Business & Finance

Amazon has a reputation for forward thinking, but when it comes to sustainability, the company has often fallen behind the times. For years, it has weathered criticism over its worker treatment, recycling and other sustainability metrics. Recently, however, the online retailer has signaled that a change may be on the way. Dara O’Rourke, a leading expert on global supply chains, has joined the company’s sustainability team.

Sustainability, sometimes under the banner of corporate social responsibility (CSR), used to be a specialty practice used by only a few companies, like Nike and Coca-Cola, to manage risks to their high-value brands.

A host of major tech companies like Apple (AAPL), Facebook (FB) and Amazon (AMZN) are part of a new investment fund managed by UBS, that brings sustainability investing to life. ...

Chris Larson is the new CEO and President of New Island Capital Management, Inc. New Island Capital’s mission is to help its clients deploy capital – at scale – to generate appropriate, risk‐adjusted financial returns and transform the way natural resources are used, businesses are built and communities thrive. Read more

Traditionally, the divide between a for-profit or nonprofit organization was clear: for-profit businesses would engage in revenue generation and nonprofits would engage in charitable work to solve social issues and would largely stay away from revenue generation. The rise of social enterprises in recent years, however, has made that distinction less and less clear.

Fellow Judith Rubin wrote this article in 2003, but it still holds today. Feel free to use the "Writing a Gift Letter" sidebar at the bottom of the article to encourage your own relatives and friends to rethink their giving habits.

As we enter the holiday season, Fellow Alicia Daniel offers a checklist for Earth-friendly toy buying.

Territorial user rights for fisheries are being promoted to enhance the sustainability of small-scale fisheries. Using Chile as a case study, we designed a market-based program aimed at improving fishers’ livelihoods while incentivizing the establishment and enforcement of no-take areas within areas managed with territorial user right regimes.

It seems that almost every week, another major food company announces plans to remove artificial colors and flavors from their products. In the past six months, major food companies such as Nestle, General Mills, Kellogg's, Hershey’s and Campbell’s committed to reformulating many of their iconic brands to be free of artificial colors and flavors. National restaurant chains such as Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Subway and Noodles & Company also made similar commitments. Tens of billions of dollars of products are being reformulated.