Social Responsibility and Sustainability News

There are probably a couple of reasons to vote for Mitt Romney. Yet, climate change shouldn’t be one of them. If anything, climate change should be a deal breaker for any American concerned about climate change.Even Boyd Cohen who presented the argument that climate change might actually be a good reason to vote for Romney last year believes this is not the case anymore. “My rationale was that at the time, Romney was on record as accepting humanity’s culpability associated with climate change while Obama failed to deliver on his promises leading up to and following Copenhagen’s Conference of the Parties,” Cohen explains.

Solar power has hit a rough patch in Europe the past year. From Germany to Spain, incentives to boost solar capacity have decreased while local companies struggle to compete against cheap Chinese photovoltaic (PV) imports. Despite the recent fiscal crises, however, solar energy, as stated in a recently released European Commission report, continues to surge ahead in Europe: 280-fold, in fact, between 2000 and the end of 2011. A sector that contributed 185 megawatts of power to Europe’s grid in 2000 has rapidly spiked and will continue its overall boom.

I spent the last two years in Hong Kong where I consulted on Corporate Social Responsibility communications projects for various organizations in Hong Kong and mainland China. What is the current state of Corporate Responsibility there? The short answer is that Chinese companies realize they have greater responsibilities as their presence on the global playing field grows. Leaders of Chinese companies and officials of the People’s Republic of China are aware of the need to expand their corporate responsibility efforts.

In terms of the broad understanding of Corporate Social Responsibility in China corporations are realizing their responsibilities and are writing CSR reports and establishing programs directly related to their impact and values. Today in China, more than 100 million people live on $1 a day (BBC). There is much to be done.

Maharashtra Forest Department officials have rejected proposed development of an open-cast coal mine in an increasingly diminishing area of Central India forest. Greenpeace India and other organizations have joined with local residents in opposing the plan. They’re now circulating a petition on the Web calling on the Prime Minister and national government to protect all Central India’s forests from coal mining, and to further investigate a scandal involving the PM, government and the nation’s powerful coal mining and industrial companies.

Last week the American wind industry got a bit more turbulent after Siemens announced plans to lay off 615 workers in its plants in Iowa, Kansas, and Florida. Siemens is not alone – similar cuts, as the New York Times reported, are happening throughout the American wind sector – almost 1,700 employees have received pink slips industry-wide.

There are various reasons for these layoffs, from low natural gas prices to slow growth in energy demand because of the recession. Yet, the main reason seems to be the uncertainty about the extension of the wind production tax credit, which is supposed to expire by the end of this year.

Great news: more MBAs than ever will try out alternative career paths, even after snagging that degree.

Net Impact surveyed more than 3,000 respondents on the strengths of top MBA programs (turns out sustainability is not so fringe anymore) in order to give an unprecedented look into the current business school climate.

On July 30th and 31st, the world’s largest blackout – The Great Indian Outage, stretching from New Delhi to Kolkata – occurred. This blackout caused by northern power grid failure left nearly 700 million people – twice the population of the U.S. – without electricity. A grid failure of this magnitude has thrown light on the massive demand for power in a country and its struggle to generate a much-needed power supply.

India aims to expand its power-generation capacity by 44 percent over the next five years.

Cell phone use in developing countries is really growing. Three-quarters of the world’s population have access to cell phones, according to a Worldbank study released in July. Cell phone subscriptions increased from one billion in 2000 to over six billion currently. Over 30 billion cell phone apps were downloaded last year. The report predicts that ownership of multiple subscriptions is becoming more common, and the amount of cell phone subscriptions soon will exceed the amount of people on the planet. Cell phone use is very popular in Indonesia where 80 percent of the population is cell phone users, and 96 percent of cell phone users say they send text messages. However, almost 75 percent of Indonesians live on less than $2.50 a day.

Milk product company Aurora Dairy recently found itself paying out $7.5 million to settle a lawsuit which accused the company of misleading consumers. The company which is based in Boulder, Colorado has been labeling its milk as organic in spite of the fact that its cows were confined to feedlots. Federal regulations mandate that dairy cows have to be grazed outdoors in order to label their milk as organic.

This isn’t the first time the company has been called to the mat for its misleading ads suggesting its milk comes from small organic farms.

The new iPhone has arrived. And those who worship at the altar of Apple are salivating. The phone has a lighter-weight design. The larger screen makes room for another row of icons. The battery is better. The camera is more… well… camera-ish. Oh, rejoice!

Wait – what are we rejoicing again?

When we stop to think about how deeply Apple has penetrated our lives, one can’t help but be mesmerized. In a culture where we really don’t necessarily want to be caught sporting the same products as everyone else – designer blue jeans, new cars, fresh haircuts – there seems to be an overwhelming monopoly in our communication devices. Whether individually we like it or not, the iPhone reigns triumphant.

And Apple doesn’t simply own the mobile telephone market; they also dominate the corporate world. According to recent financial reports, Apple, with a net value of more than $622-billion, has become the most expensive public company of all time.

About ninety-five percent of the projects on Kickstarter are non-industrial: movies, video games, food products. For the five percent that comprise the technology and design categories, the open nature of crowdfunding can create flurries of agita usually hidden behind the curtain of private investing and venture capital.

It came out last week that star Kickstarter project Pebble – the highest raiser on the site – had failed to ship their 85,000 e-paper watches on time to their donors/customers, without any explanation or new expected ship date.

The art and science of sustainable coatings is on display at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, where researchers have taken over part of a parking lot to test a series of differently colored treatments intended to cool down paved surfaces that are exposed to sunlight.

Uncovered parking lots account for a large part of the surface area in typical cities, making them a major contributor to increased urban temperatures called the “heat island” effect. The extra heat packs a triple whammy by contributing to smog formation and adding to the public health impacts of excessive outdoor temperature, increasing the energy needed to cool interior spaces, and putting an extra strain on the grid by exacerbating peak energy loads.

While browsing the counter of Origins, a cosmetics company that bills itself as a “natural skincare” company, the sales lady made some rather remarkable claims about a product. She told me that Plantscription SPF 15 foundation firms skin and smooths out wrinkles. According to Origin’s website, Plantscription SPF 15 is a “patent-pending, clinically proven anti-aging foundation.” Rather big claims for a little bottle of foundation. The implication is that the foundation can do what dermatological prescriptions for wrinkles can do. The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) is getting fed up with such claims.The FDA reviewed Lancôme’s website and found even bigger claims, including that two of its products “boost the activity of genes.

You’ve traded in your SUV for an economy car, your 60-watts for CFLs, and your garbage disposal for the added trouble of a compost bucket, all in the name of reducing carbon emissions and saving the world.  But there’s another global warming culprit you might not have considered: your computer. More specifically, the internet surfing that you do with that computer.

In 2009, Harvard physicist Alex Wissner-Gross calculated the carbon emissions associated with individual Google searches.

While locavores are busy these days debating the new Stanford research about the benefits of organic food, there’s an older debate they haven’t settled yet. This one concerns Wal-Mart and whether it can help scale up local food.

Wal-Mart’s vow in 2010 to double its sales of locally-sourced produce by 2015 created two camps – those who believe this step can take local food to the next level and those who suspect this is just another form of good old Wal-Mart greenwash that will have no substantial impact on local food.