquid. Last, but not least, even if each of us consume a little bit less due to the sharing economy, there will be more of us and in this kind of contests scale usually wins, so aggregate consumption will rise and hence we’ll see more growth in the GDP.

So should we be happy because it seems like the sharing economy can boost the economy while reducing consumption to some degree on a personal level? Isn’t it the win-win strategy we were looking for? It is if you believe growth is key to prosperity. It isn’t if you believe growth is mistakenly synonymous with well-being. Can the sharing economy become a good fit for the latter and not just the former? In the next piece, we’ll try to figure it out.

[Image credit: Liquid]

Raz Godelnik is the co-founder of Eco-Libris and an adjunct faculty at the University of Delaware’s Business School, CUNY SPS and the Parsons The New School for Design, teaching courses in green business, sustainable design and new product development. You can follow Raz on Twitter.

By Julie Malone

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and National Geographic provides a new video, “Make Each Choice Count,” based on water usage in textile production. The growth, manufacturing, transporting, and washing of cotton uses huge amounts of water.

For example, it takes about 2,700 liters of water to make just one t-shirt , which is enough water for one person to drink for 900 days. And, let’s not forget the wear and tear on the t-shirt once purchased. One load of washing uses 40 gallons of water and five times more energy to dry it. How often do you wash that t-shirt: once a week or month? Fortunately, there are ways to help the problem, skip the drying and ironing process and hang your t-shirt to air dry. You might save 1/3 of your t-shirt’s carbon footprint. The choices we make today affect the future needs of others.

Our society believes there is plenty of consumable water to go around for everyone. Not really. Our planet’s water is 97 percent salty and two percent snow and ice, which leaves less than one percent that we can access. However, 70 percent of that one percent is used to grow crops. Cotton is a very thirsty crop. Can you imagine how many t-shirts are in our city, towns, state, country, globally, and on this planet?

Waterfootprint.org, a learning platform for connecting diverse communities interested in sustainability, equitability and efficiency of water use, mentions that cotton farming is the largest consumer of water in the apparel supply chain, and is used in 40 percent of all clothing worldwide.

Fortunately, there is good news from the industry. Companies are making great strides in reducing their water footprint for cotton. Major textile brands are looking towards more eco-friendly cotton production. WWF works with farmers and the businesses that buy their crops to develop sustainable farming methods. This takes the strain off water supplies, not just for cotton, but for other “thirsty crops” like sugar cane and rice.

Farmers in Pakistan and India, as well as CEOs in the United States and South Africa, are being helped by the WWF to assist people to use water more responsibly. With WWF’s support, the Better Cotton Initiative is working with farmers to grow cotton with less water. The Better Cotton Initiative is an intense cooperation consisting of a multi-stakeholder group of organizations that work together to find better, more sustainable way of growing cotton to introduce to the public.

In Pakistan, the Initiative has worked with 75,000 farmers who, as a result, have reduced their water use by 39 percent and increased their income by 11 percent. They also used 47 percent less pesticide and 39 percent less chemical fertilizer. By using less pesticides and chemical fertilizer in the United States, the rivers are less likely to transport pollutants to The Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico, a large region of water that is very low in oxygen, and therefore can't support life. That’s good for companies, good for other communities downstream, good for the fish, birds and other creatures that depend on rivers and wetlands, and good for people like you who care about where your t-shirts come from. The textile industry can bring a better product to the customer, however, it is up to the customer to play their part in water efficiency also.

The Dead Zone's website shows an animation of how the above chemicals, and water from farms, rivers, streams, feed lots, and city streets from 40 percent of the U.S. runs down the Mississippi, Ohio, Arkansas, Red, and Missouri Rivers, where the water all collects in the Mississippi River and down to the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico. The result: bottom-dwellers such as snails, worms, starfish, and crabs can't escape the dead zone's oxygen poor water - so they die. Fish and shrimp swim out of the area, which could cause shrimp supply to drop and seafood prices to rise.

Julie Malone, based in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, is an environmental researcher. She is graduate student at the University of Denver and has a M.A.S. degree in Environmental Policy and Management and is working on her M.S. in Legal Administration. Her academic work can be found on knowourplanet.com.

Image credit: Unsplash

Bribery and corruption used to be seen as part of the reality of doing business in certain parts of the world. But, writes Leo Martin, business is leading the international charge for change
According to Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, two thirds of the 176 countries and territories it ranked have scores that suggest a serious corruption problem in their public sector. This presents a real problem for global businesses, with many often forced to work with governments whose contracting, public tendering and financing are far from transparent or accountable.

Against this background, it is not surprising that stories of corruption still dominate the business pages or feature in the history of many corporations. It has long been argued that in certain parts of the world, this is how business is done. And from the cases we read about, it appears that many companies went along with this, or turned a blind eye, at least until they got caught.

Corrupt activity is usually carried out indirectly through third parties, intermediaries or agents. But though this may secure a contract, it also makes doing business more costly. The UN estimates that corruption costs the global economy $1tn a year and adds up to 25% to the cost of procurement.

What concerned Transparency International, in particular, was that given the recent focus on tackling bribery, very few countries have done much to reduce corruption – in direct contrast to the business community. But this is changing.

In the UK, for example, since the Bribery Bill first appeared in the Queen’s Speech in 2009, corruption has risen up the corporate agenda. Where the UK was once criticised for lagging behind the world on anti-corruption legislation, its Bribery Act is now seen as among the most rigorous. There are parallel processes going on elsewhere. As a consequence, many companies listed in the UK and on the major North American and European exchanges are at the forefront of tackling corrupt behaviour.

So what are the best businesses doing? Crucially and, perhaps, most importantly, businesses are beginning to take this seriously. Anti-corruption compliance is fast becoming the latest ‘must-have’ function, and not just in those sectors subject to industry-specific legislation, such as pharmaceuticals or financial services. These newly-formed compliance teams are putting systems in place to ensure their organisations comply with anti-bribery legislation and are spending money to check they actually work.

In the best cases, compliance and ethics teams are working to set the right spirit and tone, developing systems and processes that govern behaviour and go beyond box-ticking exercises that simply aim to meet regulatory requirements. Tick-box compliance was prevalent in the financial services sector, resulting in damaging behaviour and heavy fines. Such an approach should be avoided at all costs in a rigorous anti-corruption programme.

In many companies, developing robust anti-corruption measures begins with a high-level review, comprising a risk assessment for senior management. This includes a careful appraisal of the geographical areas where the company operates and the likely exposure to corruption; a review of all suppliers, agents, joint-venture partners and other third parties; an assessment of staff, customers and business areas most at risk from bribery or internal fraud; and an examination of relationships with public officials and due diligence of major capital projects or new ventures.

Such an exercise should provide companies with an anti-corruption roadmap showing gaps in protection and identifying any procedures that would be deemed inadequate. It also informs policy-making and the development of effective and targeted training programmes.

Successful anti-bribery and corruption (ABC) programmes are based on the six key principles outlined in the Guidelines on Adequate Procedures, published by the Ministry of Justice, enabling companies to demonstrate:

• top-level commitment to ABC policies and a zero tolerance of bribery and corruption;
• effective communication of and training in the company’s ABC programme;
• regular risk assessments of the business, markets, countries and sectors where the company operates;
• due diligence on all high risk areas, individuals and organisations. A focus on the highest risk transactions and intermediaries is key, including sales agents and anyone helping the company enter a market or obtain permits and licences of any sort;
• rigorous ABC controls in operation in all key business functions and
• ongoing monitoring, internal and external, to check ABC compliance.

Some companies have made significant steps towards these goals but, for many, the business landscape, particularly in certain parts of the world, is still challenging.

Assessing risk and monitoring conduct in the supply chain is the most difficult area, yet is possibly the area most vulnerable to corruption. In 2011, every US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act/Department of Justice prosecution involved corrupt activities in the supply chain. This clearly shows the need, not just for due diligence checks, but for monitoring and establishment of a zero tolerance policy on corrupt practices across the organisation.

Some companies are attempting to perform due diligence on tens of thousands of suppliers; others are unsure where to begin and have no system in place. Having some type of ‘decision tree’ to judge where due diligence is needed is essential.

Decision trees enable businesses to conduct the appropriate checks on the right suppliers. In the majority of cases, service suppliers have more opportunity to bribe on an organisation’s behalf than suppliers of goods. Companies are, therefore, having to categorise suppliers according to risk by examining the service they provide and the opportunity for corruption.

Once categorised, appropriate due diligence is conducted in the form of questionnaires, audits, training, signed agreements and investigative research, as appropriate.
This should be carried out on new and existing suppliers, and always before a contract is awarded. This can be most challenging when it comes to existing suppliers and, although risk assessments should still be carried out, penalties for terminating contracts must be considered alongside possible risk and reputational damage.

Third parties, intermediaries, agents and joint venture partners are increasingly being checked in the same way. Often, when managing these relationships, differences in business conduct and culture are most acutely felt, but companies can and should put systems in place to reduce risk and ensure adequate procedures have been set up.

Where suppliers are identified by the decision tree as ‘high risk’, the company should:

• ask to see its anti-corruption policy or statement
• introduce anti-corruption terms and conditions into the contract
• ask the organisation to sign an anti-corruption commitment
• check its past record on corruption
• check its relationships with government officials
• carry out anti-corruption training if necessary
• establish ownership of the intermediary and look out for conflicts of interest
• check its policy on gifts and hospitality and, where none exists, ask for them to commit to yours
• check for statements on facilitation payments and communicate the company’s own policy on such payments.

In addition to due diligence, conflicts of interest, gifts, hospitality and facilitation payments are also emerging as challenging issues.

Facilitation payments are a major challenge for many organisations working in emerging markets and in sectors that require permits and licences to operate. Best practice and, nowadays, laws demand a zero tolerance approach. Some do successfully enforce this, despite working in challenging countries. But to succeed, companies must unequivocally back all staff who resist requests for payment.

It is important that facilitation payments are addressed explicitly in the company’s code of conduct, ideally supported by an anti-corruption statement of principle from high-risk third parties, suppliers, agents, intermediaries and joint venture partners. Many companies are tightening controls in this area but feel they are working in isolation, potentially penalised for failure without government or embassy-level support in urging countries to act themselves.  

Gifts, entertainment and conflicts of interest require a more sensitive approach. With respect to gifts and entertainment, many companies are treading a path between what complies with company policy and the culturally-defined expectations in certain parts of the world.

Many companies are wary of corporate imperialism but, to comply with adequate procedures, they should communicate a clear gifts and hospitality policy, and undertake regular monitoring to ensure they are not being put at risk. The UK case between Sainsburys’ and Greenvale shows that gifts are unlikely to be the target of a corruption investigation in and of themselves, but can be very compelling evidence in showing that a relationship has been corrupted.

Rigorous monitoring of potential conflicts of interest is also essential and, again, the best companies have systems in place. However, conflicts must be fully explained to staff. All too often, employees are scared to declare a conflict because they are unsure about how it might be treated. Staff should be encouraged to be transparent and it should be made clear that the conflict itself is not the problem, but rather the actions taken to manage it (or not).

Many companies are also getting themselves into ridiculous knots over political connections. The key thing is to focus on connections that are material, that might actually influence a public decision affecting the company, and to ignore the rest. Again, even this type of conflict is usually easy to manage, as long as it is declared.

From the work GoodCorporation does in this area – conducting reviews, audits and training for leading international companies – we know that ABC compliance is becoming increasingly widespread and far reaching. Supply chain and procurement risks are also being monitored more meticulously. Some companies are taking extreme action to protect their businesses, severing relationships with third parties, agents and suppliers suspected of corruption – and even pulling out of countries where they fear they cannot operate without engaging in corrupt practices.

Anti-corruption has never been higher on the corporate agenda and there are signs that business can effect change. Corporates should not be left to fight this battle alone – more inter-governmental action would be in everyone’s interest. In the meantime, the business world is leading the charge.

Leo Martin is director and co-founder of GoodCorporation

Submitted by Guest Contributor

Sustainability is no longer a fleeting trend. It is becoming a standard practice of companies both large and small, across multiple industries here in the United States and around the world. The health care sector is no different. While the safety and efficacy of health and personal care products will always be paramount, people today are increasingly interested in the sustainability of the products they purchase.

This series is about EARTHWARDS^®, a Johnson & Johnson program designed to promote greener product development throughout the enterprise. You will hear from employees at Johnson & Johnson and its Family of Companies, including some of the sustainability advocates who helped build and evolve the program over the years; brand managers and R&D leaders who collaborate to design greener products; and external corporate social responsibility (CSR) experts who will provide their own unique perspectives on sustainable product development at Johnson & Johnson, including independent reporting by CSRwire's Editorial Director Aman Singh.

In part one, Keith Sutter, Senior Product Director of Sustainable Brand Marketing, introduces us to the Earthwards^® process and gives us a peek into the origins of the program.

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Every product has a footprint, from the raw materials sourced and energy and water used during production, to the impacts of packaging, distribution and disposal. In fact, the only way to really eliminate environmental impacts would be to stop making and using products altogether. But chances are we will continue to use products – whether it’s to shampoo and condition our hair, place a bandage on a scraped knee, take medicine when we aren’t well, or be healed with the help of a surgical device.

Every company is faced with this balancing act of making products to meet consumer needs but also addressing inherent impacts of their products. So, what if we change the way products are made so that they have less of an environmental impact?

It was this thinking that led my colleagues to introduce the Earthwards process at Johnson & Johnson, which was designed to foster product stewardship and sustainable product innovation throughout the enterprise, including 250 operating companies across our Consumer Products, Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices & Diagnostics sectors. We’ve made strides since the program launched in 2009, and are proud to be providing our customers more sustainable products using our robust product stewardship effort that has been externally-validated.

Earthwards^®: The Beginning

At Johnson & Johnson, our highest priority is the health of people and the planet. This is why we established Healthy Future 2015, our sustainability roadmap for the future that includes enterprise-wide goals to reduce our environmental impacts. We’ve had specific sustainability goals in place since the early 1990s, but our commitment to the environment dates back to our origins and our Credo:

We must maintain in good order the property we are privileged to use, protecting the environment and natural resources.

One way we strive to reduce our environmental impact is by improving the sustainable design of our products. Our first venture into greener product design was in the late '90s, when we launched a Design for the Environment program.

We had some early successes, such as eliminating more than 3,000 tons of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) from our packaging from 2005-2010, but we were convinced we could go further with this and really challenge ourselves. We also recognized the realities of today’s competitive marketplace, in which sustainability can be a tie-breaker, a differentiator, or a reason to believe.

We wanted to help our product development teams better understand how lifecycle thinking can result in greener products with science-based claims that help our marketing colleagues better tell our sustainability story.

In 2009, we worked with Five Winds International, a product stewardship and sustainability consultancy, to develop the Earthwards process. We created a Board of Directors, and recruited product developers and brand marketers, as well as external subject matter experts from organizations such as Practice Greenhealth and World Wildlife Fund.

To keep our process state of the art, the following year, we asked a group of product sustainability experts from government, academia, business and the NGO community to review the Earthwards process and suggest improvements to our approach. As a result, we further integrated the Earthwards process across Johnson & Johnson companies by setting a 2015 Healthy Future goal of 60 Earthwards-recognized products and integration of the process into our company wide Environment, Health and Safety standards.

The Earthwards Process & Scorecard

Today, the Earthwards process is helping our product development teams identify and address a product’s biggest environmental impacts. We use lifecycle thinking to better understand the areas of greatest impact and guide how we should focus our efforts. In most cases, the greatest impacts associated with our products result from the customer use phase and end-of-life disposal, but depending on the product, impacts related to packaging, raw materials, distribution and waste can also be significant.

To be considered for Earthwards recognition, product teams use our proprietary scorecard to take a product through a four-step process:

1. Satisfy prerequisites. Product teams ask a series of questions to gauge their general understanding of the product. What materials are used in this product? Where do the materials come from? What happens to a product after it’s used?
2. Undergo screening. The product undergoes a lifecycle screening to examine impacts and quantify improvements made, and then it’s evaluated against 12 specific goals that fall into seven categories: materials used, packaging, energy reduction, waste reduction, water reduction, positive social impact or benefit, and product innovation.
3. Identify improvements. A product must demonstrate more than a 10 percent improvement in at least three of the 12 goal areas. [Five of the seven Earthwards categories have two goal areas, so it is possible for a product to achieve recognition by showing improvements in only two categories.]
4. Submit for review. Teams then submit the scorecard and improvement results to the Earthwards Board for review.

Earthwards: Looking Ahead

As we look ahead to the next phase of Earthwards, we see opportunities to continue to improve the suite of tools and resources we created for the product development and marketing teams. We’ve begun by upgrading the scorecard functionality and introducing an online scorecard to replace the spreadsheet-based tool we previously used. This will help minimize errors and ensure the availability of data and calculations.

We also developed a “claims calculator” to help translate the reductions and improvements into meaningful and relevant information for our marketing teams and customers.

It has been an exciting few years for the Earthwards team, but there’s so much more to be done around our sustainable product development. While we’re proud of how far we’ve come, this progress is just one step in our sustainability journey toward our Healthy Future goal of developing 60 Earthwards recognized products by 2015. We are up for the challenge!

Next: Aman Singh reports from a front row seat to sustainability in action at J&J

About the Author:

As Senior Product Director for Sustainable Brand Marketing at Johnson & Johnson, Keith leads Johnson & Johnson's 250+ operating companies in developing sustainable business and marketing strategies. Through the Earthwards process, Keith translates the value of Johnson & Johnson's extensive product stewardship and environmental successes to the company's trade customers and consumers.

One of the benefits of living in a large city like New York is the power of choice – especially when it comes to cuisine. Just about every type of ethnic food can be found here, from Ethiopian to El Salvadorian, from gluten-free to nut free, from halal to kosher.

But sometimes there’s nothing better than enjoying a home-cooked meal in your own dining room, especially if you get to pick the menu for the night (and the cook), and don’t have to prepare it, schlep it, or clean up your kitchen.

That’s the idea behind Mealku.com, an unusual food-sharing cooperative started by Ted D’Cruz-Young. Innovation and simplicity were the trademarks with which he launched his New York-based marketing enterprise Ideocracy, and they are evident in his newest creation as well.

“Really simply," says D’Cruz-Young, it’s “for people to share more, waste less (and) eat better.

“Meal sharing… has existed since the beginning of time. All we are doing is making it easier.”

According to its website, Mealku bills itself as “the first and only Real Food Network: The Best Way to Eat.” It caters to those who can appreciate the art that goes into a thoughtfully-prepared meal without the fuss, the bother and the exorbitant price tag of sitting in someone else’s four-star dining room. It simplifies the process of meal sharing. It also provides a venue for cooks to share their best creations with individuals who appreciate good food.

And simplicity is also at the heart of Mealku’s operation. Meals are posted on the site by approved homecooks according to the day and time that they will be ready. Other members within their city or regional area can then visit the site and “claim” the dishes for that day. Once claimed, a delivery person acts as the liaison by picking up and delivering the dish to the recipient (transport dishes and carriers are provided by the cooperative). The dish can either be delivered to a specified destination (your house or office for example), or picked up at a prearranged Mealku hub location.

Mealku’s premise works on the concept of community sharing, not only in the active exchange of meals, but in how it regards member participation. While it does conduct pre-screens of its homecooks and participants do have to register to become members, there is a certain amount of responsibility placed on participants to make thoughtful choices and to live by the cooperative’s maxim of respectful conduct. As Mealku’s FAQ succinctly states, “There is nowhere on Mealku for bad cooks to hide. You’ve checked the cooks' most recent reviews. You’ve FoodPal’d people who have ordered from the cook. You’re ordering because another Mealku member has told you that the food is amazing.” Participants are encouraged to review the meals, and to remember that Mealku is first and foremost a “tight community” of like-minded people.

At the present time, membership costs $10 per month, which provides you with a beginning credit with which to purchase food. Members can earn more credit (calculated as “ku”) by cooking, and reviewing meals online, or through other activities such as hosting welcome visits and introducing new members to the cooperative. The monthly “payment” of ku encourages members to take on participatory functions that feed back into the group’s success and growth.

Ask D’Cruz-Young why he feels that New Yorkers – and other urbanites for that matter -  would be interested in the services of an online meal-sharing cooperative, and he’s just as succinct.

“Exhaustion,” he says. “We have created a system where we have ever-increasing quantities of stuff that we don’t need, and … there are ever-decreasing rewards for having that stuff. We have a generational break going on … We have over-saturated the population (and) society with stuff, and therefore we can’t value any of it.”

The end result, he says is a craving for a simpler, more intimate exchange.

“I value something more if I share it,” says D’Cruz-Young. “I value something more that is shared with me, and belongs to someone (else). We are in a fundamental shift.”

Once a local group is established, it is up to the group to decide what kinds of foods it can, and wants to provide. Mealku provides a template of choices such as gluten free, vegetarian, vegan, kosher, halal, etc. It’s also up to the community to define the interpretations of those categories. For example, cooks who check off kosher will be able to indicate the extent of stringency of the rating. It’s also up to the person ordering to ask questions, if necessary.

At the present time, Mealku is only in New York City. But there are plans to expand the cooperative to other cities, and D’Cruz-Young feels confident that there will be as enthusiastic a response in other cities as there has been in New York.

“We will be in every major city across the country very fast,” says D’Cruz-Young.  He points out that the beauty of Mealku is its adaptability as a sharing economy cooperative. Cuisine isn’t just limited to the dining room or a restaurant; sharing can happen anywhere.

“We’re also in schools, we’re also in apartment buildings …Wherever there are people, and they are eating, we can be there.”

Photo courtesy of  KayOne73; Mealku logo courtesy of Mealku.