How leading companies, NGOs and solution providers are working to address the myriad issues that can arise in any supply chain.
Cross-Posted from Marketing and Comms. GMO Inside, a campaign of Green America, learned from Post Foods on Thursday that the company has committed to rolling out Grape Nuts verified by the Non-GMO Project this month.In response to a request from GMO Inside, Post Foods responded: “We have an exciting update for you. Post has released a non-GMO verified Grape Nuts that is on the store shelves as of January 2014. Also, we are exploring some of our other cereals to see if there is potential going forward to add more non-GMO verified products to the Post Foods product line. We are always listening to our consumers and looking for ways to provide a good variety of products.”
Cross-Posted from Marketing and Comms. Hazardous chemicals have been found in children’s clothes and shoes made by major brands including Disney, Burberry and adidas, according to a new report, A Little Story About the Monsters in Your Closet, released yesterday by Greenpeace East Asia.
Cross-Posted from Marketing and Comms. As companies begin their 2014 planning, it is critical to have a firm understanding of the regulatory and sustainability trends that will impact core business. In a new publication series Let’s talk: sustainability, Ernst & Young’s Climate Change and Sustainability Services group highlights the top concerns facing companies in these areas in 2014.
What started as a conversation amongst three friends in 2012 soon evolved into a new online retail concept founded on a shared passion to make a difference.Nomadista, a term coined by co-founders Irina Bezsonoff, Marisol Gomez and Luisa Echeverry meaning an open-minded, stylish and socially-conscious wanderer, launched in September with a mission to provide shoppers with beautifully designed products that are responsibly sourced and made, while helping to improve conditions and create opportunities for underserved children in Colombia.
Sustainable supply-chain management company EcoVadis and BSR’s Clean Cargo Working Group (CCWG) have announced a partnership aimed at standardizing sustainability reporting requests for the sea freight supply chain.Under this partnership EcoVadis will align its environmental assessment questionnaires for sea carriers with the Clean Cargo Environmental Performance Survey framework. Clean Cargo members also will have the opportunity to leverage the EcoVadis online collaboration platform to access sustainability scorecards on their partners’ performance.
McDonald’s announced this week that, by 2016, it will begin sourcing “verified sustainable beef.” The pledge is an effort to reduce the environmental impact of the fast-food chain’s meat production, as well as to be kinder to the animals on which its livelihood rests. Though there is, of course, plenty of debate over just what “sustainable beef” is, or whether it is achievable.In its pledge, McDonald’s vows, rather vaguely, “to improve environmental practices in the way beef is produced, support positive workplaces in the beef industry, and drive continuous improvement in animal health and welfare.”
In his pre-show keynote at the 2014 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas yesterday, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich outlined a range of the company’s new products, initiatives and strategic relationships aimed at accelerating innovation across a range of mobile and wearable devices, and challenged the entire electronics industry to join Intel in becoming “conflict-free.”
A Minnesota watershed project is using an ecocommerce framework, a fundamentally different approach to bringing shared value to natural resource management.
It was every retailer’s worst nightmare: Days after the Rana Plaza factory collapsed in one of the worst industrial disasters in recorded history, activists began plastering the Internet with pictures of clothing labels uncovered amongst the rubble of concrete and human remains. Amongst these, some of the world’s most recognized brands, including Mango, H&M and Walmart.
Cross-Posted from Marketing and Comms. GMO Inside, a campaign of national non-profit organization Green America, celebrated a victory yesterday after target General Mills announced that its original Cheerios cereal would now be produced without the use of GMOs.
Evolving government policies, technical possibilities, market conditions and stakeholder relationships are all constantly influencing – directly or indirectly – buyers and sellers alike. This channel zooms in on sustainable purchasing and procurement news for anyone looking to stay up-to-date with movers and shakers in the space.
2013 was a banner year for companies using their muscle to drive transformative change, both internally and globally. Without further ado, here is just a taste of some of the progress we found most inspiring.
This is the fourth in a series of excerpts from Engaging Outraged Stakeholders: A How-To Guide for Uniting the Left, Right, Capitalists and Activists (Affinity Press, 2013), the new book from Future 500. Earlier this month, we posted the beginning of Chapter Two: The Power of Engagement, and learned six reasons to engage your activist stakeholders.
After the recent piece regarding palm oil and the depredations its industrial cultivation rains on the heads of one of our most wonderful simian cousins, if there is anyone in the beauty industry or from one of its agencies that read it and didn’t end up feeling anything other than a creeping, yawing shame climb up their neck I would be staggered.Sadly, whether they give enough of a flying arse to do or say anything about it has more to do with income, career, the unassailable truth of an utterly disinterested management structure and the luxury of distance.
Cross-Posted from Marketing and Comms. For those within the fashion industry who have been working for many years to highlight the need for more transparent, traceable and accountable supply chains, the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh was a metaphorical call to arms. The days following the tragedy saw a plethora of articles calling for a more ethical fashion industry and we looked for ways to channel this energy and momentum into lasting change.
In addition to achieving its commitment to source 100 percent mass-balanced RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil)-certified palm oil more than a year ahead of its original 2015 commitment, The Hershey Company announced last week it will also work with its suppliers to achieve 100 percent traceable and sustainably sourced palm oil by the end of 2014.
Cross-Posted from Marketing and Comms. This is the third in a series of excerpts from Engaging Outraged Stakeholders: A How-To Guide for Uniting the Left, Right, Capitalists and Activists (Affinity Press, 2013), the new book from Future 500. Earlier this month, we posted the beginning of Chapter Two: The Power of Engagement, and learned six reasons to engage your activist stakeholders. Here we continue further into Chapter Two to examine one of seven examples of how engaging activists stakeholders has helped companies serve their purpose.
Last week, institutional crowdfunding marketplace Optimize Capital Markets released a call for accredited investors looking to profit by disrupting an environmentally destructive industry while solving a massive waste problem: Optimize’s client, Prairie Paper Ventures, co-founded by actor Woody Harrelson, makes paper from agricultural waste.
Cross-Posted from Marketing and Comms. In an interesting yet ‘bah humbug’ kind of study, a group of scientists at the University of Leeds' School of Earth & Environment got together and calculated that Santa's carbon footprint from delivering Christmas gifts to the UK alone could be as high as 9 tons per stocking — 25 permits more than the average Brit emits in a year. As part of the University's work with Yorkshire-based sustainability charity the United Bank of Carbon (UBC), the academics set out to highlight the possible environmental damage caused not only by Santa's sleigh and eight reindeer but the manufacturing of the presents themselves.
Cross-Posted from New Metrics. I’ve been thinking about different approaches to measuring sustainability for some time now (for the purpose of this discussion, I’m concerned mostly with quantifying carbon emissions, though the discussion can be generalized beyond this). I’ve begun to categorize the measurement approaches I see into one of two categories: horizontal vs. vertical.The horizontal approach is organization-centric. It measures total impact across an organization. The vertical approach is product-centric. It looks all the way up and down a product’s supply chain and measures the total impact of the product through its life cycle.