2Sustain

Last month, Kraft Foods shared results of a pioneering survey that measured the company’s impact on climate change, land and water use.

The multi-year footprinting project—in partnership with Quantis Inc. and reviewed by World Wildlife Fund and academics at the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment—showed Kraft that its environmental impact goes far beyond the company’s walls.

For example, based on the results of the analysis, Kraft, learned that more than 90 percent of its carbon footprint is outside its plants and offices. Nearly 60 percent is from farm commodities.

The company doesn’t own farms, but the survey certainly supports the work of Kraft’s sustainable agriculture efforts on key commodities to improve crop yields, reduce environmental impacts and improve the lives of farm workers and their families.

In addition, the footprinting work revealed that: (more…)

Here’s some welcome news: A new coalition promises to develop an independent, non-commercial framework for rating sustainability performance. If successful, this new Global Initiative for Sustainability Ratings (GISR) could

• eliminate market confusion,

• reduce conflicts of interest between rating agencies and the companies they survey and

• increase market and consumer confidence in how companies are rated in their environmental and social performance.

Launched last month, GISR is a joint initiative between Ceres, a national coalition of investors and public interest organizations, and Tellus Institute, one of the world’s leading sustainability research and policy organizations.

A more uniform framework is important because sustainability ratings have the ability to push capital and consumer markets towards companies that have embedded sustainability within their operations and supply chains. But, the proliferation of sustainability ratings over the past decade means that in some cases, companies can manipulate the results from various ratings systems and promote only the scores that put their company in a favorable light. Of course, those same companies also can “cherry pick” among results, avoiding the mention of other surveys that are less flattering.

Confusing matters further, some ratings offer little or no transparency about the methodologies used to determine their ratings, which blurs the line between the raters and the companies they rate.

Will this new, additional sustainability standard muddy the waters even more? (more…)

Consumers are increasingly focused on corporations’ sustainability practices. But, how well do public perceptions align with firms’ actual performance on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues?

New research suggests that there isn’t much alignment, at all, and that, unfortunately, many companies are facing reputational risk if they don’t better coordinate their branding, communications, reporting and stakeholder engagement processes around emerging ESG priorities.

The new study, Sustainability Research Report: Measuring Perception vs. Reality, provides a quantitative analysis of sustainability and corporate citizenship performance of 100 leading multinationals.

Conducted by the brand consulting firm Brandlogic and CRD Analytics, the study surveyed 2400 supply chain managers, investment professionals and graduating college students from the US and abroad about their perceptions of the multinationals’ ESG efforts. Then, researchers compared those perceptions against the performance data from 175 performance metrics and five key ESG performance indicators.

Data from the study showed that: (more…)

Reinforcing results reported in earlier studies, new research from the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants shows that most companies fully appreciate the relationship between social and environmental stewardship and business performance.

CIMA, AICPA, and CICA surveyed organizational leaders from their respective memberships and found that more than three-fourths (79 percent) of larger companies currently have a formal sustainability strategy. One-third (33 percent) of smaller companies do, too, and an additional 23 percent of smaller companies have plans to formulate a sustainability strategy within the next 2 years.

In addition, the study also found that: (more…)

Working within the framework of the World Ports Climate Initiative, six European ports have collaborated to launch an initiative to reward ships that cut emissions.

Beginning in January, the ports of Hamburg, Bremen, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Le Havre will offer financial incentives to ships that perform better than the emissions standard adopted by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) back in 2008. The cornerstone of this new initiative is the Environmental Ship Index (ESI), which essentially calculates a ship’s green performance. (more…)