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Amid growing pressure from investors, America’s largest corporations are embracing sustainability reporting.

Nine in ten companies on the S&P 500 index, one bellwether of U.S. stock market performance, published sustainability, corporate responsibility or citizenship reports in 2019. That’s up from only 20 percent in 2011 and 86 percent in 2019, according to Governance & Accountability (G&A) Institute findings released this week. And companies are deploying significant resources to detail their environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance against a wide range of voluntary standards and frameworks utilized by investors, raters and rankers. Foremost among these are CDP (65 percent of reporters) GRI (51 percent), the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (36 percent) and SASB (14 percent), G&A found.

Investors help spur sustainability reporting

What’s driving such a big shift in sustainability reporting in under a decade? The first and likely most important factor is investors. Pressure is growing on companies to manage ESG risk and harness related opportunity from across the investment spectrum. Half of all U.S. individual investors now practice sustainable investing, while 80 percent of institutional asset owners use an ESG lens in their investment process, according to surveys by Morgan Stanley.

Global asset management firms, in particular, are increasingly vocal in their demands for greater sustainability disclosure, especially on climate risk and impacts. BlackRock, for example, has voted against 53 portfolio companies so far this year that it judged to be making insufficient progress on integrating climate risks into both business models and disclosures. Chevron, ExxonMobil, Daimler and Volvo were among the culprits, and the investment giant has put a further 190 companies “on watch.”

Both BlackRock and State Street Global Advisors have urged public companies to use SASB’s reporting standards which focus on sector-specific material ESG issues.

Consumers and employees are engaged in ESG performance

More than ever, consumers and employees are also making purchasing and employment decisions with an eye to how brands behave on environmental and social issues. In a 2019 Fast Company survey of 1,000 employees at large U.S. companies, more than 70 percent said they were more likely to choose to work for an organization with a strong environmental agenda. And in recent months, workers have flexed their muscle at Facebook and Amazon over providing a platform for misinformation, inaction on climate change and working conditions, respectively.

This trend is likely to intensify as employees voice concern and demand employer action over the systemic social and racial inequities unmasked by the COVID-19 pandemic and the new wave of Black Lives Matter protests. For example, 71 percent of U.S. adults now say corporate brands have a role to play in responding to racial injustice, according to a recent survey by Opinium.

Adding to the pressure on companies, regulators are also getting in on the act. There are now more than 180 ESG-related corporate disclosure regulations in place globally, with the European Union’s Nonfinancial Reporting Directive at the forefront. The United Kingdom government also expects all listed companies to report material information on climate change governance, risks and metrics in line with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) by 2022. 

Bottom-line benefits of sustainability reporting

There are also more positive incentives for companies to embrace sustainability disclosure, namely growing evidence that doing so can boost the bottom line. For example, analysis by Boston Consulting Group found that top performers in ESG information benefit from stock market valuations as much as 19 percent higher than average ESG performers, while margins can be up to 12 percent higher.

Of course, disclosure alone doesn’t equate to meaningful action. But it is harder for companies to stand still on sustainability issues when their record and progress — or lack thereof — is on public display.

Hank Boerner, chairman and chief strategist of the G&A Institute, says embracing greater ESG disclosure has pushed corporations, in turn, “to achieve industry leadership, gain a competitive advantage and, very importantly, to excel in the competition for capital. We would ask the remaining 10 percent of non-reporters in the S&P 500 universe, what are you waiting for?”

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The COVID-19 threat is likely to have a huge impact on the world for the foreseeable future. Public health experts recommend strategies such as social distancing, frequent hand washing and wearing a mask to help stop the spread of the deadly virus. But what happens when a person's entire living situation makes it challenging — and often impossible — to follow these measures? Such is the case for many immigrants who came to the United States to apply for asylum and found themselves in one of the country's immigrant detention centers. 

Many of these immigrants arrive here with histories filled with violence, poverty and other tremendous hardships. They put their lives on the line to reach the U.S. after concluding their current situations were too dangerous, and no better options existed. 

The heartbreaking reality is that many got to this country and traded their previously life-threatening conditions for others, having no choice but to stay in overcrowded immigration detention facilities during a pandemic.

The feds review immigrant detention centers, and the results are horrific

As statistics showed COVID-19 cases in immigrant detention centers rising — and some news outlets reported deaths — federal government officials surveyed 188 facilities to get workers' input on several crucial, timely matters. Their report confirmed a 496 percent increase in the number of detainees testing positive for the coronavirus. That jump happened across only four weeks. 

Most of the study's respondents felt prepared to handle COVID-19 but worried about what might happen if the virus continued to spread. Many also commented that social distancing was virtually out of the question. Another problem was that facilities admitted not having enough dedicated areas to isolate people with suspected infections. 

Moreover, 29 percent of facilities did not have negative pressure ventilation systems to stop the spread of airborne infections associated with suspected cases. Health officials acknowledged that COVID-19 can stay suspended in the air depending on certain factors, such as humidity. 

In addition, COVID-19 research indicates that indoor air contains the most contaminants, and recycled air causes the infections to spread more. The government's documents showed that as many as 75 people live together in "pods" while detained, increasing the likelihood of rampant transmission.

Despite those findings, the government officials overseeing investigations did not make recommendations for mitigating the issues and keeping people safer. Those authorities also did not get the perspectives of the detainees themselves — only the employees at these immigrant detention centers. 

Detainees face punishment for speaking out

The people housed in immigrant detention centers aren't staying silent about this issue. The trouble is their actions may not be noticeable enough to spark widespread change. One investigative report profiled how some people planned strikes within the facilities but ultimately called them off. They encountered obstacles when trying to spread the word outside of the pods where they lived. 

However, some residents persisted by creating and holding signs to convey their distress and highlight the dangers within their environment. Some information eventually spread to the outside when a detainee's boyfriend recorded footage from a video chat and distributed it online. Making such decisions comes with risks, though. Some guards take disciplinary action and even use excessive physical force against those who try to show their plight, according to the investigative report. 

After some detainees used a video app to draw attention to the severity of their circumstances, they were put into solitary confinement. A representative from one of the detention facilities involved confirmed that people risk such consequences for disrupting a facility's orderly operations. Group protests automatically break the rules. Individuals band together and accept what might happen, knowing the public health dangers outweigh potential punitive action. 

How can people fight back against this injustice?

Staying silent about this gross injustice is a virtually guaranteed way to help it flourish. The COVID-19 pandemic is terrifying enough for people who have access to protective equipment and can socially distance. Many detention center residents make masks from socks, knowing there's no hope of staying safely apart from others, but wanting to do anything they can. 

Those on the outside can advocate for improved conditions by sharing the stories of legal professionals and others on the front lines working to combat these human rights violations within detention centers. Go beyond posting short status updates, and link to material that gives firsthand perspectives from those affected and the people working hard to help them. 

It's also helpful to stay abreast of recommended policy changes provided by people who want to make these detention centers safer. Advocates suggest providing occupants with coronavirus tests upon arrival at facilities, giving them adequate hygiene supplies and stopping detainee transfers. Many experts want to go further by eliminating the mandatory detention imposed on all asylum seekers. 

People can also donate to organizations that are actively working to assist people in detention centers, too. They made positive impacts against strong headwinds before the coronavirus came to the U.S., and you can rest assured your money will go an especially long way now.

Human Rights Watch ran an online petition to free asylum seekers during the pandemic, while the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) offers an assortment of statistics to illustrate its ongoing impact.

In Texas, the nonprofit RAICES and other organizations across the Lone Star State are doing what they can to assist immigrants, and could all use individual or corporate support.

​​​​​​​Awareness can add momentum to the push for change

It's easy to feel discouraged and that problems like the ones happening in immigrant detention centers are too big to conquer. However, don't lose sight of the fact that you can help make a difference by telling others what you know and urging them to act along with you. Informed conversations are essential ingredients for persistent change.

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Investors are now using various ratings and reference indices to evaluate financial and socially responsible investment (SRI) portfolios. Typically, SRI indices constitute a relevant proxy as they evaluate the environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance of listed businesses. A large number of SR contractors, analysts and research firms are increasingly specializing in the collection of ESG information as they perform ongoing analyses of corporate performance. Many of them maintain a database and use it to provide their clients with ESG analyses - including proxy advice - benchmarks and information about engagement strategies of different corporations. They publish directories of ethical and SRI funds - as they outline their screening criteria. In a sense, these data providers support the responsible investors in their selection of funds.

KLD / Jantzi Global Environmental Index, Jantzi Research, Ethical Investment Research Service from Vigeo EIRIS and Innovest  are among the firms that analyze the corporations’ socially responsible and environmentally-sound behaviors. Some of their indices shed light about the impact of products, the production processes, or investments in renewables or recycling. Similarly, social issues are also a common category for these services that evaluate socially responsible investment portfolios.

Generally, socially responsible investment indices benchmark different types of firms hailing from diverse industries and sectors. They adjust their weighting on specific screening criteria as they choose which firms to include - or exclude - from their indices. One of the oldest SRI indices for CSR and Sustainability ratings is the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI). The companies that are featured in the DJSI are analyzed by the Sustainable Asset Management (SAM) Group.

Another popular SRI index is FTSE Russell’s KLD’s Domini 400 Social Index (also known as the KLD400) which partners with the Financial Times (FT) on a range of issues. Similarly, FT partners with an EIRES, an ESG research firm, to construct its FTSE4 Good Index series. Smaller FTSE Responsible Investment Indices include the Catholic Values Index, the Calvert Social Index, the FTSE4Good indices and the Dow Jones family of SRI Indices.

The KLD400 index screens the companies’ performance on a set of ESG criteria. It eliminates those companies that are involved in non-eligible industries. Impax, a specialist finance house that focuses on the markets for cleaner or more efficient delivery of basic services of energy, water and waste also maintain a group of FTSE Indices that are related to environmental technologies and business activities.

The Catholic Values Index uses the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Socially Responsible Investment guidelines to scrutinize eligible companies, as in corporations with generous wage and benefit policies, or those who create environmentally beneficial technologies. This index excludes certain businesses trading in “irresponsible” activities.

Calvert Group’s Calvert Social Index examines 1,000 of the largest U.S. companies according to the social audit of four criteria: the company’s products, their impact on the environment, labour relations, and community relations. The latter “community relations” variable includes issues such as the treatment of indigenous people, provision of local credit, operations of overseas subsidiaries, and the like. The responsible companies are then featured in the Index when and if they meet Calvert’s criteria. This index also maintains a target economic sector weighting scheme.

Other smaller indices include; Ethibel Sustainability Index for Belgian and other European companies and OMX GES Ethical Index for Scandinavian companies, among others. Generally, these SRI indices are considered as investment benchmarks. In a nutshell, SRI Indices have spawned a range of products, including index mutual funds, ETFs, and structured financial products. Many SRI mutual fund managers are expected to consider other important criteria such as risk and return targets. For instance, iShares lists two ETFs based on the KLD Index funds, and Domini itself offers a number of actively managed mutual funds based on both ESG and community development challenges. In addition, there are research and ratings vendors who also manage a series of mutual funds, including Calvert and Domini.

In sum, these socially responsible investment indices serve as a ‘seal of approval’ function for the responsible businesses that want to prove their positive impact investment credentials to their stakeholders.

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Tens of thousands of essential workers across the country took to the streets on Monday in a strike for Black lives and to demand justice for frontline employees. Black workers make up 17 percent of frontline employees, though they represent 12 percent of the total workforce, according to a 2020 Center for Economic and Policy Research report.

Monday’s strike for Black lives followed weeks of global protests spurred by the brutal killing of George Floyd by police officers in May. While Floyd’s killers are going to trial, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain and others have yet to see justice — an indication of the systemic racism the United States has yet to dismantle.

The strike for Black lives challenged companies to go beyond blanket statements supporting BLM

Organizers of Monday’s strike for Black lives called out companies including McDonald’s and AT&T.

“What we’d like [AT&T] to understand is if they’re going to go out and advertise that they believe black lives matter, take the steps you need to take to protect the lives of your black employees,” said Randall LaPlante, a member of the executive board of the Communications Workers of America Local 3806, told the Washington Post. “This is a company that has all the resources in the world to slow the spread of the pandemic, and they are failing.”

Companies have taken varied approaches to the strike. Airbnb, which in the past has been accused of failing to ensure hosts didn’t base rental decisions on race, stepped up with their employees.

Demands of the strike and why corporations should listen

Organizers of the strike include unions like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), as well as social justice and environmental nonprofits — all recognizing the connectedness of racial, economic and environmental justice.

The demands on July 20 were four-fold:

Declare that Black Lives Matter — a necessary first step for progress.

Government officials at every level should rewrite election laws to ensure fair and safe voting, while collaborating with workers and community stakeholders to protect worker wellbeing through the pandemic.

Corporations should take steps to dismantle racism and economic exploitation wherever workers face it, including raising wages, providing adequate healthcare and paid leave during the pandemic, and listening to employees when planning for a safe workplace.

Finally, companies should provide the freedom for any workers to form a union.

Specific demands included a $15 and hour minimum wage, fully funded healthcare and paid sick leave for all.

Strikes were held in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, New Jersey, and across the U.S. in a total of nearly 200 cities.

Essential workers to companies: Back up words with deeds

Essential workers called on companies to stop hiding behind empty words.

“Companies like McDonald’s cannot on the one hand tweet that ‘Black Lives Matter’ and on the other pay us poverty wages and fail to provide sick days and adequate [protective equipment]," Angely Rodriguez Lambert, an Oakland McDonald's worker and leader in the Fight for $15 and a Union, said in a press statement from SEIU. “We're going on strike because McDonald's and other fast-food companies have failed to protect us in a pandemic that has ravaged Black and brown communities across the country. We’re going to keep joining together and speaking out until McDonald’s and other companies respond with actions that show they really value our lives."

Any nationwide labor strike would indicate severe dissatisfaction with working conditions. Not only does such action alert customers to unjust practices, but it also indicates that companies are leaving money on the table simply by not listening to the needs of their frontline workers. Happy employees can be 20 percent more productive than their unhappy counterparts. And companies that take good care of their employees find healthy stock price increases.

The bottom line: No company saves money by exploiting their workers.

AirBnB: An example worth noting

In a July 20 statement, Airbnb shared that it stands with the Strike for Black Lives and that employees are able to take paid time off to participate in peaceful protests.

The statement also lists some steps Airbnb has been taking to create a more equitable work environment and platform. Airbnb created a “Living Wage Pledge” that hosts can opt into to pay the workers who clean their homes between stays. Also listed are partnerships and methods the company has been using to combat discrimination on its platform, as well as a commitment to increasing diversity on its leadership team by 2021.

Airbnb admits there is much more it can do, which is a step ahead of other companies that spoke out this week.

Some companies respond with defensiveness

In its statement, McDonald's threw its support behind Black Lives Matter and claimed its employees are safe, protected and well-paid. Despite the bonuses and raises franchises are potentially handing out, the fact remains that cashiers are paid an average of $9 an hour.

Then, there’s the decision to go on the defensive in the face of criticism. AT&T said in its statement, “Everything we do meets or exceeds the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and local guidelines and has been a result of lots of consultation with medical community to minimize risk at our locations. Any suggestion otherwise is wrong.”

The July 20 strike made corporate leaders around the country take a look in the mirror.

The questions are clear for anyone in management: Am I supporting my essential workers? Am I meeting the demands these tens of thousands of people agree on?

These strikers are not asking simply for words of solidarity, but for action, specific steps — fight racism in the workplace, provide a living wage for all, take care of your sick employees, lift up those workers on the bottom of your totem pole. Those are the actions every business leader and elected official can work toward and accomplish.

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Whisky is aged in wooden casks or barrels before it’s bottled, but next year we should begin seeing Johnnie Walker appear on shelves in bottles made from paper.

Reducing the world’s dependency on single-use plastic packaging is a long, complicated journey. It could take generations for Plastic-Free July to transition from an awareness-raising campaign to a global norm all year round. In the meantime, some leading companies are beginning to collaborate on more sustainable packaging alternatives. That’s a significant step in the right direction, because cooperative ventures like these could provide a foundation for accelerating change.

A 2021 New Year's resolution: Johnnie Walker in paper bottles

A case in point is the new consortium Pulpex Limited, which launched earlier this month as a venture of the leading beverage maker Diageo, the parent company of Johnnie Walker, and the financial management firm Pilot Lite.

Pulpex Limited will produce 100 percent paper pulp bottles made from wood along with other renewable sources. The wood will be sustainably sourced, according to a Diageo press statement.

This is an especially interesting move by Diageo and the venerated Johnnie Walker brand because the company is actually not known for its use of plastic bottles.

Diageo sold off 19 of its brands in 2018 but still holds a portfolio of high-profile spirits including the iconic Johnnie Walker brand, which is typically bottled in glass. Another well-known Diageo brand is Guinness, which comes in aluminum cans.

Glass and aluminum are two of the most commonly recycled materials, which should give Diageo a sustainability edge over beverage makers that rely on single-use plastic bottles.

Digging a little deeper, though, glass bottles can involve an outsized carbon footprint, partly because they are much heavier than either plastic or aluminum. In addition to the carbon impact, the extra weight also raises shipping costs for the beverage maker and for the bottle recycler.

As for Guinness, paper may not have a weight advantage over aluminum, but it does have the advantage of recycling options that involve a lower carbon footprint compared to producing recycled aluminum. The paper bottles are both biodegradable and compostable.

The new bottles also support Diageo’s emphasis on innovation, which it is promoting as part of Johnnie Walker’s brand identity. In addition, the wood-sourced packaging enhances the aged-in-wood identity of spirits like Johnnie Walker.

Expanding the reach of paper bottles

From an environmental perspective, the brand advantages come into focus more clearly for two other companies that have joined the Pulpex venture, Unilever and PepsiCo. Both companies rely heavily on single-use plastic bottles, and they have both set ambitious goals for joining the circular economy.

PepsiCo has pledged to make 100 percent of its packaging recyclable, compostable, or biodegradable and use 25 percent recycled content in all of its plastic packaging by 2025. That seems like a ridiculously low bar, considering that most plastic beverage bottles are already recyclable, as are aluminum cans. The real problem is getting people to recycle them. In that regard, the compostable and biodegradable options for disposing of the Pulpex bottle may help PepsiCo reach its goal in a more meaningful way.

Unilever has established similar goals, but its task is more complicated because it deploys grades of plastic other than the PET commonly used in beverage bottles. The company says it is working with recycling stakeholders to improve recycling rates, and the Pulpex bottles should help relieve some of that burden.

In recent years, Unilever has also expanded its brand family to include Seventh Generation and other “natural” products. Paper packaging would help the company live up to the sustainability marketing of those brands, including an internal carbon tax that Seventh Generation established in 2016.

The paper advantage

At first blush, paper and transportable liquids seem to be an odd couple. Paper cups, for example, are fine for short-term use but begin to fall apart within days if not hours.

Nevertheless, Pulpex has come up with a patented technology that provides for a long-lasting, durable paper pulp bottle.

The challenge is getting costs down. Pulpex anticipates that support from beverage industry leaders will enable it to compete on cost with most glass bottles in the near future. The company is also working on a bottle that can withstand the hot-fill process (the industry term for when liquids and bottles are sterilized), and future plans include developing a version that can hold carbonated beverages.

It will be interesting to see if other leading companies join the Pulpex venture. Brands that rely on single-use plastic packaging have ample motivation to introduce more sustainable solutions into their supply chains, and could be willing to absorb any extra costs in order to establish an identity that demonstrates awareness of the ocean plastic crisis.

Even as the world is gripped in the COVID-19 outbreak, the ocean plastic problem is not going away, and cleanup efforts pale beside the amount of plastic waste entering the world’s oceans.

For example, the organization Ocean Voyages Institute recently completed the “biggest open ocean cleanup effort ever,” pulling 103 tons of fishing gear and other waste out of the water. Unfortunately, researchers estimate that millions of tons of plastic waste enter the oceans every year.

Some companies have turned to sourcing recycled plastic bottles and other products from retrieved ocean waste. That is a helpful approach that could provide an economic incentive for scaling up cleanup efforts.

However, until there are behavior changes at all levels of society the ocean pollution problem will persist, and a more sustainable, biodegradable alternative to plastic packaging will help make a difference.

Editor’s note; In case you missed our most recent Learn From Home Webinar on Plastic-Free July during the era of the coronavirus, you can watch it here.

Image credit: Diageo

Retailers sputtered for quite a while before they started implementing more uniform face mask policies, but they now appear to be unified in rethinking disposable, single-use plastic bags.

This week, leading retail chains including CVS, Target and Walmart joined forces with Closed Loop Partners to see if they can find a solution to a pesky problem that has long dogged them: a more responsible and sustainable solution to standard throwaway plastic bags.

They were joined in this effort by Kroger and Walgreens, the design consultancy Ideo, and the nonprofits Conservation International and the Ocean Conservancy.

The group, which calls itself the Consortium to Reinvent the Retail Bag, has so far committed $15 million to reinvent the bags we receive at the checkout counter.

The effort is important, as estimates have suggested Americans alone consume 100 billion single-use plastics bags annually. Out of that total, less than 10 percent are recycled. Add the impacts of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and we’re in the early throes of a waste management crisis.

So far, the devil is in the details when it comes to envisioning the new plastic bags, or any containers we could receive at grocery and pharmacy checkout stalls in the future. Will they be compostable or readily biodegradable? Will they be made out of a uniform material, so that they can be recycled in just about every municipal waste stream? Could the result be some reusable, box-like contraption that would be far more seamless to lug around than those shapeless plastic bags?

Furthermore, despite the enthusiasm some states and cities shared for reusable shopping bags before the novel coronavirus reared its ugly head, some research has suggested their environmental footprint presented its own host of problems. The data suggest consumers have to use those cotton or recycled PET bags many times to justify their overall environmental impact.

A big problem plastic bags have, however, is one of optics. Supporters and opponents of single-use plastic bags can argue and go as far down a rabbit hole as they wish, but research the Ocean Conservancy took on in 2018 suggests that disposable plastic bags rank in the top 10 items found on beaches and in waterways across the globe. We love our plastic bags – until we see them in the natural environment.

The big challenge this Beyond the Bag coalition has, however, is delivering results in the long term. It’s going beyond reinventing what we put our items in after we swipe our debit cards and return home. Changing consumer behavior will be a huge part of this herculean effort, too.

Previous ambitious, scaled-up efforts can give us a hint of how this campaign may proceed.

The Gates Foundation, for example, launched an ambitious and well-funded effort seeking to reinvent a Victorian invention, the flush toilet, in the name of clean water and sanitation. The decade-long quest resulted in the debut of a $350 debut “tiger toilet,” powered by worms. While the innovation was lauded, widespread adoption has been another story.

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High-profile retailers have been struggling through the COVID-19 crisis on multiple fronts, and employee safety is one of them. Even something as simple as face masks has become fraught with danger. The jumble of inconsistent state-based policies and contradictory messages from the president himself have exposed frontline workers to both verbal and physical abuse. Finally, in recent days, leading retailers have taken matters into their own hands, and that appears to have sparked a new position from the president.

Pushback on basic health precautions

It is not unprecedented for public health experts to receive pushback on policy and guidance. For example, in the U.S. many drivers still refuse to wear seat belts, funding for research on gun violence as a matter of public health is taboo, and there is a small but aggressive movement against childhood vaccines. Even basic handwashing is an ongoing concern.

However, the COVID-19 crisis has plastered a unique layer of visceral emotion onto public health issues, and it is playing out in public. Wearing a face mask is a simple, basic health precaution, but it has become a matter of intense personal identity, evoking over-the-top responses that are more commonly associated with gun extremism than, say, having to wear shoes and a shirt in a store.

Gun safety and COVID-19 safety

In terms of retailer action, the comparison to gun extremism is an apt one. In the absence of national leadership on gun safety, in recent years Dick’s Sporting Goods and other leading retailers have taken up the call for common sense solutions.

In particular, Kroger and other leading retailers have begun to focus on employee and shopper safety issues involving right-to-carry laws.

Similarly, retailers have begun to act in the absence of national leadership on face masks. Costco and Apple were early adopters of mandatory masks, beginning in May.

However, through May and June many states continued to de-emphasize masks. Even as the pandemic spread widely throughout the U.S., the president refused to demonstrate leadership on masks and repeatedly appeared in public without a mask.

That foot-dragging has put retail workers in the line of fire, facing customers who become verbally and physically aggressive when simply asked to wear a mask in a store.

The failure of national leadership is also putting retail customers in jeopardy. For example, earlier this week a Walmart shopper in Pennsylvania was spat on when she asked another customer to wear a mask.

Retailers lead on COVID-19 mask policies

Some state governors finally began to tighten up their mask policies in July, but as of this writing 10 states still have no universal policy, and at least one state leader — Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia — has thwarted efforts by local mayors to establish mandatory mask protocols in their jurisdictions.

Against this backdrop, in July the Costco and Apple mask trickle turned into a flood.

Starbucks led the pack. On July 9, the company announced that it would update its safety protocols to include wearing masks at all of its stores, effective July 15.

Of interest, Starbucks uses the same “respectfully ask” language that it has previously deployed to discourage customers from bringing guns into its stores: “We respectfully require customers follow social distancing and safety protocols recommended by public health officials, including wearing a facial covering when visiting our stores,” Starbucks wrote on its updated store policy. “It is our responsibility to protect our partners and comply with local public health mandates," it added, with the term "partners" referring to employees. "As such, our partners have the right and responsibility to refuse service to customers who are not wearing facial coverings.”

Best Buy and Panera Bread followed suit soon after the July 9 announcement. By July 16, Walmart and Target announced mask requirements as well.

Business groups push back against the anti-maskers

Finally, on July 17, the organization Business Roundtable issued a nationwide call to action, encouraging all companies to require masks regardless of state policies that fail to encourage them:

"Rising infection rates around the country are putting public health and our economy at grave risk. Failure to bring the pandemic under control will have devastating, long-term consequences for millions of Americans,” the organization wrote. "One of the most effective things we can all do to protect public health and the economy is to wear face coverings in public settings, especially when other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain.”

Business Roundtable has also joined a series of lobbying efforts with other business organizations in support of a nationwide mask policy, including a July 2 open letter addressed to the president, vice president, and the governors of Maryland and New York.

It seems that business leaders are now responding in force.

As of July 20, USA Today reported that more than two dozen national retailers have joined the effort, including Apple, CVS, Lowe’s, Trader Joes, Verizon and Whole Foods, among others. That includes Winn-Dixie, which is concentrated in southern states where the COVID-19 crisis is spinning out of control.

Coincidentally or not, on July 20 the president tweeted a dramatic-looking black-and-white official photo of himself wearing a black face mask, similar to the one that Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate in the 2020 election cycle, has been wearing all along.

It was the first time since the beginning of the pandemic that the president forcefully celebrated wearing masks, though with the following message:

“We are United in our effort to defeat the Invisible China Virus, and many people say that it is Patriotic to wear a face mask when you can’t socially distance. There is nobody more Patriotic than me, your favorite President!”

Aside from the racially-charged rhetoric, the all-about-me framing and the freighted reference to patriotism, the message still doesn’t carry the weight of any type of real leadership. Instead, the tweet positions the president as following guidance from “many people” rather than setting the standard himself.

If by “many people” he meant many leaders in the business community, that is the only place where national leadership is residing today as the death toll rises and the suffering needlessly continues.

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Of all the public health measures enacted to reduce the spread of coronavirus, in the U.S. at least, the wearing of masks has proven to be the most politically and culturally explosive. One recent example was the sudden reversal of Deep South supermarket chain Winn-Dixie earlier this week from a no-mask stance, stating it was a “highly charged issue with our customers,” to joining other supermarket chains like Walmart and Costco in requiring face masks.

Face masks meet a dog whistle at Winn-Dixie

As food reporter Laura Reiley of the Washington Post noted, the about-face came hours after President Donald Trump tweeted a picture of himself with a mask and called mask-wearing patriotic. Phil Lempert, editor of SupermarketGuru.com, told the Post that the earlier no-mask policy at Winn-Dixie was a dog whistle of sorts, meant to align the company with the values and political stance of its customers.

Winn-Dixie’s see-sawing on masks is representative of America’s cultural war over masks, where anti-mask protests have erupted from California to Texas to New Jersey and elsewhere across the country, asserting that any such mandate infringes on citizens’ personal freedom. At times the anti-mask fervor has become violent, with employees who tried to impose the mask requirement being attacked by irate customers, even fatally, as at a Michigan Family Dollar store.

Trump’s recent tweet of himself wearing a mask, after long downplaying the importance of mask-wearing in the fight against the pandemic, may signal a lessening of these tensions. The U.S. Surgeon-General Jerome Adams this week told the conservative audience at Fox and Friends, “I’m pleading with your viewers. I’m begging you. Please understand that we are not trying to take away your freedoms when we say, ‘Wear a mask,’” CNN reported. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, applauded the president’s support of masks on NPR’s Morning Edition yesterday, stating, “I think we’ve turned the corner on the road of a consistent message.”

Yes, masks work, so more businesses are requiring them

The latest scientific data bears out the effectiveness of masks in curbing the spread of the coronavirus. Earlier this month, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington forecast 45,000 fewer deaths from the coronavirus in the U.S. by Nov. 1 if at least 95 percent of people wear masks in public. Scientists from IHME told NPR that the latest analysis shows that wearing cloth masks could reduce transmission by 30 percent.

While a federal mask mandate seems unlikely given the current position of the White House, many states; businesses like retailers Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Gap; airlines; and, recently, the Marriott Hotels have not hesitated to enact their own mask requirements. While Marriott required employees to wear masks for several months, now guests must wear masks in lobbies and public spaces as well.

Masks are presenting challenges worldwide

The anti-mask sentiment might be red-hot in the U.S., as seen with Winn-Dixie, but it’s also being felt elsewhere in the world. In the United Kingdom, Brits remain reluctant to wear face masks, despite having the highest coronavirus death toll in Europe. And France, which this week made masks mandatory in all enclosed public spaces amid fresh outbreaks, has experienced its own backlash against masks, with a group of passengers beating to death a French bus driver who asked them to wear masks.

The sentiment against masks is not without historical precedent. The Anti-Mask League of 1919 was formed in San Francisco following the outbreak of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, and hundreds of “mask slackers” were arrested after failing to comply with the law. Echoing some of the sentiments heard today, the League members believed the masks were unsanitary, useless and a threat to their constitutional rights, Business Insider reported. 

Those 1919 anti-maskers eventually won a repeal of the mask-wearing mandate, but San Francisco became one of the worst-hit cities in the U.S., with 45,000 residents infected and more than 3,000 deaths. The hope among infectious disease specialists and other proponents of mask wearing as an important tool in the fight against coronavirus is that, this time, history won’t repeat itself.

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With Jide Zeitlin’s resignation from Tapestry this week, the Fortune 500 now includes three companies headed by Black CEOs, all of them men. Only two Black women have ever headed an S&P 500 company – Ursula Burns of Xerox, along with Mary Winston, who served as CEO of Bed Bath and Beyond on an interim basis for six months last year.

The long path toward racial equality is not only occurring in our neighborhoods and cities – it’s also unfolding within both corporate America’s C-suites and the investor community.

Try calling it a concrete ceiling

Black women in particular face this paradox: Despite being the most educated segment of the U.S. population, and largely driving the development of new companies across the U.S. for the past several years, they often struggle to get the funding they seek to scale up their businesses.

In the wake of the nationwide protests after the murder of Black Americans by police officers, companies in all sectors have been stepping over themselves to promise a more inclusive workplace and, more significantly, more diverse corner offices.

The promises have been fairly boilerplate: a boost in diversity hiring and advancement to the C-suite, with the goal to be achieved by 2025. But such pledges have raised more than a few eyebrows, especially considering that the U.S. is still in the midst of a pandemic and unprecedented unemployment that as of today shows no signs of abating anytime soon.

More than diverse hiring is needed

First of all, a rapid push to have a less white C-suite can run into problems if a company has had a long history of resistance to any shift in culture. “Companies that say they want to diversify will diversify and then be shocked at how the company is being asked to change,” Nicole Sanchez, a managing partner of a consulting firm, told the Washington Post earlier this week.

The bottom line is that if a company is going to chip away at that glass (or cement) ceiling, it must start with its foundation. That means taking on the hard challenges, such as revamping how a company screens, searches, hires and retain employees. An embrace of salary transparency and the hiring of talented diversity managers are also necessary, wrote Ashley Stahl in Forbes.

Black women in particular face even more hurdles than their male counterparts, as they often deal with the double whammy of racial and gender bias. In a recent CNBC profile, Black women asked to discuss their career paths mentioned they often lack access to mentorship, the opportunities to lead on projects, and other forms of support that were readily available to white women.

Money absolutely matters

The lack of opportunities is not just about career advancement – it’s also largely about money, whether it’s being granted the chance to invest it, or even manage it. Despite the vastly documented evidence showing the strong entrepreneurial streak of Black women, a 2018 report showed they received less than $300 million in venture capital or angel funding during a nine-year period ending that year. In other words, less than 0.0006 percent of all startup funding went to companies led by Black women.

Here's one explanation for that miserly percentage: Only about 1 percent of all assets are managed by Black investment managers.

Then add the coronavirus pandemic's effects. Many of these same Black entrepreneurs have reported that the effects of COVID-19 are hitting their businesses hard — as much as 98 percent, as stated in one survey. That statistic alone is a chilling reminder that 2025 is too long to wait for the Americans who have already heard too many promises about a more welcoming business environment.

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Just about every large bank has announced a climate action strategy in one form or another. Some have responded with a plan to provide financing for low-carbon technologies. Others claim they are integrating climate analysis across their investment portfolios. One problem these banks face, however, is that while they say they are providing capital needed for a low-carbon economy, they also continue to fund carbon-intensive industries.

But another challenge the largest banks currently face is gaining their customers’ buy-in. It’s easy to make the connection between certain kinds of foods and their carbon footprints. Automakers make it easy by praising the virtues of their hybrid and all-electric models. For the financial sector, however, making that connection is a far peskier riddle. Most consumers won’t bother to investigate whether the institutions holding their funds are also providing loans for polluting industries. Making the connection between a bank’s operations and how they can push climate action forward is even more difficult to conceptualize.

But what if you actually engage your customers to do their part to further climate action or, at a minimum, make them aware of how their purchasing decisions have an impact on the planet? California-based Bank of the West says it’s doing just that with its newly launched 1 Percent for the Planet Account. Teaming up with the NGO that goes by the same name, Bank of the West says it’s done what it could with every aspect of this banking product to make it a more sustainable option.

Let’s start with the debit card (as no one writes checks these days, right?), which the bank says is made with a biodegradable and compostable plastic. Customers who have signed up with this account can go online and view the carbon impact of each of their purchases. And 1 percent of the revenues generated from each of these accounts goes to a nonprofit that’s partnering with 1 Percent for the Planet. As of press time, that NGO is Protect Our Winters (POW), a nonprofit founded in 2007 that brings together people passionate about the outdoors to advocate for policies that will allow the world to become carbon neutral by 2050.

There’s an economic sustainability asset too: At a time when many banks are accused of badgering their customers with countless fees, this Bank of the West checking account is free of any monthly charges.

1 Percent for the Planet says its business members have been a part of the organization’s ability to donate more than $265 million to its environmental partners.

Bank of the West is a subsidiary of BNP Paribas, the Paris-based banking giant holding over $2 trillion in assets that has its own sustainability agenda, a climate action plan that includes the funding of billions of dollars in renewable power projects.

Image credit: Bank of the West/Facebook