At the recent Business Excellence Seminar run by the DTC, Varda Shine delivered an impressive speech comparing the supplier of choice program to the Eden Project. For those who are unfamiliar, the Eden Project is an attempt to create a self sustaining ecology within a contained environment, and more information is available at www.edenproject.com.

Ms Shine correctly pointed out that the Eden Project was about sustainability, and so was the DTC - "Sustainability is about balance." Well, I did a bit of research about sustainability.

The large South African mining company, Anglo Platinum, is the winner of the UK's Chartered Association of Certified Accountants sustainability reporting award. I spoke with one of the panel members, a consultancy group called Sustainability Ltd. One issue was very clear, sustainability is not about balance. It is about delivering, not only economic value, but also social and environmental value. It is about moving to cyclical processes with recycling.

As Sustainability's Seb Beloe commented "Balance is a limited way of viewing sustainability, you should be looking at a win-win approach with environmental sophistication. If you are managing a finite resource like diamonds, sustainability would require introducing an alternative to the un-recyclable diamond." Perhaps Chaim Even Zohar's hunch about De Beers' synthetics is correct!

Ms Shine was most probably referring to a sustainable diamond polishing industry in various African countries. This is a far cry from sustainability - where the DTC should be.

Talking about the environment, today there is an array of ecofriendly products, from car bumpers to foods to materials. But we have never seen a "green" diamond. A branded diamond that devotes part of its profits to improving the world. "We replace the tons of earth dug out to find this diamond." Or, "We plant trees around the mine with the proceeds of this diamond etc." And then pundits are concerned that the sector of the population that is willing to spend more on eco-friendly products doesn't want to buy diamond jewellery for themselves - single women.

Large companies like Anglo Platinum devote significant resources to sustainability and communicating their commitment to the outside world. Their report was 108 pages, audited by KPMG and worthy of its prize status. De Beer's 2006  stakeholder report was an even longer 146 pages. The SGS report on De Beer's BPP was patchy and who is URS that reviews SGS?

But if De Beers and the DTC want to herald business excellence in sustainability, we should be seeing them lead with prize winning sustainability reporting. And to take it one step further, we should be seeing similar reports from sightholders alongside their financials and their profiles. The diamond industry at all levels should take the lead in all areas of corporate responsibility.

Ms Shine also announced that consulting firm PWC has been retained for a misnomeric “Sightholder Support Programme" for non-sightholders who will no longer be supported with supplies of rough from the DTC's SoC program.

The fact that a contract was not renewed is similar to an employee being fired, and it can have nothing to do with your competence. Downsizing can happen anywhere although some of the incompetent sightholders should have been kicked out long ago. That your parents were sightholders is no more relevant than a CFO candidate saying his dad was an accountant. However, if my contract was unrenewed, I would be reluctant to go to PWC - who knows what their instructions really are, and instead would recommend my colleagues at CFO Plus who are putting together an excellent 'Diamonds can Bounce' package.