Corporate Climate Action | Which Corps Are Keeping An Eye On Consumer Expectations

Washington (GGM) Analysis | October 9, 2019
by Noreen Wise

Many individual Americans are rushing forward with climate action, doing their best to lower personal & household carbon footprints by targeting the 5 major categories for quick action:

Home – switching to solar, managing efficiency
Transportation – Hybrid or EV autos, walk more
Food – eat minimal dairy & red meat, home composting bins to be applied to garden & forest soil
Stuff – buy less stuff in general, and buy used whenever possible
Nature – huge focus in cutting carbon; our oceans can’t hold anymore carbon, we must all become gardeners and planters: trees, flowers, shrubs, ground cover, compost, compost & more compost (nutrient rich soil from compost will enable soil to hold much more carbon)

And now, with the holiday shopping season quickly approaching, it’s time to focus on America’s large corporations with intense scrutiny as we decide where to spend our holiday shopping dollars. Let’s make Climate Action an important criteria for patronage.

For example, Target Stores, one of the huge shopping mecca’s for Black Friday deals, has assured consumers that 500 of their stores will be fitted with solar panels on roofs come November. Go, Target! Your customers appreciate your concern over the rising global temperature. But can you go one step further, and please remove all single-use plastic shopping bags from your cash registers and force shoppers to use reusable bags. Thank you!

There have been several recent headlines highlighting corporations who’ve taken bold steps into sustainability and climate action. From Marriott Bonvoy hotels eliminating single-use plastic toiletries, to Nike opening a massive distribution center that uses 100% renewable energy. And what about Apple’s commitment to lowering carbon levels… is our favorite Apple green or red?

Further, just yesterday, Act One Climate 100 released it’s Corporate Climate Action Progress Report. Act One Climate 100+ is a group of 370 investors managing $35 trillion in assets of the worlds largest carbon emitters . Their website notes that their goal is to:

Curb emissions
Improve governance and
Strengthen climate-related financial disclosures

Awareness and accountability make a significant difference, especially when billions of global citizens are then armed with facts enabling us to separate climate action focused corporations from profit-above-all-else focused corporations and spend our money accordingly.

So this holiday season, before hitting the stores or clicking online, we must first Google to see what each brand and retailer is doing to fight global warming. We only have a few years to get this right. We must act immediately. Numerous companies have created innovative solutions. There’s no time to hesitate, though. If a company isn’t onboard with climate action, then they’re off board. There’s no neutral position. We the consumers hold all the power this holiday season. It’s imperative that we let our climate action feelings be known and simply shout “NO” to inaction by using our wallets to express our feelings and priorities.