A Tale of Two Desks: Why CFOs and CSOs Should Collaborate for Integrated Reporting

3p Guest Author | Wednesday May 30th, 2012 | 0 Comments

[Image Credit: stress-relief, Flickr]

By Ory Zik, Founder and CEO, Energy Points

It is a tale of two desks, the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and the Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO). On the desk of the CFO sits a file of data points and calculated totals representing the company’s annual international revenues and losses by quarter. On the desk of the CSO are multiple files representing a myriad of environmental sustainability projects and initiatives, tallying the resulting kilowatt hours (kWh) saved, tons of CO2 abated, gallons of water reduced and so on.

The CFO knows that the data on the CSO’s desk is critical to the organization’s risk mitigation and branding and therefore Wall Street’s perception, shareholder value and ultimately financial success.

Just as they did last year, both executives will produce an annual report for the business. But while the CSO is trying to compare the environmental impacts of electricity to natural gas, determining how many gallons of water were saved, the CFO is converting yen, euro and pounds into total dollars spent and saved and asking for hard numbers on just what those gallons of water saved mean to the bottom line.

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McDonald’s UK New Stakeholder Engagement Website Shows Signs of Progress

| Wednesday May 30th, 2012 | 0 Comments

Following the failures of McDonald’s #McStories, #shamrocking and #MeetTheFarmer twitter campaigns, which have brought a storm of protest against the company, McDonald’s UK decided to try another approach. Instead of using an open social media platform in campaigns that seems to be more about advertising, it decided to build a new platform that will actually be more about engagement. The result is What Makes McDonald’s?, where stakeholders are invited to find the facts, share their views and ask McDonald’s a question or two.

The new website will feature a broad range of articles and videos that go behind the scenes of McDonald’s, “covering topics including food sourcing, the charities that McDonald’s supports, the truth about jobs at McDonald’s and what McDonald’s is doing to reduce its impact on the environment.” McDonald’s also plans to include in it contributions from a number of campaigning groups and organizations to highlight what it calls “some of McDonald’s more surprising connections – from The Marine Stewardship Council to animal welfare charity Compassion in World Farming.”

So, is McDonald’s becoming the new poster child of stakeholder engagement? Well, not so fast.

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Things Are Finally Looking Up for Fisker Automotive

Gina-Marie Cheeseman | Wednesday May 30th, 2012 | 1 Comment

Since Fisker Automotive rolled the Karma, a four-door luxury plug-in hybrid sedan with a price tag of $103,000, off of the production line in December, the California-based company has been plagued with problems. At the end of December, Fisker issued a recall because of a battery pack coolant leak that could have caused the Karma to short-circuit. A few weeks later, Fisker issued another recall for the sedan because of a software problem. A few months later, in February, Fisker announced that it is renegotiating some terms of the Department of Energy (DOE) agreement for the $336 million balance on its $529 million loan. A month later, the Karma died during a Consumer Reports test. Later in March, Fisker announced that it will replace the batteries in the Karma after the manufacturer A123 admitted there is a glitch.

Things are finally looking up for Fisker and its luxury sedan. Fisker recently announced that during the first four months of the year, it made over $100 million. The company also delivered 1,000 Karmas to in the U.S. and Europe since December. Business Green reports that Fisker hopes to sell 4,000 by the end of the year.

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When the Military Meets the Maker Movement

| Wednesday May 30th, 2012 | 0 Comments

DARPA joins TechShop and Maker movementThe Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) might not be ready to set up a booth at the next Maker Faire, but the agency is heading in that direction. DARPA’s new Adaptive Vehicle Make program has just teamed up with TechShop, a maker-friendly chain of shared workshops, to collaborate on a test bed for developing advanced new manufacturing technologies.

Combined with President Obama’s initiatives for promoting advanced manufacturing technologies in the civilian sector, DARPA’s initiative could help speed the development of cutting-edge systems that enable the U.S. manufacturing sector to leap into a new generation of greater energy efficiency and improved lifecycle management.

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Why Your HR Department Needs to Drive Green

3p Guest Author | Wednesday May 30th, 2012 | 0 Comments

Image from Bucks Consultants

By Greg Moran, CEO of Chequed.com

One way to categorize all organizations would be to determine those who are green and those who are not.  Luckily, the latter group is shrinking, as Buck Consultants asserts that more than sixty percent of companies include environmental responsibility a part of their mission statement.  However, if you find your organization now falls in the minority, failing to adopt environmentally friendly initiatives, it’s not too late to act and here are just a few good reasons why:

  • To offset the carbon dioxide output of the average person’s annual business flights, six trees would have to be planted and grown to maturity (99 years).
  • The average American office worker uses 500 disposable cups each year, contributing to the approximate 115 million tons of annual commercial waste.
  • Every year, roughly 1.3 million acres of formerly unpaved land is covered in asphalt – typically without engaging in any environmentally offsetting behaviors

However after determining that environmental sustainability is a priority for your organization, the question turns to who will lead the change.  Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is actually loud and clear: the HR department.  HR is key in the development of organizational culture as they are often the first in contact with new recruits and maintain contact with personnel across all departments.

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Interview with Plug Power Shows Fuel Cells Gaining Steam

RP Siegel | Wednesday May 30th, 2012 | 0 Comments

Earlier this month, I posted a piece on fuel cell power as part of my series on energy: pros and cons. Then there was also a press release from Bloom about their plans to double their production capacity with an East Coast plant which we covered in detail here.

After those posts went up, I got deluged with interview requests from fuel cell manufacturers that couldn’t wait to tell me how much they really have going on.

So I took the bait. Over the past week, I spoke with several top executives of fuel cell companies. Today I share my conversation with Andy Marsh, CEO of Plug Power along with Reid Hislop, VP of Marketing.

The real story here is that fuel cell technology, which was once considered the panacea for all of our energy problems, especially in the automotive arena, was suddenly dropped like so many hot embers when investors learned that it would take a while to develop this technology. Now, several years down the road those hot embers have started new fires of their own, as numerous companies have not only continued improving their technology, but have developed some very interesting, and sizable niche markets that didn’t require waiting for the enormous chicken and egg problem (vehicles, refueling stations, technology) associated with the automotive application, to resolve itself.

Here’s what Andy had to say.

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BALLE: Local Heart and Soul

| Wednesday May 30th, 2012 | 0 Comments

I wasn’t prepared for the emotion. I didn’t realize that when people got together to talk about supporting and growing local businesses, how much they would care. When the speakers gave the audience members a glimpse into their communities, we could see that they are fighting for their homes, their friends and neighbors, their neighborhoods and a sense of belonging. They are teaching their children to stay, connect and rebuild, instead of leaving for more prosperous cities. But even after seeing all that, I didn’t expect the tears.

It was my first time attending a BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies) conference. Most of the conferences I have been to were about business products or services. No one cries at those. Businesses outline and promote their tools, and many can have great impact on customers and even communities (like the recent IBM PULSE2012 conference I attended), but you felt like you are viewing these products from a mile-high, bird’s eye view, whereas the BALLE stories put your boots on the ground and you looked these community members in the eye. You felt their despair when their communities were abandoned and devalued when large employers folded or left town, and cheered when they described how a few people led the way in revitalizing their small corner of town, and how that feeling, that inspiration spread.

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4 Things You Can Learn from the Craft Brewing Industry

| Wednesday May 30th, 2012 | 4 Comments

Everyone loves craft beer. Photo © 2012 Jason E. Kaplan

Craft brewing is an industry that is feel-good in more ways than one. Boasting more than $8.7 billion in total retail sales in 2011 from the nearly 2000 American craft breweries (the highest total since the 1880s, per the Brewers Association), the craft brewing industry proves that it is serious business. By creating a collaborative culture that emphasizes high quality products, the craft brewing world serves up powerful lessons.

Lesson 1: Find your passion

Placing an emphasis on the “craft” in craft beer creates a culture of excellence. People are drawn to the craft beer world by their dreams, passion, and love of good beer. And the fact that it’s really fun. Currently the craft beer industry provides an estimated 103,585 US jobs.

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The Truth Will Out: The Power of Employees

CSRHUB | Tuesday May 29th, 2012 | 2 Comments

The following post is part of a CSRHub series focusing on 10 trends that are driving corporate transparency and disclosure in the coming year. To follow the discussion of each trend, watch for posts on the CSRHub blog every week. CSRHub (a 3p sponsor) – offers sustainability and corporate social responsibility ratings on nearly 5,000 of the world’s largest publicly traded companies. 3p readers get 40% off CSRHub’s professional subscriptions with promo code “TP40.”

By Karen Dam

Do you want to work for a socially responsible company? Do you care if your employer’s social and environmental performance is consistent with your values? Insisting on a job that respects your moral commitments as well as your paycheck is a prominent trend in today’s workforce, especially with younger workers. As companies assess the challenges and benefits of effective sustainability and/or CSR efforts, employee preference, retention, and engagement is an increasingly important element.

According to a 2011 PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) study, 88 percent of graduate students and young professionals factor an employer’s CSR position into their job decision. And 86 percent would consider leaving a job if their employer’s CSR performance no longer held up.

Similarly, the 2010 Corporate Social Responsibility Branding Survey revealed that almost half of respondents between the ages of 18 to 24 would choose a position with a socially responsible company, even if they had to take a pay cut.

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Coal Industry Bribes “Activists” with T-Shirts and Lunch to Fight the EPA

Leon Kaye | Tuesday May 29th, 2012 | 1 Comment
coal industry, big coal, epa, Sierra club, chicago, coal, carbon dioxide, carbon emissions, EPA chicago hearing, Leon Kaye, astroturf groups

America counts on coal, more so when paid $50 to wear this t-shirt

If Citizens United and “Fast Fashion” had a love child, it would have been the coal industry’s attempt last week to influence Environmental Protection Agency hearings by dragging in a few rented activists to wear t-shirts and show their (paid) support for a morning.

The bizarre incident occurred last week in Chicago and Washington, DC, where hearings were held to discuss the EPA’s carbon standards for new power plants. Naturally the coal industry and its stakeholders are not happy about the agency’s attempt to slash 123 billion pounds of carbon emissions a year. Apparently a few folks wearing ill-fitting and frumpy t-shirts were supposed to intimidate regulators and organizations like the Sierra Club during the hearings.

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Raise a Glass to Green Beer

| Tuesday May 29th, 2012 | 0 Comments

Green Beer? Cheers to that! Photo © 2012 Jason E. Kaplan

Earlier this month, Triple Pundit teamed up with The Can Van to better understand the connection between two of our favorite topics: sustainability and beer!

We had the unique opportunity to sit down and share a beer at the 29th annual Craft Brewers Conference with craft beer all-stars including Sierra Nevada, New Belgium, Bison Organic Beer, and more. With each new industry professional we met, and every brew we enjoyed, it came as no surprise that our appreciation for beer deepened.  These candid conversations helped us develop a clearer picture of the integral role sustainability plays in the beer industry. And that made us pretty happy about our choice in adult beverages.

We learned that you can gain more than just money by collaborating with your industry peers, that breweries (on the whole) are important community stewards, and there are a number of different ways a business can view its commitment to sustainability.

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Case Study: Corporate Volunteer Programs at Land O’Lakes

3p Guest Author | Tuesday May 29th, 2012 | 0 Comments

This is the third in a six part series on building better employee volunteer programs, presented by MicroEdge, the leading provider of software and services to the giving community worldwide. Follow the rest of the series here.

How a single-sign-on volunteer tracking program and other simple measures led to almost 20 times growth in volunteerism in only two years. 

Kicking off a true volunteer program at Land O’Lakes

Land O’Lakes is one of America’s premier member-owned cooperatives, delivering an extensive line of supplies as well as state-of-the-art production and business services to agricultural producers. A leading marketer of dairy-based food products, the company is now the second-largest cooperative in the nation with approximately 9,000 employees, 3,200 direct producer-members and 1,000 member-cooperatives serving more than 300,000 agricultural producers.

Long committed to social responsibility, a key component of Land O’Lakes’ vision has always been to take a leadership role in the community. However, in 2003, Dollars for Doers was their only organized giving event.  To move the company forward in this leadership effort, the acting CEO set a goal for greater volunteerism and encouraged more participation throughout the company. In order to jumpstart this initiative, the company kicked off a United Way Campaign with the goal of enrolling 400 volunteers.

With this objective in mind, the company’s Community Relations team realized they would need to reconsider their standard methods for signing up employees, such as hanging sign-up sheets in cafeterias. They needed a more advanced mechanism for employees to register for events and log their hours. The company began searching for a solution to help drive volunteerism locally and across the company.

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Radical Sharing for the New Industrial Revolution

Presidio Economics | Tuesday May 29th, 2012 | 2 Comments

Presidio Graduate School’s Macroeconomics course for Spring 2012, is authoring a series of articles. The articles on this “micro-blog” reflect reactions and thoughts on news items, economic theory, and other issues as they pertain to the concept of sustainability.  Follow along here.

By Morgan Matthews
Until recently, I have been astonished by the incredibly poor allocation of one of our most widely available, but drastically underused resources: open seats in cars.  According to a national survey conducted by the US Department of Transportation, the average vehicle commuting to and from work today carries just 1.1 people which means about 80% of car capacity goes unused. In the Bay Area alone an average of 270,000 cars commute across the Bay Bridge daily and each vehicle is only 20% full; talk about massive waste of resources!

Why so wasteful? Obtaining efficient transportation is a pain for city dwellers and commuters alike. Public transportation is affordable, but can be unreliable. Taking taxis and driving are convenient, but expensive. Is there a simpler solution to our transportation woes? Yes, yes there is. All thanks to a movement known as collaborative consumption and a few innovative companies.

The sharing economy, or access economy, also known as collaborative consumption, is characterized by the sharing of goods, space, services and expertise, in innovative ways; typically through an online platform. Ridesharing and car sharing platforms such as Zimride, Get Around, and Avego are contributing to the evolution of transportation and taking the market by storm. Each platform provides users with a unique way of filling up empty seats in cars. On Zimride you can sell empty seats in advance and on Get Around you can rent your car to a stranger for a fee. One of the most creative ways to solve the efficient-transportation conundrum is a platform called Avego.  Avego is a real time ridesharing application that uses map overlays to instantly match riders; it offers the convenience of a car and rates slightly higher than public transportation. Avego recently launched a bay area pilot program, called We Go, earlier this year and is already gaining traction. 

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Should We Praise Goldman Sachs for Pledging to Invest $40 Billion in Clean Energy?

| Monday May 28th, 2012 | 4 Comments

Goldman Sachs announced on Thursday it plans to invest $40 billion of its own and its clients’ money in renewable energy projects over the next decade. The investment bank described the renewable energy sector as one of the biggest profit opportunities, comparing it to technology investments in the 1990s or to investing 10 years ago in fast-growing countries like Brazil, Russia, India and China. “This is another emerging opportunity we think will be quite large,” Stuart Bernstein, head of Goldman’s clean technology and renewables investment banking group told Reuters.

When you read this news, you might be wondering if this is not just a charm offensive, or in other words, an effort by Goldman to rehabilitate its reputation following Greg Smith’s famous New York Times op-ed accusing Goldman in lacking of any “moral fiber.” This might be the case here, but it is almost too easy to just dismiss it as a public relations stunt. Even if you’re not a Goldman’s fan, there are some good reasons why this announcement should be praised and not ridiculed. At the same time, you always need to look at the big picture and when you do, suddenly this step looks more like a lipstick on a Wall-Street pig. So which one is it?

Let’s look first at the reasons why this move should be praised:

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Amazon.com Becomes the Latest Company to Leave ALEC

| Monday May 28th, 2012 | 0 Comments

Cigarettes, Voting Rights, Gun Rights and Climate Change

Some odd things have been happening at the intersection of voting, guns, climate change and cigarettes. Last week, retail giant Amazon.com joined a growing list of major companies that have severed their ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a lobbying group that has worked effectively on voting rights,  gun use, and climate change issues. Also this month, the Heartland Institute, a lobbying organization with a long history of thwarting anti-smoking legislation, has seen its membership drop over its activities related to climate change.

If you have been trying to make sense of how these two powerful organizations have suddenly found themselves on the rocks, well, so have we. There are a number of ways to look at the situation, and one way is through the lens of media and messaging.

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