"With China’s plan to urbanize another 20-30 million people per year until 2030, there is little doubt that overall demand for energy will continue to grow for the next two decades. As will the size of the challenges that China faces with addressing the imbalances in its energy systems; a system that by some estimates will grow by more than 250% over the same time period." With our goal to prov…
In February, Richard Brubaker, Founder and Managing Director of Collective Responsibility gave two presentations to DOW Agriculture leadership and sustainability teams on the sustainability and the future of food in China. As one of the largest firms in the food & agricultural sector and one whose products extend throughout the food & agricultural value chain, Rich covered a wide ra…
This past Wednesday, Canadian Consulate General and Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai organized a CSR Roundtable Workshop at Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on the Bund where guests representing a wide range of industries, and charities, were invited to learn about building a CSR program with impact. As part of this event, Charlie Mathews, Director of Corporate Advisory at Collective Responsibilit…
While we all can contribute to sustainability by making small behavioral changes every day at work, turning your passion for sustainability into a core product or establishing a new process at your company often proves much more challenging. At this Beyond Business As Usual forum event, we have invited several champions of sustainability to share their success stories on how they overcome their pe…
As 2015 comes to a close, we would like to take a moment to thank our attendees, speakers, and sponsors for this year's Business As Usual luncheons. It was for us another great year of engaging discussions on the challenges that are faced in the Asia region, but more importantly, we identified many areas where opportunities for collaboration, engagement, products, and services exist to bring solut…
In the 20 years since the "spear in the chest" moment that catalyzed Ray Anderson to move Interface from a company that complies to one that contributes, Interface has become known for their progress in moving their business from "take-make waste" to "zero footprint". It was a process that required vision, but more importantly it required Ray Anderson to engage others on that vision. In our int…
For the last few years, as awareness around sustainability has grown in China, an opportunity to build a successful green brand has developed. To understand more about the challenges of building a green brand, and the opportunities to engage consumers, we spoke with Jeni Saeyang about her work at Eco & More's to build a green product, engage consumers, and the challenges she has faced along…
This Wednesday, we kicked off our Sustainability Speech Series by hosting a talk on ‘Understanding the business case for personal and professional ethics’ at Xi’an JiaoTong Liverpool University in Suzhou. To help students gain an insider perspective on the topic, we invited Mr. Drew Meyer, Associate Director of Control Risks and former FBI officer, to speak about his experience in risk manageme…
Held on September 10th, 2015, Bayer and a group of industry leaders brought their expertise to discuss current and future healthcare challenges that patients face in China and explored ways forward. During a series of interactive workshops, participants worked together to understand the issues from a patient’s perspective, and discussed how they can turn them into opportunities that can drive b…
Sustainability in China has been a topic of many conversations for years now. It is a story that has been about smoggy skies and polluted skies, and as the challenges have grown, calls for a different model suitable to trends of urbanization have grown louder. It is a story that has gained more steam over the last several years as urban residents have become more numerous, grown wealthy, and a…
This week, we kicked off the Beyond Business as Usual luncheon series of the year by hosting a discussion focused on resources, and the need for firms to look across their industry's value chain, align it to the China context, and create sustainable mindsets for how they will plan for, and use, resources as they deliver their products and services going forward. To help bring tangibility t…
Serious water crisis due to never-ending drought struck São Paulo and, consequently, the city faces a massive problem to quench its 20 million citizens’ thirst. Similar situations are affecting cities around the world, including many Chinese cities. For nearly half a century, the capacity and number of rivers in China have decreased significantly, with a 50% reduction due to the diversion of water…
Last week, As part of BASF’s 150th anniversary program in Shanghai, BASF hosted a 24 hour sustainable transportation creatathon involving teams from 7 of Shanghai's universities. With the goal of the event to inspire the teams to create APP-based solution that would help urban residents make better transport decisions. With China’s struggle with smog, energy security, and traffic…
As part of BASF’s 150th anniversary program, Collective Responsibility were appointed to organise a two-day summit on sustainable lifestyles in China, focusing on consumer choices of food, electronics, and textiles. Industry leaders, government associations, NGOs, and students from leading universities gathered to take part to address the current and future challenges in these sectors, and co-c…
When Unigroup recently announced that they were now moving twice as many expatriates out of China as they were into China, it created quite a stir for the global press. A piece by the WSJ stated: "For years, China was a promised land for expanding multinationals and manufacturers, drawing hordes of expatriate employees eager to capitalise on the country’s billion-plus consumers. Could those days…
