Building a Roadmap for Corporate Sustainability

Ceres has worked with companies for 25 years to improve sustainability performance and, today, more companies are taking leading roles than ever before in tackling pressing issues such as forced labor and resource scarcity. In the first two decades of this work, however, it was unclear what sustainability leadership really looked like.

That’s why, in 2010, Ceres released The 21^st Century Corporation: The Ceres Roadmap for Sustainability outlining 20 expectations in the areas of governance, stakeholder engagement, disclosure and performance that, if met, would transform companies into truly sustainable enterprises.

We released the Ceres Roadmap because we believe that a sustainable business strategy is fundamental for corporate success in the 21st century. The Ceres Roadmap is a resource to help companies visualize and re-engineer themselves for success in a world beset with unprecedented environmental and social challenges that threaten the global economy and local communities.

The Ceres Roadmap, which has set a new standard for progress, has helped dozens of leading companies – including Nike, EMC and Ford – drive change in industries from apparel to electronics and beyond.

Ceres tracks corporate progress against its 20 expectations, and published detailed findings in 2012 and again this year. The 2014 analysis identified pockets of leadership among companies and within industries, and provides individual scorecards for 613 of the largest companies in the U.S.

At Ceres’ Annual Conference this year, we sat down with Hannah Jones, Vice President, Innovation Accelerator & CSO, for Nike – a Ceres Company Network member – to discuss the company’s approach to sustainability and how it has integrated principles from theCeres Roadmap into its own strategy.