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By Christophe Fauconier 

At Unilever, a team develops partnerships with the World Toilet Organization and Vietnamese institutions to build decent sanitation in schools. Another fosters the development of a network of community caterers with grassroots partners in South Africa to fight crime by fighting hunger. At Coca-Cola, a group engineers partnerships with the Chinese government and a crowd-funding program to create clean water access for the millions of children around the country who currently drink unsafe water.

These are not CSR or sustainability experts; they are marketers, and these activities are part of their brand plans. So if you believe the job of a brand manager is to create new products and ad campaigns, you may have missed something…

Marketing today is expected to not only create value by making products and services desirable, but also to nurture purpose brands that can better the world with shared value strategies. A recent launch by Coca-Cola China shows how it totally re-invents the job of brand managers.

Less rational sense, more human sense

As humans we use two basic models to make sense of our daily lives, but as marketers we have long been stuck in one of them.

The first assumes we weigh our alternatives, and then choose what yields the most value – the perfect economist in action. We make decisions because they make rational sense. This way of thinking can be very useful in much of what has to be done in business, but when it comes to creating value with a sense of purpose, empathy and imagination, it falls short.

The second model is quite different. It assumes that people make decisions that make human sense, based on shared identities created by common passions, values, missions and beliefs. It departs from the view that people want to contribute to creating a world that they can value and that they act accordingly.

In a more social world, people have new expectations for businesses — and for themselves. They want to make their life and their consumption behaviors more meaningful, and they expect brands to help. In that context, the second approach makes more sense. For Coca-Cola, it allowed to crack a solution to a business issue that the “rational” view of not solve.

Less me, more we

When Coca-Cola tried to grow profitably its water business in China – a low margin, commoditized business, it struggled with a simple question: when all drinking waters look and taste the same, how do you build more value on your brand?

In China, 40 million kids do not have access to clean, drinkable water. Water is seen as a source of life, almost a human right. It’s a cheap, but emotional resource, so many people would feel engaged if given a chance to help these kids. Coca-Cola decided to solve this problem – and to make it a sales argument.

But Coke could not solve the issue by their own means. Part of the business problem is that water provides very little profit, so the ability for Coke to fund full-scale change would have been limited. Coca-Cola shaped the problem so that a collective solution could be put in place.

The brand team asked the Coca-Cola foundation to help develop a system that could produce clean water in villages, and put in place a few prototypes. Coke leveraged then its scale to spur a tribe into action: the government, external commercial and NGO partners, consumers, were brought together to participate in fundraising programs. Coke offered consumers the chance to donate small amounts through a QR code and online platform. They launched a higher price variant of their “Ice Dew” brand, and committed to use some of its proceeds to fund the program. They offered people to join sports events and raise funds with their friends. The advertising for the brand celebrated the exchange between a Chinese city dweller and rural children. It all made change easy, fun, and socially desirable...

The Pure Joy launch was powered by the idea that "we" matters more than "me." It engaged consumers, and put everyone into action. The business brief turned into a movement, that delivers on purpose and profit.

Less guilt, more build

Too often, “purpose” comes with a narrative of guilt. It is a “social responsibility," a license to make money. But it’s not guilt that people want to be part of —neither the people inside the company, nor the people it serves. They want to be part of something great, something that changes the world, even if only in some small way. They want “build” narratives.

To “build," Pure Joy is designed to scale. Coke leverages its brand for purpose, it distribution system for purpose, and even its long-term partnerships with other companies or institutions for purpose. It crafts a narrative that many people want to be a part of, and that's how true impact is made.

Pursuing purpose for guilt comes with the danger of creating stories without substance, without action, and worst of all, without participants. To make “Pure Joy” work, Coke’s marketers learned to work with an ecosystem of stakeholders, leverage their different interests, create engagement, design the solution with them.

But it’s not the guilt narrative that people want to be a part — not the people inside the company’s four walls and not the people it serves. No, they want build narratives, impact narratives. They want to be a part of something great, something that can change the world, even if only in some small way.

A new era in marketing?

The rise of purpose brands, it seems, is redefining the role for marketing and brand stewardship as we know it. Building purpose brands requires a new set of skills and a new set of practices; skills that focus on creating shared value for entire eco-systems, rather than on extracting value from well defined categories. But the good news is that it may turn them into the most impactful change agents of their generation — activists that leverage the power of purpose with profit, to craft for a better future for society and business as a whole.

 Image credit: Chi King, Flickr

Christophe Fauconier is CEO and founder and Benoit Beaufils,  founding partner of brand consultancy Innate Motion, co-authors of the book ‘Create value people to people, another way to do marketing’.

With developing countries driving economic growth and energy use worldwide, adopting climate-friendly clean energy and sustainable development pathways in these nations has become a priority for the U.N., World Bank Group and other multilateral lending organizations, as well as governments, around the world.

Providing local small businesses, cooperatives and communities with streamlined, cost-effective access to international climate funds continues to be a major sticking point, however. Voluntary, private carbon offset credit systems providers and international organizations founded on principles of equitable, sustainable development have stepped into the breach, reaching out to communities with less in the way of capital, market access and other resources.

An example of this is a collaborative agreement between Fairtrade International and The Gold Standard. Joining forces to leverage and capitalize on their respective strengths, the two organizations on June 13 opened up the formative-stage Fairtrade Carbon Credits (FCC) Standard to an initial round of public consultation.

Shared value and principles

Leaders in their respective fields, Fairtrade International and The Gold Standard share a set of fundamental principles very much akin to those that form the foundation of triple bottom line businesses. With poorer, less developed populations most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, climate change mitigation and adaptation are central to the activities of both organizations.

Helping small producers, traders and consumers form partnerships that reduce poverty, improve living conditions and provide sustainable livelihoods for thousands of people around the world, Fairtrade Intenational standards and programs, the organization explains, “address the imbalance of power in trading relationships, unstable markets and the injustices of conventional trade, and foster sustainable development.”

The Gold Standard, for its part, is committed to ensuring that access to climate finance is both widespread and effective. For 10 years, it has been developing and managing results-driven carbon credit offset certification standards and projects “that promote best practice, assure strong governance and provide impact measurement." The initiative has been recognized by The World Bank's International Finance Corp. and WWF (World Wildlife Fund) for its high quality and integrity.

In signing a collaborative agreement to develop the FCC Standard program, Fairtrade International and The Gold Standard intend “to foster wider sustainable development through a landscape approach and provide greater access to the carbon markets for smallholders and rural communities in developing countries.”

In parallel with the U.N. Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and localized statutory markets such as the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and the U.S. Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), voluntary carbon credit offset markets are opening the door to for small, often poor communities in developing countries to access funding that fosters sustainable development.

Operating within the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), voluntary carbon offset credit standards programs such as The Gold Standard, the partners explain, enable “companies and individuals to offset their carbon emissions on a voluntary basis by purchasing Verified Emission Reductions (VERs), also known as carbon credits, generated from projects that either reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or capture carbon from the atmosphere.”

The Fairtrade Carbon Credits Standard

Through the FCC Standard, Fairtrade International intends to offer “disadvantaged segments of society” in the Global South the opportunity to access climate mitigation and adaptation funding by carrying out climate mitigation projects that qualify for FCCs. These can then be sold to investors worldwide looking to offset carbon and GHG emissions.

As the partner organizations explain, FCCs “will be generated through a range of different scopes of activities, related to agriculture, renewable energy, energy efficiency, and forest management. The FCC Standard furthermore aims to empower produces to address climate change and builds a path on which producers can increase their resilience to climate change effects.”

An FCC Standard pre-consultation phase involving some 100 stakeholders in regional workshops in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, including potential traders in Europe, was held prior to opening up the FCC for a first round of public consultation. A second public consultation round is slated to be held later this year in which additional program elements, such as pricing, will be discussed. Fairtrade International anticipates completing the FCC Standard by the end of this year.

*Images credit: Fairtrade International

Multinational consumer goods company Unilever is asking young leaders to prove what they’re doing to help build a sustainable future. Now, in the second year of its Sustainable Living Entrepreneurs Awards, the company — in partnership with Ashoka and the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership — is inviting young people (ages 30 and under) to come up with practical and innovative solutions to some of the world’s biggest sustainability challenges.

Seven stellar entrepreneurs will be awarded a total of more than €200,000 (US$272,000) in financial support, in addition to mentoring, to help scale their services or applications. The competition seeks to provided resources and recognition to solutions based on one or more of the following nine categories:

• Water, sanitation and hygiene


• Nutrition


• Water scarcity


• Greenhouse gases


• Waste


• Sustainable agriculture


• Smallholder farmers


• Opportunities for women


• Micro-Enterprise


• Tackling critical issues

Finalists will take part in a four-week online development program and a two-day accelerator workshop in Cambridge, U.K. before pitching to a panel of leading business and sustainability entrepreneurs in London.

Entries will be assessed on their level of innovation, measurable impact, financial sustainability and the overall leadership qualities of the entrepreneurship. The most influential entrepreneur will receive the HRH The Prince of Wales Young Sustainability Entrepreneur Prize.

Last year's competition winner was Gamal Albinsaid, 24, of Garbage Clinical Insurance in Indonesia. Gamal’s innovative project helps the poorest communities gain access to health services and education through the collection and recycling of garbage.

The competition deadline is August 1. To enter, submit your solutions online via the Ashoka Changemakers Platform. Seven finalists will be announced in October, and the accelerator workshop and final judging will take place in January 2015.

Image courtesy of Ashoka Greece Facebook Page

Supermarket giant Asda has become the first retailer in the world to open up its books and give a full disclosure of where and how it sources wild fish. This is coupled with an assessment of the sustainability of each fishery. 

The report – Asda Wild Fisheries Annual Review 2013 - covers all source fisheries used by Asda between January 1 2013 and 31 December 2013 and is the result of a collaboration between Sustainable Fisheries Partnership and the retailer.

The report names each fishery and provides practical information about location and catch methods as well as a sustainability assessment and information about eco-certifications, improvement projects and environmental impacts. 

The report is part of Asda’s commitment to ensure all of its wild seafood is responsibly sourced and sets a new benchmark for openness among companies that sell seafood. Asda has accepted that some fisheries still need work and has put plans in place to address these issues. For example, Asda has pledged that all ambient canned and pouched tuna will be either line-caught or caught using FAD-free methods by the end of 2014.

The report will become an annual publication and allow the public to judge Asda on its track record for sustainable seafood as well as finding out more about individual species. The assessment does not yet cover seafood from aquaculture (fish farming) but it is hoped this information will be included in the next report in 2015.

Commenting on the release of the report, Sarah North, head of the Oceans Campaign at Greenpeace UK, said: "Greenpeace applauds Asda for this bold display of honesty and transparency about the seafood they sell. Now Asda's customers in the UK will be armed with the information they need to choose more sustainable fish, and can follow Asda's journey as it continues to work hard to improve its seafood sourcing. We sincerely hope that other retailers in the UK and beyond now follow Asda's lead."

Blake Lee-Harwood,Strategy Director at Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, added:
“This is a milestone in corporate social responsibility regarding the oceans. Asda have taken a bold step in comprehensively disclosing where they source seafood and giving clear information about the sustainability of those fisheries. We look forward to this kind of reporting becoming an annual event and including seafood from aquaculture as well.”

You access the report here.

 

Picture credit: © Andrei Calangiu | Dreamstime Stock Photos
 

Environmental group Greenpeace has released a film online, highlighting its campaign against toy giant LEGO’s association with the oil company Shell. It deems the association ‘a collusion in the threat to the Arctic by promoting the controversial Shell brand on its toys’. 

Mel Evans, Arctic Campaigner at Greenpeace, said: “Every company has a responsibility to choose its partners and suppliers ethically. LEGO says it wants to leave a better world for children, yet it’s partnered with Shell, one of the biggest climate polluters on the planet, now threatening the pristine Arctic. That’s a terrible decision and its bad news for kids. We’re calling on LEGO to stand up for the Arctic, and for children, by ditching Shell for good.”

LEGO has responded to the campaign by posting a statement online from Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, president and ceo of the LEGO Group. He describes LEGO’s partnership with Shell as a way of putting “LEGO bricks into the hands of more children” and that LEGO “expect(s) that Shell lives up to their responsibilities wherever they operate”. He said LEGO “intend(s) to live up to the long term contract with Shell”.

You can watch the video, made by BAFTA-winning creative agency Don’t Panic, here. It has recently been suspended by YouTube, following a copyright claim from Warner Brothers.

 

Submitted by Guest Contributor

By Caroline Rees, President, Shift

In 2004, I was representing the U.K. Government in the United Nations Human Rights Commission (predecessor to today’s Human Rights Council) when the subject of business and human rights hit its agenda. The proposition was a set of draft human rights ‘Norms,’ supposedly binding on business.

Companies were furious: this looked like an attempt to foist onto them states’ international human rights obligations, which too many governments continued to fail to meet.  Civil society was equally exercised: too long had companies sought to argue that human rights had nothing to do with them, when all the evidence spoke to the contrary.

For many, a treaty seemed the only way forward.

Avoiding a Treaty

That argument helped focus some government minds. The Commission asked Kofi Annan, then UN Secretary-General, to appoint a representative to chart a way forward.  Professor John Ruggie was the appointed man. Over six years he ran a careful process of research, consultation and pilot work that led to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. This document set out the baseline expectations of both governments and business for ensuring that companies do not harm people’s fundamental human rights. It generated sufficient consensus among the previously warring factions for governments to endorse them in 2011 without changing a word.

Wind forward 10 years and one has a sense of déjà vu.

Human Rights: A Treaty

Last month, the Human Rights Council adopted a resolution (albeit with only 20 positive votes of a possible 47) that will see the establishment of an intergovernmental process to develop a broad-ranging treaty on business and human rights.

So has nothing changed? Are we back where we started? 

Quite the contrary. The current conversation bears little relation to that of 2004. The reality far less. 

No business associations or companies in the Geneva debate would today claim that human rights are not relevant for business. To suggest such has become ridiculous. Instead, the number and range of companies introducing human rights policies and due diligence processes, conducting and commissioning impact assessments, scrutinizing their business partners and product lines for human rights concerns is burgeoning.

But these are just symptoms of a new reality. 

Today, the UN is not the main attraction when it comes to generating change in business practices with regard to human rights. Nor should it be. The UN was needed to break past stale assumptions and catalyze a step change in thinking.  It was smart to do so through an unusual process – outsourced in order to both include but also reach beyond the realm of international human rights law – resulting in the UN Guiding Principles.

Implementing the UN Business and Human Rights Principles

Today, besides ever more hundreds of companies starting to implement the Guiding Principles, and now numerous governments developing action plans with the same aim, we have law societies discussing how corporate lawyers should be advising their clients on these issues, public and private finance institutions integrating human rights into their financing decisions, investors calling on companies in their portfolio to implement the Guiding Principles – and even divesting on human rights grounds, ever more jurisdictions – now joined by the European Union – requiring companies to report on their human rights performance, regional organizations adding their endorsement of the Guiding Principles, and trade unions and NGOs using the Guiding Principles in their advocacy work, to good effect. 

We are even starting to see some regulatory initiatives by governments and parliaments to mandate corporate human rights due diligence as defined by the Guiding Principles.

To underline that much more remains to be done is absolutely right.  But to suggest little or nothing has been done is quite wrong: arguably no human rights document of the United Nations has had more broad-ranging and serious uptake in so short a time for decades. 

Protecting Human Rights

Perhaps most importantly, companies today aren’t implementing the Guiding Principles because the UN said they should. They are implementing them because their home and host governments, financers, investors, workers and consumers are all saying they should; because their employees’ morale, their public reputation and even their bottom line increasingly depend on them doing so. 

So neither companies nor governments should fear that this development in Geneva is a diversion from, or dilution of, what has been achieved in the last 10 years.

John Ruggie and others have laid out the reasons why efforts to develop an all-encompassing business and human rights treaty (instead of targeting specific governance gaps) will struggle to deliver meaningful change. But ultimately, if the proposed treaty process is poorly defined and driven by political machinations not human rights principles, it will simply demonstrate its irrelevance.

And if – as I still hope – Geneva manages to salvage a good process, crafting a targeted agreement that can add real value, this will inevitably drive corporate practices in the same direction as called for by the UN Guiding Principles.

It will be years before we know which scenario wins out. Either way, putting the UN Guiding Principles into practice remains the only practical way forward and the imperatives for doing so grow unabated. 

A good treaty may add to them.  A bad treaty will not reduce them.

About the Author 

As a U.K. diplomat, Caroline Rees chaired the 2005 UN negotiations that requested Secretary-General Kofi Annan to appoint a Special Representative for Business and Human Rights.  From 2007 to 2011 she worked at Harvard Kennedy School as a senior advisor to John Ruggie, whom Annan had appointed to the role.  In 2011 she founded Shift - a non-profit center for business and human rights practice, chaired by John Ruggie.  Shift works with companies, governments and their stakeholders to put the UN Guiding Principles into practice. 

With the lines drawn over Vermont’s recent passage of a GMO labeling law, two advocacy organizations have announced that they will file a motion to intervene in a lawsuit launched against Vermont by national food manufacturers.  A third has stated it will file an amicus curiae in support of the embattled state law. A motion to intervene is usually filed when an organization or person feels they would be affected by the suit, such as consumers, grocers and farmers in Vermont.

Paul Burns, executive director of Vermont Public Interest Group, said in an interview last week that VPIRG will be filing a motion to intervene in the lawsuit filed by the Grocery Manufacturers Association et al. With approximately 30,000 members, VPIRG is one of the largest consumer and environmental groups in the state.

“VPIRG was one of the groups that led the charge in passing the law, so naturally we have a strong interest in seeing it take effect," said Burns. “Our members are concerned about the possible health impacts of consuming GE foods, as well as a range of negative impacts on the environment linked to GE food production.” Burns said that VPIRG expects to file the motion to intervene sometime this week.

VPIRG is a coalition partner of Vermont Right to Know, which represents more than 200 grocers, manufacturers and other interested parties across the state and worked to get the labeling law passed. It’s also supported by a small but growing number of members from outside of Vermont.

“We’re very interested in being as involved as we can be at every stage of the process to defend the law that we helped to pass,” Burns said, noting that there are a number of other local and national organizations that have expressed interest in the motion.

One is the Organic Consumer Association, a national advocacy organization based in the heart of Minnesota’s farming region. Katherine Paul, the organization’s associate director, said that OCA has been a large supporter of the legislation.

“The Organic Consumers Association since just January of this year has invested over $250,000 in helping to pass the Vermont law,” Paul said. “Some of that money was spent to help provide outside legal advice on the constitutionality of the law even before it was passed. And we will support any efforts undertaken to either intervene this law and/or fight it in the courts if we have to.”

The Center for Food Safety declined to say whether it would be joining the motion. However, Senior Attorney George Kimbrell said that the center was committed to preserving Vermont’s right to require labeling of foods made from genetically modified organisms.

“We at CFS vigorously supported Act 120 throughout its legislative process, as we have with GE food labeling laws across the country, for over a decade.  In 2013-14 alone, 70 GE labeling bills were introduced in 30 states,” Kimbrell said.  “And that GE food labeling is central to CFS’s fundamental mission to protect the public and the environment and provide transparency in our food system.  With regard to the litigation on Act 120, CFS remains fully committed to doing everything we can to help protect the important and legally sound law from the Big Food industry’s baseless and irresponsible legal challenge.”

Rural Vermont (RV), another VRK partner, announced that it will file an amicus brief rather than joining as an intervenor.

“We’re a very small organization and don’t really have the resources to retain legal council to take us through that process,” said Andrea Stender, executive director of RV. Stender said the decision not to join as intervenor was not a reflection of the organization’s commitment to the spirit of the law. “We’re obviously very committed to doing what we can to ensure that the state is able to prevail in defending this law, because we worked very hard to get it passed. And a lot of Vermonters want to see labels on genetically engineered food.”

The amicus curiae filing will allow the organization to file a brief to ensure the court takes certain information into consideration when making its finding.

And while advocacy organizations have been busy strategizing the legal implications of the lawsuit, ice cream fans have been coming up with their own ways of lending Vermont some moral and monetary support.  Last week the ice cream line Ben & Jerry’s announced that it would be temporarily renaming one of its products “in support of Vermont’s first-in-the-nation GMO-labeling law.” It will also donate $1 from every sale of that newly named “Food Fight Fudge Brownie” (formerly called Chocolate Brownie) made at its Vermont locations.

“This is a pretty simple issue,” stated co-founder Jerry Greenfield. “Vermonters want the right to know what’s in their food.”

Ben & Jerry’s, which is now owned by Unilever, originated in Vermont. It has a long history of supporting advocacy issues including GMO labeling laws. In 2005 the company became the first ice cream company to use Fair Trade certified sources. It has been working toward converting all of its sourcing to non-GMO ingredients -- a requirement for maintaining membership in Fair Trade, but also a well-publicized priority for the popular ice cream company.

Not all may be happy with the increasing publicity over Ben & Jerry's staunch support of GMO labeling, however. Unilever is a member of the "Big Foods" associations that are currently suing to stop Vermont's GMO labeling law. However, the corporation has so far continued to honor the deal it made at the time of the company's purchase, which was to permit the Ben & Jerry's board to continue to exercise leadership in advocacy issues. With a clear support of Ben & Jerry's Fair Trade efforts, the agreement doesn't seem to be hurting either entity.

Image of sign: Public Domain

Image of Ben & Jerry's truck: Hede2000

I consider myself a regular customer at Walgreens -- I shop there at least once or twice a week. For some reason I thought I knew the company quite well, at least when it comes to sustainability issues, but this week I’ve learned a new fact that I wasn’t aware of:

Walgreens is considering a move abroad to lower its tax rate.

As Andrew Ross Sorkin reported in the New York Times, Walgreens “is now considering moving the company’s headquarters to Switzerland as part of a merger with Alliance Boots, a European drugstore chain. Why? To lower Walgreen’s tax bill even further.”

According to Americans for Tax Fairness, Sorkin adds, “a move by Walgreen to Switzerland would most likely cost United States taxpayers about $4 billion over five years.”

So what does it mean exactly, and what should Walgreens customers like me do about it? Here are five things to think about:

1. Walgreens is not alone

First, let’s be clear – from a legal standpoint there’s nothing wrong with this move. As Americans for Tax Fairness explains in a report published last month, Walgreens is basically just taking advantage of a tax loophole allowing American companies to reincorporate offshore, typically in a tax haven, when just 20 percent of their stock is owned outside of the U.S.

Second, according to a report published last month by Citizens for Tax Justice and the U.S. PIRG “many large U.S.-based multinational corporations avoid paying U.S. taxes by using accounting tricks to make profits made in America appear to be generated in offshore tax havens—countries with minimal or no taxes.” One of the report’s findings is that at least 362 companies, making up 72 percent of the Fortune 500, operate subsid­iaries in tax haven jurisdictions as of 2013. Among these companies you can find Apple, Nike, American Express, Bank of America, PepsiCo and Pfizer.

2. Sustainability, innovation and tax avoidance

Walgreens prides itself on being committed to both innovation and sustainability. In the last shareholder meeting in January 2013, CEO Greg Wasson told company shareholders about the many ways the company is "push[ing] the needle on innovation, including expansion of “the "community pharmacy" role of its pharmacists and nurse practitioners in filling the gap in primary care that has been growing in the US for many years and adding more fresh foods to its selection of groceries.”

Another example Wasson gave for the company’s innovativeness was the company’s first "zero-energy" store in Evanston, Ill., “which generates more than enough electricity to power all of its own needs.” The store, the Christian Science Monitor reported, packs in more than 800 solar panels, two wind turbines and geothermal technology, generating 28 percent more electricity than the store will need.

This is all great and goes hand-in-hand with what Wasson has to say about social responsibility on Walgreens’ website:

“Walgreens is much more than a drugstore chain. We are part of the communities we serve and we share their values and objectives: good health, a close community spirit and a healthy environment. We are absolutely committed to supporting individuals, organizations and neighborhoods as they work to achieve these goals.”

But do tax avoidance strategies go hand-in-hand with innovation and sustainability? I doubt that. It might be considered innovative, but I don’t think you’ll find one community in the U.S. where Walgreens operates that will support this move or think it demonstrates Walgreens’ commitment to the communities it serves.

3. Why a legal effort to lower tax rates is unsustainable

It’s not that all of the money Walgreens will save by paying lower tax rates will go to its executives or stay abroad. Some of it will probably go back to customers through lower prices and to its shareholders through greater return on their investments. Still, my guess is that for most of Walgreens’ stakeholders in the U.S. the impact of this move would be negative.

As Joseph Stieglitz explains in a paper the Roosevelt Institute published in May, “Tax arbitrage has become a major and highly profitable activity for firms – an activity with no social returns but high social costs.” These social costs include vast amounts of lost revenue for the U.S. treasury and the exporting of much-needed jobs to other countries.

All in all, I believe that, as a 2006 SustainAbility report suggested, companies should treat the payment of tax as a key part of their social contract. After all, why should there be any difference between the way companies address local water resources, local social issues or their share in the tax base of communities in which they operate? These are all parts of the same puzzle.

4.  Does it mean that Walgreens is not sustainable as it claims to be?

There is no simple answer here, as the company is taking both sustainable and unsustainable steps. The way to decide which one matters more should be by looking at the company’s approach to what I call ‘practices you might have a hard time selling to your shareholders.’

Now, it’s not that difficult to explain to your shareholders why “zero-energy” stores or selling more fresh food in the stores make sense. It is, however, not easy to “sell” to shareholders the idea of tax fairness. Therefore, I think this is the right place to test Walgreens’ sustainability, and unfortunately at the moment it fails in it.

5. What should Walgreens’ customers do?

The adoption of tax fairness approach by companies is usually the result of regulation, leadership or pressure of stakeholders. Since I doubt that we’ll see anytime soon an effort in the U.S. Congress to close tax loopholes (like the one we saw now in the EU) or any leadership at Walgreens similar we saw at CVS, we’re only left with the third option.

If customers will show Walgreens they’re unhappy with its move, Walgreens may rethink if this move is worthwhile. Otherwise, nothing will change.

So, Walgreens customers, this is up to you now: Would you do something about it? Feel free to share your thoughts!

Image credit: Phillip, Flickr Creative Commons

Raz Godelnik is an Assistant Professor of Strategic Design and Management at Parsons The New School of Design. You can follow Raz on Twitter.

Despite the increase in recycling programs, new technologies turning trash into energy, growing consumer awareness about electronic waste and more efforts made to compost, trash is still a mounting problem. This is particularly true in Europe, where mandates to reduce landfill waste have not stopped residents from pitching the majority of their garbage. Now the European Commission is trying to nudge the economic bloc into adopting opt a more circular economy.

To that end, late last week the EC last week adopted a framework to ramp up waste diversion and recycling efforts in its member states. Moving past the current nations’ obligations to divert half of their trash from landfills by 2020, these proposals are far more aggressive. By 2030, Europeans will be asked to recycle 70 percent of municipal waste and 80 percent of packaging waste. The EC also recommends a total ban on the burial of recyclables in landfills by 2025 and suggests new proposals for slashing marine waste at sea and food waste on land.

To score a buy-in from the bevy of states that together form the world’s largest economy but at the same time comprise a fickle group, the EC is positioning this proposal as one centered on economic growth.

According to the EC, this “circular economy package” is not just about bans and reductions, but also about creating wealth. The authors of this framework suggest an ambitious zero-waste program could generate up to 580,000 jobs, would save European industry €630 billion annually (US$856 billion) and prevent the loss of valuable materials that would otherwise take up space in municipal dumps. The framework also promises additional economic benefits, an example being a steady increase in GDP due to the continued boost in resource productivity.

So how will this shift to a zero-waste economy work? For now the EC is supporting this circular economic plan with more suggested initiatives. Among them include a “green employment” initiative; a “green action plan” for small- and medium-sized enterprises; and plan to ensure the building and construction industries are greener. Eventually these frameworks will end up as proposed legislation to be passed in Brussels.

The devil, of course, is in the details. Not only are EC member states sure to squabble over how to get this done, but also the drive to eliminate waste will require close engagement of various stakeholder groups. Even more businesses will have to agree to a zero-waste agenda for this to succeed at the industry level — and the big elephant in the room of course, will be consumers, who have become accustomed to cheap disposable goods. The EC claims consumer education and new services will be a large part of any such plan — and they will have to be. This is not just about recycling: Product designers and engineers will have to rethink how to “design out” waste at the conceptual stage if, says the EC, products will be “easier to maintain, repair, upgrade, manufacture or recycle.” The fact so many consumer goods, such as electronics, are made to have a short lifespan and end up being pitched is a large factor in this “disposable society” in which we live.

Posturing aside, something has to be done. Europe is running out of landfill space, and projects such as waste-to-energy plants and textile recycling by retailers may plug a few gaps but pose their own challenges and controversies. Mandates and regulations are the easy tasks — the real work will be convincing people how they can benefit from changing the way we have lived — the way to which most of us on both sides of the Atlantic have been accustomed for the last half-century.

Image credit: Wikipedia (Cezary p)

Leon Kaye currently lives in the United Arab Emirates, where he works for the Abu Dhabi office of APCO, a communications consultancy. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter.

As the world begins to awaken to the looming food crisis -- how we will feed 2 billion more people by the year 2050 -- investors are turning to a place not typically associated with its agricultural bounty, but a region that National Geographic Magazine (NatGeo) is calling “The Next Breadbasket”:  sub-Saharan Africa.  In its July edition, NatGeo’s Joel K. Bourne Jr. (aided by predictably stunning photos from Robin Hammond) points a wide lens at the issues raised by the creation of giant agricultural developments in sub-Saharan Africa, including some of the potential benefits as well as the likely pitfalls.

First, why sub-Saharan Africa?  The short answer is that the region has the most potential upside, or what is referred to as "yield gap," on Earth.  This essentially means that Africa is home to an enormous amount of arable land, yet the continent produces "roughly the same yield Roman farmers achieved  ... in a good year during the rule of Caesar."  Put another way, less than 5 percent of arable land in the sub-Saharan area is currently irrigated, and farms in the region are not reaching anything near their potential output.

This is likely true for a number of obvious reasons, and NatGeo’s Bourne lists the clear culprits:  poor infrastructure, limited markets, weak governance and brutal civil wars.  The other key ingredient is the amenability of African governments, some of which are willing to overlook (or inadequately safeguard) the property rights of their citizens in favor of influxes of foreign cash and the attendant benefits.

The “why now” is two-fold.  On the one hand is the impending food crisis, which is centered on the African continent and which, for most of Africa, is not really impending but has been plaguing the region for years.  Second, there's the real driving force:  the potential monetary upside for investors.  As Bourne puts it, “Since 2007 the near-record prices of corn, soybeans, wheat, and rice have set off a global land rush by corporate investors eager to lease or buy land in countries where acreage is cheap, governments are amenable, and property rights often ignored.”  Large Chinese and Brazilian companies have eyed the “millions of acres of fallow land and plentiful water available for irrigation” and seen the potential for massive profits.  It seems only a matter of time before others join the party as well.  In fact, Bourne points out that a recent conference in New York for agricultural investors drew some "800 financial leaders from around the globe who manage nearly three trillion dollars in investments."

The potential problems, from a human rights perspective, are manifold, and the line that opens the NatGeo piece nicely frames the primary risk:  "She never saw the big tractor coming."  The article goes on to detail how a Mozambican woman and her family watched their farm be taken over by a Chinese corporation that was in the process of building a 50,000 acre farm in Mozambique's Limpopo River Delta.  Corporate land-grabs in emerging markets are not new, but nothing tees-up the possibility for widespread abuse like a potential gold rush. So, this specific issue in this particular place and time presents one of the primary human rights issues we face as we edge closer to a true, worldwide food crisis -- a crisis which will only be exacerbated by the impacts of global warming, predicted to hit those most vulnerable the hardest.

The potential benefits flowing from the agricultural development of sub-Saharan Africa are, however, quite alluring.  Experts suggest that, if farmers in the region can raise their yields to 2 tons of grain per acre -- up from the current regional average of half a ton, and as compared to the 3 tons achieved in the U.S., China and most of Europe -- they could not only better feed themselves but could actually export food, leading to much-needed cash for African farmers and much-needed food for the rest of the world.  The need for more food in this part of the world is obvious.  Nearly a quarter of the population in sub-Saharan Africa is malnourished; in Mozambique, to take just one example, almost half of the children under 5 suffer from the deadly effects of malnutrition.

Yet, what is the likelihood that these benefits actually accrue to the Africa farmers and their families and neighbors who undoubtedly need them the most?  If history is a reliable guide, the answer seems pretty clear: not terribly likely.  Africa, after all, is the place that birthed the theory of the resource curse, and the continent is no stranger to the exploitation of that which naturally occurs on and beneath its land -- think conflict diamonds in Liberia, or the oil wells in Nigeria.

At this juncture, it appears that there is little that will stem the infusion of cash into the region, but in order for it to benefit more than just corrupt African heads of state and greedy investors, land rights must be secured -- and there must be non-governmental oversight of the governments and accountability demanded by investors.  If those things are achieved, the potential is there to benefit businesses, communities and governments alike.  Not only might hungry people get fed, but infrastructure could also be developed and food security protected.

Bourne’s NatGeo piece is a must-read, and it covers additional aspects of the issue including a potential middle ground and some interesting success stories (and failures).  I hope to cover these and other additional angles in future pieces.

Image credit: Flickr/afronie