CSRNYC

Mayor Koch on Corruption in Government

2011-11-01T23:49:00.000-07:00

Former Mayor Edward I. Koch

Former Mayor Ed Koch writes an email that is sent out by his law firm Bryan Cave. I get it, and the one he sent out on Halloween was a blunt cri de coeur about corruption in the country and the City. I couldn't find a website link for his commentary, so I will excerpt from it and suggest you contact www.bryancave.com to ask for your own email subscription.

Right in the opening of his commentary, Mayor Koch lays out why he thinks the Occupy Wall Street initiative resonates in the nation and the world:

What thiscountry needs is a Congress and a President who will investigate the corruptionthat Americans feel is rampant. The Occupy Wall Street crew… has capturedsupport because of the uneasiness of Americans... thatour lawmakers at every level of government have been compromised, if notpurchased… Corporate America – particularly the banks and Wall Streetsecurities firms – that were responsible for... the Great Recession [are] now richer, bigger andmore powerful than ever… while 15 million Americans remain unemployed…

He cites Tom Friedman's column in the October 30 issue of the New York Times, on the power of corporations and Wall Street:

Our Congress today is a forum for legalizedbribery… [T]he financial services industry… spent $2.3 billion on federalcampaign contributions from 1990 to 2010… Why are there 61 members on the HouseCommittee on Financial Services? So many congressmen want to be in a positionto sell votes to Wall Street.

Mayor Koch was a member of the House Banking Committee, predecessor of the Financial Services Committee, before he was elected Mayor. So he is in a good position to assess what is happening in the Congress. He goes on to cite a specific failure of justice:

Two major WallStreet corporations responsible in part for the Great Recession were fined bythe S.E.C. One, Goldman Sachs, paid a fine of $550 million; the other, CitiGrouppaid a fine of $285 million [for] takingadvantage of clients in the sale of securities which they knew were nearworthless. In imposing the civil fines, the S.E.C. did not require thecompanies to admit guilt.

Friedman is referenced again as the source of a quote from Senator Richard Durbin, Democrat from Illinois and number two in the DemocraticSenate leadership, describing the financialindustry lobby as "still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill.And they frankly own the place." Koch's comment: "Many of us think they still do."

Koch links to this national corruption the current police scandal in New YorkCity:

We see the beginning of a police scandal, which I sense will rival thatof 1972 when the Knapp Commission investigated the Police Department … [I]n the Borough of the Bronx [there are] charges against 16 cops for ticketfixing. The Daily News of October 30 reported, "Some of the roughly 160cops whose names surfaced in the ticket fixing scandal will be asked to testifyagainst their fellow officers..." … Robert T. Johnson, theBronx district attorney, said the ticket fixing scandal had bled between $1million and $2 million in revenue from the city’s coffers and tainted thepolice force. What this situation calls out for is a new Knapp Commission to once again examine the integrity and practices of the police officers and their union, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association.

Since the days of the ancient Greeks, some people earn the status of prophet. The way to do this is to first to become a prominent leader (like King Oedipus) and then continue to speak up in retirement. Many ex-leaders try to get heard, but only a few continue to have a voice and influence - as Mayor Koch did in confronting the President on Middle East issues. I think the reason he gets heard is that he tries to be reasonable even when he is passionate about an issue, and that he is above all fearless. I hope he keeps on commenting, for as long as he is able, on what's wrong with the country and the City.

The Sugar Stimulus - Comment

2011-11-01T12:32:00.000-07:00

In his blog "The Sugar Stimulus", on Halloween candy, Andrew Rosenthal, editorial director of the NY Times, wonders about the net economic effect of $2.2 billion sales of Halloween candy. I have commented - see http://community.nytimes.com/comments/loyalopposition.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/the-sugar-stimulus/?permid=1#comment1.

Here is the text of my comment, should you not want to go look up Mr. Rosenthal's original post:

To put Halloween candy in perspective, the $2.2 billion sales is 2.4 percent of what U.S. consumers spend (2006 data) on tobacco products. Tobacco companies spend $12.4 billion (2006) promoting tobacco products in the USA, double what they spent in 1997. Cigarette smoking is debited with $193 billion in annual U.S. health-related economic losses ($96 billion medical, $97 billion lost productivity, data through 2004), about $10.50 per cigarette pack sold in the USA. The Center for Science in the Public Interest seems more concerned about (1) corn syrup added to food, and (2) daily consumption of fatty food than about candy. Here's a thought: Kids getting sick at Halloween might actually be put off consumption of candy the rest of the year. (Sources on tobacco at http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/economics/econ_facts/.)

Foretica CSR Conference, Madrid

2011-09-29T22:40:00.000-07:00

Alice with German Granda, Madrid.

Madrid, Sept. 20, 2011 [updated Oct. 3, 2011] - I am in Madrid with Alice attending the launching by Foretica of the Spanish component of Enterprise 2020, the corporate part of the planning exercise of the European Union that was launched last October. We attended a dinner yesterday for speakers hosted on Sept. 19 by German Granda of Foretica. See photo at left of German and Alice.

The European effort is led by CSR Europe, of which Stefan Crets is Executive Director. He said at the conference opening today that Europe-wide they have recruited 3,000 companies in 27 member countries as partners in the project. Crets used to be at Toyota. In his introductory remarks he asked: “What is the added value of CSR? How can it add value for society and the company? The business case can be made easily in some areas, but in others it is simply a belief. In the 'third phase' of CSR we must emphasize innovation. How does the core business model generate innovation toward sustainability? What new ideas, businesses can be created that address sustainability issues? Urban mobility, for example, will require government cooperation to move toward plug-in hybrids, smart cars, electric cars. We need to look to practical projects.”

LtoR: John Tepper Marlin, Gefei Yin, German Granda, Madrid, Sept. 20.

Conference participants at Foretica Conference, Madrid, September 20, 2011.

The Spanish launch is led by Foretica, of which Juan Pedro Galiano is President and German Granda is Director General. Foretica is recruiting Spanish companies to join in the European corporate effort. Companies are asked to come up with ideas for solving environmental and social problems. The elephant in the room was Spain’s economic crisis, which dampened the enthusiasm of Spanish companies to send their top executives to the conference. However, the number and importance of the companies at the conference was impressive. While many companies may be cautious about committing themselves heavily to the program, they are clearly eager to avoid the other danger, which is being absent from the dialog. In fact, the quality of the corporate staff that showed up was extremely high – the corporate speakers were well informed and masters of their subject matter. [My report on comments by Spanish speakers is based on the simultaneous translation provided by the conference.]

Pedro Ortun, Director of Enterprises and Industry of the EU, spoke of his office, which was opened in June 2010 in Brussels. He assists in recruiting companies to create partnerships with government entities in Spain.. Now 700 companies are involved Europe-wide with the BSCI initiative, which has led the way [its labor standard is based on the SA 8000 standard]. Since 10,000 companies have more than 1,000 employees, many large companies are still not involved. Active corporate CSR groups exist in 7-8 member states - what about the remaining 27 member states? Most companies have a small CSR component in their advertising and put out a CSR report. But this is not enough. Companies need to involve their stakeholders and checking on their processes. Very few, maybe 10 companies, where the company is totally responsible.

Will Day spoke eloquently on environmental issues (deserves a post of its own) and Alice Tepper Marlin spoke on labor issues, especially SA 8000.

Right Travel - Bicycle Rental and Safety

2011-09-28T14:16:00.000-07:00

Riding a bicycle is the most efficient and least environmentally damaging form of transportation. Unfortunately for our planet, the bicycle is rapidly being replaced by cars in China and other emerging countries, which adds to their thirst for oil. Bicycle advocates are trying to reclaim space on city streets. I have blogged about companies (Decaux et al.) that have made rental bicycles available in Paris and elsewhere. Here are some updates on business, government and community actions enabling more bicycle travel in cities:

New York City. (1) NYC is planning on bringing in a company that has done public bike rentals for London and Boston. They plan to start with 10,000 bikes in 600 locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn. However, the company plans to charge a $100 membership fee, which may make it hard for tourists to use. More. (2) The NYC Department of Transportation has put out a terrific bicycle map. One thing to look for is the location of every bicycle shop in New York (identifying which ones rent bikes), as well as details on bicycle paths and special detail on crossover points at highways and bridges. We have biked on the riverfront path up to the West Side and down to the Battery. (Reminder: The Dutch bought Manhattan - Battery Not Included.) (3) Another innovation in NYC is community responsibility for growing flowers in the pits next to the bike lanes.

Paris. I read reports that the bicycles in the Velib’ program were being vandalized and that the Mayor was reducing his commitment to it. But on two visits in the last three months I saw no sign of this. The Velib' program is alive and well.

Transport for Oxford alumni, Said School, Sept. 2011.

London. Bicycling got a boost from the Central London Congestion Charge (about $12 a day to bring a car into the central district) and then from the tube bombings in July 2005.

Oxford rickshaw-cycle with passenger.

Oxford. As Oxford University has grown, so have the bicycle racks. And for Oxford alumni there in September wishing to stay out of the rain, Oxford brought in in cycle-rickshaws for its senior members and their spouses (see photos, in front of the Said Business school ).

Washington, DC. Alice and I have bicycled along the Potomac and along the Mall. I have also ridden many times on the towpath next the canal from Georgetown.

Topeka, Kansas. Elly Blue is is reporting every couple of days on her travels by bicycle with a documentary film-maker and a vegan cook. Most recently in Topeka, she shows how bicycle riders can push their case hand-in-hand with community renewal programs.

Nantucket, Massachusetts. Earlier in September Alice and I visited Adele in Nantucket and we went biking. We needed to rent a couple of bikes and Edgartown has three bike shops in a row. We picked the middle one, Young's, and were each fitted with a bike and a helmet in a couple of minutes. We visited the Coast Guard beach and several other beaches in different parts of the island.

Safety-conscious bicyclist studies map ahead of the trip (left) and reads notices at the Coast Guard beach (above).

Bicycle Safety Issues

Note that even in Nantucket we wore helmets! It's even more important in an urban environment. Hand-in-hand with the growth of bicycle riding in cities, more attention should be paid to bicycle safety. Ross Sandler of the New York Law School has just urged that bicycle safety be improved in four ways. I have slightly edited his list to make it clearer (at least to me):

Mandate Helmets: These are the equivalent of seat belts. They should be mandatory.
Mandate Visibility Conditions. Bike riders are not always visible, especially when traveling closely between cars. New York City’s car lanes are narrower than the lanes found in most cities and on all modern highways. This puts a premium on visibility for pedestrians and for cars in tight turning situations. Bicyclists should be required to wear bright-colored clothing and have lights at night.
Enforce Compliance with Traffic Laws. This should be a police matter of high priority. Bikes are silent and often speed faster than cars on the same street. Only police officers can stop a bike going in the wrong direction or weaving through pedestrians in the cross walk. For bike riders with driver’s licenses, put points on their license and impose a stiff but realistic fine for traffic violations including ignoring red lights.
License Bikes and Commercial Bike Riders: Register bikes on purchase. Put a license tag on all bikes. Make commercial delivery riders wear shirts with the names of their businesses on their back. Licensing would permit identification of violators and put teeth into enforcement.

Some of these proposed rules are common sense, like wearing bike helmets. Others are more controversial. For example, should bicycle-riding behavior be a factor in deciding whether to allow someone to drive a car? Does the punishment fit the crime?

Comparing Coffee Standards

2009-03-11T10:50:00.000-07:00

Sooner or later, it has to happen. The raters are rated. Jorrit Reintjes has written an excellent M.A. thesis for Rotterdam's RSM Erasmus University on "How Do You Take Your Coffee Production?" He rates eight standards for sustainable coffee supply chains. Coffee is a good product to start with. It's legal, calorie-free and is addictive yet has healthful properties. They say that when human life becomes extinct on earth the beetles will survive. In the same vein, at an NYU Stern seminar last week, the consensus among panelists was that in the deepest recession, coffee sellers will thrive.

The eight coffee standards are FairTrade (FLO), Utz Certified, Common Codes for the Coffee Community (4C), Rainforest Alliance, Globalgap, Organic (EKO), SA8000 and Sara Lee's Global Standards.

The five overall criteria for rating the raters are: scope of standards, rigor, embeddedness, compliance information system, and non-compliance response system.

As might be expected, the single-company standard fell short in every category. The three top-performing standards were FairTrade (FLO), Rainforest Alliance and SA8000. One characteristic of these three standards is that the organization sponsors are long-term members of the ISEAL Alliance and they know what it takes to develop, institute and enforce a global multi-stakeholder standard. Some of the other organizations have joined ISEAL and can therefore be expected to be moving in the right direction.

Jorrit deserves huge praise for this detailed and thoughtfully executed study. His professors at RSM Erasmus University also deserve commendation. As Jorrit notes, there is room for further work in this area. Meanwhile, this is a major contribution to the field.

New Report: Workplace Conditions in China, India, Turkey

2009-02-12T15:22:00.000-08:00

A new collection of three corporate citizenship case studies has just been published by the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE). The report is called: "From Words to Action: A Business Case for Implementing Workplace Standards". The case studies review workplace conditions in factories in three countries - China, India and Turkey. The report was prepared with the assistance of Social Accountability International (SAI).

Evidence from all three factories supports the idea that better working conditions support a healthier, better trained, and more loyal staff. A better workplace supports better quality products and a sustainable company.

The companies profiled include a mid-size garment factory in China, a large textile company in Turkey, and a world-renowned steel manufacturer in India. All three used the SA8000 system for managing and being certified to ethical workplace conditions.

"Business attains corporate sustainability when all three bottom lines - financial, environmental, and social - are addressed in an integrated fashion," said Eileen Kohl Kaufman, Executive Director of SAI.

Disclosure: I worked on one of the case studies, that of Topkapi Iplik, the Turkish textile company.

Green Spaces, NYC

2009-02-05T15:53:00.000-08:00

Green jobs are on President Obama's agenda. He is committed to creating five million new green jobs via subsidizing energy alternatives and conservation. An estimated $100 billion of the stimulus bill will be spent on green projects. The same commitment is occurring at the New York State and City levels. On January 26 New York’s Governor David Paterson told wa conference on green jobs that he intended to convert 45 percent of the state's energy use to alternative sources by 2015.

Do New York City's green entrepreneurs have "shovel-ready" business plans? The Sallan Foundation, which focuses on environmental issues in New York City, has asked me to look at the green movement through the prism of a new (less than a year old) eco-incubator in Brooklyn called Green Spaces.

I come to the assignment having worked on the 1999 study of the New York City software industry undertaken by the then City Comptroller, Alan Hevesi. From that study, I became enamored of Henry Etzkowitz's concept of the "Triple Helix" -- bringing together government, business and university resources to create new companies.

Later, I spent more than half a year working in the incubator of the NY Software Industry Association at 55 Broad Street. Green Spaces is located on less expensive real estate, yet easy to get to from Manhattan via the 2, 3, 4 or 5 train to Nevins Street, right across from the incubator building. See bottom of Google map below. I note approvingly the proximity of universities -- a campus of Long Island University is a block away and northwest of that is tech-mecca Brooklyn Polytechnic, just recently absorbed into NYU.
View Larger Map Green Spaces occupies the fifth floor of 33 Flatbush Avenue (name on the building is Metropolitan Exchange). The intercom directory shows all the tenants. I am buzzed in, take the elevator up and meet the founder of the space and resident manager, Jennie Nevin. I never got to ask her whether Nevins St. was named after one of her ancestors.

The light streams in to the fifth floor from the front and the back of the long industrial-standard floor. The 16 incubatee companies, composed of 1-3 people each, occupy physical as well as business niches. The center of the floor houses an open kitchen that has samples on hand from Kumquat Cupcakes and coffee courtesy of Crop to Cup.

I am most interested in the green companies that have a strong technical component and are scalable, i.e., can expand quickly if they get the model right. On this basis I pick half of the 16 tenants to interview:

- Sea to Table
- Crop to Cup
- Sustainable Edge
- My College Calendar
- Ecosystems
- Translate Media
- Catch Interactive
- Global Workers Justice Alliance

I would also have liked to interview SunOne Solutions, which helps make a carbon trading market, but the principals were in Washington.

My general observation about Green Spaces is that it's a nice place to work. Everyone here, it seems, has a laptop that they treat with the highest respect and affection. Just as someone walking a dog is easy to approach if you admire their pet, so also a quick way to break the ice here is to admire the incubatee's laptop.

Didn't see any large computers. If green entrepreneurs are cowboys and their laptops are their horses, they seem to prefer Shetlands to Clydesdales.

But this is no rodeo. It's more like a study room, with all the incubatees hard at work on their theses. Their collective thesis is that business can make the world a better place. These entrepreneurs are studiously engaged in envisioning more environmentally friendly systems and then making them happen. They are engaged in God's work.

Sea to Table

The first incubatee I interview is Sean Dinkeloo [seriously] Dimin of Sea to Table (www.sea2table.com). His business card has a slogan on both sides. One side says: "Direct from fishermen, delivered overnight." The other side says: "Connecting fishermen with chefs." These slogans leave out what is most important for a green company, the fact that Sean is deeply concerned about overfishing and handles orders only for wild fish, sustainably harvested and delivered direct. He seeks out fish certified to the standards of the Marine Stewardship Council.

Sean provides fish advice to large restaurants in New York City and elsewhere in the United States, and he has associates in four other cities providing the same service. He has a list of large restaurants and another list of fishermen (Sean insists that the word is not sexist; it is "gender neutral") and he puts the two groups in touch with each other.

Sean has two large posters over his desk. One is of "billed fish" like marlin (is that a nephew of mine up there?). The other poster shows various kinds of tuna. His main fish he sells are Tobago Wild, Alaska Wild and Dixie Wild (from the Gulf and Southeast Atlantic). These fishermen fish with hand lines.

He is able to bypass the markets by relying on email and phone and keeps track of everything on his laptop. Deliveries are made via FedEx with gel ice (FedEx won't take dry-ice packaging).This is a green business because of great benefits to the environment:(1) Only one trip, from fisherman to restaurant, meaning less of a carbon footprint (and less cost); (2) Shipping is consolidated with other shipping, eliminating fish trucks; (3) Assurance by Sea to Table that no endangered fish are being purchased, with MSC-certified fish; (4) No fish market is required; and (5) Much less waste and fresher fish.

Incubators are for babies that will grow bigger. What is the growth trajectory for Sea to Table? It needs to expand supply by working with more fisheries. It needs to expand demand by adding more large restaurants in more cities. The sustainable model takes longer to catch fish and so they are more expensive. I would bet on the idea that people are going to care increasingly about where their food comes from.

Crop to Cup

The second incubatee is Crop to Cup (www.croptocup.com), which is a small ethical trading shop that imports coffee and sells both unroasted "green" coffee to roasters around the country and roasted coffee on its website. It also sells the coffee wholesale to restaurants, grocery markets and the food service industry.

Ethical trading is quite simple means paying small farmers in a developing country more than market price for their products. The consumer gets quality coffee that competes on price with similar quality coffee, with the additional pleasure of knowing that the farmer is being well treated. I have tasted the Crop to Cup coffee at Green Spaces and at home and it's good.

There are quite a few such ethical trading efforts under way, and coffee is a product that is very likely to be ethically traded, especially coffee sold in coffee shops. Once it is known that a coffee shop, say Starbucks, is selling only ethically traded coffee, who would want to be seen drinking coffee in a coffee shop that denied farmers the extra money for their labor under the hot African sun?
Crop to Cup's unique selling proposition is that its coffee that is branded with the photo of the farmer from whom the coffee is purchased. I'm looking at a baseball-card type handout showing us Topista and Joseph Namisi, two Uganda farmers who have a farm in Gabagi Village, Bugisu, Uganda. The card tells us that they have 2,000 coffee trees and six children. Topista also teaches in the local elementary school. The link to the local farmer is a very nice touch that is likely to be imitated in future if it isn't already.

Crop to Cup says that it pays the farmers 20 percent more than market price. In addition, it gives 5 percent of revenues and 10 percent of profits to community development organizations in the areas where the farms are located. Through Crop to Cup's nonrpofit arm, DevelopNet Iganga, which supports Uganda development, the 5 percent of revenue that are reinvested in farmers are treated as donations on behalf of customers. So a wholesale customer sending $5,000 with Crop to Cup in one year can take a year-end deduction from taxable income of $250.

In addition it gives 5 percent of revenues and 10 percent of profits to community development organizations in the area where the farm is located. In addition, Crop to Cup accepts tax-deductible donations to a nonprofit organization (Iganga) that supports Uganda development.

C2C's credibility depends on the individuals who run it. The two young men in the incubator have the eco-credentials as well as the appearance of a well-organized operation. Taylor Mork used to work with Cal Safety Compliance Corporation (CSCC), a worldwide certification body, and therefore understands the importance of traceability and quality and the need for management systems to ensure these elements in the supply chain. C2C is not certified to any standard yet, but neither are most small startups.

Taylor's partner at the incubator is Jose Fernando Aguilar, who grew up in a coffee-growing area. Both of them have cards giving "Farmer Representative" as their titles. They firm has two other partners in Chicago - Jake Elster and Neil Balkcom.

This project is eminently green. Worker conditions are part of the green movement. Taylor's background in the certification business should be very valuable as the organization scales up. However, maintaining contact with the farmers is labor intensive.

A shortcut to expansion would be for Crop to Cup to be acquired by a larger business that wants to sell ethically traded coffee. I like the link to the farmer but predict that as the company gets bigger some shortcuts will need to be made. For example, the supply chain and information on farmers could be connected to a number or name on each bag of coffee. The consumer could then find out about the farmer on the Crop to Cup website or on a poster at each retail outlet.

My other six interviews will be posted on Huffington Post under the Green Edge brand. Green Spaces is a good idea and is well executed.Meanwhile, I have been asked by the Green Spaces Founding Den Mother Jennie Nevin - see photo - to help publicize their green business competition, for which the deadline is March 22. They are giving away three baskets of startup help for the right companies worth $25,000, including up to one year of free desk space at Green Spaces. For more information about Green Spaces, go to . There's a launch for the competition on February 9. Be there - reserve a space first.

Bush 43’s Eco-Legacy – Three Good Things He Did

2009-01-21T13:18:00.000-08:00

I've been in government during a dozen political transitions of one kind or another. as a Federal and a City employee and have posted a few comments about transitions, for example here.

Takeaway: Look for the good in the other side. The easy and emotionally satisfying part for the winning new guys is to focus on what the old guys did wrong. After all, that was part of the campaign that brought in the new guys. But you can be sure that the new guys are making big mistakes from the gitgo, and the old guys may (I hate to say it) take satisfaction in seeing the new guys getting it wrong. It's also easy for the old guys to see what the new people are doing wrong, but time will tell who does a better job overall.

The interesting part is: What should the new people appreciate about what the old guys did right (and vice versa)?

In this spirit, now that the election is over and we should - at least for a few days! - put behind us partisan animosity, I was interested to see that the environmental blog Grist decided to look for something good in the environmental legacy of George W. Bush, who is decsribed by edie.com as the "Toxic Texan". Grist asked Jim DiPeso, Vice President for Policy and Communications of Republicans for Environmental Protection, to write a sympathetic story about George 43's environmental legacy. It was posted on January 16, with the title Oceans 43 (get it? Bush 43). It reminded me of the New Yorker cartoon of the dragon addressing a roomful of knights, and beginning his speech (something like): "It is a heartening sign of the great progress we have made in knight-dragon relations that I am able to address you tonight."

Here is an abbreviated summary of three Bush 43 environmental successes as described by DiPeso:

1.Huge New Marine and Other Preserves. There are enormous new federally protected areas on sea and land.

[T]wo weeks before the administration's expiration, relying on a precedent established by Theodore Roosevelt and employed by successors from both parties, President Bush invoked the Antiquities Act to establish three marine monuments that protect some 125 million acres of habitat, history, and beauty in America's Pacific territorial waters. The Marianas Trench, Pacific Remote Islands, and Rose Atoll marine national monuments are a treasure of coral reefs, whales, sea turtles, dozens of bird species, hundreds of varieties of fish, the deepest spot one can go without burrowing into the planetary crush, and weird thermal formations that support the toughest life forms on Earth. Bush's action was the most sweeping use of the Antiquities Act since this somewhat obscure but highly effective conservation law was enacted in 1906. Combined with the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, which Bush designated in 2006, his marine preserves are equal in size to the combined extent of all national parks, national wildlife refuges, and the National Landscape Conservation System, plus 9 million acres in change. Bush 43 also added some land within the 48 contiguous states, nearly 2.5 million more acres added to the National Wilderness Preservation System.

2.Higher Fuel Standards. Vehicles must be engineered to limit further poisonous emissions.

[Bush 43 adopted] tougher fuel and engine standards to control harmful emissions from non-road diesel-fueled equipment. The sooty gunk that shoots out of exhaust pipes from bulldozers and other non-road vehicles is bad news for hearts and lungs in cities across America. The standards, adopted in 2004, are expected to prevent 12,000 premature deaths, 8,900 hospitalizations, and 1 million lost workdays.

3.Phaseout of HCFCs.

The president has taken steps to limit HCFCs. [Bush 43 succeeded] in securing approval of a proposal to bring forward by 10 years the Montreal Protocol's phase-out of hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), a refrigerant with a heat-trapping potential hundreds of times more powerful than carbon dioxide. The accelerated phase-out could reduce greenhouse-gas emissions up to 16 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent. That's more than two years' worth of U.S. CO2 emissions.

Although he wasn't asked to comment on Bush 43's biggest failure, DiPeso can't resist:

[After 9/11] Bush had an opportunity to give U.S. energy policy a hard corrective turn. It was a moment of clarity. At last, the dangers of oil dependence had broken through the fog of political inertia and narrow agendas. Had Bush seized that moment, he could have begun shifting the American energy economy away from oil, away from conventional fossil fuels, away from waste, and toward safer, cleaner, more efficient energy choices. For a Texas oilman to do that would have been a Nixon-going-to-China gambit; actually, it would have vastly overshadowed Nixon's diplomatic coup. But the moment passed. Nearly seven years were lost. Only when gasoline prices had reached painful levels [did Bush] put his name on overdue legislation strengthening motor vehicle fuel economy standards. Even so, the administration did not accept statutory limits on greenhouse-gas emissions. It continued pushing aggressive growth in domestic fossil fuel production offshore, in Alaska, and in the Intermountain West. It made repeated runs at weakening the Clean Air Act's pollution control requirements for old coal-fired power plants. A week before clocking out, the administration finalized a regulation easing controls on mountaintop removal coal mining, about as destructive a fossil fuel production method that can be found anywhere.

One week after the post there were six comments, mostly about whether or not CO2 emissions cause serious pollution or add to the greenhouse effect.

U.S. Presidents - Progress on One Front

2009-01-20T00:01:00.000-08:00

One year ago, the United States seemed likely to get our first woman president or our first non-lily-white president. It wasn't clear which. In fact the U.S. women's rights movement has before moved in parallel with the anti-slavery and civil rights movements, especially in presidencies #11, 18, 28, 35 and 36:

#11, James K. Polk. The 1848 women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls was convened by abolitionist women who came to champion their own rights. But it took Frederick Douglass, who had himself just escaped from slavery ten years earlier, to convince the cautious women to embrace suffrage as a goal. Susan B. Anthony, who joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton not long after the convention as co-leader of the suffrage movement, was also an abolitionist.

#18, Ulysses S. Grant. In 1870, the 15th Amendment was ratified, prohibiting states from denying the vote to a “citizen” (i.e., a man at that time) on the basis of “race, color or previous condition of servitude.” Some women leaders were outraged that the proposed amendment did not enfranchise women. During the second term of the 18th president, Frederick Douglass became the first African-American nominated as a U.S. Vice Presidential candidate, running on the Equal Rights Party ticket with Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for U.S. President. But after that burst of effort, progress for the next 40 years was slow.

#28, Woodrow Wilson. During the 1910s, a new wave of woman suffragists became active, led by Quaker Alice Paul, Catholic Lucy Burns and freethinking New Yorker Inez Milholland, whose Presbyterian father (one of the last of the Lincoln Republicans) was the first Treasurer of the NAACP. When Wilson arrived at Union Station for his first inauguration, the only people to meet him were a few escorts sent by President Taft. Everyone else was at the huge woman suffrage parade, led bravely by Inez Milholland in the face of violent opposition by opponents of suffrage. Milholland intervened on behalf of a Howard University group that was being denied a place in the parade. Milholland died three years later during a strenuous suffragist campaign against Wilson in the West. Her death inspired a final push by women to get the vote that turned public opinion and then Wilson around. The last state ratified the 19th Amendment in 1920.

#35 and #36, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. The civil rights movement blossomed in the 1960s, putting a spotlight on Jim Crow laws. The federal government put itself behind enforcement not just of voting rights but broader civil rights. The women's liberation movement grew in tandem, led by writers like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, peaking perhaps in 1970 with the anniversary-year march of 10,000 people down Fifth Avenue.

#44, Barack Obama. What can we expect now? Maybe, human rights for everyone. A year ago, in a post for Huffington Post, I wrote:

Vote for Hillary Clinton, but not on the basis that someone of color has no right to occupy the White House. Vote for Barack Obama, but not on the basis that no woman has a right to become president.

My rights are not secure until they are secure for everyone else.

Wal-Mart's CSR Steps

2009-01-18T13:18:00.000-08:00

Wal-Mart is the world's largest retailer.

Its business model is clear and simple. It aims to be the lowest-cost retailer wherever it operates.

This has made it the target of a coalition of groups, including unions. I would summarize their concerns under three headings:
1. Wal-Mart's impact on smaller competitors in the communities where it operates.
2. The company's labor practices, especially its opposition to union organizing (except in China, where Wal-Mart employees become members of the official Chinese federation of unions).
3. Its tough negotiating with suppliers, who are offered large orders on condition they cut their prices significantly, and its lack of interest so far (compared with virtually all of its European competitors) in the conditions of work at the factories and farms from which it buys its products.

On the labor front, a Wal-Mart executive told me that with more than one million employees, a $1 increase per hour would destroy its profitability in some years. So as a low-cost seller, it has to watch its labor costs. That should surely not require interference with freedom of association, but this leads us into alternative interpretations of specific events that is not the focus of this post.

My purpose now is to give credit to Wal-Mart for the CSR programs it has introduced, primarily in the disaster relief and environmental areas. Wal-Mart has found that green packaging and green distribution initiatives have actually saved it money. This is a win-win-win for the environment, Wal-Mart's bottom line and the communities it serves.

Here is an announcement of three short videos in which Wal-Mart makes it pitch.

In late October 2008, Lee Scott, President and CEO of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., reaffirmed Wal-Mart’s strong commitment to social responsibility. As a part of our commitment, we fund the International Development Program (IDP) to help factory workers and their families across the globe move up the economic ladder and enjoy better lives. The IDP has already impacted the lives of thousands of people from providing formal and vocational education to factory workers and their children in China and India to giving hope to HIV-infected orphans and adults in Africa. We believe the International Development Program is making a real difference in the communities where we source our merchandise.

Wal=Mart has created three video clips to communicate what it has done: (1) Wal-Mart and the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (3.6 mins.), relating to the U.N. Millennium Development Goals; this video features Amir Dossal, Executive Director of the UN Office for Partnerships. (2) Hope Worldwide in India (1.5 mins.), featuring Marie David, Wal-Mart’s Director of Social Responsibility. (3) International Disaster Relief (1.3 mins.), featuring Suze Francois, Wal-Mart’s Manager of Social Responsibility. The videos are downloadable at http://walmartstores.com/Video/?c=503.

Don't Give Lottery Tix to Kids

2008-12-12T08:56:00.000-08:00

I hadn't thought about it much before, but it makes a huge amount of sense: Don't give lottery tickets to children. The National Council on Problem Gambling in Washington has joined with the Canadian International Center for Youth Gambling Problems and High-Risk Behaviors -- and individual lotteries in both countries -- to warn parents during the holidays about the risks of giving lottery tickets as gifts to minors.

The collaborative campaign -- so far not including the New York Lottery (shame on us) -- also received unanimous support from the Responsible Gaming Sub-committee of the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries.

The campaign says:

Research shows that the majority of adolescents gamble at least occasionally, and that lottery products may be a gateway to problem gambling. Gambling also is linked to other risk-taking behaviors. Studies indicate gamblers and problem gamblers are prone to engage in other addictive behaviors such as smoking, drinking and drug use.
“We know that playing the lottery at a young age can increase the potential for problem gambling later in life,” said Dr. Jeffrey Derevensky, co-director of the centre and a renowned expert on problem gambling among young people.

For more information, go to www.ncpgambling.com www.youthgambling.com oir contact Keith S. Whyte of the National Council on Problem Gambling at keithw@ncpgambling.org.

Climate Change Experts Rethinking Renewable Energy??

2008-12-09T23:54:00.000-08:00

We've lived through a lot of changes of mind by scientists on dietary issues. We've also found out that the potential for recycling is limited by the extent of the markets. Now in recent weeks questions have been raised about the adequacy of carbon-capping and trading programs in the face of the urgency of the need for reductions.

It is nonetheless unsettling to read a story by David Adam in the Guardian yesterday that climate change experts are "losing faith" in renewable technology.

These experts are meeting under UN auspices in Poznan, Poland to confer on what to do about global warming. The Guardian reports on a survey that portrays 1,000 specialists in climate change as less optimistic that wind, solar and hydro power have "high potential" to solve the climate crisis.

The problem is that both worldwide economic problems and the true scale of the carbon reductions required have grown, according to the Globescan survey, which compares opinions in 2008 with those a year earlier:

The survey shows less support for wind energy, solar power, biofuels, biomass and hydrogen energy as technologies with "high potential" to reduce carbon levels in the atmosphere over the next 25 years.

There was also less support for carbon capture and storage, new nuclear build, small-scale hydropower and natural gas stations as viable ways to hit targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The Globescan survey of "climate decision makers" was supported by such groups as the World Bank, the UN Environment Program and the Pew Centre for Global Climate Change. The respondents included leaders from governments, NGOs and companies in 115 countries over the last few weeks. They concluded:

Support for offshore wind farms, the bedrock for ambitious UK renewable energy plans, was down to 61%, from 65% last year. Solar electricity generation was rated as having high-potential by 66% of respondents, down from 74%. Support for hydrogen power was 32%, down from 36% in 2007.

The respondents also warned that a deep recession would make a new global deal on climate harder to achieve. Some 44% agreed that the current economic crisis will significantly delay or compromise the "achievement of effective climate change agreements".

The Poznan negotiations aim to set the stage for a new global treaty of climate change to succeed the Kyoto protocol to be agreed in Copenhagen at a meeting this time next year.

Meanwhile, are the survey results too small a change to be meaningful? Or do they portend a rethinking of how climate change should be addressed?

Green Edge 3 - Small Farmers, Ecofeminism, Vanada Shiva

2008-08-30T13:31:00.000-07:00

HuffPost

2 Comments Posted July 24, 2008 01:12 AM (EST) Huffington Post

For more than a century, farms have been getting bigger while seeds, fertilization and pest control have been getting more uniform. Led by farm suppliers, it has raised productivity. But negative byproducts of this trend include increasing chemical dependence and loss of biodiversity. Ecofeminist Vandana Shiva is at the Organic...

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Green Edge 7 - Bottled Water and the Fiji Flap

2008-08-30T13:06:00.000-07:00

8/29/08 (HuffPost) Green Edge 7 - Bottled Water and the Fiji Flap. The Fiji flap is a surreal poster-child for the global trafficking in bottled water. Ten local bottlers (#1 is Fiji Water) fill Chinese-manufactured bottles with Fijian well-water and ship them to the United States, which has an abundance of clean water. The Fijian government has watched as its artesian wells are drained while many of its citizens lack access to clean water. This summer the government imposed an export tax of 20 cents/liter. The bottlers all shut down. As last week's World Water Week conference in Stockholm breaks up, in this post I try to make some sense of the bottled-water industry: (1) How did we get to Fiji? (2) Are the bottler brands being responsible? (3) What should consumers, and voters, do about the issue? More.

Green Edge 4 - Organic Fruit Worth the Premium

2008-07-30T22:01:00.000-07:00

Green Edge 4: Organic Fruit Worth the Premium (Huffington Post)

3 Comments Posted July 30, 2008 05:02 AM (EST)

The fruit in Modena restaurants is delicious, whether chopped up into a fruit medley in a large bowl at the buffet of the Cafe Concerto on Modena's Piazza Grande...

...or teased by the chefs...

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Green Cure for Fiscal Red Ink

Posted July 28, 2008 06:01 PM (EST)

When my children were younger I had the pleasure of watching many Sesame Street episodes. In one I remember well (#344), Bert complains to Ernie (I paraphrase): "The apartment is getting wet. The rain is coming through the window" and Ernie responds:...

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Green Edge 2 - Organic Wine-Making

2008-07-21T22:22:00.000-07:00

The wine-making track of the Organic World Congress in Modena, Italy is a serious business, with dozens of scientists reporting the results of their surveys and experiments, all for the benefit of our personal enjoyment and health and the sustainability of our planet. Below I summarize their research on the organic wine market - supply and demand - and on sulfites and the alternative treatments of downy mildew, powdery mildew, the grape berry moth and weeds. The conferees mill around in the spectacular Castle of Levizzano Rangone near Modena, set among rolling hills covered with lush vines, the view of the vineyards from inside the castle stretching far the distance. At a welcoming event we taste Lambrusco Grasparossa di Castelvetro wine as a jazz group plays. Afterwards we go for dinner to the village at the base of the hill.

The visit to impressive vineyards and the related wine-tasting is a highlight of the Organic World Congress. The big vineyard we visit is gorgeous and eco-friendly - but it is not organic. For that, participants are taken to a pilot farm, Moretto in Castelvetro, where organic Lambrusco wine is produced under the experimental ORWINE protocols, funded by the EU Commission to bring together scientific knowledge with organic wine-growing practices.

A survey of European wine-makers under the auspices of the Italian Association for Organic Farming (AIAB) covers the marketing of organic wine, size of production units, major clients, export share, most common grape diseases, additives and wine-making practices. Details may be obtained from the authors - Gianna Trioli <Gianni.Trioli@vinidea.it> and Cristina Micheloni <C.Micheloni@aiab.it>.

Wine-making organic standards are more complex than, say, standards for organic vegetables. A three-way case for organic vegetables can be made, that organic production is earth-friendly, health-friendly and tastes better. For organic wine the case needs more elaboration.

One major principle for organic wine in the United States is to avoid "added" sulfite chemicals. Yet sulfites have many beneficial qualities. They occur naturally in grapes (as well as, e.g., onions and garlic) and have long been used on grapes to fight certain diseases. Sulfites are also produced naturally by yeast during fermentation and have for centuries been added to wine as a preservative or taste enhancer, to protect against oxidation and bacteria.

The sulfite compound is very interesting, with a sulfite ion loose in a molecule of sulfur dioxide, potassium bisulfite or a sodium sulfite or bisulfate. Most of the sulfite molecule bonds with other substances in the wine and the bound sulfite usually can't be tasted or smelled in normal concentrations. A smaller part of the sulfite molecule doesn't bond with the wine andlooks for bubbles of air or alien substances that could cause wine to spoil. The free sulfite has a strong preservative effect in the wine, which might otherwise turn to vinegar within a year. It is also more easily detected by the nose or palate than the bound sulfite.

The problem with sulfites is twofold. First, addition of too much sulfur salts or sulfur dioxide solutions to grape juice before fermentation can mask a wine's flavor. Second and more seriously, small quantities of sulfites can trigger allergic reactions in some people who do not have the enzyme to break it down. Consuming sulfites can result in breathing difficulty within minutes. Asthmatics and people with aspirin allergies are at greater risk for such a reaction, which requires an immediate visit to the E.R. because it can be fatal. Symptoms include sneezing, swelling of the throat, and hives. The recommended way ot checking whether you are allergic to sulfites is to consume a brightly colored (sulfite-treated) dried apricot, two ounces (56 gm) of which has 112 mg sulfites, many times the typical concentration of sulfites in a glass of wine. Watch for reactions; if there are none, you are unlikely to be allergic to sulfites in wine.
The bound and free sulfites are combined as "total" sulfites, measured in " parts per million" or "ppm".

Wine bottled since 1987 and sold in the United States must have a label stating that it "contains sulfites" if it contains more than 10 ppm. To omit the label, producers must show levels below 10 mg/liter by analysis. Wines must have less than 1 mg/liter to have a label that says "No Sulfites". All wines must carry the label, whether made in the US or abroad. (An equivalent law was passed in the EU in 2005.) Red wines and older white wines contain the lowest levels of naturally occurring sulfites (under 5 ppm), while young white wines may occasionally show levels from 5 to 15 ppm. Most wines contain 25-150 ppm, which shows the extent to which sulfites are added. The legal limit is 350 ppm (mg/liter). Australia requires a label indicating "preservative 220" for wines with added sulfites, but other countries permit sulfites without a label - including France, Italy, Spain and Chile. European wines contain an average of 80 mg/liter sulfites, about the same as in the United States, about 10 mg in a typical glass of wine, slightly higher in white wine than red wine.

To be certified as organic by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, organic wines must be (1) made from grapes that are certified organic and (2) contain no sulfites or tartaric added during the winemaking process. Wineries that use organic grapes, but add preservatives must be labeled simply: "Made with organically grown grapes."

Modern winemaking equipment and sanitation make it possible to produce good wines without sulfite additives, but to avoid the wine going off, it's advisable to drink it within a year. Organic wine can also have unusual aromas from the aldehydes that would be bound and made odorless by the sulfites. Organic wines tend to be sold at natural food stores, but increasingly may be found in a special section of trending supermarkets.

Helga Willer presents a paper at the conference on the general state of organic winemaking worldwide. In the 1950s, Switzerland and Germany were pioneers. By 2006, 85,000 hectares of vineyards were managed organically. Europe is still the largest producer of organic wine, but the share of the market is tiny, less than 3 percent. The United States and Chile are the largest sources of organic wine outside of Europe, although Down Under data are lacking. Another survey attempted to identify the needs of organic viticulture in Europe. The contact for this ongoing survey, as well as for EU regulatory issues, is Monique.jonis@itab.asso.fr.

A paper from Californian L. A. Thrupp describes a surge of interest in organic grape-growing and the addition of new organic wines. He describes two pioneers in organic viticulture, the Fetzer and Bonterra vineyards. Fetzer is the largest organic grape-grower in California and has led not only in viticulture techniques but more broadly in wastewater treatment, renewable energy, soil conservation and biodiversity, along with care for its employees. It is also a leader in educating other grape-growers in best practices. Bonterra got major prizes for the taste of its wines this year in the international organic wine competition..

Two Romanian professors describe the results of experiments at the Tarnave Vineyard and arrive at the conclusion that organic viticulture is not only better for the environment and consumers but is more profitable. Contact cameliaburja@yahoo.com.

Organic wines have their own magazine, the Organic Wine Journal <http://www.organicwinejournal.com/> and, as mentioned, their own annual competition <http://www.gosanangelo.com/news/2008/jun/04/competition-acknowledges-top-in-organic/>, the 2008 International Green Wine Competition. This first major competition dedicated to organically produced wine, had 271 entries, mostly wines made from certified organically grown grapes, with 40 of them biodynamically produced. The entries came from 6 states (AZ, CA, IL, OR, TX, WA) and from 11 foreign countries - Cyprus, Portugal, Canada, Chile, Argentina, Italy, Spain, France, Lebanon, New Zealand, Australia. Competition results are posted at <http://www.greenwinecomp.info/>, with "The Consumer's Green Wine Shopping List," showing the names and prices of the award-winning wines. Bonterra Vineyards in Mendocino, California - producing an organic wine since 1990 - won two of the 15 gold medal for its Sauvignon Blanc ($13) and Merlot ($15). Bonterra Zinfandel ($15) and the McNab ($45) won silver medals.

Two French researchers compared three organic approaches to suppressing "downy mildew" (Plasmopara viticola) and conclude that Chitoplant (chitin) is best, in conjunction with copper. Four German professors test Riesling and two other grape varieties and conclude that copper hydroxide and Myco-Sin VIN gave good results under medium infection pressures. Under heavy rain conditions Frutogard worked well and copper hydroxide with 1.9 kg pure copper. More details from uwe@eco-consult.net. Four Italian researchers conclude that of the cultivars they reviewed, the Chardonnay grape is most resistant to the disease - contact someone@lamb.it.

"Powdery mildew" (oidium) has been controlled primarily with sulfites. Two Swiss researchers report that sulfite use is a major issue for consumers, growers and EU agricultural regulators (hanna.stolz@hbl.org). An Italian scientist looks at alternatives, especially in the late stages of viticulture when the sulfur is more likely to affect taste. What worked for medium levels of intensity was a 500 g/hl dosage of sodium and potassium bicarbonate. Another study in Tuscany by four researchers compared fungicides and recommended Tiovit and Heliosoufre.
Another grape pest is the grape berry moth and four Italian researchers studying vineyards in the Veneto region conclude that when the threat is moderate, non-chemical approaches are more effective than use of chemicals.

Weed control, a problem not confined to viticulture, is reviewed by an Australian scientist. Mechanical approaches are considered to harm the soil through frequent passes. Undervine mulching was assessed as an alternative. The most effective approach was use of cereal straw with a depth of 20 cm. or more. Cereal straw improved the soil pH but this benefit did not follow to the pH of the must (pressed grapes). The researcher's main conclusion was that trials must be made locally because the availability of mulch and soil needs vary so much.

On the winemaking end, - L. Blateyron and G. Elichiry compare three final filtration thresholds for preparing wine for bottling. Blateyron is also a co-author of a paper on organic nitrogen as a way of overcoming sluggish fermentation.

I meet a stalwart organic farmer, Alan Chubb, at Levizzano Rangone. He has a small organic vineyard in the Britain, a country not widely known as a winemaking region. In the south of England 600 farmers grow grapes on an average of less than 2 hectares (5 acres) per vineyard. The organic contingent is very small. Of the 600 growers, only five grow organically, with a total of 20 hectares certified and 10 more in the pipeline. Alan is the smallest organic grower with one hectare under cultivation in Wiltshire (his website is http://www.quoins.demon.co.uk/).

Alan argues that the first step toward organic viticulture is picking the right root stock. His favorites are Grondo, Orion and Madeline Angevin. These are hardy and greatly reduce the need for pesticides. When weather conditions deteriorate or pests attack an area, the organic farmers tend to do better because they have hardier plants.

It takes three years of chemical-free farming to become certified organic. While they are waiting, Alan says some farmers opt to join an ethical trading system (FairTrade, for example) so their products can have entry into the premium food market immediately.

The economics of his vineyard are transparent. He produces 4,000 bottles/year and sells them to Waitrose for the sterling equivalent of $13 each - Waitrose charges $24 per bottle. Alan says he doesn't get a premium for being organic - he just pays less than conventional growers because he doesn't buy commercial fertilizer or pesticides.

California Building: Missed Opportunity

2008-07-21T04:10:00.000-07:00

The LA Times reports that California is requiring greener buildings. The good news is that the state's new building standards will reportedly reduce the energy used in buildings by 15 percent and the water used for landscaping by half. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger praised the new standards. But environmentalists argue that the standards were heavily influenced by the construction industry and are weaker than they need to be.

It's a traditional response by business to the threat to impose new standards - encourage the creation of multiple standards so that businesses have choices and consumers are confused. This strategy assigns no value to the goal of the regulation. Nonprofits like the US Green Building Council and the Forest Stewardship Council have created standards for private-sector environmental performance, but California chose not to rely on these standards. This sows confusion in the minds of consumers and - as they are increasingly finding out - businesses, and weakens the work of those who have pioneered in creating standards.

In Europe, governments and business are much more willing to simplify their lives by relying on the standards created by nonprofits. Governments intervene to create a floor, i.e., minimum standards, or to subsidize or otherwise encourage businesses to achieve certification to higher standards.

Some certified building materials are in short supply, and it would be a legitimate concern if government required the use of materials that were unavailable or required a huge premium. But the LEED point system starts at a low level with many options for reaching the minimum number of points. It has higher levels - silver, gold and platinum - for higher points. It doesn't make sense to me that the LEED system was not used in California.

Report from the Organic World Congress

2008-07-12T23:01:00.000-07:00

I am privileged to attend the triennial Organic World Congress in Modena, Italy in late June. This is the world's largest gathering of organic agriculture's standard-setters, strategists and thinkers, with 1,500 participants sharing hundreds of presentations and research papers. I am posting photos of the event on Huffington Post. The first post is at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-tepper-marlin/report-from-the-green-edg_b_111310.html.

Our host city is Modena (pronounced MAWD-enna), Italy - a small but important place where the green pace is set by bicycles outnumbering cars five to one downtown. It has 175,000 residents in a province of about 800,000 and a region (Emelia-Romagna, centered on Bologna and taking in most of the Po Valley) of about 4 million.

From an expo point of view, the Organic World Congress is small potatoes. The BioFach expo in Nuremberg, Germany, is huge. In the United States, the Natural Products West Expo in Los Angeles has 3,400 exhibitors this year and was no slouch with 52,000 registrants, an increase of 11 percent over last year. The All Things Organic show in Chicago attracts similar numbers.What impresses me about the IFOAM conference is the depth of representation from the academic, NGO and government community, with 400 oral presentations and 350 poster presentations. My takeaway will be an armload of theories and evidence, samples of exquisite food using organic products and conversations with hundreds of people who are truly thinking at the edge about the future of a world where fertilizers and pesticides will rise in cost and change the economics of farming. I will be posting sampling from all areas of the conferences, including practical recipes and a wide range of personal profiles.

From Lambrusco Grapes to Balsamic Vinegar. It's amazing how long the balsamic vinaigrette franchise has been kept in Modena. The loical producers start with a good grape, the Lambrusco, which is also made separately into a fine wine. The local Este family has records of "balsamic" in connection with vinegar as long ago as 1747, and in 1046 that the local vinegar was sought by Henry II on a visit to the area.

Local balsamic vinegar producers such as the Barbieri family press their Lambrusco (or Trebbiano) grapes softly and then cook the result in steel vats before fermentation. The fermentation process takes place over many years in a series of barrels of different kinds of flavorful woods such as cherry, chestnut, juniper, mulberry that have been themselves been first aged for a year. Certified bottles of aceto balsamico must be aged for at least 12 years and if certified will include the words "Tradizionale di Modena" on the label. Vinegar aged more than 25 years will include the additional two words "Extra-Vecchio" (extra-old). Common sizes of bottles are 1/10 liter and 1/4 liter and certified bottles are not cheap!
Recipe: Strawberries, sugar and balsamic vinegar. Wash a pound of strawberries well, cut them into vertical slices. Cover with 3 ounces of sugar and put in the refrigerator for an hour. Just before serving add Extra-Old Balsamic Vinegar to taste. Serves 3 or 4.

Organic Cotton - Meet Jill Dumain. She is in the next row in the conference bus from Modena to visit the green winemaking Castle at Levizzano Rangone. She works for Patagonia and also serves as Chair of the Board of the Organic Exchange, www.organicexchange.org. The Exchange is a group of cotton growers, organic-yarn spinners like Topkapi, textile weavers like Anvil Knitwear (whose CEO just won the Ernst & Young Entrepreneurship Award in New York City), and retail buyers like Marks & Spencer, Otto and Patagonia. The Exchange, she sums up, " promotes organic agriculture and transparency in the clothing production chain." Her employer has sought to further transparency in its own production by posting ten supply-chain stories at www.footprintchronicles.com.

Jill's presence at the conference is a reminder that organic agriculture is not just about food. An entire mini-conference is under way in Parma on organic textiles. Figures presented at the conference impressed me with the risks to workers and the local environment of chemical use in the cotton industry. Five pesticides commonly used in cotton production are known carcinogens. Pesticide poisoning kills an estimated 20,000 people a year in the world, and causes three million injuries, nearly half attributable to cotton pesticide use. Conventional agriculture is held responsible for 70 percent of pollution problems in U.S. rivers and stream.

The good news is that consumers appear to value organic textiles. I ran across a poll of British Columbia residents that reports 58 percent of consumers more likely to shop at clothing retailers offering eco-friendly clothing - i.e., made with natural fibers (organic cotton, silk, wool, hemp, etc) grown without pesticides within sustainable farming environments. Interest in eco-friendly clothing is strongest among the youngest consumers, aged 18-39. Which makes you think - because some of these important opinion-makers are younger than Extra-Vecchio Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena.

USGBC to Accredit Green-Building Certifiers: Two Cheers!

2008-06-04T12:06:00.000-07:00

It was big but unreported news, and it was good news, on May 28, when the U.S. Green Building Council announced that starting next year it will abandon certifying green buildings. It will instead convert its sister certification agency into an accreditation body to license certifiers. The USGBC’s LEED standards, the most widely used U.S. green-building ratings, have been slow to get certified. After four years, the New York City LEED program at the end of 2007 had 15 certifications, or one for every 20 of the 294 registrations in the pipeline. The ratio, by contrast, is one to five (100,000 certifications, 500,000 registrations) for the UK’s equivalent green-building program, BREEAM. The approach USGBC was taking also put it at odds with international standards for accreditation and certification.

· The LEED standards themselves are eagerly promoted by builders seeking to improve their brands. They are also workable, because they (1) use an easy-to-follow point system, (2) have an easy-to-achieve first level, (3) are flexible, (4) offer challenges for industry leaders, (5) give incentives to builders to use green products, (6) are scalable and expandable, (7) recognize independent third-party certifications, (8) and are broad-based and transparent.

· The cost for LEED is also reasonable – an estimated 2 percent premium for silver LEED certification, 4-6 percent for gold and more for platinum (very hard to achieve). If the estimate is accurate that half the cost of LEED certification is USGBC’s fee, this is very high compared with other certification programs, where the bulk of the cost is for meeting higher standards. The certification cost should drop by the end of 2009 as more certifiers are accredited. Some of the backlog should also start to get cleared up.

But USGBC’s use of the terms “accreditation” and “certification” is mixed up in USGBC announcements, which does not inspire confidence either in USGBC’s understanding of the process or in its current compliance with the related international standards. So just two cheers.

New York City – Lots of Claims, Few Certificates
The basic problem with the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program in New York City has been that so many are named but few are certified, making for a long queue. In December, I prepared a Snapshot for the Sallan Foundation on the LEED system, later published by Huffington Post, that was mostly positive. I congratulated LEED on the growth of its certifications nationally, as of the end of 2007, (to 1,129. I noted how much consumers and builders are scrambling to meet LEED standards and the impressive revenue (about $11 million) that LEED has generated for the USGBC ($40 million in 2007). Also, I praised the USGBC committees that set the LEED standards because they do the job and are going through regular reassessment. Although not as stringent are the Architecture 2030 standards, which look for a 50 percent energy saving, the LEED standards can achieve half of that savings or more and most important they are easy to understand and presently dominate the marketplace.

The City of New York in 2006 recognized LEED standards by requiring adherence to them for most NYC buildings that cost at least $2 million or more to build or renovate, or for privately owned buildings that get $10 million or more of NYC subsidy. The Mayor’s Office of Environmental Coordination did this by adding a new Chapter 10 to Title 43 of the Rules of the City of New York.

My main concern about LEED in New York City is the big gap between claims and reality. Billboards get give new buildings a boost to their brand by claiming “pursuing LEED gold”, but very few certifications have actually been issued, just 15 at the end of 2007 according to the USGBC NYC Chapter website (click on FAQs):- The first certification was in 2004, for the Solaire at 20 River Terrace. The Battery Park City Authority had its own green building standards and the Solaire was planned green from the beginning, with all-EnergyStar appliances, wood certified to FSC standards and solar panels that generate 5 percent of its energy. It was therefore a cinch for the Solaire to get certified to LEED Gold in April 2004.- One in 2005.- Eight in 2006.- Six more in 2007 (this list adds up to 16, although the USGBC Chapter website shows 15).

[Photo here]
How Long the Pursuit? The Wannabe LEED Gold CRBE Macklowe Building at 510 Madison last week

[Photo here]
Pursuing LEED Platinum. The Visionaire.

By the end of 2007, 294 NYC buildings were registered with LEED, a ratio of registrations to certificates of nearly 20 to 1. Clearly, the certification process has not been keeping pace.

UK – 100,000 Buildings Certified and Half a Million Being Processed
The green buildings backlog in New York City may be contrasted with the situation in the UK, where 100,000 buildings have been certified to the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) and more than half a million more are in the registration pipeline. BREEAM won the “Best Program” Award at the 2005 Tokyo World Sustainable Building Conference for having ”the most successfully executed program for promoting sustainable practices, and influencing other initiatives, worldwide.”

BREEAM from the beginning opened up certification to licensed assessors, which means they are competing for business and their numbers can expand and contract along with demand. The assessors work within a rigorous quality assurance framework. BRE examines organizations that are trained to do the assessments and licenses the ones that are qualified. BREEAM coverage includes courts, EcoHomes, industrial, international, multi-residential, offices, prisons, retail and schools. Headquartered in Watford, BRE is continuing to expand its network of licensed assessors.

The Big News from USGBC
The big USGBC news last week was that as of January 2009 it will concentrate on standard-setting and its sister organization, the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI), will no longer certify buildings. Instead, GBCI will become an accreditation institution. Since the beginning of 2008, GBCI has administered the LEED Accredited Professional program. To conform to international standards, GBCI should become the Green Building Accreditation Institute (GBAI) and it should be moved up to a status coequal with USGBC – comparable with the Forest Stewardship Council and its new Accreditation Services International.

[Diagram here.]
GBCI is becoming an Accreditation Agency in 2009.

The problem with USGBC’s announcement is that the words certification and accreditation are being mixed up, leading to a question about its full understanding of the difference between them. On its website, USGBC describes itself as a “third-party” certification body but USGBC is only ANSI-accredited as, and is best described as, a standard-setting body. It was never itself a properly accredited third-party certification body.

International standards are evolving and that it is forgivable that USGBC may have lagged behind this evolution. The ISO/IEC 17011:2004 standard for agencies that accredit conformance assessment bodies, aka certification bodies or certifiers, tightens up the previous ISO Guide 61 language and requirements for accreditation. In a word, it is unacceptable for an accreditation agency to be subordinate to or part of an organization that sets standards or certifies conformance to the standard. This requirement was not so clear before 2004. There is now no excuse for not getting the message.

USGBC Is a Standard-Setting Body
Since USGBC and LEED ultimately depend for their credibility on compliance with international standards, it’s worth getting into the detail. Measurement of anything requires standards, such as units of weight, money and temperature. Ideally an independent group convenes with representation from different stakeholders (e.g., buyers, sellers, government) and definitions of standards are agreed upon.

USGBC is such a standard-setting body. It created the LEED ratings of levels of green buildings (basic certification, silver, gold and platinum) in different types of buildings or groups of buildings. The new plan for outsourcing certification does not affect USGBC’s committee-based process for developing LEED standards. USGBC is accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) as a standards developer and the LEED Accredited Professional program is ANSI-compliant. ANSI is a national member of the International Organization for Standardization, ISO, a network of national standards member institutes in 157 countries, based in Geneva, Switzerland.

ISO attempts to harmonize among national governmental standards institutes the standards for products or services in different business or industry sectors. These standards define specifications to be applied consistently in the classification of materials, in the manufacture and supply of products, in testing and analysis, in terminology and in the provision of services. ISO also provides guides for conformity assessment for suppliers, third-party certification and accreditation. ISO does not carry out certification itself, nor does it control the verifications used in the business sector of ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 management system standards. Some international groups have an advisory function such as the International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC. There are regional intercountry standards groups and each country or economy usually has a single national standards institute that is the core member of ISO.
Separating USGBC from the certification process will bring LEED into alignment with norms established by ISO that require standard-setting bodies to remain distinct entities, not combined with certification bodies in the same area. USGBC is not the only organization addressing the conflicting roles of standard-setting, certification and accreditation. The Forest Stewardship Council sets the standards for Rainforest Alliance Smartwood certification and its sister organization ASI accredits the Rainforest Alliance to certify that wood meets these standards. Separation of functions is crucial for USGBC because it won’t be long before USGBC, like FSC, has watchdogs, investigative reporters and bloggers questioning the validity of some of its ratings. Separation of institutions makes it easier to identify problems and fix them. FSC and LEED are linked by the points that LEED attaches to certified wood products. The problem for everyone is that the supply of certified is limited, an estimated 2 percent of the total lumber market. This in turn means a possibly long waiting time, higher prices or counterfeiting. FSC seeks to capture one-fourth of the market by 2015. Wood vendors try to make it easy for buyers (builders or do-it-yourself homeowners) to buy certified wood by providing copies of fact sheets like this or this, which is best practice according to the International Social and Environmental Accreditation and Labeling (ISEAL) Alliance, the equivalent to ISO for global multi-stakeholder standard-setting initiatives like FSC.

Certification Bodies
Third-party certification bodies or registrars are auditing organizations that issue certificates of conformance to a standard. The certificates can be issued to individuals (as in academic degrees or professional licenses) or to companies that wish to obtain show compliance with standards. Certification bodies derive their own credibility, consistency and quality by being subject to renewable accreditation.

Hundreds of certification bodies with staff literally in the hundreds of thousands stand ready (for a fee) to audit and certify against standards of all kinds. Their fees are justified by their long experience and the training that their auditors must undergo in order to qualify for certification work. By tapping into these bodies, USGBC will be able to clear the backlog in its certification pipeline when enough certifiers are trained to LEED standards. It could speed things up even more by licensing other organizations to accredit and train certification bodies. The economies of scale in accreditation are substantial and accreditation, like auditing, is labor-intensive and not as profitable as consulting.

Standards for accredited certification bodies are set out in ISO/IEC Guide 17021:2006 and the earlier ISO/IEC Guide 65:1996. Both of these guides are surprisingly expensive ($112 for 26 pages, $58 for 8 pages). Consult at no charge a guide to the guide on accreditation by the International Accreditation Forum, an association of national accreditation agencies. A list of IAF members may be found on the website of the European Cooperation of Accreditation.

Accreditation Bodies
Accreditation is another word for licensing – of qualified certification bodies. An accrediting authority – private or governmental – assesses the certification body on a regular basis to verify that the certification body is qualified to do its job, i.e., is objective, independent, with appropriately skilled personnel operating quality systems, so that the certification body will be able to determine reliably whether or not applicants for certification comply with the relevant standards.

Why is accreditation so important? Certification bodies need to be watched like the companies or products or buildings that they certify. Accreditation agencies are the answer to Juvenal’s question - quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Remember the bankruptcies of Enron in 2001 and WorldCom in 2002, the two largest bankruptcies in world history? Both these companies were being audited by Arthur Andersen, which was not being properly accredited. It was being peer-reviewed by other accounting firms, but this clearly was and is inadequate. Andersen was benefiting from lucrative consulting contracts at the same time as it was auditing the companies’ financial statements. It is even then conventional wisdom that auditing suffers when consulting business is being conducted or under consideration at the same time. Andersen gave up its life as this message was hammered home in 2001-2002. Since July 2002, under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, accounting firms that wish to audit public companies must be registered with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which thereby serves as an accreditation agency (the PCAOB can always decide to revoke a firm's registration).

Besides the International Accreditation Forum and ILAC, both like ISO is based on national bodies, the previously mentioned ISEAL Alliance is the specialized organization for environmental and social global standard-setters and accreditation bodies, of which the oldest is the U.S.-based International Organic Accreditation Service. IOAS is the sister organization to the organic agriculture standard-setting body, the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), which has created both organic-agriculture norms and accreditation norms. ISEAL accreditation members, including the Forest Stewardship Council’s ASI accreditation agency, are committed to compliance with the ISO standard ISO/IEC 17011:2004 ($105 for 21 pages) for accreditation bodies. ISEAL has its own member code of good practice, which is downloadable from its website. To comply with ISO and ISEAL standards for accreditation agencies, the Forest Stewardship Council and Social Accountability International have each been separating out its accreditation function into a new organization – ASI for FSC and Social Accountability Accreditation Services for SAI.

ISEAL has pioneered some innovations that are applicable to LEED standards. Interesting national and local recognition of ISEAL member accreditation have been provided by governments. For example, in Italy, several regions (e.g., Venetia, Umbria, Lecce, Tuscana) and municipalities (Rome) have programs to encourage adherence to the SA8000 workplace sustainability standard. Regione Toscana (Tuscany, around Florence) was the first. Tuscany provides public education on SA8000 and provides grants to small businesses to enable them to implement SA8000 and to be certified for their compliance. These government-assisted programs have directly helped 300 Italian facilities become certified. Local governments have a stake in the branding of companies located within their borders. Regione Umbria (around Perugia) gives preference to otherwise qualified and cost-competitive bidders for government contracts that are certified to SA8000.

Summary
USGBC's move to open up its certification process to outside certification bodies, and to focus on accreditation, is a very good sign that the green buildings program is going both to catch up on its backlog and to be credible, so that the public will know whether or not the claimed standards are actually met. USGBC helps builders brand their buildings. Such organizations can have four different kinds of functions:
(1) Set standards.
(2) Certify against these standards.
(3) Accredit certification bodies.
(4) Provide consulting or training.

The USGBC plan seems to make it #1. GBCI’s name implies #2, but it is morphing into #3, ceding #2 to qualified independent bodies. An accreditation agency, #3, should not be mixed with any of the other functions. Although USGBC and GBCI are legally distinct and have separate boards of directors, they share for the time being two senior managers. Ideally, all staff should be separate and all relationships between USGBC and GBCI should be arms-length and contractual.

USGBC is moving in the direction it needs to go. Another cheer when it moves closer to global norms.

Green Lending as an Indicator of Financial Health

2008-05-03T19:13:00.000-07:00

The relative success of the Vice Fund is a reminder that companies can still make a profit on the addictions of smokers, drinkers, gamblers and arms buyers. The children of darkness can sometimes be wiser - socially responsible investing can indeed cost something to a portfolio. For example, I have joined in questioning alcohol screens. It's therefore interesting when good CSR practices seem to provide a proxy for the solvency of financial institutions. In January, Ceres issued a report that grades large banks on climate change issues. It puts European banks at the top of the list - HSBC (70 points out of 100 on Ceres' Climate Change Governance Checklist), ABN AMRO (66), Barclays and HBOS (61), and Deutsche Bank (60). At the other extreme, Bear Stearns gets zero points and Lehman Brothers - despite a well-received report on climate change - scored a mere 26. Other U.S. financial institutions were in the middle. Goldman Sachs invested $1.5 billion in clean energy in 2006 and scored 53. Merrill Lynch launched an Energy Efficiency Index in 2007 and scored 52. Morgan Stanley established a Carbon Bank in 2007 to help clients go carbon neutral and scored 49. The ratings were a proxy for long-term thinking and might have been used to predict the insolvency of Bear Stearns.

Median Pay of CSR Workers in UK is $80-$120K

2008-05-03T07:09:00.000-07:00

Of surveyed CSR workers in the UK in 2007, 15 percent earned more than $160,000 and 4 percent earned more than $240,000. The median income was $80,000-$120,000, with 38 percent of salaries in this range.

Dated March 2008, the first-ever survey of UK CSR salaries was conducted in late 2007 by the Acona consultancy, Acre Resources recruiting and the Ethical Performance newsletter.

Company vs. Consulting Salaries

The survey shows that even with their bonuses, consultants tended to earn less than CSR employees in companies. This suggests that companies prefer to have the sensitive CSR function in-house and are willing to pay more for this choice. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that the head of CSR in UK companies tends to report directly to the company CEO or a key member of the Board of Directors.

The relatively lower salaries of consultants could also reflect a high level of competition in the UK among consultancies leading to “overservicing” of clients. Or it could mean consultants are not generating sufficient value for companies. Or it could simply be a hedonic indicator that workers prefer to have the flexibility and greater freedom afforded by the consultancy relationship.

The two main activities in 2007 reported by both UK firms and UK consultancies are (1) environmental issues (climate change) and (2) preparing CSR reports.

Industries Represented

Of the 281 respondents to the survey, one-half are from corporations, one-quarter from consultancies and the remainder are from NGOs, government agencies or “other”. The great majority are based in the London area. The industries of the company-based CSR employees are as follows, ranked in order of percentage of employees:

Banking and Finance 18%
Retailing 12
Consumer Goods 10
Media 7
Construction 6
Support Services 6
Telecoms 6
Natural Resources 5
Transport & Utilities 5
Industrials 4
Leisure 4
Technology 3
Engineering 2
Accounting/Consultant 1
Health 1

The #1 rank of banking and finance on the list may be a surprise to a U.S. observer because CSR has not been very visible in the operations of major financial institutions in the United States. One U.S. exception is the Equator Principles initiative that was spearheaded by the Citi Foundation in New York. In the UK, major banks have for some years been producing leaflets available in bank lobbies showing what they are doing for the environment or society.

The shape of today’s global CSR movement was created 40 years ago in the United States, but data on CSR employment shows that CSR has taken root faster in Europe and the UK. Because CSR has been around so long in the UK, middle-level CSR employees may have been working their entire careers in CSR. This is much rarer in the United States at large companies.

For more click on Median Pay of CSR Jobs in the UK is $80-$120K.

Alcohol Screens, Prohibition and April 7

2008-04-07T00:51:00.000-07:00

The Volstead Act was modified 75 years ago and April 7, 1933 marked the first time that Americans could legally drink beer in more than a dozen years. The lesson of Prohibition is surely that the objections to neighborhood saloons were eclipsed by the gangsters that arose when government attempted to prevent alcohol being sold.

While some religions may prohibit alcohol use among their members, and may indeed wish to screen out companies involved with the sale of alcoholic beverages, for most people the moderate consumption of alcohol is not sinful or even unhealthy. Prohibition of alcohol was a failed experiment and alcohol screens by non-religious organizations may fall into the same category.

The heyday of opposition to alcohol in the United States was in the years leading to the Prohibition Amendment, i.e., 1920-1933. The law was enacted by Congress in 1917 as a constitutional amendment in 1917, ratified 13 months later as the 18th Amendment, and took effect in 1920. The goals of the amendment were to end the saloons that religious leaders viewed as an open challenge to them and they associated with unhealthy living, social problems, crime and corruption. Advocates of Prohibition believed that eliminating traffic in alcohol would usher in a new era in which Americans would become more productive, prisons would empty out and the populace would become healthier.

The enforcing law was introduced by Republican Senator Andrew J. Volstead of Minnesota. It was much more draconian than many voters had expected, putting the maximum alcoholic content at one-half of a percent. It forbade the manufacture, transport, export, sale or possession of alcoholic beverages anywhere in the United States. Any beverage with more than 0.5 percent alcohol was forbidden. The Act was to be enforced by Federal agents. In October 1919 it passed over the veto of Democratic President Wilson.

Prohibition was, the record is clear, a disaster on just about every conceivable front. In the 1929 New York City Republican mayoral primary, the dry candidate complained that there were 100,000 alcohol-serving speakeasies in New York including one in the “shadow of the Police Department.” (His defeat by the wet candidate, Fiorella LaGuardia, was by a lopsided margin.) Highly concentrated alcohol was easier to transport, so amateur production of moonshine, home-still-brewed spirits and patent medicine thrived, raising the number of illnesses and deaths from adulterated alcohol. Organized crime flourished and Al Capone seemed beyond the reach of a growing and expensive army of Feds. The law became a sad joke, creating more social problems than it solved.

After FDR’s election and inauguration, on February 20, 1933, Congress passed a bill repealing the 18th Amendment and sent it to the states for ratification. As an interim mini-repeal measure, on March 21, 1933, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Cullen-Harrison bill, permitting again the manufacture and sale of 3.2 percent (by weight, about 4 percent by volume) beer, along with light wines, in the states that allowed alcohol. FDR signed it on March 23 and said to bystanders – “I think this would be a good time for a beer."

New Beer’s Day was scheduled for April 7, 1933. The day before, on “Brew Year’s Eve”, parched customers lined up outside brewery gates with conveyances of every description. Anheuser-Busch – which had sold the nation’s most popular beer, Budweiser, before Prohibition – announced on radio “Beer is back!" The Times Square Budweiser clock played FDR's campaign song, “Happy Days Are Here Again," and the Clydesdale horses clip-clopped down Fifth Avenue to bring the new beer to awaiting politicians and newspapers at the Empire State Building.

From April 7 to December 5, 1933, only 4.2 percent beer and light wines were permitted. In the interim, repeal was fast-tracked by the New York lawyers working in each state, with the last required state ratifying the 21st Amendment on December 5. Prohibition has become an object lesson for Americans on the limits to trying to legislate morality.

Are Alcohol Screens Outdated?

2008-04-07T00:35:00.000-07:00

Jay Falk of Sustainability Investment News (Social Funds.com) has a March 27 post of an interview with Rob Frederick, director of corporate responsibility at Brown-Forman, which owns liquor brands like Jack Daniels, Finlandia and Southern Comfort. The full interview may be found here.

Frederick argues that alcohol companies can accept the responsibility to reduce the societal impacts of their products.

He takes the view that instead of screening out alcohol companies, investors should recognizethat some companies behave better than others. He also argues that alcohol is different from, say, tobacco, in this it is not inherently harmful for the great majority of consumers. "There are some people who should never drink and we have always been clear about that. For most, however, when enjoyed responsibly, our brands can enrich the experience of life."

I'll buy it, especially when the screening-out approach has hurt the relative performance of SRI funds vis-a-vis the S&P 500 or against the benchmark Vice Fund.

The Shop Local Movement

2008-03-31T19:55:00.000-07:00

Every movement tends to inspire an equal and opposite movement.

Wal-Mart exemplifies the advantages of economies of scale. Bigger stores and bigger chains mean that systems can be perfected, buying power is enormous, and widespread recognition of the brand makes it hard for competitors to make inroads.

The Shop Local movement is a reaction to this. It is spearheaded by, for example, the American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA). Their enemy is the big company.

Evangelists for the Shop Local movement include Stacy Mitchell with Big Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses and Bill McKibben with Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future.

Another evangelist, in his own way, is Ellis Jones and his Better World Shopper. I notice that on his comparisons of beers and fast-food chains, for example, the smaller brewers and chains get better ratings.

The paradox of the Shop Local movement is that successful small firms get bigger. Surveys show that most Americans want to work in a small city or town, but in fact choose a big city because that's where the jobs are. We can savor the pleasures of shopping local, but economics will carry a successful company beyond its local market.

For example, Gary Hirshberg, CE-YO of Stonyfield Farm Yogurt, is an exponent of Shop Local. But his path forward was selling stock to Danone, a very big company based France.

Anniversary: Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, March 25, 1911

2008-03-24T14:28:00.000-07:00

3/25/08 (Tuesday, tomorrow) Triangle Shirtwaist Fire 97th Anniversary. The fire occurred next door to the NYU Law School, which was then located just to the east of Washington Square. Just 18 months before, in September 1909, the 250+ teenage girls who worked at the Triangle workers went out together on strike in 1909 and were joined by nearly 20,000 other workers on a strike that lasted 13 weeks. Some companies settled, but the Triangle owners refused to make any concessions. One requested concession was that doors not be locked (see Joan Dash, "We Will Not Be Moved: The Women's Factory Strike of 1909", Scholastic, 1996, p. 140). On March 25, a fire took the lives of 146 girls who could not exit the locked doors. Most chose to jump to their deaths from windows rather than wait to be burned alive. This fire led to the creation of the Department of Labor in New York State and then to the U.S. Department of Labor and the first female cabinet member, Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor for FDR's 12 years as President. The wikipedia entry on the fire is good and references two excellent books on the subject.

3/28/08 (Friday) CSR Career NightPanel Discussion on CSR and Sustainability at Baruch College in NYC. Panelists from BSR, NRDC, l'Oreal, Enclave Rising. Participating schools besides Baruch are Columbia, Fordham, NYU Stern - 6-8 pm Networking and Cocktails and 8-9 pm Reception. Baruch College Library Building 151 25th Street 7th Floor. RSVP to: NetImpactCareerNight - http://www.netimpactcareernight.eventbrite.com.

3/17/08 (HuffPo) Hops and Fears on St. Pat's Day. Hops are scarce and their price has been rising. Barley too. But you can't make beer without them. So be afraid of a beer drought at some small breweries. These fears are no joke says Alonovo. It's enough to remind you of Prohibition, the end of which was 75 years ago. From April to December 1933, the only legal U.S. alcohol was beer. For St. Patrick's Day, 2008, the question is: Which beer is greenest? Of the biggest three U.S. brewers, which is greenest? I think it's Anheuser-Busch. (But stay tuned - as a result of the post I have been promised more comparative data.) John Tepper Marlin, Huffington Post, Hops and Fears on St. Pat's Day.

3/8/08 (HuffPo): Today is the 100th Anniversary of Women's Day. "International Women's Day" has been little noted in New York City despite having been born here. One hundred years ago today 15,000 women workers marched down Fifth Avenue. Many of their goals were advanced by the largely successful 13-week shirtwaist workers' strike of 1909. The tragic Triangle Fire of 1911 sparked more progress and the suffrage parades in New York City and Washington in 1912-13 led via picketing of the White House in 1917 directly to woman suffrage in 1920. Despite these victories and the fact that women are better educated than men, working women still trail men in pay. On Wall Street, 96 percent of women report they earn less than men doing comparable jobs. March 8, 2008, John Tepper Marlin, Huffington Post, Today's 100th Anniversary of Women's Day.

International Cocoa Verification Board

2008-02-24T01:51:00.000-08:00

1/30/08 - I posted a comment on the World Cocoa Foundation blog asking about the International Cocoa Verification Board: "Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives with which I am familiar are designed to generate independent, fair standards against which company practice can be evaluated by accredited auditors. (They aren't set up to do audits!) Examples are environmental standards of the Forest Stewardship Council or the labor standard SA8000. In the cocoa industry case, two sovereign nations are conducting surveys that they want a second-party auditor to verify as fair. What is the role of the MSI?"

2/8/08 - Mil Niepold responded: “The Multi-Stakeholder Initiative (the International Cocoa Verification Board) in this case has a unique structure and role. Unlike the majority of other MSIs, we have included governments on this Board (as well as industry, trade unions, NGOs and academics as is typical with other MSIs). To answer your question, their role is to select the most credible, effective and high-quality independent verifiers who will in turn evaluate and report on the robustness of the National Surveys conducted by the governments of Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire. The vision for this work is that having credible and accurate data, that is transparently and widely communicated, is the pre-requisite to strengthening and targeting any remediation efforts designed to address Worst Forms of Child Labor (WFCL).”

2/24/08 - I responded: "Thanks for your explanation of the role of your MSI Board. It will not be a standard-setting or policy-making group but a Board that hires or vets staff, in your case a group of auditors/verifiers. It will be interesting to see how it works."

UK vs. U.S. Forms of CSR - Which Is Ahead?

2008-02-16T06:59:00.000-08:00

Henk Campher has an interesting blog contrasting CSR in the USA vs. the UK. He questions the conventional wisdom that the United States is behind Europe in CSR issues. He thinks the two are just different. He oversimplifies, but in interesting ways. At the end, I will say what I believe he is missing, something very important. He picks out three areas where the two countries differ and shows how they affect their approaches to CSR:

1. The United States Has Less of a Safety Net. Government intervention is resisted to a greater extent in the United States. That means, says Henk, that CSR in the United States has more to do with corporate citizenship, i.e., relations with the community, whereas in the UK it has more to do with company operations.
The clearest area where this resonates is in the area of corporate philanthropy. Expectations for corporate charitable support are higher in the United States. Philanthropy is more encouraged by U.S. tax laws than UK tax laws - certainly at the individual level and probably at the corporate level. In the United States, you get an immediate tax break up front - which is more of an incentive than a covenant of a minimum number of years that results eventually in H.M. Treasury topping up the gift.
However, on the other side, the Business in the Community initiative of the Prince of Wales is heavily concentrated in community involvement. There is nothing quite as major on the U.S. side. Meanwhile, U.S. companies like Gap Inc. and Chiquita have been leaders in bringing their supply chain operations into compliance with workplace and environmental standards. It's not so clear.

2. UK and European Corporations Are More Heavily Regulated than U.S. Corporations. His second point is related to the first. The United States is more decentralized and less regulated. Washington rules at home with a light touch. As a result, says Henk, states and localities are more independent than local units of government in the UK, and U.S. corporations have more room for creativity. That could be.
But how does that affect CSR? Americans are outraged by Chinese factories that make drugs that are poisonous and are allowed to be shipped overseas without inspection. But how much damage will U.S. CDOs be causing in 2008 and how much inspection did they get? This room for experimentation has side effects that should be listed on any prescription for laisser-faire.

3. Celebrities Are More Important in the United States. Henk argues that celebrities play a more important role in the United States. He does not entirely approve of this. CEOs tend to be covered in the news as personifying their companies. He does not like television news in part for this reason. He contrasts the BBC with local television news. What he is saying, I think, is that CSR initiatives in the UK and Europe come via committees whereas in the United States they are led by individuals.
A contrary example would be Anita Roddick and the Body Shop, or the Prince of Wales and his eco-efforts. And there's nothing in the United States quite like the celebrity-worship of the British royals. The BBC has no shortage of coverage of them. Queen Elizabeth has personified the UK for 55 years - not necessarily a bad thing, but it undercuts Henk's argument.

Missing Element: the Difference between the UK and U.S. Consumer. What Henk fails to see, I think, is the great difference between the U.S. and UK consumer. The shopping for a better world movement, like the socially responsible investment movement, started in the United States but it took root more deeply in Europe than here. If you go into high-end Waitrose or low-end Tesco, you see the same signs informing you which items are organic or fair-traded or hormone-free or low-energy. Environmental seals and labor certifications are taken seriously. The UK-European shopper is an amazing human being, able to keep quality and price considerations straight and at the same time care about the globe.
The United States is catching up. The EcoMom is tearing up a storm, but it is still early-stage stuff and only the number of brands that are affected is still small, nothing like Europe. Chiquita is putting its environmental co-brand (the Rainforest Alliance frog) only on bananas destined for the European market - because American shoppers don't care enough yet.
All this is in flux. But meanwhile, for my money I submit that it's the difference between the UK and U.S. shopper that puts the conventional wisdom on the money.

Milton Friedman on CSR

2008-02-14T10:40:00.000-08:00

Milton Friedman wrote a critical article in the Sunday New York Times on September 13, 1970 that appears in virtually every collection of articles on corporate social responsibility (CSR). I have reviewed it elsewhere.
While I was at Oxford I attended meetings of the free-market-oriented Mont Pelerin Society and got to know Professor Friedman. So a few years later when I was attending the American Economic Association meetings in Chicago, I found myself alone in an elevator with him and my new wife Alice Tepper Marlin.
I introduced her to him and explained that she was a leader in the movement that he had criticized in his Sunday Times piece.
He looked at her and smiled: "Well," he said, "we all do harm in our own way."
He was a nice man to argue with.

CSR in Finance - Green Lending

2008-01-16T00:27:00.000-08:00

One way that banks can show their concern for a sustainable future is through environmentally careful lending practices. A new report grades large banks on climate change issues. It was released last week by the Ceres coalition of activist investors, environmentalists, and companies.

The report puts European banks at the top of the list - HSBC (70 points out of 100 on Ceres' Climate Change Governance Checklist), ABN AMRO (66), Barclays and HBOS (61), and Deutsche Bank (60). At the other extreme, Bear Stearns gets zero points. Lehman Brothers released a report on the business challenges of climate change that received praise, but it scored a disappointing 26. Other banks active on this topic are
- Goldman Sachs, which invested $1.5 billion in clean energy in 2006 and scored 53.
- Merrill Lynch, which launched an Energy Efficiency Index in 2007, and scored 52.
- Morgan Stanley, which established a Carbon Bank in 2007 to help clients go carbon neutral, and scored 49.

Islamic Banking and CSR

2008-01-15T23:46:00.001-08:00

As we see large parts of our banking system being acquired by sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and East Asia, we should pay more attention to Islamic banking, whether or not the acquiring institution has any intention of engaging in Islamic banking. Harvard has recognized the growing importance of the topic by creating an Islamic Finance Center.

There are about 260 Islamic banks in the world, most in the Middle East. They are worth about $200-$300 billion, not to mention trillions of dollars more in deposits from Islamic customers who do not at the moment use an Islamic bank. Two big established Islamic banks outside the Middle East are Bank Islam Malaysia and Islamic Bank of Britain; new ones are Amanah (HSBC), Citibank and Noriba (UBS). Noriba makes clear that it sees a connection between Islamic banking and CSR.

The three basic principles of Islamic banking are:
1. Do not do business in sinful industries, haram, such as alcohol and gambling.
2. No riba, usury - no accepting or paying interest.
3. Avoid gharar, i.e., risk.

The first principle does sound like CSR. The second turns out to have a workaround in the form of lease-purchase arrangements. The third sounds like good advice based on what has been happening in the U.S. financial arena.

Chrysler Tied to Rifle Manufacturer

2008-01-15T20:18:00.000-08:00

A professorial colleague who teaches at the business school at Augusta State University in Georgia of Augusta is a careful researcher who cares deeply about peace. We were once officers together on the board of Economists for Peace and Security. He has alerted me to the fact, posted on his web site, that Cerberus Capital Management, the people who purchased Chrysler Corporation, now also own the world's largest rifle manufacturer.

Now, for all I know, this rifle maker sells only to people who use the rifle for target practice. But the guardians of the portfolios of some socially responsible investors attempt to screen out companies that make weapons. A Quaker I know who owned a large machine-tool manufacturing company would not sell it to a prospective buyer that had arms-manufacturing connections. So it matters to them. I pass on this information for these investors.

Why We Overlook Unethical Behavior

2008-01-15T08:47:00.000-08:00

What with the string of Enron and Worldcom shockers and then what seems with hindsight to have been a collective see-no-evil attitude in the mortgage origination and securitization businesses, it's not surprising that some Harvard Business School professors have been wondering why no one blew the whistle loud enough on lapses of ethical behavior in business.

They start with clearing the air by saying that good people can do bad things and that it's usually easier to see lapses in ethical behavior - or appearances of such lapses - when you are not a party to a transaction.

The professors then come up with four types of theories about why people so often seem to overlook unethical behavior at work. They are as follows (I am paraphrasing their language to fit my own understanding of the issues, and I may be oversimplifying their argument):
(1) Why raise the issue if the main immediate outcome is to damage one's situation at the office (or other workplace)?
(2) Why raise it if the behavior isn't "clear, immediate, and direct"?
(3) Why get excited about it if the change in ethical behavior for the worse is gradual?
(4) Why bring it up if nothing bad has happened? (If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it.) So nothing is said during the decision process.

All of which suggests that business needs ethical issues built into its management systems. That in turn leads an endorsement of voluntary written standards and periodic reviews. And it suggests there are limits to relying on voluntary approaches.

Architect of Corporate Responsibility

2008-01-14T20:20:00.001-08:00

Architect of Corporate Responsibility 01 This video is now on YouTube and AOL Video. It covers the life of Alice Tepper Marlin as a Wellesley student, Wall Street analyst and President of the Council on Economic Priorities, which she founded to collect data on the social responsibility of corporations. The video covers her private life as wife and mother, her activities at CEP and finally her new role as President of Social Accountability International, which prepares the SA8000 standard for workplace equity.

Ashoka is the organization that prepared the video and is behind the recent surge in interest in social entrepreneurship. Ashoka was founded by Bill Drayton.

You could say I am biased, but I think the video is a great story from beginning to end. Ashoka did a magnificent job putting it together.

Seneca Falls, 160 Years Ago

2008-01-12T11:41:00.000-08:00

This year Women's History Month in March and Women's Equality Day on August 26 have special significance. It's the 160th anniversary year of Seneca Falls. It's also the first year ever that a woman is a serious candidate for the office of President of the United States.

Ten years ago on the the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Seneca Falls I was privileged to have produced at the GeVa Theater in Rochester a music-accompanied history of the American women's movement, titled "Take Up the Song". The title song is presented by the Akoma choir and folk music is played between each sequence.

The event was sponsored by the Susan B. Anthony Center at the University of Rochester and covers the ground from 1840 when Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton met in London to Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party.

An earlier version had been put on as a staged reading in New York's City Hall Blue Room in 1995 (the 75th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment), sponsored by the City Comptroller.

In honor of this year's 160th anniversary, I have posted on the CSRNYC web site the dramatized history. The title is from a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay dedicated to New York City suffragist Inez Milholland. Click on the link above or here.

Valentine Chocolates - Child Labor Inside

2008-01-08T13:28:00.000-08:00

Rodney North's comments on the Cocoa Verification Board and the context have convinced me that the chocolate industry should be doing more. Six years after the child labor issue surfaced in 2001, the new proposal is to monitor the state of child labor on only half of the cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast and Ghana - the two largest world cocoa producers.

As North explains it, if a van full of children is trafficked in 2008 to work on a cocoa farm, the monitoring process could note it and this note could be certified and verified without any requirement for corrective action - no requirement for stopping the forced labor, or for alerting consumers that the cocoa/chocolate they are buying is tainted by slavelike practices.

The industry needs to answer these questions. If not, consumers should be signed up through a campaign to spread the word about the conditions under which chocolate is produced. The model is the "No Dirty Gold" campaign, which has been very effective. Equal Exchange is working with the International Labor Rights Forum (laborrights.org), Co-op America, and other Fair Trade chocolate companies and they have prepared a Statement of Commitment to Ethical Cocoa Sourcing that they are seeking to get others (importers, manufacturers, retailers, faith-based organizations) to sign. Expect to hear more about this in the runup to Valentine's Day.

EcoTourism in the Americas

2008-01-06T06:45:00.000-08:00

I've done the tourist thing in Belize, Brazil, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Jamaica, Mexico, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and the message I brought back was the same everywhere - tourism can damage or (less often) restore the environment, depending on how it is handled.
If you want to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem, look for a hotel/resort that supports local conservation of the environment - i.e., a place committed to ecotourism or sustainable travel.
This kind of shopping for a better world is now easier with the second edition of Go Green! A SmartGuide to Sustainable Travel in the Americas, published by the Sustainable Tourism Certification Network of the Americas in collaboration with Rainforest Alliance. It covers more than 200 tourism businesses in the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile and the Caribbean that as of October 2007 were certified by one of the Network's member programs.
All of them have demonstrated their commitment to protecting their surrounding natural and cultural resources. The guide is organized by country and certification level, and by hotel, restaurant and tour operator. Printed and CD versions are distributed free at related trade shows and conferences. This guide was supported by the Global Environment Facility, the United Nations and the Inter-American Development Bank.

Workplace Conditions: Why Consumer Action Is Needed

2008-01-05T20:58:00.000-08:00

David Barboza, the NY Times economic correspondent in Shanghai, has written about Chinese apple juice exports (2004), Chinese corruption (2005), China’s cadaver industry and chip fraud and environmental and health damage from its coal industry (2006), and food safety, lead-painted toy recall, tire recall and discrimination against U.S. films (2007). He has clearly gotten to know Chinese business pretty well and is responsive to NGOs seeking to bring their information before the public.

His article today (Saturday, January 5, 2008), “Reform Stalls in Chinese Factories,” is based on a National Labor Committee report in December 2007 and covers half of front page and two-thirds of an inside page of the business section of the NY Times. The subhead is: “To Supply the West, Workers Endure Lost Fingers and Low Pay." The four accompanying photos show a worker handling corroding batteries, filthy sanitation at a factory, primitive handling of chemicals and a crowded factory floor. Captions on inside photos say that China passed a new labor law effective 2008, but says: “critics say more change is needed." Barboza covered a similar expose in August 2007 by the China Labor Watch. Among brands, Barboza takes after Wal-Mart as a buyer. His concluding paragraph is: "There is little that any Western company can do about those issues no matter how seriously they take corporate social responsibility - other than leaving China."

Business is not leaving China any time soon. The only way forward, in the absence of better oversight of factory conditions by the Chinese Government itself, is for consumers to pay more attention to what they are buying and for them to avoid brands that do not have workplace standards, credible implementation systems and purchasing practices that reward supplier improvements and compliance with law. Gap, for example, subscribes to two such standard systems – the Ethical Trading Initiative and the SA8000 standard developed by Social Accountability International. Nike subscribes to the Fair Labor Association code of workplace conduct. Consumers need to know who subscribes to and implements these credible standards so that they can demand such commitment be an ingredient in the brands they buy.

Cocoa Verification Board - Willy Wonka Cares

2007-12-26T15:06:00.000-08:00

The Cocoa Verification Board is a multi-stakeholder body created to validate government surveys of labor in cocoa production. It is both unique and promising. Its sponsor, Verité, says (12/21/07) that the Board “will select, train and hire individual, independent verifiers who will analyze critique and report on the robustness of the national surveys undertaken by the governments of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire… to identify and remediate the worst forms of child labor and forced adult labor in the cocoa sector.”
Verité has announced that all materials relating to its own work and that of the Verification Board will be readily available to all interested parties and a website will be created to ensure that information is easily accessible and widely available.
Verification Board members are: (1) NGOs: Dr. Stephen Ayidiya, University of Ghana, Legon, Alice Koiho Kipre, Afrique Secours et Assistance, Côte d'Ivoire, Andrews Addoquaye Tagoe, General Agricultural Workers' Union, Diane Mull, International Initiative on Exploitive Child Labor, John Trew, CARE International, (2) Government: Tony Fofie, Ghana Cocoa Board, Amouan Assouan Acquah, Special Counselor to the Prime Minister, Côte d'Ivoire, (3) Industry: Jeff Morgan, Mars, Inc., Isabelle Adam, European Cocoa Association.

Comment: This is a good step forward for a luxury-good industry that has for decades had enlightened leaders. In England it was the progressive Quakers - the Rowntrees in York (an inspiration for Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, their firm was purchased by the at times anti-CSR Nestlé group in 1988), and the utopian Cadbury Family in Birmingham. In the United States it was the Mennonite utopian Milton Hershey, whose factory in Hershey, Pa. was for many years a dedicated citizen and employer, and founder of a model orphanage and school; the company was reportedly acquired amidst controversy by the white knight of the buyers, Cadbury-Schweppes.
Another U.S. company, Mars, has a similar record of financial success as the other three companies but was not historically in the same CSR league, perhaps partly because it moved around, starting in Tacoma, Wash., moving to Minneapolis, Minn., then Chicago, Ill., while expanding to Slough, England and Newark, NJ.

The main question I have about the new Board is about how much it has bitten off. On the basis of how it describes itself, the Cocoa Verification Board is a multi-stakeholder body and process, a concept with a fine pedigree.
The question in my mind is how far one can go with second-party auditing, i.e., verification of nonfinancial activities without the guidance of an independent set of standards or the oversight of an accreditation body. Second-party audits evolve based on feedback and need. As the first auditor of the Ben & Jerry's CSR multi-stakeholder report for 1988 - the first stakeholder report on record, and independently audited to boot - I am familiar with the concept and also with the challenge (20 years ago!) of trying to carry out several oversight functions at the same time.
The Cocoa Verification Board and its sponsor, Verité, are pioneering new approaches to second-party verification. They both have the character of an industry association, sharing some of the attributes of associations created by the processing and retailing end of an industry, like the Council for Responsible Jewellery Practices, to improve working conditions at the source of their raw materials. The Board and sponsor are good examples of the best of second-party auditing and certification and in dealing with two sovereign West African governments they have the clout of the chocolate-buying brands behind them. It will be interesting to see how this experiment works.

The other route, which I have come to prefer as more methodical and easier to manage, is to create a separate standard-setting body and an accreditation body that will train and eventually accredit individuals or organizations to serve as certification bodies. The number and size of certification bodies have been growing (see examples in India) and are accumulating cross-company and cross-standard experience and skills that have a regional focus.
Best practices for both second-party and third-party audits have been evolving, especially over the last ten years, in the direction of specifying the function of each function in the process to preserve the integrity of the multi-stakeholder verification process. The interested reader is referred to ISO (national accreditation) and the ISEAL Alliance (global accreditation) for more information on the current status of third-party audit practices. Both ISO and ISEAL members have a history going back decades of working with raising standards, including labor standards, in private-sector agriculture.
Could a globally accredited certification body audit a government agency? That will be the big test. At the moment governments appoint accreditation bodies that examine state universities, hospitals and labs. An open question is how far governments would be willing to go to submit themselves to third-party verification. Experiments are under way now in which third-party accreditation and certification bodies are working with NGOs providing adoption services. If these experiments continue to have a positive outcome, government agencies could follow the same path.
So the Cocoa Verification Board is both unique and promising as one of the best examples of second-party auditing. It has taken on a lot.

How Many Consumers Are Green? How Many Could There Be?

2007-12-26T10:29:00.000-08:00

According to BBMG, a marketing agency specializing in CSR-sensitive brands, consumers are becoming more conscious of the environmental and social impacts of the companies whose products they buy and almost nine out of ten Americans surveyed identify themselves as "conscious consumers". BBMG said of their late-November report: "Consumers are hungry for more information about the products and services that they choose in their lives. They want companies to be transparent about product attributes and ingredients, and honest about their impact on the environment and society."

On the other hand, another marketing agency, egg, puts the number of green consumers at fewer than 7 out of 10 consumers because of a sizeable group of sceptics, and the number of consumers who actually show in their buying practices a sensitivity to CSR practices of the brands they buy is down to 7-20 percent.

What is the truth? Probably some sceptics are dubious about CSR being used in purchasing because of a lack of easily available information. Similarly, the percentage of consumers who actually use CSR ratings of brands in their purchasing practices is much lower than the number who say they would act on it, because the information is hard to come by.

This suggests that the advance of CSR efforts requires more effort along the lines of alonovo, which puts CSR information in the hands of the consumer when buying online, and Shopping for a Better World, which puts the information in the hands of the supermarket consumer.

NYU Stern School Names Alice Tepper Marlin to Citi Fellowship

2007-12-26T09:06:00.000-08:00

NYU's Stern School has named Alice Tepper Marlin the fifth Citi Distinguished Fellow. Celebrating the fifth anniversary year of the Citi Leadership and Ethics Program, the Stern School has focused on Global Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), a rubric that spans environmental stewardship and sustainability, respect for labor and its inherent rights and the responsibilities of global capital to developing economies.

In announcing the appointment, Stern describes Alice Tepper Marlin as "one of the true pioneers in the field [who] has been called the "architect" of CSR. She is the founder and current president of Social Accountability International (SAI), an organization that created the SA8000 workplace standard to addresses the ethics of supply chains. Slice Tepper Marlin was also the founding president and CEO of the Council on Economic Priorities (CEP), the first organization to research and publish information on corporate ethics for consumers. Its consumer handbook, "Shopping for a Better World," sold more than a million copies.

As fellow, Alice Tepper Marlin will visit Professional Responsibility classes and anchor the Citi Program's annual conference on Friday, February 22, 2008, which will include the participation of Pamela Flaherty, president and chief executive officer of the Citi Foundation. She also plans to meet with the MBA Social Enterprise Association and the undergraduate Stern Business Ethics Society student clubs, engage with members of the faculty and bring leaders from her field to the Stern community.

The four previous Citi Distinguished Fellows were Arthur Levitt, Jr., the 25th and longest-serving Chairman of the SEC; John Biggs, former Chairman and CEO of TIAA-CREF; Harvey Goldschmid, Dwight Professor of Law at Columbia University and former SEC Commissioner; and Charles Ellis, Trustee of the RW Johnson Foundation and for 30 years Managing Director of Greenwich Associates.

In anouncing the appointment, Thomas F. Cooley, Dean of NYU's Stern School, said: "The Stern School has had an abiding interest in research and teaching on the relationship between business and society and sees itself at the center of this dialogue. We are delighted that our partnership with Citi enables us to welcome Alice Tepper Marlin to the School. Her contribution to the discussion on global corporate social security is sure to stimulate discussion and debate on this important area."

Citi's commitment to CSR in the area of global climate change was recognized in September 2007 when it was named a top financial institution in the Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index. In May 2007, Citi announced that it will direct $50 billion over 10 years to address global climate change through investments and financings to support the commercialization and growth of alternative energy and clean technology.

The Citi Leadership and Ethics Program at Stern was established in 2003, through the support of the Citi Foundation. It is managed by Stern's Markets, Ethics and Law Program.

CSR in Academia - December 2007

2007-12-23T09:50:00.000-08:00

New Program: Postgraduate CSR Certificate, University of Geneva, Switzerland. The course, in English, starts in January 2008 and runs for six months. To accommodate busy professionals, it will be held monthly from a Thursday evening to a Saturday evening in Geneva, Switzerland. It is aimed at three groups: (1) company executives who wish to improve and refine their CSR skills; (2) those who wish to enter the CSR field from NGOs, government institutions or international organizations; and (3) postgraduate students who wish to improve their knowledge and skills in this exciting area. The course will be given by some leading CSR thinkers and practitioners. See the course brochure for syllabus and speakers, or visit the University of Geneva website, Query info@mhcinternational.com and register by the end of December 2007. Grants are available under certain conditions.

The Sustainable Endowments Institute recently issued its annual College Sustainability Report Card that assesses campus initiatives, such as green building, renewable energy, and local food sourcing, as well as endowment investing practices such as shareholder engagement and transparency. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, and the Sierra Club's magazine cites the report card as a source for its own top ten green colleges list.

Business schools got a similar treatment earlier with the publication of Beyond Grey Pinstripes, the Aspen Institute's biennial evaluation of how well MBA programs address social and environmental sustainability issues. Exemplifying the kind of best practice rewarded by this assessment is the Sustainable Innovation Summit hosted by the Thunderbird School of Global Management. Ten teams from business schools compete for a $20,000 prize that goes to the most innovative business solutions to real-world social and environmental problems. Academic research represents a vital tool for advancing sustainable business through independent, empirical studies.

Before that, the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management announced findings of a study correlating strong corporate environmental performance with robust environmental disclosure by companies. The Rotman researchers contend that environmental performance can serve as a proxy for financial performance, suggesting investors will increasingly grade companies' environmental transparency.

A Puzzling View of CSR History

2007-12-04T23:42:00.000-08:00

Through a reference on this week's excellent CSR Wire, I clicked through to Accountability-Central, which is a company in Mineola, NY that is attractively assembling CSR news from a wide and deep pool of sources. What a treat to find CSR articles retrieved from all over, although I wonder why so many different stories are included about the future of interest rates. (The financial news media already cover this topic exhaustively.) CSR Wire provides a steady flow of useful information from corporations but Accountability-Central complements this information with a well-organized collection of analytical and thoughtful articles.

What caught my attention on this site was an article, The Birth of Corporate Social Opportunity, by Ian Morton, Founder and CEO of the Summerhill Group, a Canadian company that seems to have made great contributions to environmental progress and healthy housing in the great country to our north where I have spent many happy years. In an attempt to create a niche for his own company, Mr. Morton essays a history of CSR. He opens with mention of a 1953 book, continues with a vague reference to CSR being practiced among the ancient Greeks, then skips forward again to settle correctly on the assessment that the true origins of CSR were in the United States in the 1970s (he might have said the late 1960s, but that is a quibble). He goes on to observe the enormous recent growth of CSR and then pronounces CSR a fad and a disappointment.

Having participated actively in the origins of CSR in the 1970s, I was taken aback. Who do I believe - Mr. Morton or my own lying eyes? We have in fact come a tremendous way since the 1970s, when it was considered a deeply radical idea to ask corporations to reveal information about their social and environmental practices. The 1970s were replete with false claims about corporate environmental virtue (this propaganda is called greenwashing today but was then given names like ecopornography) that had to be exposed one by one. CSR a fad? It is so solidly entrenched in Europe that it will surely last there not just through my lifetime but that of my children. The United States is years behind Europe in its awareness of CSR issues but is catching up, and the developing world is paying close attention to CSR because Western buyers are insisting on social and environmental assurances in the growth of agricultural products, the mining of ore and the manufacture of apparel and toys.

Toys. Mr. Morton chooses a toy industry example to preface his otherwise undocumented statement that "public cynicism [about CSR] is rising" in the United States. He notes that in 2004, Mattel issued its first CSR report listing as a core value, "taking ownership of all that passes in front of us". He continues: "But it's difficult to reconcile this statement with Mattel's recent product recall... [and its] attempt to pass responsibility for mistakes to the country that manufactured their product, to their specifications. (To be fair, Mattel later apologized to China, saying that 85% of the recall was due to its own design faults.)"

If public cynicism is rising in the United States, it is because the 21st century has opened with an incredible string of revelations about corporate misconduct, from the boom and bust of the dot-coms, Enron, Global Crossing and Global Warming, and now arguably the biggest meltdown of the financial sector in American history, the subprime crisis.

On the basis of this story and the public cynicism that he perceives, Mr. Morton is ready to scrap CSR and substitute a new initiative that he calls Corporate Social Opportunity. I understand that he seeks to convey to corporate executives that CSR offers a marketing opportunity, that there are no obstacles, only opportunities. A positive approach. But his suggested name reminds me of the Pogo comic strip, whose most famous line is: "We have met the enemy and he is us," followed in the next panel by a less remembered epilog: "We are surrounded by insurmountable opportunity."

I submit that Mr. Morton is not the first to see opportunity in CSR and that many once-small companies have ridden social and environmental missions to growth and prosperity. I offer Mr. Morton every good wish for his success in tackling insurmountable opportunity in Canada, but I submit that if he thinks CSR is just a fad he is, on this subject, to use Rick Blaine's well-chosen word, misinformed.

The Status of LEED in NYC - Positive Lessons

2007-12-03T12:17:00.000-08:00

The LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program is very successful, judging by the number of signs in New York City with large headlines indicating pursuit of this or that LEED certification, and the number of real estate advertisements that mention LEED certification achieved or in process. More ("Snapshot" on the web site of Sallan.org) »

CSR Issues Relating to Subprime Loan Losses

2007-12-03T11:26:00.000-08:00

Citing Allan Sloan's research for Fortune magazine, Ben Stein in Sunday's NY Times ("The Long and Short of It at Goldman Sachs") criticizes Goldman Sachs for underwriting securities representing packages of loans while simultaneously short-selling mortgage indexes. He also takes to task a Goldman economist for being excessively bearish on mortgages and suspects that the short-sellers were paying for that particular portrait.

There is a point of view that markets are markets and that if someone wants to buy junk from Goldman's securitization window at overly high prices, caveat emptor and good for Goldman. Similarly, if Goldman's traders (another department) want to bet that the housing market is going to continue to deteriorate, and they place their bets, what's wrong with that? If Goldman's bets win at both windows, tant mieux.

This point of view depends on a wall between departments of the kind that the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 was supposed to put up between banking activities and investment banking. Is anything left of this wall? Is there any limit on communication between Goldman's traders and the people who investigate the quality of loans that they packaged?

On Stein's other issue, the excessive bearishness of Goldman's economist, I believe the Case-Shiller indexes and various estimates of the total likely losses support the idea that downward adjustment in housing markets has considerably further to go. But several factors will come into play to mitigate the impact:
1. Continuing infusion of central bank liquidity in the United States and overseas.
2. Local judicial insistence on seeing all the documents before permitting foreclosures, such as is occurring with Deutsche Bank in Ohio, which may slow down foreclosures - at some cost to the credibility of the American mortgage system.
3. Industry association assistance to mayors to help with easing the impact of foreclosures on local communities (the Mortgage Bankers are providing $100 per foreclosure to create a foreclosure database and to fund counseling services).
4. Congressional action to freeze interest rates on ARM interest rates that are about to float up.

A St. Nicholas Day Message: Conscience and Money

2007-12-02T22:21:00.000-08:00

Here is a St. Nicholas Day thought by my Dutch-born mother, writing 50 years ago, when the family was in Montreal because my father was working there for the U.N. Given the way that the 21st century has opened, with the dot-coms, Enron, Global Crossing and Global Warming, and now the spreading subprime-mortgage problems, the issues she was raising are in stark relief.

A ST. NICHOLAS DAY MESSAGE: CONSCIENCE AND MONEY
By Hilda van Stockum, December 6, 1957

It strikes me that the whole area of finance has imperceptibly crept outside the boundaries of moral awareness. People tend to think in terms of profit and loss, not in terms of good and evil. Yet nowhere is ethical consideration so necessary. How much of our life is dominated by buying and selling, how much is being changed by modern trends in manufacture and trade… yet no one seems to think it necessary to ask: “Are we furthering the right principles?”

I was looking at an American television program for children one Saturday morning, and I was struck by the bad quality of the program itself, full of improbable bad guys and improbable good guys, much too exciting and violent. Ten minutes were devoted to a lighting of a dynamite fuse about to blow up a sleeping boy in a cave, before the galloping horse was allowed to come to the rescue. It was interlarded with drooling appeals to children to ask their mommies to buy them succulent lollipops or chocolate bars or ice cream cones, while some smug child was licking at the aforementioned article with tempting expressions of pleasure.

The thought that came into my mind was: “This is not fair!” I saw the harassed housewife, trying to make ends meet and keep her children away from the dentist or doctor, besieged by the little horrors with cries of “Ah mom, give me a sucker or chocolate,” and finally succumbing from sheer weariness, to the detriment of her purse and her child’s health.

I felt it was hitting below the belt to address the modern barrage of advertising to little children, the most suggestible creatures in the world, without the sense to resist. There is a strong mother instinct that wants to make children happy, but should this be exploited for the purpose of financial gain?

Yet many people, when I talk about this, say: “I don’t see what morals have to do with it. It is good business."

Now I do not deny that business is a good thing. But how can it remain a good thing without morals? Is it really irrelevant HOW we spend or earn money?

Irresponsibility usually leads to chaos, and then order has to be brought in by force. I think it would be to the advantage of businessmen and housewives alike, if they gave a thought to the moral side of money.

If we appeal always to the weaknesses and vices of the public in our advertisements, we are necessarily going to increase these weaknesses and vices. Some Martian visitor to this planet might get a queer idea of our civilization by reading the appeals in our ads. He would think that the only thing Canadians care about is to smell nice, to attract the opposite sex, to rival the neighbors and to eat quantities and varieties of food.

Luckily, of course, advertisers are not completely successful. But is this trend to try to make the poor hardworking father spend the money he needs for the rent on a new car or a new refrigerator a healthy trend?

In a sense, how we use our money determines not only our own lives but those of others too. If we wish for foolish, vulgar or ugly objects, and make others want them, a certain number of people will spend their lives making them. What we ask for, will be supplied. What we make, others will be induced to ask for. But is there no place in these transactions for a thought as to their usefulness, or moral value?

This is a very complex and difficult question. What one person considers good and necessary, may be despised by another. There are no hard and fast rules. But I do suggest that this side of the matter is worthy of attention.

I think we all have a responsibility, whether we like it or not. We will be answerable one day, I believe, for the way in which we spent our money, or caused others to spend it. I don’t think one needs to be puritanical to feel there is room for improvement.

Perhaps some day the irresponsible use of money will seem as strange and outdated to us as slavery seems now, and we will have learned to restrain our profit-making to what is legitimate and generally beneficial. Meanwhile, all one can do is throw out a hint here and there for other, cleverer and wiser people to pick up and work out.

Corporate Executives See the Writing on the Wall

2007-11-16T23:38:00.000-08:00

Corporate executives have come to accept that greater government regulation is likely. Some embrace it because they believe it is right. Others, like a boxer facing off against a punishing opponent, would rather embrace it than be socked by it.

A national survey last month of senior executives by the Chicago-based accounting firm Grant Thornton LLP, found both (1) strong support (by 72 percent of respondents) for more environmental regulation of companies, and (2) strong expectation (by 70 percent of respondents) that this regulation will happen within the next five years. More than half of the respondents, 56 percent, supported more workplace regulation (human rights and labor practices), but a smaller percentage expect it to happen. Only 35 percent believe the government should regulate companies regarding their impact on the communities in which they operate.

Of the respondents, 68 percent also expect more environmental responsibility reporting requirements in the next five years, while 35 percent believe the same will be true for social responsibility (workplace) reporting. Only 29 percent currently produce some kind of corporate responsibility report and more than half (55 percent) say they have no plans to produce such a report, despite believing such reports will in time be required!

These results suggest that corporate executives are acutely aware of the context within which they work and favor government intervention in certain areas. The views revealed by the survey may reflect the reality that environmental issues are very much in the forefront of political debate and that a consensus is building for a more active stance for the government. Jim Maurer, Managing Partner of Grant Thornton's Consumer and Industrial Products practice, says that if there is to be more regulation, most executives "want to be sitting at the table deciding what the parameters of that regulation should be."

A different survey, of UK opinion leaders, by Chatsworth Communications was reported last month by Edie as concluding that one-fourth of respondents believe companies pursue green policies to protect their reputation, with one-fifth saying these initiatives result from consumer pressure and good business sense. Only 1 percent said they believed genuine concern for the environment was the main motivation for companies becoming more environmentally friendly. Although Brits tend to be more sceptical and critical of corporations than Americans, it's clear why corporate executives on either side of the Atlantic might believe more regulation is on its way.

Pepsico's Food Opportunity

2007-11-16T21:11:00.000-08:00

With a reorganization behind it, Purchase, NY-based Pepsico, starting in FY 08, may be able to do more with its largest single division, its Americas food operations. They account for 45 percent of the company's revenues, half again more than its beverage units in the Americas region, and is headed up by John Compton. The division has reduces the environmental impact on local communities of its Frito-Lay factories, which is terrific for the workers and the community.

Now it would be wonderful if the oligopoly power that Pepsico has, with the long reach of its vending machines into our institutions, is used to give us more choices. This is a good CSR goal and one that would benefit me personally because I am scheduled to teach from 6 to 9 pm many evenings and the vending machines all belong to Pepsico. Rarely is there time at the break to go farther than the nearest vending machine if I have not had anything to eat before class. But the vending machine offerings do not cater to professors seeking to stay away from salt, processed sugar or anything fried. How hard would it be to include raisin-and-nuts packages (what the Dutch call "student oats" and the Germans "studentenfutter" or-"student fodder")?

CSR Issues Relating to Subprime Loan Losses

2007-11-12T09:36:00.000-08:00

As the subprime loan losses mount up, the CSR issues relate to where markets failed and what can now be done proactively by the financial sector (and government officials) to reassure the investing public. The S&L crisis of the 1980s was largely a regulatory issue, with losses confined to the S&Ls themselves and to U.S. taxpayers who paid for restoration of stability to the industry. But a substantial percentage of subprime prime loan losses seem to have been exported overseas. Subprime loans are hiding in collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) salted away in many overseas institutions. Deutsche Bank AG, Credit Suisse Group and HSBC have all recently written off substantial subprime losses. This problem is therefore not confined to the United States and the solution may need to be global. The stock prices of Barclays and the Royal Bank of Scotland have fallen sharply on rumors that they will have to take large losses, with Sanford Bernstein projecting last week that the two banks would have to write off $4.4 billion in subprime losses. Barclays today denied that it was seriously affected by subprime loan losses and its stock price recovered somewhat, along with that of RBS. But investor confidence in both Barclays and the RBS, which earlier were fighting over control over ABN Amro Holding NV (RBS's team won), remains weak, with their price-earnings multiples in the range of 6 to 7 whereas the average for European banking institutions is 10.

Basic Standards for Laggard Companies

2007-11-12T07:37:00.000-08:00

The Ethical Corporation has a comment on laggard companies to which I would like to add my own. The focus of much CSR commentary and debate is over the leaders, who are carving out and paying for new levels of compliance with higher standards of environmental care, workplace quality, fair trade or the reporting thereon.

Activist groups tend to focus on the leading brands because the media are more interested. If you have a problem with "blood diamonds, for example, go after the leading jewelry companies. This is common sense, because the best-known brands make better headlines.

However, there is a danger in the focus remaining solely on the top brands' raising their standards or their level of enforcement even higher to respond to activists' publicity about conditions in subcontractors' facilities.

The danger is that for the bulk of the industry, there is no pressure to improve conditions.

That is why I believe there should be at least two levels of CSR performance - one to be applied to any company in the industry and a higher standard for companies that wish to be leaders.

This is the approach being taken by the Council for Responsible Jewellery Practices, which is putting pressure on companies throughout the industry ("from mining to retail") to adhere to minimum standards, while some companies are seeking to comply with higher standards in the environmental or workplace areas.

The debate has gone on too long about whether standards should be higher or lower. It seems to me that both ends of the spectrum deserve attention: (1) High-end multi-stakeholder CSR standards, with rigorous monitoring and full reporting, and (2) Basic standards enforced on the "laggards" by each industry, because it's right and because if the industry is not careful the laggards could have a major negative effect on the industry.

The scary poster for encouraging industry-wide initiatives is what happened to the fur industry.

"Why Business Schools Fail to Teach Ethics"

2007-10-22T20:34:00.000-07:00

I've been attending some interesting breakfast and lunch events at the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs and have read some issues of their online magazine Policy Innovations. Now I have found their blog site, Fairer Globalization. A recent post on this site is "Why Business Schools Fail to Teach Ethics." It includes several paragraphs from a New York Times op-ed by Robert Shiller (author of Irrational Exuberance) in 2005 titled "How Wall Street Learns to Look the Other Way," which puts the responsibility at the feet of business schools for failing to provide enough ethics training.

The op-ed is indeed worth resurrecting, because it critiques not just business schools but a moral philosophy that students sometimes pick up that takes utilitarianism away from an altruistic search for the greatest good of the greatest number and towards a Machiavellian egoism that borders on a rejection of any social obligations at all. Here's the excerpt from what Shiller said:

"[A]s with any situation in which we are puzzled by how a group of people can think in a seemingly odd way, it helps to look back to how they were educated. Education molds not just individuals but also common assumptions and conventional wisdom. And when it comes to the business world, our universities - and especially their graduate business schools - are powerful shapers of the culture.

"That said, the view of the world that one gets in a modern business curriculum can lead to an ethical disconnect. The courses often encourage a view of human nature that does not inspire high-mindedness. Consider financial theory, the cornerstone of modern business education. The mathematical theory that has developed over the decades has proved extremely valuable in general. But when it comes to individuals, the theory runs into some problems. In effect, it portrays people as nothing more than 'maximizers' of their own 'expected utility.' This means that people are expected to be totally selfish, constantly calculating their own advantage, with no thought of others. If the premise is that everyone would steal the silverware if he knew he could get away with it, and if we spend the entire semester developing the implications of this assumption, then it is hard to know where to begin to talk about ethics.

"Ultimately, the problem at the university level is a tendency toward overspecialization. Each professor gains expertise in a certain kind of research skill; that is how subject matter is defined. The specialty of financial theory has largely come to be defined by skills manipulating a narrow class of mathematical models of purely selfish behavior. Business ethics is just another academic specialty, and can seem as remote as microbiology to those studying financial theory."

Using Tech to Grow Givers: DonorsChoose.org

2007-10-22T19:37:00.000-07:00

If you watched the Colbert Report last week, you learned something about DonorsChoose.org. It has also received attention from Oprah, the Today Show, Dateline, the New York Times, Time magazine, Newsweek and Doonesbury comics. The organization has received the Nonprofit Innovation Award from the Stanford Business School and Amazon.com, a Global Technology Laureate from the TECH Museum of Innovation and Microsoft, the 2006 Social Capitalist Award and selection by Ashoka as a model project.

The idea behind DonorsChoose.org is a two-way exchange, to foster innovation in public schools and at the same time encourage individual philanthropy for that cause. School teachers submit ideas for experiences and materials that their students need to learn, using a form. The proposals are then put online and anyone can search among them by areas of interest, learn about needs, and choose to fund a project with a gift card to a teacher or family member. Donors get a package of photographs and student thank-you notes, a teacher impact letter, and an expenditure report showing how their gift was spent.

A former student in the CSR course at NYU Stern School that I teach (with Prof. Bruce Buchanan), Kari Hayden, is now Director of Corporate Partnerships at DonorsChoose.org. She will be working on direct corporate philanthropy and cause marketing programs through an innovative approach highlighted by the Wall Street Journal. To learn more, look at Blogger Challenge, or email Kari at kari@donorschoose.org.

SAI Conference on November 5

2007-10-21T18:59:00.000-07:00

Social Accountability International (SAI) will have its 10th anniversary conference on Monday, November 5 at the Harvard Club of New York City. It's not just sentiment that will bring me there. It's a tremendous opportunity to hear stories from around the world from people with a variety of perspectives who share the common goal of improving the quality of their workplaces and the environment.

My special regional interest is in Turkey, which will be well represented. Workplaces and managers will also be represented on the program from countries like China, India, Pakistan; Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland; Argentina, Nicaragua and Peru. At least two major international labor unions (UNI and UFCW) will be there, and speakers from the World Bank, IFC, Harvard, ETI and ISEAL.

For more about the conference, click here.

Word for the Day: "He Meant Well"

2007-10-21T10:41:00.000-07:00

NYU's Stern School of Business requires a course in professional responsibility and offers an elective on CSR and other topics. Its Markets, Ethics and Law (MEL) program is responsible for teaching and research on professional responsibility and CSR. The MEL faculty has recently been focusing on utilitarianism as a guide for moral conduct, and the text has been John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism.

Mill has a dispositive retort to those who defend perpetrators of acts with bad consequences on the basis of their having had good motives. This is the quote of the day:

"It is often affirmed that utilitarianism renders men cold and unsympathising; that it chills their moral feelings towards individuals; that it makes them regard only the dry and hard consideration of the consequences of actions, not taking into their moral estimate the qualities from which those actions emanate. If the assertion means that they do not allow their judgment respecting the rightness or wrongness of an action to be influenced by their opinion of the qualities of the person who does it, this is a complaint not against utilitarianism, but against having any standard of morality at all; for certainly no known ethical standard decides an action to be good or bad because it is done by a good or a bad man, still less because done by an amiable, a brave, or a benevolent man, or the contrary. These considerations are relevant, not to the estimation of actions, but of persons; and there is nothing in the utilitarian theory inconsistent with the fact that there are other things which interest us in persons besides the rightness and wrongness of their actions." (Utilitarianism, Book 2 [full text])

In other words, good people can do bad things and bad people can do good things. But note that Mill distinguishes between motives and intentions. See more on Utilitarianism Today at the CSRNYC.com web site.

New Blog

2007-10-21T07:06:00.000-07:00

This blog is being started to cover issues relating to corporate social responsibility. It supports the web site http://www.csrnyc.com/.