Food & Drink Sustainability Network

Organised and run by our Sustainability Guru DR ALAN KNIGHT OBE, The Food & Drink Sustainability Network has special six monthly meetings where we sort out “what’s hot and what’s not” for our Food & Drink Industry.

There is a UK focus, but of course the subject is definitely global. If you come along to a meeting you’re automatically enrolled in the club.

  • November 25th, 2010. By Dr Alan Knight.

    WHAT IS CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY AND WHAT ARE THE ISSUES?


    Corporate social responsibility, social responsibility, corporate responsibility, environment, ethics, sustainable development, sustainability – for people outside our field it’s confusing and even for some people inside our profession it’s baffling why there are so many descriptions and why some are more important than others.

    To make it simple, I’ll distil the descriptions and start the debate by arguing for corporate sustainability versus corporate social responsibility.

    There is a lively debate between the attractions and relevance of CSR vs sustainable development, although until recently there has been insufficient consensus about what those differences are

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  • November 25th, 2010. By Dr Alan Knight.

    WHAT MAKES A GOOD CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY PROFESSIONAL?


    There are a relatively small number of sustainability professionals (a separate breed to corporate social responsibility managers) and they can feel isolated and outnumbered by the CSR community. Board level management and HR departments could be better information on how sustainability professionals can create short and long term value for the commercial agenda of the business so it is necessary to codify just what an excellent corporate sustainability professional would look like. This codification needs to be circulated widely as a tool for the professionals themselves as well as board management, training bodies and recruitment professionals.

    A codification ‘strawman’

    A competent sustainability professional will be expected to reflect many different attributes to some extent, but inevitably there will be stronger and weaker characteristics shown by each person. What is important that the sustainability team, at least within larger organisations, is able to deliver all the attributes listed here:

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