This month’s speakers where challenged with looking at green and clean-tech technology, how it is being used and the benefits that people are getting from it, with an eye on our September session on feed-in tariffs. They also shared some of their thoughts on the long-term future on the new way of using these various technologies.

John Ashford (Sainsbury’s) set out the 3 principles that Sainsbury’s want to see and how they assess the long-term future of any green or clean technologies....more...

At the inaugural Green Monday in the North West, the panel reflected on foremost points within the sustainability agenda and how these topics are currently playing out. They also reflected on their companies more pioneering initiatives and the emerging trends in this space. 

The evening was kicked off by Paul Turner from Lloyds TSB. Paul gave insights into why the agenda is now core business strategy, pointing out that sustainable development touches on all the levers of value creation within any business....more...

For the June London event the panel contemplated Sustainability and Growth, and how business can achieve decoupling. The three speakers on the panel shared their thoughts on the subject, and debate focused on whether decoupling is either realistic or sufficient in the long-term....more...

The plenary for the May event in London looked at “Green Innovation and Disruption”. The three speakers offered their own interpretations and experiences of devising and introducing new sustainable models.

Ian Cheshire, the CEO of Kingfisher, (the third largest home improvement retail group globally), began proceedings. In his time as CEO the company have tried to approach sustainability as a worldwide agenda embracing all operating companies....more...

The talks at the April event looked at why and how you improve the sustainability of your supply chain. With this being such a broad and difficult area to engage in, the panel discussed the business case, the complexity of the challenge and how it is set to develop, giving specific insight into the work they each do in this area at ASDA, Pepsi Co and the Carbon Disclosure Project.

Paul Kelly (ASDA) began by highlighting the scale of ASDA, or more accurately Wal-Mart with its 176 million customers per week and 61,000 suppliers globally....more...

We would be really grateful if you could take 5 minutes to complete our survey. As ever we want to be constantly innovating and making sure we have the best speakers, topics and tables. You can fill in the survey here - http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/greenmonday20102011 - Many thanks for your help!

All commentators agree that the green agenda brings with it a great deal of disruption. And for any well established large corporate it always goes against the grain to change a formula that works. This poses a quandary for all incumbents, who know that their modus operandi will one day be successfully challenged. Do you rip up the rule book, wait and follow or resist.

In this session we are delighted to be hearing from Ian Cheshire (CEO of Kingfisher, who own B&Q and others) on the opportunity he sees for his business and how it will be grasped....more...

The plenary at the March event was a “Pre-Election Special”. With all the 3 major parties on the panel the discussion included their latest thoughts on the climate change agenda, the agenda of their own party in the run up to the election and the specific role they see business playing.

Shortly before the event Joan Ruddock MP (Labour Party) was called in for an important Parliamentary vote and therefore was unable to attend the event....more...

Wal Mart's ambitious announcements last week (and M&S's new targets this week) show the growing trend towards greening the supply chain. While M&S have stressed that they want to see their whole industry drive down emissions (and related environmental impacts), they have acknowledged that they want to "outgreen" the competition. Lee Scott (CEO, Wal Mart) is very clear that he sees this as a key differentiator for his company. And for their suppliers that is already a reality....more...

[Tom Idle, Editor, Sustainable Business - www.sustainablebusinessnetwork.net]

The focus of February’s Green Monday session centred on the potential of brands to effect behavioural change among consumers to help them reduce their environmental impacts – and the role of marketeers in communicating encouraging and inspiring messages....more...

[Tom Idle, Editor, Sustainable Business - www.sustainablebusinessnetwork.net]

Delegates and speakers at this month’s Green Monday event reflected on what did and didn’t happen in Copenhagen. Kingfisher’s director of social responsibility, Ray Baker, was baffled by the negative language to come out of COP15 – “meaningful agreement”, for example....more...

To ensure the correct ratio of the different types of attendees we will be making a small charge for "Suppliers". Please note this is for "Suppliers" only! This will help us support Green Monday at a new level and fund our regional activities. We hope you can understand our need to charge this fee - and we hope that you will have benefitted greatly from your previous attendance of the event. Please do get in touch if you have any questions about this.

Green Monday is teaming up with the business world's biggest social networking platform - Linked In. Initially this will simply be a high level community for you to interact with, but quite soon we will be creating more depth to it. This will consist of new sub-groups that will relate to the tables and allow you to find communities focused on specific challenges or topics (e.g. Supply Chains, Transport, Built Environment). Please join here now - http://www.linkedin....more...

We are delighted to announce that Joan Ruddock MP, Greg Barker MP and Simon Hughes MP will make up our March plenary. The idea is to establish their views on what role they see for business in ushering in the low carbon economy and the wider energy and sustainability agendas.

We will be looking at the lessons we can all draw from a successful relationship between marketing and sustainability functions. And learning how to create the right conditions for succesful and truly sustainable innovation.

The FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) community have long been the most sophisticated readers of consumer demand. And, as with most consumer aspirations, there is often a disconnect between their stated sustainability intentions and their purchasing habits....more...

To help us understand what has happened and what the implications are for business we are delighted to welcome Ian Cheshire (CEO, Kingfisher plc), Steve Howard (CEO, The Climate Group), Peter Betts (Director of International Climate Change, DECC) and Abyd Karmali (President, CMIA)....more...

Thanks to all our speakers at Monday night's event. (You can find the podcast in "Downloads"). SMART grids is definitely at the more technical end of the scale for Green Monday. It is a topic beset with semantic problems around language (not least what is meant by a SMART grid), but they will play an enormous role in helping harness renewables, increasing distribution efficiencies and increasing end-user efficiencies....more...

Many of you who were present at the last Green Monday witnessed a heartfelt plea from Catalina McGregor, Government Deputy Champion Green ICT to Chris Dodwell from DECC to assist the Cabinet Office in obtaining a slot for Green ICT at COP 15 in Copenhagen. Due to a series of timelines and deadlines DECC had said that it would not be possible....more...

There is a big opportunity with SMART grid plans to make a telling contribution to the climate change agenda through infrastructure optimisation, getting renewables online, and better end-user energy management. However it requires the subtle melding of many different parties who have not historically collaborated and with varying agendas. This event will look at the priorities for business and how those aims might be positively applied to climate targets....more...

We are very sorry to say that we are unable to accept any more applications for the November event. We apologise for this and would urge people to apply as far in advance as they can (for future events) if they wish for their application to be successful.

We haven't confirmed every last detail yet, but this is the general thrust for November's event. Jonathon Porritt will look at he thinks the impact of the talks will be on UK plc and how ready we are. James Cameron will be reflecting on the likely outcomes, (drawing on his experience representing the Alliance of Small Island States), and the financial world’s attitudes to those outcomes....more...

Thank you to those of you who completed our questionnaire following the September Green Monday. We have used your feedback regarding the events sustainability and aim to implement new initiatives for future events. We have also passed on suggestions to the venue so that Green Monday will become a more sustainable event month by month....more...

Thanks to those of you who completed our questionnaire following the September Green Monday. We have used your feedback regarding the events sustainability and aim to implement new initiatives into the setup of the next event. We have also passed on suggestions to the venue to help improve their sustainability as well....more...

Fill in our survey to win a free Green Strategy 2009 ticket

We really value your input, so please do get through this quick survey. We have some free tickets to give away for Green Strategy 2009 and we hope to find out a bit more about how to make Green Monday even better – and how we take it to other parts of the UK. The survey is here....more...

We want to consider corporate risk – how you assess it, how you communicate it and how you reduce it. David Lawrence, Head of Global Risk, Procurement & Governance at Diageo, will be reflecting on the various strategic risks one should associate with climate change – and some of the more immediate strains he is seeing in their supply chain. Mark Andrew, Chief Executive at NG Bailey, will reflect on how he sees companies starting to respond – and the specific risks of failing to adapt....more...

We hope you have had a good summer break and are raring to go for what will be a defining six months for this agenda. Copenhagen and the first shoots of recovery (dare we say it) could really galvanise things - but it might not all be good news, so we must prepare for everything. There are also more prosaic duties around CRC compliance and other "must-do" work....more...

We are delighted to welcome Mark Elborne, CEO and president of GE in the UK. GE are one corporate who quickly spotted their place in the environmentally sustainable future and it will be fascinating to hear how they are building on their well known initiative, "ecomagination", and what advice they have for others. Joining Mark are EDF (Robert will not be able to join us now, but we expect to find someone else) and Mark Shorrock, who has been identifying business solutions to climate change since 2001....more...

Although we have plans afoot to take Green Monday over the pond we are also conscious that we need to create a UK network of events. These events are quite tough to finance and so we will be looking for organisations willing to host Green Mondays in the regions. We have not finalised which cities these will take place in, but please let us know if you think your city would attract enough interest and whether you might play host.

After much work and the appreciated efforts of DUNK we now have a very tidy content management system. Not only will this help us better manage things our end, but it will also help you get more out of the event and make the evenings more productive.

The main things to look out for are in the application process. We will now be asking you to tell us what your profile is - leader, influencer or supplier. You may be both in which case you decide what you would prefer to be known to others as....more...