Leaving Lighter Footprints

In summer, we lighten up our lifestyles and go back to basics—walking and biking, eating fresh vegetables and fruits. This is good for our health and the environment, and we save gas money too. We can leave an even lighter footprint on the Earth by demanding that companies make products that are as least toxic as possible, following standards that are socially responsible and environmentally sound.

"For a company to be successful, it needs a high level of feedback from its customers," says Jeffrey Hollender, CEO of Seventh Generation and coauthor, with Stephen Fenichell, of What Matters Most: How a Small Group of Pioneers Is Teaching Social Responsibility to Big Business, and Why Big Business Is Listening (Basic Books, 2004). "The companies that are the most successful are those that are the most passionate about responsiveness," adds Hollender, a member of The Green Guide Institute's board of directors. Seventh Generation, he points out, charts every consumer contact; when a customer noticed a rotten-egg odor coming from a new dish liquid, the company pulled the product from the shelves.

We can also turn up our noses at rotten business practices while patronizing sustainable companies—those that pursue a triple bottom line of environmental stewardship and social responsibility as well as economic success. The greening marketplace includes more than a decade of 22-percent-a-year growth in organic foods, which Katherine DiMatteo, executive director of the Organic Trade Association (OTA), attributes to consumer demand. Following consumer campaigns and media coverage, large retailers such as Staples and Home Depot are stocking recycled paper and sustainably sourced wood, respectively. Nike and other companies that have been criticized for using sweatshop labor have drawn up corporate social-responsibility plans. This spring, following hikes in the price of gasoline, Americans' demand for high-mileage hybrid vehicles surpassed supply.

Here are some sustainability checks to consider when buying summer basics:

Sports Shoes

What's cheap to make, a leading source of environmental toxins and the material composing Chanel's $555 ballet flats? It's PVC, or vinyl, used throughout the shoe industry, where exposures during manufacturing threaten workers' health, though not customers'. Although Chanel proudly advertises its vinyl shoes, some manufacturers—including Nike—are eliminating PVCs and dangerous volatile organic compounds (VOCs) (see chart below). Nike is also focusing on reducing greenhouse emissions from manufacturing and shipping, says Sarah Severn, corporate global director of sustainable development. And its Reuse-A-Shoe program converts sneakers into soccer fields and basketball courts.

Puma says it's paying attention to the manufacturing environment and workers' health, and Adidas has produced a Guide to Environmental Practice for its suppliers. Reebok says it is reducing packaging waste, working on efficient transport and conducting an inventory to reduce climate-change emissions.

On the labor side, Adidas, Nike and Reebok have, since 2001, allowed monitoring of workplace conditions by the non-profit Fair Labor Association (FLA), which contracts with independent monitors who pay unannounced factory visits. Following the first round, Adidas implemented reproductive-health education for female workers, Nike entered discussions with Mexican workers seeking to organize an independent union, and a democratically elected, worker representative group was introduced in a Reebok factory near Shenzhen, China. Reebok is the first footwear producer to have been accredited as in substantial compliance with FLA requirements, which include a workplace code of conduct and provision for worker self-determination.

In 2001, Co-Op America's Guide to Ending Sweatshops reported that FLA had been criticized by labor unions and workers' rights groups for failure to adequately address poor working conditions, forced overtime and lack of a living wage. "When we tried to raise the living-wage issue, they wouldn't even let us speak," says Global Exchange co-founder Kevin Danaher. Now, by focusing on labor relations and freedom of association, FLA is trying to address the underlying systems that lead to abuses, explains Anne Lally, FLA coordinator of outreach and transparency. Going forward, Oxfam's 2004 "Play Fair at the Olympics" campaign criticizes the sportswear sector on labor issues, and FLA is helping "to bring members of the campaign and those who are targeted by it together for meaningful exchange," Lally says.

The Rundown on Running Shoes

Cotton Clothing

Recent studies have shown that some hazardous pesticides being used on cotton in the U.S. can reach our water or our food supply. These include the neurotoxic substances methyl parathion (banned for use on several fruits and vegetables popular in children's diets) and diazinon (banned for home use), as well as the probable human carcinogen thiodicarb. In a study of pesticide exposures among children in India during the 2003 cotton-growing season, Greenpeace India found that "exposure to small doses of pesticide has severely impaired the analytical abilities, motor skills and the concentration and memory of children from farming communities."

For a decade or more, clothing made of 100-percent organic cotton has been pioneered by green-minded companies such as Maggie's Functional Organics, Earth Wear, Garden Kids and Patagonia. Now Timberland and H&M have followed suit, and in May, Nike introduced its fall line of all-organic-cotton women's activewear at OTA's expo in Chicago. Nike says it plans to include at least 5-percent organic in all its cotton products by 2010. The stated goal of a new non-profit Organic Exchange, founded in 2002 by 55 companies, including Nike, is to shift world production of organic cotton from today's mere half a percent of the market to 10 percent in ten years.

FOOD: Local, Organic

When you buy locally grown foods, "you are supporting people who live in a place," says Michelle Long, co-founder of Sustainable Connections, a network of 300 businesses that share environmental, fair-trade and other sustainable goals in Washington State. "When you lose local businesses, you lose civic engagement, meaningful jobs, so much about the character of the place," Long adds. Hence the name of their public-education program, "Think Local, Buy Local, Be Local." A farm program, in conjunction with the local Bellingham Food Co-op, helps train farmers in reduced-pesticide, resource-conserving methods. Growers are paid market rates by the Co-op to deliver their produce to the food bank that distributes to low-income families.

"Programs like this are a sustainable strategy for developing local food markets," says Judy Wicks, owner of Philadelphia's White Dog café and a founder of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), which cultivates local networks in 11 states plus Vancouver, B.C.

Whether local or national, a sustainability benchmark has been certified organic farming, which is free of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers and conserves natural resources. And, because the market is growing, big companies are getting bitten by the organic bug, says Bob Scowcroft, executive director of the Organic Farming Research Foundation. "The largest of all lettuce producers, Tanimura & Antle, are transitioning 1,500 acres annually to organic," and have bought a 30-percent share in Natural Selections, producers of Earthbound Farms salads, Scowcroft says. Grimway Farms, the largest carrot producers in the world, cultivate 30,000 acres, of which 17,000 are now organic. A. Duda, a Florida family farm with national sales, has an organic division, and is providing its seasonal workers with benefits including medical, savings and retirement plans, housing and day care.

According to Scowcroft, competition from these large producers has motivated small organic farms to find new ways to distinguish themselves by adding labels such as "Fresh and Local" for produce and "fair trade" and "shade grown" for coffee, chocolate and bananas. This may be one reason that, as Scowcroft says, "the number of small farms is increasing for the first time in a long time."

Are there any size limits to sustainability? If responsiveness is crucial, smaller and more local companies have an advantage in that it's easier for consumers to voice concerns to their owners, Hollender says. Yet, as he and Fenichell document in What Matters Most, because sustainable companies are performing better in the marketplace than others, multinational corporations have been swallowing them up. For instance, Odwalla is owned by Coca-Cola and Boca Burger is owned by Kraft, itself a subsidiary of Altria, which owns cigarette-maker Philip Morris. "Unfortunately, these sales take place without the knowledge of consumers, who continue to buy thinking they are supporting these funky little businesses," says Hollender.

In order for consumers to be able to pick truly sustainable businesses, what's ultimately needed will be verifiable standards for environmental and social responsibility, such as those that are in place for certifying organic food. Yet even these standards are under assault by some big companies, which in April pressured the USDA to permit synthetic pesticides to be used on crops, and homones and antibiotics to be given to dairy cattle. Thanks to a letter-writing campaign by the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), the USDA restored the organic standards in May.

Meanwhile, many companies are getting eco-friendly brand enhancement for just "a drop in the bucket," as Hollender and Fenichell say about Starbucks' organic, shade and fair-trade coffee lines. In the face of mounting criticism for the fast-food industry's contribution to obesity and environmental degradation, McDonald's has voluntarily taken such actions as eliminating styrofoam containers and Supersize meals. But, the authors say, this falls far short of companies' taking responsibility for their products' entire lifecycles, as they do in mandatory takeback programs for obsolete computers in Germany and Japan. Others make a sustainable mark by converting to alternative energy, as has Interface Carpets, a U.S. manufacturer that also takes back and reuses its products. (For more examples, see "Big Companies Taking Eco-Steps" in sidebar.)

As defined by the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987, "Sustainable development seeks to meet the needs and aspirations of the present without compromising the ability to meet those of the future." As consumers, we can help by demanding that companies' bottom lines reflect such costs as the depletion of natural resources and cleaning up pollution, and by shopping with sustainability in mind.

Resources

What Matters Most, by Jeffrey Hollender and Stephen Fenichell (Basic Books, 2004, $26), www.whatmattersmost.biz.

Cannibals with Forks: the Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business, by John Elkington (New Society Publishing, 1998, $21.95).

See product reports on paper, computers, clothing, wood, fair-trade coffee and chocolate at www.thegreenguide.com.

Co-op America's National Green Pages list sustainable businesses featuring fair-trade and green practices: www.greenpages.org. Also see www.responsibleshopper.org.

The Fair Labor Association (FLA) report on shoe and garment companies is at www.fairlabor.org/all/transparency.

BALLE and Sustainable Connections can be found at www.ballenetwork.org.