Author: Bianca Wisseloo

On the 14th of October in Cairo, the conference ‘CSR in Egypt: Building on Experiences in the Netherlands’ was held. The central question was what Egypt can learn from the Dutch approach in order to stimulate companies in the area of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and to see what role the government can play. The conference was organized by the Dutch Embassy, in cooperation with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Egyptian Ministry of Trade, Industry and SMEs. (more…)

The current market is increasingly asking for certification as a guaranty for sustainability. Smallholder farmers are also confronted with this trend. However, smallholder farmers often lack the right skills and motivation to keep records of their input use and other agricultural data. These data are needed to demonstrate compliance with the respective certification standard.

In order to give this group a hand, CREM, on behalf of the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO), has developed a handbook for smallholder farmers who would like to be certified according to the Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB) standard. (more…)

Long working hours with lots of overtime are a common feature in the floriculture industry in East Africa. Regular excessively long workdays can be dangerous for workers’ health and have a negative effect on their productivity. A healthy balance between regular work times and overtime is therefore very important.

MPS – the administrator and developer of floriculture standards in the area of sustainability – has included a maximum amount of overtime in its SociallyQualified (SQ) Standard. This overtime must also be voluntary and not structural. (more…)

Restaurant owners who have filled out theirestablishment’s sustainability profile on the online restaurant guide IENS.nl, can also now showcase their sustainability story on www.duurzamereten.nl, a website about making food more sustainable. The Dutch trade association for the hotel and catering industry (KHN), IENS.nl and CREM worked together to couple the sustainability profile on IENS.nl to one on duurzamereten.nl.

Restaurant owners are thus encouraged to be transparent about their sustainability activities. At the same time, the consumer gets more insight into restaurants’ sustainability initiatives. (more…)

During the yearly meeting of the Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) in Basel, Switzerland, CREM gave a presentation about shade-grown cocoa, its relationship with biodiversity and ecosystem services and payment for these services.

Shade trees provide ecosystem services

Cocoa produces best under shade trees, which is where you find the natural habitat of the cocoa tree. Cocoa trees in such a system (with 40% shade) benefit from diverse ecosystem services: control of sicknesses and pests, better water management and maintenance of soil fertility. Shade trees provide products such as wood, nuts and fruits, which give the farmer additional income. (more…)

How can clothing stores lead consumers to make a sustainable choice? More demand for sustainable fashion can stimulate producers to invest more in sustainable production. CREM and some fashion companies went looking for answers. In assignment from the Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment, they researched communication strategies for conveying the sustainable aspects of clothing in the store. (more…)

An app about fish, the fishery and cooking with fish. The Vissersbond (Fishery Union) has developed an app called VIS! (fish in Dutch) that can be downloaded in the app stores. CREM did research for the Vissersbond about how the app could better meet consumers’ needs and how consumers could be persuaded to download the app to their smartphones and tablets. The results of this research and other new ideas were brought together in a communication and strategy plan. (more…)

‘Building a new sustainable neighbourhood on the outskirts of Sneek, together’. This is the philosophy behind Harixmaland. The city of Sneek would like to give collective and sustainable initiatives in this area a chance. A Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) is the way to put together ideas from a collective vision for the future and bring them to action. The Sneek Association for Urban Agriculture (Stichting Stadslandbouw Sneek) invited CREM to lead a BAP session. Around 50 participants came together on the evening of 31 October to brainstorm about the biodiversity-rich area. Among the participants were current and future users of the area, business people and employees from care, educational and health organizations. Local government employees were present as observers. (more…)

The project Moving South Africa forward to certified sustainable energy was started out in 2009. The project was managed by the National Development Agency and Tsebo Consulting in South Africa and supported in particular by Gwynne Foster (South Africa), Brinkmann Consultancy (the Netherlands) and CREM.

During the project, small producers were supported in the production of certified biomass and the creation of local employment options. The crops, soy and sunflowers, were cultivated on degraded land. Maize was cultivated in addition to the biomass in order to increase food production in the region. (more…)

On the afternoon of Monday, the 9th of December, the conference, ‘The Square of the Future’, took place in Amsterdam. The program was based on the knowledge and experience acquired through the project, Sustainable Squares, carried out bySOMO, CREM and Humanrights@work’s Liesbeth Unger. Around thirty architects, advisors, involved citizens and local government employees gathered for the meeting in the Pakhuis Willem de Zwijger.

Participation of residents and businesses

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Smallholders are responsible for a large proportion of all palm oil production. These are mostly family businesses that have one to a few hectares of land. In Indonesia, 30-40% of the palm oil is produced by one million smallholders. The certification of smallholders for sustainable palm oil production has specific sustainability issues associated with it.

There are inequalities between smallholders and palm oil factories in the areas of land rights and contractual dependence relationships. (more…)

The EU has the goal of reducing the use of fossil fuels and using more biomass for energy production. To reduce negative impacts of the production of biomass, the EU has established sustainability requirements. In the current requirements, however, there are no criteria set forth for social issues or for water, ground and air quality.

The production of sustainable biomass is a common theme in CREM projects. Last month we finished a project about palm oil production in Indonesia and one about the cultivation of soy and sugar cane in Brazil.

Social, water, ground and air quality issues

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Governments mostly make use of information campaigns or financial incentives to stimulate sustainable consumption. These traditional instruments do not always work effectively. Campaigns offer information and strong arguments and people assume that these lead to behaviour change by themselves. Recent research shows the possibilities for social norms strategies or ‘nudging’. For the Sustainability Department in the Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment, CREM did research into the role of the government in stimulating sustainable consumption. This role is difficult to determine because consumer behaviour is dependant on many different factors. (more…)

A Dutch steel company provides local communities in the Sahel with simply serviced hand pumps. A horticultural company trains farmers in Africa and Asia. An installation company supports vocational training for girls in Kenya.

These are examples of good projects started by Dutch companies in developing countries. But what barriers to these companies face? How do they find, for example, a reliable social organization to work with? And how do they ensure that they move from good intentions to actual effects? (more…)

Resources taken from nature, called green bioproducts, are increasingly being used for energy. These include sugar-based ethanol added to gasoline/petrol, soy oil used as a basis for biodiesel or wood pellets used in power plants.

To keep the green motor running, sustainable production is essential. For biofuels – green natural resources turned into fluid fuels such as diesel – there have even been regulations to guarantee their sustainability enacted at a European level.

Certification for Green Natural Resources

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