[Editor's Note: This article is part of GreenBiz.com's coverage of the 2009 Business for Social Responsibility conference. To read all our coverage, visit GreenBiz.com/BSR2009.]

The past year has been a whirlwind -- or perhaps more of a hurricane -- for the business world. Between the Great Recession, increased realization about how rapidly climate change is happening, and the expansion of political and economic influence to new nations, it all adds up to what the leaders of the upcoming Business for Social Responsibility Conference call a "reset world."

The conference aims to explore how this reset world has changed, and show how companies can adapt and even thrive to the new business and ecological environments.

To get a sneak preview of the BSR conference, and talk about the state of responsible business in general, I spoke with Aron Cramer, the President and CEO of BSR.

Matthew Wheeland: Aron, thanks so much for taking the time to talk with us today. I want to talk mostly about the upcoming BSR conference, and the theme of this year's conference is "Reset Economy, Reset World." Tell us a little bit about what that means.

Aron Cramer: Well, the world has been through a roller coaster over the last year, and in some ways, going back a couple of years. So we've seen a trio of things happen that have immense impact on businesses everywhere. One, of course, is the recession and the steep fall. We seem to be seeing a bit of return, but we've been through a very, very difficult economic time. That's number one.

Number two is lots of evidence that natural resource constraints are becoming more pressing. There's evidence of faster than expected climate change taking place. Last year, we saw amazing pressure on commodity prices. All of these things suggest that the natural resource limits to business-as-usual are under more pressure.

And the third is, the world is changing very, very fast. You know, this year we've seen a transition from the G8 to the G20, and that's just one symbol of how political and economic influence is shifting to be held in a much wider set of hands.

So all three of these things and, by the way, adding to it the fact that trust in business has declined very rapidly -- all of these things suggest a very, very different frame for the world and for our economy.

Our conference is designed to put that front and center and to ask all the thousand or so participants at our event to think about how they can change business strategies and sustainability strategies that will meet the challenge of this reset world.

MW: And it's great that you brought up the issue of trust because I wanted to ask about that as well, that that's obviously another big theme is regaining the public's trust in business, which is something that at times can seem like a pretty tall order. What's your take on what companies can do to rebuild those bridges, or things you've seen companies already doing?

AC: Well, there are a number of things that companies can do to regain public trust. One thing that I think will make a big difference, quite frankly, is if the economy begins to recover, the public is going to be more comfortable with what the private sector is doing.

But in addition, I think looking at ways to show that businesses are interested not only in their own short-term profits, but also in building businesses and building an overall economy that delivers on the biggest challenges we face globally. Good stable jobs certainly, but also addressing climate change, also looking at labor conditions, both domestically and in their supply chains, looking at water crisis, looking at good transparent governance -- these are all the things that lead the public to say that businesses actually have a broader set of concerns that affect me and my life and not only delivering what Wall Street wants to see.

And by the way, this is not just an academic matter because when businesses have strong public trust, it means that their employees have greater trust in them, their customers and consumers have greater trust in them, and regulators are also more inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

So these are all things that have very practical impacts on how businesses -- individual businesses and business as a whole -- are positioned to succeed. And so regaining trust will really help businesses perform more effectively. It's not just a question of moving polling data up or down.

MW: And some of the examples that you mentioned, I know BSR is very engaged with especially water issues, there are supply chain issues. Can you give us an example of a recent activity that companies -- that BSR members or BSR projects have worked on, that sort of serve as an example for showing business concern beyond just profits?

AC: Well, we are, in any given year, we're working on 150 -200 projects with our 250-member companies, and there are a couple that, I think, are particularly interesting in this year, in 2009.

One is that we worked with Sprint and Samsung in the development of their reclaimed phone, which is an actual handset, a mobile phone, that Sprint's put into the marketplace. It's a Samsung phone that is a truly sustainable handset, and the issue of e-waste is obviously one of considerable concern.

A lot of people believe that companies are just always trying to sell the next new thing, regardless of the impact on the environment, but here's an example of a couple of companies who took a very common consumer device and tried to redesign it from the ground up to make sure that it didn't just have a green coat of paint, but in fact was based on sustainability principles from the beginning.

And I think when you see more companies designing for sustainability along the lines of this phone that we have the great opportunity to work on with Sprint and Samsung, then you get into an economy that is much more like a closed loop economy. And I think that's the kind of thing that will not only deliver great results for the companies that are doing them, but also I think will begin to reshape the very core of the economy.

On another note, we've been working with Walmart and a number of its suppliers in China. Walmart has made some very big, audacious statements about its objectives on sustainability, and we've been working right there on the ground with Walmart and a number of its suppliers, with staff person embedded in Walmart's headquarters in China to help these big suppliers simply reduce their energy use.