Corporate Social Responsibility – Page 11

TerraCycle Has a Great Idea But Issues in the Execution

By Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert Posted on March 10, 2011 Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Green Business Tagged with packaging waste, recycling, reuse, terracycle

Packing waste is a scourge in our society. Filling landfills, choking birds, littering our streets, it definitely is a problem that needs to be addressed.

One way, of course, is by generating less packaging in the first place. Do companies really need the little plastic baggie inside the pouch inside the form-fitting foam insert inside the cardboard box inside the shrinkwrap inside a forest of packing peanuts inside a shipping box inside another layer of outer wrap? That kind of overpackaging is all-too-common among boxes I’ve opened. 100 years ago, many products were sold in bulk. We could certainly return to bulk packing for more things.

But another way is to deal with the packaging once it is created. As individuals, we can do a lot of this: reuse glass jars and plastic containers, recycle or compost cardboard and paper, bring our egg cartons back to the farmer, and so forth. But for a lot of the products sold through mainstream retail channels—and particularly for the less simple packing like aseptic boxes, snack chip bags, and drink pouches—we simply don’t know what do to with the packaging.

Enter TerraCycle(R). This company actually pays consumers to pack up their trash and send it off, where it gets transformed into a host of interesting products like fencing, picnic coolers, and—isn’t this cute—recycle bins. In all, the company creates 256 different products out of recycled packaging that would have (in many cases) been thrown in the landfill.

Cool, huh?

Also cool is the way the company involves schools in the collection effort.

BUT…with my particular consumption habits, the site doesn’t work for me. First of all, the company only collects 38 different types of waste, out of the thousands of possibilities. And of those 38, 13 require specific brands—not necessarily the brands I buy. I might dispose of one tube of Neosporin in a year, and that’s not worth collecting. But if I could bring all my empty tubes of toothpaste, skin cream, mentholated muscle-relief cream along with my single tube of Neosporin, that would be worth setting aside, if the drop off was convenient.

The company has made big strides since my last visit, in broadening many of the items from specific brands to generic categories taking any brand, but still…

Then there’s the matter of collection. Each of the 38 has a different set of collection sites. I can’t really see that I’m going to drive hither and yon, dropping off three wine corks here, two cereal wrappers there. And I don’t really understand the logic of having multiple collection streams for essentially the same kind of waste (e.g., a cardboard box for macaroni and cheese is handled differently form a cardboard box wrapped around a tube of Colgate toothpaste).

Using schools as an organizing force makes sense, but not all of us have school-age children. I’d love to see the company partner with landfill and transfer station sites around the country, so collection could be streamlined at the place we’re bringing our trash anyway.

And finally, while I recognize that e-mail can go astray and forms can break, it does bother me that I wrote the following and submitted it through the company’s website back on November 21. Six months later, I haven’t gotten an answer yet:

I was hoping to come to your website and determine whether there are collection points near me. I am surprised by how difficult that is–there’s no way to search by geography, only by product. And the products–so many of them tied to specific brands–don’t correspond well with my buying patterns.

Thus, even though I would be delighted to ship off my trash to you, I see no practical way to participate. I’d love for instance to be able to send you the plastic bags my home-delivery newspaper arrives in on wet days. Or sandwich baggies that are contaminated with food residue and no longer suited to direct re-use. Or the pet food bags which are paper lined with plastic.

Still, I wish them well. I’d love to come back in another six months and discover that it’s vastly easier to get rid of my junk and see it turned into great stuff.

Corporate Crime Doesn’t Pay

By Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert Posted on February 15, 2011 Posted in Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Ethics-International, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with Business Ethics, chevron, corporate greed, ecuador, pollution, solar, stevens urethane, texaco

Two stories in today’s paper about high consequences for corporate greed—and both of them have significant environmental as well as business ethics interest.

First, a local company here in Massachusetts, Stevens Urethane, faces a five-year ban on manufacturing a technology used in making solar panels, as well as more than $8.6 million in assorted fines, penalties, and other costs. The company was found guilty of stealing the secrets of a competitor, and the judge’s ruing not only impounded more than a million dollars worth of revenue, but forbade the company from using a $2 million assembly line it had built to make the product. Punitive damages, attorneys’ fees, and reimbursement of the other side’s legal and expert witness fees combined to create the $8.6 million total.

But the cost of this business ethics failure is only 1/1000th of the costs slapped onto oil giant Chevron by the government of Ecuador. While the $8.6 billion amount was less than 1/3 of the court-appointed expert’s recommendation, it is still the largest damage award ere in an environmental damage lawsuit (and probably the first of many more around the world against oil companies, which have been sued for habitat destruction in Nigeria and elsewhere).

Ironically, this suit had originally been filed in US courts against Texaco (now owned by Chevron), and the company’s attorneys successfully argued that the case should be heard in Ecuador.

It’s About Trade-Offs: Hard Questions from the Sustainable Foods Summit (Part 2)

By Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert Posted on January 22, 2011 Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Green Business, poverty Tagged with biodegradable plastic, biodynmic, fair trade, gmo corn, organic certification, sustainable foods summit

(This is Part 2 of my report on the Sustainable Foods Summit. If you missed Part 1, please click here.)

And some insights that I knew already, but appreciated the reminders—most of which were echoed by several presenters:

Yields, quality, and taste of organics have improved a lot in the last couple of decades—often due to technology innovations that allow packaging more quickly after harvest and longer shelf life.
Private-label supermarket brands have moved from their original positioning as generic, low-quality price-leaders to elite niche brands.
The best sustainability initiatives combine multiple benefits and create wins for multiple players in the supply/consumer chain (examples include a new packaging process that lowers energy use, costs less, delivers fresher food, and reduces worker risk…a commitment to ship product on trucks with full loads…ways to turn wastes into inputs for a different process, closing the loop and reducing both pollution and cost).
The lack of definition for “natural” causes problems.
Turning cropland from food production to energy production has unforeseen consequences. For example, the much-heralded corn ethanol movement a few years ago resulted in higher food prices both in the developed markets and, critically, in developing countries where the increases led immediately to greater hunger problems—and ultimately, did not have a positive impact on the energy picture.
Just because other people tell you a positive initiative is impossible doesn’t mean it is. Many “impossible” goals turn out to be quite possible, once buy-in spreads through an organization or its customer base—even sourcing from small farms to serve food at big cafeterias.
People have a wide range of reasons for going green—from committed environmental or hunger activism to personal and family health.

Although organized by Europeans—they also do one in Amsterdam—most attenders were American or Canadian, with a handful from Latin America (including one presenter who’s part of a large family-owned sustainable sugar plantation and mill in Brazil). It looked to me that about 180 people attended. The conference had only one track, which means everyone got to hear from all the presenters—a nice change.

Despite all the questions that have no consensus answer yet (see Part 1), there was a lot of agreement:

GMO is a major threat to organic growers because of its ability to infiltrate and contaminate organic fields.
Only 3rd-party certifications (as opposed to self-declaration by a grower or an industry trade group) give the consumer something to trust in, but there’s a problem of certification clutter and oversaturation, leading not only to consumer confusion but also a burden on growers and suppliers trying to comply with and document multiple certifications—and of course, very crowded packaging labels. This is likely to shift as more comprehensive certifications (for example, covering both organic and fair trade) start to come on the market.
The best certifications cover not only growing methods but also working conditions—and their attention covers not only the absence of chemicals, but also positive steps to rebuild soil, spread health, etc.
The range of practices considered “sustainable” is quite wide, and ultimately the consumer has to decide what’s really important—but any definition of sustainability has to include an adequate livelihood for the growers and their workers.
Sustainable products may originate locally, or from far away, though the later can have a pretty big carbon footprint.
Sustainable products need sustainable packaging. Many companies have drastically reduced their packaging through careful redesign.
Both to save money and to reduce environmental impact, many farmers and producers are moving at least partly toward green energy sources.
In the end, sometimes you have to make choices. You may not be able to get organic, local or fairly traded, biodynamic, minimally processed, and appropriately packaged all in the same product—so you do the best you can and help the world reach the point where you can get all the desired attributes without having to choose among them.
The sustainable foods industry has a responsibility to make an impact on issues around hunger, poverty, and the economic viability of indigenous suppliers.
Sustainability is a process, a journey of many steps. And while all of us need to start taking at least some of those steps, even those who have been on the path a long time still can find ways to improve.

Shel Horowitz is the primary author of Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green and writes the Green And Profitable/Green and Practical monthly columns.

It’s About Trade-Offs: Hard Questions from the Sustainable Foods Summit (Part 1)

By Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert Posted on January 21, 2011 Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Green Business Tagged with biodegradable plastic, biodynmic, fair trade, gmo corn, organic certification, sustainable foods summit

Can you preserve the soil by switching to no-till farming if it means you can’t use organic methods?
Which is more sustainable: a lightweight plastic bag made from virgin materials (i.e., petroleum), or a plastic clamshell using 40 times as much material, but made from recycled water bottles?
If biodegradable (PLA) plastics are made from GMO (genetically modified organism) corn, are they any better than non-biodegradable plastic?
Is organic enough of a standard, or do we hold out for the much stricter but much rarer Demeter Biodynamic certification?
Are food-industry giants squeezing out small artisan brands, or opening up new opportunities for them?
And can we achieve a food system that combines the artisan quality and chemical/petroleum independence of pre-20th century food production with the massive volume and ability to feed hungry people of the 20th century Green Revolution, while achieving the distribution necessary to end hunger?

These are some of the questions attendees at the Sustainable Foods Summit grappled with on January 18 and 19, 2011 in San Francisco.

Conference presenters included a number of certification agencies and a few consultants (including me on the marketing side) as well as producers and retailers both from major companies like Tesco’s Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, Safeway and White Wave (whose brands include Silk and Horizon) as well as much smaller companies like Theo Chocolate and Washington State’s Stone-Buhr Flour.

Some of the things I hadn’t heard before:

It’s well-known that cows are a huge source of methane emissions (a worse climate change problem than CO2)—but I hadn’t known that cow burps cause almost twice the emissions of cow manure, and that cow burping can be greatly reduced through feeding the cows a healthier organic grass-based diet rich in flax, which also raises the Omega-3 level in the milk (a good thing).
Cows fed a healthy organic diet live an average of three times as long and have more lactation cycles; this translates directly into increased profitability of the farmer.
Organic farming can sequester 7000 pounds per acre of CO2 per year.
By converting some acreage to oilseed crops such as sunflowers, farms can supply a goodly percentage of their energy needs, feed cows, and gather the seeds as a cash crop. (These four bullets from Theresa Marquez of Organic Valley dairy cooperative; the percentages on cow emissions were from Bree Johnson of Straus Family Creamery)
Makers of biodegradable plastics often source from GMO corn. (Adrianna Michael, Organic and Wellness News)
No-till farming vastly reduces soil erosion (which can lower the altitude of a conventional farm by more than a foot in 40 years), but is difficult to do without chemical weed control.
Organic, interplanted, and no-till soil hold a lot more water, and look, smell, and even taste healthier than conventional soil.
Some private-label supermarket brands, including Safeway’s O Organics, are now being marketed through other retail channels not owned by the original company. (Alex Petrov, Safeway)
Even though it’s more expensive to start with, you get 20% more yield from a natural beef patty compared to a conventional one, which makes progress toward evening out the price. (Maisie Greenawalt: Bon Appetit Management Company, an institutional food service provider for colleges, museums, and corporate cafeterias)

(This report will continue tomorrow)

Shel Horowitz is the primary author of Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green and writes the Green And Profitable/Green and Practical monthly columns.

Half-Measures on Green and Accessible

By Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert Posted on October 2, 2010 Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, General Commentary

Back to back, I saw two instances of organizations making a good step forward, but stopping half-way. Why do they stop there?

I’m in New York because I spoke at a conference today, at the Sheraton on 7th Avenue at 53rd. So of course, I took the E train from where I’m staying in Queens to the conference hotel. And since I was speaking, I had a handcart loaded with books to sell after my talk.

Getting off the train, I noticed an escalator up. Oh, good–it’s not much fun to carry 30 pounds of books and a cart up a crowded NYC public stair. And good, too, for anyone who pushes a stroller.

This is progress. When I was a kid growing up here, only a handful of stations had any kind of mechanized people lifter. A few escalators, a handful of elevators. Now, people with disabilities can navigate many parts of the system, but nowhere near the whole thing. The city is definitely making an effort.

However…the escalator only goes as far as the token arcade, and there’s still a flight of stairs from there to the street. And in the opposite direction, down to the platform, there is no option. It’s stairs–a loooong flight–or walk to another station. And no one in their right mind would take a wheelchair even on the part that has an escalator. Fail!

Inside the elegant hotel, I got to the conference room and was pleased to see, instead of the usual water bottles, the far Greener approach of carafes of filtered tap water and biodegradable (compostable, really) plastic cups. An excellent start–score one for Sheraton.

But to complete the circle, the hotel needs to collect those cups separately for composting. Instead, they’re going into the regular trash. Considering the premium price the hotel is likely paying for branded, custom printed compostable plastic, this is rather odd. Either the hotel should do glass, or collect the cups separately for proper, eco-friendly disposal.

Unlike the subway accessibility problem, which would be hugely difficult to re-do, this would be an easy fix, and would give the chain a lot more Green karma points.

Why Do We Need Specifically GREEN Marketing?

By Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert Posted on September 2, 2010 Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with Cisco, csr, green marketing, HP, Intel, Unilever

The latest research proves the need. In a wonderful article for Sustainable Life Media, “Measuring the Value of CSR Communications,” Perry Goldschein notes that “80% of consumers had no idea that sustainability leaders (e.g., HP, Intel, Cisco, Unilever) were participating in any sustainability practices at all.”

If the sustainability efforts of these leading companies are so under the general public’s radar, what does that say about the rest of us and our visibility?

This is why I wrote my eighth book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson), why I do Green marketing consulting and speaking, and why I’m starting an international trade association for Green marketers: to provide the tools businesses need to tell their Green story to the world, and to take full marketing advantage of the edge that gives them if told properly.

Marketing Honesty: Is Fair Trade Really a Fair Deal?

By Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert Posted on August 7, 2010 Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Corporate Social Responsibility, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, poverty, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with Alexis Bonari, cacao, chocolate, coffee, fair trade

Editor’s Note: Sometimes I like to post things to stimulate controversy, and thus I’m running this guest post by Alexis Bonari, critiquing one of the sacred cows of the sustainability movement: fair trade certification.

From my own point of view as a consumer, I look to Fair Trade certification for many products, especially chocolate. I am all-too-aware of the use of child slaves to harvest cacao, particularly in the Ivory Coast, and as a lover of chocolate, I don’t want to be a party to that. Fair Trade labeling is my assurance that the cacao was grown honestly.

I also disagree with Bonari’s two points:

First, there’s nothing, to my mind, inherently evil about mechanized farming, as long as it’s done sustainably. Many Fair Trade products are also organic, and that’s a big step in the right direction. Systemically, of course, we should be looking at how we power our tractors and all the rest of it. And we can all look for ways to increase our “locavore” quotient by consuming products (including food) created locally. But I do believe there is a place for imports in the mix, and in fact, in my book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, the section on “Local as Green” is followed immediately by one called “Global as Green.”

And second, Far Trade (while far from perfect) certainly does provide a wedge against poverty. Farmers in Fair Trade co-ops are demonstrably better off than most who sell through conventional channels and who have no choice but to accept a pathetically low bid. Remember, too, that economic leverage varies a lot from country to country, and differences can be orders of magnitude. There are many parts of the world where an income of $25 or $50 a day puts someone in the upper half of the population, but it may only cost a few cents to cook a meal.

I’ll turn the floor over to Alexis now—but I’d love to know your thoughts. Please add your comment below.
—Shel Horowitz

Marketing Honesty: Is Fair Trade Really a Fair Deal?

By Alexis Bonari

The Fair Trade label has become a marketing boon for many companies. Soon, even Nestlé’s Kit Kat bar will be made from Fair Trade sources.

Essentially, the term Fair Trade refers to the following business model: companies pay craftsmen and farmers in developing countries an increased wage for goods that are traditionally produced in that region. These goods are produced with an eye to minimal environmental impact. Examples of Fair Trade goods are: bananas, honey, cotton, wine, handcrafts, coffee, sugar, and tea. As of 2008, the annual amount of revenue generated by Fair Trade goods amounted to approximately US$4.08 billion worldwide.

While the popularity of Fair Trade goods is almost certainly a byproduct of good intentions on the part of consumers, is there a downside to the Fair Trade industry?

The problem is twofold:

1. Unsustainable Markets
While incentivizing the production of local crops and handcrafts may temporarily short-circuit the cycle of poverty in certain communities, it does nothing to address the problem of supply and demand. First world countries lead the global economic market by producing technology and mass-produced products. India, and other developing countries experiencing economic growth, are educating their people and encouraging them to adopt mechanized means of production and farming.

Fair Trade workers are being incentivized to continue producing the very same products that are keeping them in poverty. A comprehensive solution would encourage education and new business ventures.

2. Perpetuation of a Toxic Cycle
Simply put, Fair Trade policies perpetuate a system that denies the citizens of developing countries control over their own businesses. Under the banner of Fair Trade, foreign companies are offering them pennies on the dollar that a citizen of the US or a member of the EU would make for the same service.

Fair Trade is a case of inaccurate marketing. The consumer is convinced that they’re working toward eradicating poverty in the Third World. In reality, Fair Trade could potentially hurt the very people it intends to help.

Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is a passionate blogger on the topic of education and free college scholarships. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

Category: Corporate Social Responsibility