“’We’re looking for companies to set targets directly within their supply chain so that they can track and measure the direct outcomes of their actions,’ lead author on the report and senior co-ordinator of the environmental health programme at As You Sow, Cailin Dendas, tells Sustainable Views." Read More →
The settlement, which does not require that Amazon admit wrongdoing, ends a lawsuit originally brought in California by a group of anonymous plaintiffs and As You Sow, a nonprofit that works with corporations to promote environmental and social responsibility. Read More →
As You Sow's report on Costco claimed it wasn't being as transparent as it could be and wasn't holding third-party suppliers to task. While that issue is considered "resolved" with a shareholder request for stricter regulations, just what came of that is unclear. Read More →
As You Sow, called for greater transparency on regenerative agriculture and pesticide reduction. The proposal garnered 29 percent support, demonstrating investor inuence and growing activism in this area.. Read More →
‘General Mills is falling behind its peers in reporting on pesticide reduction, which may negatively impact long-term shareholder value,’ says Danielle Fugere, president and chief counsel at As You Sow, in a statement on the vote. Read More →
Filed by As You Sow , the resolution notes that while the firm discloses pounds of pesticides avoided annually by its organic farmers, it does not report pesticide use reductions by its suppliers using regenerative agriculture practices. Read More →
These heavy metals make their way into your chocolate through the cacao bean, said Danielle Fugere, president and chief counsel at As You Sow, a nonprofit that worked with the chocolate industry to produce an investigative report on heavy metals in chocolate in 2022. Read More →
The chocolate industry and its watchdogs have been looking for solutions since a corporate accountability group based in California called As You Sow began finding lead and cadmium in dark chocolate in 2014. After years of litigation, As you Sow and the industry agreed to conduct a study to understand how metals are getting into chocolate and how to fix it. Read More →
Christopher Gindlesperger, a spokesperson for the National Confectioners Association — which represents chocolate manufactures including Hershey's, Lindt and Godiva — referred NPR to its Dec. 16 statement, which said, "The products cited in this study are in compliance with strict quality and safety requirements, and the levels provided to us by Consumer Reports testing are well under the limits established by our settlement with As You Sow" Read More →
For lead, that will mean changes in harvesting and manufacturing practices, says Danielle Fugere, president of As You Sow. Such practices could include minimizing soil contact with beans as they lie in the sun, and drying beans on tables or clean tarps away from roads or with protective covers, so lead-contaminated dust won’t land on them. Another option is finding ways to remove metal contaminants when beans are cleaned at factories, Fugere says. Read More →
ESG disclosure is maturing and starting to get the support it needs from the SEC, said Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow, a shareholder advocacy group that pushes companies to be more socially responsible.
“It’s all moving us into a place where we can actually judge which companies are part of an economy based on justice and sustainability,” Behar said. Read More →
As You Sow focuses on environmental and climate issues but has waged investor campaigns or gone to court on several food-related issues. The nonprofit group and the National Confectioners Association released a report in August identifying growing and harvesting conditions for cacao beans that led to toxic heavy metals lead and cadmium in chocolate. Read More →
The result of a three-year study by a multi-disciplinary panel of four experts into the sources of lead and cadmium in cocoa and chocolate - and how levels may be reduced in the future - has been published by the National Confectioners Association (NCA) and nonprofit organization As You Sow. Read More →
"We are concerned that the Proposal's division of funds into three separate categories does not reflect the reality of how fund managers incorporate ESG factors in investment and stewardship decision-making, which could increase compliance costs," As You Sow CEO Andrew Behar said in a letter to the SEC. Read More →
E.S.G. supporters say critics may have a point. Andrew Behar, C.E.O. of the shareholder advocacy group As You Sow, agrees that many supposed E.S.G. investments don’t reflect true sustainability — with ever more capital directed toward the idea and many funds failing to live up to their promises. Read More →
Two shareholder groups, Green Century Capital Management and As You Sow, are pushing Travelers to measure and report emissions generated by its customers and investments. Without understanding this broader carbon footprint, the groups say, Travelers cannot know how it is exposed to the likely financial risks of increasing climate catastrophes. Read More—>
For far too long, the Securities and Exchange Commission—the nation’s top Wall Street watchdog—has responded only tepidly to the global climate crisis. This week, that finally changed. On Monday, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) voted three-to-one to issue draft rules that will require publicly traded corporations to be more transparent with investors about their greenhouse gas emissions and how climate change may pose a risk to their businesses. Read More →
On Thursday, Shareholder advocacy organization As You Sow released Road to Zero Emissions: 55 Companies Ranked on Net Zero Progress, which ranked companies on their progress in aligning their emissions reductions with the 1.5-degree Paris Agreement goal.
“Approximately 84% of the assessed companies received total scores of ‘D’ or ‘F’’, underscoring that we have a long way to go toward net-zero progress,” said David Shugar, As You Sow’s climate initiative manager and lead report analyst. Read More →
Then there’s the issue of carbon offsets. Science Based Targets, as well as Climate Action 100+, an investor-led initiative to make sure the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters are taking necessary climate action, both advise that offsets should be avoided or at least limited. “What [they both] say is that carbon offsets should not be used until it’s absolutely necessary and because it’s infeasible to do anything else, so the focus has to be on companies actually reducing their own emissions and their own value chain emissions,” says Danielle Fugere, president and chief counsel at As You Sow. Read More →
Too many still rely on buying permission to pollute through carbon offsets rather than changing how they source energy, says sustainable-investing advocate As You Sow. The nonprofit on Thursday issued its periodic report, “Road to Zero Emissions: 55 Companies Ranked on Net Zero Progress“.
“The next few years are critical in achieving emissions reductions and setting a less catastrophic path for the global climate,” said Danielle Fugere, president of As You Sow. “To address the current gap between goals and action, As You Sow’s scorecard weights near-term, year-over-year greenhouse-gas emissions reductions as the largest scorecard component.
The University of California, San Diego, and the nonprofit sustainable-investing advocacy group As You Sow concluded that the linguistic patterns found in mutual fund and ETF prospectus language they reviewed has a relatively low correlation with its ESG rating. The collaborating teams spent four months analyzing 94 mutual funds and ETFs with “ESG” in their name.
“We see funds with ESG in their names getting F’s on our screening tools because they hold dozens of fossil fuel-extraction companies and coal-fired utilities,” said As You Sow CEO Andrew Behar.
Investing in ESG funds is like trying to navigate “the Wild West” as both regulations and enforcement fall short, according to Andrew Behar, the chief executive of As You Sow.
"The theme is that investors are looking to all of their companies to address climate risk," said Danielle Fugere, the president and chief counsel of As You Sow.
Last year, 14 ESG resolutions backed by the sustainability advocacy group were voted on by shareholders of some of the nation’s largest companies, according to data compiled by the Manhattan Institute think tank. More than a quarter of As You Sow’s proposals were supported by those investors.
In the most recent year of data, Americans spent almost $9 billion on pesticides for agricultural use. Benchmarks outlined in a new report from As You Sow, titled “Pesticides in the Pantry: Transparency & Risk in Food Supply Chains,” identify the degree to which major food manufacturers have adopted practices to measure and mitigate risks related to the use of synthetic pesticides in agricultural supply chains. Read More →
"We believe that compensation drives outcomes," says Danielle Fugere, president of As You Sow, a nonprofit that works in shareholder activism. "So when an executive team is incentivized to actually accomplish a goal, then they're more likely to do so." Read More →
Danielle Fugere, president of As You Sow, a nonprofit that promotes environmental and social corporate responsibility through shareholder advocacy and other activities, also pointed to the broader trend while urging Wells Fargo to share more about specific actions it will take. Read More →
"The financial system is recognizing climate risk — and moving toward addressing it," said Danielle Fugere, the president of As You Sow, a nonprofit that promotes environmental and social corporate responsibility. "This is an important signal to the entire economy." Read More →
“Awareness of antibiotic risk has increased among both shareholders and consumers,” says Christy Spees, environmental health programme manager at As You Sow, a campaign group focused on shareholder advocacy. Read More →
The "almost non-existent bidding for oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge were not surprising. It confirms what we already know to be true: the era of drilling for oil at any cost is over," says Danielle Fugere, president of As You Sow, an environmental non-profit. Read More →
Exxon said it made the disclosure due to investor interest. “They’re seeking dollars against companies that are disclosing Scope 3,” said Danielle Fugere, president of As You Sow, a non-profit shareholder activist group. “I don’t think they have any choice.” Read More →