CSR is PSR

What is CSR? CSR is an attitude.

This has been one of the key learning points personally over the last year or two and one that others seem to share. It is also what I try to convey to others. Thus CSR is a personal attitude and very much related to how you live your live and what you care about: PSR -personal social responsbility. PSR is mostly about a) awareness and b) action (or laziness to be more pessimistic). There is a continuing need for more awareness around how you can be more personally socially responsible; not because the 'how' is so complex, but because no-one spends 5 minutes to sit down and think about it.

What should you do? Sit down and think a bit about your appartment, your office and what you do in them and in between them (and what you do elsewhere of course too). Do you re-use your cup, turn the lights off in the toilet or your office/room (even if you just leave for 5 minutes), leave your computer on overnight, or whilst you pop out to lunch? How are you travelling, how are you treating people? It would be great to come up with some brief structured list of questions that each person could use to sort of do a PSR report (like a company's CSR report). Maybe this already exists? I am sure there could be some basic award or something that a school could give to the most PSR schoolkid (or most improved!).

Actually, the best thing to do might be to team up with someone else and take it in turns to spend a day monitoring the other person and what they do. It can be a competition to see who can list the most things the other person could do to improve their PSR, since it is hard to recognise your own actions but easier to observe someone else's. It is with great joy I discovered the 'We are what we do' website yesterday (www.wearewhatwedo.com/).

It lists 50 things each person can do at work, at home, at school and 'out and about' (and have received a further 5,000 suggested actions!!). Have a look, and maybe they could develop their concept further. So think about your PSR today!