A survey conducted late last year on behalf of Business for Social Responsibility, a global network of firms with an interest in corporate social responsibility, or CSR, showed that almost a third expected their spending on sustainability to fall as a result of the economic crisis. Yet so far the recession has not produced a wholesale retreat from corporate do-gooding. Instead it has led firms to cut things that were at best peripheral to their business interests and, at worst, a waste of time and money.
Most of the cuts have been to corporate-philanthropy budgets, which typically fund charities and NGOs, not to sustainability initiatives.
Source: The Economist