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President Donald Trump on Tuesday moved to revert to older standards for light bulbs as well as toilets, showers and other water-using appliances, a day after signing an order promoting plastic straws and rescinding a plan to reduce single-use plastics. Trump said he would call on the Environmental Protection Agency to go back to water standards from his first White House term that would also affect sinks, washing machines and dishwashers. In a post on his private social media platform, Trump wrote that he was directing EPA Secretary Lee Zeldin “to immediately go back to my Environmental Orders,” calling them common sense. “I look forward to signing these orders,” Trump added. On Monday, Trump signed an executive order encouraging the U.S. government and consumers to buy plastic drinking straws, part of a broader weakening of environmental commitments by the Republican president after taking office on Jan. 20. Trump first served in the White House from 2017-2021. Trump’s Democratic predecessor, President Joe Biden, had embraced a host of environmental measures, including new energy-efficiency requirements for household clothes washers and dishwashers that capped water usage. Conservatives had challenged the rules in court. (This story has been corrected to reflect that no action has been taken yet in the headline) Susan Heavey, Reuters
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E-Commerce
The Trump administrations dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development is stiffing American businesses on hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid bills for work that has already been done, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday. The administrations abrupt freeze on foreign aid also is forcing mass layoffs by U.S. suppliers and contractors for USAID, including 750 furloughs at one company, Washington-based Chemonics International, the lawsuit says. One cannot overstate the impact of that unlawful course of conduct: on businesses large and small forced to shut down their programs and let employees go; on hungry children across the globe who will go without; on populations around the world facing deadly disease; and on our constitutional order, the U.S. businesses and organizations said. An organization representing 170 small U.S. businesses, major suppliers, an American Jewish group aiding displaced people abroad, the American Bar Association and others joined the court challenge. It was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington against President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, acting USAID Deputy Administrator Peter Marocco, a Trump appointee who has been a central figure in hollowing out the agency, and Russell Vought, Trumps head of the Office of Management and Budget. It is at least the third lawsuit over the administration’s rapid unraveling of the U.S. aid and development agency and its programs worldwide. Trump and ally Elon Musk have targeted USAID in particular, saying its work is out of line with Trumps agenda. Marocco, Musk and Rubio have overseen an across-the-board freeze on foreign assistance and agency shutdown under a Jan. 20 executive order by Trump. A lawsuit brought by federal employees associations has temporarily blocked the administration from pulling thousands of USAID staffers off the job. The funding freeze and other measures have persisted, including the agency losing the lease on its Washington headquarters. The new administration terminated contracts without the required 30-day notice and without back payments for work that was already done, according to a U.S. official, a businessperson with a USAID contract and an email seen by The Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal by the Trump administration. For Chemonics, one of the larger of the USAID partners, the funding freeze has meant $103 million in unpaid invoices and almost $500 million in USAID-ordered medication, food and other goods stalled in the supply chain or ports, the lawsuit says. For the health commodities alone, not delivering them on time could potentially lead to as many as 566,000 deaths from HIV/AIDS, malaria, and unmet reproductive health needs, including 215,000 pediatric deaths, the lawsuit says. The filing asserts that the administration has no authority to block programs and funding mandated by Congress without approval. Marocco defended the funding cutoff and push to put all but a fraction of USAID staff on leave in an affidavit filed late Monday in the lawsuit brought by the workers groups. Insubordination and noncompliance by USAID staffers made it necessary to stop funding and operations by the agency to allow the administration to carry out a program-by-program review to decide what U.S. aid programs could resume overseas, Marocco wrote. Ellen Knickmeyer, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
For a decade, Dr. Bronners has been a certified B Corporation, a designation issued by the nonprofit B Lab that confirms a company has met certain environmental, social, and governance standards. But now the organic soap company is dropping its B Corp certification without plans to renew. Dr. Bronner’s says B Lab’s standards are weak, and that some multinational corporations are now using its sealan encircled B, which became a symbol that businesses can be a force for goodas a form of greenwashing. Dr. Bronner’s mainly takes issue with B Lab’s increasing certifications of multinational corporations such as Unilever Australia, Nespresso, and Nestlé Health Scienceand the fact that these businesses are not required to provide third-party certifications on the humans rights or environmental impacts of their supply chains. Instead, a business can still get a B Corp certification by scoring high in other assessment areas, such as if it monitors waste or has a certain percentage of management from underrepresented populations. To Dr. Bronner’s, this means B Lab is failing to ensure that its certification “wont be used to mislead consumers, David and Michael Bronner, the company’s CEO and president, respectively, said in a joint statement. “Sharing the same logo and messaging regarding being of benefit to the world with large multinational CPG companies with a history of serious ecological and labor issues, and no comprehensive or credible eco-social certification of supply chains, is unacceptable to us. A B Lab spokesperson says the nonprofit remains “deeply committed” to its mission, and that “catalyzing business as a force for good is a journey rather than a destination.” It has been working with its member businesses, advocacy groups, and independent experts to strengthen its standards, and in early 2025 will publish new requirements. These updated standards, the spokesperson says, “address todays most urgent social and environmental challenges, providing clear, impactful requirements that companies must meet in order to deliver leadership and systemic change.” Dr. Bronner’s first became a certified B Corp in 2015, the same year it became a benefit corporationa separate, unrelated legal designation that allows companies to pursue social good instead of simply profit. In the years since, its become one of the top-scoring B Corps. The company currently has an overall score of 206.7 (reportedly, the highest score ever awarded by the nonprofit), and the B Corp website notes that the median score for ordinary businesses is 50.9. The minimum score to become a certified B Corp is 80 points over five areas: governance, workers, community, environment, and customers. B Corp’s logo has graced thousands of brands, including notably progressive ones including Patagonia and Ben & Jerry’s. Dr. Bronners says its B Corp fee is paid through September 2025, but that the company won’t renew after that point. It’s also begun removing the B Corp logo from branding and marketing materials. For the past few years, Dr. Bronners has been pushing B Lab to improve its standardsespecially after larger companies joined the B Corp community. In 2022, the Nestlé-owned coffee company Nespresso announced that it received B Corp certification, setting off a wave of backlash from other B Corps. Just two months after that announcement, 30 certified B Corpsincluding Dr. Bronnerssigned an open letter to B Lab, protesting the certification, pointing to the history of child labor and wage theft on farms that grew Nespressos beans. B Labs standards have been questioned before, especially as the number of certification submissions has surged. And B Lab has taken action against some companies for behaviors that go against its ethos. In 2022, Scottish brewery BrewDog announced it was no longer a certified B Corpthough it said its status wasnt revoked, just that it withdrew after B Lab requested additional measures that the Scottish company couldn’t fulfill. (BrewDog received scrutiny after its certification from former employees who said the companys culture compromised their health and safety.) In 2024, B Lab stripped Havas, a French public relations company, of its certification because of the agencys relationship with Shell. But its mostly B Labs certification of multinational companies that has received the most criticism, especially from its own B Corp community. Its these large companies that are using their B Corp certification as a marketing ploy, Dr. Bronners says in its statement. Dr. Bronners has been pushing B Lab to require companies, especially those multinational corporations, to certify all major supply chains. The raw agricultural materials a company useswhether meat, milk, eggs, palm oil, cocoa, coffee, cotton, and any othersare often produced in terrible ways in terms of social and environmental impact, the Bronners said. Requiring third party eco-social certification for major multinational supply chains would, they added, protect against the B Corp certification being misused by companies to hide these unsustainable and unjust corporate practices. They acknowledged that some certified B Corps do already practice this, including Patagonia, another prominent example of a purpose-driven business. But, they said, they are unfortunately a minority and this is not required by B Lab, most glaringly in the case of large multinational companies and their enormous supply chains.
Category:
E-Commerce
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