leadership

By Leslie Back I love being a student, especially this time around. I am seven weeks into my Sustainable MBA and I am delighted by what I am working on. Well, let me qualify that. I like most of what I am working on. In truth, my statistics book cures insomnia, but the class has [...]

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By Leslie Back Last week, while speaking at the Green Economy Business and Leadership Briefing, Will Day, Chairman of the UK’s Sustainable Development Commission and advisor to the UN Development Program (UNDP), suggested that sustainability is the greatest business opportunity of the 21st century. The presentation, delivered to Irish business leaders, served fair warning that [...]

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By Vale Jokisch at BALLE conference 2010 In February of last year, President Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  The $787 billion act included $500 million allocated to train “green-collar workers” in the environmental sector.  The inclusion of this funding in the bill was a major boon for the city of [...]

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Even as climate policy stalls in the US and elsewhere, 70 percent of corporate executives globally plan to increase spending on climate change intiatives between 2010 and 2012, according to a new survey (PDF) by accountancy Ernst & Young LLP. The international survey, which polled 300 executives at companies with revenues of $1 billion or more, [...]

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The following is a guest post by our friends at Saybrook University’s Organizational Systems Program (a 3p sponsor) – designed for students who want to understand the nature of organizations, collaborative practices, and transformative change. By Dennis T. Jaffe, Ph.D Going Green would be easy if people were rational.  Instead, even the most well-intentioned companies [...]

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A categorical exclusion is a legal term. What is essentially means is “drill baby drill.”

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Back in January, many of you, 3p readers, told us that when it comes to sustainability, George Siemon was the top CEO in all the land. For the rest of you who might not know about this organic farming pioneer, we’d like to introduce you. Triple Pundit talked with Siemon recently about what it means [...]

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It’s been the continuity of the fishing business and the return of tourists, to New Orleans and other destinations along the Gulf Coast that have been pivotal in the area’s recovery after the massive 2005 storm which claimed over 1800 lives. Five years later, the area is still rebuilding. This contamination of the Gulf will doubtless prove a major setback to the area.

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The options are few and many of them, such as burning or the use of toxic dispersal agents can create as much or more harm than they are trying to prevent. Unfortunately, urgency and prudence don’t seem to mix any better than oil and water do.

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By Melinda Burns, reprinted with permission from Miller-McCune Irving Mendelssohn, a Louisiana wetland ecologist, knows what won’t work if and when the oil slick in the Gulf reaches his marshy coastline. Unfortunately, he’s not sure what will. “The most important thing is that you don’t send hundreds of people walking into the wetlands, pushing that [...]

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Trying to make some sense out of the events of recent weeks, I find myself making connections that may or may not be obvious to others. We had an industrial disaster, which continues to gush like an open wound beneath the Gulf of Mexico. The event could and probably should become a symbol of our [...]

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This week Walmart agreed to pay $27.6 million to settle allegations that it improperly disposed of hazardous waste at stores across California. The settlement stems from an investigation started five years ago after an off-duty San Diego County Department of Environmental Health employee noticed a Walmart employee pouring bleach down an open drain. Further investigation uncovered [...]

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by Amy Galland of As You Sow As regulators debate emission caps and utilities install filters and scrubbers to reduce toxic particles from going into the atmosphere – we have to take a minute and remember that the coal problem isn’t solved.  These toxins go somewhere. They go into the 130 million tons of Coal [...]

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Can the wrath of women scorned undermine the strides that Walmart has made with respect to environmental sustainability over the past five years? The mega-retailer claims its sustainability programs, which include using renewable energy to power its stores and cleaner transportation to drive its trucking fleet, is going to save the company millions in operating [...]

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By Glenn Gutterman Where will tomorrow’s corporate responsibility leaders come from? That was the question before a breakout session panel Monday at the BCCCC Conference. According to Maggie McArthur, deputy director of Net Impact, about 50 percent of CSR positions are filled internally while another 25 percent are filled quietly, via word of mouth or [...]

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Mission statements can be painful exercises for entrepreneurs that have yet to truly define their business–or for people who just hate writing. But they are an important part of your planning, and writing a meaningful one can be a cathartic step in business development. Besides, getting it wrong can land you in court. Infuse mission [...]

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Biomimicry is a great design discipline for making cradle-to-cradle products, but it’s also a handy tool when it comes to developing sustainable businesses, explains Gregory Unruh in his new book, Earth, Inc., out this month on Harvard Business Press. The book describes how business leaders can learn from nature’s way of getting things done, sustainably. [...]

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A pack of more than 45 prominent corporations and organizations, led by innovation-hurricane Google Inc., sent a letter to President Obama last week urging the White House to lead the effort to bring energy-efficient smart technology to American homes and businesses. The letter is just the latest in a flurry of announcements from the smart [...]

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The partnership between Germany’s Daimler AG and the Renault-Nissan Alliance to share small car, electric vehicle and hybrid technology and development costs is a landmark deal on several levels, including the fact that they even agreed to do something like this. Imagine Ford, Chrysler and General Motors forging a similar agreement. You really can’t can [...]

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In 1869 in Promontory, Utah a team of eight Chinese laborers hoisted the last rail into place on the Union Pacific Railroad, connecting the East and West coasts of America by rail for the first time. A hundred and forty-one years later, the Chinese are angling to get back in the railway business in the [...]

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Silicon chip giant Intel has amended its corporate charter to include mandatory reporting on “corporate responsibility and sustainability performance.” The move came after dialogue between Intel and social responsible investing firm Harrington Investments, Inc. Harrington introduced in December a shareholder resolution to create a Board of Directors Committee on Sustainability at Intel, the second year [...]

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No April Fools here: the Governor of Montana demands local officials express support, in writing, for a proposed coal mine in order to receive stimulus money for local projects. “The potential revenue from the sale of Otter Creek coal might allow for your project/projects to be funded,” the Governor wrote in a letter (via Green [...]

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A new study by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) argues that Europe and North Africa can achieve complete independence from fossil fuels by 2050, and that all the technologies necessary for such a transformation are already in place. The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and the European Climate Forum all [...]

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All across the United States, local governments, who carry the burden of waste disposal for their communities, have been overwhelmed by literal mountains of hazardous waste that are the byproducts—the unintended consequences—of our voracious consumer society. Because local governments are rarely if ever equipped to deal with a disposal problem of this magnitude, the result [...]

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Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook (there were 3 of them),  Director of Online Organizing for the Obama Campaign, and founder of brand new non-profit start-up Jumo.com, spoke at Tuesday night’s Full Circle Fund meeting.  Since I was lucky enough to attend, and Hughes had some greatly relevant nuggets of wisdom, I thought I’d share with [...]

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A senior corporate responsibility journalist has called Corporate Responsibility Magazine’s (formerly Corporate Responsibility Officer) 100 Best Corporate Citizens list “way off base” in a blog post published Tuesday. Marc Gunther, who writes for Fortune and Greenbiz.com on CSR and environmental subjects said the inclusion on the list of oil companies like ExxonMobil (no. 51) and [...]

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Shipping options for small- and mid-size businesses just got a shade greener. Yesterday, UPS announced the launch of UPS Smart Pickup, an eco-friendly shipping system that uses innovative UPS technology to ensure that a UPS driver stops at a customer location to pick up a package only when a package is, in fact, being shipped. [...]

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The bi-partisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission has been studying no less than 22 contributing causes of the financial crisis. At the risk of oversimplifying matters, Jed Emerson of Blended Value Proposition, believes he knows the root cause.  It all boils down to values, Emerson told participants at the Economist’s recent 2010 Corporate Citizenship Conference “Doing Well [...]

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The Great “but” in any discussion of short term profitability versus corporate responsibility, whether to the public or to the company’s own future, is “but CEOs owe it to the shareholders to increase stock price.” This seemingly iron-clad obligation is arguably the source of much of the financial turmoil of the last couple years, with [...]

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The Economist’s Corporate Citizenship Conference “Doing Well by Doing Good” wrapped up earlier last week and provided a variety of perspectives on what exactly needs to be done, how and by whom to restore our economy, corporate ethics and public trust. It was no surprise that the bleak economic situation was a recurring theme echoed [...]

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