Green jean, baby.

In 1873, Levi Strauss & Company invented the first blue jeans, a durable pair of trousers that could hold up to the task of constructing America. The rest is history. Today, Levi’s 501 jeans are the world’s best-selling item of clothing, and the blue jean, whether skinny or bell-bottomed, has been a global fashion staple for as long as most of us can remember.

Levi’s commitment to social responsibility has similar historical clout. During the Great Depression, for instance, Levi’s instituted shorter work weeks to prevent the massive lay-offs that were happening around the country. Levi Strauss factories were racially integrated long before the Civil Rights Act mandated it. And in the 1980s, Levi’s became the first American corporation to publicly address the HIV/AIDS epidemic sweeping the nation. The fight against HIV/AIDS continues to be an issue central to the company’s not-for-profit Levi Strauss Foundation.

In addition to its social responsibility efforts, Levi’s has also been a pioneer in the world of sustainability. Their current eco-efforts are founded on an intensive study of the entire product lifecycle of their best-sellers – the Levi’s 501 jeans and Dockers Original Khakis – conducted in 2007. From this study came the idea to further evaluate – or “E-valuate”, as they call it – 11 of their most popular items using primary data across several categories: contribution to climate change, energy use, renewable energy use, water consumption, land occupation, qualified sustainably grown fiber content, waste generation, materials efficiency, recycled content, land transformation, eutrophication, and restricted substance list adherence.

The Good

From the product lifecycle analysis, Levi’s had a better idea of their strengths and weaknesses as a company. They made the decision to hone in on two key phases – cotton production and consumer use – and they have aimed to reduce their impact in the energy, water, chemicals, and materials aspects of apparel manufacturing.

By making the decision to focus, Levi’s has taken a “do less, but better” approach to sustainability marketing. Over the past five years, they’ve made particularly significant strides in the area of water preservation. In 2010, they introduced the Water<Less jean collection, which used up an average of 28% and up to 96% less water in the finishing process than traditional jeans.

“What’s different about the Water<Less collection is that we’re still using the same materials and techniques to create finishes for our jeans but we’ve substantially reduced water’s role in the equation,” said Carl Chiara, Director of Brand Concepts and Special Projects. “Sometimes, the way to achieve a more sustainable design is to rethink a traditional process and find a way to do it better.”

A typical pair of jeans consumes 919 gallons of water throughout its lifecycle, including what’s needed to irrigate the cotton crop, produce the pant, and wash them at home. For Water<Less jeans, Levi’s made simple changes like reducing the number of washing machine cycles by combining multiple wet cycle processes into a single wet process, incorporating ozone processing into the garment washing, and removing the water from the stone wash.

Levi’s also aims to change how customers use their products, after finding that nearly 60 percent of energy use involved in a product’s lifecycle happens after the jeans are taken home. Their “Care Tag for Our Planet” campaign instructs Levi’s owners to wash less often, use cold water in the cycle, air-dry jeans on a line, and donate old jeans to Goodwill, using innovative methods like a crowdsourced design competition for air-dry solutions.

The Bad

Apart from some backlash over a handful of tasteless ads, Levi’s reputation has been pretty pristine for the past few decades. That’s not to say their conscience is completely clean. In the 1990s, Levi’s was embroiled in a scandal involving factories in the Northern Mariana Islands, a commonwealth territory of the United States located in the Pacific Ocean. Though jeans from these factories were branded “Made in the USA,” they were produced primarily by imported laborers operating under “slavelike” conditions: 12-hour work days, seven-day work weeks, poor living conditions, payment well under the minimum wage, and an atmosphere of fear and control.

The high-profile case spurred Levi’s to establish a workplace code of conduct for its manufacturing suppliers. In 1991, the company released the first version of their Terms of Engagement, which spells out the ethical standards, legal requirements, environmental requirements, and community involvement that all of their suppliers and contractors must agree to and abide by.

The Questionable

Levi’s has a strong track record of operating responsibly, and is considered a pioneer in sustainability by many in the industry. The company has compiled an impressive body of information, literature, and resources surrounding its operations, and has been transparent both with its failings as well as its dedication to improve.

However, much of this information isn’t necessarily translated to Levi’s customers. The other day, I popped into a Levi’s retail store in lower Manhattan, expecting significant promotion around the Water<Less campaign, or the Better Cotton Initiative jeans shipped out just a few months ago. Within the store, I couldn’t find any information concerning sustainability, and when I asked a salesperson for information about their sustainable jeans, she said she had no idea what I was talking about. When I mentioned water, she said that most of the denim in the store was made using 96% less water than usual – a pretty big exaggeration of the truth, which is that the Water<Less process uses on average 28% and up to 96% less water than usual.

It was only when leaving the store that I finally stumbled upon a mention of Levi’s sustainable initiatives: a wooden “Care Tag for the Planet” sandwich board placed just outside the front entrance. Funny enough, the actual care instructions faced the wall, while an advertisement for a 30% off sale had prime real estate.

Levi’s is one of the few major apparel brands making waves in the world of sustainable manufacturing. That’s a major accomplishment, but it also comes with a major responsibility. Levi’s is missing the opportunity to educate a wider audience about the importance of sustainability by leaving its efforts out of its mainstream marketing.

A November New York Times article described a recent scene at Levi Strauss HQ:

After being briefed on the cotton initiative by the sustainability team, the new Chief Marketing Officer, Rebecca Van Dyck nodded her approval, then asked, “But do our customers know?”

They won’t if you don’t tell them.

SEE ALSO:

Behind the Label: H&M’s Conscious Collection

Behind the Label: McDonald’s See What We’re Made Of Campaign

Do we really want to see what McDonald’s is made of?

As the world’s largest hamburger fast food chain by sales, McDonald’s serves around 68 million customers per day in 119 countries. Founded in 1955 by Dick and Mac McDonald, and later run by legendary businessman Ray Kroc, McDonald’s is the best known franchise in the world, with golden arches spotted from Lebanon to the Louvre.

McDonald’s history of controversies and lawsuits is nearly as old as the company itself. Since its founding, McDonald’s has come under fire for everything from environment to health to labor practices, inspiring terminology like McJob (a low-paying job that requires little skill and provides little opportunity for advancement) and critical food industry documentaries like Super Size Me. What else would you expect from a restaurant founded upon and organized around factory assembly line principles?

McDonald’s latest marketing campaign addresses the quality of their ingredients, and more specifically, the people behind those ingredients. Under the headline “See What We’re Made Of,” the campaign, created by Omnicom DDB, is heavy on video, with feel-good “Supplier Stories” from potato, lettuce, and beef growers, as well as informative looks “Inside Our Kitchens” to see how staples like the Big Mac and Egg McMuffin are made.

“We thought putting a face on the quality of the food story would be a unique way to approach this,” McDonald’s U.S. Chief Marketing Officer Neil Golden told AdAge. “We acknowledge that there are questions about where our food comes from. I believe we’ve got an opportunity to accentuate that part of our story.”

But how much of the story is real, and how much is just marketing? Let’s look at some of the facts.

The Good

While McDonald’s certainly isn’t the poster child for corporate social responsibility, the company has taken a number of steps toward greater transparency and more sustainable business practices in recent years. Nutritional information and ingredient lists for most of their standard menu items are available online, as well as answers to frequently asked questions like “What do you feed the cows that the beef comes from?” (answer: mostly corn). In 2008, McDonald’s opened a pilot LEED-certified “green” location in Chicago, with energy efficient equipment and lighting, high efficiency plumbing, and permeable pavement and rainwater collection for irrigation. They followed up with a North Carolina location in 2010 and a LEED-driven sustainable overhaul of their Global Headquarters. McDonald’s has also tackled packaging, cooking oil reuse, and customer awareness campaigns.

With this particular campaign, it looks like McDonald’s aim is to tap into the fresh/organic/locavore movement by presenting its ingredients as fresh and its farming partners as real people, just like you and me. The farmers chosen for “Supplier Stories” are secondary sources, contracted through McDonald’s suppliers, and they represent a cross-section of backgrounds and locations.

The Bad

McDonald’s has long been criticized for working with large-scale suppliers who have questionable environmental and animal welfare policies. Just in November, ABC News revealed that Sparboe Farms, which supplied the majority of eggs used in McDonald’s popular Egg McMuffin breakfast sandwiches, was guilty of horrific violations related to animal cruelty and hygiene. Soon after, McDonald’s ended the supplier relationship, and Sparboe vowed to “do better.”

But McDonald’s has yet to take action in response to PETA’s recent “McCruelty: I’m Hatin’ It” campaign, which calls the corporation out on inhumane treatment of chickens by their suppliers.

Says PETA: “Chickens who are raised for McDonald’s are killed using an old-fashioned method that causes millions of birds to have their wings broken and many to be scalded to death in defeathering tanks. A less cruel slaughter method—and one that is already used by McDonald’s European suppliers—is available, but the company refuses to require its U.S. suppliers to upgrade to it.”

And those are only recent scandals in a long list of controversies.

The Questionable

“Supplier Stories” presents a romantic view of American agriculture, with soft lighting, panoramic shots, acoustic background music, and farmers who emphasize the values of hard work and perseverance. In the world depicted in these videos, conventional factory farming isn’t a practice that’s harmful to the environment; it’s the American dream. The feel-good nature of the campaign glazes over many of the issues involved in McDonald’s supplier relationships, like the pesticide and migrant worker issues in the Salinas Valley where lettuce producer Dirk Giannini farms.

Plus, while the base ingredients in McDonald’s meals may come from the fairytale farms depicted in the videos, what happens to them after they hit a McDonald’s kitchen cancels out all the purported purity. McDonald’s famous french fries, for instance, contain much more than just home-grown potatoes:

Potatoes, vegetable oil (canola oil, hydrogenated soybean oil, natural beef flavor [wheat and milk derivatives]*, citric acid [preservative]), dextrose, sodium acid pyrophosphate (maintain color), salt. Prepared in vegetable oil (Canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil with TBHQ and citric acid added to preserve freshness). Dimethylpolysiloxane added as an antifoaming agent. CONTAINS: WHEAT AND MILK. *(Natural beef flavor contains hydrolyzed wheat and hydrolyzed milk as starting ingredients).

For McDonald’s to highlight the stories of the people behind their products is a step in the right direction. However, McDonald’s has yet to address in a significant way how its factory farm suppliers are harming the world they so romanticize.

The Bible. It’s consistently the best-selling book on the planet and now it’s gone green. Publishing company Harper One recently released the Green Bible, a new environmentally-friendly version of the Bible, and it’s selling well. In fact, more that 25,000 copies sold in the first few weeks of its release.

Printed on recycled paper with soy ink, the Green Bible has a sustainable beige linen cover embossed with a green picture of a tree.

Covering both the Old and New Testament, this eco-friendly Bible has all text that mentions something about the environment printed in green (as opposed to the “red letter bible” where all the believed words of Jesus are printed in red). In all, over 1,000 verses throughout the Bible have been printed in green. And to make relevant issues (air, pollution, gardening) easy to find, there is even a Green Subject Index.

Endorsed by secular organizations such as the Humane Society and The Sierra Club, the Green Bible has been making waves among some Christian evangelical circles who are concerned that introducing environmental activism into the Bible could lead to people being distracted from their mission to follow and spread the word of God.

But while some are not happy with the Bible going green, others, particularly those involved in the Creation Care Movement, are more enthused by the emergence of a green ‘Good Book’. They are hoping that, with essays about global warming and other environmental issues written by well-known religious leaders such as Desmond Tutu, the new version will generate a lively theological debate about environmentalism. I guess time will tell.