Comparison of the UK’s Beverage Industries CSRs cultures
The use of CSRs by organizations and various industries is becoming a common aspect in the world today. This is due to the firms’ bid to influence its customers and product deliveries that would see that both sides gain in one way or another. A firm can choose to join an environmental non-profit organization that would ensure most of its products are friendly to the environment. This will build a positive impact on the company’s ethnicity since positive customer feedback. The environmental relation to the society and vice versa is a significant aspect that would see the continued working together of most companies with regards to CSRs manifestations; regard CSRs as a set of activities that are devoted towards achieving a particular goal that is related to social responsibility in one way or another (Devin & Richards, 2018). The beverage sector of the UK serves as one of the key sectors in which employment of CSR policies in industries and brands has made a huge impact on the industries’ successes. The social responsibilities of such companies and brands are constituted by various principalities that seek to benefit the community at large and not only focus on the companies’ income flow. The companies can demonstrate the CSRs in many forms; environmentally through reduction of carbon footprints in a company’s products, participation in community-based activities and also incorporating company policies that will see a company’s employees are treated well. All this is to related f the community’s significance to a company among others.
Most alcohol industries have a policy that accords the importance of responsible consumption of their products. This includes several practices that aide in the advertisement on the negativities as well as precautionary measures when using their products. This is because self-regulation of industriesindustries is more comfortable than the legislation of policies by the government that may affect the company’s service delivery to its customers. The Scotch Whisky Action fund of the UK is key aspect that seeks to improve on the responsibility of an industry. The Action fund announced its plans to fund various initiatives on education and prevention, thus totaling up to 48 successful funded initiatives since the establishment of the Action fund way back in 2013. An estimation of about GBP1m; U$ 1.29 m, will have been provided by the Action fund for support. Heineken is also another UK based company that is working in line to the same goal as the Scotch Whiskey Action fund though in different way (Mialon & McCambridge, 2018). It advocates for the responsible consumption of its products through a campaign dubbed ‘When you drive, never drink’ and has seen its implementation to all countries where the Heineken Brand is sold. In addition to that, the brand appointed a former Formulae one world champion, Rosberg, to be the campaigns ambassador who will chaperon on the emphasis on responsible alcohol intake by the Heineken’s campaign.
In community based activities, an industry can formulate CSR based policies that will see the society benefiting wholesomely from it. Companies may contribute towards charities and other non-profitable NGOs whose main goals it to see that the community have their welfare improved. Fever tree is a drinks company in UK that has a mutual relationship with a campaign that seeks to end malaria. This is due to the sourcing of quinine to be used in malaria hotspots zones from tonic waters. In 2018, the company set out an initiative on social media that enabled it to raise funds for the campaign. Through the hash tag ‘#Malariamustdie’, the company was paying 5 euros to every picture posted under the hash tag. This is an advancement from a move from the previous year; 2017, which the company had set on their consumption of their product on the World Malaria day. This move saw the company pledging 20% per tonic and gin world-wide consumption on that day to the campaign. Another beverage company of the UK; Kenco also plays an important part in its involvement in some community actions. In has partnered with the Coffee vs. Gang Initiative that seeks to reform young adults from crime and provide an alternative to them (Reyes, 2018). It does so by providing them with basic skills that would also enable them become good coffee farmers. Along -side that is the lessons in languages, math and agricultural practices in which most of them would not have had access to. This will enable them become better people in the society as well as become future’s coffee entrepreneurs.
Environmentally, key implementations by various companies have been seen to aim the conservation of the environment. This are policies are formulated by the companies whose main goal is to cut down on the Carbon waste emission to the environment since they are the major ingredients to the continued climate change; a problem that is due to the imbalance of various natural aspects. The carbon wastes contribute to the degradation of the ozone layer thus exposing the earth to harmful radiated rays from the sun that happen to penetrate through the layer. With this, most industries have embarked on various innovative programs that seek to make their products eco-friendly and biodegradable. Clipper, a Tea company in UK, has been the first company to launch green tea and the use of unbleached eco-friendly tea pack bags. The bags are made out paper with thin heat seal coating that would enable the pack be put into home paper recycling as well as be lighter than the initial used tea bags by 33% (Tadic, 2016). Clipper is part of the B corp community that seeks to make their products from purely natural materials. This move by the community will benefit both the universe and its inhabitants; the humans and all other organisms by involvement of the Global carbon emission campaign through 100% non-carbon use in their products. Another company that has the same goals as Clipper is Evian, a water bottling company in the UK. Evian has introduced the use of 100% PET bottles to the markets in UK, Ireland as well as abroad. This is a measure that would see Donane Water, a water company, achieve their ambitious action on corporate climate action (Ballantine, Ozanne & Bayfield, 2019). This action is backed up by Evian’s pledge of becoming carbon neutral by 2020 and a cyclic move that would ensure 100% recycling of plastic bottles with zero wastage on the plastics by 2025. Also joining Evian is another water bottling company called Glaceau smartwater that has already made similar enhancements to their water packing. They used the 100% recycled PET bottles to pack their water. Another action by the Coca-Cola based aqua packer is having a plant logo on their recycled bottles to help one identify that their bottles were made from using partly plants. Their Polythene Terephthalate (PET) bottles might perhaps be the first invented bottles that constitute of about 30% of plant material. This makes their effort in carbon footprint reduction recognized as well as their initiative to support the conservation of the environment. Other companies that are non-beverage also take part in the reduction of the use carbon in their products. Unilever, the largest deodorant manufacturing brand in UK and also Europe, began compressing their cans to help reduce on the carbon footprint by 25% per can of the aerosol spray (Bryant & Thimmaiah, 2018). This also shows that other companies also partake in the conservation of the environment as the innovation of all industries contribute to the onset of environmental related problems such as climate change that is being taken seriously globally.
A company can also treat its employees with the uttermost respect in accordance to their ethical CSRs view. A company that hears its employees’ pleas and treats them right is accompany that is accepted by many people. Ribena, another company in the UK beverage sector has been on the forefront on supporting its personnel through an aid. The company’s aide, the Grocery aide, helps their grocery employees who might be in need of financial as well as emotional support (Roache & Gostin,2017). This is because the company believes that people are the heart of any business and that their welfare is significant to the success of that business
Generally, a company should have a wide set of essential CSRs that see the improvement of the sustainable development goals that in turn comes along with economic, social and environmental benefits. This is because of the implementation and conductance of the CSRs by companies that enable diversification of various sectors in the business scope. This will in turn see a balanced system that provides a win-win situation to both the company and the community around it. The UK beverage industries are just but a few of the many industries that seek to manifest various policies that will aide in the confrontation and solution upbringing of various community related problems. They also seek to improve their services by looking beyond profit making but deal with the plight of their consumer and the community at large to enable them builds a strong ethical customer acceptance just like Clipper which has gained trust by number of its consumer who in turn encourages the consumption of their products.
References
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Bryant, J. and Thimmaiah, A., 2018. Corporate carbon footprints: evaluating climate responsibility of six corporations. Adv Plants Agric Res, 8(6), pp.363-370.
Devin, B. and Richards, C., 2018. Food waste, power, and corporate social responsibility in the Australian food supply chain. Journal of Business Ethics, 150(1), pp.199-210.
Mialon, M. and McCambridge, J., 2018. Alcohol industry corporate social responsibility initiatives and harmful drinking: a systematic review. The European Journal of Public Health, 28(4), pp.664-673.
Reyes, A., 2018. Connecting higher education and innovation to local development. Futures, 103, pp.73-83.
Roache, S.A. and Gostin, L.O., 2017. The untapped power of soda taxes: incentivizing consumers, generating revenue, and altering corporate behavior. International journal of health policy and management, 6(9), p.489.
Tadic, L., 2016, December. The environmental impact of digital preservation. In presentation at the Association of Moving Image Archivists conference (Portland, Oregon November 2015), at https://www. digitalbedrock. com/resources/, accessed (Vol. 15).