Engagement & Disclosure

What We Do

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Connect. Lead. Solve. Inform.

Since 1989, Ceres has supported companies in balancing economic, environmental, and social performance through these four strategies. Ceres is about connecting investors, environmentalists, and companies in an effort to create smart business solutions for today’s sustainability challenges.

This year, we are issuing our fourth sustainability report to evaluate our own 2006 performance. Our direct operational impacts continue to be energy use and emissions associated with staff travel and office occupancy, as well as resource utilization and waste associated with use of paper, office supplies and technology. Each year Ceres continues to grow, both in size and workload, and each year our environmental impact increases. In 2006, the emissions associated with our staff travel increased dramatically and our operational impacts continued to rise.

Ceres recognizes the great challenge that many businesses face as they work to grow the business, while also attempting to improve social and environmental impact. This dilemma is one that Ceres is working to take head on and you will see that for the first time, we have put in place targets and goals for 2007 and 2008. As a staff we will use these targets and goals as a road map to reducing our organizational impact and working towards continuous improvement. Through efficiency measures, behavioral changes, employee engagement, and improved accountability mechanisms we hope to see a steady decrease in our impact over the next several years.

While we work to reduce our emissions through efficiency measures and behavioral changes, we are also committed to remaining carbon neutral and again this year Ceres purchased offsets to neutralize the emissions associated with both our operations and major events.

Even though our environmental footprint is small, our impact on the world is much greater and Ceres is committed to leading by example. Ceres continues to produce sustainability reports for various reasons, including: to hold ourselves to the same standards that we set for Ceres network companies, gain experience to better understand the challenges and complexities involved with reporting, drive improvement of our own performance, support and engage Ceres staff, and demonstrate that reporting can be beneficial to all organizations, no matter their size or type.

Ceres is also working to refine a reporting model that can be used by other nonprofits and small businesses. This year, for the first time, Ceres is utilizing a web-based report. The web-based format not only lessens the report’s impact on the environment by eliminating printing, but it also lends depth and detail by linking the report to the Ceres annual report, Ceres and Investor Network on Climate Risk web pages, as well as Ceres videos, blogs, and other communication mediums.

Ceres conducted a pre-publication review of this report with a team of stakeholders. We welcome additional feedback from all reviewers to help us improve our ongoing performance and future sustainability disclosure.