The debate about whether companies should be obliged, by law, to participate in CSR activities has been going on for years and looks set to continue for some time yet.

The UK Companies Act (2006) took a step in the right direction through its compromise between the Yes/No extremes of this argument. In essence, it is not mandatory to participate in these activities, but all companies listed on the Stock Exchange are obliged to publish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure their impact on and involvement in “environmental matters, employees and social issues”.

The next round of debate will undoubtedly move onto what these KPIs should be. At present there is a situation where companies can choose their own measure making it impossible to compare one company with another easily or fairly. Some form of mandation seem likely.

However there is another way. Rather than mandating specific KPIs, those which can be used should be categorised and ranked in order of perceived importance. So, as a very basic example, you have environment and social categories and performance against an emissions cutting indicator is ranked more highly than performance against a carbon-sink creation indicator.

Then you create a green certification scheme for a company’s supply chain. What this scheme does is measure/aggregate the KPIs for a company’s supply chain and give it a familiar A-E ranking, much as is currently required for electrical items and offices.

At a single blow you’ve just created two things: a framework for comparing different KPIs which is flexible enough to accommodate new ones and changing priorities and a system for monitoring and encouraging companies’ sustainability through the their business activities.

Of course, the next debate is whether the scheme should be mandatory or not. Maybe or maybe not, but self-certification available for companies not listed in the stock exchange looks an interesting proposition. A discussion for another time.

Site Tags: sustainable, supply chain

Have you ever had the squits? No, seriously. I mean its a serious question….

Good. Now that we’ve established that you have let’s move on to the next question … do you understand how the squits happen? Well, here’s an outline to help you along.

Something enters your body, something which shouldn’t be there. Your body, delicate thing that it is, goes “Oh No! Gotta get rid of that otherwise I’ll become horribly ill and die” and launches an all out attack on whatever that nasty thing is.

All sorts of to-ing and fro-ing goes on, sometimes with your body winning and sometimes with the horrible whatever it was winning. Sometimes the battle gets rather frantic and you get gut pains. At other times there’s a sudden victory on the part of your body and you find yourself running upstairs to re-read “War and Peace” while sitting on the toilet.

Eventually this hard metabolic battle results in the horrible whatever it was being squitted out and your body left back in good health. Which is just as well, because otherwise life would not have gone on for much long.

I hope you’ve seen he analogy coming: the horrible whatever it is was is Man’s behaviour and the body is the Environment. Like a squitty infection, Man’s behaviour has sought to try and dominate and change the environment around him. So bad has this behaviour become the Environment is currently undergoing a bit of gut pain, commonly known as Climate Change.

If you really are serious about combating Climate Change, forget all about your carbon footprint and fossil fuels. That is only a first, tentative step towards the overall solution. It’s a great headline grabber, but something more subtle, more meaningful needs to take place alongside it: a change in attitude.

We common mortals must be that change in attitude. We can have a look at the environment around us and try and understand where our behaviour has changed the World around us, how we are causing the squits to happen.

For instance, where have we drained land marshes to destroy richly diverse reedbeds in favour of pesticide poisoned cornfields? Why have we straightened rivers, destroying lazy and meandering environments in favour of fast moving drains?

When was the last time you saw roadkill? Did you think “poor thing: I really wish they could understand roads and cars and keep away”, or did you think “would it really hurt us so much not to hurry about in such a hurtful way”?

How about the last time you saw a wolf, or a lynx or a bear. Did you think “I need to treat that animal with respect, it could hurt me”, or was your attitude simply to reach for a gun?

Man’s behaviour is one of domination and confrontation. Like a horrible something in the gut, his bloody-minded attitude is giving the Planet a bad dose of the squits and the future is looking dangerously toilet-pan in its outlook.

We have to stop this. Stop thinking that we are the Planet, because we are not. The Planet is a system of life all living with each other through systems so complex that it’s unlikely that we will ever fully comprehend them.

But we don’t need to comprehend them, anymore than we need to comprehend the mechanics that dirty hands can lead to diarrhoea. It’ a fact, that’s all that matters.

Our bodies are tuned to handling a certain amount of these bacteria, but not too many. So it is with the Planet: it’s not that Humans are “Bad”, it’s just that our behaviour has become too much. Like a growing child, it’s time our attitude changed and we started living as part of the environment, not against it.

Site Tags: living, life, environment, climate change, squits