If a tree falls in a forest when no one’s around, does it make a sound? If a company emits carbon dioxide but saves a forest, has it achieved climate neutrality?
While both companies and outside stakeholders agree that reducing and/or offsetting emissions is a worthy corporate objective, there is no consensus on how to define and achieve this goal.
A new study from Clean Air-Cool Planet and the UK’s Forum for the Future considers climate neutrality and makes detailed recommendations for how to achieve it. Getting to Zero: Defining Corporate Climate Neutrality defines carbon neutrality as a condition in which “a company, or one of its products or services, can have no net impact on climate.”
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German footwear producer Adidas has recently begun to disclose its global supplier list publicly.
The company followed a number of other footwear and apparel companies in doing so: in mid-2005, Nike became the first major footwear company to publish a list of all of its suppliers globally on its website, after labor rights groups had pressured the company (and its peers) for several years on this issue. Levi Strauss started publishing its list later that year.
Timberland states in the FAQ section of its website that it releases the names of its supplier factories to “code of conduct specialists and other locally-based NGOs” with which it works. Puma’s website FAQ section says that its list of suppliers is publicly available on the website of the Fair Labor Association (to which Puma provides a link), but after looking on FLA’s site for several minutes, I gave up.
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From within the world of SRI, one gets the impression that a key aspect of global supply chain management is how to uphold and improve labor standards for workers producing the things that you and I use every day.
Human rights groups, labor unions, social investors, international organizations, academics and a number of companies have spent years on this question, and there are now annual conferences devoted entirely to labor rights in supply chain production.
So when I came across a brochure recently for the upcoming Tenth Annual European Supply Chain & Logistics Summit 2008, to be held in Germany in May, I was surprised to find almost no mention of labor standards. I was even more taken aback when I saw that scheduled speakers include company representatives from industries, such as technology and electronics, that have been hit by allegations of supply chain labor violations.
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Jonathan Dee’s article, “A Toy Maker’s Conscience“, which appeared in the New York Times Magazine at the end of December is a must read.
First, it’s a generous yet clear-eyed portrait of Baruch College professor Prakash Sethi, a defining force in the movement for corporate accountability for more than 35 years.
His story is one of the great ones in our business, but it has gone, largely, unheralded. And Jonathan Dee has gotten both the story and Prof. Sethi’s voice right.
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Over the past couple of months, China’s response to expanding concerns over the safety of products manufactured there has ranged from the execution of the former head of China’s food and drug administration, to a complete disavowal of any responsibility for enforcing foreign standards.
The latter is evident in a quotation that caught my eye in an Associated Press article, “Toys just 1 danger imported from China,” published on August 18th in response to Mattel’s latest announced recall of 19 million toys manufactured in China. When the China National Light Industry Council trade group hosted a panel on toy standards, Zhang Yanfen, secretary of the panel, claimed that “the quality of Chinese-made toys with American brands should be the responsibility of the American brand owner, not the Chinese manufacturer.”
But if that is the case, why has a company like Mattel, a leader in its industry with respect to setting and overseeing health, safety and environmental standards, been forced to recall millions of children’s toys due to lead paint and other safety issues?
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This week, in the wake of recent discoveries of lead paint in toys and contaminated toothpaste, pet food and other products from China, the International Herald Tribune reported that large American toy and food retailers were “stepping up their analysis of imported goods that they sell”.
News coverage of tainted products from China reached a fever pitch in the late spring, with customers (including parents of children who love Thomas the Tank Engine toy trains) demanding companies do something to ensure the safety of the products they sell. As is often the case, it has taken a public outcry (based on investigative reporting) to light a fire under companies.
It is not a new thing that suppliers have been cutting corners on products to meet the growing demand for cheap goods. But the deaths of about 100 people in Panama from tainted Chinese cough medicine, and the deaths of dozens of cats and dogs in the U.S. from melamine-laced pet food made in China, have focused people’s minds.
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