7gen Bloc

The Giants beat the New England in the Super Bowl. John McCain is leading the GOP presidential race. Lee Scott and Bill Gates are calling for a more responsible form of capitalism. In ads for Burt's Bees, Clorox takes the personal care industry to task over dangerous chemicals. ...

Last week was an amazing time in the annals of corporate responsibility. Bill Gates, speaking at Davos, called upon business leaders for a kinder capitalism. "We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well," Mr. Gates told the world leaders attending the forum. At Wal-Mart, CEO Lee Scott issued a Social Manifesto, saying that “we live in a time when people are losing confidence in the ability of government to solve problems.” But Wal-Mart, he said, “does not wait for someone else to solve problems.”...

Has Ben & Jerry’s helped Unilever to become more socially responsible? Will Tom’s of Maine make Colgate more natural? Will Green & Black help Cadbury Schweppes to be more organic? Over the past five years, many of the leading natural and organic brands that we’ve come to know and love have been purchased by huge multinationals. From Kashi to Odwalla, Balance Bar, Cascadian Farm, Muir Glen, Terra Chips, Arrowhead Mills, White Wave, Horizon, and Solgar to name but a few. ...

A note to the Seventh Generation community as we enter a new year. The fact that 80 percent of the world’s almond crop comes from one small part of the world, a 600,000-acre series of orchards in California’s Central Valley, is a metaphor for a world where we have dangerously bent the rules of nature to accommodate our own conveniences. ...

Imagine 400 CEOs representing Wal-Mart’s largest vendors all sitting in one room pondering the future of sustainability. Aside from representing trillions of dollars in market value, this group could change the course of history. As I observed from the third row of this gathering on Wednesday at Wal-Mart’s headquarters, I was both excited and scared. ...

I’m disappointed. I’d heard rumor of this before, but it was sad to read Thomas Friedman’s account of how Toyota is lobbying against tougher auto mileage standards in the Senate version of the draft energy bill. You heard me right: Toyota is sitting right beside GM, Ford and Chrysler arguing that it can’t achieve a corporate average fuel economy standard of 35 m.p.g. by 2020. Friedman speculates on the reason. ...

On the list of critical issues facing the human race and the planet we call home, global warming is at or near the top of my list. Yet, as Al says, the facts surrounding the climate crisis present us with a host of inconvenient truths. Many of us (me included) are unwilling to give up air travel, commit to the exclusive use of public transportation when we’re on the ground, eat an exclusively local diet or do the hundreds of other things necessary to dramatically reduce our CO2 footprint. ...

Here are Jeffrey's notes for his keynote address at the Ethical Corporation conference in Philadelphia on June 14, 2006: I find myself in a challenging situation! Many people have asked me not to be here today because a representative from cigarette manufacturer Phillip Morris, a cigarette manufacturer will also be speaking at this conference. To speak at the same conference as Philip Morris, they say, would legitimize the company when it does not deserve to be legitimized. ...