Beginning in the world of business with absolutely no training, Roddick opened the first Body Shop in England in 1976. At the start of her business, Roddick made all the products herself, using only natural ingredients. After opening her first shop, she opened her second shop just six months later. Fifteen years down the road, the Body Shop had 700 branches and Roddick was awarded the 1991 World Vision Award for Development Initiative Award.

Needless to say, the immediate success was just as much a surprise to her as it was to the rest of the international business community. In 1993, in an interview with Third Way Magazine, Roddick explained,

The original Body Shop was a series of brilliant accidents. It had a great smell, it had a funky name. It was positioned between two funeral parlours - that always caused controversy. It was incredibly sensuous. It was 1976, the year of the heatwave, so there was a lot of flesh around. We knew about storytelling then, so all the products had stories. We recycled everything, not because we were environmentally friendly but because we didn’t have enough bottles. It was a good idea. What was unique about it, with no intent at all, no marketing nous, was that it translated across cultures, across geographical barriers and social structures. It wasn’t a sophisticated plan, it just happened like that.

During her long career as both a businesswomen and an activist, Roddick stayed true to her roots, playing a hands-on role in operating the business. In her conviction, Roddick was unwavering. In fact, her business was one of the very first to ban the use of ingredients tested on animals and to promote fair trade with Third World countries.

Aside from activism within her business life, Anita Roddick also went out of her way to champion of the causes that were dear to her. In 1990, Roddick founded Children On The Edge, an organization that works to help disadvantaged children affected by natural disaster, AIDS/HIV, war and disabilities. It is here that I am reminded of the famous words of Mrs. Roddick: "Pray for the dead, but fight like hell for the living."

Only confirming her commitment to benevolence, it has been reported that Roddick gave away her $104 million dollar fortune in 2005.

In the wake of the death of an amazing leader in business, philanthropy and activism, we can all be reminded of the impact one small business owner can have on the world. Let us all take this loss as a call for action, a call for greatness. If every business owner could act with half the conviction of Anita Roddick, imagine what massive social change could be actualized.

photo courtesy of AnitaRoddick.com

The UK-based organization provides support for travel management professionals and promotes best practices across the industry. The toolkit was announced at their 2007 conference entitled "Responsible Travel Management". The intent of the toolkit is to help create a framework for the travel management industry to help companies conduct business travel more responsibly and to better understand corporate social responsibility.

The toolkit includes corporate case studies highlighting successes in the use of video conferencing and ground transportation, a guide to RFP and travel policy environmental best practices, an FAQ document dispelling some emission reduction myths, and tools to calculate and analyze carbon footprints.

The toolkit is part of ITM's Project ICARUS, which was established last year to "promote carbon reduction in travel management programmes throughout the UK business travel industry." As part of ICARUS ITM is also working to implement a set of environmental accreditation standards and an awards process to give credibility and recognition to business travel suppliers who are working towards these goals.

ITM has been around since 1956 and has no doubt seen changes in their industry as transportation and technologies have evolved over time. ITM is demonstrating the need to help their members respond to new corporate needs with Project ICARUS and the toolkit, which will also make it easier for businesses to reach their CSR goals and emission reduction targets.

Via Institute of Travel Management; The Transnational; Environmental Leader

Statement: SRI does not perform as well as traditional investing
Status: Mostly False
Explanation: As more people become of aware of investing responsibly, a lot of naysayers point out that social portfolios and funds have underperformed market indexes over the last few years. This much is mostly true, but it is not that simple. Following the tech bust and subsequent recession, the market enjoyed a cyclical upturn in 2003, which continues to the present day.

In this cycle, as in most early-stage cycles, the stellar performers have been commodities-based companies, extractive companies, heavy industrial companies, and of course, oil companies. Many socially screened portfolios have not participated with these companies because they tend to rely on socially troubling practices. Commodity players (some, not all) are in developing countries paying exploitative wages. Heavy industry pollutes. Oil companies are a root cause of global warming emissions. But, since overall market indexes incorporate these companies, SRI indexes have trailed.

However, with an over-weighting toward technology and health care stocks, SRI portfolios outperformed for seven years prior to the last upturn. Most of the run-up in those cyclical stocks occurred in 2003. So, any study of the matter that does not take multiple cycles into account is just plain incomplete. The best scholarship on the topic, represented by the Social Investment Forum’s Moskowitz Prize, shows that there is no real difference between screened and non-screened performance over the last 25 years. The verdict is that SRI neither underperforms, nor overperforms traditional investing on a financial return basis.

Statement: SRI is more risky.
Status: False
Explanation: Adherents to the Dow Theory claim that by narrowing your universe of stocks through social screening, you increase your risk by decreasing diversification. The problem with that notion is that, by definition, managing a portfolio requires narrowing your universe of stocks. If that is too much work or too expensive, just get an index fund and be done with it.

Statement: Companies do not pay attention to social investors.
Status: Mostly False
Explanation: Skeptics point to alcohol, tobacco, and gambling companies, long the target of social divestment strategies, and show that the social divestment movement has not really made them change their ways. This is probably true. Divestment probably does not work when a socially repugnant enterprise is the core business. In these cases, activists can only hope that they behave more responsibly, such as has happened with cigarette settlements, better labeling, etc.

Social investment activism has been very effective with companies that have repugnant practices in the everyday pursuit of their not-especially-repugnant businesses. For example, Nike (NYSE:NKE) was once shamed as a pariah of sweat shop labor. Today, that company is one of the most progressive companies on the issue. Social investors recently persuaded large publicly traded financial companies such as Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and Lehman Brothers (NYSE:LEH) to pledge to clean up their project financing guidelines. I could go on and on. If the company's core business is not socially IRRESPONSIBLE in and of itself, SRI can have a huge effect.

Statement: National divestment campaigns do not work
Status: Jury is still out
Explanation: Social investors like to take credit for forcing companies to divest from Apartheid-era South Africa. The economic isolation was one reason that the white leadership eventually caved. I, personally, think that SRI contributed to Apartheid’s downfall, but realize that there were several other issues that contributed as well. Alas, this is a subject for another post, or even another Green Options blogger.

However, anecdotally at least, one can look at occasions of forced divestment through government regulation to see how this works. Companies have been forced to divest from countries with oppressive political regimes for decades. Forced divestment from Cuba, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, the former USSR, and its allies frankly has a mixed record. Economic isolation definitely caused some communist regimes to crumble. In other cases (Cuba, Libya, Iran), sanctions have not had much effect on destabilizing regimes. And, in others (Iraq, North Korea), it could be argued that sanctions have caused suffering only among the population while actually strengthening the targeted regimes. Having an enemy to rally against while at the same time exploiting black markets created by sanctions helped Saddam hold on to power, and is probably doing the same for Kim Jong Il.

The current campaign to divest from Sudan is a current hot-button issue. In my opinion, this is a case where national divestment could work. Oil revenues are giving the genocidal government its power. Foreign oil companies make those revenues possible. Make no mistake. The ethnic cleansing going on Darfur is all about claiming oil-rich land. If it were just about claiming political power (as in Cuba, or North Korea), I would be more skeptical that financial investors could change the minds of maniacs.

Mark Brandon is the founder of First Sustainable, a Registered Investment Advisory catering to socially responsible investors. His weekly column appears in Green Options on Mondays.

The Pennsylvania based confection maker has been working with organizations such as the World Cocoa Foundation and the International Cocoa Initiative to help ensure that cocoa farmers are treated fairly and that the crop is grown responsibly. They also signed the Harkin-Engel Protocol in 2001 that called for the end of child labor on cocoa farms by 2005.

Now shareholders are asking for more and the company is responding. Hershey's recently announced that they will evaluate their entire supply chain to make sure their other ingredients, such as sugar, dairy, nuts, and their product packaging are manufactured and produced responsibly.

Hershey's is also working with Verite, a non-profit human rights organization, and non-profit Business for Social Responsibility, to develop a supplier code. This code is like a social and environmental auditing process for their vendors, which will be transparent and available on the company's website.

Now, I'm not a Hershey's girl myself, but when a corporation like Hershey's (the largest manufacturer of chocolate and candy in the US with annual revenues of $5 billion) asks their suppliers to step up, the amount of positive change that will come out if it is huge.

And FYI - as of October of 2006, Hershey's owns the organic chocolate label Dagoba.

Via WBCSD; PR NewsWire; Hershey's

Some ideas in the works include creating a way to measure a company's carbon emissions throughout the entire supply chain; creating software to make electric grids more efficient; developing techniques to forecast water supply for cities; improving water purification and solar technologies. And this is in addition to environmental consulting - or evaluating business practices and operations to find ways to reduce water and energy consumption and waste generated.

Of course Big Green Innovations isn't all altruistic. There's big money in clean and green tech right now. Investors are putting their cash behind new technologies, and there's a growing demand for them from busisnesses and consumers. IBM realizes this and has found a way to make it work for their business.

The idea came about during a companywide brainstorming session called InnovationJam, a process geared to "identify new market opportunities and create real solutions that advance businesses, communities and society in meaningful ways". IBM pledged $100 million in development funding for the top ideas that come from the "jamming" session. Big Green Innovations is the latest.

Before you start to write this off as another green washing scheme, think again. IBM has been a corporate green leader for over 30 years - long before green became cool. IBM's approach to business is as a corporate steward. They see that environmentally and socially responsible business practices can be beneficial to the bottom line. This new venture only falls in line with their current corporate mantra:

By considering the environmental impact of their endeavors-and adopting clean technologies and environmentally sound practices - busniesses can have a profund affect on the planet not only without sacrificing revenue, but while improving it.

Via CNET; IBM