Gucci is bankrolling a new global equality campaign for women, enlisting support from Facebook and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The luxury brand is underwriting ‘Chime for Change’, which will formally launch this week and will use social media to direct donations to a range of women’s education and equality charities. Salma Hayek Pinault, the actress – and wife of François-Henri Pinault, the chief executive of PPR, Gucci’s parent company – is a co-founder of Chime, as is the singer, Beyoncé, and Frida Giannini, Gucci’s creative director. An advisory board has also been assembled, including Gordon Brown, the former UK prime minister, and Desmond Tutu. Chime is partnering with several NGOs, including the Global Fund for Women, Unicef, The White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood, and Equality Now. (Financial Times*)
Supply Chain
H&M launches clothing recycling programme
H&M has kicked off its global recycling programme. The initiative allows customers to donate used clothing of any brand at any H&M store in the company’s 48 markets worldwide. The company launched the initiative in partnership with Global Green USA, the American affiliate of Green Cross International, and I:Collect, a Swiss-based company that processes around 500 tonnes of used items every day in 74 countries. For each bag of clothing donated, customers will receive a voucher for 15 percent off their next purchased item. The initiative is the most recent addition to H&M’s ‘Conscious’ programme, intended to create more sustainable fashion. This includes being the No. 1 user of organic cotton worldwide and banning perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), in all products ordered in 2013. (Environmental Leader, Waste Management World)
Fairtrade Foundation in the spotlight
Fairtrade has moved to counter accusations that it is propping up unviable farms following news that UK sales of Fairtrade products increased by 19 percent, to £1.6 billion, last year. The organisation has recently come under fire amid claims that it is moving towards the use of large-scale operations and away from smaller farms, as well as the suggestion that it props up unviable and unsustainable agriculture whose resources should be redirected to more profitable use. The foundation, which counters that smallholders are responsible for 80 percent of the world’s coffee and 90 percent of the world’s cocoa, is launching a campaign aimed at improving the lot of smallholders, including proposals to improve credit to small farmers. (Times*)
Consumers
Our taste for prawns is killing the sea
British supermarkets are selling prawns reared using a technique that is destroying vast swathes of the ocean’s ecosystem, according to an investigation by the food campaigner and chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Tesco, Morrisons and the Co-op have admitted buying prawns from a company owned by a Thai billionaire that feeds the shellfish with “trash fish”. Catching trash fish involves the use of fine nets that scoop up and destroy all the sea life in a given area. “If you eat prawns and they’re not organically farmed, then you’re part of the global problem . . . The supermarkets are not taking responsibility for the food they are selling” said Fearnley-Whittingstall. (The Sunday Times*)
COMMENTS