Tag Archives: social responsibility

ECOFFEE by DESITA in the 2011 Sodalitas Libro d’Oro della Responsabilità Sociale d’Impresa – ninth edition

The Sodalitas Social Award every year prizes the most significant social responsibility initiatives implemented in Italy either by large, medium and small companies operating in any branch of activity, or by business associations, by industrial districts and by government agencies. This award differs from other initiatives for its high social value – also recognized by the President of the Republic – and the growing acceptance and engagement. To participate to the Sodalitas Social Award means to be part of a selected group of companies which have distinguished themselves for their careful attention to the citizens needs, to market trends, to innovation as a tool to allow the grow of the society and to sustainability.

ECOFFEE by DESITA has been published in the Sodalitas Libro d’Oro della Responsabilità Sociale d’Impresa (Golden Book of Corporate Social Responsibility), collecting all the companies which applied to the Sodalitas Social Award and that have been recognized by the Sodalitas organization as  worth a mention for their actions towards a more sustainable world.

ECOFFEE by DESITA has been published in the “Sodalitas Libro d’Oro della Responsabilità Sociale d’Impresa”, collecting all the companies which applied to the Sodalitas Social Awards and that have been recognized by the Sodalitas organization as  worth a mention for their actions towards a more sustainable world.

To have participated to the Sodalitas Social Awards and to have been published in their Libro d’Oro sulla Responsabilità Sociale d’Impresa is a great honour for all of us who are involved in the ECOFFEE by DESITA project. This is further stimulating our daily actions towards an always greater and constant attention to those practices that can change the way we all do business, towards a better business. Our commitment to sustainability is the result of a deep belief and of continuous improvement. It is not easy, but we’re going all out.

New Terms of Engagement for Levi Strauss & Co. Global Supply Chain

Yesterday, Levi Strauss & Co.  announced a new Terms of Engagement for its global supply chain, moving beyond compliance to help improve the lives of workers in factories around the world. Under the new approach, LS&Co. will require contract factories to help make employees’ lives better by supporting programs for their workers that align with UN Millennium Development goals.

In a speech delivered today at the CERES annual conference, CEO and President John Anderson said: “We are proposing a new apparel industry standard of social, economic, and environmental sustainability that focuses on improving workers’ lives. If our ultimate goal is to improve not just factory conditions, but to make a material difference to the people and communities in our supply chain, then we need a more holistic approach and a more human perspective.”

The speech comes twenty years after Levi Strauss & Co. announced a Terms of Engagement that set a new standard of compliance for vendor factories in the apparel industry. The TOE required manufacturing factories to follow health, safety and environmental standards set by Levi Strauss & Co. This standard – considered pioneering at the time – rapidly became the norm for most companies with a global supply chain.

Anderson argued that companies need to do more to create progress and move the industry forward: “Compliance has us focused on two things: a legalistic standard of “do no harm” and factory-level monitoring and reporting,” said Anderson. “While we’ve made progress in a number of areas over twenty years, the hard truth is that we haven’t made enough progress on improving the everyday lives of the people who make our products.”

A New Terms of Engagement
The company’s new approach will focus on programs that align with the UN Millennium Development Goals http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/ specifically: improving maternal and child health; combating HIV/AIDs, and other diseases; promoting gender equality and empowering women; eradicating extreme poverty and hunger; and ensuring environmental sustainability.

LS& Co. committed to a nine-month advisory process with NGOs, other brands, labor unions and suppliers around the world. At the end of the process, Levi Strauss & Co. will release a white paper for public comment and then will begin implementing the new terms of engagement with suppliers in May 2012.

The company argued that a new terms of engagement is not only the right thing to do, but is good for business: “We are sure that if companies focus not just on the minimum legal requirements, but on a broader vision of social, economic, and environmental sustainability, they will be rewarded,” said Anderson.

Levi Strauss & Co. is a participant in the CERES Investor Business Roundtable for a Sustainable Economy announced this morning. The company made the commitment as part of a keynote speech delivered at the 2011 CERES Conference. For more information about the Roundtable, visit: ceres.org.

For the full John Anderson speech and more background information, please visit:http://www.levistrauss.com/new-termsofengagement. (Source: CSRwire PR)

When Guerrilla marketing goes green

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As we previously anticipated, the SIGEP event participants have been “bombarded” by ECOFFEE’s green guerrilla marketing actions. The events premises and central locations in downtown Riccione and Rimini have been decorated with ecofriendly graffiti by  Greengraffiti®.
ECOFFEE has chosen GreenGraffiti® because of its being a completely carbon neutral outdoor advertising media. With the help of a template and a high pressure water sprayer an advertising message is cleaned out of the dirt. The result is a high impact message and a cleaner street.  But ECOFFEE’s green guerrilla is not only sustainable: for each liter of water used to produce an expression, the GreenAdsBlue foundation invest in water harvesting projects and provide one liter of clean drinking water in regions where water is scarce.

The green “spraying” of the ECOFFEE logo, payoff and web address has raised great attention in all the passing by event participants – all curious about what was going on and what ECOFFEE was about and all praising its being sustainable and socially responsible.