Here are 10 CSR reports that impressed our writers in industries ranging from automotive to fashion to technology to sports apparel to cosmetics.

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Patagonia has released its Footprint Chronicles, one tool to help customers and stakeholders learn more about the the company’s global operations and suppliers.

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Patagonia has rolled out a new snack that could help save the Pacific coast’s salmon population. Salmon jerky could help save endangered salmon species.

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The consumer trend tracking firm Trendwatching.com is covering a new trend called “Flawsome” which shows why businesses who truly embrace their flaws will come out on top, and why those who don’t are likely to suffer from consumer indifference and maybe even disdain.

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As companies consider the steps in incorporating or re-incorporating as a benefit corporation, one unique aspect of the process continues to cause confusion. It is the idea that a company’s “material positive impact” will be determined by a third-party standard. This post reviews what that means and provides a list of third party standards available.

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If you were wondering what would be the next stop in the journey of businesses to identify their impacts and dependencies on ecosystem services, you got an answer earlier this week. After disclosing their carbon and water footprints, companies are moving now to disclose their forest footprint. Why they do it? Are these companies becoming the new treehuggers?

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The first month of 2012 is almost over, but it’s still difficult to envision how this year will look like, especially when it comes to the interaction between consumption and sustainability. One of the people who came for our help is Raphael Bemporad, the founding partner and Chief Strategy Officer of BBMG. He offered on Sustainable Brands a list of five trends that he believes will shape sustainable brands in 2012. This is a great list and we’d like to share it with you, adding our point of view as well as two more trends to watch for.

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Over the past year, the reputation of corporations has been dragged through the mud, with the global Occupy movement casting a skeptical, antagonistic view of such entities, and rightly so, in many cases. But quietly, a new, broader world-benefitting form of corporation has been emerging during the past several years - the B Corp, and more recently, Benefit [...]

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Since the dawn of corporate social responsibility, Patagonia has been it’s pioneer and poster child. The company was founded on the principle that the business’s bottom line was more than just monetary. As early as 1974, founder Yvon Chouinard published an essay in the Patagonia catalog urging climbers to be more conscious of their motives and to [...]

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At Cone Communications, we spend the entire year tracking cause marketing and corporate responsibility (CR), and between shark fin soap and $3,500 sneakers for a cause, we’ve seen it all. We reveal our top 10 cause marketing and CR trends of 2011.

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We have teamed up with Abbott to produce an article series on the future of corporate philanthropy. Please read the rest of the series here. By Mike Hannigan To speculate on the future of corporate philanthropy, it helps to first consider the recent past. In the early 1990s, while corporate profits reached an all-time high, there [...]

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Last Friday, retailers tried to convince you to shop as much as you can, opening their stores as early as Thursday at midnight and offering large discounts. Only one retailer seemed to be in a non-party mood. On that same day, Patagonia, the outdoor apparel clothing company, advertised a full-page ad on the New York [...]

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Some of the most challenging big wall climbs in Yosemite that most often take two to three days for highly experienced climbers can be completed by free solo climbers in a matter of hours. Pretty impressive, but what are the risks for corporate sponsors?

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This year, Opportunity Green showcased some of the most innovative companies working in the corporate social responsibility space. Leaders from IBM, Starbucks, KPMG, Dell, and Patagonia shared their biggest sustainability challenges and offered solutions. Below is a compilation of some of the innovative approaches they are using to make progress on sustainability issues for their organizations.

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Asking your customers to buy less of your product is never a good sales strategy but that is exactly what Patagonia is doing. As the California-based company opens its first flagship store in London‘s Covent Gardens it has also teamed up with eBay to create the Common Threads Initiative. This campaign aims to encourage customers [...]

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Patagonia and eBay have teamed up to create a new marketplace for sellers and customers to buy and sell their unwanted Patagonia clothing and gear.

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The Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), which includes Nike, Gap Inc, H&M, Levi Strauss, Marks & Spencer, and Patagonia, will work to lead the apparel industry towards developing improved sustainability strategies and tools to measure and evaluate sustainability performance.

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Last year I posted the question, “Who are our top sustainable CEOs?” Your responses were very enlightening. Last year’s top vote getters included Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia, George Siemon of Organic Valley Company, Mick Bemans of Ecover and Jeffery Hollender (formerly) of Seventh Generation. In total, voters nominated almost 40 different CEOs covering a range [...]

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By the Sequoia Lab Team If you could reduce your product packaging costs by 38% while offering a more sustainable solution to your customers, would you think twice? Many companies are taking bold steps to incorporate sustainability into their core business strategy, reaping not only brand and customer benefits, but bottom line benefits as well. [...]

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By Nathan Schock In order to have a credible, sustainable brand, companies must have operational integrity and their communications have to strike the right balance between visibility and transparency. That was the message from Jennifer Rice of Fruitful Strategy on day one of the five-day Sustainable Life Media Seminar here at the 3M Innovation Center in St. [...]

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By: Rob Lamkin In a world where plastic is ubiquitous, enterprising organizations are developing innovative, environmentally responsible applications for plastic. Some companies are producing products that re-imagine plastic waste as a useful resource. Most people don’t think about the resources involved in plastic’s production, nor do they consider what happens when they discard plastic products. [...]

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By Matt Courtland I have to wonder if Andrew O’Connell’s recent piece, Respect Employees: Be Tough on Them, in the Harvard Business Review blog was intentionally meant to incite a strong negative response from as many people as possible. The entire thrust of the article can be summarized in these few outrageous sentences: “…it’s not fine to [...]

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Patagonia will soon launch a Common Threads Initiative that pushes what the company describes as the 4 R’s: reduce, reuse, repair, and recycle. It is another step in the Patagonia’s Common Thread’s Recycling Program, which started five years ago. That program encourages customers to some of the outerwear company’s clothing lines back to facilities that would reprocess them into new garments, therefore keeping those items out of landfills.

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The following is a post by Paul Hannam of Bright Green Leadership (a 3p sponsor) – offering internet marketing strategies for responsible businesses. This tips and observations in this series are aimed at green entrepreneurs looking to understand how internet technology can benefit them more. Every Green and Socially Responsible organization wants to attract more [...]

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Summer Rayne Oakes, the woman named “Hottest Eco Model, OK Only Eco Model” by Grist in 2006 is nothing if not conversation worthy. Which is why, when she walked onto the stage at Sustainable Brands 2010 , I opened my email. However, I quickly closed it and started taking notes when I realized that the 5’11 [...]

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by Helena Meryman What does it mean to be a relevant leader? The challenges we face today ask us to rethink the role of leadership and to focus on its purpose: reducing our impact on the environment to a sustainable level, improving the prospects and security of the poor and regenerating previously damaged ecosystems. Collaborative [...]

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By Olivia Khalili, founder, Cause Capitalism One of the undeniable perks of being part of a sector that wants to change the world for the better is its collective commitment to change over self-advancement. Patagonia councils Walmart—a company 1,300 times its size—on greening its supply chain for free. Benetech founder Jim Fruchterman takes time away [...]

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More and more, company websites are becoming dynamic educational tools that businesses can use to communicate their sustainability strategy to stakeholders. As a recent report published by AltaTerra Research reveals, marketing and stakeholder communication is evolving in interesting ways. The report analyzes the evolution of corporate sustainability reporting and evaluates how current sustainable business leaders are communicating their sustainability strategy online.

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By Kathy Miller Your company’s values count with customers.  Ask yourself what your company stands for, in addition to making a profit.  Unless you can answer this question quickly and clearly, your company is unlikely to win the hearts of your customers.  And those companies who can connect with their customers’ emotionally are likely to [...]

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In my line of work, I read a lot of books about sustainable business. First there was the required reading for my MBA in Sustainable Management, then there are the books that publishers send, which I lap up like a kid in a candy store. I love this topic and I’m a bookworm anyway. Which [...]

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