Ceres: Shareholder Resolutions Spur U.S. Companies to Act on Sustainability During 2012 Proxy Season
Ceres, a U.S.-based nonprofit co-founded by Trillium Asset Management, which advocates for corporate sustainability leadership, recently released its wrap-up of the 2012 Proxy season. The July 10, 2012 press release states, in part: “During the 2012 proxy voting season, investors successfully used shareholder resolutions to spur action on corporate sustainability challenges such as climate change, hydraulic fracturing and supply chain and water availability risks. Of the nearly 110 resolutions tracked by Ceres in 2012, 44 proposals resulted in U.S. companies making commitments to tackle environmental and social risks in their operations and supply chains.” “…In 2012, investors continued to focus …
Report on Bisphenol A in Thermal Receipt Paper- Panera Bread Company (2012)
WHEREAS: The value of Panera Bread Company’s brand is based in part on customer trust. We believe that if the company’s cash register thermal receipt paper contain bisphenol A (BPA), a potentially hazardous chemical, that trust could be put at risk. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has stated “Some receipts made of thermal paper may now contain as much as 10 mg. of BPA, which could pose a risk for human exposure, as well as account for substantial environmental releases of BPA.” http://www.epa.gov/dfe/pubs/projects/bpa/index.htm BPA reportedly mimics estrogen in the body; a number of animal studies link BPA, even …
Sustainable Palm Oil Policy – YUM! Brands, Inc. (2012)
Whereas: The environmental and social impacts of palm oil, an ingredient in our Company’s supply chain, make it highly controversial. Accordingly, we believe the Company’s failure to procure certified sustainable palm oil is a brand risk, to both our Company’s reputation and long-term to the security of supply. Approximately 85% of palm oil is grown in Indonesia and Malaysia, much of it on industrial plantations. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, palm oil plantations are a large source of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) because they are often established on land converted from swamp forests (“The Root of the Problem: …
A Reason to Celebrate(A)
Taco Bell Boycott Called Off When Fast-Food Chain Concedes to Workers’ Demands …
Breakthrough at Taco Bell(A)
Farmworkers and YUM! Brands Reach Agreement on Wages and Working Conditions; 3-Year Boycott Called Off …
2005 Shareholder Advocacy Preview: A Poem(A)
(With Apologies to Major Henry Livingston, Jr.) …
2003-04 Advocacy Roundup(A)
Shareholder activism professionals (admittedly, a job category you will not find in any Labor Department surveys) refer to it as “the season” – the months between the autumn deadlines for filing shareholder proposals and the spring shareholder meetings in which the voting results are announced. The season is the opposite of a quiet week in Lake Wobegon. We trade legalistic paperwork challenges at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), meet with companies to persuade them to implement our proposals, and if that fails, we try to get large institutional investors to vote for them. (If that fails, well, summer’s on …
Indigestion from YUM! Brands(A)
In this dawning era of Good Corporate Governance, YUM! Brands’ ostrich-like response to stakeholder discontent could be considered almost laughably out of sync with the times -- if the real-world consequences weren’t so grim. …
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