BCLC’s February e-newsletter included a piece by Ben Erulkar, BCLC’s senior advisor for Corporate Community Investment, that weaves together commentary from four business and community leaders working at the intersection of CSR and competitiveness.

According to Erulkar: “Today, unprecedented challenges and opportunities reshape how businesses compete and communities grow. Companies of all types continue to pioneer innovative, sustainable solutions to these real-world challenges. Corporate citizenship programs can be highly effective when they’re fully leveraged within a company’s value proposition, making these programs well positioned to handle the leading competitive challenges of today: education, energy, health care and job creation.”

Nancy Nalence of Waste Management gave us her thoughts on environmental challenges and opportunities.

[Editor's note: Leading companies and partner organizations will address this topic -- and other competitiveness topics such as the education, health and wellness, and jobs-- at BCLC's conference, Provide and Prosper: Corporate Citizenship and Competitiveness in the 21st Century.] 

Waste-services providers have a unique opportunity to contribute in critical ways to environmental and competitive business challenges. As North America’s largest waste-services provider, Waste Management has been not only expanding our services to meet changing community and customer needs, but partnering with experts in business, education, and industry to develop technologies and programs for sustainable energy and environmental solutions.

These efforts include working with equipment manufacturers to develop vehicles that will improve our fuel efficiency and significantly reduce our fleet emissions; doubling our waste- and landfill-gas-to-energy production; and increasing the amount of recycling we handle – much of it though single-stream technology – to more than 20 million tons. We are also partnering with solutions providers on projects aimed at producing diesel and alternative fuels, as well as electricity, from landfill gas.

Knowing all businesses face similar challenges, the company formed its consultation group, Green Squad, to help customers implement and enhance their own sustainability initiatives by reducing resource consumption, managing materials and developing overarching sustainability strategies.

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[Editor's Note: See related post, Not Again.]

Continuous improvements in humanitarian assistance, disaster recovery, and community development practices at the local, national, regional, and global levels will save lives and minimize damages, and it is especially timely to look at this need for improvement in light of what is happening in Chile (see related post: Not Again), Haiti, and previous disasters.

Mary Wong, president of the Office Depot Foundation and the co-chair of BCLC’s Disaster Assistance and Recovery working group, has long advocated for a re-think of all of these issues.  One of my favorite sayings of hers is, “We need to make different mistakes than what we’ve made in the past.” 

We can’t keep repeating our current approach and expect different results.  So herewith are a few ideas about how we might change our approach to humanitarian assistance, recovery, and development.

(1) Let’s invest in an ounce of prevention.  In many parts of the United States and around the world, infrastructure is growing increasingly obsolete and needs to be refurbished and rehabbed and, in some cases, redesigned or even moved. 

A  March 1 USA Today article reports that in 2009, the American Society of Civil Engineers warned that 26% of the nation’s bridges “are either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.” The engineers’ report, based on Department of Transportation figures, showed that one in three urban bridges are either broken or obsolete, and suggested a $17 billion yearly shortfall in maintenance spending nationwide.

Stark examples such as the Bay Bridge collapse after the 1989 World Series earthquake or the 2007 Minnesota I-35 bridge collapse show how important infrastructure sustainability is for human lives. 

But this requires that we fundamentally change our culture to reward prudence instead of urgency.  The Mobile Chamber commissioned a sustainability study for Mobile Bay, but funders got sticker shock over a $3 million design price tag and potential millions more in infrastructure upgrades.  This is so much cheaper than having to spend billions to pick up the pieces after the fact, but right now, crises are an easier sell. Better planning, design, and infrastructure improvements not only save lives, they reduce risk and increase the economic attractiveness of any location.

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On November 12th I posted notice of the opening of the 2010 Siemens Sustainable Community Awards nomination process.

Almost four months later, I’m posting one final notice about the 2010 nomination period (though there have been posts in between). After a two-week extension due to the Haitian earthquake, Award applications are due this Friday at 5:00 p.m. EST - you can get the nomination form here.

Don’t panic, there’s still time to craft your 1,000-word submission essay. You can then email your submission and as long as we receive it by 5:00 sharp on Friday, it will be considered (late nominations won’t be accepted).

The U.S. Chamber BCLC and Siemens seek applications from communities that have committed to achieving complementary economic, environmental, and social goals that will help build long-term competitiveness and success. Criteria are further described in the nomination form.

Meanwhile, information and photos from past winners are available online. Please email BCLC if you have any questions about the awards.

If you are planning to submit a nomination for the 2010 Siemens Sustainable Awards, please note the application deadline is extended until Feb. 12th (original deadline – Jan. 31).

In the past two years, 16 U.S. communities have ascended to national attention for their local efforts to blend economic, environmental, and social priorities and advance the overall sustainability and long-term success of the community. This is what the Siemens Sustainable Community Awards is all about.

Here is the type of information we seek for the 2010 nominations:

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[Editor's note - this post is related to a workshop BCLC will host this month in New Orleans: Next Steps for Gulf Coast Recovery and National Resiliency, Jan. 26 & 27.]

What does successful “disaster recovery” look like? Would you be surprised to learn that there’s not really a single authoritative definition of disaster recovery?

Last June, BCLC hosted a workshop that convened business, government, and nonprofit leaders to “respond” — hypothetically speaking — to a specific disaster scenario; in this case, back-to-back disasters of major magnitude.  The goal was for participants to better understand how to work together if the scenario actually happened.

During the workshop, it quickly became apparent that a universal definition of disaster recovery does not exist.  Instead of working together to meet a common recovery goal, participants had to first define what the goal was.

This was a problem.

The lack of a common definition at the workshop is a microcosm of what actually happens on the ground after real disasters.  Everyone has their own sense of what a recovery is, so it’s difficult to work together to achieve it.

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We at BCLC want to help you get a jumpstart on 2010 by letting you know about some great upcoming opportunities related to corporate citizenship, CSR, and sustainability. 

Business Excellence: BCLC offers two awards programs to honor the social and civic efforts of companies and their government and nonprofit partners. The Siemens Sustainable Community Awards program recognizes public-private coalitions for taking on the 21st century challenge of sustainable development.  Be sure to nominate (PDF) your local sustainability efforts by Jan. 29, 2010.

The Corporate Citizenship Awards honor companies for excellence in four categories – U.S. Community Service, International Community Service, Business-Nonprofit Partnerships, and Corporate Stewardship. The 2010 nomination period will begin in March. In the meantime, learn more about the 2009 winners and finalists.

Big Issues, Concrete Action – As an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, you can be sure BCLC will always bring the business voice to the table. Some of the issues that remain our strategic focus in 2010 include sustainability, community resiliency, global aid reform, community development, business and society relations. Visit our website’s different program portals for more information.

Thought Leadership – BCLC staff members and strategic advisors are public speakers and writers about leading corporate citizenship and CSR topics. Visit our Articles page and Staff/Advisors page to read recent articles and learn more about BCLC’s network of experts.

Connections and Networking – Whether you attend a conference or a webinar, participate in BCLC’s corporate working groups, or contribute to any one of our communication outlets, BCLC gives you an established platform to amp your corporate citizenship story. Check out — and participate in — this blog, our events, and the Company Library for a sampling of how BCLC connects people and ideas.

Happy New Year, and we can’t wait to work with you more in 2010.

If you have not seen Avatar, stop reading and go see it.  It’s that good.  If you are like my wife and me, you don’t go to the movie theater anymore unless they are featuring a spectacle.  Believe me, this movie is a spectacle.  So consider this opening paragraph your spoiler alert.

Good.  Now that the last few folks who haven’t seen the movie have left, let’s get serious.  If you are into corporate citizenship, then wasn’t this movie a poke in the eye? 

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I was invited to participate in a NOAA workshop this month. There were university professors, research scientists, government experts, and me. They were talking about thinks like LIDAR maps, hydrography, geomorphism, subsidence, and other easy topics like that.  When I got up to speak, I confessed to having a bit of an existential crisis since the topics on hand went far beyond anything my college environmental sciences classes had covered. Plus I didn’t speak “science-ese”, and I was afraid of committing some egregious faux pas (which I’m sure I did).

I needn’t have worried though. None of the climatologists bit me, and in fact they were surprisingly welcoming.  They wanted to hear different perspectives on the issues that they were facing.  As they look out over the next one hundred years, they see shifting weather patterns and different interactions taking place between sea and land that will have profound impacts on current development patterns. 

What are the implications of the Great Lakes subsiding?  What happens if the Greenland ice sheet tips into the ocean?  What happens if the sea level rises three to five feet? 

In short, this wasn’t a conversation about the causes of climate change, but about the effects of climate and extreme weather.  These experts didn’t want my opinion on the environmental practices of business, they wanted perspectives on what kind of climate data would help inform future economic and development decisions.  In short, they wanted to help us work on community resilience.

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When treatment systems recycle wastewater into clean water, cities like Lima, Peru, are able to safely irrigate nearly 1,000 acres of farmland per day. This is a prime example of how one of BCLC’s 2009 Corporate Stewardship Award finalists addresses a pressing global issue: water scarcity. 

ITT is a high-technology engineering and manufacturing company that specializes in water and fluids management,  global defense and security, and motion and flow control.  It is also a company helping to bring safe water, sanitation, and hygiene education to more than 300 schools in Asia and Latin America – improving the lives of more than 100,000 children and their families.

ITT is committed to safeguarding the climate, communities, and resources while also focusing on sustainable growth and development. Additional ways the company took on the water challenge in 2008 included:

* Supported 52 schools in Latin America and Asia with safe water, sanitation and hygiene, directly impacting

A council meeting to plan a new well and its management

more than 36,000 students.

* Provided safe water to more than 190,000 people following emergencies.

* Sent the first wave of ITT volunteers to Honduras and Guatemala in April 2009 to work alongside Water For People’s team of World Water Corps workers to evaluate water availability, sanitation conditions and hygiene practices, take photographs, collect water samples, and interview students and community members in towns needing assistance

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I recently visited Cleveland, Ohio, with the purpose of meeting with civic and business leaders to determine whether BCLC can play a helpful role in Sustainable Cleveland 2019.

Sustainable Cleveland 2019 is Mayor Jackson’s ten-year initiative to redevelop and rebuild Cleveland along sustainable development principles (grow the economy, nourish the community, preserve and protect the environment).  At BCLC, we’re launching a technical assistance platform to provide meaningful assistance to communities like Cleveland where our member companies are making community investments.

I was impressed by the momentum and consensus that Sustainable Cleveland 2019 has generated in just a short period of time.  Based on its progress so far, Cleveland is well-positioned to become a standout among initiatives of this type for a combination of three reasons:

1) First, Cleveland’s economic challenges, both historically and as a result of the current downturn, are substantial.  The city has lost 50% of its population over the past 60 years, and 10% of the area’s residential properties are now vacant, due in part to the recent rise in foreclosure filings.  I’m aware of only one other large U.S. city – Detroit – that has suffered from current and long-term economic challenges as Cleveland has.

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