San Francisco, the heart of the tech world, has some of the most progressive environmental and social mandates in the US. One would think Silicon Valley corporations in Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Redwood City, Cupertino, Santa Clara, Mountain View, and Sunnyvale would be equally sensitive to sustainability issues.
To answer this query, CSE has undertaken a series of research examining leader corporations in Silicon Valley. CSE’s 2016 research found Silicon Valley lagging on sustainability indicators compared to other sectors and even the FT 500. Key sustainability factors include Community, Environment, Ethics, Employees, Supply Chain and Philanthropy. At the time, only 21 of 100 companies in the study had a sustainability strategy that included all six concerns.
CSE is revisiting the research in 2019. Highlights from the report will be debuted at CSE’s Certified Sustainability Practitioner Program (Advanced Edition 2019), Oct. 15-16 in San Francisco. Spoiler alert: the tech world is doing better – but not good enough!
That is why training is key. CSE has developed unique training with leading Silicon Valley companies to instill a sustainability culture within those companies. CSE trainings start and finish by making the business case for sustainability. If a company cannot advance financially, they can’t help their community of stakeholders. With Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial spirit, investor relations are key!
Employees need to understand this as well as employers do. That is why so many tech leaders send attendees to our training. We’ve worked with Google, Workday, Netgear, LG Electronics, T-Mobile, Sandia National Laboratories and other tech organizations.
The same year Google won the Silicon Valley Community Foundation award for its corporate social responsibility (CSR), CSE president Nikos Avlonas received their CSR Practitioner of the Year award.
Coupled with its leadership in sustainability and having the pulse of the tech world, San Francisco is an ideal location for CSE’s Certified CSR-P Training, Oct. 15-16, 2019. Other upcoming trainings include Toronto, Oct. 31-Nov.1, 2019 and Miami, Jan. 16-17, 2020.