For more than a century, Mars, Incorporated has been driven by the belief that the world we want tomorrow starts with how we do business today. This idea is at the center of who we have always been as a global, family-owned business. Today, Mars is transforming, innovating and evolving in ways that affirm our commitment to making a positive impact on the world around us.
8 years ago - Consumer products, manufacturing and heavy industry sectors are getting the best financial returns on solar power—the most popular renewable power technology for corporates—according to a new report by RE100, an initiative of The Climate Group in partnership with CDP.
8 years ago - Mars, in partnership with UC Davis, launched the Innovation Institute for Food and Health, part of the university's World Food Center, at a day-long symposium on Wednesday. Laureates and other leading scientists discussed major challenges relating to improving global food security, sustainable agriculture and health for a growing world population.The Innovation Institute is being supported over the next 10 years with a pledge of $40 million from Mars and $20 million from UC Davis and aims to advance new discoveries in sustainable food, agriculture and health.
8 years ago - Marking the end of the comment period on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, 223 companies have announced their support for EPA’s proposed carbon standard for electric power plants, including IKEA, Mars Inc., VF Corporation, Novelis, Levi Strauss, Unilever and Nestlé.
8 years ago - What if 15 of the biggest Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) companies decided they really wanted to change the world? How would they go about communicating their sustainability commitments to the millions of consumers they need to persuade to live more sustainably?At present, even though FMCG companies are starting to understand the need to explain sustainability directly to consumers, they continue to put most of their communication efforts into their Sustainability and CSR corporate sites — an obvious destination for NGOs, shareholders and academics but not the first place the general public go to get information.
8 years ago - IKEA, Swiss Re, BT, Formula E, H&M, KPN, Mars, Nestlé, Philips and Reed Elsevier were among businesses that joined a powerful group of NGOs and clean energy experts during Climate Week to launch of a multi-year initiative to encourage major companies to commit to using 100 percent renewable power.
8 years ago - Previous articles in this series talked about leading businesses taking bold steps on their own for the common good — because it's the right thing to do — even if it costs the company financially in the short term.This time I want to point to the latest wave of businesses working collaboratively on the urgent, common ground issues of renewable energy and climate policy. In America's history of westward expansion and exploration, pioneer families came together in wagon trains for mutual support. In the same way, the examples below show that businesses are taking action, together, to ensure a more certain future that's good for all of us and for business.
8 years ago - Looking to increase availability of cost-competitive renewable energy to run their businesses, this week 12 leading US companies signed the Renewable Energy Buyers’ Principles, created by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the World Resources Institute (WRI), to better communicate their purchasing needs and expectations to the marketplace.
9 years ago - Monday, day one of SB ’14 San Diego, was jam-packed with thought-provoking workshops featuring dozens of experts sharing their latest research and insights on a variety of topics — from multi-sector anti-deforestation efforts to intrapreneurship to context-based sustainability.The day was dominated by a two-part, day-long session featuring market insights from top researchers. In part one, researchers from Shelton Group, GlobeScan, BBMG, Cone Communications and more shared their latest findings on customer attitudes and behavior, many of which not surprisingly still examined the stubborn gap between the two.
9 years ago - Two reports released this week examine the increasingly urgent risks to which major corporations around the world are vulnerable thanks to climate change, along with their own part in exacerbating those risks and how they could act to mitigate them.Gap, HP, PepsiCo and over 50 other S&P 500 companies are feeling climate-change-related risks increase in urgency, likelihood and frequency, with many describing significant impacts already affecting their business operations, according to a new report from CDP.
9 years ago - After a recent rash of new commitments from a number of its fellow consumer goods giants and a number of not-so-subtle hints from Greenpeace (including a high-profile protest at the company’s Cincinnati headquarters last month), Procter and Gamble (P&G) has announced a new “no deforestation” policy that pledges to eliminate palm oil-related forest destruction from its products and provide full traceability for all the palm oil and derivatives it uses.Greenpeace has welcomed the move as a huge step forward in protecting Indonesia’s rainforests and the communities that depend on them, but the NGO warned that much work still remains.
9 years ago - Mars Incorporated has announced a new sustainable palm oil policy, which commits Mars to both industry-leading standards and to developing a fully traceable pipeline back to known palm oil processing mills by the end of the year. The initiative is supported by the company's new zero-deforestation policy, which focuses on its sources of palm oil, beef, soy, pulp and paper.
9 years ago - “Given that carbon footprinting is predicated on climate science, why doesn't the Greenhouse Gas Protocol include guidance on setting science-based emissions goals and targets?” That's the question I asked Janet Ranganathan, Vice President for Science and Research at the World Resources Institute (and founding director of the GHG Protocol at its outset), at the 2012 Ceres Conference (she's a Ceres boardmember). Her response has unfolded in words and actions over time, first by introducing me to Pankaj Bhatia, the current director of the GHG Protocol, at lunch in Washington, DC in the fall of 2012, where we discussed this gap and potential ways to fill it.
9 years ago - This post first appeared on CSRwire's TalkBack blog on December 17, 2013.The ubiquity of the apparel industry is staggering. Everyone wears clothes. The manufacturing of apparel triggers national development and industrialization, jobs and forms of commerce for the sellers of it, and cover and satisfaction for consumers. At three trillion and counting, the global garment and textile industry is responsible for a great deal of progress throughout the world.
9 years ago - The Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) — which represents food-industry giants including Coca-Cola, MARS, Kellogg, P&G, McDonald’s, Mondelez International, Starbucks, Hershey, General Mills and roughly 300 others — announced this week that it will petition to the chief U.S. food safety regulator and Congress to enact a single federal standard for the labeling of genetically modified (GMO) foods.
9 years ago - 16 of the nation’s leading food and beverage companies sold 6.4 trillion fewer calories in the United States in 2012 than they did in 2007, according to the findings released last week by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). The companies, acting together as part of the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation (HWCF), pledged to remove 1 trillion calories from the marketplace by 2012, and 1.5 trillion by 2015. The independent evaluation found that the companies have so far exceeded their 2015 pledge by more than 400 percent.The 16 companies committed to the HWCF calorie-reduction pledge are:
9 years ago - Although business leaders expect exponential growth in consumer interest and business action on sustainable lifestyles within five years, they are struggling to make the case for action, according to survey results released earlier this year by BSR and global sustainability agency Futerra.
9 years ago - SAN FRANCISCO, October 16, 2013 – Sustainable Brands® recently announced program details for its pan-European conference to be held at the Lancaster London, November 18-19th. The conference will bring together over 500 senior-level brand marketing strategists, product designers, business model innovators and sustainability executives to collaborate and explore how environmental and social innovation is becoming an engine for business growth and brand value.
9 years ago - Global opinion research consultancy APCO Insight last week revealed its list of the 100 Most Loved Companies, based on findings generated by its Emotional LinkingSM model, which measures consumers’ emotional attachment to brands. The Walt Disney Company was ranked #1, but the list was largely dominated by tech companies — Yahoo!, Google and Sony rounded out the top four.
9 years ago - Companies that donated funds to oppose ballot initiatives to require the labeling of products containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are facing new pressure from shareholders to stay out of future elections.
9 years ago - SAN FRANCISCO, July 31, 2013 – Sustainable Brands® announced today that the Sustainable Brands London conference is set to convene November 18-19, 2013 at the Lancaster London. The conference theme, From Revolution to Renaissance, will focus on positive shifts currently taking place in product and service innovation and marketing, as well as provide examples of purpose-driven brand innovation that is reinvigorating global and local economies.