How organizations are addressing the 'G' in ESG – striking the balance of maximizing long-term growth and value while safeguarding the interests of all stakeholders
Today, Walmart joined forces with CEOs from more than a dozen global companies — including Kellogg, P&G, Monsanto, Campbell Soup, PepsiCo, General Mills and the Dairy Farmers of America — to sign new commitments that accelerate innovation in sustainable agriculture and recycling. The pledges kicked off Walmart’s inaugural Sustainable Product Expo, a three-day collaboration to expand the availability of products that sustain people and the environment. Together, the participating suppliers represent more than $100 billion in sales at Walmart.
Bristol-Myers Squibb, Johnson & Johnson, and Gap have topped CR Magazine’s 2014 100 Best Corporate Citizens List, which ranks companies based on disclosure and performance measures covering environment, climate change, employee relations, human rights, governance, finance and philanthropy.Now in its 15th year, the list documents 298 data points of disclosure and performance measures acquired from publicly available information in the aforementioned categories. Microsoft, Mattel, Weyerhaeuser, Ecolab, Intel, Coca-Cola, and Walt Disney Company rounded out the top ten.
Park Howell, president of Phoenix-based brand strategy and marketing firm Park&Co, also heads the Communications thread of the Arizona State University School of Sustainability’s Executive Master’s for Sustainability Leadership (EMSL) program. Under Howell’s direction, the program replaces communications theory with “communications commandos.”
In honor of Arbor Day today, FedEx and the Arbor Day Foundation have launched a new initiative to help connect disaster-stricken communities with the resources needed for sustainable recovery and community healing.The Community Tree Recovery program is designed to be a national resource for communities as they seek to restore their trees in the aftermath of natural disaster, FedEx says. The program provides the structure and capacity to address multiple disasters annually, distributing seedling trees to afflicted communities nationwide.
A year ago today, over 1,100 Bangladeshi garment workers lost their lives when, despite prior warnings, the building in which they were working collapsed. Over 2,500 more were injured in the disaster, some crippled for life.The victims of the Rana Plaza factory collapse, most of them young women, were part of a global supply chain that brings affordable garments to markets around the world. This was not the first event of its kind in Bangladesh, and Bangladesh is not the only country where industrial disasters have occurred.
Patagonia, GoLite, Seventh Generation, New Belgium Brewing Company and 80 other global companies have been named “Best for the Environment” by the nonprofit B Lab.The ‘B Corp Best for the Environment’ list honors businesses that earned an environmental impact score in the top 10 percent of all Certified B Corporations on the B Impact Assessment, a rigorous and comprehensive assessment of a company's impact on its workers, community and the environment. Honorees were recognized among micro, small and mid-sized businesses.
Arizona State University’s School of Sustainability recently launched the Executive Master’s for Sustainability Leadership (EMSL), a 13-month program designed for mid-career professionals currently employed in or near sustainability roles. The program features a hybrid curriculum of virtual learning and immersive, in-person experiences at ASU and abroad.
IKEA US announced last week that it is making its first US wind farm investment with the purchase of Hoopeston Wind in Hoopeston, Illinois. The 98-megawatt wind farm is the largest single IKEA Group renewable energy investment globally to date and will make a significant contribution to the company’s goal to generate as much renewable energy as the total energy it consumes by 2020. The project is currently being constructed by Apex Clean Energy and is expected to be fully operational by the first half of 2015.
Diabetes care supplier Novo Nordisk has opened two new clinics in Ghana as part of its Base of the Pyramid program, which creates partnerships to build sustainable access to diabetes care for people with low incomes.The two diabetes clinics serve very different areas of Accra, Ghana’s capital – one suburban and relatively prosperous, and the other populated by people with lower incomes. The clinics are designed to be one-stop, offering screening, access, and a stable and affordable supply of insulin to an area with more than half a million people.
HP announced this week that thousands of entrepreneurs around the world have already received microloans from its employees since the launch of Matter to a Million, the Hewlett-Packard Company Foundation’s partnership with Kiva, in February. In announcing the partnership, HP said it is called “Matter to a Million” because the goal is to help one million entrepreneurs achieve their dreams.
Practically Green, the engagement platform for sustainability and responsibility programs, this week announced it is rebranding as WeSpire. The company also debuted its proprietary ROI calculator, which will allow customers to more accurately measure the impact and savings of each individual project deployed.WeSpire helps companies engage people in sustainability and responsibility initiatives with persuasive technology that builds awareness, drives behavior change and now more accurately measures business results. Practically Green’s evolution to WeSpire reflects the growing scope of sustainability and as a result, the growing scope of its technology.
Terracycle has been making it easy for people and businesses throughout North America to reduce consumer product waste through its dozens of “Brigades” that collect previously non-recyclable or hard to recycle waste — everything from Brita filters and CLIF bar wrappers to binders, cell phones and shoes — since 2007. Now the company’s new Zero Waste boxes are helping tackle miscellaneous discarded items in factories, such as earplugs and hairnets.
General Motors, Samsung and Best Buy are among the 127 organizations to receive 2014 Energy Star Partner of the Year Awards, which the Environmental Protection Agency awards to organizations that have demonstrated innovative strategies to help customers, partners and stakeholders to save energy and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through energy-efficiency projects.Other recipients include Meritage Homes Corporation, PepsiCo, Sears, 3M and LG Electronics.
Jenn Vervier, Director of Strategy & Sustainability at New Belgium Brewing, knows firsthand the potential craft beer has to create profound and lasting change. Since starting part-time on the bottling line more than twenty years ago as a graduate student, Jenn has gone on to serve as CFO, COO, and the company’s first director of strategy & sustainability. She spearheaded the development of the brewery’s sustainability management system and has pushed for greater advocacy for environmental regulation.
Christine Bader, author of The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil (Bibliomotion, March 2014), worked for BP for nearly a decade managing the social impacts of some of the company’s largest projects in the developing world. We asked her about the complexities of being a corporate change agent and other challenges surrounding corporate idealism. Anna Lui: Who was this book primarily written for? Did you have a corporate management audience in mind, or the increasingly skeptical/cynical American public?
If you’ve ever thought of dropping a book on your boss’s desk, in the hopes of sparking a Ray Anderson-type conversion, here’s a tip. Don’t use the new IPCC report: It’s gloomy, terrifying and a muddle.Try this instead: Andrew Winston’s business transformation book for the “new normal” of climate change-fueled disruption. It’s called The Big Pivot.
The Obama Administration has released its official strategy for reducing methane emissions as part of the President’s Climate Action Plan, which takes steps to further cut methane emissions from landfills, coal mining, and agriculture, as well as oil and gas systems through cost-effective voluntary actions and practical standards.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report today that says the effects of climate change are already occurring on all continents and across the oceans and the world, in many cases, is ill-prepared for risks from a changing climate. The report also asserts that there are opportunities to respond to such risks, though the risks will be difficult to manage as warming continues to increase.
Unilever, Philips, 3M and several other members of the European Alliance to Save Energy (EU-ASE) have signed a letter sent to the European Commission calling for a new set of competitiveness objectives to exploit all possible cost-effective energy-efficiency opportunities by 2030.
For too long, sustainability executives have been focused on external stakeholders — selling their company’s story in order to build reputation and fill polished social responsibility reports.Now, according to a recent MIT Sloan Management Review article by George Mason University’s Gregory Unruh, sustainability managers have had enough. They’re turning their gaze inward, to the functional managers and line employees who control the management tools — budget, staffing, incentives, etc. — to make change happen.