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05/19/2006
A Seat at the Table
The hiatus is over. Sorry about that, but we were extremely busy with workshops on corporate sustainability over the past week. We brought over partners from the UK , Joss Tantram and Jimmy Brannigan of Terra Consult, to train corporations on the CSR shift from philanthropy to core business sustainability.
There were interesting discussions one of which came early in the workshop in response to the question “Why should business become sustainable?” The obvious answers came up, long-term profits, good for the brand, cost-efficiency, etc. Then the representative from Philip Morris responded, “For a place at the table.” When asked for clarification on the response, she began quite an emotional explanation of how Phillip Morris was being turned away by everyone including NGOs unwilling to accept their money despite the environmental projects they were undertaking. She said words to the effect, “You don’t know how it feels like being turned away because your company produces cigarettes and kills people.” Jimmy Brannigan, one of the British facilitators replied, “Does anybody know how many people the cement industry has killed, or the mining industry?” No response. “Cigarettes are a personal choice. Do people have a choice in the pollution of a cement plant or the devastation caused by a mining or logging concession?” No response.
Don’t misunderstand, the workshop did not dwell on the morality of unsustainable business but how corporations could integrate sustainability in their long-term strategies and how global pressures demand that we relook at the way we do business.
The business case was Interface Inc., probably the only sustainable corporation in the world. After the group work and the discussions, Joss Tantram explained how the CEO of Interface reinvented the whole company from a carpet manufacturer selling to distributors, to a carpet leasing company selling to retail with the overall objective of 0 waste and carbon neutrality. To which one of the corporations said, “But this can’t happen with fuel and mining. We will always need fuel and metals.”
Joss Tantram replied that in the near future, especially with the runaway cost of crude, “We will learn to live without fuel and mining. You have to think about the essential core of your business and see how you may have to reconfigure what your business is all about. Mining may very well have to look at themselves as resource managers, not extracting any more metals or minerals but trading and recycling those that are already processed, from pure necessity.” Of course he was talking about how the world is changing, in the light of directions corporations were beginning to take in Europe.
To the last discussion topic, “How can your business be sustainable?” Philippine Batteries contributed a real turn-around insight by saying,”We may no longer sell batteries, but rent them out and recycle to avoid mercury leaching and achieve a 0 waste objective.” This was at the end of an intense workshop. Were they tired and hallucinating or did they really learn something from it? When people walk out with a gleam in their eyes, they’re either happy that its over or happy that they’ve found a beginning.
My favorite was a socialite VP of Delbros walking out before lunch, telling WWF CEO that it was “fascinating stuff, by my God, there’s just too much information to take in.” But corporations are primarily people and in a changing world, there will always be some who will give up their seat at the table.
09:50 Posted by sr in Mining , Sus Dev , Sustainable Business | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: Sustainable Development