A regular blog about (un) sustainable business. A focus on practical stuff, not blue sky pretentious waffle. Around 6000 regular readers, surprisingly.
It’s important for global investors to learn to address and model supply chain risks if they wish to achieve financial outperformance, argues Gabriel Thoumi, director of capital markets at Climate Advisers. He makes the points well, alongside NSF’s Meredith Reisfield at a recent event in the US. ValueWalk Video: Managing Investor Expectations & Risk – How to…
Just a quick note on the upcoming Innovation Forum: Sustainable apparel: How brands can transform supply chains (24th-25th April 2018,Amsterdam). Through focused discussion, this two-day conference, our third annual event on this topic, will address the most pressing issues in the apparel industry. It will equip delegates with the best-practice and know-how relating to the biggest…
Last week I published this post about what brands might do as zero deforestation approaches are seen to need re-working, given we are 1000 days or so away from some big stated deadlines. That post is linked below, as is a response by Anita Neville from Golden-Agri Resources. Now, again below, is some further commentary…
While investors recognise the risks in the palm oil sector, there are some key things they can do to engage with the industry more effectively. Toby Webb meets with Abigail Herron, global head of responsible investment at Aviva Investors, and Clara Melot, SPOTT engagement and impacts manager at ZSL, to discuss how palm oil is…
Most readers of this blog, I would suggest, enjoy a glass of wine on occasion. If you don’t, my condolences. Writing about sustainable wine is a hobby of mine, and my wine blog allows me to go and visit winemakers all over the world. Andrew Felluga, who I interview below, points out that grape growers…
One of the things people find annoying about online comments and letters sections, is so few people see substantive responses to original postings. So here I’m posting one below, after my recent post: “Response to my post: 1000 days to go…the six most difficult questions for consumer brands around ‘zero’ deforestation palm oil by 2020“….
I’m not a fan of conspiracy theories. And so I usually regard anything coming out of the Anonymous collective with quite a bit of suspicion. But this video, all fifteen minutes of it, is pretty compelling. In it, Chamath Palihapitiya, former senior Facebook exec, clearly lays out (edited of course!) his fears and concerns about social media,…
Palm oil is much in the news again early in 2018, with headlines appearing such as: EU heading for ‘zero palm oil’ in transport by 2021 Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand ready to retaliate on EU palm oil ban Palm oil: Malaysia can argue for exclusion from European ban Proposed ban on palm oil: Felda to…
The coverage of the Trump administration’s roll-back, or attempted roll-back, of social and environmental regulations is well documented. But are there some benefits to his election? It could be that I’m looking for a silver lining here, and I liked the idea of a bit of a clickbait headline. But also I think there is some…
Josh Prigge, CEO of Sustridge and most recently sustainability head at Fetzer Vineyards, says there’s no doubt that studying sustainable wine has benefits for other business sectors. Josh has spoken at a couple of Innovation Forum conferences in the last few years. I found what he had to say highly interesting, and I was curious about a…
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…
The critical business issues coming up at Innovation Forum Many companies are poised to make real progress on the key corporate sustainability challenges. So, at Innovation Forum we are planning plenty of engaging discussion and insight to help find what’s coming next, and the solutions we’ll need. Over the next few months, through the first…
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…
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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