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Fernando Soares Carneiro received the
prize awarded to Portugal Telecom |
What is sustainable development? According to Heidrick&Struggles, “it is a long-term investment aiming to create value for stakeholders through opportunity identification and exploitation, and risk-management resultant from economic, environmental and social factors”. This consultancy organised the Sustainable Development Award 2009, aiming to honour national entities with the best practices in terms of sustainable development and to survey the evolution of the state of the art of sustainability in Portugal.
At the award delivery ceremony that took place at Pestana Palace Hotel in Lisbon, Portugal Telecom was honoured with the second position of the Sustainable Development Award. Fernando Soares Carneiro, Board Member, PT climbed onto the stage to receive this major award and said that “the recognition of the work done is always important”.
“Among the five major goals defined by PT’s Board of Directors for this term of office, one of them is to become an element of reference in terms of sustainability, either in Portugal or in the countries where we operate. This is a huge challenge: an ambitions challenge that we are going to meet. With this will to win, “the company expects to reach the first position of the ranking next year”, confessed Fernando Soares Carneiro.
Sustainability is an important issue on PT’s agenda. Aware of the potential of telecommunications in bringing people closer together and improving everyone’s lives, PT is committed to contributing to the benefit of society and sharing value with the community, environment and shareholders. This award represents thus the recognition of this bet.
The 1st edition of the Sustainable Development Award
In 2007, Heidrich&Struggles launched the most extensive national survey on the state of the art of sustainability practices in Portugal and repeated the survey in the following year, registering a larger participation from organisations. The number of companies deemed capable of participating in this pioneering analysis grew from 47 to 76.
This year, this consultancy decided to move forward and honour the entities that accepted the sustainability challenge, through its third survey. Therefore, it promoted the 1st edition of the Sustainable Development Awards. The ‘Diário Económico’ newspaper associated itself with this initiative that sought to identify and honour organisations with the best national practices, which are contributing to the progress of the country.
Altogether, 200 entities that replied to the Heidrick&Struggles survey sent an application for the awards, which were later analysed by an Advisory Board. The methodology was based on the ‘triple bottom line’ management philosophy that analyses sustainability in three dimensions: social, environmental and management.
In the course of the event that disclosed the big winners in terms of sustainability, the 25 best classified entities got a diploma; the first five positions received a special prize: an olive tree. This was the chosen symbol to represent this initiative as it is an ancestral Mediterranean tree with strong traditions in Portugal, whose longevity exceeds 2,000 years, always bearing fruit. The five winners were:
- BES
- Portugal Telecom
- Efacec Capital
- Banco Comercial Português
- BP Portugal
During the event, several organisations were honoured with an industry award in the following categories:
- Best SME: Lipor – Inter-municipal Waste Management Service of Greater Porto
- Best Municipality: Cartaxo Municipality
- Best public company/ institute: Lisbon Transport (Carris)
Learn more at http://www.premiosustentabilidade.com/ website.