Basically, John’s company helps young children in poor communities develop strong learning habits, which include dedication and perseverance. This will help them succeed in later years of their schooling. The Better World Books company really admires John Wood and his philosophy while he continues to, “build libraries in rural villages of Nepal” (Better World Books). There are other organizations very similar to Room to Read, such as Books for Africa, Worldfund, National Center for Families Learning, and, “80 other literacy partners” (Better World Books), are companies which Better World Books generates fundings for in every book they sell. This “people” aspect of the triple bottom line for this book company shows how they work with other companies, donate their fundings to help people in poorer parts of the world, and help to improve education for less fortunate people.
The “planet” aspect of a typical company is supposed to show how the company is benefitting the planet, ecologically, rather than destroying the Earth with pollution and waste. Better World Book’s term for the planet aspect is “loving your mother”, which applies to loving planet Earth. There is a book by Paul Hawken called, The Ecology of Commerce. In this book, Paul argues that, “a true economy mimics ecology in its circular no-waste systems and healthy fecundity of niches” (Better World Books). The company’s website discusses how they are trying to make the delivery of their books more sustainable. The company is going through a program where they know their carbon footprint and are trying to balance out the amount of carbon emissions that are generated through the entirety of the company’s production, including shipping and handling. They have done t...
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...” (Gunther). From these statements, Amazon clearly does not show sustainability through their company, even though they are one of the largest, and most popular bookselling companies on the market. Amazon does not, “take back electronic waste” (Gunther). Instead, it refers customers to other websites, like Earth911 for instance. This website advises people to take their old electronics back to Best Buy, Staples, and Circuit City. However, Circuit City is a company which has been bankrupt for about five years! This shows that Amazon is not a reliable company, for they do not show the same “green” aspects like Better World Books does. Amazon does not dissect a triple bottom line like Better World Books does, probably because they do not live by this practice. Our group truly believes that BWB is showing how their practices coincide with their true philosophy.
It will be advantageous for the company if they can project themselves as responsible corporate citizen and an environment friendly company. Social enrichment schemes, recycling schemes and educational funds can be initiated to cater to this cause and long term goal.
Supplying eco-friendly products has been on the Walmart agenda since the early 1990s. After a failed first attempt and much criticism, the company decided to try again. In a speech made in October of 2005, CEO of Walmart, H. Lee Scott Jr., declared Walmart would devise a “business sustainable strategy” to reduce the environmental impact the company had. Walmart could not pull this off alone. If they only focused on the confines of themselves, rather than all that they were involved with, it was estimated that they’d only reduce their impact by about 10%. To reach that goal of 100%, Walmart had to involve stakeholders to make networks which achieve sustainability. These networks proved to be vital in not only Walmart’s goal in minimizing its environmental impact, but recovering their reputation, avoiding criticism, saving money, raising awareness, improving customer satisfaction, and creating incentive for other businesses to work towards sustainability.
According to Ray Bradbury, four hundred fifty-one degrees is the temperature at which books burn, thus giving the inspiration for his novel’s title, Fahrenheit 451. In it, fireman Guy Montag, a fireman, wrestles with social norms and his own developing beliefs to uncover truth, emotion, and purpose. Through his endeavor, Montag must face robotic animals, ruthless coworkers, and treachery from his own wife, all with a considerably smaller team on his side. As the journey progresses, readers see new sides to Montag, unveil connections between two supporting characters, and must predict the outcomes of further years.
Sears Canada is meeting the environmental needs of our world in many different ways. To start with Sears not only sets goals, but the company also achieves them. Starting in 2007 Sears set the ambitious goal of reducing their paper consumption by 50% by 2013, one they achieved. One other goal they set was starting in 2007 to reduce their carbon footprint by 50% by 2020. As of 2010 they had reduced their carbon footprint by 15%, ahead of schedule. Helping to make our Earth cleaner with less garbage in landfills and less pollution in our air is what Sears is doing to help protect our Earth. The positive outcome to society that occurs by Sears meeting the environmental needs of our world is clear; less waste in landfills and cleaner air for everyone to breath.
People isolate themselves from information in this world to protect themselves and the society as a whole, but in the case of the book they take it to the extreme. The book Fahrenheit 451 shows that individuals or society shouldn’t isolate themselves from information when it could be useful.
In “The Lonely, Good Company of Books,” by Richard Rodriguez, you learn that Rodriguez had read hundreds of books before he was a teenager, but never truly understood what he was reading. His parents never encouraged him to read and thought the only time you needed to read, was for work. Since his parents never encouraged Rodriguez to read it effected how he perceived books.
Whenever we fight for clean drinking water, or clean air, or a safe workplace, we are likely to find a corporation on the other side of the issue. The goal of a corporation is, first, to survive, and, second, to return a profit to its shareholders, not to mention for money and if the air has to be fouled to accomplish these goals, then the air will be fouled. Meaning, the corporations will do anything to keep these goals even if it means that they have to cause pollution or some issues. Pollution is one of the problems by the corporations that affect us. The Business Council for Sustainable Development thinks of this as ?gToday, for instance, the earth's atmosphere is providing the valuable service of acting as a dump for pollutants; those enjoying this service rarely pay a reasonable price for it,". This is an example of corporations ?gexternalizing?h their costs. By using the air as a free dump, corporations are able to get away with paying the costs for waste disposal to the people while they prof...
The planet earth as we know it had become completely trashed thanks to humankind, and the focus on technology and consumerism caused this issue to be too much that could ever be cleaned up. Buy-n-Large was the major corporation that caused the major focus on consumerism and less attention towards the planet, and their plan to “clean up earth again” while the humans were away on a cruise failed leaving the humans on the space ship in space for hundreds of years. The Buy-N-Large corporation had become so vital to everyone’s way of life, it was socially unacceptable to not be apart of it. This dependance on this corporation made people blind to the effect it was having on the environment. In Bodil Birkebæk Olesen’s article “When Blue Jeans Went Green”, Olesen explains the American social importance to cotton made denim jeans, this parallels the reliance the people in Wall-E had on Buy-N-Large in that their obsession is very similar. Olesen concluded with somewhat of the same warning Wall-E gave, if people don’t learn to give up some of the things that are important to them that are destroying the environment, the planet will suffer. While technology was supposed to be a positive thing by cleaning up all of the trash and allowing the human’s a place to live, the effects of
Michael Holder, in the article “IKEA Argues for Business to Go All-In On Sustainability,” examines how businesses nowadays need to follow the footsteps of IKEA with the method of sustainability in mind. Holder mentioned that IKEA produced “...LED lighting which improved the lifespan and energy efficiency…” of the usage of this product. Normally, IKEA produces fluorescent bulbs in which it does the opposite of LEDs. This information indicates that the original business model has changed. Not only this action is tremendous for the environment, but it helps develop more business. It gets people excited to see what the company IKEA’s business model had sold when they involved innovation and growth within sustainability. IKEA is officially cutting back on the materials that tends to be unrecyclable. Also, they are attempting to reuse waste materials into actual resources, which is an highly important aspect of the sustainable lifestyle in which what IKEA is trying to achieve with their
To help further explain these misleading claims, a well recognized company by the media is called Terrachoice. “The Terrachoice Environment Marketing Consulting practice converts knowledge of markets, science and marketing into winning, client-centered solutions to help sustainability leaders deliver results” (“The "six sins," 2007). Terrachoice has conducted a study of the “Environmental Claims in North American Consumer Markets” and found shocking results that made them want to give warning to potential consumers about the ‘six sins of greenwashing. The Terrachoice Company was designed to improve the communication between the purchasers and consumers, helping to enhance, strengthen, and prove market relationship.
Amazon is one of the largest brands in the world, reporting $23.18 billion in sales last quarter. They operate with a customer-first mentality. This is clear in their mission statement, which is as follows: “We seek to be Earth’s most customer-centric company for four primary customer sets: consumers, sellers, enterprises, and content creators (Amazon).” Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos seeks to bring the highest quality products and most efficient services to their customers. According to critics of Amazon, Bezos’ goals have lent themselves to a
Environmental pressures have caused green supply chain management to emerge as an important corporate environmental strategy for organisations’ processes. Our discussion will describe, illustrate and critically evaluate the purchasing process of Woolworths. It will further identify the steps of the purchasing process, the effect of green purchasing and sustainable purchasing. Moreover, the essay will go on to look at the effort that Woolworths has made through their programmes and initiatives of green purchasing.
Environmental awareness has also become a distinctive competence for Walmart. The company has a genuine concern to reduce their environmental footprint, which will appeal to customers who support this initiative. They are leading the way for other big-box retailers who can make a big difference with small changes. All of their goals and objectives are published in the annual statement for shareholders and the general public.
The primary goal of The Walt Disney Company is to become one of the world’s leading producers and providers of not only entertainment, but also information (The Walt Disney Company, 2014). The company aims to achieve this by utilizing its immense brand portfolio so as to differentiate services, content, and consumer products. While this is the overall goal, there exist other innate milestones that essentially touch on socially responsible business in enhancing sustainability. They include, but are not limited to; zero net greenhouse gas emissions, whereby the company aims to have reduced net greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2020; zero waste, whereby Walt Disney hopes to achieve a 60% reduction in waste from
Over the past few decades there have been discourses both in favor and against Globalization’s capacity to guarantee a sustainable future. Authors attest societies and businesses’ inability to account for ecological and environmental limits when dealing with economic growth, examples of this are some of the traditional business metrics used by most global companies, and nations’ measure of wealth (GDP); both sides heavily resting on economic factors, fail to account for societal and environmental concerns (Byrnea & Gloverb, 2002). Other researchers point at the intensive use of resources, especially by global corporations; such as the increasing and careless consumption of fossil fuels, water, precious metals, etc. leading to a rise in GHG (Starke, 2002) (United Nations Development Program (UNDP), 2000). Most fervent opponents go as far as to call ‘sustainable development’ an oxymoron (Ayres, 1995).