2Sustain

Brooks Sports, Inc. released its first corporate responsibility (CR) report earlier this month.

Brooks Sports, parent of leading running brand Brooks and women’s active lifestyle brand Moving Comfort, aptly titled the report Running Responsibly and is using it to:

• highlight the company’s environmental and social performance in 2009 and 2010 and
• outline challenges and key focus areas for the future.

Among the sustainability achievements, Brooks has:

• modified materials used in the manufacture of the vast majority of Brooks shoes. For example, virtually every component of the Cascadia 6 has an environmentally-friendlier feature, such as materials made of recycled content, soy-based foams and water-based inks and adhesives.
• reduced packaging materials needed and waste generated in the manufacture of its shoe boxes.
• reduced the use of hazardous substances in the manufacturing process. I n 2010, Brooks listed 193 chemicals on its restricted substance list and actively tracked 67 of the highest risk substances. All 49 of Brooks’ footwear component and material suppliers, and contract factories have enlisted in its Restricted Substances program to help make Brooks products as safe as possible.

With regard to factory and supplier performance, Brooks: (more…)

Late last month, Hilton Worldwide announced an extraordinary partnership with Good360 to connect hotels donating high-quality used goods with charitable organizations that can then repurpose the items and use them to serve needs within their communities.

By utilizing LightStay, Hilton Worldwide’s proprietary sustainability performance management platform, all of the more than 3,750 Hilton Worldwide hotels globally will be able to enter goods available for donation into a tracking system. This tracking system will link to Good360′s online product donation marketplace, enabling more than 22,000 participating charities to claim items as needed.

Additionally, Hilton Worldwide’s group meeting clients can track donations entered by Hilton Worldwide-branded properties in the event a donation opportunity is available through LightStay’s Meeting Calculator.

“Our partnership with Good360 is the critical link we’ve been looking for,” said Jennifer Silberman, vice president, corporate responsibility for Hilton Worldwide. “Many of our hotels have been donating for some time, and we are excited to watch how this partnership will enable more donations by connecting hotels with a greater number of organizations to support communities in need and providing resources to facilitate their donations.”

Traditionally, hotels have trouble building effective relationships with existing charitable partners on a consistent basis due to time, resource or legal constraints. (more…)

Cisco has released its seventh annual corporate social responsibility report, which outlines the company’s accomplishments and efforts in five areas: governance and ethics, the value chain, Cisco employees, society and the environment.

This year, Cisco supplemented its report with input from 25 external global CSR stakeholders who came together via Cisco TelePresence to provide feedback on the company’s CSR reporting process, performance and emerging issues.  According to Cisco, this input resulted in a more navigable report format, increased transparency on supply chain and governance issues  and added detail about how Cisco’s products and solutions are helping its customers meet their energy and environmental goals.

Here are a few environmental accomplishments highlighted in the report:

• Nearly 20,000 Cisco employees use Cisco Virtual Office to extend the company’s network into their homes, permitting high-speed access to voice, video and data applications and reducing green house gas (GHG) emissions by telecommuting one or more days each week.
• Cisco is on track to meet its commitment to reduce all Scope 1, 2, and business-air-travel Scope 3 GHG emissions worldwide by 25 percent absolute by CY12 (from a CY07 baseline).
• In FY11, Cisco conserved approximately 16.9 million kWh of energy and avoided 7,400 metric tonnes of CO2e emissions by investing $1.9 million in energy conservation projects. Twenty-six percent of Cisco’s global energy use was from renewable sources.

With regard to responsible sourcing and the value chain: (more…)

WhiteWave Foods, the Colorado-based company that makes Silk^®, Horizon Organic^®, International Delight^® and Land O Lakes^®, released ambitious new sustainability targets last week.

Most notably, by 2013, WhiteWave plans to:

• reduce GHG emissions by 25 percent, working from a 2006 baseline.
• reduce non-ingredient water use by 15 percent, compared to a 2008 baseline.

The company had previously set several sustainability goals in 2006 and 2007, and the results to date are impressive. For example, WhiteWave already has: (more…)

Recent research by KPMG found that even though corporate responsibility reporting has reached an all-time high among the Global Fortune 250 (G250), many of the reports lack rigor.

Now, another new study offers an even harsher critique.

After analyzing more than 4,000 corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports, rankings and surveys published by companies worldwide over the past 10 years, researchers at the University of Leeds and Euromed Management School (France) found that most included significant errors, such as unsubstantiated claims, gaps in data and inaccurate figures.

In fact, out of 443 European Union companies featuring in the FTSE All World Index between 2005 and 2009, fewer than one in six reported greenhouse gas emissions that covered all corporate activities, while others were vague, failing to reveal precisely how the data applied to specific activities.

The research uncovered some glaring examples of misinformation. (more…)