Innovation + Responsibility

I am excited - no, thrilled - to report on some of the momentum of Sun's corporate responsibility program. Fresh on the heels of our first CSR report, we are making some great strides in some key areas. I can tell you about some of those things now, and some will have to wait a few weeks (oooh, have I piqued your interest?).

THE UNITED NATIONS GLOBAL COMPACT
As of today, March 9, 2007, Sun Microsystems is a signatory of the United Nations Global Compact. The Global Compact is an initiative that was launched several years ago by then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan. It was created as an effort to join business, civil society and the United Nations together in addressing the challenges of globalization. The Global Compact is a declaration of ten principles focused in four key areas: human rights, labor rights, the environment, and anti-corruption.

By signing the Global Compact, Sun affirms its support of these ten principles and we commit to furthering them through our own business operations and within our spheres of influence. We also commit to communicating our progress to the UN every two years.

Many people criticize the Global Compact because it has no 'teeth' - in other words, some people believe that with such low barriers to entry, anyone can sign it and there are no consequences if you do not follow through on your commitments. While I do think there is some merit to this argument, I do not think that it means that the Global Compact does not play an important role in the movement to engage the business sector in the work of effecting positive change for its stakeholders.

Sure, there are going to be companies that sign the Global Compact as some kind of CYA or PR move. But the requirement that you communicate your progress every two years is real - in fact, the Global Compact has begun calling out signatories who do not meet this requirement. And any company that uses corporate responsibility as a PR initiative with no authenticity to it is asking for big trouble. What's great about the Global Compact is that it gives business, society and the UN a common vocabulary and context within which to talk about and address the responsibilities that come with operating a global company in today's marketplace.

Electonics Industry Code of Conduct (EICC)
Sun is joining the EICC. This is great news! The EICC is a consortium of 24 electronics providers who have come together to establish consistent requirements that promote the health & safety of our stakeholders and the social and environmental responsibility of our suppliers.

This is a great step in the rapid evolution of Sun's supply chain CSR program. We only recently formalized our supply chain CSR program (though many elements of it were already in place, there were some holes and no one "owner")but the folks who are responsible for it are going gangbusters! We have made a number of supply chain-related commitments in the CSR report and this group has embraced every one of them. Sun has a long and proud tradition of exempliary supply chain management. CSR in the supply chain will prove to be no exception.

Watch this space
That's all I can report on now. But watch this space in the coming weeks, as there should be more cool stuff to reveal.

In other news
The other day I sent an email complaint to the folks who run Sun's cafeterias (what can I say? I have that lethal combination of being both a former food-service worker and from NY;I am the mostly likely kind of person to complain when I have bad service!). I ended up speaking to the VP of Operations for the company - a really nice guy, actually. Once he was finished convincing me that the company was taking specific steps to address the shortcomings about which I complained, I decided to take the opportunity to strike up a different conversation with him.

I asked Rick (that's the VP of Operations) to tell me a bit about the foodservice company's practices - is anything organic? is the fish bought from sustainable fisheries? are the meats hormone-free? why don't we use compostable cutlery? etc. etc. I was surprised to learn that the company actually has a sustainability program in place. The fish is all from sustainable fisheries. The meat is hormone-free. The eggs are cage-free. Who knew? When I told Rick that I was pretty certain nobody at Sun was aware of these facts he seemes surprised that anyone would care. He told me that a number of other companies whose cafterias his company manages have asked for things like spudware - cutlery made from potatoes! - and composting programs. As far as he knew, Sun isn't interested in exploring these kinds of programs so why would anyone care where the food comes from!?

Oh Rick! How wrong can one man be? So I did what anyone in my situation would have done - I set him straight and offered him some unsolicited advice. I suggested that his company start marketing the kind of food they sell to Sun employees. Yes, it is great that the flat screen TV in the cafeteria tells me what is on the menu. But it would be so much better if that space was used to tell me about what goes into the items that are on the menu.

I am certain that if I knew the about the kind of sustainability programs for the food in the cafeteria, I would have been decidedly less frustrated an angry about the service shortcomings. I am sure I am not alone in this.