Ethical Purchasing

December 2, 2010 In Ethical Purchasing

Fair Trade Certified Apparel Now Available

Flickr / Shared Interest

In early-May Reeve Consulting reported that Fair Trade Certified jeans and t-shirts would be available in the United States this fall. After more than 3-years in the works, Trans Fair USA’s apparel pilot program has certified it’s first cotton garments.

Previously only the agricultural inputs of products, such as cotton, could be Fair Trade Certified in the United States. This new certification for Apparel and Linens is the first social, economic and environmental standard that directly benefits workers at both ends of the supply chain – the farmers who grow the cotton and the workers who sew the garments.

The new standard has two parts:

Obligations of Factories, which includes Fair Trade management systems, core labor standards from ILO Conventions and multi-stakeholder initiatives; and,

Obligations of Buyers, which explains the requirements for US companies interested in using the Fair Trade Certified label on cotton products.

Fair Trade garments for uniforms & corporate team apparel

Flickr / Wonder Mike

While there are many companies still undergoing the certification process, a number of early adopters, Maggie’s Organics, Hae Now and Tompkins Point Apparel, are currently selling Fair Trade Certified apparel (mainly shirts) through their online stores. All companies offer styles that would be suitable additions to uniforms and corporate team apparel, ship to Canada, and offer wholesale discounts for larger orders. We at Reeve Consulting look forward to seeing a broader style selection of Fair Trade apparel emerging over the coming months.

November 19, 2010 In Ethical Purchasing, Sustainable Purchasing, Waste Reduction

Reeve Consulting Invited to Work with Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee

On the heels of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic’s BuySmart Program’s success, Reeve Consulting has been approached by the Organizing Committee for the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi to help design and build an environmental procurement and sustainable sourcing program.

Flickr / roland

A sustainable purchasing program will enable organizers of the 2014 Winter Games to leverage procurement to meet sustainability objectives including zero waste, carbon neutrality and sustainable economic development of the surrounding Krasnodar district. These targets have been outlined in both an environmental strategy adopted by the advisory committee in 2009 and subsequent environmental procurement policy drafted by Reeve Consulting and adopted by the Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee in June of 2010.

Flickr / maiak.info

Reeve Consulting will be working with executives and senior managers from the Environmental Support and Sustainability departments of the Organizing Committee to build tools, develop procedures and identify high profile purchasing opportunities to support implementation of their sourcing policies.

Tim Reeve will be traveling to Moscow to meet with members of the Organizing Committee in late-November and again in February of 2011. Check back for updates from the field! You can also follow Tim’s trip on Twitter @ReeveConsulting.

October 27, 2010 In Ethical Purchasing, Ethical Supply Chain Management

Cadbury Dairy Milk Goes Fair Trade in Canada

Flickr /xelcise

If you pick-up a Cadbury Dairy Milk bar in Canada these days you may notice some changes to the packaging. Since this summer, Cadbury’s Dairy Milk line has been fair trade certified. The wrappers now include an internationally recognized symbol that assures the sugar and cocoa have been purchased from producers paid a fair wage for their crop. Cadbury’s first fair trade bars were released in the UK and Ireland in 2009 and more recently in Canada, Australia and New Zealand in 2010. According to the Cadbury website, going fair trade will quadruple the sales of fair trade cocoa from Ghana and affect over 40,000 cocoa farmers.

The fair trade marketing campaign:

To accompany the release of its fair trade line, Cadbury has unveiled a marketing campaign that invites people to “see the big fair trade picture”. The campaign features print, billboard and online advertising as well as a redesigned website dedicated to the brand (dairymilk.ca). At the centre of the campaign is a series of murals in Toronto and Montreal designed by a Ghanian artist, each of which focuses on a particular benefit of fair trade. The murals fit together like puzzle pieces to present the “big picture”. Themes of the murals include “Improving Local Infrastructure”, “Providing Access to Clean Water”, “Improving Local Health Care” and more. Out-of-home advertising also featured a summer street campaign that invited passersby to sign a petition supporting fair trade in Canada.

Is big business good for fair trade?

This move has brought plenty of attention to Cadbury and has some questioning if big business’ increasing interest in fair trade is good for the sector. On the one hand, more corporations moving some of their buying to fair trade could have a large positive impact worldwide. Further, the greater availability of fair trade certified products could raise awareness among consumers. There’s also the hope that other corporations will note their competitors shift and joins suit, for example Hershey’s or Nestle.

But is it enough for Cadbury to convert one of its lines to fair trade designation? If they’re committed to the tenets of the movement, shouldn’t they be buying fair trade inputs for all their products? It’s a good question. A skeptical view of Cadbury’s fair trade Dairy Milk may lead one to conclude its primarily a marketing stunt; an attempt to improve Cadbury’s public image without a full commitment to sustainability.

It’s a start:

At Reeve Consulting we’re not quick to jump to this conclusion. We support incremental change and from experience realize that broader change takes time. Companies face many challenges in converting their supply chains and in most cases need to start small. An important element for us is that companies acknowledge there are problems beyond those they’re starting with, and that moving forward there’s a plan for these issues to be addressed.

We’re hoping to discuss this further with Cadbury’s Ethical Sourcing Manager this week when we attend the Sustainable Supply Chain Solutions conference in San Francisco. Watch this space for a follow-up post on what we find out. We’ll also be tweeting from the conference at @ReeveConsulting.

May 7, 2010 In Ethical Purchasing, Reeve News

City of Vancouver Commits to Fair Trade Java; the Greenest City just got a little bit Greener

Flickr / 96dpi

The City of Vancouver is keeping pace with several other Canadian municipalities by applying to become a “Fair Trade Town.” This commits the City to purchasing Fair Trade coffee, tea and sugar, as well as other Fair Trade products for meetings, offices and cafeterias. Eight Canadian towns have already received certification and at least eleven other Canadian municipalities are working towards becoming “Fair Trade Towns,” including Montreal, St. John’s, and Quebec City.

Transfair Canada – Canada’s third-party certifier of Fair Trade products – provides the official “Fair Trade Town” status, which is slated to happen for Vancouver this week, just in time for World Fair Trade Day (Saturday, May 8th). Vancouver will be Canada’s largest municipality to have achieved this designation.

Fair Trade guarantees that business supply chains function according to standards of fairness, transparency and accountability – setting the proverbial ‘level playing field’ – especially for those at the producing end of the supply chain. Vancouver’s commitment to Fair Trade means the City will use its spending power to advance several social and environmental objectives, such as the ‘green economy’, ‘fair labour practices’ and ‘toxic free’ food production.

In a report presented to Vancouver City Council, ethical and sustainable purchasing has been identified as a key priority by Mayor Robertson’s Greenest City Action Team, and is seen as a strategic and cross-cutting lever for making Vancouver a leading edge sustainability organization.

We at Reeve Consulting believe these kinds of commitments are a very important piece in creating a green and fair economy; an economy from which everyone can derive benefit. We think more municipalities should commit to these policies. We also know that public declarations are just one step in a process of positive change. They are an important declaration. But as many will attest, maximum strategic impacts come when innovative policy meets with outstanding implementation.

May 4, 2010 In Ethical Purchasing, Fair Trade, Reeve Blog

Fair Trade Certified jeans and t-shirts coming to stores in the U.S. in 2010!

Flickr / geishaboy500

When buying clothes in North America, it is quite difficult to know whether or not they were produced in a sweatshop. But now, two leading independent groups have teamed up to try and make it easier for consumers to select ethically produced clothes, simply by looking at the label.

Transfair USA and Social Accountability Accreditation Services Social Accountability Accreditation Services (SAAS) – the agency that oversees the SA8000 certification for ethical factories (i.e. “non-sweatshops”) – teamed up this year to integrate auditing processes in a pilot project that will result in the first Fair Trade Certified jeans and t-shirts in the USA market! A groundbreaking effort on three fronts.

First, Fair Trade certifying bodies have been grappling to extend Fair Trade Certification beyond basic agricultural commodities (e.g. coffee, tea, fruit and cotton) to the production of garments and other factory made items. This recent move by Transfair USA to extend the Fair Trade label to clothing is the first of its kind. Consumers will soon be able to look at the label on their jeans and trust that they were not produced in a sweatshop.

Second, it is rare to see two third-party certifying bodies double check each other’s work, so to speak. Often, our trust, as consumers, must be put into a single certification system. Now, however, when consumers buy Fair Trade Certified apparel in the USA (on shelves in Fall 2010) they can be assured that SAAS was also closely involved in ensuring that the garments were not stitched together in a sweatshop. This brings a new level of strength and legitimacy to third-party product certifications.

Third, Transfair USA and SAAS’s partnership is also groundbreaking in that they are working together to make it easier for factories to demonstrate compliance with ethical standards. Ethical compliance auditing processes can be cumbersome and many manufacturing facilities are reporting “audit fatigue” as a result of having to complete multiple audits per year for different agencies. Transfair USA and SAAS’s efforts to integrate their auditing process will help alleviate some of this pressure.

This type of partnership between Transfair USA and SAAS will hopefully generate a ripple effect in the third-party product certification space. Will we see more certifying bodies joining forces to harmonize standards and auditing processes? Or will consumers continue to have to wade through multiple certifications and try to decipher which ones are better? Reeve looks forward to seeing how this will influence other agencies and maybe one day Transfair Canada will partner with someone like SAAS and bring Fair Trade Certified clothing to our stores.

Click here for more information on this partnership.

April 14, 2010 In Ethical Purchasing, Reeve News, Sustainable Purchasing

Environmental Purchasing “Torch” passes to Sochi 2014

Flickr / thelastminute

The Organizing Committee for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games seems poised to continue the strong legacy of ethical and environmental purchasing within the Olympic community. Organizers for the Sochi Games are currently working with a team of strategic advisors to design an environmental procurement program that will result in a 2014 Winter Games with less waste and lower GHG emissions. Sochi has been particularly interested in the Vancouver 2010 Buy Smart program, an ethical and sustainable purchasing program that Reeve helped design and implement, which was recognized as setting a new bar for Olympic purchasing programs.

Reeve has partnered with Shaneco, a Russian environmental consulting firm, to create an Environmental Procurement Policy (EPP) for Sochi 2014. The draft EPP has been designed to foster procurement practice that is in harmony with nature, is climate neutral, minimizes waste, and enlightens the suppliers of the Sochi region as well as the broader community. Dmitriy Kolosov, head of Environmental Programming for the Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee, stressed that it is imperative to use the high profile of the Winter Games to “enlighten” the Russian supplier community in order to have a lasting, positive impact on the natural environment of the Sochi region.

So far it has really been the Organizing Committee’s, such as Vancouver 2010 and London 2012, who have really led the way within the Olympic community at increasing the uptake of ethical and environmental procurement. It is interesting to note a comment made by Derek Wyatt, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Group. At the Sports, Legacy and Sustainability Dialogue, held during the Paralympic Winter Games in Vancouver, Wyatt talked candidly about the need for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to offer greater commitment to ensuring an environmental sustainability legacy in Host Cities. In his opinion, OCOGs and Host Cities carry the environmental sustainability agenda with little support from the IOC.

The new Candidature Procedures, the procedures for bidding to host the 2016 Games, now ask bid cities to demonstrate the steps they will take, in regards to sourcing licensed products, to ensure that social and environmental factors are taken into account in making selection decisions. This is the first time this question has been asked of bid cities, but this direction is limited to licensed merchandise (products that carry the Olympic logo) and does not extend to sourcing sustainable items for operational purposes. Reeve hopes that as Organizing Committees continue to push this agenda forward that the IOC will consider ways in which it can offer more specific direction to sourcing sustainable products and services for all functions of the Olympic Games.

Please share your stories about other organizations that are also pushing the ethical and/or environmental purchasing movement ahead in the comment section of our blog.

April 1, 2010 In Ethical Purchasing, Ethical Supply Chain Management, Out and About

Bridging the Gap Between Local Action and Global Impact

Engineers Without Borders / Bridging the Gap

Mohandas Ghandi once said: “Be the change that you want to see in the world.” This was the inspiration behind this year’s Engineers Without Borders’ (EWB) Bridging the Gap Conference held at UBC on March 27th.

Compelling keynote presentations delivered by Shauna Sylvester and Dr. Hans Rosling and several breakout sessions cut across four main themes: EWB’s Values and Capacity Building, Advocacy, Serving Global Society, and Connecting to the Developing World. According to Rogayeh Tabrizi, event organizer extraordinaire, “we came together to create a space for dialogue, for understanding, for sharing the passion, for helping each other see the world around us better.”

The Fair Trade breakout session encouraged critical discussion by walking participants through what it means to “trade fairly.” Workshop facilitators Stacey Toews, of Level Ground Trading, and Randy Hooper, of Discovery Organics, talked candidly about how true fair trade has to go beyond just putting a Fair Trade Certified logo on a package. From their perspective, building direct relationships with producers that are based in transparency, dialogue and respect is really what fair trade is about.

This contention resonates across the field of ethical and sustainable purchasing. Countless examples of successful ethical and sustainable purchasing (ESP) programs demonstrate that focusing on supplier or producer relationships is imperative. In interviewing leaders and pioneers in this field, Reeve has heard procurement professionals say time and time again that without building strong relationships with suppliers their ESP initiatives would have been less successful.

When you buy products or services do you just look for a third-party ecolabel to ease your conscious or do you go beyond to learn more about the supplier or producer who is behind the product? You may not have time to build longterm relationships with all your suppliers, but even just asking a few simple questions about their business practices or their relationships with their contractors will facilitate understanding and greater success in achieving your sustainability goals. To paraphrase Toews and Hooper, go beyond product labelling and dig deeper…get to know the people behind your products and enter into dialogue with them.

March 26, 2010 In Ethical Purchasing, Ethical Supply Chain Management, Sustainable Products

Who Sets the Standards for Ecolabels?

It is common practice to rely on third-party ecolabels to define environmental criteria for particular purchasing categories. Ecolabels provide third-party verification of the environmental and social standards related to a particular product or service category and can be used to reduce the onus of creating environmental criteria. By understanding how to identify a mature and credible ecolabel purchasers can rely on these pre-determined criteria and simply specify that the product or service in question carry this ecolabel, removing the burden of developing criteria.

There are over 350 ecolabels in the global marketplace so it important to understand how to identify mature and credible ecolabel standards, as all are not created equally. There are three main international expert sources that provide definitions of different types of ecolabels and set out parameters for developing high quality ecolabels that consumers can trust. The following provides an introduction to these organizations and briefly describes their efforts to set international parameters for ecolabelling.

International Parameters for Ecolabels: Key Organizations and Definitions

The following organizations have set international definitions and parameters for ecolabels:

Global Ecolabelling Network (GEN)
International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
ISEAL Alliance

Global Ecolabelling Network

GEN is a non-profit association of third-party environmental performance recognition, certification and labeling organizations founded in 1994 to improve, promote and develop the ecolabelling of products and services. GEN defines different types of ecolabels, categorizes existing ecolabels, and sets generic environmental criteria for specific product and service categories. As a membership based organization, GEN provides assurance that member organizations are meeting their parameters for ecolabelling.

For more detail visit: http://www.globalecolabelling.net/whatis.html

International Organization for Standardization

ISO is the world’s largest developer and publisher of international standards. It brings together a network of national standards institutes from 159 countries to build consensus of global standard setting. In particular, they have created the ISO 14020 series of standards that define parameters for developing environmental labels and declarations. This series includes ISO 14024, 14021 and 14025, which define the parameters for Type I, II, and III ecolabels, respectively.

For more detail visit: http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=34425

ISEAL Alliance

ISEAL is a global association for social and environmental standards. It works with established and emerging voluntary standard systems to develop guidance and strengthen the effectiveness of these standards. They also work with companies, non-profits and governments to support their referencing and use of voluntary standards. They have developed Codes of Good Practice that are applied to leading standards systems and are an ISEAL membership requirement. As a membership based organization, ISEAL provides assurance that member organizations are meeting their parameters for ecolabelling.

For more detail visit: http://www.isealalliance.org/content/codes-good-practice

March 26, 2010 In Ethical Purchasing, Ethical Supply Chain Management, Sustainable Products, Waste Reduction

What’s in a label? ISEAL Alliance aims for a gold medal with standard setting code.

Who’s certifying the certifiers?

Credible standards that define sustainable products is critical to ongoing work in sustainable supply chains. Here’s an interesting presentation from a group that’s trying to bring more consistency to the standard setting process. ISEAL is an organisation that is comprised of groups like FSC, Marine Stewardship Council, Rainforest Alliance and more.

Reeve is keen to see more developments like these.

Check out this quick and informative presentation on ISEAL Alliances Standard-Setting Code: Introduction to the ISEAL Standard-Setting Code

View more presentations from ISEAL Alliance.

February 25, 2010 In Ethical Purchasing, Olympics

Vancouver 2010 Olympic Medals: the Untold Story

Flickr / US Mission Canada

Did you know that the Vancouver 2010 Olympic medals are made of recycled gold, silver and bronze recovered from used electronics? It’s true, the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) for the 2010 Games has worked with their domestic sponsor Teck Resources to ensure each of the 1,000+ medals contain recycled metals from electronic waste. This is a great achievement worthy of its own medal and should be shared to inspire the world to take on similar initiatives.

With the 2010 Winter Olympic Games well underway, many Olympic champions have risen to the podium to accept their medals, how many know that the medals they receive symbolize more than an ultimate athletic achievement. On Sunday, Kevin McCarty had the amazing opportunity to sit with the athletes’ families during the speed skating and cross country skiing Victory Ceremonies. He reported that it was a powerful experience to witness their emotion as their loved one’s bowed to receive their medals. However, he also noticed that the story of recycled metal in the medals wasn’t made apparent during the ceremonies.

Some might argue that the Victory Ceremonies are not about environmentalism and social responsibility, but during the beginning of the ceremonies information was projected on three large screens above the podium that proudly outlined VANOC’s commitment to being one of the most sustainable Games in Olympic history. So there is a place in the Ceremonies for environmentalism and social responsibility, but unfortunately the story of the medals was not apparent. Additionally, there was a short video shown about the artists who designed the medals, but again, the story of the recycled content was not told.

We here at Reeve Consulting strongly believe in the power of purchasing to change the world we live in and feel it would be a great opportunity to promote sustainable purchasing while the world is watching. The story of the medals and their recycled metal content is a great example of how VANOC is helping to change the world. The Victory Ceremonies would be a great place to share this story.

Check out these related blogs for more information on the Buy Smart Program and related success stories: Buy Smart Program; Vancouver Olympics Sources Ethically Produced Flowers for Medal Ceremony