A blog by Amanda Williams, Sustainability Manager
On Monday 29 April, Landmarc Sustainability Manager, Amanda Williams, attended a Responsible Business in Action Practitioners event organised by Business in the Community (BITC). Timed to coincide with the first day of the Responsible Business in Action Campaign, the event marked the start of this ten-week showcase of activities designed to inform, inspire, engage and challenge businesses to become more responsible. Here, Amanda shares some of her insights from the day.
“The day was an opportunity to learn about the latest trends in responsible business across the UK through a review of the output from the first Responsible Business Tracker. This new BITC tool has been piloted by 64 organisations to assess their performance on responsible business and identify areas for improvement. Many of these are leaders in the field.
“Professor Ian Thompson, Centre Director of the Lloyds Banking Group Centre for Responsible Business, outlined the key findings of the pilot which provided some interesting insight. For example,
- 94% of the companies that participated had demonstrated CEO commitment on responsible business, showing leadership from the top
- Like Landmarc, some 42% of the businesses in the pilot had used the global sustainable development goals to evaluate priorities for action
- 63% had set objectives, targets and KPIs to support carbon reduction strategy
- 44% were collaborating with their value chain on environmental issues
- Only 17% had team-specific responsible business objectives, which were relevant to day to day roles.
“At the event, BITC also named those organisations selected as finalists in this year’s Responsible Business Awards, and it was great to be in the room as Landmarc was announced as a finalist in the Age-Friendly Teams Award.
“The day was also a great opportunity to hear from other responsible business and sustainability practitioners about how they have delivered innovative programmes and driven change in their own organisations. Hosted by the Sky Bigger Picture Team at the Sky Campus in Isleworth, it was fascinating to tour the site and see some of the large-scale sustainability initiatives that contribute to this major corporation’s approach to sustainable business.
“Most notably, it was an opportunity to find out about Sky Ocean Rescue, the campaign which sees the company shortlisted for a Responsible Business Award this year in the UPS Environmental Sustainability Award category. This was timely particularly as we develop our own action plan to tackle single-use plastics.
“Sky Ocean Rescue aims to shine a spotlight on ocean health, find innovative solutions to the problem of ocean plastics, and inspire people to act. The media company has committed to eliminating single-use plastics from its operations and supply chain, invested in innovation to help move society away from single-use plastics, and uses their channels and news platforms to shine a spotlight on the issues affecting ocean health.
“Events like these are always inspiring and act as a reminder of how much more we have to do to make our own contribution to tackling some of the world’s biggest environmental issues, like ocean health and global climate change.”