In the past few days I have been involved in two starkly different but strangely related events.  The Unilever and Guardian Sustainable Business’ Sustainable Living Debate: Mainstream or pipedream? And Sony and Forum for the Future’s Futurescapes workshop. I found both events to be inspiring and yet limiting at the same time.  To bring optimism and despair.

The Unilever event looked at the question of how in relation to changing consumer behaviour.  Can and will consumers change their behaviour?  How can businesses and brands enable and encourage them to do so?  Of course the one overriding imperative here is that we as society and business as the creators and wealth and profit are finally beginning to wake up to the reality of a severely resourced constrained world.  Though like any addict; we’ve taken the first step of finally admitting we have a habit but are yet to kick that habit.  And if we understand that imperative I’m not sure we have yet grasped the second imperative.  That we are now talking about the need for radical and sustained action in years and not decades.

I was recently the guest of a local Fairtrade group.  The subject under discussion was ethical consumption.  It was brought about because of the understanding by the group that a simple answer, such as buy Fairtrade, is no longer a good enough response (other independent certification systems are available – he says in a BBC kind of way).  What does “buy Fairtrade” actually mean for today’s consumer?  And with more and more big brands using the Fairtrade label is all Fairtrade the same?

When do you reach the limits of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)?  There are a number of leading companies in the UK who are building a strong reputation and leadership credentials in the CSR and business sustainability debate.  Many of them are doing some great things and delivering real impact.  This leadership comes from across different sectors of the UK economy and includes some of the UK’s most familiar companies; M&S and Unilever to name but two.

Another company who has been showing leadership is BSkyB.  Today (Wednesday) they have announced a 32 per cent rise in operating profits for the three months to 30th September.  A recession busting performance.  But it’s not their financial performance that concerns me.  It’s their governance.

I thought I’d return to the subject of working from home.  A recent survey from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) may have surprised many when it revealed that the vast majority of us commuted for less than half an hour a day.  But it also hid some other interesting facts.  Firstly that most of our commuting is by car, about 70 per cent.  And that those that commuted further tended to be paid more.  I would imagine that a lot of this was because of people commuting in and out of London and people on bigger salaries have more choice as to where they live.  As someone who doesn’t have to commute every day I tend to look on the prospect of having to fight to get on a train (and for me the privilege of paying of £40 to be crammed uncomfortably into a carriage to stand with my nose in someone’s armpit for the 30 minute trip into London) or sit for hours in a traffic jam, to be utterly horrific. 

I’ve been in a number of meetings in recent weeks where I’ve heard a number of professionals in the Corporate Social Responsibility and sustainability industries (I choose my words carefully) talk about how sustainability is moving from it being a CSR issue within companies to being mainstreamed in the way people do business. And I think to myself; is this really true?

First of all a confession.  I’ve broken one of my own golden rules.  When I started this blog in 2010 I boldly set out what I thought were the principles of good blogging for business.  One was to keep your blog up to date by making regular entries.  I had in mind at least once a week, if not more.  So what happened in February?  I failed to take my own advice and in a very busy month this blog slipped off the agenda.  An easy mistake, but one we should be seeking to avoid.  Well life is going to remain busy for a while so let’s see how I get on.

I’m returning to the issues of the ICT sector and its place in the sustainability debate with this blog.  Increasingly we are all falling in love with our laptops, phones, tablets and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.  While much of the bright uplands of a sustainable future are based upon a vision of a hi-tech world replacing things such as the need to constantly travel. And while the dream of a paperless office may still be a distant one that networked, cloud computing world in which business in conducted in an efficient, “speed of light” way, involving less resources, is still dangled tantalisingly in front of us.

I see Apple is in trouble again over their environmental record.  Is it time for Apple fans and customers to rise up once more and call on the company to take its responsibilities more seriously and to be straight and open with us about their supply chain?

A new decade has begun.  The second of the 21^st century and with this new decade is a chance to think ahead and ponder on the sustainability challenges to come.  OK confession time.  I’m not going to look ahead a whole decade.  I’d venture far too far into the realms of fiction if I did.  But I will take a look at 2011 and suggest some of the challenges for CSR and sustainability communicators in the year to come.

At the beginning of any year I often ask myself, “Am I optimistic or pessimistic about the year ahead?”  To be honest this year I’m neither, and both.  Sort of opti-pessimistic I suppose.  I think there are some very exciting and useful opportunities to get our messages across in 2011 and to deliver some real change in the way we do business, the way we consume and even in the way we live our lives.

With this being my last blog for 2010 I’m not going to succumb to the temptation of re-caping the year passing.  Instead I want to look at what I think should be one of the Corporate Social Responsibility challenges of 2011.  It is certainly something that should be a matter of debate within and among the CSR community.

As the Cancun COP16 talks enter their second and final week the picture still seems to be one of confusion.  Not surprising in many ways as we are in the middle of an intense round of negotiations.  We’ve had everything from Japan threatening to sink Kyoto, to China suggesting it might allow its emissions reduction plans to be subject to “independent scrutiny and incorporated into a “binding” resolution”, according to BusinessGreen.com, who also described this move as a “gamechanger”.  But then we have had to suffer the pessimism of the European Union and countries like Bolivia accusing developing nations of perpetuating “genocide”.