It’s not only UK supermarkets who have been in the dock following allegations of price fixing recently - it appears that Danish Christmas tree growers are getting in on the act too.

According to reports, the Danish Christmas Tree Growers’ Association has been accused of attempting to rig prices, despite being warned by the country’s competition commission about the practice twice in the past six years.

Anyone who currently has a Nordmann fir perched precariously in their front room is likely to have paid 25 percent more for it in 2007 than in 2006, as Denmark ’s 4000 or so Christmas tree farmers cash in on soaring demand and limited supply.

The Tree Growers’ Association blame the booming Christmas tree market in Eastern Europe for the price jump, but those claims have received a prickly response by officials in Scandinavia.

Of course, in an industry worth over $250 million a year, the tree farmers are likely to dispute the commission’s charges fiercely, which should make for an interesting exchange of views (and not presents) this Christmas.

At your desk right now? Well, have a look around and count the Christmas cards perched on your screen and sandwiched between your family photos and the 2007 calendar pinned to your notice board.

Finished?

In an age when sustainability is the buzzword to end all buzzwords, I’m beginning to wonder if next year we can all look forward to a clear desk during the festive period. What a delight!

Surely the endless churning out of corporate Christmas cards – attractive as they may sometimes be (and don’t get me wrong, I love a snowscape as much as the next man) – is about as environmentally friendly as me travelling the 20 or so miles to our London offices by 4x4, then plane, after absent-mindedly chopping down a couple of hectares of rainforest before breakfast.

Just because it’s the season to stuff yourself silly and get slightly tiddly at the Christmas party, doesn’t mean there should be any let-up in the quest to cut carbon emissions.

Four e-cards have arrived unobtrusively in my inbox this past week (I know, only four!) , so some companies do appear to have abandoned the traditional method of festive greeting sending - others will surely follow. Hap E-Christmas!! ;-)

Anyone searching for evidence that a carbon emissions reduction strategy was the ‘must have’ accessory of 2007 can look no further – the proof arrived in my inbox this morning.

A statement from one of the world’s richest football clubs proudly proclaimed that Chelsea had signed up to play a key role in a campaign aimed at tackling climate change right here in London.

Now call me a cynic, but no football club (especially not one the size of the Premiership’s richest club), jumps on a bandwagon such as this unless they think there’s something in it for them. Which can only mean one thing – reducing your carbon footprint isn’t just essential from an environmental perspective, it’s now an absolute PR must too.

Speaking at the launch of London’s Green500 scheme, London Mayor, Ken Livingstone told anyone within earshot that: “The London green organisations programme will motivate, support and reward organisations to reduce their carbon footprint.

“This is a world first, and places London at the forefront of government and business working together to cut carbon emissions. The impressive range of companies who have already signed up to the Green500 shows that leading businesses want to take a lead in helping to prevent climate change, and recognise that it increasingly makes commercial sense to do so.”

He’s not wrong. And Simon Greenberg, Chelsea’s Communications and Public Affairs Director, chimed in with the upbeat message - his voice almost drowned out by the sound of the players leaving the club’s training ground in their enormous gas-guzzling 4x4’s – that the club are preparing to make a “real impact” in the capital’s fight against climate change.

Could this be, I ask, the same club who last week flew their players the 140 miles to Derby for a Premiership fixture?

So as Chelsea prepare to install energy-saving light bulbs in their swanky West London offices this evening, whilst ensuring that the giant screen inside their Stamford Bridge home isn’t left on stand-by, the green brigade will be waiting for evidence that today’s statement is one of intent, and not just a rather nice piece of PR.

Yawn!

Too many late nights beavering away on presentations, I’m afraid.

Yawn again!

I am looking forward to my pudding on Christmas day, actually.

Even bigger yawn!

Oh no, here comes yet another article on sustainability. Does any one actually understand any of this sustainability guff and what it will mean for the corporation?

2007 will surely go down as a watershed year as far as sustainability is concerned. On the one hand people really did start to take stock of what was being said. On the other, the quality of thinking around what this means for the corporation is still nascent. Everyone seems to be all too willing to recognise how important the topic is to their organisation, but few seem to have got to grips with the answers, or even started to understand what the questions are.

We as a community of professionals who have linked our careers to the procurement space, must work to understand what sustainability means for us; I have argued before that procurement functions have a central role to play in addressing the sustainability issue; the purpose of this essay is to outline some thinking around how this could happen.

First off, it is worth defining what sustainability in the context of the current debate means; at its simplest the term means the extent to which the environment around us can be maintained at a certain level indefinitely – i.e. the current conditions which are so conducive to life as we know it today. So for the corporation, presented with this definition, the challenge is understanding whether their economic value generating activities have had, or will have some kind of negative impact on the environment.

For my own part I like the broad appeal of this challenge – it means that nothing can slip through the net! He must be mad, I hear some of you cry. Nothing of the sorts – making the breadth of the challenge as broad as possible is important, as it goes some way to answering the next question, namely, what are you going to do about addressing it? For the corporation to make sure that they have taken the right steps, there really is no other option other than going back as far as is necessary to understand what are the implications of the day-to-day economic generating activities.

Having a first tier of suppliers that can testify to being greener than green is no good if it transpires that somewhere along their supply chains somebody is doing a very good job of clearing large swathes of the Amazon to mine nickel. Starting with this mindset, sets a very high bar indeed for the entire supply chain; but the hope must be that in time the philosophy will eventually propagate its way down the entire supply chain.

And by the way, forget about offsetting in the first instance – it has to be treated as a second choice. The real challenge is substituting existing processes, technologies, and energies with more efficient options, which means innovation. Innovation is driven by collaboration, which is built on trust derived from a healthy working relationship with your external third parties. The bulk of these third parties, are usually suppliers, whose relationships should be governed by the procurement function.

The high degree of supplier/supply chain content should demonstrate why procurement has, and must have an important part to play in supporting the organisation in finding the answers to these questions.

Economic activity needs suppliers, people and an idea. It’s procurement’s job to keep tabs on the suppliers, and make sure that the contribution that they can make is fostered and rewarded appropriately when it comes to addressing the sustainability agenda.

Merry Christmas everyone – in the words of John Lennon, let’s hope it’s a good one.

Executives at some of the world’s biggest oil companies would have been woken by some interesting phone calls this morning after an apparently bona fide press release proclaimed that the likes of Shell and BP had agreed to a commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 90 percent by 2050.

However, as cornflakes were collectively choked over breakfast bars on both sides of The Atlantic, it soon became clear that their companies had been victims of an elaborate hoax.

Having mocked up a portal to look identical to that of the US Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a consortium of some of the world’s most influential organisations and corporations, the ‘press release’ included the rather eye-catching headline “major businesses announce commitment to reduce greenhouse emissions by 90 percent.” What’s more, the release claimed that this was ‘no strings attached’ commitment.

“In an effort to encourage decisive action (at climate change talks) in Bali this week USCAP’s members have committed to a 90% reduction in their greenhouse gas emissions by 2050,” Matt Leopold, a spokesman for commission said. “This commitment should send a strong message to the assembled countries and businesses about the type of reductions needed to stop global warming," he added, no doubt with a wry smile upon his face.

Among the companies listed as USCAP members were Alcoa, BP, Dow, DuPont, Ford and Shell.

It didn’t take long for the hoax to surface, however. With company spokespersons falling over themselves to deny any knowledge of the commitment. BP’s press office in London said although it was a member of the USCAP consortium it would not, unsurprisingly, commit itself to a 90 percent reduction without conditions attached. Similar denials were swiftly forthcoming from Shell.

The hoax is though, just one in the latest of a series to hit the oil industry in the past month, with the Yes Men – activists who specialise in doubling up as oil executives, complete with outrageous statements on the environment – being particularly busy in recent weeks.

Last month they posed as executives from ExxonMobil and the National Petroleum Council (NPC) and managed to dupe, albeit briefly, up to 300 delegates at Canada’s largest oil conference, GO-EXPO.

They told their unsuspecting audience that the oil industry could keep “fuel flowing” by transforming dead people into oil. “We need something like whales but infinitely more abundant,” ‘NPC rep’, Shepard Wolff, told delegates before experiencing the hospitality on offer at Calgary’s largest police station.

No-one involved in procurement needs telling that the battleground for talent has got a whole lot more ugly in 2007, and, with this in mind, a recent article in Fortune magazine should be required reading for anyone with a passing interest in the subject.

The piece, which was penned by Geoff Colvin, the magazine’s editor-at-large, argues that countries are beginning to realise that their future success depends not on their resources, but on that most priceless of commodities – human capital.

“Companies have been battling for years to attract and keep the best people. Now countries are engaging in the same fight,” Colvin says. “It wasn't much of a scrap until recently. Only the United States, Western Europe, and Japan - for a while - were even contenders. They didn't beat up on one another too badly vying for the best talent because there was enough to go around.”

Not any more there isn’t. And in a week where Europe has once again outlined plans to attract more skilled workers, a plan Colvin slams as “pretty pathetic”, the battle for what he terms “human-capital supremacy”, promises to rage on.

According to Colvin, education is the key battleground, and cites comments made by Cisco CEO, John Chambers, that “anyone with a college degree should be welcome in our country, with appropriate security change,” as evidence that, in an increasingly global marketplace, nations have to adapt to the demands placed upon them.

“This international fight for talent will get much more serious,” Colvin warns. “With luck, it will lead to something new: a free market in brainpower.

Wise words indeed.

Innovation is the lifeblood of any business, which made a recent article in the Wall Street Journal sticks in my mind.

Most of us would imagine that the most innovative minds in the emerging markets of China and India would be found in the financial centres of Mumbai or Shanghai, but, as students at the Institute of Management in Ahmedabad have been finding out, it sometimes pays to look beyond the obvious.

The Honeybee Network is an online database of rural innovations that, according to the man who runs it, Prof. Anil K. Gupta, has ambitions of becoming the Wikipedia of grassroots inventions. But the professor’s grandiose plans aren’t to be sniffed at – since 1988 Honeybee has catalogued over 70,000 innovations by inventors in rural India, and has facilitated meetings between these most unlikely inventors and entrepreneurs with the cash to take the ideas forward.

Ranging from traditional herbal treatments to a ploughing device that can be attached to the back of a motorbike, these rural innovators have the potential to change the way many of the world’s biggest companies think.

Mr. Gupta’s Network is now working closely with Indian businesses, and the man himself is determined to show that the country’s less developed communities can be viewed as a source of product ideas and, in some cases, can prove invaluable business partners.

"We don't want a system where you first create a lot of growth and try to create a lot of CSR [corporate social-responsibility] programs as a nod to the poor; you include them as stakeholders right up front," Gupta tells the WSJ.

The idea has now gone global, with similar networks now operating in Tianjin University in China and the Genesis Institute in Rio de Janeiro. Both of which are proving as successful in their new locations as the original project has been in India.

So, the message appears to be clear. When it comes to innovation, the answers aren’t always to be found in the most obvious places - sometimes it pays not just to think outside the box, but to leave the box far behind.

Ever feel like your working too hard? Well fear not, because latest figures released by the TUC in London, suggest that you’re far from alone.

For the past decade the UK’s working week has been getting progressively shorter, but as employers feel the pinch, it appears that the return of the 48-hour week could once again be just around the corner.

According to the TUC, more than 13 percent of the UK’s workforce (3.2 million people) put in more than 48 hours a week – a rise on the 2006 figure of 12.8 percent.

The increase comes despite the introduction of an EU directive aimed at preventing excessive working hours, although this is something workers in the UK can opt out of, leaving unions to claim, somewhat unsurprisingly, that employers are abusing the system.

However, despite the latest figures, it appears that workers in the UK still have a long way to go to catch up with their competitors on the continent. In Greece, for example, the average working week was 42.7 hours in 2006 - narrowly ahead of the Czech Republic’s 41.7, and the 40.9 hours worked by employees in Poland.

The average weekly total of 36.9 hours in the UK put them behind France (38 hours), but slightly ahead of Germany (35.4 hours). The Netherlands has the lowest average working hours in Europe – coming in at 30.8 hours.

How do these figures compare to the hours you’ve put in throughout 2007 and are these figures reflected across procurement as a whole? Let us know your views.