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I was working with the corporate responsibility committee of one of my clients recently, a very well-known brand involving global manufacturing, distribution and sales. We were brain storming new initiatives that we could work on to develop the next stage of their strategy and asking what the next priorities might be.

One of my colleagues, who work in legal affairs, suggested that elimination of paper might be something for the group to work on. There was an awkward pause before one of the technical team reminded us of all the detailed analysis we had done to characterise and quantify the company’s overall environmental footprint. From this work, which is similar to carbon footprinting but with an all issue’ remit, the environmental heavy hitters are quite clear: the company’s paper purchases do not even register on the scale as being a significant impact.

I reminded the group that we had also analysed stakeholder concerns and expectations on the company’s social and environmental issues – and paper consumption had not figured in that analysis either. So if paper consumption has a relatively trivial impact overall and no third party was lobbying for a reduction in its use, why was ‘paper use’ front of mind for my
legal colleague?

Paper problems?

We carried on our conversations. Further down our agenda was publication of the company’s next corporate responsibility report. Bear in mind that a cross-functional team working with external consultants had been developing the report for the best part of a year. The text and design was ready and was already sat with the chief executive for his approval. Again my colleague asks, “Why are we printing 1,000 copies of the report, isn’t this an inappropriate thing for a responsible company to do?”.

We stopped and discussed the company’s overall communications objectives and the desirability of putting a hard copy in the hands of certain report users. We also reflected upon how this was already a radically reduced print run compared to the previous year and again we moved on.

But these discussions set me thinking about the massive challenges facing the print and paper industries. For some reason, it has become accepted wisdom, with little debate, that print media are generally a ‘bad thing’. I have written in this column about this issue before, but I remain convinced that so much more should be done by the industry to make its case regarding its environmental and social impacts – both positive and negative – to create greater balance in the debate.

Tailored information

We also need to work extremely hard to explain scientific and technical issues to a non-expert audience. The field of corporate responsibility is still relatively young and the tools that we have at our disposal to help companies understand what’s important and decide priorities are far from perfect. More than that, when decision makers struggle with even basic scientific concepts, the danger of getting distracted – or forming bad policy – is huge.

On a more positive note, at the same meeting, we presented the results of some benchmarking work my company had done to the committee. The tool is called the Tomorrow’s Value Rating and is being published on a rolling basis, sector by sector.  The rating explores how corporates understand and are responding to ‘material’ sustainability issues – and using what they learn to create future value.

The research clearly differentiates between the companies that ‘get it’ and those that don’t.  In this case, applying the rating to my global manufacturing company showed that they had not only been relatively successful to date in focusing on the priority issues, but also that they are better than most in measuring performance and setting effective targets.

It is surprising how many high-profile brands that are known for being good corporate citizens are actually quite bad at committing to future improvements, but there is comfort in the fact many others are relatively good.