Triodos bank explores the path to achieve a green olympic games, Levi Strauss resigns from the ETI and supermarkets are warned they must act on their green promises if the farming industry is to be sustainable.
The greenest games ever
An event, hosted by Triodos has explored how the Olympic Games and Paralympics can fulfil Tony Blair’s public promise to be “the greenest ever”. The meeting included presentations from leaders of the social enterprise, organic and environmental community and resulted in an open letter being sent to David Higgins, chief executive of the Olympic Delivery Authority. The correspondence outlined the need to bolster key procurement policy with measurable targets and urged the ODA to not abandon positive social and environmental priorities if budget overruns were to occur. The letter was signed by representatives from the Soil Association, Social Enterprise London, London Remade and Triodos Bank.
Levi Strauss was suspended – and subsequently resigned – from the Ethical Trading Initiative after disagreements over the living wage. Companies signed up to the ETI must comply with all the initiative’s base codes or risk suspension. Levi’s felt that it could not resolve, nor implement, the living wage base code with its suppliers over one year, which was the period it was initially suspended for. The living wage section of the ETI’s base code states: “Wages and benefits paid for a standard working week meet, at a minimum, national legal standards or industry benchmark standards, whichever is higher. In any event, wages should always be enough to meet basic needs and to provide some discretionary income.” The ETI said that “all members of ETI must adopt all the provisions of the base code in full and may not pick and choose which elements they wish to implement” but does go onto to acknowledge that Levi’s has contributed to ETI activities and is committed to improving working conditions in its supply chain.
South Africa’s Department of Minerals and Energy and De Beers, the mining group, announced an agreement on February 9 that is aimed to promote sustainable diamond mining and exploration in the country.
Two mining operations on the West coast of the country will be amalgamated to form a single diamond mining company by 2008, and it is hoped that this will support and promote economic development of the area.
De Beers plans to hand over control gradually to the Department of Minerals and Energy but will make its management, technical expertise and assets available to facilitate the start up of the State Diamond Trader. The move is seen as a commitment by De Beers to see the industry as well as competition grow in the diamond sector in South Africa.
Kraft Foods, ED&F Man Holdings and Nestlé have been implicated in a report released by the WWF, which suggests that coffee growers in Indonesia had illegally used 45,000 hectares of national park to grow coffee. The companies had imported the illegal coffee beans, from local traders who had mixed them with legal beans before exporting abroad, according to the report – Gone in an Instant. It suggests that the coffee firms involved were unaware of the problem due to a lack of planting regulations in the region, but criticised importers and exporters for failing to put in place mechanisms to prevent the trade of illegal beans.
Supermarkets must act on their green promises if the farming industry is to be sustainable, and to prove that their statements are not just “about PR or about looking good”, according to Peter Kendall, president of the National Farmers Union.
He was speaking at the NFU’s annual conference and stressed that “it is a matter of urgency that rhetoric becomes a reality and mainstream” and that “corporate social responsibility must be real and not just tacked to the back of a company report”.
He called for a “real partnership” between farmers and the supermarkets and made particular reference to Justin King, CEO of Sainsbury’s, who was also a speaker at the event. He commended Sainsbury’s for the work it has been doing with regard to sustainability but pointed out that the NFU was concerned with “what is done with that success”. He concluded by saying that the NFU is developing a responsibility index that will allow the organisation to track the ethical behaviour of supermarkets.
Justin King welcomed this proposal and said that “Sainsbury’s would be delighted to be the first retailer to trial the Index for the NFU”.
Starbucks and the Earthwatch Institute have extended their partnership in 2007 to benefit 2,600 coffee farms in Costa Rica. The partnership allows Starbucks employees and customers to work on Earthwatch environmental expeditions. Contact – Earthwatch, www.earthwatch.org; Starbucks, www.starbucks.com
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