Signed, Sealed... Delivered?

Signed, Sealed... Delivered?
Behind Certications
and Beyond Labels
Signed, Sealed Delivered?
Behind Certications and Beyond Labels
Foreword
Acknowledgements
30 second summary
Executive summary
1 Why this research?
2 How certication and labeling work
3 How businesses use certication and labeling
Timelines Cofee
Seafood
Electronics
Apparel
4 Value, challenges and implications
5 Recommendations
6 Emerging good practice
Case studies Mars
Nestl
Ofce Depot
Timberland
Cafdirect
Method
7 On the horizon
8 Final remarks
Appendices
1 Research and collaborations on certications, labels and standards
2 Interviewees
3 Notes
2
3
4
5
6
9
12
14
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17
18
19
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Contents
2011 SustainAbility
All Rights Reserved. No part of this
publication may be reproduced, stored
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any form or by any means, electronic,
electrostatic, magnetic tape,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without permission in writing from the
copyright holders
ISBN
1-903168-26-0
Design
Rupert Bassett
The cover image consists of
certication and ecolabel logotypes
downloaded from The Ecolabel Index.
www.ecolabelindex.com
Blog
Continue the Signed, Sealed
Delivered? conversation at
www.sustainability.com/blog
3
Signed, Sealed Delivered? looks behind certications and beyond labels at how
these tools and the performance standards that underpin them create business
value.
But our decision to explore the experience of business with marks and movements
like Energy Star, Fairtrade, Marine Stewardship Council and Rainforest Alliance had
a larger purpose, asking: What has been learned about the best ways to improve
supply chain performance, increase trust among value chain partners, and change
customer and consumer behavior? What lessons can be extrapolated to the
challenge of scaling sustainability overall?
Signed, Sealed Delivered? applauds the ways certications, labels and standards
have advanced more sustainable business practices. They empower customers
and consumers, powerfully combine standards-setting and branding, and deliver
credibility and transparency via independent assurance. Businesses use them to
dene, deliver, demonstrate and create demand for better sustainability outcomes.
And they have improved lives and livelihoods in supply chains while helping
preserve and regenerate resources.
We also conclude we are reaching limits in terms of scale. Certication and
labeling are time and money intensive; we cant we shouldnt certify and
label everything. The aim behind certications and the aspiration beyond labels
is the creation of organizations and market systems that are just and sustainable
in their entirety. Rather than certications and labels driving endless incremental
improvement, we anticipate we hope for a future built on increasingly rigorous,
pre-competitive standards for sustainability performance, above which brands
compete to make sustainability intrinsic, where new business models emerge with
factors previously requiring certication part of their DNA, and where civil society
nds more efective and efcient ways of holding business accountable.
Certications and labels have been pioneers in building a more sustainable
economy. Some will continue to dene leading edges while others form crucial
minimum performance oors in future markets. Their continued roles are welcome
and required, even as we hope overtaken by the emergence of a more sustainable
economic model overall.
We are endlessly grateful to our sponsors Starbucks, Mars, Brown-Forman and
Ofce Depot and many collaborators. We thank too you, the reader, and invite
your reactions and feedback.
Mark Lee
Foreword
Mark Lee
Executive Director, SustainAbility
lee@sustainability.com
4
Our warm thanks to all who contributed to this project, including:
Our lead sponsor Starbucks, sponsors Mars and Brown-Forman, and supporting
sponsor Ofce Depot. We are grateful not only for their nancial support but
for their many intellectual contributions to the research. Special thanks to Ben
Packard and Colleen Chapman at Starbucks, Daniel Vennard at Mars, Rob
Kaplan at Brown-Forman, and Yalmaz Siddiqui at Ofce Depot.
The many dozens of people from businesses, standards-setters, NGOs,
government and others who generously shared their insights with us through
interviews, ongoing conversations and their own research. Their contributions
are woven throughout this report and their names are listed in the Appendix. We
also thank KoAnn Skrzyniarz of Sustainable Life Media and Drummond Lawson
of Method for hosting roundtable discussions early in the research.
From the SustainAbility Board and Council: Mark Lee for championing the
project from the beginning and for reviewing drafts; John Elkington of Volans,
Peter Zollinger of Globalance Bank and Geof Lye for inspiration at key points;
and Dorothy MacKenzie of Dragon Rouge and Rob Cameron of Fairtrade
International for reviewing draft sections.
And our SustainAbility colleagues, particularly Mohammed Al-Shawaf, Frances
Buckingham, Marion Chivot, Tom Cousins, Caren Holzman, Geof Kendall and
Kyle Whitaker for invaluable support on research, editorial guidance and launch;
and a hat tip to Preetum Shenoy and Mark Lee for the title and subtitle. Finally,
we thank Rupert Bassett for the report design.
Patrin Watanatada
Heather Mak
November 2011
Acknowledgements
Patrin Watanatada
Director, SustainAbility
watanatada@sustainability.com
Heather Mak
Manager, SustainAbility
mak@sustainability.com
5
Signed, Sealed Delivered? explores the value and
challenges that businesses nd in using certication and
labeling as tools to improve economic, environmental and
social outcomes across global value chains.
Certication, labeling and the standards-setting
organizations behind them have been pioneers in
building a more sustainable economy. For businesses,
they provide a credible, consensus-set reference point
for collective action, access to expertise and networks,
and can spur demand for certied or labeled goods. But
the very traits governance and inclusiveness that
make consensus-based standards so useful as credible
mechanisms for collective action also pose challenges for
businesses seeking to move quickly and to diferentiate
themselves in the marketplace. And like any tool,
certication and labeling have limits including limits to
scale.
We conclude that there is a need to deconstruct
and evolve the old model that combines standards,
certication and on-pack marks. Instead we urge a
shift towards a new model based upon increasingly
demanding and pre-competitive standards, above which
brands compete, collaborate and partner with civil
society to transform supply chains and consumer norms
and behavior, and where civil society and government
evolve more efective and efcient ways of holding
business accountable.
30 second
summary
6
Certication, labeling and the standards-setting organizations behind them have
been pioneers in building a more sustainable economy. Theyve made what was
once invisible visible, changed societal and consumer norms, given producers
access to new markets, promoted multi-stakeholder collaboration, and driven
operational changes among businesses and other large buyers. They are now in
widespread use as operational tools for business to make purchasing decisions,
manage supply, market and sell to B2B and B2C customers, guide employees, and
respond to stakeholders and regulators.
How well are these schemes working for business? With close to four hundred
certications and labels and counting in the marketplace, have we reached a point
of diminishing returns both for business and for the sustainability agenda? Our
key ndings are summarized below.
1 We recommend that businesses think in terms of dening, delivering,
demonstrating and creating demand for better sustainability outcomes across
the value chain.

We identify four key ways in which businesses have relied on certication and
labeling that we refer to as the 4Ds: to help them dene criteria for processes,
performance or measurement that will result in better sustainability outcomes,
to contribute to delivering better sustainability outcomes by providing expertise
and on-the-ground relationships, to demonstrate to their business and civil
society stakeholders that better sustainability outcomes are being achieved
through certication, verication or some other assurance, and to create
or respond to demand for better sustainability outcomes from B2B and B2C
customers.

Thinking in terms of the 4Ds provides a framework for deciding whether
standards, certication and/or labeling are most appropriate and when other
tools or relationships might be more powerfully deployed.
2 Businesses have realized most value in working with certication and labeling
to deliver, demonstrate and meet business-to-business (B2B) demand. They
experience both benet and challenges from dene, and least value of all in
creating business-to-consumer (B2C) demand.

Working with the consensus-based standards and civil society organizations
behind certications and labels gives businesses a credible and shared reference
point for collective action, as well as access to expertise and networks.
Businesses also nd value in meeting B2B and institutional demand for certied
or labeled goods. However, businesses also experience challenges when they
perceive independent standards to be too low or too slow to change. Where
businesses experience most challenges and see least value is in working with
certication and labeling to create demand from B2C consumers.
This report has been written primarily
for consumer brands who work
with or are considering working
with sustainability certication and
labeling. We also expect it to be of
interest to organizations working in the
certication and labeling space seeking
greater insight into the way in which
businesses use them and how they can
become more efective partners.
Executive
summary
7
3 Consensus-based standards embody inherent tensions. Certication and
labeling have limits including limits to scale.

The very traits governance and inclusiveness that make consensus-
based standards so useful as credible mechanisms for collective action also
pose challenges for businesses seeking to move quickly and to diferentiate.
Certication, even when used well, is necessarily a snapshot in time and space,
while independent labels invite condence but pose increasing marketing
challenges for brands as they proliferate. These challenges will amplify with
scale: certication cannot reach every farm and factory in the world, while labels
alone will not shift the mainstream consumer.
4 Businesses are moving to separate certication use from communication.

We looked at retailers seeking to simplify complexity for their customers; brands
seeking to address supply chain challenges while diferentiating and growing
their own brands; and 100% sustainable brands such as Method or the UKs
Cafdirect are looking both to continue raising the bar on performance and to
communicate their leadership positions.

There is a wide variety of approaches to inuencing both suppliers and
consumers, but we see two trends increasing: (1) Strategic use of independent
certications and standards to manage supply alongside other mechanisms,
combined with (2) unique brand campaigns that create an emotional connection
or speak to a Whats In It For Me for the consumer, with sustainability
certications, labels or attributes used back-of-pack (metaphorically or literally).
In both cases, the business or brand embraces, rather than outsources, its
relationships with its suppliers and consumers. We welcome both of these
trends and believe this will lead to more value for both business and for society.
5 We need to deconstruct and evolve the old model that combines standards,
certication and on-pack labeling in one system.

The classic sustainability label (think Fairtrade or Energy Star) combines a set
of consensus-based standards with service delivery, independent auditing or
verication, and a product label. This was an inspired and innovative idea at a
time when the need was to raise awareness and to develop a common platform
for taking action.

But as we seek to scale the impact of voluntary standards in order to transform
global production and consumption, recognizing that standards, certication
and labeling do not have to co-exist and that they are part of a bigger toolbox
for inuencing sustainability outcomes opens up many more possibilities for
how business and the voluntary standards movement can work together more
efectively.
Executive summary
8
6 The model for the future? Pre-competitive standards, competing (and
collaborating) brands and new forms of partnership and accountability.

We urge a shift towards a new model based upon increasingly demanding
and pre-competitive standards, above which brands compete, collaborate and
partner with civil society to embed these standards into business models and
to transform supply chains and consumer behavior and where civil society
and government evolve more efective and efcient ways of holding business
accountable.

Business will innovate to deliver to outcomes rather than standards, complement
certication with strong supplier-buyer relationships, and use the power of
their brands to delight and mobilize consumers into adopting more sustainable
behaviors. In turn, standards will stretch and innovate alongside business,
certication will be complemented by new mechanisms such as partnerships
and national regulation, and labels will fade into a quieter, background role,
acting as trust marks for those who seek it and leaving brands and consumers
themselves to take the lead.
Executive summary
9
In the last fty years, the value of internationally traded goods has increased from
less than a fth to more than half of world GDP. A couple of years ago, a shipping
container followed by the BBC went twice round the world in a year, stopping at
Scotland, Shanghai, Brazil and Los Angeles along the way. Whereas a century ago
we might have known where, how and who produced the things we eat, wear and
use, in so many instances today all we know is what were told. And how can we be
sure that what were told can be trusted?
Enter the sustainability certication or label: the independently veried standard
accompanied by an on-pack mark that tells the consumer a product was produced
(think Fairtrade or organic) or can be consumed (think nutritional labels or Energy
Star) in a more sustainable way. Its a powerful idea that combines sustainability
standards-setting and branding, underpinned by the credibility of an independent
body.
But 33 years after the worlds rst sustainability label (Germanys Blue Angel)
appeared, were in a diferent, noisier world, where seven billion of us and counting
are bumping up against the limits of the planets natural resources. A number of
trends indicate its time to examine the model.
Certications and labels are everywhere. From Italys 100% Green Electricity to
New Zealands Zque natural wool label, the Ecolabel Index lists 426 certications
and labels in 25 industry sectors and 246 countries as of November 2011. Around
two-thirds of these were developed in the last decade alone, and new schemes
continue to arrive.
From their origins as civil society and policy initiatives, certications and
labels have now become important tools for businesses. Our informal review
found that most of the ten largest publicly held companies in each of the apparel,
carpet, electronics, food & beverage, household & personal care and pulp & paper
industries employ certications and labels. We expect this trend to continue as
more and more businesses set sustainability goals for their value chains and need
credible ways both to deliver and to demonstrate that these have been met.
Its not only consumers who are confused its businesses. Nowadays its stating
the obvious that consumers are confused by the sheer number of certications and
labels: according to the Natural Marketing Institute, 51% of American consumers
think there are too many green seals and certications and 59% wish there were
one over-arching universal seal. But businesses are confused as well.
1
In the many
conversations weve had over the past year, a few questions came up repeatedly:
What are they for? Are they minimum standards that stand in for regulation or
leadership guidelines to which to aspire? How do we choose between schemes
that cover the same commodity, attribute or category?
Whats the value? Are these best used to manage supply or to build our brands?
Is it worth developing our own or better to participate in an existing scheme?
Where do we use other tools instead?
Whats the future? Will demand for certication and labeling increase or
diminish? Will their role change? How will these schemes evolve?
Why this research?
1.0
10
Many research initiatives are underway to map the certications, labels and
standards landscape, understand their impact and develop strategies going forward
and many useful tools have been developed to help businesses to navigate this
tangle. (See Appendix 1 overview of some of the major research initiatives and
tools.)
Theres another question, though. As weve come to learn, the rst question to ask
isnt Which certication or label? Rather, its Why certify or label? This places
the question in the context of other ways available to businesses for improving or
communicating sustainability impacts across the value chain.
Our intent is to contribute to the debate by exploring the business perspective on
certication and labels.
How do businesses use these tools to inuence and communicate with their
stakeholders? What value and challenges do they experience?
What do businesses need to understand in order to make smarter use of these
tools? How can certication and labeling initiatives evolve to become more
efective partners and mechanisms?
How should businesses see certication and labeling in the context of other
ways of inuencing and communicating better economic, environmental and
social outcomes?
For this report, we have focused on the perspectives of consumer brands and
retailers operating in Europe and North America, where certication and labeling is
relatively advanced.
Weve taken a qualitative approach to our research, undertaking some 85 interviews
with businesses, standards-setters, certiers and other expert observers, and
supplementing these discussions with desk research and our own point of view. A
list of interviewees is included in Appendix 2.
1 .0
Why this research?
11
Apparel Adidas
Nike
Richemont
VF Corporation
Examples of companies
in the sector

Labeling is now
commonplace in many
consumer goods industries
Organic (cotton)
Labels used in the sector

All
(Richemont
Rolex)
Users of the ten largest
companies in the sector
(Exceptions)
Carpet Beaulieu
Interface
Mohawk
Shaw
GreenGuard
NSF 140
All
Electronics Apple
LG
Panasonic
Samsung
Energy Star
EPEAT
All
Food &
Beverage
Coca-Cola
Kraft
Nestl
Unilever
Fairtrade
Marine Stewardship Council
Organic
Rainforest Alliance
UTZ Certied
All
(Anheuser-Busch
Kirin Holdings)
Household &
Personal Care
Henkel
Kimberly-Clark
LOral
Procter & Gamble
AISE
Eco-Cert
Fairtrade
Nordic Swan
Organic
All
(Procter & Gamble
Kao Corporation)
Pulp &
Paper
International Paper
Nippon Paper
Oji Paper
Stora Enso
Forest Stewardship Council
Programme for the
Endorsement of
Forest Certication
Sustainable Forestry Initiative
Sustainable Green
Ecosystem Council
All
(Procter & Gamble)
Source: SustainAbility research
1 .0
Why this research?
Fairtrade was the driving force for
getting people to want to know more
about who is producing their cofee
and the conditions under which theyre
producing it. The direct trade model,
the competing seals, the development
of Starbucks CAF Practices, all owe
their existence in some sense to
Fairtrade.
Matt Warning
Professor of Economics,
University of Puget Sound
12
The best certications and labels are, rst and foremost, agents of change.
Theyve made what was once invisible visible. Theyve created a metaphorical line
of sight between production and consumers. Theyve shifted societal and consumer
norms, built capacity, given producers access to new markets, promoted multi-
stakeholder collaboration and cross-industry alliances, driven operational changes
among businesses and other large buyers, and empowered consumers with
information.
How have they done this? We see four ways in which sustainability certication and
labeling work to achieve better economic, environmental and social outcomes:
1 Dene standards for better sustainability outcomes. Some specify processes
(most), others metrics (Bonsucro).
2 Deliver better sustainability outcomes through capacity-building, expertise,
relationships, infrastructure and networks. This is a major feature of the
agricultural voluntary standards initiatives, for example.
3 Demonstrate intent or delivery of better sustainability outcomes. Certication
involves independent checking and assessment, while verication generally
means some form of verication of a manufacturers or producers own
assessment.
4 Create Demand by identifying and appealing to a want or need for the better
sustainability outcome among buyers. Some engage in highly active marketing
(Fairtrade, Energy Star), while others may do very little (Common Code for the
Cofee Community).
Its important to note that there are three conceptually separate mechanisms,
which often, but dont always go together. For example, the ISO 26000 corporate
responsibility standard isnt a certication.
Standards set requirements to be followed by program participants, often taking
a consensus-based approach.
Certication provides third party assurance that a product, process or service is
in conformity with certain standards.
Labeling provides on-pack claims, marks or seals that indicate conformance
with the standard.
2

Consider the following programs, which all combine certication, labeling and
standards:
Fairtrade (1988) Fairtrade denes standards for producers in developing
countries for better trading conditions and to promote sustainability among
products such as handicrafts, cofee, cocoa, sugar, tea, bananas, honey and
cotton. To help deliver on the goal of alleviating poverty and empowering
producers, it provides a premium to producers and asserts higher social and
environmental standards. To demonstrate the labels credibility, external bodies
certify products against the Fairtrade standard. It aims to inuence demand by
partnering with brands and retailers, and by forming a social movement through
events like the Fairtrade Fortnight. A label is displayed on pack.
How certication
and labeling work
2.0
Provides third-party assurance that
a product, process or service is in
conformity with certain standards. Often,
support the producer or business being
certied in making improvements.
Provides on-pack claims, marks or seals
that indicate conformance with the
standard and serve to communicate
with the buyer or consumer. Sometimes
supported by a marketing or public
education campaign.
Standards Codify
requirements, often
consensus based.
Certication
Labeling
13
Energy Star (1992) Launched by the United States Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA), the Energy Star label denes energy usage standards for diferent
product categories. The standard is adjusted every few years to allow for
improvement. To help deliver on this goal, the number of product categories has
been expanded in partnership with the Department of Energy, the standard has
also been licensed internationally in partnership with governments, and regular
educational campaigns are run. To demonstrate product adherence to standards,
Energy Star uses licensed Quality Assurance Providers. To inuence demand, it
has been embedded into government and other institutional purchasing programs
and awareness has been raised through many government partnerships with
utilities, state agencies and other organizations. A label is displayed.
Marine Stewardship Council (1997) Launched by WWF and Unilever in 1997,
the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) denes through a consensus basis what
sustainable shing practices are for wild-caught sh and sets a tiered standard
which includes performance indicators for sheries to meet in order to be
classied as sustainable. To help deliver, the MSC provides technical assistance to
sheries. To demonstrate that sheries have met the standard, they go through an
assessment with an accredited third party and are encouraged to improve their
performance. To inuence demand, the MSC works with governments and retailers
to increase the number of certied sheries and increase the points of distribution
for products that carry the label, and also works with other organizations to raise
awareness about sustainable seafood for consumers. A label is often, but not
always, displayed.
How standards, certication
and labeling work to achieve
better sustainability outcomes
Dene standards
for processes,
performance or
measurement
Inuence Demand
by identifying and
appealing to a want
or need among
buyers
Deliver through
capacity-building,
expertise, relation-
ships, infrastructure
and networks
Demonstrate
intent or delivery
through certication,
verication or other
assurance
2.0
How certication and labeling work
Intel said to us, If you provide us
with a credible measuring stick, we
will innovate and compete on that
standard.
Wayne Rifer
EPEAT Director of Standards
and Product Verication,
Green Electronics Council
14
If certication and labeling started out primarily as ways for NGOs and
policymakers to deliver change through markets, theyve now also become widely
used by businesses as operational tools: to make purchasing decisions, manage
supply, market and sell to B2B and B2C customers, guide employees, and respond to
stakeholders and regulators. Consider the following examples.
Suppliers and producers
To make purchasing decisions.
Sodexos seafood sourcing specications includes a commitment to increase its
use of standards or labels.
To inuence changes in producer and supplier practices.
As a founding member of the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), IKEA has committed
to transitioning all of its cotton to BCI guidelines by 2015.
Customers: B2B and institutional
To meet B2B buyer specications or reporting requirements.
Walmarts supplier sustainability scorecard asks suppliers to specify any
3rd party labels or certications. Other buyers may ask for more general
environmental impact reporting, for which a certication can serve as a proxy or
guide to responding.
To meet government or institutional purchasing specications.
The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games Sustainable Sourcing
Code requires purchases of Fairtrade and Soil Association-certied goods.
Meanwhile, the Responsible Purchasing Network, whose members include
major universities, municipal governments, and non-prot organizations,
species the usage of various standards and certications in the purchase of
product categories such as paper, cleaning products and electronics.
Customers: B2C
To meet consumer expectations in a particular category.
Just about every high street fast food chain in the UK now ofers a certied
cofee.
To support or enhance the brand story.
Although it has been working with the Marine Stewardship Council for over ve
years, McDonalds Europe has just begun placing the mark on its sh sandwich
wrappers in part to raise awareness among its consumers, in part to support its
shift in brand positioning from fast food towards good food, fast.
Civil society and regulators
To respond to stakeholder pressure.
Kimberly-Clark and Mattel both committed to increasing purchases of Forest
Stewardship Council-certied pulp and paper following Greenpeace campaigns.
To report or to respond to regulatory disclosure requirements.
The Global Reporting Initiative Food Processing Sector Supplement asks food
& beverage companies to report on the percentage of raw materials sourced
under third-party standards or certication. The French government is piloting a
program to require all consumer products and services sold in France to display
information about their environmental impacts.
How businesses
use certication
and labeling
3.0
15
How businesses use sustainability
certications and labels

Brand Producer Supplier
Govment /
Institutional
Customer
Civil
Society &
Regulators
B2B
Customer
Consumers
Employees
Employees
To engage and guide employees.
The narrative behind the Cradle to Cradle certication has inspired the designers
at Steelcases Designtex.
To set goals for the business to work towards.
Apple designs its MacBook Pro to meet EPEAT Gold environmental criteria.
Inuence changes
in practices
Inuence changes
in practices
Make purchasing
decisions
Engage and
guide
Meet purchasing
specications
Meet consumer
expectations
Support
brand story
Meet purchasing
expectations
Respond to
pressure and
disclosure
requirements
3.0
How businesses use
certication and labeling
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Certications, labels, and standards
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International Cofee Agreement created by the UN 1962
16 Timeline 1
Interest in Sustainable Seafood
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17 Timeline 2
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18 Timeline 3
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Multi Fibre Agreement created 1974
19 Timeline 4
Weve seen that certications and labels work to dene, to deliver, to demonstrate
and to create or respond to demand for better sustainability outcomes. How
efective are these four Ds from the perspective of business? To nd out, we asked
dozens of brands and retailers: What value and what challenges do you experience
in working with certications, labels and standards?
4.1 Dene standards for processes, performance or measurement
Working with external standards not only saves work and draws on the expertise
of many, but gives businesses a common reference point for collective action. We
cant do it unless the rest of the industry comes along as well was a common
statement.
And as more businesses sign on to a standard, it creates a movement. I follow
retailers like Marks & Spencer, Sainsburys and Waitrose closely, says Paul Uys,
vice-president of sustainable seafood at Loblaw, Canadas largest food retailer.
Why paddle up a diferent creek?
But working with external standards poses challenges as well as almost by
denition, compromise is required. Businesses expressed frustrations with the
soundness of criteria (based on perception or politics, not science, popular only
because it was the rst), the level at which requirements are set (too low we
cant diferentiate ourselves), the t for the business (requires us to change our
processes for no reason), or the failure of the standard to adapt to new knowledge
or processes (hampers innovation).
4.2 Deliver through capacity-building, expertise, infrastructure and networks
Many certication and labeling organizations provide access to valuable services,
experts and local networks. Youre talking to the worlds best people working on
sustainable agriculture, labor, and so on. We have a lot of expertise on cocoa, but
we dont have it all, says Alastair Child, global cocoa sustainability director at Mars.
But committing to a single standard can limit sourcing exibility in the case of raw
materials standards. It also ties the business to the reputation and viability of the
standards-setting organization.
Challenge
The standards not the right one.
The standard doesnt work for us.
Challenge
Limits exibility.
Value
Saves us from re-inventing the wheel.
Enables us to raise standards across
the industry.
Value
Gives us access to services, expertise
and a built-in stakeholder network.
20
Value, challenges
and implications
4.0
Were seeking a sectoral
transformation certication is a
mechanism for that. Big components of
this are pre-competitive, and we need
the rest of the industry to do it too.
Interviewee
One of the problems with developing
labeling criteria based on current
technologies is that it could stie
innovation. A new technology might
actually be better for the environment
but not comply with the standards set
and so not be eligible for a label.
Julia Hailes
Author of The New Green
Consumer Guide
There is a role for rigorous, prescriptive
certication, but not everything needs
to be certied. It depends on the scale
of the issues. Certications matter
where everyone needs to get behind
the same actions and where theres
signicant incentive not to get behind
those actions.
Patrick Laine
Director of Corporate Relationships,
WWF-UK
21
4.3 Demonstrate intent or delivery through certication, verication
or other assurance
Credibility was the most frequently cited benet amongst the businesses we spoke
with a benet of the involvement of a trusted third party. According to the Natural
Marketing Institute, almost three-quarters of U.S. consumers admit that it is hard
to know who is telling the truth about sustainability claims, and over half said I like
to see someone else endorse what a company says it does for the environment or
society.
3
Not only does working with certication or labels reduce the risk of making claims,
it provides a convenient and fast way of assessing sustainability for those with little
time or resource. Retailers with hundreds of products will rely on labels to select their
green product sets, and to communicate their benets quickly to customers.
But getting the information can be a challenge particularly for retailers or
manufacturers with little visibility into their supply chains beyond the rst tier. In
other cases, the information may not be reliable.
And as more and more businesses report on impacts beyond their operational
footprint, they rely on certications and labels to serve as a proxy for supply chain
impacts. But while measuring outputs such as GHG emissions, acres of FSC-certied
land or volumes of certied cofee is straightforward, it is far more difcult to
measure outcomes and this is what most are seeking.
4.4 Create Demand by identifying and appealing to a want
or need among buyers
Businesses cited B2B value from the use of certications and labels. Many
governmental, institutional and corporate buyers now have green purchasing policies
which reference certications and labels. Some businesses are proactively selling on
such claims: one manufacturer noted that its raw ingredient suppliers would promote
their sustainability certications and awards, even without being asked.
Challenge
Not enough evidence of impact.
We cant get or dont trust the
information.
Challenge
Its just not easy to engage our
consumers on sustainability, and labels
dont diferentiate anymore.
Value
Credibility and convenience.
Value
Our consumers and customers expect
it, and some of them reward it.
We look to agricultural certications
and roundtables to provide value in a
number of ways, and rst is through
governance and transparency on the
standard-setting process.
Jan Kees Vis
Global Supply Chain Director,
Sustainable Agriculture, Unilever
We encourage our top suppliers to get
[EPA] SmartWay certication its a
great program, and it helps me in my
reporting.
Mark Bueltmann
Manager of Sustainable Supplier
Development, American Electric Power
There are certain business segments
that actively seek out specic ecolabels
in certain product categories.
Yalmaz Siddiqui
Senior Director, Environmental
Strategy, Ofce Depot
People are logod out.
Drew Tremblay
Business Development Manager,
Domtar
4.0
Value, challenges and implications
22
But B2C value was harder to nd. The biggest challenges: Sustainability is not a
top purchase driver, so we dont have a return on our investment, Our customers
dont understand the issues, so they dont respond to the label, and Every brand
has a mark its no longer a diferentiator. Simpler frustrations exist as well:
we heard comments such as Our designers dont want to use the labels in their
design or Its hard to nd the room to put both required and voluntary information
on-pack. (One person we spoke with noted wryly that cereal companies were at an
advantage, with their larger packaging!)
4.5 Implications
What have we learned from these conversations and from past experience? We
make four general observations:
1 Consensus-based standards are good for collaboration, not so good for
diferentiation.

The great strengths of consensus-based standards are governance and
inclusiveness, making them valuable to businesses as credible reference points
for moving entire industries. However, these strengths also pose challenges for
anyone seeking to innovate swiftly or for businesses seeking to diferentiate
themselves in the market.

By their nature, standards embody tensions. Its not easy both to be inclusive
and to adapt quickly to new knowledge. And its not easy both to meet the needs
of leaders at the same time as drawing in their mainstream counterparts.

As Kellie McElhaney of the Center for Responsible Business at the University of
California, Berkeley says, Sustainability is a team sport you really do have to
have everyone in the room. [But] sometimes you drop to the lowest common
denominator, and its below where some companies are in their programs. This
can slow things down for the most sustainability-minded folks.
2 Certication is necessarily a snapshot in time and in space and the solution
is not more or better inspections.
Certication inspections and auditing, if done well in a spirit of supplier capacity-
building and sharing responsibility for problems between supplier and buyer,
can be important tools for uncovering challenges and supporting suppliers in
instituting better practices. But too many audits place burdens on producers and
suppliers, and if used at arms-length are at best a blunt instrument and at worst
a way for brands to outsource responsibility.

Said one social auditing expert we spoke with, The amount of time and efort
spent on monitoring doesnt seem to result in enough return on investment. Its
not that brands dont want to drive change. But there are just too many factories
and not enough resources.

I think these certications would like to
be more dynamic, but they nd it really
hard. These are systems set up ten or
twenty years ago that are struggling
to change due to their governance
systems.
Scott Poynton
Executive Director, The Forest Trust
We started the Marine Stewardship
Council not to create a few perfect
boutique sheries, but to create
powerful incentives to move the
entire industry. We set the bar at an
intermediate level that will be a stretch
but not a holy grail.
Michael Sutton
Vice-President,
Monterey Bay Aquarium
4.0
23
Nor is the solution more or better audits. Theres a deeper limitation related to
the systemic nature of social and environmental challenges. Take agricultural
certication.

Certication by denition is at farm-level, says Andrew Bovarnick, global head
of the United Nations Development Programmes Green Commodities Initiative.
The farm might have the best forest stewardship and water management
practices, but if that farm is surrounded by a landscape with deforestation and
water contamination, there will be minimal environmental sustainability. Its a
difcult one for certication schemes to deal with.
3 Labels preach to the converted but are limited in what they do for the rest.

Labels work (and are often required and regulated) where people are motivated
to look for them: consider the plethora of on-pack labels that address nutritional
content, allergens, alcohol content, safety, and so on. But how well do they work
to sell more distant concerns that are rarely the rst purchase driver for all but a
niche few?

For the less converted majority or even the converted but busy labels wont
make much of a dent. One person told us that eye-tracking technology show that
consumers spend mere seconds looking at any label, let alone a sustainability
label. And recognition for most seals remains relatively low although in
some cases, that is changing. For example, according to the Natural Marketing
Institutes 2011 data, 42% of American consumers recognize Rainforest Alliance,
26% LEED and 19% Forest Stewardship Council, although 95% recognize
Energy Star and 76% recognize USDA Certied Organic
4
both of which are
associated with strong Whats In It for Me? factors.

The biggest opportunity now is to shift the behavior of light- or mid-green
consumers those who care about sustainability, but who also place a high
premium on price and convenience. And for this, well need something more
than a label. As Dara ORourke of GoodGuide says, Our data shows that there is
a much greater market for sustainable products than is currently being captured
but the current system of four hundred logos is not a winning strategy for
capturing that market potential. People need to connect to this information in an
almost emotional way, the way they do with some brands and retailers.

Retailers are well-placed to step in. According to an October 2011 GlobeScan/
SustainAbility survey, three-quarters of experts surveyed ranked retailers
brand or reputation as having a high or very high inuence on their purchase
decisions almost as high as independently veried sustainability labels.
5

Everyone wants a label but very few
people can point to hard evidence that
shows that this is making an impact
on consumer purchasing above and
beyond that niche group who will
always seek it out.
Luke Upchurch
Head of Communications & External
Afairs, Consumers International
Labels dont work so well anymore.
You need a softer, more open
relationship that connects the
consumer to our story.
Jean-Marie Shields
Global Brand Director,
Starbucks
4.0
24
4 And nally, certication and labeling face limits to scale.

We cannot certify every factory and farm in the world.

Agricultural certication illustrates this challenge emphatically. At the moment,
certication is the only process we have, but at some point well have to jump
to a completely diferent mechanism, states Jan Kees Vis, global director of
sustainable agriculture at Unilever. Were not going to certify every farmer
in the world, we cant create a roundtable for every raw material. Andrew
Bovarnick of the UNDPs Green Commodities Facility shares this view,
noting that another massive challenge is maintaining the rigor of auditing as
certication schemes become more popular and the numbers of farmers getting
certied increases.

Nor can we label everything in the world.

Understandably, the goal of certication and labeling organizations is to see
widespread take-up of the label. Yet, the more brands carry these marks, the
less the consumer is likely to notice, and the less of a diferentiator they become
for any one brand. This makes the investment much harder to justify for a
business if the expectation is to diferentiate, to increase sales or to secure a
price premium from the consumer.

And theres another, perhaps less obvious, cost to labeling. In order to ensure
that product claims match product practices you need traceability: connecting
the product to actual practices at origin and along the supply chain. Traceability
can have many benets from food safety to more efcient supply chains, but
segregating certied product especially a commodity that is processed
and mixed along the chain all the way through the supply chain is hugely
expensive. Is it worth the cost of communicating what the consumer may not
reward?

Traceability can add value, especially when communicating to consumers, but
we must recognize that resources spent on traceability can limit those available
for farm level programs, observes sustainability strategy and supply chain
consultant Liz Muller. Why not just fund the change?
Weve created a model that has
delivered real results in the market
and in the eld but the coupling of
standards-setting with labeling might
not be sustainable into the future.
The standards-setting process should
stand the test of time, but labeling
and certication might be replaced by
better models.
Dr. Alan Knight
Founder, Single Planet Living
For consumers, trust marks have
run a course where they now lack
diferentiation in a sea of competition.
The onus is on marketers to gure out
how to engage, inspire, and delight
beyond slapping a label on-pack. The
[packaging] real estate is so limited,
and the consumer impact is so in
doubt.
Rob Kaplan
Manager of Corporate Responsibility,
Brown-Forman
4.0
Green consumers
1719%
5
Certied world supply of
various commodities
<20%
6
25
How will certication and labeling need to evolve to accelerate more sustainable
modes of production and consumption as seven billion of us and counting bump up
against the limits of the planets natural resources?
This is a question that some standards-setters are looking at. The International
Social and Environmental Accreditation and Labeling (ISEAL) Alliance, the global
association for social and environmental standards which includes Fairtrade
Labelling Organizations International, Forest Stewardship Council, Marine
Stewardship Council, Rainforest Alliance and Social Accountability International
among its 19-strong membership, has just launched the recommendations of
its Scaling Up Strategy, which includes leveraging the support of key external
actors, increasing producer and enterprise access to standards, and increasing the
efectiveness and efciency of standards systems.
Businesses, too, will need to evolve their approach to certication and labeling. We
ofer three proposals.
5.1 De-construct the classic model and rebuild
The classic sustainability label (think Fairtrade or Energy Star) combines a set
of consensus-based standards with services delivery, independent auditing or
verication, and a product label. This was an inspired and innovative idea at a time
when the need was to raise awareness and to develop a common platform for taking
action.
But as we seek to scale their impact in order to transform global production
and consumption, thinking in terms of a more exible model where standards,
certication and labeling do not have to co-exist and are instead seen as part of
a bigger toolbox for inuencing sustainability outcomes opens up many more
possibilities for how business and the voluntary standards movement can work
together more efectively.
Recommendations
5.0
How do we scale?
How do we reach the rest?
26
5.2 Know the value, manage expectations and partner
Know the value. There is signicant value, but it will come from managing supply,
managing risk, supporting brand value and reputation, engaging employees or
access to B2B markets. For many categories, the value is unlikely to come from
brand diferentiation, increased B2C sales or price premiums. Many people we
spoke from both businesses and standards-setters acknowledged that from a
B2C perspective, the window of diferentiation has closed in many categories.
Manage expectations. I do think managing expectations is critical, says Patrick
Mallet, credibility director at ISEAL Alliance. Certication can be an efective tool
to deliver sustainability but it needs to be applied in coordination with other tools
like regulation and nancial incentives. One area where managing expectations
is especially important is measurement. Linking certication or labeling and
improvements in social and environmental outcomes is difcult because it
requires the researcher to unwind the specic impacts of the certication from an
uncontrolled, dynamic environment with complex feedback loops.
8
We may need
to do more with directional and qualitative forms of impact measurement. Happily,
stories are efective in engaging not only consumers, but also employees and others
working in the eld.
Partner. The relationship needs to be a partnership, not a transaction on both
sides. Businesses must not outsource their responsibilities and relationships to a
certication or label. Indeed, increasingly businesses are seeing certications as
delivery partners. Companies are asking us, How can you help us to deliver on the
ground? How do we dig in with you to look at our productivity and quality concerns,
and how does this align with your agenda to improve farmer incomes? says Rob
Cameron of Fairtrade International.
5.3 Join forces to create demand
Finally, brands and voluntary standards will need to gure out how best to work
together to create demand.

Labels have done a lot to increase issue salience and awareness, but they dont
necessarily do a lot to change consumer behavior, says Michael Sutton, who co-
founded the Marine Stewardship Council and now runs Monterey Bay Aquariums
Seafood Watch. Our extensive consumer research shows there isnt a strong
correlation between awareness and behavior change.
Brands, who hold the relationship with consumers, will need to do much more
to deploy their insight into consumer behavior and marketing know-how, while
certications will need to continue to establish trust and raise awareness of their
issues while recognizing the challenges that too much focus on labels poses for
brands.
We know that the big challenges
are around making more signicant
changes in how we do things on a
systemic level. This creates an agenda
for brands that is about empowering
citizen-consumers helping us to
live in the right way overall rather than
just making specic decisions about
specic products.
Dorothy MacKenzie
Chairman, Dragon Rouge
Our biggest competitor is
misinformation and greenwashing
this erodes trust in all labels. Ive seen
enough green leaves in the past few
years to ll a forest.
Josh Jacobs
Director of Marketing,
GreenGuard
5.0
Recommendations
27
We see a shift towards a new model, based on the essential foundation set by
certication, standards and labeling.
Business will innovate to deliver to outcomes rather than standards, complement
certication with strong supplier-buyer relationships, and use the power of their
brands to delight and mobilize consumers into adopting more sustainable behaviors.
In turn, standards will stretch and innovate alongside business, certication will be
complemented by new mechanisms such as partnerships and national regulation,
and labels will fade into a quieter, background role, acting as trust marks for those
who seek it and leaving brands and consumers themselves to take the lead.
In moving in this direction, the businesses we looked at are using certication,
labeling and standards increasingly strategically based on what works for them,
their supply chain and their customers. And notably, many are moving towards
communicating sustainability through their brands. Below we highlight some ways
in which businesses are making more efective use of these tools to dene, deliver,
demonstrate and inuence demand for better sustainability outcomes.
Is it any wonder that no single tool can
do it all? Instead of going straight to the
certify or label route, businesses must
consider each of their key stakeholder
groups (as outlined in section 3) and
ask, For this stakeholder, what is the
best way to dene, deliver, demonstrate
and/or inuence demand for better
sustainability outcomes?
Sometimes the answer will be a
standard, certication or label and
sometimes, it wont be. We nd
that the value of using a standard,
certication or label versus another
approach (be it an industry forum,
bespoke standard, NGO partnership,
direct sourcing relationship or a brand
campaign) difers widely depending
on the business, the product category,
the supply chain and the competitive
landscape.
When to use a certication, label or
standard? It depends...
We saw earlier that businesses use
certication, labeling and standards
as tools to engage with suppliers, B2B
customers, B2C consumers, regulators,
NGOs and employees. Consider how
diferent the motivations and needs of
these diferent stakeholders are:
Suppliers need a business case,
capacity-building and the ability to
make gradual changes.
B2B customers seek credible but easy
ways to make purchasing decisions.
B2C consumers respond to whats in
it for me (WIIFM) and an engaging,
memorable story.
Regulators may be responding to
constituent perception or political
winds.
NGOs want to see participatory
governance and evidence of impact.
Employees need actionable guidance
and an inspiring narrative.
Emerging good
practice
6.0
28
Dene. Know what matters to your business, and deploy the best tool.
Companies are now making signicant eforts to understand their value chain
hotspots and the companys own values in order to identify the most material areas
rather than trying to cover everything. Certications and standards apply to
specic points during production, are best used where its important to coordinate
with others, and need to be complemented by life-cycle thinking. Key elements of
this include:
Stretch goals based on outcomes, not on the means of getting there. These
goals do not link to any one certication or label (and may not even link to
labeling or to certication as a mechanism), though certication or labeling may
play roles in achieving them. For example, Nestl and Sainsburys have both set
goals to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains. Timberland includes
simple but powerful goals (bolstered by more specic indicators): Protect the
Outdoors, Innovate Cradle-to-Cradle Design, Improve Workers Lives.
A set of company-specic principles to govern the businesss use of
certication or labels. Both Mars and Unilever are actively engaged with
certications for their biggest agricultural commodity inputs, but do so
through company-specic unifying frameworks. Mars, which has committed
to 100% certication targets for both cocoa and palm oil, has dened a set of
Certication Requirements, while Unilever, which has committed more generally
to sustainably sourced, has developed its own Sustainable Agriculture Code
against which it benchmarks third party standards.
Deliver. Recognize and embrace your roles and responsibilities as a business.
Whether its partnering or embedding the principles behind standards into the
business, the work does not stop with choosing the standard.
Ensuring the standard is a beginning, not an end. This means staying connected
to supplier and consumer relationships through teams on the ground and direct
consumer engagement on the issues, rather than outsourcing these relationships
to a certication or label.
Partnering with certications and standards on key issues. Businesses are
increasingly seeing certication and standards bodies as delivery partners,
working with them in areas where they themselves can lend expertise.
Starbucks worked closely with LEED to develop standards for retail stores and
with Fairtrade on helping farmers to improve the quality of their beans through
cupping sessions and other support. Kimberly-Clark sits on the board of the
Forest Stewardship Council.
Pooling internal resources. Internal collaboration was crucial for the businesses
we spoke with, with sustainability, procurement and technical teams working
closely together to prepare for changing the supply chain. Costs were also
shared across the business, with the investment in a certication or label shared
rather than charged to any one product or brand.
Ten years ago, we didnt want to use
external standards we felt it would
dilute our brand. [But] with time, weve
recognized that the cost and agony
of developing your own standards far
outweigh the benets. Its too much
efort, and people dont always trust
it. Were now on a journey that says,
Certication is important, but its got to
be wrapped round with whats unique to
M&S.
Mike Barry
Head of Sustainable Business
Marks & Spencer
Big companies should be more
connected to their production base.
Not delegating all the work to NGOs,
but having teams on the ground, being
engaged with producers, co-operatives,
governments.
Andrew Bovarnick
Global Head
UNDP Green Commodities Facility
6.0
Emerging good practice
29
Demonstrate. Think assessment and development, not auditing. Create feedback
loops from disclosure.
Going beyond auditing. Leading brands have shifted from an auditing/policing
to a supplier development mindset. They are working with suppliers to make
the business case for them to take ownership of better labor standards, and
assessing the impact of their own purchasing practices or design processes on
factory working conditions. We talk about ethical sourcing in terms of how we
treat our suppliers as a fundamental distinction, says Virginia Bergin, ethical
sourcing manager at Starbucks.

Said one expert we spoke with, Use audits to assess a factory and build a
relationship that allows the factory to feel comfortable admitting their issues,
uncover all the dozens of symptoms that need to be addressed, but worry only
about the very few root causes and work with the factory to build capacity on HR
processes, grievance processes. This is the only model that can drive systemic
change.
Feeding information back into design. Method and Timberland have both
developed their own supplier tools to reect their standards and to enable
capacity-building, but align with third party supplier scorecards and codes
where possible and useful. Both use product standards intended primarily as
design tools, and only secondarily as communications or assessment tools. The
Sustainable Apparel Index, building on work done by Timberland and Nike, is
now developing cross-industry tools for better design.

Meanwhile, InterfaceFLOR is pioneering the use of third party veried
Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) quantitative declarations of
product ingredients and environmental impacts based on a life-cycle analysis.
The goal is both to share product information in a consistent and transparent
way as well as to feedback into the companys design processes.
Demand. Engage well beyond the label. Communicate what makes sense for your
brand. Make it easy for consumers and customers to make better choices.
Businesses and brands can simplify the complex, make it easier to make decisions,
and create distinctive brand campaigns that engage consumers while drawing on
certication as a reason to believe. Technology opens up entirely new possibilities
to connect consumers to production both in-store and online.
Flexible communication on sustainability that supports the brand story and
leads with issues that resonate with consumers. Sustainability is only rarely
the rst purchase driver, with value, reliability and quality almost always higher
on the list. And customers can only take in so many messages at one time. So
communication on sustainability is increasingly playing a supporting, brand-
specic role. Jack Cunningham of Sainsburys calls this sustainability by stealth,
while Beth Holzman of Timberland calls it a gift with purchase. The key is to
support the brand. For example, BMWs electric vehicle sub-brand, BMWi,
positions itself as a premium, highly-engineered solution for customers worried
about rising gas prices and others in search of sustainable mobility solutions.
The trick is getting the designers
and formulators to think about
environmental impact up front. Thats a
cultural shift that every company has to
go through.
Christine Kennedy
Skin R&D Sustainability Manager,
Unilever
Sustainability shouldnt change what
youre known for as a brand it should
support it.
Annie Longsworth
President, San Francisco & Global
Sustainability Practice, Cohn & Wolfe
Starbucks has a payment app that tells
the customer where her cofee is from.
Id love to see it also tell the farmer
where her cofee is going.
Dervala Hanley
Vice-President, Corporate Initiatives &
Planning, Starbucks
6.0
30
Public relations and cause marketing. Once regarded as a less credible
alternative to independent sustainability labeling, engaging with consumers
through PR or via cause marketing can be far more efective both in telling
a story and in driving sales although a independent mark still matters
for credibility. Marks & Spencer has created a Forever Fish campaign that
adds a consumer communications layer to its Marine Stewardship Council
commitment, including a Schools of Fish education program for schoolchildren.
Mobile and social technologies that connect the dots across the value chain
and the social graph. GoodGuides new Amazon toolbar allows shoppers
to consider price and quality alongside sustainability information. Says Dara
ORourke, co-founder of GoodGuide: A city may have an environmentally
preferable purchasing program and want to buy Greenseal cleaning products
but the janitors wont use it if it doesnt work. So youve got to bring in
quality through user reviews. Energy efciency software provider Opower has
launched a Facebook app to get customers to change their energy consumption
habits. Fairtrade Foundation is testing direct SMS and video connections
between producers and consumers.
Curation. The chic sister to choice-editing, curation means not only limiting the
choices available to consumers, but helping consumers to see the value of that
limited experience. eBays World of Good site denes a set of environmental and
social attributes but draws extensively on third party certication, labeling and
a network of Trust Providers to back up claims. Start-up Blissmo delivers an
appealing monthly box of organic and environmentally preferable products.
Post-purchase engagement. This deepens the brands engagement with
consumers and, where appropriate, does a better job of hitting at hotspots.
Levis ask their users to wash jeans less often to save water. Patagonia has
changed the game with its Buy Less, Buy Used campaign that encourages
consumers to buy used Patagonia gear on eBay.
6.0
31
What businesses would like to see
from standards
More explicit recognition of baseline
versus leadership. At present, few
standards acknowledge that they target
the mainstream via a minimum bar
the Common Code for the Cofee
Community is one notable exception
for being fully transparent in this
regard. We will need some standards to
dene leading edges and others to form
crucial minimum performance oors
in future markets, but businesses will
need to know which is which.
Reward businesses for better
performance. According to the
Ecolabel Index, just over two-thirds of
labels use a pass-fail system and fewer
than one-fth use tiers making it
difcult for high-performing businesses
to diferentiate themselves.
Faster decision-making and adapting to
new knowledge. Standards systems are
well aware of this need, and it is reected
in the new ISEAL strategy. As Dr. Sasha
Courville of the ISEAL Alliance has said:
We have to ensure the integrity of the
governance systems and ensure the
multi-stakeholder balance but we also
need to be able to go fast, so what does
this new form of democratic governance
look like?
9
As we went to press, the
global Fairtrade system announced that
producer representation in the Fairtrade
General Assembly would increase to
50%, a move that Fairtrade considers
likely to increase the speed of decision-
making.
10
More collaboration. This is beginning
to happen amongst some of the bigger
standard-setters. Fairtrade, Rainforest
Alliance and Utz Certied, who all certify
cocoa, cofee and tea, announced in
February 2011 that they were working
together to reduce the level of complexity
and cost for farmers and to seek further
cooperation in the eld.
11
6.0
32
Approach to cocoa supply
Mars prioritizes its commodities by asking itself the following questions: How
important is the commodity to our business? How big is the threat or opportunity?
How big is our ability to inuence it?
Says Alastair Child, global cocoa sustainability director, Chocolate is our longest-
established segment. What keeps us up at night is, How do we get cocoa thirty or
forty years from now? And we buy a lot of cocoa, so were heard. All these three
things come together for us on cocoa.
We chose to go with certication because we think this is what will scale. We want
this to be a pre-competitive efort. What we dont want to see is any one group of
farmers getting lucky because they happen to be in a particular companys supply
chain. We want to get to a base level of support services.
Mars chooses the certications it works with based on a set of Certication
Principles that reects what Mars considers to be most important to cocoa
production and livelihoods: productivity and labor. This gives Mars exibility to use
diferent certication schemes which it believes is needed in order to achieve its
goal of sourcing 100% certied cocoa by 2020.
Mars
Ensuring a
sustainable
supply of cocoa
IBM/USDA
partnership, World
Cocoa Foundation
membership
UTZ Certied,
Rainforest Alliance,
Fairtrade
Mars Certication
Requirements
Cocoa Development
Centers & Village
Cocoa Centers
Cocoa
Sustainability
Blog
Cause
marketing
Certication in
certain markets
Dene Demand Deliver Demonstrate
In-house
Partnership or
collaboration
Third-party
certications, labels
or standards
Mars & Cocoa
Case Study 1
33
Approach to engaging consumers
Diferent Mars brands use cocoa sourced via diferent certication schemes. Mars
Inc. buys the cocoa and the brands request the supply they want. Maltesers in the
UK has switched to Fairtrade, while Germanys Balisto bar uses Utz Certied cocoa,
and UKs best-selling Galaxy and Australian Mars Bars use Rainforest Alliance
cocoa.
Mars is exploring and innovating ways to engage the consumer in certication.
Says Daniel Vennard, global sustainability director brands, We want to use our
marketing know-how to engage millions of consumers in these causes in a way
that also helps grow the brands. In the UK, the Galaxy brand included Rainforest
Alliance in one of its TV campaigns whilst in Australia the recent Mars Bar
certication was communicated via PR. In Germany the Balisto brand, a cereal-
based bar with a natural feel, created a successful distinctive campaign (associated
with its UTZ certied cocoa) that planted one cocoa tree in Africa for every pack
sold.
Case Study 1
34
Approach to sourcing
As the worlds largest food & beverage company, Nestl has major buying power
and a 140-year history of developing supplier relationships and in-house expertise.
Nestl has decided not to place third party certication at the center of either its
approach to supply management or sustainability communications. Instead, Nestl
emphasizes its own responsible sourcing platform that combines in-house plans,
guidelines, codes and capacity-building teams for key commodities and suppliers
plus NGO partnerships and industry collaborations. For palm oil, Nestl is working
with The Forest Trust to go beyond RSPO commitments, to understand the palm oil
supply chain and to build transparency on areas of impact.
Says Duncan Pollard, Sustainability Advisor at Nestl: First, certication standards
are a negotiated compromise which often leaves them weak in some areas, and by
providing a comprehensive approach they often lack the ability to make an impact
on the truly difcult issues. Second, diferent schemes also deliver upon diferent
outcomes, which are often poorly understood at the consumer level. Finally, they are
not making a substantive impact at a smallholder level.
Nestl
Responsible
Sourcing Platform
Case Study 2
AIM-PROGRESS
SAI Platform,
partnerships with
Rainforest Alliance
and TFT
NGO partnerships
and endorsements
Common Code for
the Cofee Community,
Roundtable on
Sustainable Palm Oil
Cocoa Plan,
Nescaf Plan,
Nespresso AAA
Responsible
Sourcing Platform,
Agricultural Service
Team, Cocoa and
Nescaf Plans
Cocoa Plan website Communication on
Cocoa Plan
Certication in
certain markets
In-house
Partnership or
collaboration
Third-party
or standards
Nestl
35
Says Stefan Canz of Nestls Corporate Agriculture division: We have to take
into consideration the structural challenges the farmers are facing. As part of the
Nescaf Plan, the company is supplying high-yield plantlets to replace ageing, low-
yield trees. Certication schemes do not cover this aspect, and if yields decline in
the long run because of ageing trees, cofee growing wont be economically viable
anymore.
Nestl does see certication as a useful yardstick. For us, the role of certication is
to verify whether weve been able to meet the commitments weve set. Certication
is not an end point: its verifying that were on the right journey, says Pollard.
Nestl also works in partnership with certication bodies to tap into their expertise
to create impact for farmers not necessarily buying cofee certied to that
standard. With the Nescaf Plan, we worked with Rainforest Alliance because
we thought, Theres a lot we can learn from your environmental knowledge and
increasing social standard but you should work with us because of our ground
linkages to the farmers and the impact our supply chain will have on farmers, says
Stefan Canz.
Approach to engaging consumers
Nestl sees standards from an operational perspective rather than a consumer
communications perspective. In some cases, highly visible ingredients such as
cocoa are marketed through the brands, while palm oil is dealt with at a corporate
level only. Nestl uses on-pack certication where there is strong consumer
demand, as with Fairtrade Kit Kat in the UK and Ireland.
Case Study 2
36
Dening green
As a reseller facing a range of competing denitions of environmentally sustainable
across its stakeholders, Ofce Depot has created a system to clarify the idea of
greener.
There are certain business segments that actively seek out specic ecolabels in
certain product categories, other segments that seek environmental attributes such
as recycled or non toxic without requiring an ecolabel, and most others that are
simply confused by the array of denitions and approaches to green, says Yalmaz
Siddiqui, senior director of environmental strategy.
Ofce Depots GreenerOfce Ratings classies ofce products as light green,
mid-green or dark green depending on their environmental attributes (e.g.
recycled), specications (e.g. 10%, 30%, 100% recycled) or ecolabels (e.g.
Greenseal, to validate the recycled content). In all cases, items rated must deliver
one or more of the following environmental benets versus typical alternatives in
the category: saved resources or lower waste, saved energy or lower emissions, and
use of safer chemicals.
Ofce Depot
Clarifying greener
Case Study 3
Wide range of
certications and
labels
GreenerOfce
ratings system
Customer education
and reporting
services, Nutritional
Label and other on-
pack messaging
In-house
Partnership or
collaboration
Third-party
or standards
Ofce Depot
37
One big challenge is to dene whats greener: a product with a high degree of one
attribute, such as Energy Stars Most Efcient standard, versus a similar item that
may not be as stringent on the single attribute, but has multiple environmental
attributes, such as slight energy efciency along with non-toxicity and recyclability,
says Siddiqui. There is no clear answer. It depends on the products hotspots and
on what the customer cares about.
Deciding what constitutes light, mid- or dark green is an ongoing journey. We
revise our denitions based on stakeholder input and new insights, says Siddiqui.
For example, bio-based products are designated green by the US federal
government, so we decided to include corn-based products in our rating system.
Since then weve seen a rise in the food versus fuel or products debate, and new
life-cycle analyses imply corn may not be that great an alternative to synthetic
materials. As such, were re-evaluating where corn ts into our system.
Selling green
To encourage customers to buy greener, Ofce Depot puts a lot of emphasis
on dening the Whats In It for Me (WIFM) associated with environmentally
sustainable choices. It does so by educating customers on the economic, health and
other benets of greener choices, and it includes a WIFM for every attribute in its
GreenerOfce Ratings.
The company has also made a signicant investment in providing greener
purchasing reports to major customers. Says Jackie Buckwell, UK Environmental
Manager: The reports show trends over time and assist customers to set targets.
One strategic question Ofce Depot has struggled with is whether to have a
dedicated green private label, or to incorporate green attributes and ecolabels
across a wider range of private label products.
Having initially launched a separate brand, Ofce Depot Green, a question kept
arising: should new SKUs with environmental attributes or ecolabels be branded
as Ofce Depot Green or placed under the existing private labelfor that category?
Ofce Depot has now decided to move towards a consistent approach to designate
greenness across products in all its own brands. It does this through use of a
consistent design identity and environmental attribute icons.
Case Study 3
38
Approach to design
A medium-sized, global apparel brand with a long-standing commitment to
leadership on social and environmental performance, Timberland began by
developing its own product labels and supplier standards and encouraging industry
wide collaboration for greater scale.
As a company very committed to transparency wed been doing GRI reporting
for years we asked, why wasnt there the same type of information on our
products as youd see on a box of cereal in a grocery store? says Beth Holzman,
Timberlands Manager of CSR, of the companys famous Nutrition Label.
The label, rst launched in 2006, appears on every box of Timberland footwear
and provides consumers with information about the companys environmental
performance. Now, the company has developed a product-specic Green Index
rating, which scores a product on its climate impact, chemical use and resource
consumption the three most material environmental impacts of a Timberland
shoe according to life-cycle analysis. Timberlands goal is to score all of its footwear
products by the end of 2012.
Says Holzman, We wanted the Green Index to do two things: rst, to become an
internal design tool, second to empower consumers to make better purchasing
decisions.
Timberland
Environmental
sustainability and
factory working
conditions
Case Study 4
Leather Working
Group, OIA Eco
Working Group,
Sustainable Apparel
Coalition, GSCP
Quarterly calls
and reporting
Green Index,
Timberland Code
of Conduct and
Assessment Questions,
In-house assessment team
OIA Eco Index
(in future) GSCP
Environmental
Module
Nutrition Label,
Earthkeepers
Campaign
In-house
Partnership or
collaboration
Third-party
or standards
Timberland
39
So far, the Green Index has been more successful as a design tool. As we get more
information about the environmental impact of our products, weve been able to
give our designers the information they need to make better decisions at the start of
the design process.
But driving consumer preference through the Green Index has been more difcult.
Although Timberland has received stakeholder and consumer kudos for its
innovative transparency, there is little evidence that the Green Index has driven
sales.
Without comparability between our boots and our competitors boots, you cant
fully get there, says Holzman. Thats why we are working with the Outdoor
Industry Association and the Sustainable Apparel Coalition to develop an industry-
wide index.
We know that no ones banging on our door to ask for a cool green shoe. So we
consider our environmental attributes to be a gift with purchase. It does help
to diferentiate us in the marketplace, but its the fundamental quality and value
attributes that attract the consumer.
Approach to supply
Timberland also uses its own assessment questionnaire for suppliers, based on
ILO conventions and the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Timberlands own staf
serve as factory assessors. Where appropriate, it is beginning to align with other
standards.
Unfortunately there isnt yet the equivalent of the Electronics Industry Code
of Conduct for the apparel industry, says Holzman. We were one of the rst
companies to move away from the compliance, checklist model we train our
assessors to be partners and capacity-builders and to go beyond factory walls.
We were also one of the rst companies to integrate environmental management
into the process, so we didnt want to align with standards that dont reect this.
Last year we adopted the Global Social Compliance Programmes environmental
management module, which aligns with our priorities. We want to create
efciencies among all the brands asking suppliers for assessment information.
Case Study 4
40
The UKs rst Fairtrade hot chocolate and cofee brand, Cafdirect was formed by
ethical NGOs Traidcraft, Oxfam, Equal Exchange & Twin Trading after the cofee
crisis in 1989. As a pre-cursor to the Fairtrade Foundation UK, Cafdirects portfolio
has been 100% Fairtrade from the start, and much of its early life was spent helping
to build out Fairtrade as a movement and a mark. But as the Fairtrade market has
grown over the last decade and a half, Cafdirect has faced competition from newer
Fairtrade players such as supermarket private label and big roasters. These brands
are both less expensive due to diferent procurement models and scale (especially
private label) and, some say, may have further to go on the Fairtrade journey.
Fairtrade is a starting point but not an end in itself, says Cafdirect impact &
sustainability manager Whitney Kakos. You can have a whole aisle of Fairtrade-
certied products and the consumer sees them all the same way despite there being
some major diferences between the brands. Cafdirect has gone beyond Fairtrade
by embedding fair trade principles into its business model through its Gold Standard
(which, among other things, species that at least one-third of prots be re-invested
in the supply chain), governance model (producers sit on the Cafdirect board and
own shares), and Producer Partnership Programmes.
Besides establishing this point of diferentiation, Cafdirects other challenge is
appealing to the majority of roast & ground cofee buyers who buy primarily on taste,
packaging and price. So Cafdirects rst consumer message is quality and taste, and
its supporting message is a strong focus on relationships with producers and direct
procurement, playing of its name.
Cafdirect
100% Fairtrade
Case Study 5
Fairtrade,
Soil Association
organic
Cafdirect
Gold Standard
Producer Partner-
ship Programmes,
Cafdirect govern-
ance structure,
Direct procurement
Reporting against
Gold Standard KPIs
Cafdirect
marketing,
Friends of
Cafdirect
Network
In-house
Partnership or
collaboration
Third-party
or standards
Cafdirect
41
Approach to designing sustainability into the business
As a household & personal care brand founded on a commitment to sustainability,
Method approaches certication rst and foremost as a design tool. This works
because its certication of choice the Cradle to Cradle (C2C) Certied program
based on Michael Braungart and William McDonoughs Cradle to Cradle approach
to design is both a design vision and an externally audited design process. As
part of the product development process, Method sends every proposed ingredient
to McDonough and Braungarts environmental research institute and design rm for
review.
The Cradle to Cradle certication also helps Method to tell its story to both its
retail customers and its more eagle-eyed consumers. Retailers are looking for
external validation to help them feel condent that theyre not greenwashing by
putting a product in their green set, says Drummond Lawson, Methods green giant
(aka director of sustainability). C2C assesses ve key categories of sustainability
performance rather than a single attribute, so weve found it a good t for the
comprehensive sustainability vision to which we adhere. Were also the only
cleaning product and one of a very few consumer products with C2C certication.
Our salespeople love that richer narrative. And for those consumers who do look at
labels, C2C is the best story we can tell it links directly to our companys vision
and philosophy.
Method
Cradle to Cradle
Case Study 6
EPEA and MBDC
materials review
Greensourcing supplier
reporting framework
Design for the
Environment certication
Cradle to Cradle certication
User experience
In-house
Partnership or
collaboration
Third-party
or standards
Method
42
Lawson emphasizes, however, that Method does not think labeling is the way
to communicate sustainability. Labels are on the periphery. Ninety percent of
the demand were going to build is through user experience. We want to make
sustainability live through the brand.
Approach to supporting suppliers on the journey
The design-led approach extends to Methods approach to working with its contract
manufacturers. The company has developed a custom vendor reporting framework,
Greensourcing, that difers from more evaluation-focused supplier scorecards
in two ways: rst, it provides Methods designers with actionable information to
reduce manufacturing footprint at the design stage, and second, it aims to help
suppliers to set and track goals and ultimately to develop green manufacturing
competencies.
Method is aware of the challenges that customized requests for information can
place on suppliers. Says Lawson, We didnt go with an existing program because
we didnt know of any others that worked in the way we needed. We do want to
make it easier for suppliers and it would get very complicated if every brand had its
own scorecard. We are trying to nd a way to align our information request with
other supplier sustainability scorecards.
Approach to assurance
Method takes a nuanced approach to assurance that combines corporate
transparency, ecolabeling and branding.
As a company, we report under the B Corp framework because we feel that a green
product should come from a green company, says Lawson. For our products, we
think the strongest guarantee of our performance should be in the Method brand
itself. Thats the best place to be, like Patagonia.
But ecolabels are useful for people who are less familiar with our brand. Cradle to
Cradle is extremely compelling for people who know the story, but its less well-
known overall. We like [the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencys] Design for
the Environment because we consider their criteria for evaluation to be technically
sound. It has credibility from its government backing, and it ts well with our
product line.
Case Study 6
43
Where next for dening, delivering, demonstrating and inuencing demand for
better sustainability outcomes for business as well as for certications, labels and
standards? Can brand claims ever be as trusted as third-party claims? How will
certications, labels and standards and business work together more efectively to
create demand? What role will government have to play?
Drawing on some of the emerging trends from the research, we highlight just a few
key questions below that we believe will grow in importance. We hope to explore
these and others in our ongoing work in this space.
How will demand for certication and labeling itself change?
Two important drivers are set to inuence the demand for transparent, trusted,
efective certication and labeling. First, B2B and institutional green purchasing
policies are now widespread across all levels of government, the corporate
sector and other organizations such as universities. These make extensive use
of certications or other simple marks that enable the decision-maker to tick
the box. Second, emerging markets consumers are at a much earlier stage for
certications and labels. According to Cohn & Wolfes 2011 ImagePower Green
Brands Survey, the biggest challenge facing Chinese consumers in buying green
is poor, confusing or untrustworthy labeling.
Will we see a merging or rationalization?
Some say that competition is healthy, while others say that too many
certications, standards and labels confuse and take up valuable resources.
The answer is probably somewhere in between. We are starting to see some
indications, with UL Environment buying Canadas Ecologo and GreenGuard in
the past year and a half.
How will new models of governance and assurance develop?
How do we complement certication in other ways, whether through national
regulation and public-private partnerships, verication, a greater sense of joint
accountability amongst suppliers and buyers, or more sophisticated, even cloud-
based, information ows?
How might brands use their power?
Big multinationals may not be as nimble as entrepreneurs, but what these
companies have in earth-scale abundance is brand, deep insight into consumers
and the power to shape our aspirations, values and behavior. How will brands
use that power and marketing capabilities to change the world for the better?
How might they use advances in technology to tell compelling stories that
connect production and consumption? And can they nd a way of collaborating
to scale their impact on the front-end as well as the back-end?
On the horizon
7.0
44
In this report, we have sought to provide a lens through which companies of all
shapes and sizes can look to think about the specic and often signicant
value of certication, standards and labeling to their business.
By denition, however, these tools are designed to work with existing markets
and product lines. If the move to a more sustainable world requires new trading
relationships and new forms of consumption such as services, sharing, re-use,
and yes, less consumption a product-by-product focus may end up missing the
larger point. Too much focus on any one product may distract from the greater
imperative to keep production and consumption within environmental limits and to
ensure sustainable livelihoods for all.
We urge a shift towards a new, systems-focused model based upon increasingly
demanding and pre-competitive standards, above which brands compete,
collaborate and partner with civil society to embed these standards into business
models and to transform supply chains and consumer behavior and where
civil society and government evolve more efective and efcient ways of holding
business accountable.
Please do get in touch and join us as we continue to explore what these new models
beyond labels might be, even as we celebrate everything behind certications and
all we have learned from their experience and eforts to pave the way.
Final remarks
8.0
The State of Sustainability Initiatives
Review 2010: Sustainability
and Transparency (IISD, IIED,
Aidenvironment, UNCTAD and
ENTWINED). Major overview of system
characteristics and market trends for ten
voluntary sustainability initiatives (VSIs)
in bananas, cocoa, cofee, forestry and
tea.
www.iisd.org/pdf/2010/ssi_
sustainability_review_2010.pdf
Informing Green Markets (Erb
Institute, University of Michigan). Report
from annual conference series.
www.erb.umich.edu/News-and-
Events/news-events-docs/10-11/
InformingGreenMarkets.pdf
Assessing impact
Certication and Roundtables: Do
They Work? (WWF, 2010). Examines
whether multi-stakeholder initiatives are
measurably and permanently shifting
markets towards improved economic,
environmental and social outcomes.
http://assets.panda.org/downloads/
wwf_msireview_sept_2010_lowres.pdf
Certication Impact: Global
Assessment of Standards and
Certication Systems (RESOLVE,
Packard Foundation, Walton Family
Foundation, Mars, ongoing). Major efort
to understand what is known about the
impact and benets of these systems.
www.resolv.org/our-work/issues/
sustainable-development
The Impacts of Private Standards on
Global Value Chains (International
Trade Centre, ongoing). Examines the
impacts of private standards on global
value chains.
www.standardsmap.org/en/reference_
material/publications
Appendix 1 45
Surveying the landscape
The ISEAL 100: A Survey of Thought
Leader Views on Sustainability
Standards (ISEAL Alliance, March
2011). Survey of thought leaders on
awareness and use, commitment,
benets, impacts and evaluation, areas of
improvement and building trust.
www.isealalliance.org/iseal100
Scaling Up: Top Ten Trends (ISEAL
Alliance, December 2010). Outlines
the trends and opportunities facing the
voluntary standards movement.
www.isealalliance.org/news/interview-
dr-sasha-courville-scaling-up-top-ten-
trends
An Overview of Ecolabels and
Sustainability Certications in the
Global Marketplace (Corporate
Sustainability Initiative, Duke Universitys
Nicholas Institute for Environmental
Policy Solutions, October 2010).
Literature review of sustainability and
market performance of ecolabels and
certication systems. Descriptive
global survey with World Resources
Institute and Big Room of over 150
labels and certications. Parallel studies
of ecolabels in food and agriculture,
personal care, electronics, textiles and
apparel.
http://center.sustainability.duke.
edu/sites/default/les/documents/
ecolabelsreport.pdf
2010 Global Ecolabel Monitor: Towards
Transparency (World Resources
Institute and Big Room). Global survey
of ecolabels covering basic information,
enforcement, content, rules, governance
and nal backing, market share, impact,
and improvements.
www.ecolabelindex.com/downloads/
Global_Ecolabel_Monitor2010.pdf
Research and
collaborations on
and standards
Online tools to help businesses and
others navigate the landscape
Ecolabel Index
One-stop global directory of a wide range
of certications and labels.
www.ecolabelindex.com
Ekobai.com
Global B2B marketplace for certied
goods & services.
www.ekobai.com
International Trade Centre Standards
Map
Helps producers, exporters and
policymakers evaluate diferent voluntary
standards
www.standardsmap.org
US Environmental Protection Agencys
Greener Products Portal
Navigator for products using their EPA
ecolabels and standards.
www.epa.gov/greenerproducts
Consumer Reports GreenerChoices
Consumer guide to ecolabels and green
products.
www.greenerchoices.org
SELECT Eco-Label Manager
Chemicals giant BASF has developed a
system for its employees and preferred
customers to analyze and compare eco-
labels, environmental claims, directories
and ratings systems
https://select-ecolabels.basf.com/
Applications/EcoLabelManager.nsf
Whats next?
Scaling Up Strategy: Scaling Up the
Impacts of Voluntary Standards
(ISEAL Alliance, June 2011). Strategy for
ISEAL Alliance members to dramatically
increase their social, environmental and
economic impacts through: positioning
credible standards systems as leaders
in achieving sustainable development;
leveraging the support of key external
actors for scaling up; increasing producer
and enterprise access to standards;
and increasing the efectiveness and
efciency of standards systems.
www.isealalliance.org/scaling-up
Green Products Roundtable
Voluntary stakeholder group of
representatives from the private,
nonprot and government sectors
working to reduce confusions over the
green marketplace and improve the
production and buying decisions of
product manufacturers, institutional
purchasers and consumers. Currently
conducting a major mapping exercise of
standards and other mechanisms.
www.keystone.org/spp/environment/
Green-Products-Roundtable
Sustainability Consortium
Developing transparent methodologies,
tools and strategies to drive a new
generation of products and supply
networks that address environmental,
social and economic imperatives.
www.sustainabilityconsortium.org
Appendix 1 46
47
Dr. Alan Knight Founder, Single Planet Living
Alastair Child Cocoa Sustainability Director
Certication & Community Development,
Mars
Allanna McAspurn UK General Manager,
MADE-BY
Dr. Anastasia ORourke Co-Founder, Big
Room Inc.
Andrew Bovarnick Global Head, Green
Commodities Facility, UNDP
Andrew Hough Director, Lead Auditor of
Fishery Assessments and Chain of Custody,
Moody Intertek
Annie Longsworth President, San Francisco
& Global Sustainability Practice, Cohn &
Wolfe
Ben Packard Vice-President of Global
Responsibility, Starbucks
Beth Holzman CSR Strategy & Reporting
Manager, Timberland
Britta Wyss Bisang Standards & Certication
Manager, UTZ Certied
Caren Holzman Director, SustainAbility
Carol Derby Director of Environmental
Strategy, Designtex (Steelcase)
Chris Brett Head of Corporate Responsibility
and Sustainability, Olam International
Christine Kennedy Skin R&D Sustainability
Manager, Unilever
Christophe Liebon Vice-President
Environmental Impact Solutions, Intertek
Colleen Chapman, Director, Global Policy
and Advocacy, Starbucks
Colman Cuf Vice-President, Cofee & Tea
and Managing Director for Starbucks Cofee
Trading Company, Starbucks
Dan Lockton Designer, Design with Intent
Daniel Vennard Global Sustainability
Director Brands, Mars
Dara ORourke Co-Founder, GoodGuide
and Associate Professor of Environmental
and Labor Policy , University of California at
Berkeley
David Agnew Director of Standards and
Licensing, Marine Stewardship Council
Deidre Hoguet Manager, Environmental
Strategy, Designtex (Steelcase)
Dermot Hikisch Director of Business
Development, B Corp
Dervala Hanley Vice-President Corporate
Initiatives & Planning, Starbucks
Interviewees
Appendix 2
Diane Taillard Director Sustainability &
Traceability, GS1 Global
Dorothy MacKenzie Co-Founder &
Chairman, Dragon Rouge
Drew Tremblay Business Development
Manager, Domtar
Drummond Lawson Green Giant aka
Director of Environmental Sustainability,
Method
Duncan Pollard Sustainability Advisor,
Nestl
Elisabeth Laville Founder & Director, Utopies
Emma Keller Research Engineer, Unilever
Etienne Mcmanus-White Chief Marketing
Ofcer, Forest Stewardship Council US
Gary Dodge Director of Science and
Certication, Forest Stewardship Council US
Gwynne Rogers LOHAS Business Director,
Natural Marketing Institute
Hannah Higginson Project Co-ordinator,
Fashioning an Ethical Industry
Ingmar Streese Head of Public Afairs &
Policy Europe & CIS, Mars
Jack Cunningham Head of Climate Change &
Environment, Sainsburys
James Kohm Associate Director for the
Enforcement Division, Federal Trade
Commission Consumer Protection, United
States Government
Jan Kees Vis Global Supply Chain Director
Sustainable Agriculture, Unilever
Jason Metnick Senior Director of Market
Access and Product Labeling, Sustainable
Forestry Initiative
Jean-Marie Shields Global Brand Director,
Starbucks
Jia Liu Sustainability Program Manager,
Intertek Sustainability Solutions
Jim Hanna Director of Environmental Impact,
Starbucks
John Tichenor Assistant Vice-President,
Group Brand Director, Brown-Forman
Johnathon Baker Vice-President
Procurement, Starbucks
Josh Dorfman Vice-President of Marketing,
GoodGuide
Josh Jacobs Director of Marketing,
Greenguard Environmental Institute
Julia Hailes MBE Environment and
Sustainability Consultant, Author of
The New Green Consumer Guide
48 Appendix 2
Kate Wylie Global Sustainability Director,
Mars Drinks
Katie Seawell, Director of Marketing,
Starbucks
Keith Kenny Senior Director, Supply Chain,
McDonalds Europe
Kellie McElhaney John C. Whitehead
Adjunct Professor, founding Faculty Director
of the Center for Responsible Business
at Haas School of Business, University of
California at Berkeley
Kerry Walsh Skelly Director, Corporate
Afairs EMEA, Brown-Forman
Laura Thompson Director, Technical
Marketing and Sustainable Development,
Sappi
Liz Jarman Head of Product Technology and
Development, Sainsburys
Liz Muller Independent Consultant,
Liz Muller & Partners
Lorraine Smith Associate, SustainAbility
Luke Upchurch Head of Communications
and External Afairs, Consumers
International
Mark Bueltmann Manager Sustainable
Supplier Development, American Electric
Power
Mark Little Climate Change Manager, Tesco
Mark Schafer Principal and Owner, Schafer
Environmental LLC
Matt Warning Professor of Economics,
University of Puget Sound
Matthew Vierling Head of Process
Improvement, Old Navy, Gap
Michael Fernandez Director of Public Policy
and Global Partnerships, Mars
Michael Sutton Vice-President and Director
of Center for the Future of the Oceans,
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Mike Barry Head of Sustainable Business,
Marks & Spencer
Oliver Adria Researcher, UNEP/Wuppertal
Institute Collaborating Centre on Sustainable
Consumption and Production
Owen Ward Co-Founder, National Director,
LoyaltyOne Air Miles for Social Change
Pablo Ramirez Ethical Sourcing Manager,
Starbucks
Patrick Laine Director of Corporate
Relationships, WWF-UK
Patrick Mallet Credibility Director,
ISEAL Alliance
Paul Uys Vice-President Sustainable
Seafood, Loblaw Companies Limited
Ramon Arratia European Sustainability
Director, InterfaceFLOR
Rob Frederick Vice-President and Director,
Corporate Responsibility, Brown-Forman
Rob Kaplan Manager of Corporate
Responsibility, Brown-Forman
Russ Meyer Chief Strategy Ofcer, Landor
Associates
Sandra Brunet Marketing Manager
Developing Brands, Brown-Forman
Sara Eppel Head of Sustainable Products and
Consumers, Department for Environment,
Food and Rural Afairs (Defra), UK
Government
Sarah Snudden Director of Insight
Integration, Seventh Generation
Scot Case Director, Market Development, UL
Environment
Scott Poynton Executive Director, The Forest
Trust
Simon Lee Business Development Manager,
Marketplace, Business in the Community
Stefan Canz Corporate Agriculture, Nestl
Timothy Nall Vice-President, Operations,
Packaging, Environmental & Governmental
Compliance, Brown-Forman
Tom Pollock Senior Program Manager,
Greenblue
Valrie Sejourn Director, Sustainability &
Communications, International Association
for Soaps, Detergents and Maintenance
Products
Virginia Bergin Ethical Sourcing Regional
Manager, Starbucks
Wayne Rifer EPEAT Director of Standards
and Product Verication, Green Electronics
Council
Whitney Kakos Impact & Sustainability
Manager, Cafdirect
William Olson Director Ofce of
Sustainability and Stewardship Mobile
Devices, Motorola
Wolfram Pinker Co-founder, American
Green
Yalmaz Siddiqui Senior Director
Environmental Strategy, Ofce Depot
49
1
Natural Marketing Institute,
2011 LOHAS Consumer Trends Database.
2
The State of Sustainability Initiatives
Review 2010.
3
4
5
The Sustainability Survey on Sustainable
Consumption, October 2011.
www.sustainability.com/library/
survey-on-sustainable-consumption
6
According to the Natural Marketing
Institute.
www.triplepundit.com/2010/06/
whats-the-state-of-the-lohas-
consumer-segment-answers-from-the-
natural-marketing-institute
7
WWF 2010 and The State of
Sustainability Initiatives Review 2010.
8
Corporate Sustainability Initiative,
Nicholas Institute for Environmental
Policy Solutions, Duke University,
An Overview of Ecolabels and
Sustainability Certications in the
Global Marketplace, p. 44.
9
www.isealalliance.org/news/interview-
dr-sasha-courville-scaling-up-top-ten-
trends-ii
10
www.fairtrade.org.uk/press_ofce/
press_releases_and_statements/
october/producer_ownership_of_
fairtrade_moves_to_new_level.aspx
11
www.isealalliance.org/news/historic-
joint-statement-fairtrade-sanrainforest-
alliance-utz-certied
Some of the data for the timelines is
sourced from An Overview of Ecolabels and
Sustainability Certications in the Global
Marketplace (Corporate Sustainability
Initiative, Duke Universitys Nicholas
Institute for Environmental Policy
Solutions, October 2010).
Notes
Appendix 3
SustainAbility is a think-tank and strategy consultancy working to inspire
transformative business leadership on the sustainability agenda. Established
in 1987, SustainAbility delivers illuminating foresight and actionable insight on
sustainable development trends and issues. The company operates globally
and has ofces in Europe, North America and India. For more information, visit
www.sustainability.com
SustainAbility
Lead sponsor
Sponsors
Supporting sponsor
SustainAbility Ltd
3rd Floor 2022 Bedford Row
London WC1R 4EB
+44 20 7269 6900 telephone
+44 20 7269 6901 fax
SustainAbility Inc
1638 R Street, NW, Suite 301
Washington, DC 20009
+1 202 315 4150 telephone
+1 202 315 4178 fax

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