Albert Heijn for Africa: no charity!

Yesterday we had the board meeting of the Albert Heijn Foundation. It was great to hear about all those good things that are happening throught the cooperation of Albert Heijn, ICCO, FairMatch Support and our suppliers in Africa. Just being a retailer that wants to create long term relationships with suppliers to ensure future volume, quality and reasonable price. Therefore AH is investing into community projects through the foundation: water systems, learning centers, HIV/Aids programs etc. etc. No charity, no way. Just good business sense and coop at its best!

Walmart Sustainability Consortium: good slow start - reprise

The end of last month I went to Washington DC to participate in a meeting of the Walmart Sustainability Consortium. Walmart started some time ago asking its suppliers to fill a scorecard on packaging. The feedback from some major suppliers was that they thought Walmart should organize a joint effort with other retailers to start asking for that kind of info, otherwise they would end up with an organization full of Chief Questionnaire executives. And so Walmart did. Together with the University of Arkansas (watch the pronounciation... , something like "arkensow"...) and Arizona they developed the Sustainability Consortium, a joint effort of retailers, manufacturers and civil society, to create a common standard for the footprint of a product related to environmental and social issues. I think that was a great thing to do. Of course we spent way too much time on bureaucracy during the meeting, I guess that is the norm these days...

Anyway, good slow start, promising for the future!