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Posts tagged ‘Brands’

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

Consumers as Stakeholders in the Sustainable Century

A central and defining question in the Sustainable Century is how consumers as “stakeholders” can be engaged in a way that delivers the richness of our sustainability desires while shutting out blackguard marketers whose disinterest in the human condition threatens the hopes and dreams of a sustainable world.

Internet stakeholder consumer sustainability engagement is by and large a misnomer, rendered daily more meaningless, 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

Following in the Footsteps of Bhutan and the End of Advertising

Have you ever been to Bhutan?  It’s a beautiful and disconcerting place.

Beautiful for the mountains, the rivers, the history, the people: disconcerting because it is a deeply tranquil place.

One kind of expects the home of the Gross Domestic Happiness Index to be, well, a happier place. For a hyper-connected, Westerner exposed to constant commercial assaults on my psychic apparatus (http://bit.ly/ei6rAG), the country made me uneasy at first for some reason I couldn’t initially put my finger on.

There are no shortage of possible reasons 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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