It’s a video day at Socially Responsible Thoughts, featuring two advertisements from Seventh Generation, a company vastly dedicated to a healthy planet.

Their very informative website highlights a wide range of items including paper products, disinfectants, perfume / dye free cleaners and laundry soap with no petroleum products.  Until today I didn’t know any laundry soap used petroleum products.  Their site says ‘if every household in the US replaced just one bottle of 100 oz 2x ultra petroleum- based liquid laundry detergent with our 100 oz 2x plant-derived product, we could save 466,000 barrels of oil – enough to heat and cool 26,800 US homes for a year.’  Wow.

They also have a line of baby- focused products including chlorine free diapers, wipes and training pants.  This next advertisement features one of their happy little customers encouraging you to crawl to Washington to demand that the government pass a law to eliminate dangerous chemicals in household cleaners.  It’s cute…and short.

In 2007 a media storm grew around the discovery that a Gap manufacturer had a sub-contractor who employed child labour within awful conditions in India.  Gap had been unaware of the subcontractor and quickly acted to end the arrangement, described by one Gap executive as ‘a hellhole’.  Did Gap learn anything from this experience?  Have practices changed to prevent this happening again?  I took a look through the Social Responsibility information on their website to find out. By the way, Gap Inc. includes Old Navy, Banana Republic, Piperlime and Athleta.

There is extensive information on their website that you could spend hours going through.  Here are the pages I focused on:

Supply Chain Evolution: In the 1990’s Gap Inc. began a Code of Vendor Conduct which focused on factory conditions and how to improve them.  Their goals in 2010 have expanded to farms and mills which supply those factories.  There is an interesting table of factors which contribute to poor factory working conditions and the relevant influence of various stakeholders.  It is good to see that the greatest influence has been assigned to the ‘Brand or Retailer’.  There is also a chart of current and completed supply chain goals.

Helping Factories Move Forward: The Gap employs Vendor Compliance Officers who review manufacturers and their sub-contractors for approval and then monitor facilities with scheduled and random visits to ensure compliance with the vendor’s conduct code.

Our Program in Action: This page provides links to specific programs such as Uzbek cotton where in ‘Uzbekistan, we’re collaborating with human rights groups and other brands to address the use of child labor to harvest cotton.’  Here you can also find a long but interesting article by Dorianne Beyer, Esq. an ‘international labor standards expert, she has consulted to governments and corporations on a wide range of labor policies, with a particular focus on child labor. Beyer is a founding member of the Advisory Board of Social Accountability International.’

Beyer describes Gap in positive terms, explaining that their efforts to affect child labour had begun several years before the incident in India.  From her account and this July 2009 news release, it seems Gap moved swiftly to correct a bad situation and to take steps in preventing new ones from happening.  The sub-contractor is banned from any future Gap work, the original manufacturer was placed on probation, and an awareness program has educated Indian villages about their rights.  Funding was provided by Gap to support an advocate group in creating a third-party monitoring system.

Beyer states that ‘A number of Gap’s 2008 actions are aimed at broad economic development, recognizing that child labor arises from the lack of a viable economic foundation. Seen through that lens, it becomes clear that effective remediation must address the benefit of all community members — children/students and adults/parents/workers. This is the 21^st Century paradigm: Parents who can feed and house their families are the strongest barrier against child trafficking and child labor.

The objective then becomes transforming known areas of child labor from chronic poverty zones to “economic empowerment zones” that facilitate sustainable employment for adults.’

Clearly this is a huge, multi-faceted issue.  And there are many steps needed to fix the variables but it would appear that Gap Inc. is on the right track.

After a recent purchase at Shopper’s Drug Mart, I noticed my receipt described a potential prize of $1,000.00 if I completed an on-line survey.  Well, why not try?

I was surprised to see the following question on their survey: ‘How aware are you of our corporate social responsibility initiatives?’  Being totally unaware, I visited their Corporate Responsibility page to find out what they have.  (My time references may be incorrect as the information was not dated and their last website update seems to have been in 2008.)

First, I found out that they received an award by Corporate Knights, the Canadian magazine for responsible business,’  designating them as one of the best 50 corporate citizens. And in 2008 they were ‘recognized as one of Canada’s 10 Most Admired Corporate Cultures™, by the 2008 Corporate Culture Study™ conducted by Waterstone Human Capital Ltd. and the National Post.’

Here are the four main components to Shopper’s corporate responsibility program, with several specific examples.

Environmental Responsibility

• in Ontario they achieved a 12.9% increase in waste diversion, saving the equivalent of 372,827 trees through fibre recycling; expansion of these programs to other regions across Canada was planned for 2009
• energy efficiency measures were planned to replace neon lighting with LED, and to install new refrigeration controls to cut consumption by 50%
• the choices for ‘eco-friendly products’, organic food and ‘green’ cosmetics are being increased to meet customer demands; I will add here that while I toast their eco-friendly cleaning products from companies like Method (a B Corporation member) I would be happy to see more cruelty-free cosmetics as they offer very few

Product Safety and Sourcing

• Shopper’s does not have manufacturing facilities of their own but are diligent in reviewing the practices of their suppliersto ensure ‘that they act in accordance with all applicable environmental and labour-related laws and regulations.’
• vendor agreements, manufacturer’s audits, third party audits and and random testing all contribute to their due diligence for maintaining or ending a supply agreement

Employee Relations

• an employee engagement survey received a 70% response rate which showed both good points and areas to work on. In response to the survey, two employee recognition programs have been initiated.
• making internal hiring a priority led to a 31% increase at the director level in 2008
• numerous training programs have been introduced for pharmacist’s technicians, cosmetic advisors and managers as well as tuition assistance programs
• in 2008, a Chief Diversity Officer position was created, to provide further leadership and commitment to the creation of a workforce diverse in gender, age, sexual orientation, education, race, religious affiliation and natural origin.  From a research project in diversity a few months ago, I learned that the appointment of a specific person to lead such a program is critical to achieving success in workforce diversity.

Community Investment

• Each Shopper’s location is owned by a single pharmacist-owner who is ‘committed to serving the health care needs of their community with personal service, professional expertise and community spirit. Who better to understand the needs of your community than a member of your own neighborhood?’  In theory this sounds great but the commitment needs to be driven by the owner’s beliefs not just his address.
• charitable donations are given to many levels of organizations including 245 ‘grass roots’ organizations through their Tree of Life community donation program.  It would be interesting to know how much is given outright by the corporation as opposed to their campaigns which request donations from customers at the check out.

My conclusions about Shopper’s responsibility initiatives are mixed.  Some components are admirable and others sound like green washing.  With more current information and additional details it would be easier to make a decision.  In a future post I will check out other drug stores and see how they compare.  And if I win that $1,000 from their on-line survey, I’ll let you know.