BITC

Today was Business in the Community’s annual conference. BITC members work toward being responsible community members. For instance, their employees would be encouraged to volunteer. It is the weakest of weak CSR efforts (corporate social responsibility). It reflects Northern Ireland’s catch-up culture--we’re too busy creating jobs to worry about things like emissions or clean supply chains.

I like the people who work at BITC--their hearts are in the right place. But their salaries are paid by their member businesses, who may not want to be pushed too hard.

My first complaint about the conference is that the speakers were mainly from the mainland. The first plenary featured speakers from Sky broadcasting, RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) and Nesta, an English research business. They all talked about future proofing your business. I don’t recall hearing anything surprising or particularly insightful.

My panel was called The 2 Degree Economy. I was to talk for 5 minutes and then introduce the four speakers, who each spoke for 8-10 minutes. The speakers were from The Carbon Trust (England), the London-based parent BITC organisation, Veolia (an international waste management business), and CASE, the Centre for Advanced Sustainable Energy. CASE is local and seems to help companies get grants to study renewable energy. The gist of the CASE director’s remarks were that, without a national assembly, N.I. won’t make much progress on reducing emissions.

During the break, I asked a BITC member why there aren’t more NI companies talking about what they are doing on emissions reduction. He said NI doesn’t have local experts or competencies in sustainable energy. The only companies here focused on emissions are global companies with local offices (e.g. PwC, Allstate) and their sustainability functions are located elsewhere.

My second complaint is that nothing comes out of these events. Maybe 200 people show up and attend two plenary sessions and two workshops, but there’s no ask, no commitment, no challenge. It’s just informational--a day out of the office. A lot of carbon goes into flying people over from GB to chat, so you kind of want to get something out of it. I did get a nice view of the Lagan from the conference centre:

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