GlaxoSmithKline is at the top of ethical-monitoring firm Covalence’s ranking list, followed by Bristol-Myers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson. The quarterly report, which ranks the top 10 highest-ranking pharmas, reveals that the amount of revenue a company earns does not necessarily correspond to its ethical reputation. Pfizer, the world’s highest revenue-generating drug company, only [...]

In these ethically challenging times, which drugmaker has its act together? Covalence, a research group based in Geneva that tracks ethical reputations, recently released its quarterly update in which various industrial sectors were examined. The firm compiles its rankings and charts by collecting reports – both positive and negative recent news – from the Internet [...]

Interdit d’utilisation en Suisse et dans plusieurs pays européens à cause de sa dangerosité, le Paraquat continue néanmoins à faire les beaux jours de la multinationale suisse Syngenta. Ce puissant herbicide est en effet largement utilisé dans les pays du sud, notamment au Costa Rica, où il est abondamment pulvérisé sur les plantations de bananes, [...]

Indra K. Nooyi says she still feels guilty filling a bathtub with water. It sounds far-fetched coming from the chief executive of a major multinational corporation, until you consider her early years. Nooyi, the chief executive of PepsiCo Inc. (PEP), didn’t get much water growing up during the 1960s in the Indian coastal city of [...]

Nowadays the problem of the water is becoming more important than ever before. After the World Water Day on 22th March 2007 many international organisations such as United Nations, WWF and others launched an alarm for the scarcity of water in the world and they made catastrophic predictions for the near future. In fact, many [...]

«Rainforest Alliance Certified ». Cousue sur les combinaisons des fermiers, la grenouille verte de l’ONG environnementale américaine certifie que les producteurs de café éthiopien, respectent l’environnement et apportent l’espoir d’une vie meilleure. La mana éthiopienne vend son café à un exportateur, Ask International, qui le revend ensuite à Effico, un important acheteur belge. Sur [...]

La Société sri-lankaise, spécialisée dans la confection des habits et sous-traitant de la multinationale américaine Wal-Mart en Ouganda, fait objet des plaintes d’employés déposées devant l’Organisation internationale du travail (OIT). Tri-star, précise la Confédération internationale des syndicats libres (CISL), est « une incroyable machine à violer les droits des salariés (en très large [...]

The latest ethical reputations of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies have been revealed, with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) emerging as big pharma’s Mother Theresa, according to a recently-released compilation by Geneva-based ethical-monitoring firm Covalence. Interestingly, earning power and ethical nature do not necessarily appear to go hand in hand. Covalence has published its quarterly ethical reputation ranking, [...]

Everything we buy could have “carbon footprint” labels to tell us how green the product is under a government plan unveiled today. Just as food carries warnings on salt, sugar and fat, the new labels would carry a sign or figure to alert shoppers to the CO2 emissions used. The label could be based on [...]

Five years ago, General Motors Corp. gave the world the Hummer H2, a vehicle so fuel-thirsty that GM took advantage of a federal loophole that allowed the company not to publish its estimated mileage. Today, the No. 1 U.S. auto maker by sales, usually the most conservative of Detroit’s Big Three, has assigned hundreds of [...]