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Posts from the ‘Business Models’ Category

The Price of a Life in Bangladesh: Future Markets, Hedging and other Market-Based Mechanisms to Profit from Sustainability

I have a new idea to finance sustainability: a futures market trading the value of the life of Bangladeshi textile workers.

 ”Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as
to conceive how others can be in want.”
Jonathan Swift

A Bangladeshi Low-Income Workers Exchange (BLIWEx) makes a whole lot of sense. The idea is to Read more

It the Game, Not Just the Players: Royal Bank of Canada and Consumers Complicit with Drive to Low Wage Outsourcing

I was visiting a hospital in Canada the other day and overheard health care workers joking about their wages, saying “she was a low-income patient…. Heck we are all low-income now a days… there is no such thing as a middle class job.”

In the wake of the Royal Bank of Canada’s (RBC), understandable, yet inexcusable gaff managing the outsourcing of some 45 IT jobs to iGATE Indian employees, one has to wonder if these nurses might not be right.

But who’s to blame?  And what is a company to do about it? Read more

Using Sustainability Measurement Strategies for Bigger Sustainability Budgets, Value Enhancements, Returns and Impacts

In this sequel to  “To Measure or not to Measure: The Internal Dialogue of an Equivocating Manager “ you will find the deliberations of “Mario” and “Sofie”,  two smart, hard-working managers who, like dozens of my clients are trying their best to do more and better sustainability at their large national developing country firm.

As in To Measure or Not, I don’t know what all the “Marios” and “Sofias” say after they leave their  offices, but I imagine it goes something like this…..

Scene:  Dev Corp, Monterrey Mexico (note: in my experience you can insert any developing country name here) makers of electrical gear for both retail and wholesale.  Dev Corp is a supplier to several global companies and has four plants in Mexico and one in Colombia.

Mario: Is it hot in here, or is it just me?

Sofia: You not hot, you’re mad.

Mario: Yeah, you are right about that. This is the third time our community outreach program expansion proposal was shut down’.  Read more

The New S & P – What a New Pope Can do for Sustainability

In one of my earliest blogs I lied and now I am confessing.

I lied when I wrote anything can be measured…. and that’s why the next Pope needs to declare all Catholics, indeed all Christians, accept sustainability as a central and inalienable spiritual tenant.

More than Stewards
Pretty much everyone knows all major religions, in some way or another and to various degrees, support the notion of sustainability.  But while one could argue Read more

The Story behind the Suitability Strategy (and Brand) Sustainability Certifications.

I love them and I hate them.

I love them for all the great good they have done and do pioneering and commercializing corporate sustainability.

I hate them, because too many companies use them as if a sustainability strategy they make.

Ok, maybe hate is too harsh a word. But if you look at them, in reality all they are is list of things to do and/or measure. Lists and measures are important, but without strategy they remain Read more

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