Tag Archives: gap

Seventeen Retailers awarded World’s Most Ethical Companies

The Ethisphere Institute, an international think-tank dedicated to the creation, advancement and sharing of best practices in business ethics, corporate social responsibility, anti-corruption and sustainability, named 145 companies to its sixth annual selection of the World’s Most Ethical (WME) Companies, 17 of which are retailers.world-most-ethical companies

In the retail food stores category are Safeway, Wegmans, Whole Foods Market, SONAE of Portugal, Kesko of Finland and the U.K.’s The Co-operative Group. Named in the general retail category are Costco, Target and the U.K.’s Marks and Spencer. In the specialty retail category are Best Buy, OfficeMax, Petco and Ten Thousand Villages, and in the apparel category Gap, Patagonia, Timberland and Comme Il Fau of Israel were recognized.

This year’s list covers more than three dozen industries, from aerospace to wind power, with 43 of the WME winners headquartered outside the U.S. Each 2012 honoree was chosen for promoting ethical business standards and practices by exceeding legal minimums for compliance, introducing innovative ideas that benefit the public and forcing their competitors to follow suit, according to Ethisphere Institute.

They demonstrate how corporate citizenship is undoubtedly tied to the success of a company’s brand and bottom line. “Each year the competition for World’s Most Ethical Companies intensifies as the number of nominations submitted for consideration grows,” said Alex Brigham, executive director of Ethisphere.

“This year’s winners know that a strong ethics program is a key component to a successful business model, and they continue to scrutinize their ethical standards to keep up with an ever-changing regulatory environment. Corporate ethics has become much more important globally, as well, and that is reflected in the truly global nature of this year’s honorees.”

Twenty-three companies have been honored each of the six years the WME has been awarded, including Patagonia and Starbucks. The evaluation and selection process for the WME Companies is based on a proprietary rating system, the corporate Ethics Quotient, consisting of five core categories — Ethics and Compliance Program (25 percent), Reputation, Leadership and Innovation (20 percent), Governance (10 percent), Corporate Citizenship and Responsibility (25 percent) and Culture of Ethics (20 percent). New York City-based Ethisphere Institute is dedicated to the creation, advancement and sharing of best practices in business ethics, corporate social responsibility, anti-corruption and sustainability.

via Seventeen Retailers Recognized as the World’s Most Ethical Companies – Green Retail Decisions.

Chinese consumers are willing to pay for sustainability

We have already talked about China as one of the fastest growing markets in terms of customer awareness towards sustainability: Chinese do appreciate and search for sustainability.

A study released on April 18th by global advertising and international marketing firm Ogilvy & Mather answer to the question that our customers usually ask: “Do consumers are willing to pay more for sustainable products?”. The study shows that the answer is “Yes, Chinese consumers are willing to pay a small premium for environmentally friendly products”, but they place responsibility to fix China’s environmental woes on the government.

Convenience is the main factor driving shopping decisions for more than half of the 1,300 Chinese consumers across China, but 71 percent said they would pay up to 10 percent more or higher for some “green” products.

“Within about a 15 percent price band, if two items have comparable brand image, people will go for the sustainable option,” Kunal Sinha, the lead author of the study and head of the company’s sustainability practice in China, told Reuters.

“But if you were going to sell it purely on its sustainability credentials, it wouldn’t fly,” he said, referring to the range of green products and sustainable behaviors covered in the study, from toiletries to food and vacations.

Shoppers were willing to open their wallets the widest for sustainably produced milk, at premiums of 17 to 20 percent, the study said, an indication of how severely scandals involving tainted milk have damaged China’s dairy industry.

The study noted large gaps between the sustainable behavior Chinese consumers profess to and their actual consumption habits, a trend that also exists in developed markets such as the United States.

One measure of their optimism: more than 90 percent of those surveyed said they thought the sustainability movement was growing. But fewer than a fourth or respondents said they felt empowered to solve environmental problems on their own, and instead looked to the government to fix the country’s environmental woes.

Chinese consumers have long been hesitant to loosen their purse strings, more so than consumers in other countries at a similar stage of development. But domestic consumption is picking up quickly and many analysts think it has reached a turning point.

That means Chinese consumers’ buying power may be out-pacing their green ethos. The survey said the concept of sustainable living is not yet mainstream, with respondents saying those leading the movement in China are seen as idealists.

Joel Backaler, a director at the consulting firm Frontier Strategy Group who blogs on Chinese consumption trends, says mainstream Chinese consumers are focused on aspirational purchases in the short to medium-term and will not begin focusing on green and sustainable consumption for years.

“The vast majority of China’s middle class are for the first time learning how to spend and join the consumption phenomenon that their counterparts in the U.S. and Western Europe have long enjoyed,” he told Reuters in an email. (Source: Reuters)

Sustainable Apparel Coalition: what is it?

In the last days there has been a lot of buzz about the Sustainable Apparel coalition, officially launched on March 1st. But what is it?

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. 

The Coalition’s purpose at a higher level has two goals.  First, the member organizations will develop plans to soften the apparel industry’s impact on water and industry consumption, while making commitments to improved waste diversion and the reduction in the use of chemicals. To that end, the Coalition’s members will work with industry peers and supply chain partners to achieve the fullest possible life cycle transparency for clothing. Meanwhile, the SAC seeks to ensure that workplaces throughout the apparel industry adopt fair employment practices and a safe working environment, while eliminating any exposure to toxic chemicals.

Second, the Coalition will develop a metrics-based tool that will assist companies in the measurement of their environmental and social impacts.  For now described as the Version 1.0 Apparel Index, the tool works similarly to Nike’s Apparel Environmental Design Tool and the Outdoor Industry Association’s Eco Index.  Besides offering an assessment on companies’ usages of energy, water, and chemicals, the index will also evaluate products’ entire life cycles.  Companies will be able to measure their performance, compare them to their peers, and receive guidelines and resources for how they can improve their performance all such metrics.  The Apparel Index is slated to launch next month.(Source: Triplepundit Photo: Treehugger)
*Founding members of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition are based in North America, Asia, Europe and the U.K. They include Adidas, Arvind Mills, C&A, Duke University, Environmental Defense Fund, Esprit, Esquel, Gap Inc., H&M, HanesBrands, Intradeco, JC Penney, Kohl’s Department Stores, Lenzing, Levi Strauss & Co., LF USA, a division of Li & Fung Limited, Marks & Spencer, Mountain Equipment Coop, New Balance, Nike, Nordstrom, Otto Group, Outdoor Industry Association, Patagonia, Pentland Brands, REI, TAL Apparel, Target, Timberland, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Verité, VF Corp, and Walmart.