Should Corporate Boards Promote Green Purchasing?

While corporate boards often voice lofty goals for social responsibility and efforts to address climate change, there is a "wide and growing gap" between these aspirations and corporate actions, according to Professor Colin Coulson-Thomas, a business consultant and professor at the University of Lincoln.

"Many corporate boards would like to contribute to combating environmental challenges and climate change, but they have yet to identify practical and cost-effective ways of turning their noble aspirations into concrete outcomes that will help to save the planet," Coulson-Thomas told the Global Convention on Climate Security in Palampur, India recently. "At the same time, many consumers do not fully understand the differing environmental impacts of alternative options."

Professor Colin Coulson-Thomas

Coulson-Thomas noted there were support tools now available to companies that can help people to make more responsible purchasing decisions by enabling them to make selections based on environmental impact.

Companies should re-orient their attitudes to climate change to view it as an opportunity, not simply a challenge. "Understanding impacts and consequences, especially negative ones, is a first step towards reviewing and developing one's portfolio of offerings, and being more transparent," he says. "Working with customers and prospects in this process can help to build more mutually beneficial and longer-lasting relationships with them."

See Also

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• Raw Materials: U.S. Files WTO Complaint Against China
• Taking Charge of Mobile Workforce Costs
• Siemens Sees Green Tech Driving Economic Growth