How green is Silicon Valley?
Published on: Feb 22, 2010
The Tomorrow’s Value Rating of the 15 largest ICT companies in Silicon Valley has revealed that many of them are developing innovative corporate responsibility practices but on the whole they appear to be falling below the standards stakeholders expect when it comes to day-to-day CR management.
Researched and produced by Two Tomorrows, the Tomorrow’s Value Rating assesses companies on how well they manage their most pressing social and environmental issues. The Rating aims to further the debate on sustainable business, identify and reward best practices, and spur healthy competition among companies by examining the largest companies in globally important industries.
HP and Intel lead the way in this latest Rating and are the only two companies asessed to score above 50 per cent.
In general, the companies covered by the Rating fare well in its Innovation domain, displaying a range of leading-edge practices. For instance, they have begun participating in ICT industry initiatives such as the Electronic Industry Code of Conduct and the Global e-Sustainability Initiative. Some are also discussing how their products, services and initiatives tie into the broader goal of generating positive change in society.
However, the Rating finds that day-to-day CR management practices are weaker. In particular, companies are failing to discuss in their reporting many of the socio-economic issues of concern to stakeholders such as employee development, community investment, labour standards, economic contributions and supplier development. On the issues that they do acknowledge, companies rarely discuss how – if at all – they have responded to these concerns.
The team from Two Tomorrows that carried out the Rating has identified an opportunity for one of the Silicon Valley companies to position itself as a clear leader in corporate sustainability. Of course, this requires serious investment – in communications and in operating effective management systems – as well as genuine commitment from top management.
The companies assessed in this Tomorrow’s Value Rating were the 15 largest ICT companies in the San Francisco Bay area according to the Mercury News, which ranks these companies by sales.
