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So, what can I say? Well, let me start by welcoming the arrival of a superb new colleague to the Planet 2050 team, Helen Ireland. Helen has years of experience in the CSR and sustainability world, including 5 years at the Soil Association and 3 as head of corporate affairs for Café Direct the UK’s leading fair trade drinks brand. Helen joined a few weeks ago and is already impressing clients, making us laugh and giving our busy team a much needed capacity boost. In fact, without Helen I’m not sure I’d have the time to write this. We’re delighted to have her on board.

I’ve also had a slight professional readjustment – after 4 years of advising the Rainforest Alliance and helping them build their profile in the UK, they’ve asked me to join their Board of Directors. It’s an incredible honour and I hope I can live up to it! I’m very much looking forward to it. Especially now that my friend Charlie Watson is off to Guatemala, to work for the Rainforest Alliance as a communications associate – his first full time job since graduating last year. I am so excited for him. Apart from being an all round ecofriendly good guy, Charlie is also a very talented environmental photographer. He’s got a very nice new website, which can be found here Enjoy browsing photos from his travels around Latin America. He says the site is still under development, but it looks pretty good to me.

Our client Fujitsu Siemens Computers has a great new project – transporting computers from China to Europe. Yes, that’s not new. Difference is, they’re doing it by train. Track the journey and read more about it here.

Lastly, we’re pleased to be sponsoring the Green Awards again this year. Check out the nominees here

I mustn’t over exert myself on my first blog post in 4 months. But I’ll be back soon. Honest

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From what I read over the weekend, it was left to The Independent (pretty much the only trustworthy newspaper these days in my opinion) to do any actual journalistic research into Ramsay’s latest rant. They ran a brilliant piece on the fact that Gordon’s luxury restaurant in Dubai boasts of little else other than the fact that all the food (and even the milk) is flown in from the UK, some 3,000 miles away. In fact, if you visit his glitzy emporium (not that I would) in the UAE, even the fish is flown in from the North Sea, that icon of rampant pillaging. Whilst the Gulf yields plenty of fresh, local, and more exotic species of seafood, Gordon brings it in from the most laughed at attempt at marine conservation anywhere in the world. Here in Britain, the way to puff your product is to show how local and seasonal it is. But for those who, for reasons best known to themselves, opt to holiday in Dubai, the way to haul the punters in is to emphasise just how far the food has travelled. Odd world, silly man.

The F-word seems strangely apt as a response to this self-serving green grandstanding. 

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I must admit, to a young teenager more interested in beer and girls than the intricacies of classical orchestration or even war with the Soviets, this profound thought was somewhat wasted on me. But as I sat in the Royal Festival Hall on Friday evening listening to a staggeringly talented 28 year old Greek conductor (unusually, in her profession, a woman), Stamatia Karampini conducting the London Philharmonic playing the Overture to Wagner’s epic ode to love, Tristan & Isolde, I think I knew what Simpson meant. No less so when the truly brilliant Norwegian pianist, Sigurd Slattebrekk, played the Grieg Piano Concerto as though he had just discovered the meaning of sound itself.

I have long felt that those who yearn to save our wondrous planet have so much in common with those who truly appreciate and honour great music. Yet their worlds have too seldom collided. Environmental gurus revere Dylan and other popular cultural relics (albeit great ones) of the sixties. Classical music buffs are too concerned with the greatness of Mahler or Mozart to worry themselves about natural beauties like the turquoise mot-mot or the orangutans of the Asian rainforests. How I wish the two groups could combine (Classic FM is after all the most successful commercial radio station in the UK) and pool their common interest in the survival of all beauty on this earth for our common good. My father died, last year, at 92, having divided his life between journalism, political activism, poetry and the theatre. Perhaps a sub-conscious attempt to reconcile his concern for the people of this earth with the wonders they inherit in the arts. He lived long enough to see my passion for the survival of both our natural world and the musical culture that sustains its human habitants. In our day to day corporate lives, I wonder whether we would not all benefit from a little less time on email and a bit more energy devoted to the things, man-made and natural, that surely hold the key to our long term survival. On Friday night, listening to this heavenly sound flow from the orchestra, I would have deleted even the most important work email. Because in the grand scheme of things, it could not possibly have mattered.

 It reminded me always to remember the things that really count, be they sights or sounds.  If you don’t believe me, listen to that Wagner overture before you browse one more web-page today. It’s truly worth saving. It’s hard to believe anyone who heard it would engage in the carefree destruction of the planet that gave it life. Humanity has become the planet’s resident expert in waste. Some things are simply too good to waste, and the music that has survived generations is one of them. It represents natural beauty of a kind that only a nuclear holocaust could extinguish. In that sense, it is stronger than the vulnerable species that stand on the brink in the face of our wanton destruction.

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Certainly, for the company that has yet to embark on a deeply embedded CSR strategy, the fate of any plans hang in the balance as the threat of hard times looms. For the firm that views CSR as a ‘nice to have’, or as little more than philanthropy, it is unlikely to prosper until the economic downturn passes. But CSR is not about philanthropy, and many companies have now embedded it to such an extent that it is simply a part of the way in which they do business. It forms the core DNA of their modus operandi, and in that sense is much harder to undo. Not to mention the cost savings that properly executed CSR brings, through more prudent use of natural resources, a highly motivated workforce, reputational benefits, a bank of goodwill with non-governmental organisations and other stakeholders, and improved investor relations. Done well, corporate responsibility is a profit centre, not a cost.

Companies well down the path of corporate responsibility excellence are unlikely to dismantle their CSR strategies, because they can’t. And in communications terms, as competition for sales and market share becomes even harder in a recession, ethics form a key part of the corporate tool box.

Unilever, long a leader in sustainability, is not about to abandon its long established and praised approach to CSR, its new partnership on certified sustainable tea with Rainforest Alliance, or its commitments on climate change and water stewardship. Timberland is not going to drop its progressive ethical stance, and nor will Gap and Nike risk a return to the times when they faced boycotts and crippling litigation over Asian sweatshop factories. For these companies, getting the ethical agenda right is absolutely core to their survival. Some might even argue it is as critical as a healthy financial climate.

Corporate responsibility saves money, builds reputation, and provides whole new angles for communication, across all the marketing disciplines. It builds and cements a bond of trust between a brand and its customers. In times of economic hardship, that trust has a greater value than ever.

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