Adidas, British Airways, Sainsbury’s Working With Forest Footprint Disclosure Project

Adidas, British Airways, Kingfisher and Sainsbury’s are among the big name companies that pledge to answer a questionnaire about “forest risk commodities” for the Forest Footprint Disclosure (FFD) Project, reports Freshbusinessthinking.com.

A key goal of the FFD Project is to help the financial community and businesses understand their forest footprint, a measure of their commodities use in their supply chains, which may contribute to deforestation. The project is also designed to help businesses take action to minimize their impact.

The detailed questionnaire is targeted at Fortune 500 and FTSE 350 companies with high potential impacts on forests caused by the use of forest risk commodities (PDF) in their supply chains, such as palm oil, soya, timber, biofuels, beef and leather. It was designed by the FFD Project specifically to help companies identify how and where forest impact could be improved in their operations.

The new initiative is endorsed by 26 asset manager companies with collective funds under management of $2.9 trillion that believe unsustainable commodities could cause a future valuation risk to their investments.

Summary results will be published in the January 2010 annual report. The published report will identify companies that have generated innovative strategies for managing their risk and those that have declined or ignored the FFD Project request to disclose their current forest footprint.

After this baseline year a best-in-class ranking will be developed for future editions.