Responsible Investor

The survey said the UK, the Netherlands and Switzerland lead the list of countries surveyed, while France, Belgium, Italy, Austria, Germany and Greece fell below the study average.
Many food and drinks processing companies are failing to operating sustainably in terms of water consumption, according to a report by the Ecumenical Council for Corporate Responsibility (ECCR), a group of faith-based investors. ECCR analysed water use policies and performance of fifteen leading British and Irish food and drinks businesses, including their agricultural supply chains and overseas operations. The report, Water Sustainability: Meeting the Challenge, said Diageo, SAB Miller and Unilever showed greatest evidence of addressing the need to monitor, report on and reduce their water footprint. Other companies, it said had been slow to respond in a sector which is among the heaviest industrial water users. , Electronic copies are available by email from miles.litvinoff@eccr.org.uk.
The Enhanced Analytics Inititiative, whose 30 members managing nearly $3.3 trillion (€2.1 trillion) in assets commit to allocating a percentage of their brokerage commissions to pay for research on extra-financial issues, has won the Joan Bavaria Award for Impact in

building sustainability into the capital markets. The Joan Bavaria Award, named after the founder and CEO of Trillium Asset Management in the US, recognises investors, companies, and nonprofit groups for specific achievements in spurring the capital markets to move from short-term profits to integrating longer-term social and environmental factors into investment decision-making. The impact award recognizes achievements that have already creating lasting change in capital markets. Washington-based Bainbridge Institute’s MBA in Sustainable Business won the Joan Bavaria innovation award for achievements that have the potential to create lasting change. Nominations for the 2009 Bavaria Awards are now being accepted via the Ceres website (www.ceres.org/bavaria_awards).
The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has started working with leading socially responsible investment research companies to enable corporations to provide their sustainability information electronically. To date, company social responsibility reports have largely been published in print. The GRI said companies would be able to put CSR information into a widely accepted digital format giving readers more flexible access.

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