Nestlé, PepsiCo, Unilever to roll out How2Recycle label program across North America
During the Walmart Sustainability Milestone Summit, eight global brands representing over $72 billion in revenue announced that they will be joining the How2Recycle label programme. The programme seeks to educate consumers about how to recycle packaging correctly. The latest companies to join are Campbell Soup, Church & Dwight, Henkel, Ocean Spray, Nestlé Waters, PepsiCo, RB and Unilever, bringing the total number of brand-owner members to more than 60. Walmart began incorporating the How2Recycle label into its brand-owned product packaging in 2016 and has encouraged companies that sell at its stores to follow suit. (Sustainable Brands)
Responsible Investment
Nationwide to refuse loans for new-build properties with ‘toxic’ leaseholds
Nationwide, one of Britain’s biggest lenders, has launched a move to crack down on the sale of ‘toxic’ leasehold homes. The building society will refuse to lend money for new-build properties with ‘onerous terms’. Under leasehold deals, buyers do not own the land their property is built upon and instead have to pay an annual fee to the freeholder. Nationwide has become the first major lender to impose strict caps on the amount developers can charge, and will stipulate a minimum lease term of 125 years for flats and 250 years for houses. It will refuse to lend on properties where the ground rent doubles every five, ten or 15 years. The move comes after Taylor Wimpey, one of Britain’s biggest housebuilders, set aside £130 million last week to help customers trapped in leasehold contracts. (Daily Mail)
Human Rights
India begins legalising mica mining after child worker deaths expose
Authorities in eastern India have begun the process of legalising mica mining, after a Thomson Reuters Foundation investigation last year uncovered the deaths of children working in illegal mines. A three-month investigation in the mica-producing state of Jharkhand found at least seven children had died in just two months in illegal mines. The shimmery mineral is used in car paint and cosmetics, with brands including BMW, Volkswagen, L’Oréal and Proctor & Gamblelinked to Indian mines. Child rights experts say legalising the mining of mica will allow the sector to be regulated, root out child labour, and ensure better wages and conditions for mine workers. Jharkand’s labour department said it had found no evidence of child deaths, but has launched a public awareness campaign across the state to stop child labour. (Daily News & Analysis)
Gender Equality
UK companies slow off mark on publishing gender pay gap details
Only five employers in Britain have complied with a new requirement to publish details of their gender pay gap on a government website: a window-blind manufacturer in Cheshire, an umbrella company in Colchester and a cleaning company in Knowsley. The new rules – which aim to tackle inequalities in the workforce – require all private and public sector organisations with more than 250 employees to publish annual figures for both their mean and median gender pay gaps for salaries and bonuses. They must also publish the number of men and women in each salary quartile. Employers have until April 2018 to publish the data, but the government had hoped for a flurry of compliance from the start date of the new rules on April 6. (Financial Times)*
Air Pollution
Beijing removes 180,000 old, polluting cars from roads in January-April
Beijing removed 180,000 old and polluting vehicles from its roads in the first four months of 2017, the Chinese capital’s environmental bureau has said, as part of its efforts to tackle congestion and cut smog. This comes as an action plan published in 2015 committed Beijing to removing a total of 1 million ageing vehicles over the 2013-2017 period. Beijing needs to take 300,000 off the road this year to meet the target. The Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau said late on Thursday the capital has a total of 5.7 million vehicles, responsible for half of the city’s nitrogen oxide emissions, a major source of smog. The city has promised extraordinary measures this year to meet its 2013-2017 air pollution targets following a spike in smog. (Thomson Reuters)
Information source: Victorian doorway, Belfast at Wikipedia. Creative Commons: CC BY-SA 2.0
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