In its inaugural year, Greening the Future attracted 22 entries from corporations and organisations around the country.
Given that this is the first time the Mail & Guardian has run this competition focused on business environmental practice, and given the general murkiness surrounding the new concepts of the ‘triple bottom line”, the response was very encouraging.
The term ‘triple bottom line”, also known as sustainability, refers to how business makes its money. In the wake of last year’s World Summit on Sustainable Development, business is serious about adopting balanced social, environmental and economic performance as a test of corporate success.
It is clear that, particularly in sectors such as chemicals, oil, steel, mining and cement, business is taking on the challenges of sustainability with vigour. Finding ways to communicate what they are doing is a huge challenge.
Michael Spicer, Anglo American’s executive vice-president of corporate affairs, recently hosted a meeting of financial and environmental journalists to thrash out ways of communicating corporate sustainability to the public. The multinational is one of the companies that now produce sustainability reports, setting out their progress on the triple bottom line.
London-based former Greenpeace activist-turned-corporate consultant Peter Knight facilitated the Anglo brainstorming session.
‘What is clear is that business is grappling with issues of sustainability and how to communicate them,” Knight said. ‘In international business circles, South Africa is seen as a test case and companies around the world are watching to see how South Africa deals with these things.”
This is where Greening the Future and its sister competition, Investing in the Future, step in. The Greening the Future Awards celebrate environmental best practice, while the Investing in the Future Awards honour corporate social responsibility.
Both competitions and their supplements published in the M&G provide a platform for showcasing corporate sustainability practices. They also act as a forum for debate about how to take sustainability forward.
The panel of judges who adjudicated Greening the Future brought to the table a wide diversity of views. At one stage it seemed they had reached a stalemate, but they managed to move on and choose a list of deserving winners.
A lot more of this kind of interaction and debate is needed if corporate South Africa is to become the world leader in sustainability.