2Sustain

In what some are calling a watershed moment in supply chain ethics, Nike, Inc. has agreed to provide financial, medical and vocational support to workers affected by closures at contract supplier factories in Honduras.

Nike announced late last month that it had reached an agreement with the Central General de Trabajadores de Honduras (CGT), representing the former employees of Hugger and Vision Tex factories, and as a result the company has agreed to: (more…)

The demand for certified sustainable palm oil is continuing to grow, and last week Cargill announced that it will supply Unilever’s European operations with 10,000 metric tonnes of segregated refined palm oil, certified by the Round Table for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

Unilever, one of the world’s largest buyers of palm oil, plans to be using only sustainable palm oil by 2015. Already this year, over 35 percent is RSPO-certified, indicating that the company is well on its way to achieving that goal. (more…)

By 2050, 14 US states will be facing an extreme or high risk to water sustainability, or are likely to see limitations on water availability, based on new estimates from a report released this week by Tetra Tech for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

The 14 states cited in the report are: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas.

As you can see from that list, the research predicts that the Great Plains and Southwest United States will be the regions most affected, and the report specifically identifies more than 1,100 counties at-risk –and more than 400 counties at extremely high risk –for water shortages by mid-century. Obviously, water shortages in these regions will significantly impact US crop production. In an earlier study from 2007, researchers found that the value of the crops produced in the at-risk counties exceeded $105 billion. (more…)

Over the past decade, various stakeholders have collaborated internationally to combat illegal logging and forest degradation, and now new research says these efforts are beginning to pay off.

The 154-page report, Illegal Logging and Related Trade: Indicators of the Global Response, is an in-depth study of the timber trade in twelve producer, processing and consumer countries, and it includes several encouraging indicators of progress in the fight against illegal logging and related trade. For example: (more…)

Last Wednesday, a day after Greenpeace released a new report airing fresh allegations that the Indonesian paper firm Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) is “wreaking environmental havoc” in rainforests and peatlands, French retail giant Carrefour announced that it has suspended sourcing of APP products.

APP is part of the Sinar Mas group, and the Greenpeace report, titled How Sinar Mas is Pulping the Planet, maintains that the paper company is destroying Indonesia’s rainforests and carbon-rich peatlands so that it can feed its Sumatran based pulp mills, which then export pulp and paper products to a variety retailers worldwide. (more…)