Momentum for Sustainability
2015 | ISEAL Alliance
Today’s sustainability standards systems are challenged to keep up with a rapidly evolving technological landscape. While the corporate world has learned to integrate data flows across global supply chains, most standards systems are lagging behind. This report explores the relevance of current trends in technology to sustainability standards – from mobile data collection and the internet of things, to open data and blockchains – and proposes […]
What to do if you want to incorporate sustainability into your meeting plans and events? Start with this interview for the European Magazine for Meeting Managers.
Behaviour change feels like the holy grail in sustainability communications. We all want it: Wouldn’t it be nice if people just stopped acting in such a self- and planet-destroying manner?
Yet, very few of us know how to get there – and even less have ever fully achieved it.
Next to the Euro crisis and the emergence of new social movements worldwide, one topic stood out during the open space at last week’s Zukunftspiloten reunion: Understanding ecolabels.
Many of the assembled environmentalists and campaigners had mentioned their reliance on organic, fairtrade and other certified products in their attempts to live a responsible lifestyle – and were glad when Sönke and I offered to answer some questions.
“We’re only just getting started”, explained the manager of the large-ish Belgian company. They had recently introduced measures to cut paper consumption in their offices, promote reusable mugs and considered a move to Fair Trade coffee. “How can we take our employees along for these sustainability efforts?”
Had they considered setting an objective, I asked. Certainly, employees would be more likely to engage if they saw that the company is serious […]
The other day, a friend of mine asked me about the Tällberg Forum. I told her how Bo Ekman, a former Volvo executive, had founded it 30 years ago and how it had grown to a fantastic conference on today’s sustainability challenges, bridging business, science, government and civil society. Her eyes grew skeptical: “But isn’t that greenwash?”, she asked.
Words are important. They “provide the mental structures that shape the way we see the world”, to say it with Lakoff. We use words in groups and conversations to make meaning.
Yet, I’m sensing a profound discomfort with many of the words we are using in the sustainability space. We were certainly lost for words at Thursday’s conversation on “CSR & Sustainable Development”.