THE NEXT ECONOMY -
On Thursday, after months of pressure from climate change activists, eBay confirmed its departure from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).“This is a major victory for those of us who have continued to pressure eBay executives to drop ALEC,” said Ryan Canney, Senior Campaigner with Forecast the Facts. “Denying climate change has no place in the modern economy, and this decision shows the credibility of eBay’s commitment to climate change.”
COLLABORATION -
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.
PRESS RELEASE -
By: Scott Sapperstein
As an openly gay general manager at AT&T, I experience AT&T’s commitment to equality and inclusion firsthand; my story as an employee is special because it is unremarkable. From the day I joined AT&T 13 years ago, AT&T fostered an environment where I feel comfortable to share who I am. My husband Rob is a part of my work life just like any spouse, and when he and I married, I was proud to share the news with my AT&T family.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
The North Face, H&M, Eddie Bauer and several other leading international fashion, bedding and outdoor brands have adopted a third-party certification standard that can be applied to any waterfowl-based supply chain to help ensure humane treatment of animals from gosling to end product.
COLLABORATION -
In a collaborative move that’s happily becoming a trend, 57 leading organizations across a variety of industries — including the Climate Group, Ecover, GE, IKEA, Interface, Tesco, Unilever, and notably, energy companies such as Shell and Dong Energy — have published an open letter to the European Council, to support stronger 2030 climate goals at meetings later this month, ahead of COP21 in Paris next year. You can read the short letter in full below.Dear EU Heads of State and Government,Our 57 companies, funds and associations represent more than 4.5 million employees worldwide. We each acknowledge responsibility for a sustainable economic future for Europe.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
With the annual International Uzbek Cotton and Textile Fair scheduled for October 14th and 15th in Tashkent, retailers and apparel brands are taking action to prevent Uzbek cotton from entering their supply chains. Markets for Uzbek cotton sourced with forced labor continue to diminish as consumers become more aware of the egregious human rights violations that occur during the Uzbek cotton harvest.
BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
Following an extensive multimedia Greenpeace campaign, LEGO published a statement this morning committing to "not renew the co-promotion contract with Shell."
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) Group chairman Teguh Ganda Wijaya today joins a number of companies, governments and NGOs to sign the New York Declaration on Forests at the UN Climate Summit 2014. The declaration is an unprecedented international, multi-sector commitment to safeguard the world’s forests and to help tackle climate change.
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE -
Thousands of workers took to the streets of Phnom Penh, in Cambodia, last week to protest for a near-doubling of the minimum wage for retailer workers there to US$177 (£110) a month. It seems their calls for fairer pay have sparked a response from the fashion industry, as eight leading retailers have now pledged to pay more for clothes produced there, according to the Guardian.
THE NEXT ECONOMY -
Seven months ago, this series kicked off with CVS’ surprise announcement that it would no longer carry tobacco products in its retail stores. Fast forward, the company announced Sept. 3 that it had met its goal a month ahead of schedule and had a new name to match its bold, new vision of a tobacco-free America — CVS Health.
COLLABORATION -
H&M and WaterAid on Tuesday launched a new global partnership aimed at improving the health, education and future prospects of students by delivering safe water, sanitation and hygiene education programs in schools throughout the developing world.The initiative will not only transform the lives of students by delivering immediate and long-term improvements to health and education, but also influence national and international policies around the right to safe water and sanitation, H&M says.To make this happen H&M, through its philanthropic arm the H&M Conscious Foundation, will donate $9.3 million.
COLLABORATION -
The IKEA Foundation has launched a two-month campaign to raise funds to provide solar-powered lighting and other renewable energy technologies to UN refugee camps run through the sale of light bulbs in its stores around the world.For every LEDARE model LED bulb sold at IKEA from February 3 until March 29, the IKEA Foundation will donate €1 to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
On Feb. 5, drugstore chain CVS Caremark announced that it will stop selling tobacco products.It’s a big deal. Here’s why.It signals a step towards more businesses saying, “It’s wrong. So we’re stopping.” Even when the financials — what the sustainability world calls “the business case” — don’t support it in the short term.I’d like to suggest that CVS’ announcement moves the ball downfield for more business decisions based on social and environmental impacts. It creates new, safe middle ground to operate more openly from the “morals” argument as a valued partner to the “money” business case argument.
BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
In a bold yet intuitive move for a pharmacy, CVS Caremark announced Wednesday that it will stop selling cigarettes and other tobacco products at its more than 7,600 stores across the US by October 1, 2014. It is the first action of its kind by a national pharmacy chain.With more than 480,000 deaths annually, smoking is the leading cause of premature disease and death in the United States, CVS says. While the prevalence of cigarette smoking has decreased from around 42 percent of adults in 1965 to 18 percent today, the rate of reduction in smoking prevalence has stalled in the past decade.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
Private sector sourcing commitments from companies such as Unilever, Coca Cola, Starbucks and Home Depot are driving major market growth for sustainable commodities, according to the State of Sustainability Initiatives (SSI) Review 2014.Once thought of as instruments primarily tailored for niche markets, voluntary sustainability standards such as Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance and Organic are gaining traction in mainstream markets. The trend towards mainstreaming of sustainability standards is strongest among newer sector-specific initiatives that explicitly target mainstream markets.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
Bacardi Limited, the world’s largest privately held spirits company, has pledged to obtain 40 percent of the sugarcane-derived products used to make its rums from certified, sustainable sources by 2017 and 100 percent by 2022 — an industry first — as part of a new global sustainability campaign.Marking the 152nd anniversary of the company’s founding, Good Spirited: Building a Sustainable Future builds on current programs and efficiencies that reduce water and energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and sets new goals in three primary areas: responsible sourcing, global packaging and operational efficiencies.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
I have been leading a research effort to understand the impacts of the growing Collaborative Economy trend. In case you are new to the collaborative economy, there's an unstoppable wave of people trading, renting and borrowing all kinds of services and goods. The disruptive impacts to brands are potentially very high. Consumers are already buying and trading among themselves, often without purchasing items directly from the brands themselves. Companies that don't pay attention to this trend are leaving themselves in a state of risk, as technology and society continue to quickly innovate.
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
Procter & Gamble announced this week that it will eliminate phosphates from all of its laundry detergents — which include brands such as Tide, Ariel, Cheer, Gain, Ace and Bold — by the end of 2015. The company says the goal of the change is to provide consumers with superior cleaning performance while eliminating the harmful effects of the chemicals on the environment.
COLLABORATION -
The Coca-Cola Company, AB InBev, Diageo and other members of the Beverage Industry Environmental Roundtable (BIER) recently published a document that creates the industry’s first common framework for greenhouse gas emissions reporting.
BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
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: