The Timberland Company (NYSE: TBL) issued its third corporate social responsibility (CSR) report highlighting Timberland’s CSR priorities, programs, progress and challenges related to global human rights, environmental stewardship, community involvement, and employee engagement. The report uses the standards of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). “It’s been several years since Timberland last reported publicly on our activities and efforts to be a good corporate citizen,” said Jeffrey B. Swartz, Timberland’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “That is not to say that we haven’t tried to produce a CSR report since that time. In fact, we’ve started several. But each time, we ultimately decided that it wasn’t enough. There were too many holes, too many questions and not enough concrete, tangible, reliable information to share. And, in this age of too many voices and not enough time to listen, we felt it best not to add one more voice to the conversation unnecessarily.”
Timberland’s report relies heavily on the guidelines issued by the GRI and primarily covers the 2004 calendar year. Highlights include:
* Timberland’s 2004 audits of 94% of its contract factory base identified health and safety, compensation and fair and equal treatment as the three most frequent areas where infractions of its Code of Conduct occurred. The Company rolled out a new assessment process in 2005 that includes standardized root cause analyses, factory risk assessments and identification and sharing of leading practices throughout its contract supplier base.
* Timberland reports on its progress in reducing contributions to climate change including lighting retrofits in U.S. distribution centers that improve lighting quality while reducing energy use by nearly 40%; the installation of sleep mode software on computer monitors to reduce global electricity usage by more than 237,000 kilowatt hours; and the use of U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED standards in all new specialty store construction.
* Timberland’s Path of Service(TM) program – employees served more than 55,000 hours globally, engaging nearly 8,500 consumers and partners in 27 countries.
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