The 11th Annual Summit by Canadian Business for Social Responsibility brought together an international panel of leaders to address how corporate social responsibility practitioners can lead their companies onto a transformational path. Keynote speaker John Elkington showed how enterprises can set and achieve bold goals that touch their core business while addressing systemic societal risks and challenges.
A large scale study comparing Canadian companies to their world peers finds Canada leads in capturing cost reduction from sustainability initiatives but lags global leaders in driving profitability through collaboration. Broader collaborations with customers, suppliers, government and policy makers may be a key to unlocking the next phase’s rewards.
Walmart recently released its 2010 Global Sustainability Report. Being the world’s largest public corporation, Walmart has enormous influence directly and indirectly to businesses around them. Whether your business has direct dealings with Walmart or not, it is worth taking notes on their targets, achievements, and future plans. In this post, I highlight three areas of their Canadian operations: energy efficiency, waste reduction, and packaging reduction. See how Walmart Canada save the environment while saving money.
Eighty-two percent of Canadian executives believe that a response to climate change is imperative today and plan immediate increases on spending for climate change initiatives, according to the new report Action Amid Uncertainty: The Business Response To Climate Change, based on a survey from Ernst & Young. Read this post on what Canadian companies are doing and what their future plans are for climate change, sustainability, and environmental initiatives.
Sustainability has become the second top business challenges according to a new survey of Canadian and global supply chain managers by Capgemini Consulting. 56% of companies now consider sustainability a key issue, up sharply from 34% from one year ago. Read this post on the details of the report, the key success factors to sustainable purchasing, and how to apply the 4R approach to reduce supply chain costs.