Download report 2011 - -

Climate Change and Consumer Co-operatives:

Taking the Challenge forward

Report 2011

Foreword

The fight against the Climate Change threat has been an acknowledged priority for Euro Coop for a long time. Even in a context of severe economic and financial crisis, European consumer co-operatives have continued to implement a vast number of initiatives aimed at responding to this major challenge, thereby living up to their duty to act on the market as responsible economic agents.

This report offers a snapshot of the quality, quantity and diversity of such actions. Moreover, it constitutes a tangible proof of the progress made by consumer co-operatives to be at the forefront of the Climate Change combat. It represents in fact the second follow-up report on the commitments voluntarily undertaken by Euro Coop members in the framework of the project “Consumer co-operatives and Climate Change: taking the challenge forward”, which was published back in early 2009.

Some of the tools used by consumer co-operatives are also available to other companies and types of businesses, but others, like education to consumer-members, are specific to the co-operative business model. Our aim is to be of inspiration to the wider entrepreneurial world, especially by conveying the message that such a key challenge cannot be pushed to the background by the current economic and financial crisis. On the contrary, we believe that this delicate situation should provide an excellent opportunity to rethink any business strategy with a view to long term sustainability benefitting the society as a whole.

This report only covers initiatives developed by European consumer co-operative members of Euro Coop but it has been done in the framework of Consumer Co-operatives Worldwide (CCW). We hope to integrate in the future concrete examples of initiatives developed by consumer co-operatives in other parts of the globe.

Finally, a word of appreciation is owed to Euro Coop’s Sustainability Working Group, who took care in providing all the valuable input contained in the report.

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