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Impactt attended a fascinating conference last week entitled ‘Global Retailers Global Responsibilities’. The conference sought to develop a new research agenda on the theme of retail transnational corporations and the corporate responsibility initiatives that cover their overseas operations. It brought together a wide variety of stakeholders working in the area of CSR including: academics, retailers, [...]

The Global Social Compliance Programme (GSCP) – a partnership of some of the world’s biggest companies – has today launched their new reference code. The launch is intended to coincide with the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  The partnership includes multinational retailers and brands such as Carrefour, Hasbro, Ikea, Hewlett-Packard, Metro, [...]

 Impactt has been working with the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency (PASA) and the Ethical Trading Initiative to develop guidance for NHS procurers to support the development of ethical trade policies for their individual trusts and organisations.  The Guidance, entitled ‘Ethical Procurement for Health’, was launched for consultation yesterday (8th December), with the aim of [...]

The ETI has just produced two really useful new films that set out the business case for ethical trade, for suppliers and retailers.  We all know that pictures, preferably moving pictures, are crucial in getting people to relate to workers and their lives and we welcome these new films as a useful resource for communicating [...]

On 23rd October, nearly 450 brands, retailers, NGOs, trade unions and representatives of government gathered together to celebrate the first decade of the Ethical Trading Initiative and to discuss the key challenges that lie ahead. The conference room was filled with celebratory air; but strongly evident was the collective feeling that while we have begun [...]

Following the Primark news stories and Panorama documentary a couple of weeks ago about the undeclared outsourcing and child labour in the Indian supply chains of Primark, we thought we would write a blog about homeworking and the challenges it represents, particularly in the Indian garment industry. As we noted before homeworking is endemic in the [...]

Primark has again attracted the attention of the ethical trading community today after the company’s announcement that it is severing ties with 3 suppliers because of child labour found in their supply chains. Information on the labour standards of some suppliers, gained during the filming of the BBC’s Panorama series, was passed on to the company, [...]