capitalism4good

New CRO Rankings... what happened?

I just came across the most recent benchmarking by The CRO, a popular magazine for Corporate Responsibility Officers.  The editorial staff presents comparisons in ten different industries, five of which are available in this issue, with the other five due out next issue.  Sub-rankings are provided for areas such as environment, climate change, and human rights.

But the results... how did they come up with these?!  Bank of America is #1 in banking, perhaps because they've taken over their would-be competition?  Wainwright Bank doesn't even make the list.  Monsanto is #1 for chemicals and Dow is #2, though I seem to recall an awful lot of ongoing protests against these companies. Walt Disney is #1 in media - causing me to wonder if these are size and power rankings rather than CSR rankings. 

   

Solving the Omnivore's Dilemma

If you haven't yet read The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan, I highly recommend it.  This book changed the way I understand our "industrial food system" - which, since I grew up in this system, I always thought of as natural and benign.  Now I realize just how much our society's eating habits have changed, and how much the components and processes that go into our basic foodstuffs have changed.  This is what inspired me to make some major changes in my own life - by sourcing produce through Boston Organics and joining a "Meat CSA" operated by Stillman's Farm.

FT Special Report on Sustainable Business

About a week ago, the Financial Times published a special report on Sustainable Business. The cover story is Fiona Harvey's "Winds of Change" article, which looks at trends in business and environment over the past year. Other topics include climate-linked insurance, transportation innovations, holding suppliers accountable for carbon footprints, food miles and carbon labels, financial reporting of climate change risks, lobbying for climate change legislation, and sustainable packaging innovations.

Green Consumerism: Eco-Salvation or Oxymoron?

I was recently looking over the topics for the upcoming SPNetwork calendar of events, and was particularly intrigued by one on on Green Consumerism - a fashionable trend of late, but one which assumes that consumerism and sustainability are compatible. And not everyone thinks they are. 

Many, in fact, are convinced that we need to radically change our consumerist culture in order to create an environmentally sustainable society - and I would tend to agree. 

In other words, we don't need to buy different things, we need to buy fewer things.