Big Corporate Values (?)

Corporate Controls – The Everyday Products Sector

Brands Through the Lens of Just One Key Element of Most: Palm Oil Palm Oil is identified under >200 names on the market. A few of them: are: Brands Through the Lens of Just One Key Element of Most: Palm Oil “Palm oil — which appears in a dizzying amount of food and cosmetic products, and is a feedstock for biofuel — poses many environmental problems. It’s the largest driver of Indonesian deforestation, which destroys habitat and contributes to climate change.”

Palm Oil is Used for Numerous Product In Use, Including: Also used as Biofuel

Destruction of forests (slash and burn) for the sake of palm oil production are disrupting the ecology of forests around the world – particularly in South Asia. Orangutans, forced out of habitats, are sometimes killed for convenience, or die from smoke inhalation and Burns. Many become homeless.

Particularly Endangered Mammals:

The Sumatran tiger is a tiger population that lives in the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It was listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List in 2008, as the population was estimated at 441 to 679 individuals… ….with no subpopulation larger than 50 individuals and a declining trend.

Negative Social (Human) Impact of Palm Oil Companies often force local communities to give up their traditional life styles, often without compensation (Casson, 2002). This process is facilitated by regional governments who convince local people to surrender their land and participate in company activities (Potter and Lee, 1997).

Companies Self-RegulateResponsible Palm Oil Production You can review how here. There are critics; not all at the corporate roundtable report, though many do

Bottom Line: Consider the massive profit of multi-nationals Consider how important it is for them to be as free of regulation as possible for optimal profitability Consider how important it is that corporations become accountable for resource use and impact

There’s Money Behind the Means of Free Corporate Action

“The self-reinforcing quality of corporate lobbying has increasingly come to overwhelm every other potentially countervailing force.” Lee Drutman, Atlantic Monthly, April 15, 2015

Polman talks to Fortune Magazine in 2017 In 2012, the CEO created the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan, a decade-long scheme to double the company’s revenue while also slashing its carbon footprint by half In the developing world, business accounts for 60 percent of GDP, 80 percent of financial flow and 90 percent of job creation

The Term “Sustainability” and Unilever One of the challenges facing Polman in his quest to achieve…the goals is the actual term ‘sustainability’. …the vagueness of the term, as well as its various definitions, can stretch so much that the illusion of sustainability is actually greater than the reality. Critics point to the company’s use of “sustainable” soybeans, a certification system that did not exist until Unilever’s involvement, and is still unregulated at this initial stage.

However The fact that sustainable soy beans in the US were not previously an option perhaps indicates a step in the right direction, inspiring more farmers to use best practices to help their own levels of productivity and reduce their annual costs. Business Learns From Itself

In 2011, S. Uren from Forum for The Future noted: Unilever isn’t perfect. There are still products in the portfolio which …don’t seem that sustainable…{and} there are still those advertising campaigns which do not appear to be promoting fairness and equality. But it is a business in transition, and a business with a big plan. And quite frankly, given the absence of coherent government action, and consumer ambivalence on sustainability, it is one of the few positive forces out there right now for sustainability. Other big brands and businesses would do well to follow its lead.

Your Opportunity? https://www.unileverusa.com/careers/graduates/uflp/