A regular blog about (un) sustainable business. A focus on practical stuff, not blue sky pretentious waffle. Around 6000 regular readers, surprisingly.
Happy New Year to all readers, and I hope you had a restful festive break. I was in rural Somerset with the family, where it rained a lot, but the local food and (mostly imported) wines were superb. Part of my New Year resolutions (along with more gym, fewer carbs and glasses of wine in…
Sabine Benoit and Julia Hartmann at the Surrey Business School at the University of Surrey have been researching consumer perception of sustainability in supply chains (video here) They have been researching the question of whom consumers hold responsible and blame in case of irresponsible supplier behaviour and the subsequent reactions in consumer behaviour. The publication that’s the foundation of…
Here’s a Q&A with Nicky Amos and Dr Rory Sullivan, editors of the new book The Business of Farm Animal Welfare and architects of the Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare. 1) Why is animal farm welfare a significant business issue today? Who does it actually affect? Nicky Amos: The reasons why companies should care about…
Here’s an upcoming event from us at Innovation Forum and Bonsucro, on the above topic. We’ve run this twice before, and last year’s conference was generally regarded as pretty good. It’s packed with big companies and key NGOs, and I hope you can join us. Here’s a bit more on the conference, and the brochure…
Cocoa has been in the news a lot in recent years. It’s one of those soft commodities that everyone cares about and feels they have a stake in. Who doesn’t like chocolate? I spent a few days in the forests of Ghana, back in 2010, with executives from what is now Mondelēz (then Cadbury/Kraft) some years…
If, like me, you have a folder on your desktop with 20-50 unread 80-120 page reports on sustainable commodities, you may find a shorter, sharper version of many of the issues and solutions in this area, quite useful. So here’s a link to one, written by Climate Focus and published by TFA 2020. It’s something…
Here below are some recent analysis and podcasts from us at Innovation Forum. It’s all free. You don’t need to register or anything. Just click and enjoy. We’ve got a lot coming up in the second half of 2017 and if you enjoy our analysis, please consider attending one of our events and supporting our…
Ahead of two business conferences coming up on tackling deforestation in business supply chains in Jakarta in October and London in November, I spoke with Rob Bailes, associate director at consultants Robertsbridge, who are sponsoring both events, about the subject. His firm works with many of the leading companies in the space, helping them develop…
As some readers may know, business and human rights, and forced labor and human trafficking are a big area of focus for us at Innovation Forum. I recall first hosting a conference on this topic in 2003, and much has changed since, at least in terms of awareness. Looking at that 2003 agenda, here you can…
Here’s some of the interviews, insight and analysis, recently added to https://innovation-forum.co.uk The below is a mixture of written and audio content, usually recorded at/around our events from the first half of 2017. I hope there’s some useful insights here somewhere for readers. Happy summer break to all! HSBC’s noble stand on palm oil No…
Last month we wrapped our final conference of the first half of 2017, during which we covered smallholder farmer sustainability, sustainable apparel, deforestation prevention, and tackling modern slavery and forced labour, (in both London and D.C), measuring sustainability processes and outcomes. All our conferences are held under the Chatham House rule of non-disclosure, but here are…
We’ve written and held conference sessions on this above topic for a while now. And we’ll be covering it yet again in our business and human rights conference, held every year since 2014, which takes place again in London in November. (Hard to believe I first did one of these conferences in 2003. And yes,…
A few weeks ago we held one of our “How business can tackle deforestation” conferences in Washington, D.C. I was a bit concerned beforehand because it was the third year of the event and I wondered if we’d have too much repetition of previous years issues, comments and speakers. Happily this turned out not to…
Nick Kirby considers a recent conference on empowering smallholder farmers and how the lessons learned work on the ground The challenge of sourcing sustainably from smallholder farmers is as great as the distance from Diageo’s London headquarters to the coffee farms of Amazonas, Peru. Having recently made that trip after attending the Innovation Forum’s Sustainable Smallholder…
Here are some of the highlights from Innovation Forum’s audio channel over the past few months. To subscribe to the Innovation Forum webinar and podcast stream on iTunes click here. Business and deforestation – are companies going to meet their supply chain commitments? In this webinar, the findings from two new reports from Forest Trends’…
I'm Toby Webb, founder of Innovation Forum, a sustainability focused research, publishing and events business. I've also been a lecturer on Corporate Responsibility at Kings College London and at Birkbeck, University of London for eight years. I work with large companies all over the world and sit on the sustainability advisory board for Walgreens Boots Alliance. From 2006-9 I lead the development of UK CSR policy, resulting in the Responsibility Deals framework. I can be contacted at Tobias DOT Webb AT innovation-forum.co.uk
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