Moves from Sainsbury, Greenpeace, Apple and all the latest from other brands in corporate sustainability this month
Sainsbury’s grand plan
Sainsbury’s is the latest British retail giant to unveil a major sustainability plan, setting out 20 targets to be achieved by 2020, through an investment of £1bn. The 20 by 20 Sustainability Plan includes a commitment for Sainsbury’s to double the amount of British food sold in its stores. Operational carbon emissions will come down by 35% in absolute terms, and 65% in relative terms compared with 2005. The company also pledges to create 50,000 new jobs in the UK by 2020. At the same time, as part of a renewed commitment to existing employees, Sainsbury’s highlights that by 2020, 20,000 of its staff will have been with the company for 20 years.
Greenpeace deported
Greenpeace executive director John Sauven was deported from Indonesia in October as he arrived in Jakarta for a number of meetings with government officials and companies. No explanation was given other than he was on a red list of people banned from entering the country. As part of his trip, Sauven was planning to visit Sumatran forests that have been damaged by timber giant Asia Pulp & Paper.
West is best?
John West, long the bête noire of sustainable tuna campaigners, has launched an online tuna can tracker allowing purchasers of its products to enter a barcode and find out exactly where the fish came from. The Scottish company regularly came bottom of Greenpeace’s sustainable tuna league table, but has now pledged to clean up its act by phasing out by 2016 “fish aggregation devices” and purse nets, which indiscriminately scoop up sealife, including endangered species. John West and Greenpeace worked together to implement more sustainable practices. The campaign group says its discussions with the company “felt like trying to nail a jellyfish to the wall”, but the changes eventually agreed will mean that most tuna sold in Britain will now be certified sustainable.
Canned ban
The French National Assembly has voted to ban the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) from all food packaging, with effect from 2014. The decision will affect many major companies, including Coca-Cola and other soft drinks firms, which use BPA in can linings. Coca-Cola survived a challenge from shareholders earlier this year calling for the substance to be phased out. BPA was integral to “the only commercially viable lining systems for the mass production of aluminium beverage cans”, Coca-Cola said at the time. France put in place the ban because of concern over BPA’s hormone-disrupting properties, which has already led to it being banned from baby bottles in the European Union. Industry group Plastics Europe said the extended French ban showed that consumer safety decisions were “no longer based upon the weight of sound scientific evidence”.
Chinese perspective
Chinese consumers believe that homegrown companies look after their interests best, and foreign firms are less responsibility-focused, research by the R3 consultancy has shown. The survey of more than 1,500 people found that the companies ranked most responsible are China Mobile, computer firm Lenovo, electronics group Haier, and herbal drink maker Wanglaoji. The only non-Chinese firm to make the responsibility top ten was Coca-Cola. The R3 survey also showed that the ethical image of corporations in China is increasingly linked to the production of responsible or green products. The role played by corporations in disaster relief remains the top issue for Chinese consumers, but is becoming relatively less important.
Apple bitten
Apple still has much to do to deal with poor treatment of workers in supplier facilities, according to a Hong Kong group, Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (Sacom). Earlier this year, Apple described in its supplier responsibility report problems with factories in China employing underage workers, saying it had cancelled contracts with those facilities. However, during July and August, Sacom investigated Futaihua Precision Electronics, which makes iPhones, and said it had found miscalculated and unpaid wages, forced overtime, poor safety standards, and a “care hotline that does not care”. Apple should demand higher standards at Futaihua, which is a subsidiary of Foxconn, Sacom says.
Trust bust
Only a third of employees of large British companies believe that their bosses act ethically in business, a survey by the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) has found. Despite the dangers for companies exposed as ethically deficient – from the nation’s banks to News Corporation – most managers continue to put profit above corporate responsibility, according to the study. However, there is some consolation for private sector bosses: their public sector equivalents are considered even less principled by their staff. “The challenge for today’s leaders is to make it clear that ethical principles can deliver improved performance and enhance profit margins,” says ILM spokesman Peter Cheese.
Decarbonise now!
British companies must do more to help the UK meet its carbon reduction targets, the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) says in a report on FTSE 350 companies. Although more companies than ever are disclosing their emissions and making emissions-reduction pledges, more effort is needed if business wants to avoid regulation that will force greenhouse gas cuts on them. Parliament has already legislated to reduce emissions by 35% by 2022 against a 1990 baseline, but the companies that have adopted targets have so far been less ambitious, with shorter time horizons, and targets for relative, rather than absolute, cuts in emissions, the CDP says.
Fresh winds
Companies that source their power from wind energy can now proclaim it by attaching the WindMade label to their products. Under criteria published in October, the label can be used by firms that source at least 25% of their electricity through their own generation facilities, or long-term agreements with energy producers. WindMade is the first eco-label to be supported by the United Nations Global Compact. It is also backed by WWF, the Global Energy Council, and a number of companies including Lego and Bloomberg. If corporations adopt the label, it will “contribute to more investment in renewables over and above what would be built anyway,” the label’s promoters say.
Sinners’ list
Stockholm-based campaigners ChemSec have published a “sin” list of 389 companies that produce toxic chemicals. The firms should act now to phase the substances out, according to ChemSec, because they will in any case probably be banned by a European Union chemicals law. Heading the sin list (for “Substitute it now!”) is German conglomerate BASF, which produces 65 out of 378 chemicals considered highly hazardous by ChemSec. Bringing up the rear is London-based Whyte Chemicals, which manufactures diethyl sulphate, which has been linked to cancers. The publication of the ChemSec list was made possible by EU law, which requires chemicals to be registered, and information about their manufacture to be published.
Dubious practices
The governments of Belgium, France and Luxembourg need to do more to ensure ethical behaviour by their companies abroad, in the light of recent events in Cambodia, the International Federation for Human Rights (IFHR) says. According to a new report, Socfinasia, a Franco-Belgian company registered in Luxembourg, obtained concessions to convert land in eastern Cambodia into rubber plantations. The 850 families living there were given a choice between accepting minimal compensation and forced eviction. The granting of such concessions in Cambodia, and related human rights complaints, have soared in the past few years, IFHR said. Meanwhile, relatively lax corporate reporting standards in Luxembourg mean companies can gloss over their environmental and social misbehaviour.