Where BP went wrong

BP's reputation is in shreds. During the Gulf oil leak the company staggered from one PR disaster to another (interestingly their head of PR is the former head of PR for Lehman brothers!).

It failed to accept the magnitude of the situation, but even worse it failed to understand how its responses would be perceived.

The company is actually one of the better oil companies when it comes to the environment, but it does underline a growing problem. These companies place profit before all else, including the environment.

Sure they issue fancy sustainability reports, and sponsor all sorts of things, BP even went so far as to brand itself as Beyond Petroleum. The problem is that it didn't change deep down. it was still the same company, willing to do anything to make a dollar.

Companies need to release that change needs to be deep deep thing, it needs to be something that comes from within. Companies need to re-engineer their processes, their need to look at what they are doing and ask how they can do it better. A great example of this is FedEx, just today I read about how they are slowly phasing in hybrid vehicles and in some places non carbon emitting tricycles. Change is slow and sometimes painful, but necessary.

That probably why FedEx was awarded Committed to the Environment by the international charter, and BP isnt.