ECOASSET SOLUTIONS

The 2012 Proxy Preview from http://www.asyousow.com/ has been published.
We see shareholders increasing their pressure on public companies to report not only their own sustainable actions (carbon, water, diversity, etc) , but that of their supply chain as well. The ball is rolling, and the time to prepare for supplier sustainability surveys is now. A wisely-paced, well thought out plan to sustainability will put you in the driver's seat. Plus, sustainably-focused companies economically outperform those who are not through competitive advantage, profitability, and increased brand awareness. There simply are no excuses to wait any longer.
Janet Harrison

34% of shareholder proposals filed were for actions surrounding Environment/Sustainability.
27% of primary filers were from Socially Responsible Investors (SRI’s).
27% of primary filers were from Pension Funds.

The top leading mentions within specific sustainability requests were:
• Vendor Standards
• GhG Goals/Disclosure
•Water
Some good take-aways:

• Proposals that ask companies to issue broad sustainability reports that cover a range of issues advocates otherwise bring up on their own have become standard fare in proxy season. They tend to get high levels of support.

• Consistent with Peter Drucker’s belief that “what gets measured gets managed,” the goal is to push sustainability reporting—which is becoming standard practice among major publicly-traded corporations—into the global supply chain.
• A proposal remains pending at Dell and Motorola Solutions. It asks them to use “a phased, tiered approach” to take the necessary steps to help move the Company’s supplier(s) to begin publishing annual, independently verifiable, sustainability reports. Since October, Apple and HP have also agreed to substantially adopt the proposal. Proposal is expected to be filed at more companies in the future.

• Microsoft will publicly post suppliers’ reports on its website, although suppliers can opt out of this disclosure.