In a little more than a week, Europe’s largest conference on corporate social responsibility (CSR) - The Responsible Business Summit - will be taking place in the UK on May 11 and 12 in London. If you are working in the area of the environment, or just think that CSR is something you would like your company to be a part of, then this conference may be up your alley.

Until a few years ago, when people starting buying carbon offsets and trimming their carbon emissions, CSR might have meant donating corporate money and time to a local kids’ soccer team, or giving money to the poor. Now with more complicated issues at stake, like climate change, CSR is not just an opportunity to market your company, it is in some cases an imperative in order to stay relevant.

Of course your business might be suffering from the economic downturn, but how to come out shining, despite the crisis, is something top CEOs from around the world will be speaking about at the annual event. Mitigating corporate risks and taking charge of your responsibility in fighting climate change, will be an important part of the conference. Among the expert speakers will be Anders Dahlvig, the CEO of IKEA, Jeff Swartz, the CEO of Timberland, and Daniel Franklin, the CEO of the Economist.

Attendees will be able to learn how to seamlessly embed CSR activities into their business plan, while learning how to mitigate climate risk with less money and resources. Speakers, like the ones we’ve mentioned above, will be giving corporate players opportunities one should be focusing on today. Additionally, some cost-cutting and environmentally sound business tips will be part of the day as business leaders speak about how to run operations on a tighter budget without compromising the company’s ethics and values.

That’s right, folks! The recent economic collapse in the US, which is sending shock waves around the world, doesn’t mean you have to toss your company’s carbon offsetting ideas out the window.

For more about the conference, see the website of Ethical Corporation.

If you’d like a little more to chew on, and to start investigating carbon offsets to buy, or how they work, visit Carbon Catalog’s directory. European-based readers might find our European carbon offset providers, a good place to start.

And of course, there’s our very handy book review on 5 Books For Greening Your Business.