Shell Springboard

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Creative Ways to Do Well by Doing Good

As a sustainability consulting firm, we hear about a lot of different corporate sustainability strategies.  Many of these strategies involve following the GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) framework, gathering stakeholder feedback and creating a system of goals, objectives and metrics to make operational progress over time.

But one of our favorite parts about sustainability is that it spurs innovation.

We searched high and low for some of the most creative ways that companies are doing well by doing good.  Here are our Top Ten:

In an effort to support those who generate innovative, optimistic ideas, the Pepsi Refresh Project will award more than $20 million in 2010 to move communities forward.  Individuals can apply for grants to benefit a variety of projects and site visitors can vote for the best ideas for funding.  The Pepsi Refresh Project is an evolution of the Refresh Everything initiative Pepsi launched in 2009, which showed the brand as an optimistic catalyst for idea creation, leading to an ever-refreshing world.   Pepsi will fund projects that make a difference in six categories: Health, Arts & Culture, Food & Shelter, The Planet, Neighborhoods and Education.

Tropicana is working with Cool Earth to preserve forest in the Ashaninka Corridor in Peru.  Throughout 2010, Tropicana consumers can redeem their Tropicana Juicy Rewards points to help save endangered rainforest from logging and deforestation. According to the Rescue the Rainforest website, each point redeemed will save 33 1/3 square feet of rainforest.

IBM has launched a new initiative, called Smarter Planet, for which it has three primary goals: Instrument the world’s systems, Interconnect them and Make them intelligent.  The overarching goal is to make the planet’s systems more efficient and generally smarter.  Subdivisions of the Smarter Planet initiative include: Smarter Energy, Smarter Banking, Smarter Healthcare and Smarter Cities.  Within these categories, there are a slew of subcategories, such as education, food, water and transportation systems.