Christmas is around the corner already (sorry) and Pittwater
Business Limited’s speaker for December (6:45am 2nd Dec, RMYC Newport) is Father Chris Riley, talking about
his Youth off the Streets Project.
This has put me in the mood to write about sustainability
and social responsibility in a small business context (which is most of us at
PBL, of course).
You’ve probably heard of the triple bottom line – where
corporations report on their financial success but also in terms of
environmental and social markers.
It’s always seemed to me like they are paying
lip-service to both – making some tiny donations to charities and changing
their light bulbs to low voltage – so they can claim to be good guys instead of
the rapacious beasts that we all think they are.
But in a small business context, we really do operate in a
community – in our case, Pittwater – and we really do operate in an environment
that is affected by what we do. So we have a genuine responsibility and
probably we even really mean it when we say we want to look after our
environment and our neighbours.
So this is my call to you.
Think about your carbon
footprint, think about your recycling, your buying and think about putting
something back into your community. Why not support Father Riley’s great
project?
Some suggestions for improving your triple bottom line
performance (and meaning it):
·
Change to green power (from the electricity
company)
·
Give a share of your profits back to your staff
·
Give a share to charity (local – like Father
Riley’s project, or to relieve extreme poverty in the developing countries)
·
Give your staff some time off which they can
spend helping a charity. Encourage it.
We’d love you to come to the breakfast with an open wallet
or donate a prize for the raffle…….