CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

ASSIGNMENT 2

TIMBERLAND
Planning and designing CSR projects
and their implementation

SUBMITTED BY:
Akanksha Kumari
Cheshta Beniwal

1
Table of Contents

COMPANY OVERVIEW ............................................................................................................................. 4

Timberland’s Carbon Footprint 2006 .................................................................................................. 5
Initiatives for Reducing Carbon Footprint........................................................................................... 6
Renewable Energy Exploration ....................................................................................................... 6
Incentives for Less Travel ................................................................................................................ 6
Quarterly Reporting ........................................................................................................................ 7
Results ................................................................................................................................................. 7
PLANNING ............................................................................................................................................... 7
History behind CSR Reporting ............................................................................................................. 7
Driving Forces behind Sustainability Reporting .................................................................................. 8
Former CEO Jeffrey Swartz ........................................................................................................ 8
Voices of Challenge ...................................................................................................................... 9
External Stakeholders................................................................................................................ 10
Reporting History .............................................................................................................................. 10
CSR Initiatives: Philosophy ................................................................................................................ 11
Social Aspect of Initiatives ............................................................................................................ 12
Company Attitude to CSR Challenges ............................................................................................... 12
Goals 2020 ........................................................................................................................................ 12
DESIGNING ............................................................................................................................................ 13
CSR Incorporation in Company Culture ............................................................................................ 13
Highlights of Timberland’s Progress and Opportunities in 2017 ...................................................... 14
PRODUCT: ..................................................................................................................................... 14
COMMUNITY: ................................................................................................................................ 15
OUTDOORS:................................................................................................................................... 16
Performance Measurement Criteria ................................................................................................. 17
1. Quarterly Reporting .................................................................................................................. 17
2. Green Index ............................................................................................................................... 17
Challenges ......................................................................................................................................... 18
Accessibility to Good Sustainable Materials ................................................................................. 18
Determining the Right Metrics to Report ..................................................................................... 18
Resources for Metric Measurement ............................................................................................. 19
Customer Engagement with CSR Advertisements ........................................................................ 19

2
 Success Stories .................................................................................................................................. 20
Urban Greening............................................................................................................................. 20
Haiti Tree Plantation ..................................................................................................................... 20
IMPLEMENTATION ................................................................................................................................ 21
CSR Reporting Mediums ................................................................................................................... 21
The Timberland CSR Team ................................................................................................................ 22
Efforts at Standardization and Integration of System ...................................................................... 23
Benefits & Challenges of CSR Activities ............................................................................................ 25
REFERENCES .......................................................................................................................................... 26

3
COMPANY OVERVIEW

Timberland LLC is an American manufacturer and retailer of outdoors wear, with a focus on

footwear. It is owned by VF Corporation. Timberland footwear is marketed towards people

intending outdoor use. The company also sells apparel, such as clothes, watches, glasses,

sunglasses and leather goods. Timberland’s corporate headquarters are located in Stratham, New

Hampshire. Timberland also operates from offices in other parts of the world. Horween Leather

Company supplies leather shells for footwear to the Timberland Company.

In 1998 Jeffrey Swartz stepped up to become Chief Executive Officer of the company and brand

his grandfather, uncle, and father had started. In February 2007, the company acquired Howies,

the Welsh clothing company.

In June 2011, Timberland signed a definitive merger agreement with VF Corporation at $43 per

share or approximately $2 billion.

In 2012, Howies was sold to its management by VF. (The Timberland Company, 2019)

The company provides its products under the Timberland, Timberland PRO, Timberland Boot

Company, SmartWool, and howies brands. It markets its products through independent retailers,

department stores, athletic stores, national retailers, and Timberland specialty stores, as well as

through a mix of independent distributors, franchisees, and licensees. The company also sells its

products through online at timberland.com and smartwool.com in the United States;

timberlandonline.co.uk and howies.co.uk in the United Kingdom; and shop.timberland.co.jp in

Japan. (Company Overview of Timberland LLC, 2019)

Their unique culture and product designs are inspired by the rich New England heritage of their

company. Everything they make, every store they open, every aspect of their business has been

founded upon the outdoor lifestyle – whether that involves wooded trails or city streets – and a

Timberland community that thrives on giving back. (Timberland, n.d.)

4
All the people that get involved in the company’s CSR activities are called Earthkeepers. (Refer

to the video “Timberland Earthkeepers” submitted along the document. It explains

the philosophy behind the term. Source: YouTube channel of Timberland)

Timberland’s Carbon Footprint 2006

The carbon footprint measures emissions associated with Timberland’s owned and operated

facilities and employee air travel. All this covered 4% of all emissions associated with

Timberland’s business. This covered Scope 1 and 2 emissions, as well as partial Scope 3 according

to the WRI/ WBCSD GHG Protocol (which is standard for most corporate carbon accounting).

The other 96% was made up of

1. Emissions embedded in our raw materials (71%),

2. Product transportation (inbound emissions only, which covers 16%; there is not yet a

standard for outbound emissions); and

3. Product manufacturing (9%).

The company did the lifecycle analysis of its product and came up with the following goals to

reduce its footprint

1. Reducing the number of materials

2. Choosing environmentally-conscious materials

will help drive down the overall emissions embedded in our raw materials.

In order to track the progress of its efforts the company developed The Green Index®

It was a tool to inform their designers and developers of the environmental impact of materials

choices as they are creating our footwear.

The Green Index® was also a consumer empowerment tool, as the company was working to put a

Green Index® score on all of our footwear by the end of 2012 so as to educate and inform

consumers about responsible purchasing decisions.

5
They also worked across their industry to standardize environmental metrics through the

Outdoor Industry Association’s Eco Index and Sustainable Apparel Coalition, two groups where

Timberland is a founding member. (Godelnik, 2012)

Initiatives for Reducing Carbon Footprint

Renewable Energy Exploration

Using geographical and facility-type breakdowns of its carbon footprint, Timberland targeted its

biggest, most energy-intensive facilities for renewable energy exploration.

1. All new Timberland® stores in North America are built to LEED (Leadership in Energy

and Environmental Design) specifications and the company achieved energy savings by

installing state-of-the-art LED lighting in nearly all of its US stores.

2. Timberland’s distribution centres began purchasing locally-produced renewable

electricity. (Stratham, April 12, 2018)

Incentives for Less Travel

With its revenue on the rise, Timberland saw an increase in business travel. Much of it is

inevitable since the company needs to ensure that its products, which are manufactured around

the world, are being produced in line with company standards.

It promotes employees to prioritized alternative travel options instead of air travel – including

the use of virtual presence and Web conferencing in order to reduce the amount of air travel

employees use. (Herrera, 2011)

6
Quarterly Reporting

Timberland began reporting its social and environmental data on a quarterly basis since 2008

because it felt the process would aid its decision-making.

"We wanted to treat our social and environmental programs and decision-making in the same

way as we treated every other aspect of our business," says Beth Holzman, Senior Manager of

CSR Straegy and Reporting at Timberland. "We wanted to ensure that we could be accountable

on a timelier basis but also to use that information to make mid-course corrections or look at

adjustments in priorities." (Herrera, 2011)

The company’s CSR report is in a downloadable .pdf format and publicly available on their

website. They refer to the GRI G3 guidelines and utilize the GRI AFSS. Timberland switched from

a CSR report into a CSR portal in 2011 with accessible, user-friendly, transparent, and updated

information on the company’s main environmental and social impacts. The portal gets updated

on a quarterly basis. (Kozlowski, 2012)

Results
In 2015, Timberland reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 53 per cent reduction on its 2006

baseline. Renewable energy usage by Timberland was 32 per cent in 2015, compared to 16.7 per

cent in the previous year. (Dove, 2016)

PLANNING

History behind CSR Reporting

As a publically traded company, Timberland was required to report on its financial performance

and make disclosures about the business regularly to shareholders and the general public.

However, this type of reporting traditionally does little to communicate to stakeholders the

sustainability actions that the company undertakes.

7
Through its efforts in support of employee service and on other areas related to the social

responsibility, Timberland developed a strong reputation and following in the national and global

corporate social responsibility (CSR) leadership communities. This attracted the attention of the

NGO Ceres, which was leading a national coalition of investors, environmental organizations,

and other public interest groups working with companies to address sustainability challenges.

Ceres’s mission is to “integrate sustainability into business practices for the health of the planet

and its people.”

Ceres was one of the first organizations to formally introduce and advocate for the concept of

sustainability reporting. Ceres believed that Timberland was a good candidate for publicly

disclosing sustainability-related information specifically because of their unique employee

service program. In addition to reporting metrics on employee service, the “beyond the

traditional reporting” for Ceres also included the compliance area. This included reporting on the

Timberland workplace and at the factories of their suppliers around the world, including issues

such as child labour and unfair working conditions. (Case: Accounting for Sustainability: How

Does Timberland Do It and Why?, 2019)

Driving Forces behind Sustainability Reporting

Former CEO Jeffrey Swartz

In many respects, former CEO Jeffrey Swartz was the leader on CSR reporting efforts and a

driving principle of the company’s sustainability reporting efforts has been radical transparency.

For Timberland, radical transparency is about talking about the bad as much as the good. It is

about being provocative, sharing information with the intent of receiving a reaction and response

from stakeholders. It includes communicating things that are material and important to the

company.

For example, Jeffrey Swartz was the champion of Timberland’s “nutrition” labelling for shoes.

His view was that if consumers could go into a supermarket and look at a couple different boxes

of cereal and know what’s good or bad for them, why couldn’t they do that going into a footwear

8
store or going into a large retailer and see similar information reported? (Case: Accounting for

Sustainability: How Does Timberland Do It and Why?, 2019)

Voices of Challenge

On their website “Voices of Challenge,” Timberland managers share very difficult challenges and

concerns related to sustainability and ask for candid feedback through blogs and social media.

And consumers and NGO organizations have asked challenging questions to Timberland through

this resource. (Case: Accounting for Sustainability: How Does Timberland Do It and Why?, 2019)

Source: (Murninghan, 2018)

Timberland’s Voices of Challenge, exemplifies blended engagement to dialogue (and in some

instances collaborate and co-create solutions) mixing interaction on Web 2.0 platforms with
face- to-face engagement. (Murninghan, 2018)

9
External Stakeholders

As Betsy Blaisdell, Manager of Environmental Stewardship at Timberland describes it, “I think

we’re always pushed further ahead by external stakeholders. And I’d say we’re largely influenced

by requests that we get externally for improving or shifting our reporting. We had a major issue

with Greenpeace a couple years ago. It had to do with transparency in our leather supply chain in

Brazil and it really pushed us to have an industry dialogue about how can we take our protocol for

assessing the environmental performance of our tanneries, and push that further back down the

supply chain. That led to more transparency. And that was purely an external push from

Greenpeace that led to that.”

For Timberland consumers are always the most important stakeholder group to reach, but the

reality, at least for now, is that very few consumers actually read, understand, and act on the

sustainability reports. But very few probably fully understand what it means as it’s hard for them

to really use it because it’s not relative to anything.

Other stakeholder groups that are leading Timberland to expand its sustainability reporting are

the investor community, peer businesses, and other companies, including stores and retail

outlets that Timberland sells its product to. (Case: Accounting for Sustainability: How Does

Timberland Do It and Why?, 2019)

Reporting History

In 2001, Timberland released its first annual corporate social responsibility report which was

only 19 pages long. Starting in 2004, the annual CSR reports from Timberland began to feature

the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) sustainability reporting guidelines and featured sustainable

performance indicators (SPIs). Sustainability reporting helped the company become a

recognized industry leader on sustainability efforts, and this helped to strengthen the brand’s

name, recognition, and value.

10
Beginning in 2008, Timberland started reporting on key CSR performance indicators on a

quarterly basis. The main report is presented in a dashboard format, which contains SPIs in each

of the four CSR strategy categories.

Timberland also shares its social and environmental values and product attributes with

consumers through retail messaging and product information. Their Green Index rating is

intended to give consumers clear and easy to understand information about the impact their

footwear choices have on the environment. (Case: Accounting for Sustainability: How Does

Timberland Do It and Why?, 2019)

CSR Initiatives: Philosophy

Timberland’s CSR efforts have always been framed around one basic, simple principle: “How do

we make things better?”. With products, there are two ways to go about it– in terms of what they

put into their products, where they make them, and making sure that the factory supply partners

they work with, share their values. (Council, 2018)

Examples of Initiatives
1. Outdoor Initiative
With respect to the outdoors, they have had large-scale tree-planting initiatives in China;

the Dominican Republic, where they have a manufacturing facility; and in Haiti. (Council,

2018)

2. Internal Initiative
The name of their employee benefit program is called “Path of Service”. For 25 years, they

have been running this program where employees are afforded up to 40 hours of paid

time off every year to give back to their community. They also try to make it better for the

communities associated with them by making sure that the community needs get met.

(Council, 2018)

11
Social Aspect of Initiatives

Apart from the environmental impact, the company has also found ways to make a social impact.

Timberland’s projects that operate in Haiti and Honduras provide economic opportunities to the

local people living there by way of giving them a job of collecting plastic bottles and then turning

those plastic bottles into beautiful canvas fabric that they incorporated into their products.

(Council, 2018)

Company Attitude to CSR Challenges

In 2007, when Timberland started their product improvement efforts, they recall being

consistently told that they cannot create sustainable products at a price point and a performance

level that would meet consumer expectations. But the company took that challenge to heart and

created the most stylish boot of that time, with the most sustainable materials and at a price

point that their consumers were accustomed to. It performed on par with their other waterproof

boots. It was called the Earthkeeper boot.

All of their products designed from then onwards had responsible materials incorporated into

them, and irresponsible materials got eliminated. It took the company a while to get to that point,

but that one boot (the Earthkeeper) helped them drive this internal process of design and

thinking and sourcing that now transcends across all of our products, all of our categories.

The company credits the environmental product standards that they have across all of its product

categories to be able to set these lofty goals for 2020. (Council, 2018)

Goals 2020
Timberland has recently announced ambitious goals for its products manufacturing in terms of

sustainability and environmental impact, so to act coherently with its own beliefs. The goals have

been split into three macro-areas of interventions: product, environment and community. The

12
first including all the necessary expedients to reduce the environmental impact for the different

productions as close as possible to zero, the second being a strong commitment to the process of

reforestation and re-appropriation of green areas in cities, the third interesting the Timberland

employee’s involvement in activities beneficial for the community. (TIMBERLAND’S GOALS

FOR 2020, 2016)

(Refer to the videos submitted with the document. They explains the philosophy

behind targeting products, outdoor activities and community activities. Also, there

are videos describing the processes used and activities undertaken. Source:

YouTube channel of Timberland)

DESIGNING

CSR Incorporation in Company Culture

Timberland believes that the success of their CSR programs roots from their company’s culture of

empowerment and responsibility that spreads “layer through layer” and impacts the company in

small, creative ways, in addition to the large-scale projects.

“It will never work if you just have the CSR [Corporate Social Responsibility] team with their

metrics and they’re accountable for it,” says Timberland’s sustainability director, Colleen Vien. “It

definitely has to go further within the organization than that.”

“When we started cascading it down from the top, everybody thought: ‘What’s my role?’ Then we

started to see people thinking creatively across the entire organization, and ideas coming from all

over for what the next product innovation would be, or how could we further reduce our waste at

our headquarters.”

13
She cited a recent example of the workers in Timberland’s resource centre who noticed a trend of

unused office supplies being discarded. So, they came up with an initiative to ensure fewer

resources got squandered.

Workers recognized that there were many office administrators ordering things from Staples,

constantly. Things were being put in the dumpster, because somebody didn’t like the way that

binder worked or this pen worked. They took it upon themselves to create an office supply

repository. Later, before anyone ordered something from Staples, that person would first go and

check the repository because somebody else’s trash might be someone’s treasure.

This proved that when employees understand the actuality of their part in sustainability, the

entire company thinks about it. (Council, 2018)

Highlights of Timberland’s Progress and Opportunities in 2017

PRODUCT:

 Timberland set a goal to have 100 percent of its apparel cotton come from organic, U.S.-

origin or Better Cotton Initiative-certified sources by 2020. The company made great

strides in 2017, reaching 81 percent - a 40 percent increase over 2016 (58 percent). To

advance this progress, the brand continued its work in Haiti with the Smallholder

Farmers Alliance (SFA) to back as an export crop for the country. The SFA harvested its

first cotton test crops in 2017 and Timberland has committed to purchase up to one-third

of its global cotton supply from the SFA, once there is sufficient volume and subject to

achieving price and quality requirements.

 In 2017, Timberland raised the bar and changed its method of reporting the use of

material containing recycled, organic or renewable (ROR) content. From 2011 to 2016, all

materials were reported, including those used in minor components such as webbings,

trims and labels. To drive focus toward using ROR materials in more significant

components of footwear (e.g., uppers, linings, soles), the company is no longer including

14
 minor components in its reporting. As such, materials with at least 10 percent ROR

content were used in 67 percent of all Timberland® footwear shipped in 2017. The

company remains confident it will reach its 2020 goal for 100 percent of footwear to

include at least one significant component containing ROR content, even with these more

stringent requirements, and believes this change in reporting will lead to increased

overall usage of ROR content across the business.

 Timberland also continued to increase its use of recycled PET, incorporating over

890,232 pounds of recycled PET into its footwear in 2017, or the equivalent of 40 million

plastic bottles. This reflects an increase of 3 million plastic bottles over 2016.

 Last year, Timberland set a new commitment to eliminate per-fluorinated compounds

(PFCs) completely from durable water repellents (DWR) used in its products by 2020.

Timberland has made significant efforts over the past several years to eliminate PFC-

based DWR treatments from its top volume waterproof footwear leathers, and is actively

seeking non-PFC chemical innovations for its remaining footwear products. Challenges in

this effort relate to ensuring that such alternatives can deliver the required performance

attributes. For 2017, the company reported that 91 percent of its footwear DWRs were

non-PFC. (Stratham, April 12, 2018)

COMMUNITY:

 In 2017, Timberland celebrated the 25th Anniversary of its Path of Service™ employee

volunteer program, which provides employees with up to 40 paid community service

hours each year. In celebration, Timberland launched a 25 Days of Summer Service

Challenge to encourage volunteerism and connect employees with service opportunities

that speak to their passions, in addition to its year-round service events and activities.

 Around the world, Timberland employees served 56,033 community service hours in

2017, a seven percent increase over 2016. The company remains committed to create

more opportunities and projects to engage employees at all of its location to reach its goal

of 80 percent engagement in service (at least one hour served per employee) by 2020.

15
  Timberland’s manufacturing facility in the Dominican Republic led the way with 8,596

service hours - an increase of 46 percent over 2016. The facility worked to engage new

employees in service, and also organized department events so employees of all levels

could serve side by side. (Stratham, April 12, 2018)

OUTDOORS:

 Timberland planted a total of 413,757 trees in 2017, putting the brand at a total of

9,654,820 to date and in a strong position to exceed its goal of 10 million trees by 2020.

Though not included in this metric, an additional 800,000 trees were planted in Haiti

through the innovative agroforestry model created by Timberland in partnership with the

Smallholder Farmers Alliance. The brand has played a crucial role in helping to reforest

Haiti, while also creating a brighter future for 3,000+ smallholder farmers. This

agroforestry model is now being replicated to bring cotton farming back to Haiti after a

30-year hiatus, while at the same time planting millions more trees.

 Timberland’s commitment to protect and enhance the outdoors includes a focus on

creating and restoring urban green spaces in key regions, including the United States and

Europe. In the U.S., Timberland has committed to match its retail floor space in five cities

over five years, with the creation or restoration of an equivalent amount of green space in

that city. In 2017, the initiative’s second year, Timberland transformed a section of an

abandoned railway in Philadelphia into a new city green space known as the Rail Park,

which will open to the public in Spring 2018. In partnership with the Centre City District

Foundation, approximately 100 volunteers, including Timberland employees and

partners from Journeys, Kicks USA and Urban Outfitters, transformed roughly 25,000

square feet of landscaping at the Rail Park. (Stratham, April 12, 2018)

16
Performance Measurement Criteria
1. Quarterly Reporting

The quarterly dashboard is organized around the four Timberland CSR pillar areas: energy,

product, workplace, and service. For example, average grams of volatile organic compounds per

pair of footwear is a sustainable performance indicator in their product category. In each pillar

area, there are three category measures and three to six total indicators reported. All together

there are fifteen indicators measured between 2007 through the present.

The dashboard provides a consistent and cohesive way to engage internal and external

stakeholders on CSR. It enables Timberland to be accountable for progress against stated goals.

Internally, it also allows for prioritization of resource allocation against key sustainability

initiatives. (Case: Accounting for Sustainability: How Does Timberland Do It and Why?, 2019)

2. Green Index

In 2006, Timberland introduced an industry-first “nutrition label” on all of its footwear boxes in

an effort to provide consumers with greater transparency about the company’s environmental

and community footprint and the environmental impact of the specific Timberland products

consumers are purchasing.

The Green Index program is the company’s primary mechanism for pursuing “cradle to cradle”

product design. This index measures and communicates critical aspects of environmental

performance in a format that allows Timberland to guide product design and help consumer

choice. The Green Index measures three areas of product impact:

1. Climate impact

Greenhouse gases produced in making raw materials and during footwear production

that contribute to climate change. Timberland’s climate impact rating measures the

emissions of greenhouse gases from the production of each material through the

manufacturing of the final product.

2. Chemical used

17
 Chemicals used in material and footwear production.

3. Resource consumption

The score decreases as Timberland uses materials that require less land and water and

fewer chemicals to produce.

The data are compiled to give a product an index score from ten to zero, with ten being a high

impact and zero being no impact at all. (Case: Accounting for Sustainability: How Does

Timberland Do It and Why?, 2019)

Challenges

Accessibility to Good Sustainable Materials

According to the company, the main challenges to procuring good materials are their price and

availability of good sustainable materials capable of being commercialized at scale.

The company faced challenges in the past in terms of recycled rubber and finding a consistent

supply of the kind of rubber that it would be able to use and repurpose into our outsoles.

It started out using recycled tires, which then became inconsistent in supply, so they switched

over to recycled latex. The company did not give up when the idea of the tires failed. It found a

way to go back. The company struggled in a way similar challenge with organic cotton. (Case:

Accounting for Sustainability: How Does Timberland Do It and Why?, 2019)

Determining the Right Metrics to Report

Timberland, in part, used the indicators from the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) as a starting

point. However, the GRI has many performance indicators and many were not relevant to

Timberland’s stakeholders or material to Timberland.

For Timberland the most important areas to report on, measure, and act on are those that are

material to the company. Timberland’s areas of focus for materiality are the environment,

consumers, and other stakeholders, including government. Timberland prioritizes measurement

and action on the areas that are at the intersection of these three dimensions of materiality.

18
For example, Leather and rubber use is highly material to Timberland’s business operations.

These two inputs have significantly more impact on the environment than any other inputs

because of the volume of leather and rubber used in the manufacturing process and by the very

nature of the materials. These manufacturing inputs are material to the environment, to

customers, and to stakeholders and as a result are areas of focus and reporting for Timberland.

This strategy helps the company focus on the areas that have the greatest impact. For example,

customers might think Timberland should focus on packaging, such as footwear boxes, because it

is one of the aspects of the product that they most interact with. The environmental impact of

their use of leather and rubber is much more material (significant) to the company’s ecological

and social impact than its use of cardboard for shoeboxes, as the boxes come from recycled

sources and also can be easily recycled. (Case: Accounting for Sustainability: How Does

Timberland Do It and Why?, 2019)

Resources for Metric Measurement

Another major challenge for Timberland is the constant tension between measuring more metrics

due to demands from different stakeholder groups and the resources required by Timberland to

provide those metrics. This was a lesson learned by Timberland as the company started its

sustainability reporting efforts. At the beginning, Timberland struggled with trying to provide

more and more sustainable performance indicators due to stakeholder requests. The company

expended significant resources to collect and report on the different disclosure requests that they

received, which distracted the company from undertaking the activities necessary to lead to

substantive improvements in its environmental and social impact. (Case: Accounting for

Sustainability: How Does Timberland Do It and Why?, 2019)

Customer Engagement with CSR Advertisements

The company had campaigns that were very specifically about CSR and sustainability. It turned

out disappointing to see how those ad campaigns didn't resonate in terms of the traditional

marketing metrics that the business was looking for, and so those campaigns got dropped pretty

quickly after one season.

19
So they reprogramed themselves in terms of thinking about marketing. The company learned

that if it doesn't continue to tell this kind of message continually, season over season, it’s not

going to have an identity or it’s going to look schizophrenic, and eventually going to be a different

personality each season.

It’s believed that it is going to take a little while for the marketing metrics to show the figures

seen in traditional marketing. The lesson learned was that companies need to be consistent in

what you're saying, but also authentic in what they say and demonstrate it multiple times - over

and over because it's through that repeated, consistent action of authentic action that builds

brand loyalty. (Mainwaring, 2019)

Success Stories

Urban Greening

Through consumer insights research, the company learned that people think— “your logo is a

tree, you plant trees, that makes a lot of sense.” It’s good for the planet, it's good for the climate,

but it just felt too far and distant. Then the company thought, “What about right here in my own

backyard?” That was an “aha moment” for them. They realised that if they really want to invite

their consumers onto their journey, they need to be doing initiatives that are more accessible to

them. Projects should be designed such that their customers become its benefactors. So, for

example, Urban Greening was launched three years ago. We're in our third year of our

commitment right now where we set a public goal to be doubling our footprint in five major

markets in five years. (Mainwaring, 2019)

Haiti Tree Plantation

The second example is of the tree planting in Haiti. In 2010, just before the earthquake hit there,

the company had learned of the deforestation magnitude in Haiti. It realized that if anywhere

20
needs planting trees, this country needs it. But as a result of the earthquake and understanding

more about the poverty that also was rampant in that country, the company wanted to plant the

trees in a way that wasn't just about digging a hole and putting a tree in the ground and helping

Mother Nature. They really wanted to think about that human nature.

So, the company found a partner called Smallholder Farmers Alliance. Together, they crafted a

program where, by way of planting trees, smallholder farmers are improving their crop yields and

improving their revenue, their economic income, sending kids to schools for the first time. The

first round that the company did was a five-year commitment. Five million trees were planted

and the project improved the lives of 3,400 smallholder farmers. Over 3,000 school kids went

school as a direct result of this program.

That was a five-year commitment. When that was finished, the company also had challenged the

Smallholder Farmers Alliance to find a way to make it self-sustaining. They recognized that by

planting a particular tree -- the Moringa tree -- that then became an export commodity for these

farmers. Thus, the company continues to plant a million trees every single year and continue to

improve the lives of more and more smallholder farmers. (Mainwaring, 2019)

IMPLEMENTATION

CSR Reporting Mediums

Sustainability reporting is about being radically transparent. That means talking about the bad

just as much as the good…we want to be transparent and get feedback from others on how

we’re doing, or how we could be doing better. And our hope is to have a dialogue on how we

can scale good solutions for our industry and then even broader beyond that.

Betsy Blaisdell, Timberland manager of environmental stewardship (Case: Accounting for

Sustainability: How Does Timberland Do It and Why?, 2019)

The company has a corporate social responsibility strategy and reporting manager, Beth

Holzman. It reports on environmental and social performance on a quarterly basis and has since

21
2008. And it takes tangible, public actions that it works hard to let the world know about.

(Brokaw, 2011)

Timberland’s reporting and communications for sustainability includes the following:

 Full CSR reports released every other year that summarize their efforts in sustainability

for the previous twenty-four months; their CSR reports are reported on their

website http://responsibility.timberland.com

 Quarterly key CSR performance indicator reports and quarterly CSR dialogues

 Stakeholder engagement forums called Voices of Challenge

on http://community.timberland.com, a web 2.0 platform that allows all types of

stakeholders to interact with Timberland.

(Case: Accounting for Sustainability: How Does Timberland Do It and Why?, 2019)

The Timberland CSR Team

Timberland has a team of employees dedicated to CSR in the company. It consists of a vice

president of CSR, four managers, a team of fourteen code-of-conduct employees, and two

community service employees. The CSR team works closely with senior management, including

the CEO.

In December 2006, the company created a formal CSR committee within its board of directors.

This group consists of four board members who are responsible for guiding all CSR strategy

development. To accomplish this task, the committee meets regularly with the CSR leadership

team to help set the strategic agenda and hold the team accountable for their actions.

Two members of the current CSR team are Beth Holzman, the company’s CSR strategy and

reporting manager, and Betsy Blaisdell, the manager of environmental stewardship. Beth

Holzman was a manager at Ceres before joining Timberland and interacted with Timberland in

that capacity. Betsy Blaisdell had previous experience working in the New Hampshire state

government and performing environmental research at the University of New Hampshire.

22
The CSR team’s responsibilities include developing the metrics to report and standardizing the

reporting. It also includes collecting information, preparing reports, communicating information

to senior management, and interacting with stakeholders.

A key objective is to ensure that the sustainability reports are used and integrated into the other

departments at Timberland. As Betsy Blaisdell describes it, “Everybody wants to do the right

thing at Timberland. And so for us, it’s taking something that can be a really complex

environmental metric, like kilograms of CO2 for a pair of shoelaces, and translating it into: this is

the best choice, this is a good choice, and we really discourage you from using this approach.”

Another key objective is to standardize the reporting method and information in order to make

reporting easier and more cost effective within Timberland but also within the industry. The goal

is to create standardized sustainability metrics and standardized measures of environmental

performance for Timberland’s products. The goal of standardization being that instead of

Timberland collecting the information through their own business systems, suppliers would

provide the information into a registry that Timberland and other companies could access.

(Case: Accounting for Sustainability: How Does Timberland Do It and Why?, 2019)

Efforts at Standardization and Integration of System

Initiating sustainability reporting and developing the appropriate communication methods has

been a significant undertaking for the company over the past decade. Sustainability reporting had

to be done largely outside of Timberland’s regular business units and systems. A separate

reporting software system was developed for storing sustainability performance indicators

(SPIs), but, at the time, it was too complex for the corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting

system to be integrated with the company’s accounting and finance system tools or product

design systems. They were all developed on different software platforms and did not

communicate.

The other reporting and management systems were not designed to include sustainability

measures, as it was not part of standard business practice. For example, in designing a new

23
product, there was limited product design reporting system ability to take into consideration the

sustainability impacts of different designs, as they were not developed for environmental

reporting.

In 2011, business decision software systems companies, such as SAP, and the designers of

product life cycle management systems are developing systems software that have environmental

modules. This means that what were two or three separate systems before can now become more

of one integrated system to include environmental and, eventually, social impact along with

product design and financial analysis.

Timberland is moving toward being able to upload CSR metrics into their financial information

and product design systems. Their environmental and financial information systems are starting

to “talk” to one another. Timberland can take into consideration reductions in energy or material

usage reductions from both an environmental and financial perspective.

The benefits include not only being able to better tie environmental efforts with bottom line

considerations but also enabling the CSR team to reach and impact key decision makers in

finance and product design who were outside the Timberland CSR reporting system. The sharing

of information and reporting systems integration allows different business units and functional

areas to begin to speak a more common language and take a more systems and full-cost and

benefit perspective in their decision making about financial, product design, and sustainability

actions.

Timberland is focusing its sustainability reporting efforts increasingly on this integrated systems

perspective, using a core set of metrics to help identify problems and then identifying root causes

and finding the best solutions. The company can then link the problem and solution to the

financial performance of the firm. (Case: Accounting for Sustainability: How Does Timberland

Do It and Why?, 2019)

24
Benefits & Challenges of CSR Activities

Timberland has a goal of being the reference brand for sustainability and sustainability reporting,

and they do not limit that to within their own industry. The company wants to be a leader, the

brand that’s pushing the edge on transparency and reporting.

There is evidence that the efforts on sustainability and branding around sustainability reporting

are affecting Timberland profitability, market share, and customer loyalty. Timberland’s highest-

margin products—contributing the most on a dollar of sales basis to profitability—are the

company’s Earthkeepers products and this is suggestive that consumers are willing to pay a

premium for a low environmental impact product.

There is also anecdotal evidence of sustainability reporting contributing to Timberland’s market

performance; however, the company has struggled to put a hard dollar value on this.

Timberland’s marketing managers and public relations professional report that sustainability

efforts and the various sustainability reports Timberland have released over the last several years

has resulted in an increased number of positive media impressions. Timberland receives other

kinds of anecdotal evidence in market research and focus groups with consumers that

sustainability initiatives generate brand heat. (Brand heat is a marketing term to describe the

positive feelings when exposed to a brand name. There is even less evidence that brand heat

actually leads to a purchase.) A challenge for Timberland is quantifying and linking sustainability

to the financial bottom line. (Case: Accounting for Sustainability: How Does Timberland Do It

and Why?, 2019)

So as the company continues to pursue its goals to achieve its targets, they run into unforeseen

challenges. But time and again Timberland has overcome them due to the spirit of its employees

that believe that sustainability is their responsibility. Their act of accepting admit failures,

tackling challenges and overcoming every roadblock has made all the difference.

25
REFERENCES

Brokaw, L. (2011, February 18). What Do Timberland and Ford Have That You Don’t Have? Retrieved
from MIT Sloan Management Review: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/what-do-
timberland-and-ford-have-that-you-dont-have/

Case: Accounting for Sustainability: How Does Timberland Do It and Why? (2019, March 17).
Retrieved from saylordotorg.github.io: https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_the-sustainable-
business-case-book/s15-case-accounting-for-sustainabi.html

Company Overview of Timberland LLC. (2019, March 17). Retrieved from Bloomberg:
https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=308502

Council, M. S. (2018, March). A Common Thread:Timberland on Its Company-Wide Culture of

Sustainability. Retrieved from sustainablebrands.com:
https://sustainablebrands.com/read/walking-the-talk-1/a-common-thread-timberland-on-
its-company-wide-culture-of-sustainability

Dove, S. (2016, September 27). Timberland updates on CSR achievements. ECOTEXTILE NEWS, p. 1.

Godelnik, R. (2012, MAY 3). Interview: Beth Holzman of Timberland Talks CSR. Retrieved from TRIPLE
PUNDIT : https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2012/interview-beth-holzman-timberland-
talks-csr/66106

Herrera, T. (2011, October 20, Thursday). 4 Ways Timberland Will Halve Its Carbon Footprint by
2015. GreenBiz, p. 1.

Kozlowski, A. (2012). Corporate Social Responsibility in the Apparel Industry: A Multiple Case Study
Analysis. Retrieved from digital.library.ryerson.ca:
https://digital.library.ryerson.ca/islandora/object/RULA%3A1900/datastream/OBJ/downloa
d/Corporate_Social_Responsibility_In_The_Apparel_Industry__A_Multiple_Case_Study_Ana
lysis.pdf

Mainwaring, S. (2019, January 22). Purpose At Work: The Path To Purposeful Profit with Timberland
Sustainability Director, Colleen Vien. Retrieved from Forbes Web site:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonmainwaring/2019/01/22/purpose-at-work-the-path-
to-purposeful-profit-with-timberland-sustainability-director-colleen-vien/#5378055b538c

Murninghan, M. a. (2018). The Accountability Web: Weaving Corporate. New England Journal of
Public Policy: Vol. 30 : Iss. 1 , Article 9.

Stratham. (April 12, 2018). Timberland 2017 CSR Report Shows Steady Progress Toward 2020
Sustainability Goals. 3BL Media.

The Timberland Company. (2019, February 14). Retrieved from Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Timberland_Company

Timberland. (n.d.). Retrieved from Timberland.co.uk: https://www.timberland.co.uk/

26