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In This Issue
Editor's Note
The Power of Employee Engagement
Retail companies—which employ more than 10 million people in the United States alone—view their workforce as one of their biggest assets in moving the needle on sustainability.
In this week’s feature article, Adam Siegel, vice president of sustainability and retail operations at the Retail Industry Leaders Association, shares results from a research project—completed in partnership with BSR and the U.S.-based National Environmental Education Foundation—on how retailers are engaging their employees in sustainability efforts.
Next, we share how social impact assessments can help companies manage risks and opportunities amid growing stakeholder expectations and increasingly complex operating environments.
Lastly, BSR Research Manager Linda Hwang reports from GreenBiz.com’s VERGE Roundtable—where panelists discussed how energy, information, buildings, and vehicle technologies are converging to enable new waves of innovation and efficiency.
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In Depth
Leading Retailers Discover the Power in Numbers
By Adam Siegel, Vice President, Sustainability and Retail Operations, Retail Industry Leaders Association
New research by the Retail Industry Leaders Association, BSR, and the National Environmental Education Foundation reveals that most retail companies are engaging their employees in sustainability initiatives. How do these programs work, and what do retailers say makes them effective?
Read more →
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On the Record
‘Smart’ Networks Pave the Way for Innovation and Efficiency
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At GreenBiz.com's VERGE Roundtable last week in San Francisco, more than four dozen top executives gathered to look at how energy, information, buildings, and vehicle technologies are coming together to enable new waves of innovation and efficiency. Throughout the conversation, speakers discussed how "intelligent" products like electric vehicles, smart buildings, and the smart grid are quickly becoming commoditized. As a result, potential value will be realized in software that links these products together. For example, “intelligent” cities are being conceptualized with smart buildings, electric vehicles, and smart grids all sharing data for better energy management.
As part of this conversation, Nth Power’s Rodrigo Prudencio introduced the "open electron"—a concept that refers to shared information networks that are platform-agnostic and optimized for multiple applications—and emphasized the opportunities in developing software that enables these efforts.
"With the 'open electron,' we might start to understand why energy matters … The last frontier here, where we'll spend a lot of time building and innovating, will be around the software and applications layers that will make economic and business sense out of all of this."
—Rodrigo Prudencio, partner, Nth Power (June 22, 2011)
Spotlight
Social Impact Assessments Help Companies Manage Risks and Opportunities
By Alison Colwell, Associate Director, Advisory Services, BSR
With growing stakeholder expectations and increasingly complex operating environments, leading companies recognize the need for a more comprehensive approach to understanding and managing project risks and opportunities that moves beyond regulatory requirements. Social impact assessments (SIA)—the process of analyzing, monitoring, and managing social issues such as resettlement and access to water—can help companies reduce risks, enhance operational decision-making, improve stakeholder relations, maximize community benefits, and secure a company’s license to operate.
To perform an effective SIA, BSR recommends that companies:
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Consider identification of potential impacts as the first step in an ongoing SIA process to manage negative and positive impacts.
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Incorporate community participation into the SIA. For example, establish a community environmental committee to monitor impacts.
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Collect qualitative data in addition to quantitative data to assess longer-term impacts on peoples’ quality of life.
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Integrate or align the SIA approach with current or new processes to assess human rights impacts.
For more information on SIA, contact me or visit the SIA Hub.
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