Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability

The concepts of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and sustainability have been around since the late 1980s but many corporations have been slow to embrace and implement CSR practices. Today, consumers, the investment community, and the media are judging corporations on how they manage their impact on the environment, and with this increasing pressure from stakeholders, companies are turning to CSR initiatives to manage risk and enhance their reputation.

Cadmus works in a collaborative fashion with both public and private sector clients to identify, evaluate, and select the best options and strategies for moving forward on CSR initiatives. Our CSR services include the following:

Assisting companies in developing CSR programs that are flexible and address business objectives to ensure successful implementation and long-term value. Our approach to advising organizations on CSR centers around a five-step methodology:
Estimating the financial return related to various CSR implementation strategies.
Establishing a stakeholder management and communication approach to broaden awareness of CSR activities and communicate its value.
Assessing environmental, social, and life cycle issues inherent in the design, construction, and operation of manufacturing activities; the environmental and societal issues that should be considered in future planning scenarios; and how the results of the “triple bottom line” evaluation can contribute to the competitiveness of existing business processes.
Benchmarking organizations’ CSR/sustainability programs and performance against peer organizations and industry in general.

Recent examples of our CSR work includes:

Conducted a corporate-level review to assess the development of our client’s environmental, health, and safety (EHS) management system and determine whether CSR activities were being considered and developed in conjunction with current industry best practices and the changing needs of the company as it continued to grow.
Designed and facilitated a series of conferences for senior-level executives to introduce them to the company’s policy for outreach with local communities. The conferences were held in North America, South America, Southern Africa, Western Australia, Eastern Australia, and Europe.
Evaluated the major life cycle environmental and social impacts inherent in the design, construction, and operation of manufacturing activities; the environmental and social issues that ought to be considered in future planning scenarios; and how the sustainability evaluation process could be integrated into existing business processes to improve the company’s performance.
Developed, implemented, and supported supplier audit programs to assess supplier conformance with applicable EHS and CSR requirements and internal codes of conduct.
Conducted an environmental footprint analysis that identified, defined, and evaluated environmental impacts of corporate activities, including material usage, manufacturing activities, and product applications. Also, measured the carbon footprint of the business and developed a roadmap for addressing environmental impacts, assessed what it would take to become carbon neutral and how to leverage sustainability activities to create competitive advantage.