Eco-Business
Subtitle: A Big-Brand Takeover of Sustainability
By: Peter Dauvergne and Jane Lister
Contributors: Lister, Jane
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2013
Language: eng
Number of pages: 194
ISBN-13: 9780262018760
Subjects: Environmental aspects; Branding (Marketing); Sustainable development
Description: "McDonald's promises to use only beef, coffee, fish, chicken, and cooking oil obtained from sustainable sources. Coca-Cola promises to achieve water neutrality. Unilever has set a deadline of 2020 to reach 100 percent sustainable agricultural sourcing. Walmart has pledged to become carbon neutral. Today, big-brand companies seem to be making commitments that go beyond the usual "greenwashing" efforts undertaken largely for public relations purposes. In Eco-Business, Peter Dauvergne and Jane Lister examine this new corporate embrace of sustainability, its actual accomplishments, and the consequences for the environment. For many leading-brand companies, these corporate sustainability efforts go deep, reorienting central operations and extending through global supply chains. Yet, as Dauvergne and Lister point out, these companies are doing this not for the good of the planet but for their own profits and market share in a volatile, globalized economy. They are using sustainability as a business tool. Advocacy groups and governments are partnering with these companies, eager to reap the governance potential of eco-business efforts. But Dauvergne and Lister show that the acclaimed eco-efficiencies achieved by big-brand companies limit the potential for finding deeper solutions to pressing environmental problems and reinforce runaway consumption. Eco-business promotes the sustainability of big business, not the sustainability of life on Earth."--Publisher's website.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Acknowledgments; title: Acronyms; title: The politics of big brand sustainability; title: The eco-business setting; title: The eco-business market advantage; title: Eco-business tools of supply chain power; title: The supply chain eco-business of brand growth; title: Eco-business governance; title: Bibliographical references; title: Index.