Month of October , 2007

Trick or treat program turns the tables with door-to-door Fair Trade awareness

On Halloween night, participants in the “Reverse Trick or Treating” program will distribute Fair Trade chocolate door to door, along with information about the child labor abuses and chronic poverty of the cocoa industry in Africa’s Ivory Coast.

Customers can put brake on some emissions with $1.25 per-rental purchase

Enterprise, National and Alamo apparently haven’t exhausted all of their options in developing a sustainability platform: The three car-rental companies plan to introduce a carbon offset program.

U.S. businesses have contributed $20 million to California wildfire relief and recovery efforts

As some of the California wildfires are coming under control, federal, state and local officials said Friday that the situation on the ground is transitioning from a focus on providing shelter to recovery efforts.

Presidential candidate Edwards focuses on executive compensation, shareholder rights in corporate responsibility proposals

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards announced new executive-compensation and shareholder-rights reforms Friday that go beyond Sarbanes-Oxley law as a part of his larger “Restoring Corporate Responsibility and Rebuilding the Middle Class” proposal.

Ex-Flag consultant O’Connell heads North America office

Flag’s recent closure of its small Chicago office, which processed corporate responsibility reports, didn’t necessarily create a vacuum. That’s because Cambridge, U.K.-headquartered Credit360, which operates a web-based  CSR/sustainability data management and communications system, announced last week that it opened a North American office in Chicago.

CECP survey finds philanthropy increase despite year-earlier outpouring for tsunami, Katrina

Some philanthropy officials expected overall giving levels to dip in 2006 because the tsunami and the one-two punch of hurricanes Katrina and Rita contributed to a 14.6 percent spike in corporate munificence in 2005. But instead of settling back to pre-Katrina levels, total giving per company in 2006 increased again, at a slower clip than a year earlier, according to the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy (CECP)’s latest annual survey.

From ecomagination and human rights to stakeholder engagement, General Electric’s citizenship energies propelling the company toward its lofty goals

As the point men for General Electric’s citizenship efforts, Brackett Denniston and Robert Corcoran realized they had a problem during the run-up to publication of the global conglomerate’s 2007 citizenship report in June. In crafting the third citizenship report for a corporation with six diverse businesses, $163.4 billion in revenues and operations in more than 100 countries, Denniston, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, and Corcoran, Vice President of Corporate Citizenship, were confronted with a sticky issue emanating from GE Sensing & Inspection Technologies, based in Billerica, Mass.

For-profit World of Good gets crafty about building fair trade relationships in Asia, Africa and Latin America, encouraging cooperation and partnerships

Christopher Sandifolo takes old coat hangers, tin cans and whatever metal he can scrounge to create street-wire art, a South African crafts tradition that lives on through a co-op, appropriately named Streetwires. In a country with a formidable unemployment rate, Streetwires provides training and support to formerly unemployed men and women who earn a living wage through this unique art form.

Fair Trade coffee, tea and fruit are going mainstream in companies like McDonald’s, Starbucks and Sam’s Club as organizations certify producers in
the developing world

The front label on your coffee can used to promise merely that the consumer would enjoy its flavorful, quality beans. But today a label often verifies that the vendor is Fair Trade Certified, and that consumers would be contributing to sustainable development, conservation and the support of coffee farmers if they purchase the blend. These days, some big names in retail are putting the power of their brands behind the trend. McDonald’s, Starbucks and Sam’s Club are among the companies that have joined the Fair Trade movement.

In yogurts and yields, business and government renew faith in future

I feel more hopeful and optimistic than I have in many years. The past 18 months seems to have brought more positive change to society’s awareness and business focus on sustainability than the prior 18 years. Those positive changes do not mean that we have solved most of the challenges that face us. On our journey, if we are starting from one with the goal of reaching 10, movement from one to two represents 100 percent growth, but there is still such a long way to go.