CENTER FOR BUSINESS
AS AN AGENT OF WORLD BENEFIT

Novelis Inc. has found the perfect convergence of its business objectives with environmental sustainability in the avatar of ‘recycling’. The organization has given novel hues to this term by creating partnerships to procure used aluminum cans that form a principal raw material for its product. In addition to the huge cost savings for the company this strategy has also contributed to saving the environment by decreasing the carbon dioxide off-gassing and the consumption of electricity involved in manufacturing aluminum.

TOMS shoes are the harbinger of what has been christened as the ‘one to one movement’- for every shoe a customer buys, TOMS donates a pair to a child in need. Going beyond corporate philanthropy, TOMS has integrated the spirit of positive world impact in the very heart of its business, making it a truly sustainable model.

Starbucks Coffee Company’s C.A.F.E (Coffee and Farmer Equity) Practices program ensures that Starbucks sources sustainably grown and processed coffee by evaluating the economic, social and environmental aspects of coffee growing along the supply chain. In 2005, Starbucks purchased 76.8 million pounds of coffee from the C.A.F.E Practice providers, which represents 24.6% of all coffee purchased by the company. By improving the environment, economy, and the educational and health services within local communities, Starbucks creates stability for its farmers and, in turn, for the company, according to Cindy Hoots, Senior Specialist at Starbucks in the Corporate Responsibility Office.

Women's World Banking's vision is to expand low-income women's economic participation by giving them greater access to financial information and markets. In doing so they are enabling women to not only keep their families fed but also engage in the community and develop a political voice that could bring about great change worldwide.

According to Natura's website, the search for beauty is a legitimate yearning of all human beings, but based on stereotypes imposed by society. Natura believes we must demystify the ideal of beauty and maintain ourselves by cultivating and conserving our bodies. In an effort to move towards a more sustainable business model, Natura, Brazil’s leading cosmetics company, launched a new product line, Nature Ekos. Natura Ekos line of fragrances, personal care and ambience products draws from the wealth of Brazil's biodiversity and is inspired by traditional uses of plant ingredients. In keeping with the concept of sustainability, Natura Ekos products are biodegradable and use bottles and packaging that contain recycled material. Refills are provided for each product, which both reduces their environmental impact and increases the price competitiveness of the Ekos products.

Bank ABN AMRO has made sustainability a cornerstone of its business. The bank strives to include a concern for social and environmental issues in the decision-making of every strategic business unit. These activities have gained such prominence that a special unit, the Sustainable Development Group was organized to coordinate sustainability work across the organization. The innovativeness of this sustainability mindset has led to numerous activities that are creating a shift in the impact of ABN AMRO on environment and society.

The Social Enterprise El Pan de Cada Día (Our Daily Bread) was born in 2003 as the first of its kind in Peru and the only enterprise of its kind to exclusively employ disabled persons (Personas con Discapacidad a/k/a PCD). The company rescues, recuperates and reinserts into society disabled persons of low economic resources that are totally abandoned and that live in extreme poverty in places like the province of Trujillo in La Libertad. The PCD are given dignified living conditions and the opportunity to work regularly for the first time in their lives. The bread and pastry Our Daily Bread produces is sold to approximately 15,000 persons every day in what Peruvians term the "D and E social strata". This segment of the population benefit from the cost and quality of the products created by Our Daily Bread. Working within that poor population the company is fighting against poverty by combining the employment of those at the bottom of the economic pyramid with producing an affordable product for the same.

Edun is a socially conscious clothing company created by Ali Hewson and her rock star husband, U2's Bono, with New York clothing designer Rogan Gregory. Launched in spring 2005, the company aims to bring the issue of sustainable employment to the world of high fashion. EDUN was born as an alternative approach to creating beautiful clothes in a respectful, sustainable manner and to shift the focus away from aid to trade in the developing world, particularly Africa.

William McDonough & Partners are architects who design buildings and communities worldwide that tell stories of sun, wind, water that surrounds them and of the people who inhabit them. Using a creative balance of nature and culture, they strive to create a sustainable environment that honors the relationship between the human community and the nature that surrounds them.

Cummins is a global power leader and family of four inter-related, yet diversified businesses that create or enhance value as a result of doing business with each other or having those relationships. It averages more than $6 billion in annual sales and is a technology leader in the diesel engine market, providing cutting-edge solutions to the increasingly difficult challenge of producing cleaner-running engines. Currently, Cummins clean diesel engines are powering transit buses in Southern China.

As the oldest and largest for-profit Fair Trade company in the U.S., Equal Exchange trades directly with 28 democratically run farmer co-ops located in 14 countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Its mission is to build long-term partnerships that are economically just and environmentally sound, to foster mutually beneficial relations between farmers and consumers and to demonstrate the viability of worker cooperatives and Fair Trade. They strive to build social and economic justice through the marketplace.

Millions of personal computers sit idly on desks and in homes worldwide, but what if they could be linked into a power grid to help address the world's most difficult health and societal problems? IBM asked this question and answered it in 2004 by creating the World Community Grid, a global humanitarian effort to harness unused computing power of individual and business computers and direct that power toward research designed to help unlock genetic codes that underlie diseases like AIDS and Alzheimer's or improve forecasting of natural disasters. Anyone can volunteer to donate the idle and unused time on a computer by dowloading the World Community Grid's free software and registering to participate.

Deep Water Ventures’ president, Brad Ives, has turned his interests in wood, sailing and ecology into a thriving business. The company is committed to forest stewardship and the method of selective cutting, which preserves a forest’s biodiversity, provides long-term benefits to the local population, and generates profit without adversely affecting the region’s ecosystem. By association with an independent agency that carefully monitors logging operations, the company can assure its customers that the product they are purchasing comes from sustainable forests.

A community bakery in an underprivileged area of Curitiba (Brazil) is the result of a partnership between business, community, and a city agency. The bakery benefits the lives of local residents by providing better nutrition, creating employment and educational/skill development opportunities. It is anticipated that the bakery will open a small shop, and eventually supply goods nationally and internationally. Income generated by this activity will be returned to the community.

A number of major financial institutions have come together to adopt a framework for determining, assessing and managing environmental and social issues in project financing. These global voluntary regulatory guidelines, the “Equator Principles” (EPs), are revolutionizing the way large projects are financed. Banks that adopt the EPs apply them globally to project financing in all industry sectors including mining, oil and gas, and forestry, and they make loans only to those projects whose sponsors aim to be socially responsible and environmentally sound.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters is one of the top producers of double certified – organic and fair trade - coffee. As such, the company is uniquely positioned to promote ecological restoration while at the same time participating in poverty alleviation. To assure the overall successes of the double certified product like, every year Green Mountain Coffee Roasters takes its employees, customers, and partners for a "trip to the origin". To date, about 20% of the company has taken the trip to learn about the intricate interdependencies of all coffee production processes, "from tree to cup," and to engage with partners at the origins in order to create new mutually beneficial policies, methods, and approaches to coffee production.