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Despite the fact that air transportation only accounts for around 2.5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions today, it is considered to be one of the more difficult sectors to decarbonize, meaning its impact will be increasingly felt as time goes by. On top of that, since emissions from the sector are growing at a faster clip than previously estimated, by 2050 aviation could consume up to one quarter of the world’s carbon budget; that is, the maximum amount of CO2 that can be emitted to keep global temperature rise within 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial levels.

A partnership that could help reduce aviation emissions

Measures to address this problematic trend are therefore likely to gain increasing attention and importance as we move towards mid-century. Consequently, DHL Global Forwarding’s partnership with United Airlines to purchase sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) signifies a step in the right direction to address the impact that the air transportation sector will increasingly have on the environment if left unchecked. The CEO of DHL Global Forwarding U.S., David Goldberg, says in the press release that through this partnership, “We are very proud to take another step on our sustainability roadmap towards zero emissions.”

Freight forwarding as an industry is largely invisible to the average consumer yet is a vital one in getting goods from manufacturers around the world to their global marketplaces. It is a part of the broader logistics industry but distinguished by the fact that forwarders are typically non-asset-based operations: They don’t operate their own ships or aircraft but instead work with ocean and airline carriers to move products on behalf of their shipper customers. And it’s a huge multi-billion dollar industry, one projected to generate revenues of around $207 billion by 2026.

So, how partnerships operate in the forwarding business can bring about significant changes at scale. DHL Global Forwarding’s partnership with United Airlines, as a part of the Eco-Skies Alliance program, will purchase 3.4 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuel this year to reduce emissions. In doing so, this program will provide a mechanism for shippers to claim carbon offset certificates through DHL Global Forwarding’s “book-and-claim” mechanism.  

Could sustainable aviation fuel investments make a difference?

Clearly, on its own, this program will not solve the problem global aviation is projected to cause. Nevertheless, it does offer a business model that is scalable and increasingly meets the demands of DHL Global Forwarding’s customers who in turn, are trying to make their supply chains more sustainable. In any case, it’s an innovation that can help to move the needle in the right direction.

Because there is a significant cost premium for SAF, book-and-claim is an opt-in program. Shippers who participate will pay a fee per kilogram of freight moved under the mechanism, which will contribute to the use of SAF regardless of whether their freight flies on planes using it.

At the end of the year, DHL will provide participating customers with a certificate showing their resultant carbon offset, which the company says will be fully audited. In turn, shippers can use the certificates in their own corporate responsibility or sustainability reporting. Though there is still work to be done to formulate SAF certification into a formally recognized standard, the World Economic Forum sees this concept as an industry frontrunner, according to DHL’s press release.

Customers want more sustainable choices, and DHL is responding

DHL Global Forwarding surveys its customers annually and the findings are instructive for the potential demand for this program. “Over 80 percent of customers are interested in sustainable solutions,” Bianca O’Brien, DHL Global Forwarding’s strategic programs and GoGreen manager for the Americas, told us, adding, “there is increasing demand from customers asking what we are doing and how we can help them.”

Consequently, the company expects robust demand for this program. Currently, book-and-claim is a pilot with select shippers but is to be made available to all DHL Global Forwarding customers later this year.

A point of interest is that DHL Global Forwarding describes the book-and-claim mechanism as a carbon “insetting” mechanism, as distinct from an offsetting one. Insetting describes a process where the degree of carbon avoidance is derived from within the industry sector directly.

“In 2018, less than one percent [of voluntary investment in carbon offsets] went towards decarbonizing transportation directly,” O'Brien told us, “[and] most of it goes to forestry.” The book-and-claim mechanism redirects this by allowing DHL Global Forwarding, via the use of SAF, to reduce the carbon footprint caused in the transportation process itself. Importantly, it’s worth noting that as well as avoiding fossil fuels, the sustainable aviation fuel itself will be derived from waste-based biofuels that do not compete with land use for food production.

A vision for sustainable aviation fuel

According to the press release, the President of United Airlines Cargo, Jan Krems, sees SAF as a long-term, permanent solution for aviation in order to reduce carbon emissions. In addition, Deutsche Post DHL Group – the parent of DHL Global Forwarding - plans to increase the blend of SAF in its operations by more than 30 percent by 2030 and aims to give preference to working with carriers with strong environmental performance.

DHL Global Forwarding sees itself as an industry leader in making supply chains more sustainable. The company’s GoGreen division was launched in 2008, with one of its goals to be 30 percent more carbon efficient by 2020 - a milestone the company achieved a few years early, in 2016. O’Brien told us the organization also aims to have 80 percent of all employees GoGreen certified across the group so that a broad understanding of sustainability objectives is understood and applied within the company.

The parent company, Deutsche Post DHL Group, aims to reduce all logistics-related emissions to zero by 2050, claiming the group’s CO2 efficiency has already improved by 35 percent since 2007. This partnership with United Airlines will contribute towards these targets.

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When McCain released its latest sustainability report, the company also committed to embracing regenerative agriculture. The world’s largest producer of frozen potato products - from waffle-cut fries to treats that look like a smiley-faced emoji - is pledging to cultivate 100 percent of its potatoes, growing across 370,000 acres worldwide, from the use of regenerative practices by 2030. Regenerative agriculture, which more companies are adopting within their supply chains, can help restore soil health while using natural processes to control pests and disease and promote crop resiliency. It can also boost drought tolerance and prevent crop failures from extreme weather events.

"The pandemic has put a spotlight squarely on the precarious nature of our global food system," says Max Koeune, McCain’s CEO in a public statement, highlighting the importance of examining the food system for vulnerabilities. Potatoes are cultivated in 130 countries and are among the most critical crops for global food security, following wheat and rice.

The benefits of regenerative agriculture

Profitable businesses need reliable supply chains to thrive. As the global population climbs, the demand for food increases. This pressure makes resilience even more critical, especially for marginalized people. Thankfully, potatoes have a relatively low-carbon footprint, and they are nutritious, making it an appealing crop.

McCain states on its website that it has four commitments in its approach to sustainable farming: mitigating climate change, enabling sustainable water usage, promoting good agricultural practices, and supporting innovation and technology.

"But the largest challenges we face are related to climate change,” continued Koeune. “It’s estimated that a quarter of man-made carbon emissions come from the production of food, and if we have to grow more food to feed more people, that will only intensify. If we don’t transform the way we grow food, the whole system is at risk of suffering irreparable damage." Ultimately, climate change can cripple the global food system through disasters such as flooding, wildfires, drought, landslides and storms.

What this shift in farming entails

One valuable tool to farmers is cover crops, which help sequester carbon and enhance soil’s ability to retain moisture. They can also enrich soil quality, reducing the need for fertilizers and preventing runoff and erosion. McCain has been experimenting with the use of multi-species cover crops in Canada with a one-year and a two-year blend that contains a dozen or more species.

Each type of seed provides a different service to the land and is specifically designed to help promote a healthy potato crop. Alfalfa has deep roots that break up lower levels of the soil while fixing nitrogen. Buckwheat has fine roots and cycles phosphorus in the ground. Nitrogen is essential for leaf growth, while phosphorus promotes root growth, crucial to tuber crop harvests.

There is typically very little plant diversity on large industrial farms, yet cover crops can help change that reality by providing wildlife habitat. For example, flowering cover crops can help support pollinators by providing them fodder.

Another common practice in regenerative farming is low or no-till agriculture. This approach boosts organic matter in the soil, prevents soil erosion, and increases biological activity in the ground. According to the USDA, it can “lead to economic gains for farmers over time.” Likewise, introducing hedgerows with native plants and promoting crop diversity are common regenerative agriculture practices. Still, the latter might not be logical for a company with such heavy demand for potatoes.

McCain deploys more sustainable agriculture practices

Although McCain has made some strides in the right direction, implementing regenerative agricultural practices within is quite a feat for any large corporation. McCain has 3,500 producers and 49 production facilities that span the globe. What was successful in Canada might not be effective in India or South Africa.

Unfortunately, there is also no common standard for regenerative agriculture. Although such an approach often involves low or no-till practices, cover crops, and wildlife habitat, there are no specific criteria. To that end, McCain’s announcement could raise questions as it works on this 2030 goal.

“There are no rules about who can put regenerative agriculture on their packaging,” Brent Preston, an Ontario farmer who is also a member of Farmers for Climate Solutions, said in an interview with the Globe and Mail earlier this week. “When companies like McCain are talking about converting to regenerative agriculture, that’s a great thing, but they have to be transparent about what exactly it means.” McCain’s announcement is still clearly a step in the right direction despite the ambiguity, but Preston said more information about the program is still needed.

In addition to a commitment to regenerative agriculture, McCain has also made numerous measurable sustainability commitments. Other examples include a pledge of sourcing 100 percent renewable electricity by 2030, using 100 percent of every potato harvested, and sending no waste to landfills by 2025.

Image credit: Lars Blankers/Unsplash

Companies setting Science-Based Targets (SBTs) to address climate change have increased six-fold in the past four years, according to Power Forward 4.0, a new report by World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The current trend among Fortune 500 companies is the net-zero target, the latest iteration of aiming for carbon neutrality. To date, 17 percent of the top companies have set a net-zero goal.

What’s the best path toward net-zero?

However, the lack of an economy-wide definition of what encompasses net-zero means the targets vary widely. To some extent, such flexibility is a positive because it enables companies to determine the most appropriate path, but it also leads to some uncertainty in assessing plans and subsequent actions in terms of quality, credibility, and accountability. SBTs provide guidance and best practices for every sector to limit greenhouse gas emissions to below 2 degrees Celsius, according to the Paris Climate Agreement.

Some sectors are falling short altogether. WWF’s report notes that the financial services, fossil fuels and retail sectors lag all others, with less than 50 percent having set a target. The power generation sector, which is at the heart of many countries’ emissions, currently has about 90 percent of companies with a target, but only 5 percent of those are SBTs. Without this sector on board, efforts to meet or exceed commitments to the Paris Climate Agreement will likely fall short. The power generation sector is a linchpin in addressing climate change, and it’s in its own best interest to step up to the task.

The power generation sector’s stance on SBTs and net-zero

Despite responsibility for a quarter of U.S. carbon emissions, in general, the power generation sector (as in utilities) has not gone gently into the low-carbon world, often resisting efforts for meaningful reductions The clearest example of this resistance was in the fight over the Clean Power Plan, the Obama Administration’s effort to set state-based national emissions reductions for the power sector.

Resistance, however, did not come from every corner, and the introduction of the plan back in 2014 jump started a conversation around “utilities of the future” - redesigning utility business models to align and be prepared for a future under a changing climate. Further, as the costs of solar plummeted and new storage and distributed generation technologies evolved, more utilities have come on board.

Shifting political winds meant the end to the Clean Power Plan, but climate change marched on. Since 2015, the U.S. has so far suffered at least 82 billion-dollar natural disasters, and a predicted more-active-than-normal hurricane season began June 1. Disasters often directly stress the capacity and resilience of power generation systems. Utilities have become acutely aware of the risks to their operations after several years of battering storms.

Updated recommendations were issued last year to help shore up systems before hurricane and wildfire seasons, but problems still exist throughout the system. In February of this year, Texas residents suffered multiple days of power outages amidst an ice storm after the state’s utility commission failed to winterize their infrastructure, despite being advised to do so after a similar storm took down power in 2011.

Drought is another threat to this sector that, in many places, is not adequately accounted for. Business-as-usual drought contingency planning is no longer enough, especially as more places unaccustomed to prolonged drought are hit more often with it, such as New England and the southeastern U.S.

What utilities should do in the name of resilience

Incorporating updated climate modeling as well as setting SBTs can increase the resilience of the country’s electricity infrastructure. Traditional resources and business models are not built for the changing landscape under most climate scenarios. For example, hydropower in areas increasingly suffering under drought conditions, such as California and the Pacific Northwest, may no longer be a viable resource. As water constraints tighten, the use of hydropower can lead to an increase in carbon emissions as the technology has to do more with less.

Fossil fuel- and nuclear-powered electricity are also highly water-intensive, which is exacerbated in times of drought and heat waves, when an increase in demand for air conditioning puts additional pressure on already-stressed electric infrastructure. Above-ground transmission further creates challenges for reliability during storms, including hurricanes and winter storms. Power generation, transmission and distribution is done effectively in a variety of climates, even extreme ones. The technology exists to make electric infrastructure resilient, but without plans and investment to upgrade, the power sector remains at risk from extreme weather.

The Science-Based Targets Initiative, which defines best practices and provides technical assistance for developing SBTs, released guidance for the power sector in 2020. The guidance lays out a pathway for deep emissions cuts by the sector that includes low-water renewable energy technologies and developing innovative and flexible business models that prioritize distributed generation, smart grid deployment and storage options.

The good news is that due to a number of factors, from technological innovations to policy changes to economic drivers, the U.S. power sector is now halfway toward net-zero carbon emissions from 2005 levels. Setting net-zero goals has proven to bring results. Getting to the finish line will require a more rigorous set of targets. More uptake of SBTs by utilities and the wider power generation industry will ensure that the sector meets ambitious climate goals, creating resilience for its own infrastructure and the communities that rely on it.

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Danone North America recently announced an expansion of its regenerative agriculture program on participating dairy farms and almond producers. That commitment is certainly important for its portfolio of brands, which includes numerous dairy products and popular non-dairy alternatives such as Dannon, Honest to Goodness, Horizon Organic, Silk and Wallaby.

The company (and also certified B-Corp) says it is showing a commitment to continuous improvement and transparency by engaging farmers. The company’s ongoing focus on regenerative farming embraces practices that are designed to mitigate climate change, secure resilience and protect water and soil - while enhancing both biodiversity and the environment for pollinators.

“We look at pollinators as part of a wider biodiversity platform, which is an integral part of food security and sustainability,” explains Deanna Bratter, the head of sustainable development for Danone North America, in a recent interview with TriplePundit. “Pollinators contribute to 35 percent of the crops we eat. In the U.S., the decline has been quite rapid. For Danone, we believe pollinators are an important part of regenerative agriculture and the resiliency of our supply chain.”

For example, almonds rely on pollinators; and they need them if they are to remain as a key ingredient in many non-dairy alternatives. California farmers commonly import millions of bees each year to pollinate almond blossoms. Most almonds, say some critics, are cultivated as monocrops, so there are few other blossoms around to nourish pollinators after the almonds have bloomed.

At last count, Danone North America’s soil health initiative currently spans 82,000 acres, intending to expand to 100,000 by 2022. One approach is to plant cover crops to enhance organic matter in soil and to practice low or no-till management. Another strategy is to boost plant diversity through the use of cash crops and cover crops. Participating farms plant cover crops on 64 percent of the program’s acreage, compared to the national average of only 5 percent.

The program has also resulted in 25 linear miles of native hedgerows acting as nesting sites and food for native pollinators on participating farms. The interconnectivity of ecosystems, one important part of regenerative agriculture, can help to promote pollinator populations and farm productivity, especially in almond orchards.

The company is partnering with Sustainable Environmental Consultants to perform a field-level sustainability analysis of participating farms. The project involves soil analysis and setting goals in an effort towards continuous improvement.

“We have an understanding of the end goal, but we take a unique approach to meet the needs of that farm, that land, and that soil,” says Bratter. “We then monitor it over time to see if we have the impact we are hoping for.”

“We’re tracking soil health and a variety of indicators and are measuring and monitoring water inputs, water retention, and biodiversity. Soil health is an important indicator.”

Increasing the organic matter in soils can help promote food security and the overall resilience of the supply chain. The results could help suppliers, going as far down the supply chain as the farmer, withstand shocks induced by disruptions such as drought or rapid swings in climate. Further, organic matter is vital to ecosystems, as it can sequester carbon, strengthen biodiversity and boost the soil’s ability to retain moisture. It also helps encourage drought resistance and pollinator habitat.

Ultimately, these initiatives can help increase farmers’ long-term economic viability; Meanwhile, the program is monitoring improved farm yields and efficiencies. The goal is to have regenerative agriculture have a role in ensuring economic resilience by reducing risks and boosting productivity through regenerative agricultural practices.

The program also includes a financing component to help with the cost of implementing these initiatives, including access to grants. Danone North America is also launching a tool to assist farmers in making decisions based on return on investment (ROI), which could help them secure their economic viability and sustainability performance.

Danone North America recently renewed its B-Corporation certification and improved its overall score through a variety of social and environmental indicators, according to Bratter. “We use a stakeholder approach to promote growth and transformation through our brands. We value a variety of stakeholders, shareholders, animals, communities, and the smallest among us, like the bees that pollinate our crops. It shapes how we see our business as a force for good.”

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HP, Inc. is on a mission to become "the world’s most sustainable and just technology company.” To that end, the multinational computer, 3D printing and printing company based in Palo Alto, California, recently announced some of the technology industry’s most comprehensive goals that further cement its leadership in this space, centered on climate action, human rights and digital equity.

Making corporate climate action meaningful

About a fifth of the world’s largest companies have set a net zero carbon emissions goal, and such commitments doubled in the first nine months of 2020 alone. With that increase came an uptick in concerns about corporate greenwashing — that is, setting a goal that looks good on paper but will not fundamentally address the climate crisis. 

Recognizing these concerns, HP began by setting interim goals in its own operations. “We need to take care of our own house first,” Ellen Jackowski, chief sustainability and social impact officer at HP, told TriplePundit. While aiming for net zero emissions across its value chain by 2040, HP plans to reach carbon neutrality and zero waste in its operations by 2025, requiring direct investment in suppliers that can help reach that goal.

The company made clear that the priority had to be reducing absolute emissions, not reaching net zero through a reliance on carbon offsets. But that requires heavy lifting and a shift in the way the company does business, Jackowski said. “Achieving absolute emissions reductions is aligned with HP’s overall corporate strategy to move away from a transactional business model to an emphasis on services,” she told TriplePundit. The company is rethinking printing and computing, for example, to shift to print- and compute-as-a-service rather than selling individual printers and PCs. It’s also looking to increase the reuse of PCs, gaming equipment and printers, which aligns with the company’s goal to reach 75 percent circularity for its products and packaging by 2030. 

Transparency is important, too. 2021 marks HP’s 20th year of releasing its Sustainable Impact Report, and Jackowski noted that the company has become more precise about how it measures metrics, raising the bar for themselves and the industry overall. 

Given HP’s broader focus on equity and justice, leadership wanted to ensure its climate goals were inclusive — a vital step for any corporation, given what we know about how climate change exacerbates poverty and inequality around the world. 

For example, the company entered into a multi-year partnership with the nonprofit World Wildlife Fund to restore, protect, and transition to sustainable management more than 200,000 acres of forest in Brazil and China. As part of this work in Brazil, HP is collaborating with WWF and International Paper to restore 250 acres of forestland in the Mogi Guaçu River basin, together with local forest restoration organization Copaiba. Founded in 1999 by teenage sisters Flávia and Ana Paula Balderi, the all-women organization takes a human-centered approach, connecting one-on-one with rural landowners to plant seedlings that create protective buffers for springs and rivers, give wildlife more space to roam, and provide a host of benefits to landowners including improved water quality and quantity, increased pollinator populations, and more shade to protect livestock. It’s this connection — people with people, people with land, land with life — that creates a virtuous cycle of sustainable impact, HP says. 

HP is contributing $11 million to support WWF’s efforts to restore part of Brazil’s threatened Atlantic Forest and improve the management of state-owned and private forest plantations in China, which isn’t a random number: As one of the top printing companies, HP has prioritized sustainable forestry for its own paper, but also recognizes that consumers use paper from a variety of brands. Leadership arrived at the $11 million figure “as a result of the equation of the amount of non-HP paper used in HP printers,” Jackowski explained. “That money goes toward forest restoration, protection and responsible management as well as improving the wellbeing of the local and indigenous communities in Brazil and China.”

In the U.S., the company has invested directly in projects on a smaller scale that can end up having a huge impact. For example, HP now sources some of its plastic from Homeboy Electronics Recycling in Los Angeles, which breaks down end-of-life electronics and is staffed by formerly incarcerated people who are transitioning back into their communities, a relationship that began after a recommendation from an HP employee. This project “helped educate us about the needs of the community members and their employers,” Jackowski said. “Solutions and ideas exist everywhere. We have the ability to take things to scale with what we learn. With a one of the IT industry’s largest supply chains, when we learn something new from our partners, we can have a significant impact."

Taking a stand for human rights — at home and around the world

Human rights is another highly ambitious focus of HP’s new goals, and the underlying targets fit perfectly within HP’s wheelhouse: to increase diversity, equity and inclusion in the tech industry. Again, the company started internally by aiming to achieve 50/50 gender equality in HP leadership by 2030, maintain 90 percent or higher rating on internal inclusion for all HP employee demographics, and meet or exceed labor market levels for racial and ethnic minorities by 2030, among other goals. 

Such efforts are important, as the tech world has a persistent gender gap: Only 16 percent of leaders in the tech industry are women, dropping to 10 percent at the executive level. From the gender norms of traditional education systems, to a lack of relatable role models, to the “bro culture” at many tech firms, the industry faces an uphill battle. This is amplified for women of color.  

Building a pipeline of talent and creating an inclusive work environment requires years of investment. Luckily, HP is not new to the table, though there is still hard work ahead. The company has over 30 percent women in leadership roles, and it’s a founding member of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) Business Deans Roundtable, which hosts an annual HBCU Business Challenge to attract Black and African-American students to careers in tech. Dozens of people have been hired to work at HP out of the program, a necessary step to increase the current 7 percent participation of African Americans in the tech sector overall.

Programs such as these are cornerstones of the HP Racial Equality and Social Justice Task Force, established earlier this year, which looks both inward and outward to help create a more equitable tech workforce.

Ensuring digital equity

The digital divide did not get the urgent attention it deserved before COVID-19, but as the evidence mounts of more children from communities of color and low-income communities falling behind academically, it can no longer be ignored. Beyond education, the digital divide affects access to healthcare and economic opportunity, especially as both have moved to a more digital model during the pandemic. 

To help bridge the digital divide, HP today announced its Partnership and Technology for Humanity (PATH) initiative with the aim to enable digital equity for 150 million people by 2030. HP PATH is an accelerator that will fund programs and support partnerships to ensure HP continues to listen to and learn from community partners, creating a more accountable and transparent system. 

HP PATH will address inequities at home in the U.S. as well as abroad, with particular attention to women and girls, people with disabilities, communities of color, and other marginalized communities. It will interface with programs like HP LIFE, a free business and IT skills training program from the HP Foundation.  

HP LIFE offers more than 30 courses in eight languages, including Effective Business Websites, Success Mindset and Design Thinking, for students and entrepreneurs. Launched in 2012, the platform has reached over a million people worldwide. Those numbers shot up 210 percent in 2020 due in large part to increased outreach during the pandemic, Jackowski said. About 60 percent of HP LIFE learners are women looking to improve their IT and business skills. 

“Partnerships have helped us amplify our reach,” Jackowski told TriplePundit. “Partners like U.N. Women and Girl Rising help us bring new, inclusive content and curriculums and expand our programs to reach a greater number of women and other traditionally underserved populations.”

Three pillars, one path toward equity and justice

The three pillars of HP’s expanded goals are inextricably linked, and equity is the linchpin. The company says it took a broad look at the gaps in the social and environmental justice space and asked: “Where can we have the most significant impact?” Jackowski said. “What is our footprint? What is the biggest driver of our footprint? Addressing these issues requires a true transformation of our company — we won’t meet any of these goals without changing how we do business.”

When asked why she does this work and why HP is committed to these goals, she replied: “We see what’s ahead. The science is clear on the environmental and social side, and we have a responsibility to deliver results. It’s not about one story or one product innovation. It’s about taking goals and turning them into real, tangible actions and measurable impact.”

It will require heavy lifting from every corner of society to adequately address the social and environmental inequities we face. Shifting business models is like turning a battleship, but being a leader means stepping up to do it.

This article series is sponsored by HP and produced by the TriplePundit editorial team.

Image courtesy of HP

Thousands of U.S. companies have signed onto the United Nations Global Compact, which calls upon sustainable businesses to “create the world we want.” That goal is running up hard against the authoritarian trend in national politics. With the Compact slated to meet later this week, it is incumbent upon U.S. business leaders to act in support of voting rights and the democratic process here in the U.S., as well as abroad.

The Global Compact is more than an environmental sustainability movement

The U.N. Global Compact is organized as a platform for sustainable business. Much of its recent activity has been centered on climate action and other environmental areas. However, environmental sustainability is only one feature of its 10 underlying principles.

“Corporate sustainability starts with a company’s value system and a principles-based approach to doing business. This means operating in ways that, at a minimum, meet fundamental responsibilities in the areas of human rights, labor, environment and anti-corruption,” the Compact states.

“Responsible businesses enact the same values and principles wherever they have a presence, and know that good practices in one area do not offset harm in another,” the Compact continues.

U.S. sustainability leaders should be embarrassed

As a global endeavor that includes 12,000 companies in 160 companies, the Global Compact does not make judgements on many matters pertaining to cultural norms and political systems. However, it does render forceful judgement on practices that violate fundamental values, and one of those values is racial equality.

That focus has become a keen embarrassment for U.S. corporations that seek to build a socially responsible profile as members of the Global Compact.

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Many U.S. business leaders profess concern over racial equality, and many say they have taken meaningful steps to tear down institutional barriers within their operations. However, large swaths of the U.S. public, and many of their elected representatives, are in deep denial over the persistent fallout from the nation’s history of legally sanctioned slavery.

Former President Donald Trump and other Republican politicians did not hesitate to gin up white rage in the run-up to the failed insurrection of January 6. In the aftermath of that violence, The 1619 Project and the formerly obscure academic field of critical race theory have become the latest targets for white outrage, even as the counter-movement grows against oppressive economic and legal practices and institutionalized white-on-Black violence grows.

Taking a stand on anti-Asian violence

Violence and institutionalized racism are also dark hallmarks of the Asian American experience in the U.S. It has simmered under the surface in recent decades, but former President Trump brought it to a new boil while in office by conferring the imprimatur of official presidential approval on the “China virus” canard in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A sharp upswing in physical attacks on Asians in America began last year during Trump’s term in office. The violence has persisted into the Joe Biden administration, concurrent with Trump’s continued influence over the Republican party.

Earlier this year, Sanda Ojiambo, the CEO and executive director of the Global Compact, called the U.S. business community to account for standing by while the nation logs one violent anti-Asian episode after another.

"As we mark the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on Sunday 21 March, we are reminded by the horrific acts of violence against the Asian community in the United States this week that racism is an everyday occurrence in almost every country and every city,” she wrote, in an official statement for the Global Compact.

Ojiambo also issued a direct rebuke to the former president and other Republican officials who have spread the “China virus” canard.

“It is important that we recognize that these intolerable acts of hate have resulted from xenophobia, misinformation and unchallenged stereotypes,” he explained. “Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed social and economic inequalities rooted in racism and discrimination.”

Ojiambo also segued neatly from the focus on anti-Asian violence in the U.S., to the imperative for businesses to speak out against all forms of racism.

“Our ambition to create the world we want, must be a world based on inclusivity and sustainability. This requires us to acknowledge and speak out against racism in all its forms,” she concluded. “Our duty, as responsible global citizens, is to eradicate it.”

Anti-democracy as a feature, not a bug

As applied to the U.S., Ojiambo’s insistence on the eradication in “racism in all its forms” is clearly a call for U.S. business leaders to speak out more forcefully against the torrent of anti-Black voter suppression legislation sweeping across almost every state in the U.S.

Unfortunately, the time for speech has passed. The anti-democratic movement is in full force in the U.S.

Though many business leaders decried the January 6 insurrection, as a group they failed to follow through. They have continued to support the 147 Republican members of Congress who openly supported the insurrection when they voted against certification of the Electoral College results on the evening of January 6, and they have failed to stop the state lawmakers who support legislation that makes it harder for Black voters and other people of color to cast a ballot.

Democracy advocates have begun to raise concerns that actions of January 6 were no mere performative stunt by 147 Republican members of Congress. It was a test run for the ability of anti-democratic activists to exploit the Electoral College, a feature of the U.S. Constitution that enables a minority of the electorate to steamroll over the will of the majority and hand the reins of power to an unpopular leader.

The filibuster solution

The subjugation of the popular will to the Electoral College has already happened five times in U.S. history. The first three times occurred during and before 1888, a year in which the nation consisted of only 38 states.

After 1888 the popular vote prevailed as new states were added, including North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, and finally Alaska and Hawaii in 1959. Incidentally, several of those states were added to the U.S. as the Republican party in the 1880s saw their admission as one tactic to hold onto power.

However, in more recent years the Electoral College has once again exercised its power over the will of the majority. Two of the last four Republican presidential candidates, George H. Bush in 2000 and Trump in 2016, gained the Oval Office despite losing the popular vote.

The 2000 Bush win saw a narrow margin of approximately 500,000 votes, but the Trump win was a significant disconnect between the popular will and the Electoral result.

“Trump won the Electoral College, 304 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton’s 227 — but lost the popular count by 2.8 million votes,” the Associated Press has explained. “Though the electorate has of course grown over the years, Trump lost the popular vote by a greater margin than anyone ever elected president.”

Abolishing the Electoral College is a challenge that will take years, if it happens at all. Another significant, undemocratic feature of the U.S. political system, however, will be relatively easy to overturn.

That is the U.S. Senate filibuster, a practice that enables the minority party in the Senate to block legislation supported by the majority.

The Senate filibuster is not written into the Constitution. It is a quirk of Senate “tradition” that the Senate itself has suspended as needed.

The Global Compact agenda for its upcoming meeting outlines the organization’s intention to “drive collective action on focused issues to make lasting change.” Business leaders who truly care about American democracy will use that global platform to focus attention on the role of the Senate filibuster in perpetuating inequality and structural racism in the U.S., and advocate federal laws that make it easier, not harder, for every eligible voter to cast a ballot.

Image credit: Colin Lloyd/Unsplash

Today, World Oceans Day, is a reminder of how the high seas give us life and livelihoods, as this year’s United Nations commemoration emphasizes for 2021.

The reminders of the value oceans bring to humanity often come with brilliant photos that showcase sea life, recreation such as kayaking, and local people fishing across the continents — all of which succeed in demonstrating how the oceans are central to how billions of us live, work and play.

Often not shown in such visuals are the effects that the mismanagement of the oceans has on people worldwide. That’s especially true when it comes to showing the risks faced by people of color and low-income people, who are more likely to live near a facility that makes or incinerates one of the oceans’ greatest nemeses: plastic. 

“The problem is that plastic pollution isn’t just an issue of waste accumulation — plastics are also manufactured and often incinerated in communities where poor people and people of color are rarely consulted or alerted to the risks,” Yvette Arellano and Mariana Del Valle Prieto Cervantes of the conservation group GreenLatinos wrote earlier this month for the online news outlet Prism. “Our communities are living this pollution every day and understand the connections between air, water, land, ocean, and human health in very personal and concrete ways.”

Arellano and Cervantes pointed out how California, which has made some headway into taking on plastic pollution, still has two incinerators located in majority-Latino communities.

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At a higher level, the underlying cause of the ocean plastics crisis is threefold: companies’ reticence to take on plastic waste, let alone be accountable; consumers’ affinity for the convenience plastic packaging offers; and finally, the clout plastic manufacturers enjoy in many a hall of government. This trifecta has made any regulatory action a tough sell at the local, state and federal levels. Even in supposedly forward-thinking California, two bills that would have resulted in the strongest statewide restrictions to address plastic pollution in the U.S. failed to pass the legislature last year.

As widely reported, one member of the state Assembly called her colleagues out, urging them to take a stand on this environmental justice crisis. “We know this is a real problem. And it’s not a white, coastal problem. Don’t come to me with that,” said Assembly Member Lorena Gonzalez of San Diego, who sponsored one of the bills that narrowly failed to pass in 2020. “Because I have a Brown community that is dirty as crap with your plastics. It’s dirty because there’s nowhere to put them.”

Gonzalez’s pleas didn’t move a majority of legislators. And of course, the problem hasn’t gone away — if anything, the ongoing pandemic has made it worse.

Given that at least one report suggests 20 companies alone account for half of all the single-use plastic worldwide, it’s about time for those companies to step up, along with the investment firms and banks that are helping to keep the global plastics sector afloat.

A start would be concrete plans to move these plastic manufacturing plants away from the communities who are suffering from the effects as pollution takes a toll on their neighborhoods. But that action is only the bare minimum, or the floor: The ceiling is an agenda to involve the consumer goods companies and other industries that benefit from plastic. By and large, most of them so far have offered up vague pledges — often containing promises to do better by 2025 or 2030 — about how they will tackle the problems that plastic is wreaking across the globe.

Image credit: OCG Saving the Ocean/Unsplash

Here’s a grim reminder for today, World Oceans Day: A study just published this month should give a renewed urgency to the importance of corporate plastics promises. While public focus had been drawn toward gyres of plastic like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – which estimates have suggested is three times the size of France floating in the high seas - the study published in Environmental Research Letters draws attention far closer to shore. Results show that during the first five years after buoyant marine plastic waste enters the ocean from a land-based source, almost 80 percent either stays in coastal waters or comes back to land. It is actually rare for the waste to travel to the open ocean from the coast, researchers write.

These results bring the problem of plastic waste a little closer to home than the middle of the ocean. For companies, the implications may be significant, especially if businesses have failed to make progress on commitments to reduce virgin plastic intake or to increase their containers’ recyclability. Should branded plastic packaging find its way into the mouths of marine life or floating onto a beach and onto viral images within social media, the risks to a company’s reputation could be more costly than a persistent transition to renewable packaging would have been.

Companies aren’t managing their plastic pollution risk

As of this time last year, the majority of companies weren’t doing enough to help stall the plastics crisis. The nonprofit As You Sow came out with a report grading 50 large companies on their progress toward sustainability and transparency of packaging, including supporting recycling and transferring the responsibility for waste to the company’s own hands. The vast majority assessed received a D or F, and only one company received a B for its efforts.

As You Sow noted some progress, such as the prevalence of the goal to make all packaging recycling by 2025. But companies overall have not been taking the leap toward reusable packaging or recycled content. As You Sow even noted that the current supply of post-consumer recycled materials is inadequate to meet corporate commitments. Thus, the non-profit’s last point that companies aren’t taking responsibility for the recycling systems they rely on — as in supporting deposit and producer responsibility laws.

Even corporate signatories of the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, representing 20 percent of plastic packaging produced globally, have been lagging on their commitments. The most recent progress report from 2020 states that “substantial acceleration of progress will be needed in the coming years to achieve the 2025 targets,” drawing attention specifically to the recyclability of plastic packaging and reduction of single-use packaging. Less than 2 percent of signatory packaging was reported to be reusable — a significant problem when over 90 percent of plastics end of being discarded.

Remember commitments to take on plastics this World Oceans Day

This year’s World Oceans Day is a good time for companies to remember their plastics commitments (or lack thereof) and make positive strides. A 2020 survey from the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company found that more than half of U.S. consumers were highly concerned about the environmental impact of packaging. They’re even willing to pay more for “green” or more sustainable products, the survey showed.

The persistence of plastics close to shore should ring alarm bells for those producing and procuring plastic packaging. Although coral reefs, often close to shore, occupy less than 1 percent of the ocean, they hold nearly one-quarter of all ocean species. Even more, about 95 percent of commercially important fish species rely on coastal habitats. Understanding now that the vast majority of plastics remain close to marine centers of biodiversity and food supply ups the stakes for reducing the production of plastic packaging.

Image credit: Dustan Woodhouse/Unsplash