In early 2008, nearly a dozen Trillium clients asked us to develop a new investment approach – one that seeks companies providing solutions to growing global sustainability challenges.  Evolving from “do no harm,” their mantra became “invest in the innovators,” supporting only those companies actively creating positive change through their core business.  Heading their call, [...]

In August, we bade farewell to the 2010–2011 “proxy season,” the inside lingo for the annual cycle of filing resolutions, negotiating their withdrawal, and getting out the vote for the remainder that will appear on the spring proxy ballots.
“A good portion of our dialogues and resolutions resulted in agreements with companies to improve policies and [...]

Susan Baker
Good news came out of the United Nations this summer that has positive implications for shareholder advocates and activists working to promote and protect human rights.  The UN Human Rights Council (formerly the UN Commission on Human Rights) endorsed the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations ‘Protect, Respect and [...]

Natasha Lamb
As communities around the globe strive to meet ever-increasing energy demand and produce sustainable jobs and investments, we are at a crossroads where we must either aggressively adopt non-fossil fuel energy sources or risk exceeding the 2°C temperature rise already expected from the cumulative buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Mainstream conventional wisdom [...]

Cheryl Smith, Ph.D., CFA
As we watched the awesome power and devastation of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, our attention bounced between concern for the more than 18,000 people either dead or missing, horrified fascination with the evolving control issues at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, and concern about the eventual impact on the Japanese [...]

Jonas Kron
In March of this year, in the depths of the market sell-off, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner appeared before the House Financial Services Committee to discuss the need to fix the nation’s financial regulatory system. Geithner told the committee “Our system failed in fundamental ways,” and to “address this will require comprehensive reform. Not [...]

Natural gas is widely recognized as the least environmentally damaging fossil fuel, one that will play a key role in bridging our transition to a greener energy future. Although reserves of conventional natural gas have been steadily decreasing in recent years, recent advances in the unconventional drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing (or “hydrofraccing”) are [...]

Over the past year, the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) has received increasing scrutiny from consumers, scientists, regulators, the media and investors. You may have heard about it when Canada declared it unsafe. Or maybe when the water bottle manufacturer Nalgene (a brand of Thermo Fisher Scientific), announced it was phasing out its use of BPA. [...]

Just as doctors at dinner parties hear about fellow guests’ medical dilemmas, people tend to confess to me that they throw out their shareholder proxy ballots. They’re too jargon-filled and arcane, and who’s got the time to evaluate whether the auditor is a good choice or whether a shareholder resolution is as prepos­terous and costly [...]

 Susan Baker Martin with Jonas Kron 
Twenty years after the launch of Ceres catalyzed sustainability reporting in the industrial sector, several efforts are underway to bring sustainability measures and reporting to agriculture and food production, and not a moment too soon. The agricultural industry’s industrialized processes are wreaking havoc on our planet and our health. Agriculture [...]