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:
That is an interesting concern you have for the collaborative movement of Leather Working Group. I don’t entirely disagree. For centuries, humans have decided that one way of doing something is the only way, or the best way, until centuries later, science either innovates new techniques, or, proves an old technique to be damaging to the greater good of Earth and its society. It wasn’t until recent years that humans realized the damages inventions from the 60’s and 70’s would have on humanity later.
That being said, I would not be concerned that the LWG is going in a wrong direction. Established 10 years ago in 2005, science had already reached a sophisticated level (in relative to today, not the future frontier of science). Since then, LWG has continued to improve as the world moved toward more environmentally driven initiatives. So there isn’t much to worry about LWG and its collaborators doing things wrong, but the way you pose your concern is certainly a critical way of looking at the world. (For example, for centuries, society was sexist. The norm (the collaborative) felt that it was “right” for males to assume dominance over almost all aspects of life, until someone critical came along to question that.)
Hi Vivian, thanks for your comment:)
First of all, i need to clarify that my fear is not only for LWG but also for other similar collaborations among different industries generally. Indeed, LWG has been improving environment for a long time and they did several good jobs for sure, but my concern is what if they have all the power to control everything in leather market? what if they can do better to deal with sustainable tanning practices but they don’t want to do that because some members don’t agree with that?
As i know, there is no other leather groups for pursuing sustainability in the society now. I think there should be other “competitors”, for example, some independent organizations, government or NGO and so on, in the society to balance the power LWG have. Through competition between each other, they could reach a higher level of sustainability through innovative techniques and approaches (or as you mentioned, to prove the old technique is inferior to the new one). At the same time, they can also oversee with each other to make sure their competitors are doing the right things too. And i hope all the things above could be applied to different collaborations in various industries as well 🙂