African gender equality, India’s lavatory revolution and smarter product messaging
Mondelēz pledges to boost gender equality
The world’s largest chocolate and biscuit maker, Mondelēz International, is expanding its commitment to advancing women’s rights, building on the company’s existing 10-year $400m Cocoa Life sustainability initiative.
The announcement comes on the heels of Oxfam’s release of its Behind the Brands report, which ranked the agricultural policies, commitments and supply chain oversight of the top 10 food and drink companies. Mondelēz received a low overall score of 29% in Oxfam’s report, which stressed the need for increased action on women’s rights.
“Gender work has actually been in our company’s cocoa sustainability programme from day one,” says Richard Buino at Mondelēz. “We’ve been talking to Oxfam since last year about the Behind the Brands scorecard, and specifically about women’s rights in cocoa since January. As we already have done a lot of work in this area, there was a lot to discuss, [but] we appreciate it was important for Oxfam to be sure that our commitments relate to genuinely new activity.”
Mondelēz has since beefed up its corporate programmes to better address gender equality. For one, the company has set out to conduct and publish third-party impact assessments, which will include the impact of cocoa production on women across its value chain. Mondelēz will then publish the key performance indicators (KPIs) and methodology used in the assessment in July 2013, and publish its first full impact assessment by April 2014, which will cover 300 communities it touches throughout Ghana and Ivory Coast.
Mondelēz will also employ this methodology across four other countries in which it operates, and publish its country-specific action plans in 2018.
The company is also boosting its advocacy work on behalf of women’s rights, sharing its findings with both the public and private sectors, and working with organisations such as the World Cocoa Foundation, Fairtrade, and the Rainforest Alliance to increase opportunities for women and strengthen certification standards with respect to women’s rights. Mondelēz signed the United Nations Women’s Empowerment Principles in April.
“Oxfam welcomes Mondelēz International’s leadership in making clear commitments to advance women’s rights,” says Judy Beals, campaign manager for Oxfam’s Behind the Brands campaign. “We recognise the company’s pledge to step up transparency in this area to enable the company to be more accountable and to allow independent observers to judge their progress. We look forward to seeing Mondelēz International turn these commitments into measurable actions.”
Relief provided by Gates Foundation
A much-needed civic amenity is gaining momentum in India: the country’s first electronic public toilet.
The Delight toilet unit was created by Eram Scientific Solutions (ESS), a technology research and development company in Kerala that specialises in two seemingly disparate areas: sanitation and security systems. But their common thread is ESS’s innovative use of mobile technology.
The compact, portable Delight toilet was built to improve sanitation in high-density urban areas in the most environmentally conscious way. The unit’s functionality is automated wherever possible; the door opens when a user deposits a coin, activating the inside light and prompting the audio instructions to begin. The system is equipped with a bio membrane reactor, which recycles the water and reuses it for flushing and cleaning.
Delight is also powered by a solar panel. Should there be any technical issues, each unit is supported by SMS alerts that are sent to the company’s control room and addressed immediately.
Another unique feature of Delight is the advertising space on the unit’s exterior, which, along with the coin usage fee, provides a constant stream of revenue to help cities offset its original cost and help maintain it.
The Delight toilet was a recipient of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Reinvent the Toilet Challenge. Thus far, about 400 units have been installed throughout Delhi, Kozhikode, and Kerala State, with plans for 10,000 more units this year.
Public-private Launch summit
Founding members Nike, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Nasa, and the US Department of State came together recently for the 2020 Launch Summit, uniting 150 global leaders in government, business and the public sector around innovative sustainability projects that address today’s most pressing global challenges.
This year’s summit also launched the 2013 Challenge Statement, an open invitation to anyone with an innovative solution to manufacturing fabrics more sustainably (such as smart or self-healing materials, and new technical fabrics that help eliminate toxins).
Applicants will be evaluated on nine criteria, including their project’s transformative potential, technical feasibility, degree of environmental and social impact, and scalability.
In August the top 10 proposals will be chosen by a panel of experts and through public voting. The group will attend a two-day intensive learning programme, where they’ll receive guidance from a council of 40 global leaders in materiality, business, government, technology, science and communications to help drive project success.
In terms of project funding, Diane Powell, Launch manager for Nasa, explains that financing is not usually provided by the four Launch founders, and would only be allotted when a project directly relates to the founders’ core business.
“Whether or not we find technologies that are applicable for Nasa missions, the innovative processes we’ve created through Launch are helping us do business more creatively within government circles,” Powell says. “Through our partnership, we support the acceleration of innovative solutions by working together to support fledgling innovations and help bring them to maturity, even if we don't benefit directly from each innovation.”
Light bulb moments
A new study reveals that environmental messaging may not always have a positive impact on consumer purchasing behaviour and may, in some cases, be detrimental.
The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, assessed 657 individuals’ perspectives on energy-efficient products, and found that people’s opinions differed according to their political leaning, with, in US political shorthand, conservatives less in favour of investment in energy-efficient technology than liberals. Dena Gromet, a lead researcher of the study, says the divide is a microcosm of the larger political divide in the US around emissions reductions.
The second part of the study took 210 individuals and offered them regular light bulbs and compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), providing them with information about CFLs’ environmental and financial benefits. A portion of the CFLs were labelled with a “protect the environment” sticker, while the remaining CFLs were unlabelled.
Two major results came out of this exercise. Both conservatives and liberals were willing to buy CFLs when price was not a factor. But when the higher price tag for CFLs was introduced, liberals were slightly more willing to buy CFLs than conservatives.
Conservatives were also less likely to buy CFLs labelled with an environmental sticker. What’s more, the environmental sticker didn’t do much to boost liberals’ purchasing behaviour either, which Gromet thinks may be attributable to the fact that liberals already believe energy-efficient products benefit the environment, so the ecolabel provides no additional value.
So what are the real-life implications for brands? “Our results highlight the importance of market segmentation – different messages may be needed to reach different groups,” says Gromet. “A message that may be effective for one group may actually turn off another group from being willing to spend additional money to purchase energy-efficient products.”
Based on the findings, Dena suggests companies consider employing messaging that’s more universally appealing. For example, the study showed that other facets of energy efficiency, such as energy independence and financial savings, are more broadly valued across political lines than environmental messaging, and could thus be more effective in driving consumers to buy greener products such as CFLs.
Patagonia’s new venture
Sustainability leader Patagonia is getting into the fundraising business with the launch of a $20m venture capital fund that will finance environmental projects in the clothing, water, food, energy and waste sectors.
Called $20 Million & Change, the fund is aimed to help “like-minded, responsible start-up companies bring about a positive benefit to the environment”.
The outdoor clothing maker plans to invest anywhere between $500,000 and $5m in early stage companies that have at least $1m in revenue or capitalisation – and there’s the strong possibility that it will take on some ownership, too.
Patagonia will also provide the start-ups with access to its array of resources in procurement, production, distribution and sales to help support the businesses, going as far as adorning its well-known label on the new products, and selling them in stores and online to help boost sales.
In addition to the new venture fund, Patagonia has also undergone a restructuring and established a new holding company called Patagonia Works, which will be the home of $20 Million & Change and its other brands including Patagonia, Patagonia Media, Patagonia Government Sales, Patagonia Provisions, and Fletcher Chouinard Designs.
“Others might see Patagonia Works and $20 Million & Change as revolutionary business ventures; we think both are just next logical steps to doing business more responsibly,” says Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia Works.
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