The brand that I choose to write about is Veja. This is a sneaker brand that promotes sustainable fashion. All the sneakers I currently own or had owned in the past few years are Veja. It is reasonably priced, comfortable, long-lasting, and the designs can go with many different style outfits.

In 2003 the founders established their production chain in Brazil after meeting with organic cotton farmers. The founders are named Sébastien Kopp and François-Ghislain Morillion. The brand officially launched in 2005 in Paris. The following year, their first collection was designed and made with vegetable-tanned leather. Today every part of the sneaker is unique. The sole of the shoe is made out of waterproof bottle mesh. The material from the sole of their trainers is wild rubber sourced directly from the Amazon rainforest. This wild rubber is the only place in the world where it naturally grows in the wild. The company, Veja, also pays more than the market price to the rubber tappers for this wild rubber.

The company makes sure that the farmers don’t use pesticides or any chemicals on its cotton. On top of that Veja pays double the market price for their cotton allowing farmers to make a better wage. 80% of the workers that work in the Veja factories in Brazil belong to a union and the company claims to uphold labor standards set by the International Labor Organization.

Personally, I buy my shoes directly from the Veja store in Manhattan but this brand is in many stores such as Nordstrom. The company’s social responsibility comes in paying fair wages and sourcing their product ethnically. One of the things I recommend is helping the local community in Brazil where the factories are or where the materials are being sourced from. Their factories in Brazil help create jobs for the local community but can be more done to help the community. They also have the option of moving the production line to the United States to help promote local job growth. Since the company uses wild rubber from the Amazon rainforest, the company could donate to organizations that support stopping deforestation or protecting animals within the forest. Finally, despite the company’s claims of ethical production and sourcing, there has never been proof or any study shown to the public of what they claim to do.

Most of the time to pick my clothing, I usually go for sportswear. I mainly like Adidas because I’m a soccer fan, and most of the teams I want a partner with Adidas. The other reason I choose Adidas is the price since out of the other brand. I found Adidas more affordable.

Adidas has been around for about 70 years, but in the last 20 years, Adidas has been a change leader in sustainability. They were the first to bring eco-innovations to the mass market, leading the industry with the first sustainability report. Adidas has one expression when it comes to sustainability “Through sport, we have the power to change lives.” since if we don’t take care of the ground we’re on, we won’t have space to play sport. Adidas has raised the bar on environmental standards at its sites, supply chains, and products.

One of Adidas’ goals, as I said before, is to protect or take care of the ground we’re on to have space to play sport. For Adidas, sustainability is a uniquely holistic initiative, from their entire supply chain network to their offices and stores to the innovative products we create for our customers. Still, there are several more ways to make an ethical, socially responsible, and sustainable business, such as organizing an in-house social responsibility team, Directing contributions, Encouraging volunteering, and collaborating with compatible organizations.

Following some examples like encouraging volunteering makes a world of difference, so reward your employees who decide to enroll and volunteer in social programs. When it comes to direct contributions, you can show social responsibility through philanthropy. Donating money or resources to local charities can make a massive difference to their daily operations, directly impacting the community in which your business is a part. Finally, Organize an in-house social responsibility team. Once you have educated your employees, you can set up an in-house social responsibility team. These employees can dedicate some of their time to crowdsourcing ideas to figure out the best way to positively impact the community.  

https://www.gameplan-a.com/2020/06/the-adidas-sustainability-story-leading-the-change/

I decided to choose Target since I always shop there. Target is very convenient for me because it has clothes, food, electronics, medicine and so much more. Target is one of the largest retail corporations. Target has been giving 5% of their profits to communities for education services. Targets code of ethics applies to every team member no matter what their positions are, and they aspect them to be followed. They feel if the codes aren’t being followed it can ruin their reputation. Target wants to be a diverse company they participate in career fairs and with agencies to hire diverse team member. They except everyone to treat each other with respect no matter their differences. But Target has had problems with diversity in their executives and corporate positions. Target tries to provide great quality when it comes to their food and products. They make sure their business partners are applying laws to meet their standards of safe and reliable products, so they are picky with the partners they choose. As well they make sure they aren’t selling expired or damaged foods because they don’t want to sell products that would harm their costumer’s. The CEO of target wants to co-create a more equitable and regenerative future. They want to “design and elevate sustainable brands ->Innovate to eliminate waste -> Accelerate opportunity and equity.” They have made their products out of recycled materials. By 2030 they want all their electricity from renewable sources since they think it’s better for the planet and the people. These are some examples “By 2040, we plan for 100% of our owned brand products to be designed for a circular future. We will continue designing to eliminate waste, using materials that are regenerative, recycled or sourced sustainably, to create products that are more durable, easily repaired or recyclable. By 2040, we commit to being a net zero enterprise – zero waste to landfill in our U.S. operations and net zero emissions across both our operations and supply chain, inclusive of scopes 1, 2 and 3.” Target does not tolerate child labor. I do think target is doing a great job expect for the facts they don’t have much diversity when it comes to their executives and corporate positions.

A company I interact with regularly is Amazon. Amazon’s a multinational e-commerce technology company that provides a streaming service and e-commerce platform that sells various products through the internet and physical stores. The company is the number one most visited and used e-commerce platform for its availability and reliability when buying and selling products on the platform. Available in over 100 countries, Amazon has provided customers with safe and reliable transactions ever since the start of e-commerce culture. Amongst many other top multinational companies, Amazon is known to undermine and disregard its corporate social responsibility and transparency, which causes the company to receive backlash from critics and customers. To this day, Amazon is under scrutiny for its noncompliance to environmental sustainability, employee rights, community outreach programs, etc. In this essay, I will dig into Amazon’s issues regarding its ethics and social responsibility. 

Over the years, Amazon is widely believed to have invested considerable amounts of money and time into its Corporate Social Responsibility programs. However, recent reports during the COVID-19 crisis states otherwise. Adverse reports regarding the environmental working conditions at Amazon warehouses have increased during the pandemic. Amazon lowered its prioritization towards employee safety and stuck to its goal, and focused on customer satisfaction. While on the surface, this does seem beneficial, amazon employees get fired regularly for “demanding adequate protection for warehouse workers during the pandemic.” However, after receiving backlash from critics and the general public, Amazon implemented roughly 150 process changes to protect its warehouse employees by increasing their COVID-19 testing and offering more significant compensation to its frontline employees. With these changes towards the working conditions, Amazon has still been under scrutiny for disregarding many other aspects of their social and ethical responsibilities.

Ethically, Amazon still does not care nor try to change their goals for the safety of the employees as they keep working on tight schedules and long hours. Amazon’s goal has always been to satisfy the customers and sacrifice anything to keep customers satisfied and loyal to their business. The CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, has always acknowledged these problems regarding the tight schedules and ethical working conditions but disregards any other process changes (besides the COVID-19 testing and financial compensation) and decides to “unveil robotic plans to keep the employees working.” Unlike other big companies, Amazon has never been transparent with the public regarding working conditions which is the sole reason for their high customer loyalty to the business. Part of the reason the company has kept this goal was due to the high demand working standards. An article by The Verge states that “workers lacked the permission for bathroom breaks and were forced to pee in bottles while simultaneously 

working to meet their daily demands.” Furthermore, many of Amazon’s employees quit the company weekly as they are not compensated for their hard work and dedication to keep up with the high demands. From this, Amazon has not changed a single aspect of their company so long as it takes in revenue and keeps up with its high customer loyalty and satisfaction.

“We are humans, not robots!” protested a group of Amazon warehouse employees in Minnesota. Throughout the years, Amazon has lacked the corporate social responsibility to treat their workers as regular employees. With the advancement of technology, instead of employing its technological capabilities in the workforce by doing the physical work. It is used to dehumanize the work demands of employees and create a more exhausting work environment. Amazon’s technology has employed a work pace with an almost robotic-like structure forcing workers to complete tasks efficiently and on time. All work in the Amazon warehouses is monitored, controlled, and timed. If tasks were not completed on time, workers were given 18 minutes of overtime to complete their tasks. If the tasks were not completed even with the extra time, the employees would be getting less pay by the end of the month. In an interview with Time magazine, an Amazon warehouse employee stated, “After I completed a task, the scan gun not only immediately gave me a new one but also started counting down the second I had left to do it. This shows how Amazon treats their employees like robots and dehumanizes the work environment even after “trying” to employ a safer working environment. 

With all that being said, I have several recommendations for Amazon to create a safe, ethical, and socially responsible environment for the business. First, Amazon should change its goals and priorities to make sure that it keeps its customer loyalty while creating a safe and ethical environment for its workers. Over the years, Amazon has already built a significant reputation for being a fast, efficient, and reliable e-commerce platform to buy and sell products. Even if there is a slight change in working conditions, customers will be loyal to the company. For me, since I’m a regular customer of Amazon, I wouldn’t necessarily care if packages took slightly longer to arrive at my doorstep since I know the package will arrive safely. Suppose amazon slightly sacrificed delivery times with safer working conditions. It will benefit both the customers and the workers as the business will keep up with its corporate social responsibility, and workers will also stay in the company. Second, Amazon should use its technological capabilities to enforce a more accessible working environment for its employees. As I stated before, Amazon uses its technology to monitor and time their employees – which dehumanizes the working environment as they are paced for each task. Instead, I suggest Amazon use their technology to do more physical work, and the employees can control this technology for the same efficiency they had if humans did all the work. Not only will the working efficiency be the same, if not more, it will also reduce the physical stress the employees will need to go through while working long hours in the warehouses. Lastly, Amazon should treat their employees to more breaks and a better community with less restrictive work. Amazon does not treat its warehouse employees like a community, leading to an unhappy working environment. Treating workers like this is highly unethical as they are restricted from socialization and are forced to keep up with the pace. This workplace practice is somewhat common and leads to painful conditions which lead to an unhappy lifestyle. I suggest that Amazon treat the workers fairly and enforce a community amongst all the workers, so they can work without being repressed by the workload. 

Nevertheless, with all these arguments stated, Amazon is not a perfect company. Although it is in the top 10 globally, it still receives criticism daily for its inability to keep up with corporate social responsibility and unethical practices. With the criticism and suggestions stated previously, I believe that Amazon could be a mere perfect company with high customer loyalty while also treating its employees like humans and creating a happier working environment. Even though I am still an avid user of Amazon’s e-commerce platform, company secrets like these often stir me away from regularly using their platform again. 

Sources:

https://www.thomasnet.com/articles/other/amazon-csr-sustainability/

https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/15/22385762/bezos-letter-shareholders-amazon-workers-union-bessemer-workplace

https://time.com/5629233/amazon-warehouse-employee-treatment-robots/ 

https://news.wttw.com/2021/04/07/amazon-employees-stage-walkout-distribution-center-over-working-conditions

I am a member of Costco Wholesale Club where I shop twice monthly.  The company has been referred to as the “testimony to ethical capitalism” due to the company’s practices and the treatment of its employees and suppliers, in which they are known to heavily invest in. Employees are empowered to problem solve daily without being micromanaged by their managers.

Costco values their people and has an established code of conduct that was put in place for the human rights and safety of the people who produce, process, and harvest the products they sell.

Child labor, slave labor, health and safety conditions and illegal prison labor are only a few specifications mentioned in their established code of conduct. One thing to highlight is that all prison labor must be paid at the States legal minimum wage versus the prison’s established minimum wages. One might ask why are they using prison labor in the first place? This is done to assist the incarcerated individual in their rehabilitation and repayment of their restitution.

Suppliers are encouraged to always work towards goals that goes above and beyond those put in place by the company.

Community service and volunteerism is very important to the organization and for this reason they have the Costco Employee Volunteer Reading Program which assists children in the warehouse’s local community with mastering reading. The program began in 1998 and now has over 2600 volunteers within 456 programs in the USA, Canada, and Australia. The local participation rate has now reached over 70 percent.

Their philanthropy and charitable programs focus mainly on local business communities and supports children, education, health, and human services. For local organizations and local causes the local warehouses are task with reviewing applications and typically awards for no more than ten percent of a program’s overall budget. Grant applications are considered for larger, broad-based organizations and causes. Of course, there are other qualifiers including being a registered non-profit organization.

Our planet is our home and Costco is very attuned of the fact that we are all individually and collectively responsible for her wellbeing, and how we treat her will determine how she treats us. The company has taken it up on themselves to research how they can effectively reduce their carbon footprint. They have found that 77 percent of electricity purchased goes directly towards refrigeration and HVAC in their warehouses and have begun work to implement new technology in refrigeration and HVAC that will reduce electrical usage and CO2 emissions. The company is committed over the next four years (2021-2024) to continue working on the progress they have already made and develop a formal Climate Action Plan aimed specifically at significantly reducing waste and creating a “holistic environment.”

For a company as global as Costco, sustainability is very important, and they have taken steps to ensure nothing is overlooked. They have categorized their sustainability program smaller categories. They are focused equally of the welfare and protection of their people both internal and external, just as much as they are focused on their goods and services. Their goal is to ensure their members are getting high quality products at the lowest possible price, show respect to all the people and animals who produce these products and shows respect to the way the products are handled and transported from the farm to the warehouse. No aspect of the process is left unaddressed both domestically and internationally.

As great as Costco is, there is still room for improvement. Costco does not offer a wide range of products, so the customer does not have a wide variety to choose from. There is also the fact that their target customer is not very wide as buying in bulk is not financially possible for many people. Shopping at Costco would be more beneficial if there was a variety on how items were packaged so that it would be more appealing to a wider range of people. There is also the fact that they do not have Warehouses in many communities and their delivery program is very minimal compared to their two major competitors Walmart, and Amazon. I believe that in order to remain competitive they will need to improve in the area or e-commerce and undertake a major expansion to make themselves more accessible to a wider section of the community.

Overall, I think that Costco’s positives far outweigh their negatives, and they will remain my choice of shopping for a very long time.

Sources: Google.com, Costco.com

One of the companies I interact with a lot is Starbucks. They are at every corner, and it is so convenient to get coffee fast. We all know Starbucks is an American multinational chain of coffeehouses and roastery. Starbucks is seen to be the major coffeehouse chain. As of September 2020, the company has 32 660 stores in 83 countries. The company is focusing on leading the business with ethical practices and having a safe atmosphere. Their ethics standards apply to all partners, independent contractors, third parties, and workers that interact with the brand. 

As of my research, Starbucks empowers all partners to make decisions that impact their reputation. They want to make sure that everyone takes responsibility for their Starbucks Mission and acts ethically in all situations. So, let’s dig in…

            Starbucks’ core values require compliance with the law as well as ethical conduct. If those standards haven`t been met, every employee can talk to a manager, call a 24/7 Ethics and Compliance Helpline or Webline and ask for help, ask a question, or address the issue in general. All of this is anonymous so nobody can experience pressure or get into a conflict with another employee, supervisor, etc. Starbucks does not tolerate retaliation against or the victimization of any partner who raises concerns or questions regarding a potential violation of the Standards of Business Conduct or any Starbucks policy that he or she reasonably believes to have occurred.  For an employee is important to know that their opinion matters, and it has value.

            In their workplace environment, every employee must be treated with respect and dignity. This means that all partners are entitled to work in an environment that is free of harassment, bullying, and discrimination. Such as unwelcome remarks, gestures of physical contact, verbal or physical abuse, threats, and many more. At Starbucks each employee has equal opportunities for promotion, the decisions are based solely on job-related criteria. The company is stimulating employees’ growth in their career paths. Another significant ethical principal 

            Diversity is a big aspect of the company`s ethical code. Starbucks actively creates and promotes an environment that is inclusive of all people and their unique abilities, strengths, and differences, and promotes diversity as a strategic and competitive business advantage for the company. As they continue to grow, they embrace diversity in every aspect of their business. They respect diversity in each worker, customer and supplier, and all others with whom they interact. The goal for them is to be one of the most inclusive companies globally, working toward full equity, inclusion, and accessibility for those whose lives we touch. 

Some of the ethical principles of Starbucks are similar to mine, therefore I chose it as an example. Growing up we were taught what is right and wrong by our parents. Without even realizing we were developing our ethical principles. You meet new friends they also influence, and you change. You relocate and embrace different beliefs. Thus, personal ethical principles influence us a lot in our everyday activities. They describe you as a person, that`s why is important to understand them. I am glad Starbucks is taking ethical principles seriously and thrives as a global leader in the HR department.

As good as they are to their employees, their social responsibility is even better. The social responsibility strategy is based on three pillars – Community, Ethical Sourcing, and Environment.

            To have a positive impact on the communities, Starbucks develops community stores that partner with local nonprofits. The nonprofits these stores work with offer services aimed to meet the needs of the communities they’re located in. Starbucks in turn donates $0.05 to $0.15 per transaction to the nonprofit partner. Starbucks has pledged to hire at least 10,000 veterans and military by 2021 and focuses on diversity and inclusion In the workplace as we spoke above… The company also provides training opportunities for youth in their communities and has even developed the Starbucks Foundation a 501c3 whose goal is to strengthen those communities further. These are just a few of their many community-centric initiatives. When a company puts people first and focuses on making positive changes for the communities they work with and serve, consumers notice.

            The second pillar, Ethical Sourcing dictates the way that Starbucks purchases its products. The company is committed to ensuring that their coffee, tea, cocoa, and manufactured goods are responsibly and ethically produced and purchased. They say their “success is linked to the success of the farmers and suppliers who grow and produce [their] products,” and so they only purchase those products from farms and manufacturers that adhere to a certain standard of ethical treatment.

            Starbucks refers to the planet as their “most important business partner” and takes a comprehensive approach to reducing their environmental impact. To do this, they build Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified stores that are committed to recycling and conserving water, and energy and pursue strategies that address climate change on a global level. Generally, Starbucks tries to be as environmentally friendly as possible in every aspect of their operations. 

            Hands down Starbucks is trying to do everything by the book. The only thing I can recommend improving their social responsibilities is to encourage healthy competition by providing employee-chosen rewards for funds raised or volunteer hours. Promote volunteerism among the employees. Volunteering makes a world of difference; Starbucks can find a way to reward employees who decide to enroll and volunteer in social programs. For example, they can allow them to take paid time off to volunteer on specific dates.

Another thing that might help is to educate the employees. They need to be involved and informed every step of the way. They need to understand the issues your company is addressing, why you’re doing it, and exactly how. You can answer their questions by carrying out meetings and sending out informative memos. This will help them answer any customer inquiries and motivate them to join the cause.