The Institut Català del Suro Foundation (ICSuro) has self-assessed to deploy its own Balance of the Common Good result of their interest in minimize the social, environmental and economic impact of the entity in line with the environmental sensitivity of the cork sector. The international model of the Economy of the Common Good (EBC) establishes tools and models that should allow addressing present and future challenges such as the climate emergency or social inequality and moving towards a fairer economic model within the ecological limits of the our planet

The diagnosis

The result of the ICSuro Common Good Balance report was 541 points out of 1,000 which are extracted from the analysis of 20 axes that include factors such as human dignity in the supply chain, environmental sustainability, transparency and democratic participation, the ethical attitude with customers or the contribution to the community.

The balance also establishes points for improvement in various areas, such as the installation of solar panels, participatory co-management with staff, collaboration with ethical banking, the development of a code of ethics for suppliers or the increase of sustainability in analytical processes.

Joan J. Puig, president of the Institut Català del Suro Foundation, considers that this self-evaluation process of the ICSuro "represents a new example of the cork sector's commitment not only to the natural and scenic environment of cork and its economic model, but also to the Common Good and the ethics of models that are sustainable over time like cork".

The commitment

The Institut Català del Suro Foundation is a member of theassociation EBC Girona, Local group from Girona of the international movement Economy for the Common Good in accordance with its motivation to seek alternatives to the current model of economic relations based on competition and monopoly and which allow to ensure the viability of the sector on ethical foundations based on cooperation and respect for human values and the planet.

For Albert Hereu, director of the Institut Català del Suro Foundation, "as a foundation, per se, we are already oriented towards the common good, however we wanted to start this path with the EBC model to contemplate all aspects of impact and now to give visibility to the contribution made by the cork sector to the improvement of our environment".

In this sense, ICSuro is also in the process of accounting for its social value by means of GEAccounting, has experimented with the concept of Donut Economics or has made of Sustainable Development Goals (ODS) a guide for your foundation management.

The Foundation

The Institut Català del Suro (ICSuro) is a non-profit, scientific private foundation whose mission is to promote the cork sector.

It has three main lines of action: research and research on the cork and other applications, quality controls of the corks through the Cork Center Laboratory and communication for the dissemination and promotion of the conservation and responsible use of corks .

The Institut Català del Suro was established in 1991 as a public-private consortium and since 2019 it is a private foundation that works to become a world-leading entity in cork research.