Nike has promised to fulfil a set of ambitious corporate responsibility pledges in the next three years. The new business targets, covered in full in its corporate social responsibility report, include:
The elimination of unpaid overtime in Nike factories;
Making all Nike brand facilities, retail and business travel carbon neutral;
Designing all footwear to meet baseline targets for waste reduction in product design, packaging and materials used;
Investment in community-based initiatives aimed at improving the lives of the youth.
Information regarding the company’s more than 700 contracted factories throughout the world was also updated, with additional data on Nike’s auditing tools made public for purposes of supply chain transparency.
GoodCorporation has strengthened its business assessment standard by adding points regarding lobbying, bribery and corruption of public officials, supply chain management, disclosure of political payments as well as employee privacy. It was launched on June 8 by Lord Hastings at a debate at the House of Lords. The event was part of a series of House of Lords debates on corporate social responsibility, which aim to end a “PR-led approach to corporate responsibility”.
The Coca-Cola Company has pledged to manage the use of water in its production cycle by focusing on action in three areas:
Reducing the water used to produce its beverages;
Recycling water used for beverage manufacturing processes;
Replenishing water in communities and nature.
The pledge was announced by CEO Neville Isdell on June 5 at the annual meeting of WWF in Beijing.
Coca-Cola also launched a multi-year partnership with WWF to conserve and protect freshwater resources by committing $20m to WWF. The money will be used to help conserve seven of the world’s most important freshwater river basins, to support more efficient water management in Coca-Cola’s operations and supply chain, and to reduce Coca-Cola’s carbon footprint.
There were calls for more stringent regulation of business at the launch of Tomorrow’s Global Company, a new report released on June 18 by business-led think tank Tomorrow’s Company. The main message of the report is that businesses need to redefine what it means to be successful, need to embed values and need to work with governments to develop global frameworks.
At the launch, attended by Briefing, senior business leaders as well as civil society representatives emphasised the need for regulatory frameworks. Ulf Karlberg, of Amnesty International Business Group, pointed out that there are too many voluntary codes of conduct and that companies can “choose the bits they like”.
He was backed up by Dr. Wolfgang Schneider, vice president – legal, governmental and environmental affairs at Ford, who stressed that Tomorrow’s Global Company was a move “away from the voluntary code of conduct” and that the report was “a call to the world at large to create a level playing field”.
The report was drawn up by an inquiry team, which included business representatives from ABB, Alcan, Anglo American, BP, Dr. Reddy’s, Ford, Infosys, KPMG, McKinsey, Standard Chartered and SUEZ.
The United Nations must develop standards that will hold corporations accountable for their human rights actions according to campaign group, Amnesty International.
In its recently published annual review, the pressure group cited examples of states in Africa where corrupt politics have “created a power vacuum into which corporations and the economic actors are moving”. The report also highlighted China’s poor record of defending workers against big business.
BITC announced its National Awards for Excellence at the Albert Hall in London on July 2. The winners of the awards can be viewed on the BITC website – www.bitc.org.uk.
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