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Indicators for Oil & Gas CSR Websites

The GRI is in the process of finalising a supplement for the Oil & Gas industry.

Many of the participants in this (including serial website award winners Eni and BP) have also taken part in the IPIECA’s guidance for voluntary sustainability reporting, the last update to which came out in December 2010.

What follows is a summary of some of the indicators the guidance recommends and my comments upon them.

However, although these are aimed at the Oil and Gas industry they’re pertinent to many other industries.

Furthermore, as so much of the present economy is founded upon and driven by O&G products, it would do companies outside the industry no harm to have an awareness of these indicators and even discuss how they may be used when making product and supplier decisions.

[Read more…] about Indicators for Oil & Gas CSR Websites

Eight Standards for CSR and Fashion Websites

One of the biggest running sores in the landscape of CSR is the fashion industry.

Clothing manufacture in the UK (outside of Jermyn Street and Saville Row) appears to have all but died out and those garment factories which do still exist struggle to compete with cheap imports from the Indian subcontinent and China.

Trouble is the cheapness of those imports have generally come from grave human rights abuses which, for many a decade, passed along unnoticed and uncommented upon.

Now that consumers are more knowledgeable, shocking health and labour conditions have been uncovered.  Fashion companies throw up their hands and say “we didn’t know”. Right you are then, so do something about it.

One of the ways fashion companies (labels in other words, not retailers) can “do something” is through participation in the Fair Wear Foundation (FWF). [Read more…] about Eight Standards for CSR and Fashion Websites

Barclays and Standard Chartered – Two Sides Of One Coin | FTSE 100 Website Reviews

It’s always interesting to compare two leading companies in a sector and see how they approach their sustainability websites. 

There is a “standard” website design which has pretty well been settled on these days (3 columns, head and footer, menu system etc) but the question always remains how to use this to the best advantage.

Barclays and Standard Chartered are two of the best performing banks in the UK, yet their approaches to how to design a sustainability website are radically different.  You end up wishing they could have got together and produced one super-duper website, but that’s what competition and market segmentation is all about: being different to your rivals in certain, key areas. [Read more…] about Barclays and Standard Chartered – Two Sides Of One Coin | FTSE 100 Website Reviews

Seven Best Practices for Sustainability Websites | Part 1/2


Last November Two Tomorrows published their 2012 Tomorrow’s Value Research report.

It was a bit of an eye opener.

The drive for transparency, the report concluded, is distracting businesses from tackling issues and many risk losing sight of the overall sustainability picture.

A telling statistic is that only half the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) supersector members measured up to Two Tomorrows’ “leadership” criteria.  You would have expected these to be unanimously in the vanguard.

To try and galvanise the remaining companies, the report seized upon seven areas of best practices they had come across, which are repeated here with a website gloss on them.

[Read more…] about Seven Best Practices for Sustainability Websites | Part 1/2

The Equator Principles : A Brief Overview

Dalmore Boys Club Spot The Ball
Click Here For The Solution

Anyone remember spot the ball competitions? A strange photo of football action had the ball removed and you had to place an X where you thought the ball was. The winner won something, possibly cash.

Talking about business sustainability without mentioning money is a bit like a spot the ball competition. You know it’s there, an essential part of what’s going on, but spotting it can be very difficult indeed.

This is where the Equator Principles (EP) come in; a set of benchmarks put together to bring a sense of sustainability to business financing.

Governance of the Principles
The initiative was created in 2003 by the leading banks of the day, including Barclays, Citibank and ABN Amro. It uses the policies of the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) as its foundation.

They apply to all projects which financial institutions may engage in with financing of over $10m. This includes both direct lending by the banks and financial consultancy.

In addition, the working groups which govern the principles are not wholly focussed upon the banks. They include representatives of NGOs, Socially Responsible Investment analysts and the banks’ client base.

Inevitably this means that the banks and their clients complain that the principles go too far while the NGOs complain that they don’t go far enough.

This is good and it is heartening to see both sides engaging with one another and feeling able to air their views freely.

Equator Principles Homepage

The Equator Principles Themselves
There are Ten Principles. Any institution signing up to them commits to ensuring any project it is involved in with a spend of over $10m will conform to these principles.

They are relatively simple and straightforward and define the standards, management systems, consultations and monitoring which the bank should require of the client.

These provide a clear pathway for any institution wishing to improve the sustainability of its activities. These steps are underpinned by policies from the IFC and World Bank which provide the real meat.

For instance, the principles embrace both the IFC’s Eight Performance Standards on Sustainability, ranging from Cultural Heritage to Pollution, and the World Bank’s 41 industry specific Environment, Health and Safety guidelines.

ABN Amro
Equator Principles Figures

Transparency and The Equator Principles
When the EP was first launched there was one major criticism which was levelled at it: transparency. Much like the UN Global Compact, in it had placed more emphasis on signing up institutions than on monitoring their commitment.

To try and rectify this, the principles were updated in 2006 to include a tenth principle to which requires institutions to report at least once a year upon their activities under the principles.

As a minimum this requires banks to report the number of projects they have been involved in. The associated guidance notes encourage institutions to break the information down further, for instance by country or sector.

Detailed figures, such as those provided by ABN Amro, give a tiny glimpse into which projects a bank has been involved in. However this should be only the start if the banks’ disclosures.

For example: what about the bank’s governance? Is the EP included as a standard part of staff training, as appropriate? How will a bank monitor EP compliance and how will it censure a client if they fall out of compliance?

The Equator Principles Should Lead Finance Sustainability
There is no doubt that the EP acts as a force for good within the banking industry.

In the past year its membership has grown by nearly 20%, includes a quarter of the top investment banks in the world and has recently embraced Industrial Bank Co, one of the largest banks in China.

However, having a ball is only the first part of a good game of football. The rest of the sport is made up of robust rules and regulations to ensure one side or another isn’t unduly favoured.

If the quality of the benchmark’s disclosure requirements isn’t improved the EP could encourage accusations of being a vehicle for greenwashers.

This would be a shame because finance is undoubtedly modern society’s main driver. As such the EP should be a leader, not a follower, in ensuring a sustainable economy is built.

Responsible Business Summit

scarcityAre you going to the Responsible Business Summit?

It’s next week, so you’ve not got long to clear your diary, but it does look good. (See the agenda).

Key topics for discussion include:

  • Collaboration
  • Stakeholder Engagement
  • Trust
  • Supply Chain
  • Resource Constraints

I’m particularly looking forward to the discussions on resource scarcity. This is a growing area of interest for companies; for example, water usage is increasingly monitored and reductions sought as part of the CSR programme, particularly for companies where water usage is necessarily high. Food scarcity is another topic; and energy is a third.

Examples of companies who discuss these issues on the corporate website—and, indeed, go further than just discussion—include:

  • SABMiller on the nexus between water, food and energy: they host online debates, bringing together academics, thinkers and businesses.
  • Unilever have an extensive section on Water Use, and discuss the Water Footprint Network, of which they were a founding member.
  • Dupont on Food Security, discussing the index developed with the Economist Intelligence Unit, to help measure risk and the factors that drive food scarcity.

This subject will be covered in a couple of sessions, and there are lots of other fascinating topics, so if you haven’t already, book your ticket soon*, and prepare to get involved! There’s going to be lots of audience participation this year, with small round-table discussions of particular topics, speaker pitches and polling, question and answer sessions and real-life dilemma discussions.

Maybe meet you there?

(*And for the first time Ethical Corporation is offering special rate tickets to businesses with fewer than 250 employees – down to £350 +VAT for a one-day ticket or £750 +VAT for both days – a fifth of the normal price.)