A partnership between Nestlé, The Forest Trust and a leading palm oil supplier may have created a new model for more sustainability

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There’s no doubt Adidas is an industry leader when it comes to sustainability. The problem is that such recognition also generates expectations. So while its 2011 progress report shows a number of achievements, some elements are still missing in Adidas’s effort to “to meet society’s evolving expectations of business practices.”

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Safeway and Whole Foods tops the list of Greenpeace’s rating of sustainable seafood retailers.

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On April 25 a group of women delivered a petition and picketed outside Facebook to protest its all-white, all-male board.

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Explosive growth in mobile computing and cloud services has industry players, public and private sector organizations focused on greening the data center. But with investments and data center facilities growing exponentially, it’s more than likely that electricity demand will far outstrip energy savings and renewable energy gains.

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There’s no rest for Apple after Foxconn fell out of the news cycle. Only two weeks later Apple is again at the focus of new allegations – this time from Greenpeace over its reliance on “dirty energy” to power its data centers.

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Nine more companies joins the likes of Nestle, Kraft, Unilever, Adidas, Mattel and many more who have already dropped APP following the ongoing campaign Greenpeace is running against APP following a Greenpeace’s report accusing APP in cutting protected tree species in Indonesia. The list of customers that leave APP is indeed growing, but the company doesn’t seem to show any signs of change, at least for now. Even now, with nine less customers, APP seems reluctant to throw in the towel. So who wins this fight – Greenpeace or APP?

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Following on the heels of the Green Electronics Ranking, today Greenpeace released the fifth version of its Cool IT Leaderboard. This ranks and evaluates global IT companies on their leadership in the fight to reduce global carbon emissions

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In November 2011, Bill Weihl, left his post as the Green Czar at Google. Weihl oversaw much of Google’s $700M investments in clean energy and was a driving force behind Google’s Green Dream otherwise known as The Impact of Clean Energy Innovation. Now, it seems that Dr. Weihl, a former Computer Science professor at MIT, [...]

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Petroleum is probably one of the most precious commodities we have. It powers every aspect of human life, not just in terms of energy for transportation and heating but petrochemicals have spawned industries without which modern human life may well be impossible. One of the biggest risks with the extraction of crude is the risk [...]

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Big Oil is up to its usual tricks. The American Petroleum Institute (API), one of the oil industry’s main lobbying groups, was recently busted by a Greenpeace activist for some serious greenwashing. API has resisted climate change legislation, and has supported fracking and the Keystone pipeline development. Now, it seems, they’re building an advertising campaign [...]

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Greenpeace is celebrating another successful campaign. This time it’s the “Unfriend Coal” Campaign that called on Facebook to power its data centers with clean energy instead of coal. After 20 months of mobilizing, agitating and negotiating to green Facebook, and with more than 700,000 people who took part in its campaign, Greenpeace announced that Facebook [...]

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If you heard the words “guitar” and “environment” in the same sentence in the last few months you were probably hearing about the raid on Gibson Guitar. While the August raid on Gibson’s factories continues to draw a lot of attention and still gets conservatives and Tea Party supporters angry, another guitar company is coming up this [...]

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Asia Pulp & Papers (APP)  has been accused repeatedly by Greenpeace of causing deforestation in Indonesia over the past few years. It is one of the biggest suppliers of paper pulp and one of its customers, Mattel has also been the target of a recent Greenpeace campaign. Now Mongabay reports that APP fires back at Greenpeace after losing [...]

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For many companies, stakeholder engagement is no longer looked at as just a way to placate stakeholders or balance their competing interests. Stakeholder engagement work has evolved into a core strategic tool for sustainability practitioners trying to make progress on a variety of issues for their organizations. By collaborating with NGO’s, governments, customers, and competitors, companies can address sustainability challenges on a larger scale and in a more systemic way. This idea was the topic of the “New Art of Collaboration” panel discussion at Opportunity Green 2011.

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Greenpeace released the seventeenth version of  its Guide to Greener Electronics today. It has seen many changes over the years. Greenpeace didn’t release a guide last year, making this release eagerly anticipated. Several new criteria have been included in this edition. The Guide rates companies on a scale of 1-10 and puts them them in a green, [...]

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Chances are you’ve heard about Lulea, a small town in northern Sweden only if you’re a fan of Movits!, a local Hip-Hop band, or one of those who knows everything about Bond girls. That was true until last Thursday when Facebook announced it will build its first data center outside the US and the largest [...]

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Environmental NGOs have often been perceived as anti-business, anti-growth, tree-loving, bunny-huggers. However, they have evolved to become organized, structured and strategic. Instead of always standing outside with protest signs, NGOs can actually work with companies to help implement their CSR initiatives. This is happening more commonly than previously imagined. Watchdog organizations not only put the [...]

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Last week, Greenpeace made another impressive victory in its ongoing battle against paper company Asia Pulp and Paper (APP). After a four month Greenpeace campaign, Mattel, the largest toy company in the world and maker of the famed Barbie doll line announced a new paper policy. One of their decisions was to direct their printers [...]

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Add H&M to apparel manufacturers including Adidas, Nike, and PUMA that are promising to eliminate toxins from their products while they clean up their supply chains.

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H&M has recently overtaken Walmart as the biggest buyer of organic cotton. The global market for organic cotton grew by 20% and H&M used more than 15,000 tonnes of it in 2010 – an increase of 77% compared to 2009. This is great news for organic cotton, but H&M needs to make many more improvements [...]

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Did you know that your running shoes contains hazardous chemicals, some that get released every time you go out for a run? No matter how fancy the shoe, it probably contains three components that don’t biodegrade. The decorative upper of the shoe consists of nylon, plastic or synthetic leather. The sole is more often than not, [...]

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Last week, for the second time in two years, federal agents raided the facilities of Gibson Guitars, probably the most well-known guitar maker around the world. Although the two raids are the result of different cases, the accusations then and now are similar – violations of the Lacey Act, a law requiring that all wood [...]

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You would think that after the BP Deepwater Horizon Spill last year, oil companies would have learned to deal with similar catastrophes better. An oil spill is something that may be unavoidable but dealing with it in a prompt manner that encourages stakeholder awareness is more than clever PR. North Sea Spill Worst in UK [...]

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Last Wednesday was a red letter day for Nike. First, the company accepted the Greenpeace Detox challenge, beating Adidas in a race Greenpeace instigated between the two on who would be the first to commit to “a toxic free future.”  That evening, FC Barcelona, sponsored by Nike, beat Real Madrid, sponsored by Adidas 3:2 in [...]

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About a month ago, Puma, one of the world’s leading clothing brands, was asked by Reuters if the company would end its business relationship with Yonguor Textile of China. This question was raised after Greenpeace published a report profiling the problem of toxic water pollution resulting from the release of hazardous chemicals by textile factories [...]

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I have a special affection for tuna. I wrote my thesis on how to legally protect the Bluefin. Overfishing is a complicated situation fraught with geo-political issues. The bluefin is undeniably a money maker. However, it is a fact that the oceans of the world are being depleted of fish-stock largely due to over-fishing as well as illegal fishing [...]

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Almost two years after it surprised everyone with an announcement of a new deal with its former foe, Greenpeace, Kimberly Clark is pushing the envelope again. True, KC’s announcement yesterday on its new Sustainability 2015 Goals might not sound such groundbreaking news at first glance, but a more thorough look into their plan reveals a [...]

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Last year it was decided by popular vote that Barbie made a better journalist than an environmental activist. Probably just as well because this year, her parent company Mattel is being targeted by Greenpeace on their CSR practices. Using a social media onslaught, Greenpeace activists alleged that Mattel uses rainforest-sourced paper pulp in its packaging, thus [...]

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Just days after BP published their recalcitrant 2010 Sustainability Report, saying how eager they were to win back the public’s trust; they denied access to their annual meeting to five Gulf Coast residents who traveled all the way to London to be there. The shareholders, who represented various fisherman’s associations had been given proxies to [...]

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