A regular blog about (un) sustainable business. A focus on practical stuff, not blue sky pretentious waffle. Around 6000 regular readers, surprisingly.
Hello readers, I hope you are all well and pushing through to the end of the year successfully. At Innovation Forum, we’ve got two conferences left this year, on Nov 21-22 on how business can tackle deforestation and then on sustainable sugarcane with Bonsucro on Dec 1-2. Both of them are in London and I…
It seems to me that Anglo-Saxon capitalism and globalisation has failed millions of people. In two recent episodes (one barely needs to name them as the Brexit vote and the US election result) many of these citizens decided to vote decisively in protest, for what they hope is change. When you have little to lose, you are…
Does the internet REALLY need another listicle, I hear you ask? Probably not. But readers do click on stuff like this, hence the headline. I think it’s because you know it’s not going to be very long (or deep) and you might have time to get to the end. My guesswork aside, this listicle (it’s better…
Here below are four recent podcasts we taped at events we at Innovation Forum held earlier this year. The focus is all about smallholder farmers and how companies can better engage them, tackle capacity challenges, improve yields and overcome the limits to certification. (Many more podcasts can be found here) And this upcoming conference should…
Big food and FMCG brands and retailers have set important and game-changing targets in sustainable agriculture. Achieving these are amongst the biggest challenges that companies face in the next decade. Much has been done in recent years, but we’re a long way from overall success. So how will companies get there ‘on time’? Which techniques,…
At Innovation Forum we’re now helping companies understand risk in a cost effective way, that’s not just through edgy, focused conferences which get to the heart of the issues. Several companies has asked us to provide them with a quarterly, cost effective risk briefing service via PDF report, and face to face meetings. These focus…
Here’s the latest of the podcast series Scott Poynton, founder of TFT (The Forest Trust) and I are doing this year. In this edition we talked about the demise of the Indonesian Palm Oil Pledge, the IOI vs. RSPO lawsuit closure, Resolute vs. Greenpeace (briefly), why talking to critics is really the best way. We…
As we move into the summer break, here are some upcoming meetings from Innovation Forum that readers might want to think about coming to later in 2016. Remember, we take away all the boring bits of conferences and emphasise the useful. So our events are all about debate, the right people in the room, focus,…
Yesterday I took part in a webinar hosted by Forest Trends / Supply Change and our company, Innovation Forum. Our brief was to discuss progress made on tacking deforestation in corporate supply chains. I made a few remarks in an attempt to offer some challenge to current thinking, and to think about where we need…
“Everyone loves a good webinar”. That’s what my dear old grandmother used to say. Actually, she didn’t. For her the internet was something that happened to other people. But she would have loved this one, as she was a big fan of deforestation-free supply chains (that’s true, she spent a lot of time in Malaysia…
There is a massive need to address agriculture’s impacts, but existing initiatives aren’t ambitious enough Looking at food production statistics can be depressing. In the United States in 2015, some 9bn chickens were raised for their meat. The corn and soy used to feed them amounted to more than 57m tonnes. In China in 2013, 715m…
A guest post by Ignacio Gavilan. Also published here. As director of environmental sustainability at The Consumer Goods Forum, I get asked a lot about where our members are with regards to implementation, especially around our resolution to achieve zero-net deforestation by 2020. It was, therefore, with great interest that a number of third-party organisations have…
Many companies are risking their futures by not properly investigating how the shift to a low-carbon economy will affect them The bankruptcy filing in April of Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private coal company, was a warning to those that disregard the risk to their business of decarbonisation. Peabody said it would be back because…
(This is a long post. Sorry, but sometimes longer stuff is worth reading. Remember books? They were there before Twitter, and much more informative) After my recent post “Should companies sue NGOs over financially-damaging campaigns?” (*more on this at end) which has had thousands of reads, two things happened. Firstly, I was attacked in the comments…
Thai Union have been front and centre in the debate about both human rights and fishing, and seafood sustainability around the world in recent years. Greenpeace continue campaigning against the company on Tuna and fishing devices. Meanwhile the company has made significant progress on human rights issues, in a challenging operating environment. Some campaigners might…
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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