Does Beyond Carbon also mean Beyond Business Cases? :
Relational Justice Approaches to Sustainable Sourcing of Meat & Dairy
How Corporate Sustainability Standards Miss the Mark on Community Health
Author's note: After completing a summer sustainable procurement internship with Kraft Heinz, I received a return offer for a full-time position. The experience left me wanting to upskill as much as possible to hit the ground running once I start working full-time. Would than mean taking courses in corporate financial reporting or gaining new hard skills like learning how to conduct environmental impact assessments? I was reflecting on these options when I watched the documentary Smell of Money, about communities in eastern North Carolina suing Smithfood Foods for polluting the air by spraying hog manure across fields. Learning about the public health impacts of manure spreading suddenly re-focused my goal. I realized I am Paul, the protagonist of this case. And yet I also identify with the communities experiencing harm from agroindustrial practices, given the racial justice issues they are facing. Coursework, internships, and volunteering have given me a handle on how to scale decarbonization in the food industry, and even on the intersections between climate, biodiversity, and nature. But I’ve yet to grasp how to integrate– on a conceptual and a tactical level – environmental justice into my work. How might I, as a pork buyer for a major CPG, leverage my power in the industry to put an end to manure spraying? How can I center community health in the company’s sustainability commitments? This module is an effort to create a dynamic case study that moves beyond a conventional business case to articulate levers and approaches for more structural change
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