Total confirms its withdrawal from coal production and marketing
French multinational integrated oil and gas company, Total, has announced that it is no longer producing coal, following the closing of the sale of mine operator Total Coal South Africa. CEO Patrick Pouyanné publicly pledged that Total would halt all coal operations in June. Commenting this week, he said that: “Faced with the issue of climate change, Total is committed to promoting the use of natural gas, the cleanest fossil fuel… In addition to withdrawing from mining, we have also decided to divest our coal marketing operations. By the end of 2016, we will no longer be involved in the coal business.” The company has won a degree of praise from green groups in recent years, stepping up investment in its solar business and recently joining with five other oil and gas companies to call for the introduction of a global carbon pricing mechanism. (Total; BusinessGreen)
McDonald’s rejects Burger King peace stunt, proposing “meaningful global effort”
McDonald’s executives woke up Wednesday morning to a temporary peace treaty from an unlikely source: Burger King. In full-page ads in two newspapers, Burger King proposed that the two fast-food companies meld their staple burgers – the Whopper and the Big Mac – to create the “McWhopper”, to be sold at a pop-up store on Peace Day, September 21st. On Wednesday morning, McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook responded to the gimmick: “we love the intention but think our two brands could do something bigger to make a difference,” he said. Mr Easterbrook said Burger King should “join us in a meaningful global effort. And every day, let’s acknowledge that between us there is simply a friendly business competition and certainly not the unequaled circumstances of the real pain and suffering of war.” He signed off with a dig at Burger King’s grasp for attention and social media buzz: “P.S. A simple phone call will do next time.” (WSJ)
Corporate Reputation
Costco charged with suit for ‘slave labour’ shrimp
Three law have firms filed for an injunction against retailer Costco to stop it from selling seafood purchased from Thailand. The firms – Howard Law Firm, Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, and Jenkins, Mulligan & Gabriel – represent plaintiff Monica Sud, who asserts that the prawns were harvested using slave labour. In June of last year, the Guardian’s six-month investigation revealed the circuitous route that Thai seafood often takes to reach supermarket shelves in the US. That process includes a well-established and often violent slave-trade industry that sells workers from point to point and uses torture and summary executions to force workers into submission. The class-action suit that was launched last week alleges that Costco knowingly sold products from Thai distributors that source seafood from ships staffed with slave labour – and in fact, has been doing so for several years. (Triple Pundit)
Walmart to end sales of assault-style rifles in US stores
Walmart, the US’s largest seller of guns and ammunition, said on Wednesday that it would no longer sell high-powered rifles in its stores in the United States. The decision follows years of public pressure on the retailer to stop selling some of the most lethal weapons associated with many of the nation’s mass shootings. The move predated the fatal shootings of two TV journalists in Virginia on Wednesday, and Walmart attributed its decision to lower consumer demand for such military-style rifles, not gun politics. It said that it was adding to its offerings of shotguns and other weapons used by hunters. Gun control experts said they hoped the decision would prompt other major retailers, like Dick’s Sporting Goods and Cabela’s, to follow suit. Limiting the types of guns it sells is the latest in a series of steps that the company has taken to burnish its image as a corporate citizen. (NY Times)
Technology & Innovation
Californian startup saving water by reimagining shower design
An unlikely water-saving product has raised more than $2 million on Kickstarter and has drawn investors including Apple CEO Tim Cook. Nebia, a San Francisco-based startup, decided to tackle the problem of saving water by fundamentally changing how a shower worked. “If we were going to have real global impact, we had to create an experience that people preferred,” says Philip Winter, CEO of Nebia. “The way we’re more efficient with it is we increase the surface area to volume ratio dramatically. Essentially what we do is atomize water, so we create millions of tiny droplets and that creates a surface area that’s about 10 times greater than that of a regular shower.” The shower head uses 70 percent less water than a typical shower, but actually feels like it’s using more. For now, one of Nebia’s biggest markets is drought-hit California, which recently passed the toughest restrictions for new shower heads in the US. (Fast Co.Exist)
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