As You Sow

A tipping point on BPA?

April 27, 2010

Muir-Glen-Coupons-259x300So is BPA–the controversial, much-debated chemical that, right now, is almost surely lurking somewhere inside a can in your kitchen cabinet–dangerous? Or is it safe?

Scientists can’t come to agreement. Nor can regulators. Nor, unsurprisingly, can corporate America.

Fact is, it’s a daunting job for companies to figure out how to deal with BPA, as recent events at General Mills and The Coca-Cola Co. show. General Mills inched away from the chemical, by agreeing to keep it out of its Muir Glen brand of organic tomatoes. By contrast, Coca-Cola opposed a shareholder resolution asking the company to report on its plans to deal with BPA. The resolution got 22 percent of the vote at Coke’s annual meeting last week.

While the science of BPA remains clouded, there’s growing evidence that consumers aren’t willing to wait around for a decisive verdict from the lab. So smart companies at the very least should explore alternatives.

As Rich Liroff of the Investor Environmental Health Network wrote recently in a guest post here:

smart companies will change the way they communicate about BPA and as well as search for alternatives to better align themselves with consumer concerns. Some companies could gain reputational benefits and free media attention from supporting proposed legislation restricting use of BPA.

The IEHN supported the Coca-Cola resolution on BPA.

Some background for readers who haven’t followed the debate:  Bisphenol A is a chemical that’s widely used in products ranging from plastic water bottles to eyeglass lenses. As I wrote (How Wal-Mart Became The New FDA)  back in 2008:

BPA is everywhere, used to make polycarbonate, a rigid, clear plastic for bottles, bike helmets, DVDs and car headlights. It’s also an ingredient in epoxy resins, which coat the inside of food and drink cans. About 93% of Americans tested by the Centers for Disease Control had the chemical in their urine.

Since then, the debate over BPA has only intensified. Canada and Denmark have banned the [click to continue…]

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Shareholders say: Tell the truth about fracking

March 7, 2010

IMG_0697_hydraulic_ranch

No form of energy–not solar, wind, hydropower, obviously not coal or oil–comes without environmental tradeoffs.

One promising new energy source–a vast supplies of natural gas, trapped in shale deep beneath the earth’s surface–is getting renewed scrutiny these days, and for good reason.

While natural gas is often called a “bridge” to a clean energy future, critics are bombing the bridge with a frack attack, says energy policy analyst Kevin Book of Clearview Energy Partners.

Book was referring to the drumbeat of questions being raised by environmentalists, community activists, reporters and  members of Congress about  hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a process during which water, chemicals and sand are pumped underground at  high pressure to cause tiny fissures in rock and force natural gas to the surface.

In the weeks ahead, new pressures will come from activist shareholders of a dozen energy companies. They’ve filed shareholder resolutions asking the companies to take a hard look at fracking and its risk, and they will raise the issue at annual shareholder meetings. [click to continue…]

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Shareholders of the world, unite!

January 17, 2010

Several questions for those of you who own shares of stock:

When’s the last time you voted a proxy?

When’s the last time you opened a proxy?

Do you even know what a proxy is?

Don’t be embarrassed. Roughly 80% of individual investors–let’s call them share owners, because that’s what they are–don’t vote their proxies. This is one reason why CEO salaries are too high, boards of directors are complacent and executives fail to recognize that owners want companies to behave responsibly, as well as deliver returns.

A startup company called Moxy Vote aims to change that, by awakening share owners to their nascent power.

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“It’s an interesting challenge–to put passion into proxy voting,” said Doug Gates, a Moxy Vote vice president, when we talked the other day.

Doug, 41, is one of three Gates brothers involved in the venture–his twin brothers Kevin and Rich are three years younger. The startup was hatched at a West Chester, Pa., investment company called TFS Capital, where Kevin and Rich work and which put $2 million into the business.

By enlisting the help of shareholder advocacy groups, the Moxy Vote founders think there’s an opportunity to organize individual share owners so that their voices can be heard in the boardroom. About 30% of shares in public companies are owned by individuals, as opposed to institutions like mutual funds, pension funds and insurance companies (most of which, of course, represent the savings of individuals). [click to continue…]

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A historic win for green investors

August 24, 2009

ceres_logoSometimes, history is made quietly.

For decades, shareholder activists have filed dozens, if not hundreds, of resolutions with public companies asking them to improve their environmental policies and practices. Not one passed—until this year.

The breakthrough vote came in May at IdaCorp.,  a $988-million a year utility company and independent power producer based in Boise, Idaho. Despite the usual opposition from management, the owners of 51.2 percent of IdaCorp.’s shares voted to ask the company to adopt greenhouse gas reduction goals.

Hardly anyone noticed at the time because, well, it was Idaho and not even the shareholder activists expected a victory. “I expected a vote of about 25%,” said Michael Passoff of As You Sow, a nonprofit group that organized the investor vote.

Since then, the company responded. Legally, it didn’t have to act because, as you may know, most shareholder votes are “precatory,” a fancy legal term meaning that management can ignore even a majority of the company’s owners. In any event, IdaCorp. agreed to adopt goals for curbing the heat-trapping gases that cause global warming, issued its first request for a proposal for a wind farm and submitted a “smart grid” proposal, hoping to tap into the federal government’s stimulus money to upgrade the grid. [click to continue…]

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Wal-Mart, bully for good

December 3, 2008

The two most influential companies in America, I’d argue, are GE and Wal-Mart. GE has clout because of the respect accorded its managers, even after a tough run under Jeff Immelt. Wal-Mart matters because of its scale, meaning that most everyone in the consumer products business wants to do business with Wal-Mart. Both have wrestled seriously the idea of sustainability in the last few years. I never tire of writing about either company.

You’ll get lots of arguments about Wal-Mart, but I think the company has changed dramatically for the better under Lee Scott, who announced last month that he is stepping down as CEO. The company engaged with its critics, took a systematic look at its environmental impact and began an ambitious and far-reaching effort to become more sustainable. Its impact is felt in unexpected places. Did you know, for example, that Wal-Mart has taken on the repressive government of Uzbekhistan over the issue of child labor? I’ve taken an anecdotal look at a few of Wal-Mart’s initiatives in today’s Sustainability column.

Here’s how the column begins:

Children who are forced to pick cotton in Uzbekistan, farmers scratching out a living in Guatemala and salmon fishermen in Bristol Bay, Alaska, would not seem to have much in common. But all are feeling the global impact of Wal-Mart.

As the world’s largest retailer, with $379 billion in revenues last year, Wal-Mart has long been a powerful force in the global economy – a bully, its critics would say. For years, they assailed Wal-Mart for squeezing suppliers over costs, driving mom-and-pop stores out of business or crushing efforts to organize its workers.

These days, though, the company is winning praise for using its leverage – that’s a polite term for bullying – to protect the environment and help the poor.

The more people I meet who work Wal-Mart, and the more I talk with the company’s critics and partners, whether from environmental NGOS or socially-responsible investment funds–and their role as agents of change is vital–the more I am convinced that Wal-Mart is thinking expansively and creatively about its responsibility.

You can read the rest of the column here.

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Small steps

June 8, 2008

To save the planet, we need to take a handful of big steps, like regulating greenhouse gas emissions. We also need to take many, many small steps, like recycling, buying paper from sustainably-harvested forests and using less packaging. Last week’s high-profile defeat of the Lieberman-Warner bill to regulate greenhouse gases was a significant setback, a big step that won’t happen for at least another year.. So this posting will look at some small steps towards a cleaner planet that have not gotten as much attention.

We’ll start with Best Buy. Thanks in part to the work of an effective shareholder activist group called As You Sow, Best Buy announced last week that it will test a free recycling program that will offer consumers a convenient and safe way to get rid of old TVs, computers, cell phones and other unwanted gadgets. The trial will be offered at 177 Best Buy stores in eight states. The company already had an active recycling program, available when consumers bought a new product from Best Buy. The big change here is that Best Buy will take back e-waste that it did not sell.

Conrad McKerron, an activist with As You Sow, told me via email:

As You Sow has been in dialogue with Best Buy, the largest U.S. electronics retailer for several months, and filed a shareholder proposal with the company last fall asking it to look at using its stores for free take back of electronic waste, including TVs, and to partner with electronic manufacturers to develop a workable, convenient national collection system. We withdrew the proposal in exchange for an agreement by the company in April to develop a large scale pilot to test in-store recycling of electronics. They are now ready to roll out a pilot that will offer free take back of most consumer electronics, including TVs, at 117 of their stores in three areas – here in the SF Bay Area, Minneapolis and Baltimore. We believe this represents the first on-going large scale take back of consumer electronics offered by any major retail chain.

This is especially significant because of next February’s switchover from analog to digital TV broadcasting, which could render millions of old TVs obsolete. The ultimate goal—and we are gradually getting there—is for all manufacturers to assume responsibility for take-back all their products, as Dell and HP have for their hardware. (I recently shipped a couple of old printers back to BP, and the system worked well.) Sony’s the leader in the TV industry; its competitors have yet to come along. Best Buy could give them a push.

Speaking of HP, the company recently announced a comprehensive new paper-buying policy, developed in cooperation with NGOs Forest Ethics and World Wildlife Fund. We’ll spare you most of the (boring) details; suffice it to say that HP will set goals for all of its worldwide operations, maximize the use of recycled paper, give preference to papers certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, and report publicly on all of this. The paper products covered under HP’s new policy amount to more than 300,000 tons, including its retail printing paper, all packaging, promotional materials, and internally used paper.

Will Craven of Forest Ethics tells me that a growing number of companies are taking responsibility for the environmental impact of the paper they use. Among them are Limited Brands (after an activist campaign targeting the Victoria’s Secret catalog), Patagonia, REI, Crate & Barrel, Williams-Sonoma, Timberland, Nordstrom’s, and LL Bean and Dell. Visit www.ForestEthics.org or www.catalogcutdown.org for more info.

Finally, Wal-Mart marked a milestone recently—it now sells only concentrated liquid laundry detergent in all of its U.S. and Canadian stores, having phased out those wasteful, oversized jugs of Tide, All and the like. Essentially, Wal-Mart muscled its suppliers to ship their detergent in more compact containers, saving water, plastic, shipping costs and shelf space (in the stores and in your laundry room). It’s part of the company’s ambitious goal to reduce the packaging (and waste) of everything it sells.

Since about 25% of all the liquid laundry detergent sold in the U.S. is sold at Wal-Mart stores—yes, the company is THAT big—this means the beginning of the end of those oversized containers.

I’m interviewing Matt Kistler, Wal-Mart’s senior vice president of sustainability, later this week at a conference called Greener By Design organized by my friend Joel Makower. After we talk, I’ll report back on other WMT initiatives aimed at reducing packaging and designing products with a lighter environment footprint.

Given the reach of Best Buy, HP and Wal-Mart, these aren’t really small steps—they’re major steps. But let me be clear: They are no substitute for the big steps, like climate-change legislation, that will be required to bring about the change we need, at the scale we need, in a hurry.

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