Shopping to Improve the World : Consumers: Using a new guide, buyers can satisfy their tastes and their consciences.
“Here’s Avon--they made a big improvement this year. They are one of three cosmetics companies that stopped all animal testing. And Ben & Jerry’s ice cream . . . Celestial Seasonings . . . Dolefam, which is a small health food company; Eastman Kodak; General Mills; Johnson & Johnson. . . .”
Alice Tepper Marlin is reading off her “honor roll” of American companies, grading them on their corporate behavior in the 11 key categories used in her new paperback, “Shopping for a Better World: A Quick and Easy Guide to Socially Responsible Supermarket Shopping.”
The questions are tough:
Do the companies have women and minorities on their boards of directors? Do they encourage recycling? Do they offer job-sharing, flextime and parental leave to their employees? If the answer is “yes,” explains Marlin, they get a top rating in those categories, with a big, fat check mark “.”
Are they involved with the nuclear power industry? Do they have weapons-related contracts with the Defense Department? Do they package their products in excessive layers of plastic? Do they pollute? If so, Marlin flunks them in those categories, with a big, fat “X.”
In between those two grades is a little check mark, indicating an average performance.
The purpose of “Shopping for a Better World,” Marlin explained, is consumer empowerment. Armed with its 191 pages of intricate ratings charts, supermarket customers can exercise their political and social values by buying products from the companies whose policies they approve.
“People want to conduct their lives in an ethically consistent way,” said Marlin, “and that includes how they shop.”
Marlin is executive director of the New York-based Council on Economic Priorities (CEP), a nonprofit membership organization that has specialized in research on the social records of corporations (as well as work on national security and peace issues) since it was formed 20 years ago. As executive director, she is chief spokeswoman for all the group’s major activities and is an author--along with Ben Corson, Jonathan Schorsch, Anitra Swaminathan and Rosalyn Will--of “Shopping for a Better World.”
The council got into the shopping guide business in 1987 with a hefty publication titled “Rating America’s Corporate Conscience,” which looked at the records of 130 leading corporations, devoting five to 10 pages to each company.
“We heard from a lot of people who liked it but wanted something more portable,” said Marlin.
So in 1988 they self-published “Shopping for a Better World: A Quick and Easy Guide to Socially Responsible Supermarket Shopping,” a pocket-sized edition that surprised them with runaway sales. “Our most optimistic original projection was 100,000 copies,” Marlin said by phone last week from her Manhattan office. “We ended up selling more than 350,000.”
An updated and expanded paperback version (rating 168 companies and 1,300 brand names) has just been published by Ballantine Books, and Marlin was back from a cross-country promotional tour, concentrating on radio talk shows. “I did a lot of call-in shows, and the exciting thing was the number of people who already knew about the guide and were using it,” she said.
The new “Shopping for a Better World” evaluates companies according to their performance on the following social issues: charitable giving, advancement of women, advancement of minorities, involvement in military contracting, animal testing, disclosure of information on company policies, participation in community outreach programs, involvement with nuclear power, presence in South Africa, concern for the environment and the family benefits a company offers its employees.
“What we’re doing is informing consumers, not telling them how to vote,” Marlin cautioned. On three issues that don’t have a clear public consensus--military contracting, nuclear power and South Africa--the ratings chart does not use value-judgment check marks, but simply “yes” or “no.”
“People can integrate the information with their own value framework,” Marlin explained. “Most people prefer not to buy peanut butter made by a weapons manufacturer, but there isn’t complete agreement on it. Some people think we should be spending more on defense.” And animal-based research is so complex (many people see a difference between research on cosmetics and research on cancer, for instance), that the guide has three ratings in that category.
Its authors consider all this information to be a shopping supplement. Clearly, acknowledges Marlin, customers pushing carts down the aisles of a supermarket are thinking about things such as product price and nutrition before a company’s record on charitable giving or whether they promote women. “You don’t use this guide all the time,” she said. “There are lots of ways to shop. When there’s a big special on something, you buy it for the price. But often, when you see all those detergents, or cans of peas, lined up, looking just alike, these ethical considerations could make a difference.”
Why should businesses--with a bottom-line responsibility to stockholders in a fiercely competitive world--be expected to behave in socially responsible ways?
Two reasons, said Marlin, who graduated from Wellesley College in 1966 with a degree in economics and an interest in black capitalism and breaking poverty cycles. “First, for the same ethical and moral reasons that motivate individuals--because they care about the whole society. Second, because of enlightened self-interest, they’ll be more attractive to consumers.”
Marlin has been a corporate watchdog since the late 1960s when, as a young securities analyst and portfolio manager for a small Boston firm, she was asked to manage the pension fund of a synagogue, with the stipulation that she avoid investing in companies that manufactured weapons being used in Vietnam.
“That sort of screening was a new idea in 1969, and I thought there might be lots of people who felt that way.” So Marlin persuaded her firm to run a small advertisement offering this service:
“Peace Portfolio: We will manage your account without investing in weapons.”
“I thought it was a brilliant thing to do,” she said. “It gave me a way to integrate what I thought was important in the world. I wanted to integrate other social concerns, civil rights and the environment.”
But taking on the whole package of social issues was too big to be practical so, with friends, she founded the Council on Economic Priorities. Their goal was to provide information on corporate responsibility to the investment community, and they have conducted numerous studies and reports on subjects ranging from air pollution and occupational safety to the politics of defense contracting.
They were ahead of the tide. “In the last few years,” said Marlin, “the amount of funds invested with some sort of social screening has climbed to nearly $500 billion.”
Marlin says the council’s consumer surveys show an increasing public interest in the way businesses conduct themselves on a variety of levels. “This year we added the category of (employee) family benefits because it’s something a lot more people are interested in now. And the category of animal testing is the fastest-growing: It exploded a few years ago. This year the biggest consumer issue is the environment, and one reason for that is Earth Day 90 coming up in April.”
Their surveys also indicate that consumers actively use “Shopping for a Better World.” “We did a survey a few months after the first guide came out. Of 968 consumers who responded, nearly 80% said they had switched brands as a result of what they read in the shoppers guide. And 65% said they regularly checked the guide when they went shopping.”
This little success story does not necessarily please all the corporations rated in the guide, especially those who come up with overall low grades.
“Actually, we get relatively little negative reaction,” said Marlin. “We’ve never been sued, though we have gotten many threats over the years.” They start the rating process by asking the companies themselves for information in a detailed questionnaire. “But we don’t stop with what they give us,” said Marlin. “We go through government sources, computer sources, research groups and citizen groups to try and resolve conflicting stories. We corroborate everything.
“Before we finalize it, we send every company their tentative grades, and we do make a lot of changes if they ask and if they can provide documentation with additional information.
“We have done everything necessary to protect ourselves from libel suits. We’ve been around for 21 years (doing similar studies) and it is clear that we do a balanced, fair job.”
At least one company disagrees. James River Corp., a Virginia paper company that is mentioned in the new book’s press material as receiving low marks in several categories, including women’s advancement and the environment, says the documentation is outdated. “I don’t know whether it’s based on old information or they were just careless,” said Elise Lemmond, who joined James River last month as director of community and media relations. “We don’t feel that we were fairly rated, and we are in the process of filing a response to them.”
The company, which has recently grown by acquisitions has “inherited a lot of problems,” she said. “The old record was particularly weak in some environmental areas, but we are changing that. Over the next three years we will spend well over $3 million on environmental projects, fixing problems that in most cases we did not cause.”
As for low marks in promotional policies, she said, “We’re a small corporate company. We just don’t have that many managers--women or blacks.”
She thinks the publication deadlines are unrealistic. “The situation here is changing daily, but we’re being asked right now to supply information for their 1991 guide. The questionnaire they provide is just massive.”
In response, Leslie Gottlieb, CEP director of communications, noted that the book’s disclaimer emphasizes its August printing deadline. The council welcomes substantive changes from companies who disagree with their ratings, she said, “but James River didn’t provide the documentation.”
“We do stand by our research,” she said. “We have a long track record and, I think, a solid one.”
On the other hand, a good grade in “Shopping for a Better World” can make a company smile.
“We weren’t in the first edition, and we asked if we could be included in this one,” said Susan Eastman, public relations manager for Celestial Seasonings of Boulder, Colo., a manufacturer of herbal teas. “We think it’s a terrific tool, and we hope it’s a resource people will use.”
Her company made Marlin’s honor role with top grades in nine of the 11 categories. “I was impressed by the depth of the research,” Eastman said. “As a company, you really have to document your claims.”
Celestial Seasonings flunked the family benefits test. “We didn’t have the things like day care, job-sharing and flextime that they use for evaluations,” said Eastman. “It’s an accurate reflection of where we’re at as a company. There’s always room for improvement.”
She approves of the idea of a “better world” shopping guide whether or not people use it every time they go to the grocery store.
“I think it has a broader role as a consciousness-raiser,” she said. “If it develops in consumers an awareness of unacceptable practices by companies that they are going to make noise about, I think that’s good. We all have responsibility, and it will help people tune in a little more to what that responsibility is.”
Using the shopping guide to its maximum can keep a consumer busy because the authors also provide names, addresses and telephone numbers of all the corporations rated, with the suggestion that the consumer use them.
That’s the approach being taken by Mark and Robin Pittman of Cedar Falls, Iowa. “My wife and I wanted to get ourselves in the mode,” said Mark Pittman. “We make buying decisions on the basis of this book, and we wanted to inform the companies of our positive and negative decisions, and explain why.”
Each week they will pick a different category, he said: “Because we are choco-holics, we started with chocolate.” After looking at the ratings, they wrote to the Hersey Food Corp. chairman explaining why they bought Hersey’s product and to the Nestle Co. explaining why they bypassed Nestle’s.
“This is a chance to take a stand,” said Pittman. “As corporate people realize there are people who use the shopping guide, it will make it a more powerful instrument.”