Few weeks ago, we watched the video of Interface in the class, i was surprised that how they were committed in developing sustainable products and they also helped other entrepreneurs build their own green business. It reminded me Tamar had mentioned that Timberland is working closely with other leather company to pursue environmentally responsibility together.  Therefore, i checked out what they are doing and what is their goal on their website.

In April 2005, Timberland and other brands and companies formed a coalition called Leather Working Group (LWG), which is an organization with the goal of developing and maintaining a protocol to assess and audit the tanneries about several processing ways including air emission, water effluent quality and so on. They also would like to promote sustainable and appropriate environmental business practices in the leather industry. Nowadays, they have hundreds of members including Adidas and Nike. Not only in the leather industry, there are also similar collaborations in electronic industry and other industries, and their partners could be governments, NGO and suppliers. As a result, this kind of partnership and collaboration look like a trend in the industry to make group of companies become more sustainable.

I also found an article, Joining forces: collaboration and leadership for sustainability, it says as the issues of sustainability become more complicated, the companies find out they are not able to fight and act alone anymore. Under driven by strategic and transformational needs, they are eager to form collaboration with other stakeholders or competitors to share the resources and risks for sustainability. Beside, they could have more consolidated power to negotiate and affect other stakeholders or policy makers outside their collaborations.

However, i am a little bit afraid that if all of them in the collaboration are doing the “wrong” way which they think it is “right”; or as their power becomes bigger and bigger, there is no other organization can compete with them or control their power, it will turn out to another mode of monopoly. In my opinion, i think there should be at least one or two independent organization to oversee these collaborative organization in order to make sure they are on the right track and to maximize the welfare and sustainability of environment and society.

 

Reference:

Timberland Responsibility:

http://responsibility.timberland.com/product/tannery-successes/

Leather Working Group:

http://www.leatherworkinggroup.com/

Joining forces: collaboration and leadership for sustainability:

http://www.sustainablebrands.com/digital_learning/research_report/leadership/collaboration_leadership_sustainability