Sustainability Reporting describing the company’s environmental, social and governance business practices—co-filed with Walden Asset Management

Emerson Electric: re-filed resolution which received 34% last year. C.R. Bard: a slightly modified version of last year’s resolution was filed. After it received 28% last May, the company met informally with ICCR but then declined to move to greater transparency.

 

Hydraulic Fracturing: Community Impacts – Risk Assessment -- disclosure on the impacts of fracking on local community and the financial risks of these impacts. This resolution includes both environmental impacts to water quality, health impacts from exposure to water and air, and is broad enough to include social ills documented in fracking towns.

 

ExxonMobil: last year’s toxic chemical disclosure received a 28.2% vote Chevron: last year’s toxic chemical disclosure received a 41% vote

 

Here is a sampling of the significant press coverage after last year’s votes.

 

New: Political Spending Resolution – response to Citizens United ruling. Calls on corporations to review policies and oversight processes related to political spending and public policy, both direct and indirect including through trade associations, and present a summary report by September 2012.

 

IBM: Review and disclosure of any direct and indirect expenditures supporting or opposing candidates, for issue ads designed to affect political races, including dues and special payments made to trade associations, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

WASHINGTON, D.C., Sep. 01 /CSRwire/ - Two leading sustainable business organizations representing 5,000 small businesses today sent a letter calling on President Obama to reject the controversial Keystone XL pipeline and, instead, invest in clean energy technologies.  

The pipeline would deliver oil from the tar sands in Canada to the Gulf of Mexico across the United States.

In their letter, Green America’s Green Business Network and The Green Chamber of Commercesaid the pipeline would further United States addiction to oil and risk disastrous new oil spills in rivers and the Ogallala aquifer. Global warming and oil spills have been seen to have an extremely detrimental effect on the economy, which affects the well-being of their businesses.

In addition to these risks, production of the 700,000 barrels of heavy crude that would travel from the tar sands every day creates a tremendous amount of greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. Both the potential for environmentally harmful oils spills and increase in GHG emissions would be harmful to the environment, in addition to the harm to business in the United States.

The text of the letter to President Obama follows:

“We write to you on behalf of thousands of small businesses in the United States that are deeply concerned about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. The well-being of our businesses and the economy in the United States are tied to the health of our environment. The Keystone XL pipeline will have an immensely negative impact on the environment. It would bring 700,000 barrels of heavy crude from Canadian tar sands to the US every day, furthering the US addiction to oil, and risking new oil spills in rivers and the Ogallala aquifer. The production of oil from tar sands would generate enormous greenhouse gas emissions, and create greater impacts from global warming.

The impacts of global warming -- from droughts, to floods, to extreme weather -- are bad for business in the United States. As we saw in the Gulf, oil spills also have a devastating impact on the economy. The failure to shift America away from its dependence on oil to cleaner fuels will further imperil our economy and reduce the number of green jobs we need for sustainable economic growth.

Your administration has taken bold and necessary steps to increase the green energy economy in the US. Now, we urge you to reject the Keystone XL pipeline, and further invest in clean energy technologies. It is the right decision for the US, and it is the right decision for business.”

ORRVILLE, Ohio - The J.M. Smucker Co. perked up coffee-lovers by announcing that after four straight price hikes in little over a year, the company was cutting prices by an average of 6 percent.

The Orrville food company, which is holding its annual shareholders meeting today, said Tuesday's news applies to the prices on a majority of its coffee products sold in the U.S., including top-selling Folgers Coffee, Folgers Gourmet Selections and Dunkin' Donuts packaged coffee sold in supermarkets.

Smucker cut prices in response to declines in the price of raw green coffee futures, which slipped to $2.10 per pound in July, down 9 percent from a 34-year-high of $2.31 per pound in April.

That's still 65 percent higher than the $1.27-per-pound price in April 2010, but represents the third-straight monthly decline after more than a year of steadily climbing prices, according to the International Coffee Organization.

Those rising prices, on top of higher fuel and other production costs, prompted Smucker to increase its own coffee prices four times:

• 4 percent on May 18, 2010;

• 9 percent on Aug. 3, 2010;

• 10 percent on Feb. 8, 2011;

• and 11 percent on May 24.

Smucker's rivals, including Starbucks, Maxwell House, Peet's Coffee & Tea and Green Mountain Coffee have raised their coffee prices over the past year, too, but have not yet responded to Tuesday's announcement.

Dominic Caruso, vice president of Caruso's Coffee Inc., a specialty coffee roaster in Brecksville, said that while prices for some kinds of raw beans have fallen, they remain significantly higher than they were a year ago.

He said that while mass-produced coffee blends like Folgers and Dunkin' Donuts can compensate for more expensive beans by increasing the amount of cheaper robusta beans, coffee houses that specialize in premium beans or single-source coffees have less wiggle room to lower prices.

"On certain coffees, like breakfast blends and doughnut shop blends, we're going to try to pass along that savings to the customer," he said. "But on other coffees, like African coffees or Indonesian Sumatras and Javas, we're stuck" with higher prices.

Caruso doesn't expect many coffee house regulars to switch to brewing at home, however, because coffee is still an affordable indulgence. "The customer who's going to the coffee shop is going there for a lot of reasons besides price," he said.

The price cut news also came a day before Smucker's annual shareholders meeting, where two shareholder groups that advise investors on responsible and sustainable companies are seeking more information about the company's long-term coffee strategy.

Calvert Investment Management Inc. of Bethesda, Md., and Trillium Asset Management LLC of Boston want shareholders to approve their Proposal 5, requiring Smucker to provide a report to shareholders about how the company plans to deal with possible climate changes and threats to family coffee farms within six months of the annual meeting.

Because coffee makes up 40 percent of Smucker's net sales and 48.6 percent of its profit, the groups wrote a letter to shareholders saying that they want to know how the company plans to respond to climate changes like global warming, changes in rainfall patterns, and its "responsibility for its impact on the coffee farming families in its supply chain."

Rebecca Henson, Calvert's sustainability analyst, said: "The proposal is meant to encourage the company to take more meaningful steps" to protect shareholders, because so much of its business depends on coffee. "We just think there's more they can do to manage this risk."

Calvert, a mutual fund which offers advice to more than 400,000 individual and institutional investors, owns 4,269 shares of Smucker stock.

Trillium, the oldest and largest independent adviser devoted exclusively to sustainable and responsible investing, advises several hundred clients who own about 90,000 shares of Smucker.

Both groups say Smucker has provided "woefully inadequate" guidance on these topics and that it "lags significantly behind" its global peers Nestle, Sara Lee and Kraft in providing that information.

Sara Lee, for example, aims to have 20 percent of its coffee volume certified sustainable by 2015, while Nescafe will distribute 220 million disease-resistant coffee plantlets to coffee farmers around the world by 2020.

Smucker declined to answer questions Tuesday about the price cut or Proposal 5, saying that it was in its quiet period prior to Thursday's earnings conference call.

In an Aug. 9 letter to shareholders, however, Co-Chief Executives Tim and Richard Smucker responded that the company had already answered those requests.

They said that "in making the decision and expending time and resources to voluntarily publish a corporate responsibility report, it has taken appropriate action to address shareholder concerns" and that adopting Proposal 5 would be "unnecessary, duplicative and inappropriate."

Read the original article here.

By Dan Bacher

The Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee, in a special hearing in the State Capitol in Sacramento on July 7, passed AB 685, the Human Right to Water bill.

This landmark bill would establish in law a state policy that every Californian has a "human right to clean, affordable, and accessible drinking water for their basic human needs," according to a joint news release from the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water (EJCW) and Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC).

"After hearing moving testimony from safe water advocates and residents of California communities without access to safe drinking water, the committee voted 5-3 in favor," said Debbie Davis, Policy Director of the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water. "A broad-based coalition of faith-based, human rights, environmental, consumer rights and environmental justice groups celebrated the latest legislative victory for the human right to water package moving through the legislature."

The vote was on party lines, with the 5 Democrats present voting for the bill and the 3 Republicans voting against it. Democratic Senators Fran Pavley, Noreen Evans, Christine Kehoe, Joe Simitian and Lois Wolk voted yes, while Republican Senators Doug LaMalfa, Anthony Cannella and Jean Fuller voted no. Democratic Senator Alex Padilla was absent.

"California is one step closer to being the first state in the nation to establish this historic policy which would help everyone have access to clean, affordable water at their tap," stated Davis.

AB 685, introduced by Assemblyman Mike Eng, is the lead policy bill in package of six Human Right to Water bills. Four of the five other bills in the package -- AB 938 (V.M.Perez), AB 983 (Perea), AB 1221 (Alejo) and SB 244 (Wolk) have also won support in their house of origin and received bipartisan support in the latest round of policy committees votes, according to Davis.

"Although this latest vote was on party lines, we hope that the bill proceeds to the Senate Floor and receives bi-partisan support," said Reverend Lindi Ramsden, Executive Director of the Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry. "We have collected over 1,000 letters of support from people of a variety of political perspectives across the state from Humboldt County to San Diego County."

"While billions of dollars have been spent on water projects in California, we have still much work to do to make sure that everyone has access to clean water to drink," emphasized Ramsden.

More than 11.5 million Californians rely on water from suppliers that experienced at least one violation of State Drinking Water Standards as reported to the Department of Public Health in 2004, according to Davis. As many as 8.5 million Californians rely on supplies that experienced more than five instances of unsafe levels in a single year.

“The Human Right to Water bill passed the Legislature and was vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2009,” added Davis. “We are hopeful that with Brown’s experience on California water issues, we’ll have a different outcome this year.”

Co-sponsoring organizations include the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water, Community Water Center, Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry, Food and Water Watch, California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, Southern California Watershed Alliance, Winneman Wintu Tribe, Urban Semillas, Catholic Charities Diocese of Stockton and Clean Water Action.

This bill is opposed by the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA), the Western Growers Association and several other water service providers, who contend the bill "may lead to a requirement that water agencies provide water service without consideration to affordability, thereby increasing water bills and have other unintended consequences," according to the Legislative Analysis.

While the state and federal governments continue to promote the construction of a peripheral canal ("conveyance") through the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to facilitate the export of northern California water to corporate agribusiness on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and southern California water agencies, many rural and urban communities have to rely on surface and groundwater supplies contaminated by fertilizers, toxic chemicals, sewage and other pollutants.

In July 2010, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution recognizing access to clean water and sanitation as a human right. The vote was 122 for and 0 against, with 41 countries, including the United States, abstaining. Over 884 million people throughout the word lack access to safe drinking water.

For more information, contact: Debbie Davis, EJCW, (916) 743-4406, or Shelley Moskowitz, UUSC, (857) 222-8824.

PR Newswire

BOSTON and BETHESDA, Md., May 25, 2011

BOSTON and BETHESDA, Md., May 25, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Nearly two dozen investors and investment organizations, representing over $200 billion in assets under management, sent letters to 43 major companies on the Board of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) urging them to explain the misalignment between their own company's climate policies and NAM's position seeking to strip EPA of its ability to curtail greenhouse gases.

Many companies that are NAM Board members have set laudable goals to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and overall environmental impact.  Yet through NAM these same companies simultaneously lobby and support measures to weaken, delay or overturn Environmental Protection Agency regulations to lower greenhouse gas emissions, according to the joint letter from 23 investors and investment organizations.

In alphabetical order, the full list of companies is as follows:   3M Company, Abbott Laboratories, AT&T, AEP, Air Products & Chemicals, Alcoa, Bayer, Boeing, Clorox, ConAgra Foods, Conoco Phillips, C.R. Bard, CSX Corporation, Deloitte LLP, Devon Energy, Dow Chemical Company, Ecolab, Eli Lilly & Co., Ernst & Young, Exxon Mobil Corporation, Ford Motor Company, General Electric Company, General Motors Company, Grant Thornton, H.J. Heinz, Illinois Tool Works, Inc., Ingersoll Rand, Intel, Johnson Controls, KPMG LLP, Merck & Company, Inc., Nucor, Pfizer, Inc., PPG Industries, Praxair, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Procter & Gamble Company, Ryder Systems, Shell Oil Company, Sherwin-Williams, Southern Company, Toyota Motor Corporation, and Verizon Communications.

Stu Dalheim, director shareholder advocacy, Calvert Investment Management, Inc. who coordinated the open letter with Walden Asset Management, said: "Any company supporting NAM's recent letter to Congress seeking to block EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases harms their public image and reputation as well as forward progress on environmental issues."  

In the letter, investors point out that, "Contrary to the claims made in NAM's short-sighted letter, EPA regulations will result not only in cleaner air and decreased GHG emissions, but also cost savings for business.  This will bring more jobs and economic growth, which we as shareholders strongly support."

Timothy Smith, senior vice president, Walden Asset Management, said:  "Companies serving on the Board need to evaluate how their internal corporate policies on climate change contradict the policies they support through NAM. Serving on the Board of a trade association comes with the responsibility to govern responsibly and hold the association accountable for lobbying that results in environmental harm."

The letter argues the case that NAM and its member companies should support EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions for three reasons: 1) the EPA rules are not overly costly as NAM claims, 2) EPA rules will enhance manufacturers' competitiveness by encouraging energy efficiency and cost savings, and 3) a growing number of investors are supporting EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.

The challenge to companies serving on the NAM Board parallels challenges by investors with companies sitting on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Board.

About Calvert Investments, Inc.:

An investment management company serving institutional investors, workplace retirement plans, financial intermediaries and their clients, Calvert Investments offers more than 40 equity, bond, cash, and asset allocation strategies, of which many feature integrated environmental, social, and governance research. Founded in 1976 and based in Bethesda, Maryland, Calvert Investments manages over $14.5 billion in assets.

About Walden Asset Management:

Walden has been a leader in integrating environmental, social and governance analysis into investment decision-making since 1975.  A division of Boston Trust & Investment Management Company with $2 billion in assets under management, Walden blends a disciplined investment style and expertise in portfolio screening with a commitment to use shareholder leverage to improve corporate environmental, social and governance performance and accountability.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/319612#ixzz1NOh9MpIP