Monday, March 26, 2012

The 2012 Proxy Preview from http://www.asyousow.com/ has been published.
We see shareholders increasing their pressure on public companies to report not only their own sustainable actions (carbon, water, diversity, etc) , but that of their supply chain as well. The ball is rolling, and the time to prepare for supplier sustainability surveys is now. A wisely-paced, well thought out plan to sustainability will put you in the driver's seat. Plus, sustainably-focused companies economically outperform those who are not through competitive advantage, profitability, and increased brand awareness. There simply are no excuses to wait any longer.
Janet Harrison

34% of shareholder proposals filed were for actions surrounding Environment/Sustainability.
27% of primary filers were from Socially Responsible Investors (SRI’s).
27% of primary filers were from Pension Funds.

The top leading mentions within specific sustainability requests were:
• Vendor Standards
• GhG Goals/Disclosure
•Water
Some good take-aways:

• Proposals that ask companies to issue broad sustainability reports that cover a range of issues advocates otherwise bring up on their own have become standard fare in proxy season. They tend to get high levels of support.

• Consistent with Peter Drucker’s belief that “what gets measured gets managed,” the goal is to push sustainability reporting—which is becoming standard practice among major publicly-traded corporations—into the global supply chain.
• A proposal remains pending at Dell and Motorola Solutions. It asks them to use “a phased, tiered approach” to take the necessary steps to help move the Company’s supplier(s) to begin publishing annual, independently verifiable, sustainability reports. Since October, Apple and HP have also agreed to substantially adopt the proposal. Proposal is expected to be filed at more companies in the future.

• Microsoft will publicly post suppliers’ reports on its website, although suppliers can opt out of this disclosure.

1 comment:

  1. Alexandra- FIU StudentFebruary 28, 2013 at 8:23 AM

    Dear Blogger


    My name is Alexandra and I am a student in FIU’s School of Journalism & Mass Communication. I am currently taking the Communication Research course in which I work with my peers on a research project focused on environmental/green communication in the blogosphere.

    I would greatly appreciate your sharing with me and my classmates your opinions on various topics related to your blogging experience by filling out an online survey. As we want to learn about blog readers too, I would ask you to kindly distribute the survey link to your automated mailing list and/or post it on your blog.

    The survey will take you no longer than 15 minutes to complete and you can access it through the link below:

    https://fiu.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_a8GgL6TnbgWbJR3&Stu=mas331

    This survey is anonymous and does not require any identifying information.
    I really appreciate your cooperation and efforts and look forward to get your insights and ideas.

    Sincerely,
    Alexandra Masihy

    School of Journalism & Mass Communication
    Florida International University

    Amasi001@fiu.edu

    ReplyDelete