the Coup

Ceres Award

The report we wrote with Green Mountain Coffee Roasters was awarded Best First-Time Report by Ceres, the national network that sets the standard for Corporate Social Responsibility reporting.

For this project, we walked with GMCR staff down the complex path of describing and quantifying their efforts to measure and improve the impact of their business on the environment, on the quality of life for their employees, and on the quality of life for the people in the communities where they buy their coffee.

Ceres received 102 reports to consider for their awards and narrowed the pool to 19 reports from companies that included HP, Starbucks, GE, and Citigroup. The judging criteria “addressed completeness, credibility and quality of communication.” Their idea: the more we know about how companies behave, the better they’ll behave. In 2002, Kinkos was the last company to win an award for a first-time report.

Ceres is a national network of investors, environmental organizations and other public interest groups working with companies and investors to address sustainability challenges such as global climate change. Ceres Launched the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), now the de-facto international standard (used by over 850 companies) for corporate reporting on environmental, social and economic performance.