3p Contributor: Leon Kaye
Recent Articles
Kimberly-Clark Goes Full Circle on Zero Waste, Sustainable Sourcing
Kimberly-Clark released its 2011 sustainability report yesterday. The paper products giant, the brands of which include Huggies, Kleenex and Kotex, set several sustainability goals for 2015 and updates its stakeholders on the company’s progress on environmental and social issues. While paper has clearly been the low-hanging fruit when it comes to environmental sustainability and yes, recycling, there still exists plenty of room for improvement across countless supply chains. And although paper products undoubtedly provide comfort and convenience, what can be flushed down the toilet or tossed in the trash bin after a single use takes decades to regrow–not to mention the enormous amounts of fuel, chemicals and water required to manufacture all those tissues, paper towels and nappies. Companies in the pulp and paper and related industries are under the microscope, and most are replying in kind.
Kimberly-Clark rolled out its 2015 goals last year. So far metrics the company has reached on water stewardship, energy efficiency, waste diversion and supply chain compliance include the following milestones:
International Paper Sets New Sustainability Goals
Photo courtesy IP
Last week International Paper (IP), a $26 billion company with over 60,000 employees worldwide, issued its 2011 sustainability report. The 47-page report is chock full of details about the pulp and paper giant’s goals for 2020, and more of a forward-looking sustainability statement instead of a listing of accomplishments from the previous year. The company’s discussion of its direction is also typical of what a publicly-held company experiences as it becomes more of a sustainable business. “Going green” on a dime is not so simple when a firm must answer to a gaggle of stakeholders and, of course, stockholders.
IP has established a realistic set of initiatives for the coming decade. Considering how important paper is to just about every company’s supply chain and packaging needs, many of the goals, from water stewardship to solid waste management, could be a challenge to meet in the coming years. But IP’s sustainability agenda could raise the bar for other companies within its industry. After all the paper is one of the first industries that will be directly hit by deforestation, resource constraints and climate change should global temperatures continue to rise in the coming years.
Some of IP’s more compelling achievements and goals include:
Safeway, Tone Deaf to Stakeholders, Has a Miserable Week
Photo courtesy Wikipedia
Safeway had a nightmare of a week, and based on the social media firestorm, recent criticism of the supermarket chain will not stop anytime soon. The problem started a month ago when a butcher at the Del Rey Oaks Safeway in the Monterey Peninsula was suspended without pay for defending a pregnant woman who was beaten by her boyfriend in the store. Then, at last week’s annual shareholder meeting, the company’s general counsel decided an obnoxious joke, which some women could find offensive, was a hilarious way to start the day.
When your stock price has been on a downward trend the past five years, your competitors from Walmart to Whole Foods to Amazon are only becoming more fierce, and your customers are quick to assail your company over everything from customer service to ethics, you would think a company’s executives would listen and try to respond accordingly. Instead, Safeway is issuing the same tired public relations babble: and customers are having none of it. Stakeholder engagement has become stakeholder enragement.
FedEx Ramps Up Energy Efficiency Goals
FedEx Express Hybrid Vehicle, San Franciso
FedEx Express announced this week that its entire vehicle feet is becoming more energy efficient at a faster rate than the company had originally planned. While the logistic giant’s diesel trucks have improved their overall mileage and emissions performance, FedEx has added more electric vehicles while experimenting with new engines, more sustainable transportation options and composite materials.
The slow but steady shift towards more fuel efficient vehicles is important because despite all the calls to “buy” local, the truth is that Americans are buying online: over $200 billion annually and growing. With more consumers spending more time on eBay, Amazon, and even Etsy than at the local shopping mall or farmers’ market, the pressure is on the logistic companies to demonstrate that they are doing more to ameliorate the effects their business has on the environment.
So how is FedEx trying to be less brown and more green?
Clif Bar Celebrates Its 20th Birthday With LEED Platinum Headquarters
Cliff Bar Headquarters' roof, Emeryville, CA
Clif Bar, the granddaddy of the modern day energy bar, has been sustainably celebrating its 20th birthday this year. The company’s latest accomplishment is this week’s announcement that its headquarters in Emeryville, CA, across the bay from San Francisco, was awarded with LEED Platinum certification.
The Platinum designation comes when Clif Bar can look back to its role in changing and boosting the organic food industry. A generation ago, “organic” was relegated to fledgling health food stores and the few farmers’ markets that could be found across the country. Now the organic food industry is booming.
DreamBikes Teaches Job Skills and Boosts Bicycling in Urban Neighborhoods
Dreambikes, Milwaukee
Bicycling has become more popular in America’s cities but is still out of reach for many of those who struggle to make ends meet. One non-profit, DreamBikes, is tackling many the problems of poverty, transportation and skills training in the Wisconsin cities of Milwaukee and Madison. While teens learn new job and mechanical skills from repairing bicycles, local residents benefit from access to low priced and healthy form of transportation.
DreamBikes started when John Burke, president of Trek Bicycle Company, suggested the idea and then donated the seed money to open the first DreamBikes shop in Madison four years ago. A year later in 2009, the store and repair facility sold 1400 bicycles, meeting the needs of more residents in Wisconsin’s capital.
Patagonia Maps Out Its Supply Chain For Even More Transparency
Map of Patagonia's supply chain
Patagonia has long been a sustainability leader, and pokes its competitors in the eye with programs, from asking consumers to buy less to working with fisheries to the preservation of salmon populations while rolling out new snacks. Now the outdoor clothing and gear company is pushing supply chain transparency to a new level.
Now Patagonia has released its Footprint Chronicles, one tool to help customers and stakeholders learn more about the the company’s global operations and suppliers. The interactive map allows visitors to click on locations of the company’s textile mills and factories all over the world.
Iconic Milwaukee Brewing Company Rolls Out First “All Local” Beer
Lakefront Brewery, Milwaukee, WI (Leon Kaye)
Beer is only one reason to visit Milwaukee, a city rich in architecture, culture and a vibrant sustainable business community. When it comes to beer, the same could be true for just about any city or town in the U.S. Naturally every community brags about its local I.P.A. or lager, and generally the boasting is justified. But Lakefront Brewery recently started serving what it describes as the first truly “local” beer in the U.S.
Lakefront’s “Wisconsinite” adds to the company’s reputation for innovative brews. Last year Lakefront introduced its gluten-free New Grist, and had to go through bureaucratic hoops in the U.S. government in order to have it “officially approved” as a gluten free beer. Lakefront also sells the nation’s oldest USDA-approved organic brew.
So what makes a genuinely “local” beer?
Beyond Recycling: Alcoa Slashes CO2 Emissions and Water Consumption
Alcoa recycling plant in Tennessee
Sustainability is a tall order for any company in the business of smelting and fabricating metal. Alcoa’s lucrative aluminum business, for example, certainly results in those pesky greenhouse gas emissions along with other impacts on the environment.
But Alcoa has a solid record on environmental stewardship and corporate social responsibility. The company has been listed on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for 10 years and is one of only 11 Fortune 500 companies to be listed on the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) Disclosure Index. Last week Alcoa issued its annual sustainability report, which outlines some of the progress the company has achieved on the environment, water stewardship, community involvement and business.
Germany Close to Slashing Solar Subsidies
Erlasee Solar Park, Germany
The German government is close to slashing subsidies for solar energy by 20 to 40 percent. The current discussion in Germany’s Budestag (parliament) could threaten Germany’s global leadership in the development of solar power, which currently stands at approximately 25 gigawatts, or half the world’s current solar capacity.
Since the 1990s, Germany has ramped up its production of photovoltaic energy, mostly because of an aggressive feed-in tariff policy which subsidizes clean energy projects by spreading the cost difference among the country’s utilities’ customers. But the combination of austerity measures and cheap imports from Asia have pushed Chancellor Angela Merkel and her center-right ruling coalition to roll back some of Germany’s solar programs.
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