Post to Post: Sustainability Blogs
Four of our favourite socially responsible journals to read and digest
As our own Shu Yi Chu will tell you, sustainability is an active industry – you need to absorb all sorts of media if you want to succeed. And sustainability blogs are particularly good resources for staying in the know. Informative, current and accessible, they occupy the happy medium between the immediacy of Twitter, on the one hand, and the thoughtful pace of long-form journalism, on the other. Below, we’ve listed our four favourite sustainability blogs to read and digest.
Stories, The David Suzuki Foundation
For many Canadians, David Suzuki is the gatekeeper: a sustainability Buddha who, through his charming television appearances and documentary films, introduced us to the importance of caring for our planet. Today, the David Suzuki Foundation continues that tradition through its aptly titled Stories. Interactive and beautifully designed, the blog features various profiles and case studies written by Suzuki and his staff. Vibrant photography mixed with videos from the foundation’s YouTube channel dot the website, and its robust library of scientific reports and political analysis is easily accessed. Taken together, Stories serves as a warm reminder that we are all interconnected – nature, people and technology.
The Cleanest Line, Patagonia
It’s fitting that a leader in sustainable fashion boasts a leading sustainability blog. Patagonia’s The Cleanest Line takes the structure of a general interest magazine and recycles it for the outdoor enthusiast. Read about a fifth-generation, family-run shellfish farm in Puget Sound, its livelihood depending on the immaculate water of the Hamma Hamma River; meet Patagonia’s Sri Lankan factory workers who, through Fair Trade premiums, voted to create an on-site daycare centre for their children; or listen to The Dirtbag Diaries, a podcast about adventurers and their relationships with the natural world.
Each element of The Cleanest Line reinforces the company’s larger mission statement: “Build the best products, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.”
CSR-Reporting, Elaine Cohen
Elaine Cohen’s CSR-Reporting is a throwback to what made blogs so good in the first place: one voice, one computer and a whole lot of great storytelling. The CEO of Beyond Business, Cohen is a sustainability veteran, HR expert, global conference regular, early adopter of the GRI and self-proclaimed geek. We say this affectionately: if you’re a sustainability nerd, this blog is like Disneyland. Regularly updated and loaded with timely opinions and insights, CSR-Reporting embodies Cohen’s overarching mantra on disclosure: it can be fun. Look no further than her recurring feature, Dr. Sustainability, a cheeky advice column that takes aim at corporations looking to take sustainability shortcuts.
Corporate Knights
The field of sustainability is rich with experts and analysts, but it’s important to remember that the sector is a moving target. Enter Corporate Knights, the magazine “for clean capitalism.” Equipped with a stable of talented writers and designers, the publication investigates the intersection – and tension – between social responsibility and private sector growth. Corporate Knights is expansive in its areas of interest: an admission that sustainability, as a topic, touches nearly all areas of society.
Particularly welcome on the blog is the Perspectives section, where contributors and guests engage in (civil) discourse to tackle the world’s most important socio-economic issues.
Got a favourite that we missed? Let us know in the comments below!
