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This is part of a series on "The Future of Fair Trade," written with the support of Fair Trade USA. A 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization, Fair Trade USA is the leading third-party certifier of Fair Trade products in the United States. To follow along with the rest of the series, click here.

When Jim Brett became the president of West Elm in 2010, the company was closing stores. Launched by Williams-Sonoma in 2002 and based in Brooklyn, West Elm had yet to take off. When Brett looked around at the company's line of home retail products, he was uninspired.

"It was all machine-made, all very clean and simple, and all very soulless," Brett explained. "I wanted to bring personality and soul and handmade into the business."

Over the last five years, West Elm has humanized its products, and its relationships throughout the supply chain -- entering uncharted territory in the process. In partnering with Fair Trade USA, West Elm recently announced its commitment to certify 20 percent of its product assortment by 2017, and 40 percent by 2019. It made this commitment just in time for Fair Trade month.

This will generate $1 million in Fair Trade premiums in four years, empowering factory workers to decide how this money is spent – to improve social, economic or environmental conditions.

Sourcing for impact

West Elm's Impact Sourcing Program began as a collaboration between the company's design team and artisan groups, Jennifer Gootman, director of social consciousness and innovation for West Elm, told TriplePundit in an interview. When Brett joined the brand, he saw the potential to use West Elm’s design process to preserve traditional techniques and employ crafters around the world.

This certainly isn't the soulless business mentality he encountered in 2010. This new approach embraces trust and deeper relationships with vendors, communities and ultimately customers.

"Collaborating with artisan groups gave rise to a new business strategy," Gootman explained. "We were asking: 'How can we use our supply chain and purchasing power to make an impact in the world?'"

Today, West Elm’s Impact Sourcing initiatives have grown to include its commitment to handcraft, sustainability and supply chain transparency, as well as its work with Fair Trade USA.

Ultimately, pursuing Fair Trade certification for vendors involves humanizing the supply chain -- and not just the outward West Elm appearance.

"It takes trust on both sides to build out a business relation in a long-term, strategic way," Gootman told us. "It’s all about relationships and long-term partnerships for us. As we look to consolidate our vendor base, and to mean more to fewer vendors, it's about investing in those relationships. We are asking ourselves: 'Which vendors are aligned with West Elm's values?'"

West Elm currently has six Fair Trade certified factories – five in India and one in Nepal. The company's next target is Vietnam, and it has four more factories undergoing the certification process. Gootman explained that factory certification typically takes six to 12 months, and then another eight months from when a factory is certified to when products appear on store shelves. This lag time makes the 40 percent by 2019 goal seem quite ambitious, but Gootman is confident the company will meet the target given recent progress.

"We were looking inside the business to see how we can make an impact, and we feel Fair Trade [certification] can offer that," Gootman said. "It is something that invests directly back into the relationships and ultimately the workers and their communities."

Engaging customers around Fair Trade

Investing in relationships with factory workers and their communities parallels the way West Elm is redefining relationships with its customers. For example, the company offers a home decorating service where a design experts visit customers' homes, free of charge. Design consultants will even help pick out products from other stores.

West Elm's commitment to Fair Trade also offers consumers the opportunity to shift their relationship with home retail items -- something that embodies Brett's goal to humanize the company's products.

"I was reading all these reports that were down on retail brick-and-mortar, saying it's all about online," Brett told us. "I think brick-and-mortar is an amazing opportunity to use our stores and our store staff as a vehicle to truly engage with the community in a way no other retailers are doing."

Brett wants West Elm stores to feel like community hubs, staffed by real human beings. He even instructed salespeople to think of themselves as old-fashioned merchants, enriching their interactions with customers. Communicating sustainable-sourcing strategies is another avenue for humanizing the company.

"Supply chain transparency is about how we start to talk with our customers, show what is behind the products and connect them to the [factory] workers," Gootman said. "We are investing in the people making their products, instead of making a side donation [to a community charity]."

In addition to investing in relationships across the globe, West Elm also embraces locally-made goods by partnering with community artisans and even Etsy.  "We're trying to truly scale local," Brett said. "I want West Elm to be known as the brand that does local better than anyone else in the country."

Image credit: Elvert Barnes, Flickr

Last week, Ceres and its Investor Network on Climate Risk released an illuminating analysis of how some major companies are responding to shareholder engagement on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.

The report, which covers the 2014 and 2015 proxy seasons, makes clear that long-term investors are putting increasing pressure on public companies to undertake ESG initiatives. Moreover, while most company responses are incremental and tailored to placate pesky activist shareholders -- and others fall short entirely -- these investors have won some significant sustainability victories.

About Ceres and its approach

Ceres, which created the Global Reporting Initiative (now the leading sustainability reporting standard) in 1997, is a veteran of the sustainability space, and its Investor Network on Climate Risk consists of over 115 institutional investors with collective assets of more than $13 trillion.

Last week’s report examines the efforts and outcomes of many of these long-term investors (mostly socially conscious funds like Domini, Walden and Arjuna Capital, but also major pension funds like the New York State Common Retirement Fund and the California State Teachers Retirement System) to impact companies’ ESG behavior.

Ceres works with these investors to engage corporate management and boards through targeted shareholder resolutions, many of which are withdrawn before a vote because the company agrees to address the issue(s) raised in the resolution.

As Ceres points out, use of this tactic to advance a sustainability agenda has increased dramatically in the last decade-and-a-half. To illustrate, Ceres tracked fewer than 10 shareholder resolutions related to climate change in 2001; by 2015, Ceres counted 167 such resolutions. That period also saw the rise of impact investing and the launch of the divestment movement, as investors continue to devise creative ways to leverage the power of the dollar for good.

Overall results

In order to track the effectiveness of shareholder engagement, Ceres asked investors who had submitted ESG-related shareholder resolutions or engaged in dialogues with corporate leadership, to provide an assessment of the “completeness” with which companies had fulfilled their commitments.

Investors were asked to rank responses on a scale ranging from 1 through 5, with 1 being, “The company met its stated commitment and took further action,” and 5 being, “The company did not meet its stated commitment.”  In some cases, the deadlines for action have not yet arrived, so a response could not be measured.

In total, the report covers 91 total company commitments relating to sustainability reporting, greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions, sustainable agriculture/deforestation, fossil fuel risks and on other topics, including lobbying. Of these 91 responses, nearly three-quarters (73 percent) fully met their stated commitments (a 2 on the scale), and a total of 86 percent at least “mostly” met their commitments (a 3 on the scale).

Positive impacts in agriculture

Given that most companies met their commitments to investors, how significant were the actions that shareholder resolutions generated?

Based on the data compiled by Ceres, company commitments related to sustainable agriculture and deforestation seem to have the highest potential for environmental and social impact. This is particularly true regarding company commitments to responsibly source palm oil, a number of which were extracted as a direct result of shareholder pressure.

Take the case of Archer Daniels Midland (ADM).  Based in Chicago, ADM’s more than 33,000 employees operate on six continents and in more than 140 countries. In 2014, ADM’s net sales amounted to $81.2 billion. It ranks 34th on the Fortune 500 list.  What ADM does or does not do, in other words, can make a real difference to the environment and the communities in which it and its suppliers operate.

When companies clear forests and peatlands in order to harvest palm oil and other food commodities, startling amounts of GHGs are emitted. In fact, according to the EPA, corporate changes to land for food production purposes account for approximately 17 percent of annual global GHG emissions, or what the entire transportation sector emits each year. Deforestation also leads to a slew of other environmental and social problems, including erosion, biodiversity loss and conflicts over land rights.

In light of this potential damage and ADM’s position as a primary soy and palm oil purchaser, in 2015, Green Century Capital Management and the New York State Common Retirement Fund introduced a resolution asking ADM to implement a policy requiring that all soy and palm oil sourced by ADM come from areas not associated with “clearing of high conservation value (HCV), high carbon stock (HCS), or peatland areas, or exploitation of workers and local communities.”

Following the introduction of that resolution, ADM worked with investors to develop a No-Deforestation Policy.  ADM instructed its suppliers to cease engaging in deforestation and peatland clearance, while it partnered with The Forest Trust to map its supply chains and develop action plans.  In furtherance of its policy, ADM is working with the government of Brazil and hundreds of small farmers to develop a sustainable palm venture in Parà, Brazil. When its No-Deforestation Policy was unveiled, ADM became the first major supplier of agricultural commodities to implement a no-deforestation policy for both soy and palm oil production.

To be sure, ADM was not the first major player to commit to ending palm oil production-related deforestation. In the second half of 2014, Cargill, Kellogg, Unilever, Nestle, General Mills, Danone and other major food suppliers committed to satisfying the United Nations’ New York Declaration on Forests pledge to “cut natural forest loss in half by 2020, and strive to end it by 2030.”

With ADM, investors built on this momentum and secured the most significant no-deforestation pledge from a major food company to-date.  In total, investor pressure has persuaded “top palm oil suppliers representing approximately 96 percent of globally-traded palm oil” to adopt no-deforestation policies for the palm oil they trade.

Disappointments

Not all investor efforts were as successful and, unsurprisingly, fossil fuel companies appeared the most intransigent. Of the 15 investor proposals included in the Ceres report, only six fossil fuel companies fully met their commitments and two “only partially” complied.

The most disappointing actor profiled here was ExxonMobil (Exxon). Investors have been urging extractive companies like Exxon to move away from further investments in carbon-heavy reserves because, apart from the climate impacts of these activities, the reserves may end up abandoned if demand for fossil fuels continues to ebb. Exxon does not agree.

In 2014, Arjuna Capital and As You Sow introduced a resolution calling for Exxon to, among other things, explain “how it stress-tests capital investment opportunities and risk in a scenario where global temperature rise is limited to 2 degrees Celsius.” The investors withdrew that resolution when Exxon agreed to publish a report on the issue.

In the report, however, Exxon asserted that there was “limited basis for concern” of such a scenario ever arising, because “any future capping of carbon-based fuels to the levels of a ‘low carbon scenario’ is highly unlikely due to pressing social needs for energy.” As Arjuna and As You Sow explain, the 2-degree scenario means that “some fossil fuel companies will not be able to sell some or all of their reserves, thereby stranding those assets and causing the value of the company to decline.” Yet, Exxon ignored the question entirely, suggesting that one of the largest global oil companies does not take seriously the prospect of a future with significantly lower fossil fuel usage.

The Ceres report features other shortfalls, of course, but it mostly suggests a promising future in shareholder activism to advance sustainability goals. The potential is there for influential investors to continue to hold corporate feet to the fire on these issues; it will be interesting to see what happens next.

Image credit: Pixabay

Editor's Note: This is part of our continuing coverage of SOCAP 2015. Read the rest here.

“Money won’t do much good if people and purpose get left behind.” – White Road Investments

Did you know that Patagonia, Seventh Generation and Clif Bar each invest millions in social enterprises through their investment management funds? I didn’t, until SOCAP 2015 this month in San Francisco.

Investment funds for triple-bottom-line impact

At a session entitled Cool Companies with Cool Impact Funds, moderated by Kate Danaher, lending manager for RSF Social Finance, panelists shared frank advice for social entrepreneurs who are seeking funding to expand their business. So, let’s get right to it! What do you need to know if you are seeking funding from one of these organizations?

• $20 Million and Change is Patagonia’s $20 million venture fund, established in 2013. Preferring not to take board seats, the company typically looks for a 2 to 20 percent ownership stake, and seeks out enterprises that inspire and invent solutions to environmental crises. With a focus on food, water, energy and waste, Patagonia has invested in 10 companies to date, including Bureo, a company that turns fishing nets into skateboard decks and sunglasses.


• Seventh Generation Ventures was established last year with a $30 million investment from Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management. The purpose of the fund is to transform commerce to nurture the health of the next seven generations, with a focus on non-food products (like Bobble). Noteworthy: With many entrepreneurs heading for retirement now, Seventh Generation Ventures can represent an exit plan that helps ensure that the company will thrive in the long term, and not simply flip for a high profit by the next owner.


• White Road Investments (Clif Bar) is about five years old, focusing on small, mission-driven companies of about $1 million to $20 million. The company has invested in 13 companies so far, including Public Bikes and the Honest Kitchen. Clif prides itself on its “connective capital,” and likes taking board seats (though that is not required). It prefers companies that do direct-to-consumer sales.

These funds vary in their particulars, but there were three points on which all the panelists agreed: relationships, metrics and mission-alignment all matter. A lot.

It’s all about relationships

Investment decisions for this group have first and foremost to do with personal relationships. Yes, the business has to pencil out, but the numbers take a backseat to who the partners are and what they stand for. Every panelist emphasized this point:

“Transparency and authenticity are everything to us,” said Pete Alberse, general manager of Seventh Generation Ventures. “Before we invest, we need to be in love with the people.”

“The cap table is everything,” said Phil Graves, Patagonia’s director of corporate development. “Who are the existing investors? It matters. You can lose your business if you have the wrong partnerships.”

“It’s a relationship-based business,” Kate Danaher of RSF Social Finance agreed. “It takes two-and-half to three years of knowing people before they will lend to you or invest in you.”

“Authenticity is so important to us,” added Gregg Bagni, director of White Road Investments (Clif Bar). “We rely on our ‘gut check’ on people, and we’ll back out if it doesn’t seem right.”

Have metrics for social and environmental performance

Panelists seemed to agree on another point: companies seeking financing don’t need to be B Corporations to qualify for investment – Seventh Generation, RSF Social Finance and Patagonia are all B Corps – but showing that you have at least taken the B Impact Assessment really helps.

In fact, RSF Social Finance asks companies in which it invests to re-take the assessment yearly, to make sure that they are staying on track.

Make sure you are mission- and values-aligned

Each investment fund has a specific focus for its investments, so make sure that what you want to do is squarely aligned with that focus. All agreed that they want to operate in their sweet-spot of expertise and mission. You may have the best social enterprise on the planet, but if its purpose or operating principles run contrary to the investment fund’s mission or values, you are best looking elsewhere.

You can see the video of the full session, interrupted only occasionally by the thundering roar of the Blue Angels practicing over the rooftop during the conference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDiHr5OHOwQ

Image credit: B Impact Assessment logo used with permission of B Labs.

Image credit: 1) Flickr/dianaconolly101 2) B Lab

Last week, Harvard Business Review (HBR) issued its 2015 list of the world’s top CEOs. The list is an interesting one, especially when compared to last year’s. Some dramatic changes are evident, due in no small part to a shift in methodology.

This year, for the first time, HBR inserted additional criteria on environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance. ESG ratings, in the new system, which were derived from information provided by Sustainalytics, accounted for 20 percent of the overall ranking. That was enough, in some cases, to reshuffle the deck quite a bit.

Of particular note was the fact that Jeff Bezos of Amazon fell spectacularly from the No. 1 spot last year, all the way down to No. 87. Amazon’s financial performance, the sole criteria for last year’s list, was nothing short of phenomenal, making the largely self-made Bezos, with a net worth around $50 billion, a hero to the likes of Forbes. However, the company's performance in the ESG realm, at least as reported for this survey, was considerably less so.

Amazon, which as recently as 2012 was dubbed a “no-show” on sustainability by Marc Gunther, only hired its first sustainability executive just over a year ago. Add to that the rather damning recent New York Times piece on Amazon’s brutal workplace culture, with its copious mentions of ulcers and tears besieging the ranks of its workforce, and you see another aspect of the company that, until recently, nobody seemed to care much about. According to the survey, Bezos ranked No. 828 out of a pool of 907 in the ESG category.

It also bears mention that the evaluation of companies is not only subjective, but can vary widely depending on exactly what criteria are used. This is borne out by the fact that Amazon was just recently rated No. 1 for corporate social responsibility (CSR) by the Reputation Institute.

Another victim of the reordering was Hugh Grant, the CEO of Monsanto, another company that has received both very high and very low rankings in the CSR department. HBR dropped Grant from No. 7 last year to No. 66 (and there are those out there who would add a third six to that number.)

On the brighter side, the No. 1 ranking this year went to a very deserving Lars Rebien Sørensen of Novo Nordisk. The company has consistently been ranked among the top companies for CSR, and received numerous awards, including several top rankings.

In this interview with HBR, you can see a number of rather refreshing aspects of this man, not least of which are his consensus leadership style, the fact that he was one of the lowest paid CEOs on last year’s list, and that he doesn’t use a private jet (despite the company’s $140 billion market cap and $13.3 billion in sales last year) because he feels that doing so would distance him from other employees.

While the company has sometimes been criticized for deriving so much of its revenue from diabetes treatment, not only has it branched out into preventative measures like dealing with the epidemic of obesity, but it's also in the late stages of developing an oral form of insulin, which will be very disruptive to the market.

Susanne Stormer, Novo Nordisk’s VP of sustainability, had the following comment on the HBR announcement and the review's decision to include non-financial metrics.

“We appreciate the intent of the new rating methodology to ‘stimulate debate about the importance of non-financial measures.' For some years now, we’ve seen many examples of how a more holistic business approach pays off in a number of ways – often measured by intangibles such as ‘license to operate,' stakeholder trust, employee engagement, customer satisfaction and brand preference.

"There’s a strong body of academic research that points to social and environmental factors as value drivers. And there are numerous ESG rating methods that seek to identify what factors will differentiate companies’ prospects of future success. So, there is ample documentation for a correlation between financial and non-financial dimensions. Add to that mounting evidence of a causality, which is in effect what the new HBR method appears to subscribe to. Then we’re on to something really interesting.

"Imagine the implications of assessing CEOs by their performance in a 360-degree perspective and over time!”

As for Sørensen, she also had the following to say:

“Lars Rebien Sørensen’s leadership as CEO has taken the company to the next level of performance – setting a clear direction with a strategy focused on leveraging core competencies to improve health for the patients we serve, and inspiring everyone through his personal leadership style, clearly communicating what is right and what is not. He is enormously respected for the way he steers the business and leads people.”

Perhaps what impressed me the most about him was this comment he made to his employees, which he restated in his interview with HBR.

“If we wind up curing diabetes, and it destroys a big part of our business, we can be proud, and you can get a job anywhere. We’ll have worked on the greatest social service of any pharmaceutical company, and that would be a phenomenal thing.”

That might sound naïve, but can you imagine the brand equity that would derive from such an achievement? They could sell anything after that, and people would line up to buy it.

Image courtesy of Novo Nordisk

Voluntary corporate sustainability initiatives and social enterprises are essential but are not game-changers by themselves. In addition, we need laws and regulations that guide our economy toward sound, long-term decision-making, with full recognition of social and environmental externalities. As business leaders, we can and must support policy changes to help make the economy more sustainable.

A sustainable economy will depend on policies that will help advance change on a societal level. Here are three important policies that can do that:

1. Support paid leave, nationally and locally

Action on paid leave in Congress may be stalled, but just down the street, Washington, D.C.’s local government isn’t waiting. The city council introduced legislation earlier this month to give almost every part-time and full-time employee in the nation’s capitol 16 weeks of paid family leave – the most in the United States – to bond with a new child, recover from an illness or military deployment, or care for a family member. The measure is backed by a majority of the council, and originated with a grant program funded by the U.S. Department of Labor.

What’s at stake: While D.C.’s bill would be the strongest paid leave plan in the country, the city wouldn’t be the first to pass this kind of program; several states have already passed paid leave laws. And while those laws vary, there is no indication at this point that they have been a burden on businesses. In fact, a study of California’s law found that not only had businesses not been hurt, but both they and their employees were also reporting positive effects. That’s because when employees are able to take paid leave, they’re less stressed at work and are able to come back feeling refreshed, both of which are good news for employee efficiency and thus the bottom line.

What you can do: While states and localities continue to move forward on paid leave, action in Congress still represents the best possible option. The United States is the only developed nation without guaranteed paid leave for all workers; that puts us at a competitive disadvantage. Add your business voice in support of national paid leave legislation.

2. Demand sustainable trade deals

In early October, negotiators from 12 Pacific nations, including the United States, announced they had reached a final agreement on the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. The deal would include countries with a combined 40 percent of global GDP, and would remove various tariffs on products imported from other member countries. Among other things, concerns have been raised about the secrecy of the negotiations – even many members of Congress were kept in the dark during the process – and its impact on environmental and labor standards in other nations.

Congress now has at least 90 days to review the deal, meaning a vote will not come until January at the earliest. Because of earlier votes to give the president “fast track” authority, the vote will be held with limited debate and no opportunity for amendments to the deal.

What’s at stake: Done right, trade deals like this can be a boon for the American, and global, economy. By raising labor or environmental standards in other countries, we can see strong movement toward a more sustainable economy, while protecting businesses here in the United States that already play by stricter rules. Done wrong, however, trade deals can weaken the American economy, shipping jobs overseas and putting businesses at a competitive disadvantage compared to those in nations with weaker standards.

What you can do: President Barack Obama has said he wants a final TPP to include stronger labor and environmental standards. As Congress begins its review period, it’s crucial that they ensure this deal is implemented in the right way. Tell Congress to make sure this deal raises standards, not lowers them.

3. Call for campaign finance reform

With the 2016 election cycle continuing to heat up, and the first few candidates dropping out, more and more attention is turning to the impact of campaign contributions on candidates. The filing deadline for reports on third-quarter fundraising was Oct. 15, and even before that some candidates announced bringing in tens of millions of dollars in the most recent quarter. However, candidates are also earning the support of Super PACs, which cannot legally coordinate but often manage to skirt that rule. Those organizations have until January to report their fundraising numbers.

What’s at stake: Despite claims that the Citizens United decision – which allowed businesses to spend unlimited amounts on elections – will be a positive thing, many small- and mid-sized businesses do not want to devote resources to campaign contributions, instead focusing on growing their businesses.

Meanwhile, those business interests that do put up lots of cash often do not represent the full range of views of most American business owners. That leads to policy action or inaction that actually hurts the bulk of the business community. And, by raising the appearance of corruption, this spending discourages business people with differing opinions from participating in the process – ultimately making it harder to achieve policy changes that will help the economy grow sustainably.

What you can do: Overturning the Citizens United decision will likely take a constitutional amendment; groups like Move to Amend and Free Speech for People have proposed specific language. Having the business community speak out against the impact of unlimited money will help change the discussion about reforming campaign finance laws. Support a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United here.

Image credit: Pixabay

Policy Points is produced by the American Sustainable Business Council. The editor is Richard Eidlin, Vice President – Public Policy and Business Engagement.

By Luis Gallardo

I’ve known a lot of visionaries in my life, but none have understood how big dreams lead to unbridled achievement like Kailash Satyarthi, co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize.

A Nobel Prize seems like a big accomplishment, but the soft-spoken laureate didn’t let the award go to his head. The tireless advocate returned immediately to his mission to end child slavery. To date, the 61-year-old Indian’s Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Movement) has rescued more than 80,000 children from bonded labor.

Never have I encountered someone who is so committed to his cause. Even after repeated attacks on his life and multiple murdered colleagues, Satyarthi refuses to back down from his stand against child slavery. It’s a level of dedication that reminds me of Olympic athletes training for decades to perfect their craft.

Satyarthi might not be a businessman by trade, but we business leaders have much to learn from his compassion, dedication and imagination.

From Peace Prize to professionals: Here is what Satyarthi has taught me about working hard and reaching higher:

1. Don’t stop at success; keep dreaming

Although Satyarthi has rescued more than 80,000 children from slavery since the 1980s, he still isn’t satisfied. He outlined an ambitious plan when speaking to the United States Institute of Peace this past June — Satyarthi now wants to mobilize 100 million people to become champions for the 168 million children worldwide who are enslaved in child labor.

How does this apply to business? Look at Google. Google became famous for its search engine — and its leaders probably could have stopped there if they simply sought fame and fortune. But the tech giant has debuted Google Earth, is testing Google Glass, and has created the first self-driving car. How’s that for dreaming bigger?

2. Create the future you want

Satyarthi realized that ending child labor would take strategic planning — not just dangerous forays into illicit factories that employ child slaves. His 360-degree perspective led him to found GoodWeave, which aims to pull the rug out from underneath child labor by offering consumers certified child labor-free carpets while employing skilled adult artisans.

Don’t focus solely on your own business — create an entirely new future in which you want it to operate. Take Muhammad Yunus, another Nobel Peace Prize laureate turned social entrepreneur. Muhammad rethought banking by pioneering microfinance with the social startup Grameen Bank, which offers credit to entrepreneurs in developing countries who are too poor for traditional bank loans.

3. Make it personal

When I listen to Satyarthi speak to leaders, children, or just about anyone interested in his cause, I always notice something — he might be soft-spoken, but he could not be more personally invested in his mission. I’ve heard him tell children, “You’re not the leaders of the future; you’re the leaders of the present.”

Satyarthi’s teachings have showed me that you don’t need to be a CEO to lead in business. It’s easy to feel powerless at a large company of thousands of people or to make excuses for why you can’t do something. But here’s a secret: You have more power than you think you do. It’s about making change where you are now, no matter what role you play at your company.

4. Do the grunt work

Satyarthi doesn’t ask anyone to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. He has led raids himself, and he’s had his shoulders and back broken while trying to rescue children. As an organizer and participant in the Global March Against Child Labor, millions of marchers have followed in Satyarthi’s literal footsteps. The 80,000-kilometer march, which began in 1998, has spanned 103 countries and has drawn praise from leaders around the globe.

Satyarthi never would have attained the following he did if he weren’t willing to get his hands dirty. In business, this is the best way to breed trust with your team. If you show people you’re willing to do any task — no matter how menial or basic — you’ll attract a following of believers.

Reflecting, teaching and learning

Even though Satyarthi’s heart lies with humanitarian work, he taught me one more business secret: Every successful journey must include rest and reflection. Here’s how you can look back on your achievements and enable them to boost you even higher.

When your team has worked hard to reach a goal, it’s time to celebrate. It doesn’t have to be a boisterous, loud celebration — Satyarthi was happy to win the Nobel Prize, but there was no shouting or crying when he learned about it in his unremarkable South Delhi office. No matter how your team celebrates, everyone needs the headspace to reflect, rethink, and look toward bigger goals.

Another good way to gauge your success involves teaching. Before Satyarthi decided to devote his life to ending child labor, he taught eager-eyed students as a professor of engineering in Bhopal. Kailash knows sharing what you’ve learned doesn’t just help others; it allows you to understand your own experiences and goals much more thoroughly.

The flip side of this involves learning. When I travel with Satyarthi, I’m always struck by his boundless curiosity. It’s this spirit that enables him to never be satisfied with his current knowledge or his current success.

In the end, Satyarthi hasn’t just taught me to dream — he’s taught me to always factor others into my dreams. From there, it’s a matter of having the courage and determination to make those dreams happen — Satyarthi had his limbs broken and didn’t quit on his dreams. Take a cue from Satyarthi to shrug off adversity, reach higher, and never forget about the welfare of others.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Luis Gallardo is president of the Brands & Rousers Foundation and founder of the World Happiness Summit. Formerly the CEO of Thinking Heads Americas, Luis works to build on the accomplishments of the World Economic Forum by encouraging workplace happiness, human development, and holistic education. He’s an award-winning author and holds an MBA from IMD in Switzerland and a master’s degree in international relations from the Lancaster University in the U.K.

By Andy Last

On Sept. 25, at its General Assembly in New York, the United Nations formally adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the global goals that will set the development agenda until 2030.

The following day these goals formed the center piece of a special concert in Central Park, the Global Citizen Festival, featuring performances from Beyoncé, Coldplay and Ed Sheeran; impassioned speeches from Leonardo DiCaprio, Michelle Obama and Hugh Jackman; appeals for support from everyone from Ban Ki Moon to Big Bird; pledges of money and resources from prime ministers and presidents; and commitments from business leaders.

Being in New York to witness this, it felt an odd mix in some ways. Pop stars and Hollywood A-listers alongside politicians, aid workers and corporates. But in other ways it wasn’t. We do all share the same home, and our needs are interlinked and interdependent like never before. Governments of wealthy nations have a vested interest in governments of developing countries being able to provide safety and hope to their citizens; otherwise what is now a refugee crisis will become the new normal. Businesses benefit from people moving out of poverty and having more money to spend - an aim they share with many NGOs, even if they are coming at the problem from different starting points. Stars attaching themselves to substantive social and environmental issues helps make meaning of their celebrity status to themselves and their audiences.

And environmental issues affect all of us on the planet.  The actions of each of us -- individual and community, company and country -- impact the others.

Understanding and communicating these vested interests – as well as the shared goals where they overlap -- increases trust between the different types of organizations and makes effective partnership more likely. Every country and every type of organization represented on the stage in Central Park benefits from ending extreme poverty, fighting inequality and injustice, and combatting climate change, the three overarching aims of the SDGs. The 17 individual SDGs offer guidelines for practical co-operation between different countries and different types of organizations.

SDG No. 2, for example – to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture – provides the blueprint for rich and poor governments, NGOs and food companies, citizens and agrochemical businesses to work together. The common goal gives each group something tangible on which to build partnerships, while acknowledging each other’s separate objectives.

SDG No. 6 – to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all – is the framework within which NGOs and governments, business and celebrities like Matt Damon can work together in common purpose, without being distracted by their differences.

Each of the SDGs requires business to get involved in some shape or form if they are to be achieved. Achieving gender equality needs the active participation of private-sector employers and can be accelerated – or slowed – by mass consumer brands that talk to girls. Providing access to energy needs the enthusiastic involvement of energy businesses. Anyone wanting to make cities sustainable has to work with the construction industry. The list goes on.

And if the world wants businesses to get involved, we have to recognize that they are businesses and that they need to behave as businesses. Good businesses for sure, but businesses all the same, which means making a commercial return on their activities. We all need to recognize that, and businesses need to be comfortable with admitting that, to themselves and to their stakeholders.

There is clearly an increasing transparency in this, driven by the transparency of the Internet, but there are still plenty of voices criticizing businesses for wanting to make money, and plenty of businesses still shy about saying they need to make sustainability commercially sustainable.

The end of September also marked, with a little less fanfare, Salt Communications' accreditation as a B Corp. We are among the first 62 companies announced at the launch of B Corporation in the U.K. and are proud to be in such good company, along with established U.S. B Corporations like Ben & Jerry’s, Etsy and Patagonia. As part of the accreditation process, we had, as all B Corps have, to amend our articles of association to include not only running the business as a going commercial concern, but also to have a material positive impact on society and the environment.

This is our own small reflection of what we saw on-stage in New York – a pointer to a future where commercial, social and environmental are publicly recognized as intrinsically connected and mutually dependent.

Andy Last is CEO and co-founder of salt communications. He leads salt Social Purpose, which helps businesses and brands find the right social mission and communicate it in a way that promotes business growth openly and enthusiastically alongside wider social benefits. Since 2000, salt has worked with organisations including Kimberly-Clark, ManpowerGroup and Unilever, helping create social missions for brands like Andrex, Knorr, Domestos and Lifebuoy.

Sustainability non-profit, Forum for the Future, has invited members of the beauty and personal care industry to become part of a new leadership group that will steer the sector toward producing better and more sustainable products for consumers.

This follows a year of intensive work by the Forum, supported by major retailers Target and Walmart, in an industry-wide Beauty and Personal Care Products Sustainability project.

Bringing together stakeholders across the entire value chain – from ingredient manufacturers and scientists to consumer brands and retailers – it aimed to diagnose the challenges and opportunities in the beauty and personal care industry and decide on measures to deliver more sustainable products on shelves.

Shawn Townzen, vp, Personal Care for Walmart said: “Walmart is pleased to support this initiative that brings together members of the beauty and personal care industry to lead the sector toward permanent and positive change. We appreciate Forum’s innovative work to change the system and invite suppliers and other retailers to join in this collaborative effort to put products on shelves that are both affordable and sustainable.”

Forum for the Future has also published a new think piece report, Driving the Big Shift to Sustainability, which shares insights from the process of bringing diverse stakeholders together to achieve widespread change.

The think piece outlines the steps taken throughout the in-depth system diagnosis process and the gaps and opportunities uncovered. These include the need to improve access to information across the supply chain, the lack of shared criteria to evaluate the sustainability of products, and the need to stimulate more innovation in key areas such as the development of new preservatives.

Click here to get involved.

Getting the environmental message out there can be tough these days. The media spotlight can be hard to grab, particularly when the message has to do with a major corporations' alleged long-term avoidance of an issue that directly ties into climate change. So often, journalists go for the flashy banners -- the time-sensitive breaking news that they think readers want to see -- rather than reporting on something we've inherently known for years. Such is the story of advancing climate change.

But last Thursday, Bill McKibben found a way to turn that around. It was an artful, if not simple, co-opt of major media -- and a skillful demonstration of something he has been saying to audiences repeatedly recently: Get arrested and speak out.

Last year the CEO of 350.org phrased his message a little differently as he stood before a gathering of wine-sipping Seattlites who had come to hear him speak on the dilemma of Keystone XL: Don't be afraid to get arrested, but wear a suit. Challenge normal perception of what a person who cares about the planet looks and sounds like. Take part in what he calls the "collaboration with the rest of the world to stop climate change in its tracks."

It's not an unfamiliar tenor for McKibben, whose 2013 arrest in front of the White House helped shine a light on public objection to the Keystone XL pipeline project. It also set a benchmark for hundreds of students and thousands of protesters at a Washington, D.C. event a year later.

But this year, the issue isn't as physically evident as a pipeline that was due to cut a swath through some of North America's most environmentally sensitive lands. It's something more nebulous than that, but just as pressing: a corporation's blatant disregard for actions that it knew could herald irreversible climate change.

"ExxonMobil could have changed history for the better. Had it sounded the alarm — had it merely said ‘our internal research shows the world’s scientists are right’ — it would have saved a quarter century of wheel-spinning," wrote McKibben as he sat in front of an Exxon gas station in Burlington, Vermont, waiting to be arrested.

His protest worked. Since McKibben's arrest, social media has had a field day. Dozens of publications have covered the story about the environmental writer-turned-activist who, with the moxie of an entire gathering, staged a one-man protest outside a gas station and reminded the world of the story. And within minutes, months-old news that was already being relegated to the back pages suddenly inspired a reason for outrage .

And the outrage is still making its way to print. Lawmakers, including presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), are calling for a Justice Department investigation into ExxonMobil's prior knowledge that its actions would increase global warming -- while maintaining its assertion that there was no such thing as climate change.

So far, no one has asked why lawmakers didn't propose the investigation earlier this year when the story first began to break. But perhaps that just goes to show the foresight of McKibben's plan: It not only moved the press, but also inspired the country's congressional leaders to speak up.

McKibben's "silly" one-man-stand is, among other things, a masterful lesson to future generations of how big-media priorities work -- and how environmental activism succeeds. It's anyone's guess, however, how well we as a global population with a looming environmental crisis will heed the message.

Images: 1) Michael Elleray; 2) LinhDo; 3) Christopher Michel

 

In a closely-watched order, the Virginia State Corporation Commission rejected Dominion Virginia Power’s proposal to build, on its own, the first large-scale solar energy facility in its monopoly service territory. The commission ruled the utility must seek third-party alternatives and ordered it to request bids.

In its initial proposal, Dominion stated it would build a 20 megawatt facility near Remington, Virginia, at a cost of $2,350 per kilowatt with an average operating time of 22 percent. A new state law requires Dominion to provide evidence about whether lower-cost alternatives exist. Seeing none, the commissioners voted to issue the order, making it public earlier this week.

The order expressly leaves open the possibility that, if selected, a third party could own a system and sell the power to Dominion. That would be a first in Virginia.

During recent legislative sessions, solar energy companies and clean energy advocates have appealed to state lawmakers for the opportunity to compete to build solar projects in Virginia. State law now gives them that chance.

“The comparatively high cost to consumers and low capacity factor (operating time),” the SCC wrote, “underscore that serious and credible efforts, as required by the General Assembly, must be made to determine whether lower-cost alternatives for obtaining renewable power are available in the market from third parties.”

The commission’s order further stated it was not be in the public interest for Dominion to build solar projects “at any price, no matter how burdensome to consumers.”

“We are disappointed in this setback in our efforts to add renewable energy,” Dominion said in a statement. “We are evaluating our options regarding this project.”

Dominion pledged to build 56 megawatts of solar capacity in the Commonwealth by year-end 2016 and a total of 500 megawatts by 2020. The 20-megawatt Remington project would provide enough power for roughly 5,000 homes at peak generation.

In written testimony filed in June, Francis Hodsoll, who leads the Virginia Chapter of the regional solar energy industries association, stated: “Only competitive transparent procurement processes can determine whether [Dominion] received the most competitive capital costs.” The market for solar, he added, “is very competitive” and “should provide lower cost electricity than the [Dominion] monopoly.”

A key issue is the ability of third-party projects to draw on financing, with tax incentives, that can make third-party solar less expensive than what Dominion wants to charge and recover in its rates.

In summarizing testimony given during a hearing this past summer, Hodsoll wrote: “The competitive market has a lower cost of financing, lower overhead costs, and can more efficiently pass through the tax benefits to the electricity consumer. Further, Dominion’s failure to deploy any significant amounts of solar despite years of trying harms Virginia’s electricity customers by squandering federal support set to expire at the end of 2016. Finally, Dominion’s approach places unnecessary performance and market price risks on their customers.”

Dominion still has the option to pursue the Remington project on its own. But its proposal will now have to beat any responses by third parties as measured by the system’s cost and operating time. Whether a solar developer can offer a better combination of the two in a state without a renewable energy requirement and companion renewable energy credits, nor net-metering credits on large solar system, remains to be seen.

Image credit: Flickr/Arlington County