What with all this coverage of the environment, and accountancy’s manoeuverings to put itself front and centre of efforts to save the planet, I couldn’t help but ask myself, playfully as you might have guessed, just who is the greenest man or woman in the profession at the moment?
I came up with a five horse race. First Allen Blewitt, ACCA chief executive,
and a man who has seen the environment as a major crusade for some time and
pushed his organisation through its green reporting awards. He’s out of the
stalls fast.
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Then there’s Michael Izza, Blewitt’s opposite number at the ICAEW, who
recently managed to get himself invited to speak on the environment in China.
That’s a bit of a lion’s den job really, though the Chinese have softened their
approach of late, so perhaps it wasn’t as tough as it first appeared. He’s
coming up on the rails.
I also thought of John Griffith-Jones, UK chairman of KPMG, who was featured
in the Financial Times not too long ago, bragging how he wanted environmental
advice to be a major service line for the firm. That’s interesting because it
really does make the environment good business.
Marks & Sparks FD Ian Dyson caught my eye, however, as I was reading this
week’s profile. He’s at the centre of making our favourite retailer of comfy
pants and knickers carbon neutral by 2012 and spending £200m on it. Now that’s a
company making a serious commitment.
But then there is the rank outsider – Prince Charles and with him his
principal private secretary and KPMG old-boy Sir Michael Peat. This double act
actually has a green reporting project on the go – Accounting for
Sustainability. This will give accountants the tools to tell us what’s really
happening.
It’s a tight race – difficult to pick a winner, just glad we’ve got such a
large field to back.
Gavin Hinks is editor of Accountancy Age