The Danube’s Deadly Secrets - Sustainability Snack

The Danube river basin is a toxic time bomb according to a new WWF study reported on by the Guardian. In the aftermath of last week’s toxic sludge spill in Hungary, the WWF demonstrates how the river flows through a series of heavy industrial developments, many of which have been neglected over the last few decades.

The danger says the WWF is  that,”There are a string of disasters waiting to happen at sites across the Danube basin.”

Using EU data WWF has identified that Hungary has the most vulnerable sites but warns that Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria also have industrial dumps that pose a significant environmental and freshwater threat.

This is the daily Sustainability Snack provided by Custom Communication. We publish in-depth smart sustainability news digests individually tailored for companies and their employees. Contact us to hear how we can deliver you the sustainability news you need to know about.

Sustainability Snack: Google Looks to Redraw America’s Power Grid

Google and Good Energies, a New York-based investment firm specialising in renewable energy, are backing a new $5 billion wind farm energy transmission project off the Atlantic Seaboard “that could ultimately transform the region’s electrical map.” the New York Times reports this morning.

Regulators and politicians are said to be excited about the project not least because it proposes to harvest and link wind power to consumers in reliable and unobtrusive way.

“Conceptually it looks to me to be one of the most interesting transmission projects that I’ve ever seen walk through the door,” said Jon Wellinghoff, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees interstate electricity transmission. “It provides a gathering point for offshore wind for multiple projects up and down the coast,” he told the NYT.

Custom Communication provides smart sustainability news digests individually tailored for companies and their employees. Contact us to hear how we can deliver you the sustainability news you need to know about.

A History of Social Media Screw Ups

It’s been five years since we launched Custom Communication to help companies tell their own stories using smart, useful content online.

Back in 2005 most companies were just starting to consider the influence blogs and customer opinions could have on their business. After all, Twitter and YouTube hadn’t even launched back then while Facebook was still a niche networking tool used by solely by students.

We hadn’t intended to focus on social media but the more we talked to clients we realised they needed help understanding how social media might change their customer communications and how this explosion in personal publishing would affect their reputation online.

So, over the last five years, we’ve specialised in three areas of business: social media training and strategy, online reputation management and teaching companies how to think like online publishers while also creating custom content.

As we mark the fifth anniversary of our consultancy I started reflecting on the way our online world has changed in such a short time and how many companies have been caught off-guard by social media. (See how the numbers of instances have grown in that time).

I thought it would be fun to try and document all the important company misadventures in social media. Here it is - A Short History of Social Media Screw Ups. Tell us what you think and if we’ve missed any good examples.