BEST CORPORATE CITIZENS SUSTAINABILITY (BCCS)
MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIRMAN
The COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts caused the Sri Lankan economy to contract by 3.6 percent in 2020. Despite the challenges, the country’s corporates adopted a multitude of resilient approaches to bounce back while ensuring staff benefits.
The evaluation panel recognises the commitment to sustainability among CEOs and senior staff that goes beyond ‘business as usual’ – especially in the context of the pandemic among other global and local challenges. To this end, the Best Corporate Citizens Sustainability (BCCS) Award recognises corporate efforts to create economic value, healthy ecosystems and support communities.
COVID-19 changed the global outlook for meeting climate challenges. Global developments now combine Paris Agreement related mitigation and adoption initiatives with post-2020 biodiversity targets, indicating the value of conserving ecosystems and ecosystem services.
The ‘new normal’ and building back better require that corporates adopt renewable energy, and minimise the pollution of air, water, soil and ocean resources, as well as embrace circularity, life cycle analysis, green supply chains, cleaner production, and sustainable consumption and production while developing sustainable financing including blended finances among others.
It is encouraging to note that several corporates are already capitalising on the new demands, and adopting science-based targets (SbTs) and ‘greening’ approaches. This highlights the importance of board composition in supporting environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) agendas under the ‘green challenge,’ which also covers marketing, labour relations, financing and so on.
More support is needed in the SME sector in the form of sustainable financing, technology and practices to enhance access to resources as it’s an integral part of greening supply chains.
On behalf of the evaluators and judges, I would like to take this opportunity to recognise corporates’ untiring efforts to maintain the quality of submissions. The BCCS process has grown every year with their commitment. We value their participation and extend our congratulations to the winners of both forms of the BCCS Award.
Additionally, we are grateful to the Ceylon Chamber BCCS Secretariat for working with us diligently during the entire BCCS process.
Dr. Ananda Mallawatantri
Chairman
Panel of Evaluators and Judges
The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce was recently conferred the Best Corporate Citizen Sustainability (BCCS) Award 2021 for the 18th 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 both 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 2021
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 2021
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.
