Chiquita & Rainforest Alliance

Throughout the past 10 years or so of my life, I have tried to support companies and causes that I agree with. For instance, if given the choice between some delicious Pillsbury cookie dough or some equally delicious Nestle cookie dough, I always choose the Pillsbury.

Nestlé has been accused by supporters of the boycott of unethical methods of promoting infant formula over breast-milk to poor mothers in third world countries. One major issue is passing out free powdered formula samples to mothers in hospitals. After leaving the hospital, these mothers' breasts will have ceased to produce milk due to the substitution of formula feeding for breastfeeding. This forces the continued use of formula, which can contribute to malnutrition, and under worsened sanitary conditions with contaminated water, often leading to diarrhea (Nestle boycott)

Chiquita is another company that I have not supported financially for almost 10 years; ever since the Cincinnati Enquirer article 'Chiquita Secrets Revealed'. However, after reading an article by CNN Business 2.0 entitled 'Chiquita cleans up its act' I now believe that I should reconsider my stance. Here are some excerpts:

For more than a century, the banana producer was nobody's idea of a role model. Now it's forging new ground in corporate responsibility.

At first, Dave McLaughlin didn't tell his bosses at Chiquita that he was talking to environmentalists, much less taking their suggestions. After all, the banana company's executives so mistrusted the "greens" that meetings with them often turned into shouting matches. "They would sit at opposite ends of the table," McLaughlin says.

But what began as a dialogue between McLaughlin, then a Chiquita general manager in Costa Rica, and the nonprofit Rainforest Alliance has since cleared a path toward a companywide transformation. Starting in 1992, McLaughlin essentially used his two Costa Rican farms as test beds to rein in environmental abuses.

Those changes - and their impact on the bottom line - persuaded Chiquita in 1996 to allot $20 million to overhaul the environmental and employment standards at all of its 127 farms, which employ 30,000 workers in seven Latin American countries. With McLaughlin recently appointed Chiquita's senior director of environmental and social performance, the company is becoming a study in corporate responsibility, rather than a counterexample.
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Today all 110 of Chiquita's company-owned farms and the vast majority of its independent farms are certified by the Rainforest Alliance. Chiquita now recycles 100 percent of its plastic bags and twine and has reduced pesticide use by 26 percent.

Though the improvements in working conditions aren't nearly as dramatic, things are getting better for Latin American employees, who can now join unions. Disputes with Honduran labor unions in late November prompted Chiquita to spend two days renegotiating the workers' contracts.