For a small company, Seventh Generation, the environmentally sensitive household products brand, has a lot to say. Jeffrey Hollender, the US company’s president and chief responsibility officer, opens the 2004 Corporate Responsibility Report with a personal and at times strident letter.

He criticizes big business’s obsession with short-term shareholder returns and the “incomplete honesty” of the current crop of corporate responsibility reports. Stressing that no company is even close to being sustainable, Hollender says of the glossy publications: “What an incredibly limited (and disingenuous) picture of reality!”

To drive home the vastness of the sustainability challenge, Hollender lists grim statistics on global natural resources destruction, economic inequality, and the sad state of trust in corporate reputation. With the stage thus set, the question remains whether Seventh Generation’s report is any better than the ones Hollender derides.

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