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Green Business Trends
August 3, 2006
Whole Foods—a tussle over organics
A
lively online debate on organic food between Michael Pollan, the
well-known author, who, in April, published The Omnivore’s
Dilemma and John Mackey, the co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods
Market brought to light many of the contradictions in organics—the
large-scale farming operations vs. small, local farms. Given that
organic is the fastest-growing sector of the food business, it seems
likely that this ‘industrialization’ of organic food
will continue, and it has caused Pollan to wonder whether this seemingly
inevitable process “will cost organic its soul.” And
in the same vein, he seemed to be asking whether the same was true
of Whole Foods.
After several meetings between the two, and lengthy online exchanges, Whole Foods has announced that it is allowing its store managers to do business directly with local farmers, and is also putting aside $10 million, which will be used to make small loans to local farmers.
Whole Foods has 180 stores and $5.7 billion in sales.
Vanity Fair Publisher Sees Green
Graydon Carter celebrated his 14th year as editor of Vanity Fair by publishing the first ‘green issue’ in May. In the following month, Carter shared with readers what happened after the release: “After all those years, I have not experienced anything like the reception to our ‘Green Issue’... I received huge numbers of letters and calls. People stopped me on the street to say how glad they were that we had done it. My kids all loved it, and even our staff members sent me notes saying how proud they were.”
He went on to proclaim, “Going forward I am planning to do
two things—well, I’m planning to do a lot of things,
but I’ll tell you about two of them now. FIRST, Vanity Fair
will produce another Green Issue next year. And SECOND, we will
step up our coverage of environmental stories in the months ahead,
both in the magazine and our web site… this month read Michael
Shnayerson’s story on the Bush administration’s assault
on our national parks on VanityFair.com.”
Heinz Center Releases Carbon Life Cycle Study
The Heinz Center released a case study, Following the Paper Trail: The Impact of Magazine and Dimensional Lumber Production on Greenhouse Gas Emissions, which is a greenhouse gas life cycle analysis of two magazine chains (InStyle and Time) and a dimensional lumber chain (lumber used for construction, remodeling and do-it-yourself projects).
The study was commissioned by Canfor Corp, The Home Depot, Stora Enso, and Time Inc. to better understand the sources of Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG) for each product chain and then use the information to identify potential opportunities to reduce net GHG. The study was prepared by Department of Forest Ecology and Management at the University of Madison.
According to The Heinz Center, “This is a pathbreaking study because the participating companies provided actual data from their production chains. Few studies have quantified the carbon sequestration and to identify improvement in disposal practices of end products.”
For magazine production: the highest percentage of greenhouse gas emissions comes from manufacturing at pulp and paper mill; and transportation is the second highest contributor. Examples of reducing GHG could come from improving energy efficiencies in the pulp and paper manufacturing process; using more efficient modes of transportation; and encouraging purchased power providers to improve their own carbon footprint for electricity generation and utilization of renewable biofuels to replace fossil fuels. After-use, magazine paper can be recycled and the wood fibers reclaimed several times for reuse.
Green America’s WoodWise Program has been successful in moving
these issues forward in the magazine industry by providing resources
and expertise to publishers to convert to recycled paper.
Contact: The
H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment
Find out
more about Green America’s WoodWise work »
Maryland Judge Overturns Wal-Mart Law
On July 19, a federal judge overturned a Maryland law that would have required Wal-Mart Stores to cover more employee health care, arguing the retail giant “faces threatened injury” from the law’s spending requirement.
U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz concluded that the law would hurt Wal-Mart by requiring it to track and allocate benefits for its Maryland employees differently than it keeps track of employee benefits in other states. Motz wrote that the law, “imposes legally cognizable injury upon Wal-Mart.”
The Retail Industry Leaders Association, of which Wal-Mart is a member, filed the lawsuit contesting the legislation that was passed by a legislative override of Governor Ehrlich’s veto of the original bill in January. The Fair Share Health Care Bill required private companies with more than 10,000 employees in Maryland to spend at least 8 percent of their payroll on employee health benefits or make a contribution to the state’s insurance program for the poor. Wal-Mart employees about 17,000 Marylanders, is the only known company of such size that does not meet that spending requirement.
Read
more on Fair Share Health Bills in other states »
Read more
on Maryland »
Starbucks and PepsiCo Sign Distribution
Agreement for Ethos Water
Starbucks Coffee Company and PepsiCo through their joint-venture partnership, the North America Coffee Partnership, announced the signing of a distribution agreement for Ethos™ water. The agreement will increase distribution of Ethos Water in U.S. and Canada.
Ethos Water, founded in 2002 by Peter Thum and Jonathan Greenblatt, (acquired by Starbucks in April 2005) was Thum’s ideas from his personal experience while working in South Africa. He witnessed, first-hand, people living with the severity of the world water crisis, “Ethos was founded as means to raise awareness and funds to bring clean water to children around the world, under the simple principle water for water.”
Starbucks’s contribution goal is to contribute $10 million by the end of 2010 to help communities around the world get clean drinking water.
“Since the founding, we have been able to announce grants
of more than $2 million to clean water-related programs in communities
in Honduras, India, Bangladesh, the Congo, Ethiopia, Keya and Indonesia,”
said Thum “the agreement with Pepsi is the next step toward
our vision to help children get clean water and raise awareness
of the world’s water crisis.”