Richard Branson Goes for the Green

Virgin recently won two awards in the 2011 Corporate Responsibility Reporting Awards (CRRA '11), for The Best First Time Report category and the Creativity in Communications category.

CorporateRegister.com's Paul Scott tipped his hat to Virgin as "worthy winners," and commented, "We've seen CR reporting increase every year, with 2010 showing the strongest performance yet — nearly 5,000 reports worldwide.” 

Never one to rest on his laurels, Virgin founder Richard Branson will highlight the Virgin Group's corporate citizenship and sustainability efforts by heading to to Sydney to convene the Creating Climate Wealth Summit, taking place July 7-8th at the city's appropriately named Shangri-la Hotel.

The conference, a joint production of Branson’s Carbon War Room and Janine Cahill’s Future Journeys, is scheduled to feature including GE’s Commercial Director for Australia and New Zealand and head of the GE ecomagination initiative Ben Waters, former Premier of Western Australia Geoff Gallop and Charlie Finnie, Managing Partner Greener Capital. 

The Carbon War Room, for those not familiar with it, stresses that the technology required for carbon management is available and deployable now…and just waiting for financing, calling it “an opportunity marked as a crisis.”

Branson writes in a founder's letter,

“I have described the increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere as one of the greatest threats to the ongoing prosperity and sustainability of life on the planet. The good news is that creating businesses that will power our growth, and reduce our carbon output while protecting resources, is also the greatest wealth-generating opportunity of our generation.”

(Above: The Everything Counts video hows how Virgin empowers staffers to spread the message of creating more sustainable business.)