2Sustain

China’s colossal economic growth has come with enormous costs to the environment. China’s water resources have been particularly hard hit, and these days, the Yangtze tops the World Wildlife Fund’s list of the ten most-threatened rivers in the world.

BSR recently took an in-depth look at these issues, focusing specifically on water challenges and risks now inherent in the global electronics supply chain.

For this research, 10 Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) members submitted supplier names to BSR for matching against a publicly available database containing information on corporate environmental violations. After analyzing the 640 suppliers and matching them against the database, BSR found that: (more…)

BSR member companies are continuing with their sustainability programs in the year ahead, despite ongoing concerns about the world’s economy.

In fact, nearly all (94 percent) of the 377 respondents in the BSR/GlobeScan State of Sustainable Business Poll 2010 said that their companies plan to maintain or increase their budgets for CSR/sustainability programs 2011, and nearly three-quarters also anticipate increasing the amount of internal and external CSR/sustainability communications.

As you might expect, climate change remains an important focus of these efforts, with 63 percent of respondents selecting it more than any other issue as either a “significant” or “very significant” priority. However, it’s also with noting that the urgency around climate change appears to have decreased from last year, when the Copenhagen climate summit was approaching. The proportion of respondents who considered climate change a “very significant” priority declined from 41 percent in 2009 to 27 percent this year—a drop from first on the list to third.
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A few months ago, Scot Case, the Vice President of TerraChoice, testified before a congressional subcommittee that of all the products claiming to be eco-friendly, a whopping 98% are guilty of greenwashing.

Now, BSR and Futerra Sustainability Communications have teamed up to publish a new report to help companies “rise above the noise of greenwash” and effectively communicate the true impacts of their environmental initiatives.

“Greenwash is more than a distraction for the consumer; it threatens the entire market for green products and services,” says Lucy Shea, Chief Executive of Futerra. “Even while consumer trust goes down the drain, with only 10 percent believing green claims, demand for credible, environmentally friendly products and services is rising. Greenwash exacerbates this tension. The danger is that consumers lose all faith in green advertising, in effect dragging demand down.”

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It’s a subject that typically doesn’t get much press, but each year, about 90 million people around the world migrate for work. And, even though this labor migration is now essential to the supply chains of many international companies, these workers are often subject to deplorable human rights violations, including abuse, unsafe work conditions, forced labor, and human trafficking. In an effort to increase awareness of this increasingly vital –and vulnerable –segment of the global workforce, Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), recently released a new report, titled “International Labor Migration: A Responsible Role for Business.”

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