Nike Fights Deforestation, Won't Use Leather From Amazon-Bred Cattle

SAO PAULO (AP) - Sportswear giant Nike Inc. announced Wednesday that it will stop using leather from cattle raised in Brazil's Amazon rainforest, saying the move is part of the company's commitment to curbing the region's deforestation.

In a statement, Beaverton, Ore.-based Nike said its Brazilian leather suppliers have until next July 1 to "create an ongoing, traceable and transparent system to provide credible assurances that leather used for Nike products is from cattle raised outside of the Amazon Biome."

"We understand how important rainforests are to the health of the planet and the implications deforestation has on climate change and global warming" the statement added.

Nike did not say how much it spends on Amazon leather.

A statement from Greenpeace praised the company, saying the company's decision was prompted by a recent report from the environmental group showing that leather and meat produced from cattle in the Amazon are major contributors to the region's deforestation.

"We applaud the leadership that Nike is taking on the critical issue of Amazon deforestation," Greenpeace's national campaigns director, Lisa Finaldi, said.

She said deforestation in the Amazon - most of which involves the burning of trees to clear land for ranching and farming - is the world's fourth-biggest emitter of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

According to the Greenpeace report, "Slaughtering the Amazon," which was released in June, "every eight seconds, an acre of Amazon rainforest is destroyed for Brazilian cattle ranching, which is the biggest single driver of deforestation in the world."

The report was released after a three-year investigation that "tracked beef, leather and other cattle products from ranches involved in deforestation at the heart of the Amazon rainforest," Greenpeace said.

The Center for the Brazilian Tanning Industry did not have immediate comment on Nike's announcement, but its president, Luiz Bittencourt, said last week that the sector had the same concerns.

In a signed article published by the Sao Paulo newspaper Diario de Comercio e Industria, he said guidelines were being prepared to guarantee that Brazilian leather is produced in "an environmentally sound way."

Last month, the Greenpeace report prompted Brazil's three largest supermarket chains, Wal-Mart, Carrefour and Pao de Acuar, to announce that they would suspend contracts with suppliers found to be involved in Amazon deforestation, the Brazilian Association of Supermarkets said on its Web site.

Comments

[uncleblumpkins]

Don't praise Nike for it's half-assed efforts in being ethical.

[mouselion]

As long as they continue to but leather from Brazil. . .

As long as they continue to rely on cheap labor. . .

the verification process will continue to be a shell game which Nike will continue to feign surprise over.

[KarateKid]

But they'll still use slave labor in 3rd world countries.

[maisnon55]

Nike doesn't have to use leather at all, there are incredible substitutes these days.

[ReedYoung]

I understand that improvement tends to be incremental, especially in businesses, other than in their startup phase. And if Greenpeace compliments Nike, I suppose it most likely is a real commitment to improve, which Greenpeace feels it can adequately monitor, and verify or falsify. As corporate responsibility goes, I suppose this is above average? Anyway, citizens can only expect so much, and the law doesn't require Nike to do any better.
http://www.truthout.org/061109B

[FrTown]

A publicity stunt.
If they were sincere, they would abide by International laws prohibiting the use of child labor.

[ReedYoung]

That stands to reason.

[
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/1020-01.htm
Philip Knight, the company chairman, clearly stung by reports of children as young as 10 making shoes, clothing and footballs in Pakistan and Cambodia, attempted to convince Nike's critics that it had only ever employed children accidentally. "Of all the issues facing Nike in workplace standards, child labor is the most vexing," he said in the report. "Our age standards are the highest in the world: 18 for footwear manufacturing, 16 for apparel and equipment, or local standards whenever they are higher. But in some countries (Bangladesh and Pakistan, for example) those standards are next to impossible to verify, when records of birth do not exist or can be easily forged.
]

Genius, if business ethics are so hard to find there, maybe those aren't ethical places for you to be doing any business!

[johnnygoodwud]

do i support sweatshops, nope. but working for what they get and living in dorms, might be better than nothing and living in the streets. the world in not perfect.

[JOHNROGER909]

Too bad Nike still uses 12 year old girls in their Asian sweatshops.

[BannedNBoston]

Nike happy to relocate to Viet Nam where it pays young women pennies an hour for work.
The women that work there cant afford apartments they live in dorms at the factory.

[quiviran]

It's standard Asian labor practice. Your iPhone or Dell computer was probably made by a company dormitory dweller.

Used to be that way in the US, then the unions forced a living wage and the company towns fell by the wayside. Now that unions are fading, I wonder what will happen in the US. A safe place to live and three meals a day are worth something. I've known people who deliberately got themselves arrested just to achieve those goals.

[Pquilson]

Do you support such practices? How is your view on human rights doing for you? As long as it does not happen here, it is OK?
For the record, I do not buy anything from NIKE!