As a way of helping companies turn their sustainability goals into action, the Rainforest Alliance has created a Sustainable Business Forum, which brings business leaders together with sustainability experts to create supply chains for these products.
The SBF is a corporate membership program that gives companies one-on-one support from dedicated Rainforest Alliance staffers to research the most environmentally friendly ways of sourcing products, develop programs to bring these products to market in the most effective and cost-saving ways, and communicate the programs and successes.
"We created the Sustainable Business Forum to encourage companies to operate more sustainably by helping them to make responsible choices," says Rainforest Alliance executive director Tensie Whelan. "Every day we hear about companies announcing that sustainability is a priority. The Rainforest Alliance has the expertise to help companies turn those priorities into actions."
Goldman Sachs and Pfizer are the founding members of the SBF, which builds on the Rainforest Alliance's 20 years of experience and extensive network of nonprofit partners. As more companies view social responsibility as a business opportunity instead of a cost, interest in sustainable practices has entered the mainstream. The SBF will offer a wide spectrum of guidance to businesses that have yet to integrate sustainability into their existing operations, as well as to those companies who want to make continual improvements.
The SBF program is contained in five sections. The first is the planning stage, wherein member companies receive counsel and tools to develop policies, guidelines and action plans to ensure that they can organize and achieve their responsible sourcing and supply chain management and sustainability goals.
In the next stage, implementation, companies learn the basic "do's and don'ts" of responsible sourcing and supply chain management and sustainability practices. Once the plans are implemented, the SBF helps members measure progress both in relation to the company's own sustainability goals and how other companies compare across the industry.
Finally, in the communication stage, the SBF gives companies both internal and external communications support to help promote the actions they're undertaking. By promoting the practices widely, the SBF believes that everyone affected by the programs, employees and customers alike, can understand the value of sustainable practices and why these changes are important to business and society.GreenBiz via Greener Building News
