While some might consider a tradeoff between a country's economic development and the resulting socio-environmental burdens to be "justifiable," China has reached the tipping point at which the air crisis is significantly impacting economic development as well. The well-being of China's market is beginning to suffer, with stakeholders reluctant to engage with a country in the middle of an emiss…
While the rest of the world debates the impact of carbon emissions and the need to create binding agreements, China’s battle with air pollution has grown tangible enough to effectively catalyze stakeholders into action. With only six of China’s cities meeting the second tier of the National Environmental Air Quality Standards (NEAQS) in 2015, air pollution has become one of the biggest challenges…
For firms and organizations looking to join the ranks of other industry leaders and assume the mantle of social responsibility, the first key step is engaging and uniting your most valuable resource: your employee base. Consider every interested employee in the process, they bring a level of diversity in departments, expertise, and interactions with outside stakeholders. Joining their talents and…
Globally, China is often portrayed as the bad guy when it comes to environmental degradation and harm. While this is not without substance, and in many areas China is lacking far behind the world leaders, a growing public consciousness and the identification of opportunity is leading innovators to tackle the problems with business solutions. In this post, we outline areas of development and innova…
With so much going on in the realm of sustainability, leadership, and innovation, and only a limited amount of bandwidth for professionals in this space, we have created this weekly news to highlight articles that we feel are (1) important, (2) relevant, and (3) interesting in the areas of business sustainability. If you have an article that you feel needs to be mentioned, please do so in the comm…
On Wednesday I attended Plasticity forum in Shanghai, an event hosted by Doug Woodring that focuses on the plastics industry bringing together professional, experts and stakeholders from around the globe to promote and discuss the future of plastics and its progressive management. Despite a host of interesting talks I wanted to share with you the theme of a conversation that I had with the seni…
With so much going on in the realm of sustainability, leadership, and innovation, and only a limited amount of bandwidth for professionals in this space, we have created this weekly news to highlight articles that we feel are (1) important, (2) relevant, and (3) interesting in the areas of business sustainability. If you have an article that you feel needs to be mentioned, please do so in the comm…
This month, Collective Responsibility was appointed by a global food and nutrition client to speak to their executives about the sustainability risks affecting their industries in China, with a focus on aquaculture, and the market opportunities available through strategic innovation and positioning. Urbanisation continues to add pressure to the environmental and social systems of the food indus…
With so much going on in the realm of sustainability, leadership, and innovation, and only a limited amount of bandwidth for professionals in this space, we have created this weekly news to highlight articles that we feel are (1) important, (2) relevant, and (3) interesting in the areas of business sustainability. If you have an article that you feel needs to be mentioned, please do so in the comm…
Tech is becoming a part of all aspects of life and sustainability is no exception to this. In this piece, in the run-up to our Beyond Business As Usual Forum, we present the future of food in China and how tech can be leveraged to help provide for a growing, more expectant urban population. Over the past 30 years, China has experienced rapid levels of urbanization and increased individual a…
Water is our most important natural resource, it has no replacements or substitutes and all human activity in some way relies on it to function – from the basic biochemistry of the body to large-scale thermal electricity production. Once abundant in many areas, as the planet’s population has grown and poorly managed industrial processes have polluted water sources all over the world, scarci…
To understand the importance of sustainability, you only have to spend a short period of time in one of China’s major cities where you see firsthand the challenges faced in developing urban systems where balance in economic development, society, and the environment is required. These systems are growing at speeds never seen before, and are unlikely to abate anytime in the next 35 years as we mo…
Given the recent commitments to curb coal consumption, and the signature of carbon agreements in Paris, it should come as no surprise that the recently announced 5th-year plan would heavily emphasize sustainability and the continued need to address China’s mounting environmental and social challenges. Within the recent plan, which you can access here, there are a lot of measures for corpora…
China is beginning to take a tougher stance on its environmental issues. Towards the end of last year, COP21 and Chinese urban air pollution dominated the news, but as unilateral agreements were agreed for the first time and pollution levels prompted the highest-level warnings in the Chinese Capital, in the final month of 2015 a far less publicized piece of legislation was passed aimed at stemming…
This month, Collective Responsibility was invited to take part in a supplier CSR forum with Groupe Rocher, the French cosmetics firm. An event where our founder, Rich Brubaker, spoke about CSR trends in China, and where Charlie Mathews, Director of Corporate Advisory, moderated a workshop. Suppliers from across China and South Korea attended, with a diverse range of knowledge and application of s…
