BEST CORPORATE CITIZENS SUSTAINABILITY (BCCS)

MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIRMAN

The Best Corporate Citizens Sustainability (BCCS) Awards scheme aims to recognise the businesses that incorporate mainstream sustainability into their core operations while creating more significant economic value, contributing to healthy ecosystems and supporting communities associated with them.

The BCCS Awards for 2020 covered the Easter Sunday disturbances in April 2019 and COVID-19 impacted business, and working environments that highlighted the value of contingency planning and respective CEOs’ commitment to sustainability beyond ‘business as usual.’

COVID-19 – a zoonotic disease – brought ecosystem sustainability, and human actions impacting the ecosystem and its services to the forefront.

For example, the ‘new normal’ requires that exporting industries comply with many high standards encompassing the use of renewable energy, zero discharge standards, circularity including life cycle analysis, greening supply chains and pursuing cleaner production to name a few.

The bar is rising in the social and governance arenas too. Therefore, environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) aspects are at the core of any business. Thankfully, most of our corporates are well-positioned to take advantage of market opportunities related to the post-COVID new normal.

With the appropriate support from the government and governance establishments, Sri Lanka corporates could quickly bounce back and ‘build back better.’ Leading corporates must extend their experience to SMEs in this case.

The BCCS Awards went through an entirely digital process this year. Our exemplary panel of evaluators faced the digital evaluation challenge with commitment and dedication. We are proud that the process was transparent and successful, and thank the Chamber Secretariat of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce for working with us diligently.

We hope that the sector feedback mechanism introduced two years ago helped corporates identify their weaker areas, and improve the compliance with and quality of submissions.

Our team of judges and evaluators wish to thank and recognise corporates for their untiring efforts in 2020, and we also found this to be a learning experience and enjoyed the process.

On behalf of this year’s judges and evaluators, I take this opportunity to congratulate the chamber, and participating and winning corporates for being part of the Best Corporate Citizens Sustainability Awards journey.

Dr. Ananda Mallawatantri

Chairman

Panel of Evaluators and Judges

The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce recently held the Best Corporate Citizen Sustainability (BCCS) Award 2020 for the 17^th consecutive year.

The annual event looks to recognise the importance of corporate sustainability in Sri Lanka, and encourage businesses to adopt best practices to create goods and services using processes and systems aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Since this was a challenging year due to COVID-19, the awards also focussed on emergency preparedness, resilience and stakeholder management during the pandemic, and corporates’ contingency plans.

Participating companies believe the awards serve a greater purpose beyond accolades, acting as a measure of their year on year progress, as well as a performance evaluation alongside their peers.

The awards are judged in two categories, distinguished by annual turnover – companies with a turnover above Rs. 15 billion in Category A and below this in Category B. This ensures that the scheme encourages large and small corporates to interact responsibly with stakeholders.

Applications are evaluated by Sri Lanka’s best thought leaders in sustainability. Continuing its efforts to take sustainability to the grassroots level, the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce encourages business enterprises to apply for the BCCS Award each year and join a journey of sustainability.

BEST CORPORATE CITIZEN
SUSTAINABILITY AWARD 2020

The BCCS Award assesses the interactions of corporate entities – private or public, listed or unlisted – with stakeholders including the environment, employees, customers, suppliers, communities, the government and shareholders.

BEST PROJECTS SUSTAINABILITY AWARDS 2020

The Best Projects Sustainability Awards were introduced by the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce in 2007 to encourage businesses to think beyond their bottom lines by investing in philanthropic activities benefitting the environment (planet) and society (people). Awards are presented for the four best sustainability projects while those achieving high standards receive Certificates of Merit. These awards acknowledge that sustained continuous profits must go hand in hand with preserving the planet and serving people.