Gucci to Taco Bell, sustainability labels are thriving. So what?

Published on GreenBiz.com (http://www.greenbiz.com)

Gucci to Taco Bell, sustainability labels
are thriving. So what?
By Tensie Whelan
Created 2014-05-30 04:30

Certified goods and services, produced under rigorous independent standards
for environmental and social sustainability, have undergone a prolonged
growth spurt, posting double-digit annual gains in key markets for a good
decade.

But so what?

We know that Rainforest Alliance Certified coffee production grew 20 percent
(it's now 5.2 percent of global production), RAC tea grew 28 percent (now 14
percent of global production) and RAC cocoa grew 41 percent (now 13
percent of global production). Last year Rainforest Alliance certified its
millionth farm worldwide, including the first certified palm oil plantation and the
first certified tea farm in China.

A raft of new certified products from soap to beef recently have hit store
shelves. Iconic companies are getting attention with certified products such
as McDonald's Pumpkin Spice Latte, Taco Bell's RAC coffee to "boldly disrupt
breakfast" or Gucci's certified leather handbags.

These are impressive results to most (although sustainability pros have gotten
used to them and practically expect them). The relevant question is, what do
they really mean for consumers, livelihoods and the planet?

At a recent Rainforest Aliance conference at Citi headquarters in New York,
150 business leaders and producers from around the world convened for a
deep dive into the context and backstories of how they've experienced the
phenomenal growth of certification. Looking beyond the aggregate numbers,
here are some things participants told us it means to them:

Evolving understanding

Although it's taken time to climb the curve, a sustainability mindset now
pervades many kinds of businesses, including guitar maker C.F. Martin, which
uses specialized hardwoods or "tone woods."

"We're not a major consumer, but we're a good canary," says Greg Paul,
Martin's chief technology officer. Since the Adirondack red spruce the industry
once relied on virtually disappeared, "our understanding evolved," says Paul.

Martin has a long history of looking for responsibly harvested wood, but when
it started working to incorporate FSC certified woods into its supply chain
around 1997, very little was available — enough for less than 1 percent of its
needs. Since that time, FSC-certified wood demand and supply exploded
worldwide, and attitudes changed. "It's been a journey," says Paul. "New FSC
sources are arriving all the time now. Suppliers who 10 years ago couldn't
imagine how they'd ever be able to implement FSC are now sending us
certified wood in new species." Today about three-quarters of Martin's wood
supply is FSC-certified, "and we're not stopping there."

                                                                       When
forests are cut down to make tea plantations, the resulting rise in temperature

can be bad for growing tea. (Credit: Barta VI via Flickr)In the 400-year-old tea
industry, hiring migrant workers to clear forests for planting was the
unquestioned norm a generation ago. Today, tea-producing regions have
seen radical changes in rainfall, and temperatures 4 to 5 degrees higher in
summer and lower in winter, according to Rajeev Takru, director of McLeod
Russel India, the world's largest private tea producer. It now teaches workers
that if they keep consuming environmental resources such as forests, they'll
exhaust them and undercut tea production.

"The current generation doesn't quite believe it yet," says Tukru, but the old
mindset is shifting. Working with employees and local communities, McLeod
Russel is instilling wider awareness of sustainability as it certifies its entire tea
supply chain (43 of its 62 estates are Rainforest Alliance Certified, and the
rest are in the RAC pipeline). In terms of that investment producing greater
efficiency, "it's a long-term return," Turku says, "but it's inevitable."

Raising yields and incomes, securing futures

In many cases, certification already has generated tangible returns by raising
yields and incomes on existing land, or without clearing more land for planting
or grazing. As the latest IPCC report points out, climate change and extreme
weather pose a threat to food security. Agriculture and the deforestation it
drives are a huge part of the climate problem, accounting for up to 30 percent
of GHG emissions. So intensifying yields on existing land without destroying
more forests is key to feeding more than 9 billion by midcentury.

The first sustainable certified cattle ranches are operated in Brazil by Grupo
JD. They have doubled production per square meter of land by selecting
better cattle breeds, implementing better grass management and using other
sustainable practices. Sharply higher yields from improved management also
mean sharply lower land impacts and GHG emissions.

In the Dominican Republic, cocoa farmers undergoing certification learned
pruning and other techniques that raised their yields 30 percent to 40 percent
on existing cropland, which raises their incomes. "Unless you go to where
cocoa is grown, you have no idea," says Nell Newman, CEO of Newman's
Own Organics, which sources certified cocoa. "It's a rough life — not a lot of
infrastructure to transport cocoa or push to get a good price. Poverty is a
fundamental problem."

If
farmworkers don't get a fair wage for their cocoa, we may not get any more
chocolate. (Credit: Nico Nelson via Flickr)Raising yields and incomes to pay
farmers more is a matter of justice, but also a matter of securing future supply,
as young people are leaving farming in search of viable livelihoods. "There
may not be more cocoa if no one is there to pick it," Newman says.

Forty-five years ago in Nova Scotia, timber was a cheap commodity, sold at
around $8 a cord, which meant "Dickensian" wages for foresters, according to
Kingsley Brown, longtime president of the Nova Scotia Landowners and
Forest Fibre Producers Association. Brown helped organize the landowners,
which eventually got prices up to $128 a cord. That showed the forests had
value, and allowed landowners to invest in managing them sustainably. Today
90 percent of NSLFFPA forests are FSC certified.

Improving forest economics in Canada is not on a par with fighting poverty in
the Dominican Republic, but the principle is similar: environmental and socio-
economic sustainability are linked; both are needed to create livelihoods for
the next generation of farmers and foresters, and to secure future production.
"It's not just about money anymore," says Brown. "It's doing the right thing for
the land that will pass to their families."

Connecting with consumers

In a tighter economy, consumers are less willing to pay more for sustainability:
increasingly, they just expect and demand it. In the travel and tourism sector,
where 51 percent of meeting planners choose certified venues exclusively and
71 percent prefer them over non-certified ones, "the burden is no longer on
consumers to seek sustainability; it's on the industry to provide it," says Leilani
Latimer, head of marketing at travel giant Sabre, parent company of
Travelocity.

Cosmetics consumers expect product packaging, at the least, to be certified.
(Credit: Aleksey Stemmer via Shutterstock)Antonia Simon-Stenberg, senior
sustainability advisor to Oriflame Cosmetics, agrees: "Sustainability is just
expected as a minimum given." It may not be top-of-mind for cosmetics
customers, yet "they don't want to be disappointed by hearing about
something we aren't managing well." So Oriflame is working on incorporating
certified palm oil. It already sources FSC-certified paper and board, bearing
certification seals on its packaging and the 10 million catalogs it prints every
three weeks.

Simon-Stenberg calls Oriflame's network of more than 3 million consultants in
65 countries that sell its products "a great opportunity to communicate about

sustainability and making informed choices." They're learning to see
sustainability as a point of pride in the product, which they have an opportunity
to communicate to hundreds of millions.

"The biggest sustainability challenge is not operational; it's communications,"
says Latimer. As this study from BuzzBack and Rainforest Alliance shows,
"sustainability" means very different things to people of different ages and
backgrounds. It's a puzzle to craft the right words to weave it into a company's
brand promise, and to articulate the argument for choosing sustainability in a
way that connects across diverse audiences.

There's great, promising work being done in this area. The Guardian, the third
most read news site in the world, with millennial street cred and a reputation
for innovation, is engaged in it. So is Twitter, which hosts 340,000 tweets
about sustainability every week (spiking to 1.2 million on Earth Day this year)
and represents a huge opportunity to connect customers with sustainable
products and services. The Rainforest Alliance is working with both of them,
and Guardian and Twitter executives presented at the New York conference.

Can certification save the day?

To return to the "so what" question: The growth of certification is impressive,
although not monolithic. There's still oversupply of some certified products
relative to current demand in some places, and undersupply in others.
Certification has generated many positive impacts, and has been good for
producers and companies practicing it. But can it scale up fast enough to shift
global-scale problems such as rising greenhouse gas emissions, declining
biodiversity and widening inequality in hunger vs. obesity and food waste?

One takeaway from the New York meeting is that the rise of sustainability isn't
only quantitative; it's also generating big, qualitative shifts in organizations,
markets, mindsets, communications and behaviors. That makes it more than
just smart marketing or risk mitigation strategy; it's a fundamental,
transformative, long-haul trend aligning production, markets and consumers
with a sustainable future.

Image of bananas by Sally Crossthwaite via Flickr.

Source URL: http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2014/05/30/sustainability-certification-
booming-so-what