Investment
written by: Heather Davis, Jane Davis, Vincent Ilustre
Investment Policies and Business Ties
Tulane University, like many other universities across the country, holds a great deal of financial leverage because of its endowment. By this fact alone, universities like Tulane can have a huge impact on the environment. They can use their financial muscle to encourage companies that it deals with to be more environmentally friendly. Tulane can do this by checking on its investments, donors, and business ties.
Tulane has an endowment worth $406 million as of 1996. These funds are invested in numerous companies. Unfortunately, we were unable to get any information on the actual companies for which Tulane has investments. According to the Treasurer's Office, access to all information regarding investment, including guidelines, must be cleared by the Board of Directors for dissemination. They were, however, able to tell us that Tulane's investments are indexed through the S&P 500. They reported having no idea which companies Tulane has investments in because Tulane hires account managers to handle the school's investments. The account manager's only restrictions are the guidelines that the Board of Directors have approved. These do not, however, include any environmental "screenings". It is interesting to note that the university has no knowledge of the actual companies for which it holds investments. It seems to us that Tulane and its administrators would want to know where their money is invested. The university does have a vague policy regarding an annual review of investments to "identify egregious violations of human rights anywhere in the world." This statement is tempered with a reminder that the board cannot take political stands and must remember its financial responsibility to the university. It is unclear whether or not the Investment Sub-Committee, which supposedly conducts this review, is still extant.
Professors also can invest their money and most do so through the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF) and Fidelity. Professors can have their money invested in an account called the Social Choice Account, an investment fund that screens for tobacco, alcohol, nuclear, military, environmental and Northern Ireland concerns. Currently, there is a nationwide campaigns by educators that calls for the investment of $75-100 million from the Social Choice Account in companies that are exemplary of social and environmental responsibility. These companies are models of corporate responsibility with respect to employees, the environment, consumers and local communities.
Donations
The university is the beneficiary of a lot of contributions by companies across the United States. We spoke to Ron Biava of the Tulane Development Office, and got the names and the restrictions on corporate contributions. Tulane's campaign "Tulane for the New Century" raised $254 million between July 1990 and June 1996, of which 20% came from corporate sponsors. Although corporations can restrict their gifts for certain uses, research funding must allow scientists to publish findings of research and no gifts may be put towards commercial use. Other than that, acceptance of restricted contributions is left to the judgment of the Development Office.
Freeport McMoRan is the second largest contributor to Tulane, giving $5.4 million over this time period. $1 million of this was to establish a chair in Environmental Policy. $1.5 million was for a study of the Mississippi River water quality in Louisiana, Project Return which gives ex-cons job training, and general University support. $250,000 went to the Beach Cones project to reduce erosion. In this country, Freeport has been listed by the US Environmental Protection Agency for emitting the largest amount of toxic chemicals of any industry. Freeport is also guilty of destroying vast areas of the environment in Indonesia. "The dumping of tailings (mining waste) into the river has caused flooding, re-routing of the rivers, destruction of the sago forests and indigenous hunting grounds," charges Emmy Hafield of WALHI, an Indonesian environmental group.
The third largest contributor is Shell Oil, giving $2.5 million. $1 million of this was designated to go to a program in Bioenvironmental Research, the Louisiana Alliance for Education Reform, and various engineering reforms. Shell also has been accused of a multitude of environmental injustices. In Nigeria much criticism has come to Shell, including the accusation that they are responsible for the execution of nine leading environmental and human rights activists through their ties with the Nigerian government. These activists were contesting that the Nigerian natives had their territory destroyed by Shell and the government with no compensation in the region of Ogoni. One of these activists, Ken Saro-Wiwa, backed by Greenpeace, said to a 1992 Geneva conference, "Oil exploration has turned Ogoni into a wasteland. In return we have received nothing and in the circumstance, the interest of the few like the Ogonis was bound to suffer," he said.
The Entergy corporation, who supplies the electricity and related services for most of the region, including Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas has given Tulane $1.1 million over the past six years and ranks as the fourth largest donor. It has earmarked $.5 million of the money for the renovation of the Stanley Thomas building and another $.5 million for a lab complex. As a producer of energy, Entergy has done damage to the environment, but recently has demonstrated efforts towards energy efficiency. Working with Washington, D.C. based Public Technology, Inc., this Memphis-based company announced a national campaign to promote the benefits and savings of their new energy-efficiency services program to local and state governments. To demonstrate the pay back of energy efficiency, Entergy chose pilot sites to receive state of the art energy efficiency technologies, such as lighting fixtures, heating, and air conditioning.
Many of these corporate donations to Tulane are a way of "greenwashing" their images. They think that if they donate money with good environmental intentions, people will not look at all the negative things they have done to the environment. Mr. Biava voiced concern on this issue, saying that he and the Development Office are faced with a tough decision of whether or not to accept this money. They know that only a very small fraction of the companies' proceeds are doing environmental good, but he sees this as still positive, at least these environmental projects are being funded. On one occasion, involving Freeport and the Beach Cones Project, a television commercial advertised Freeport's funding Tulane to do this research. Mr. Biava was not happy about this and said that this is not supposed to be allowed.
Contractors
Tulane provides a lot of services to its students and it does so by contracting out several business ventures. Almost no one escapes the food of the Marriot Management Services. Although Marriot Management Services has no formal environmental guidelines, they have recently initiated a "Green Dining" program in conjunction with the Tulane Green Club and the Tulane Environmental Project. This program is designed to educate the uptown campus community about environmentally friendly dining and to provide incentives to reduce the amount of disposable cups and plates. To limit the use of disposable cups the Green dining program is marketing a reusable 22-ounce mug. The mug is available at the food court and the bookstore and sells for three dollars. All the future drink purchases in the mug save consumers $.40. To encourage the use of non-disposable plates and silverware, informational cards are on all tables in the food court. These cards encourage the use of chinaware and silverware rather than disposable plastic and foam.
Alongside the Marriot Management Services, the Tulane community is also being served by PepsiCo, Inc. in the form of the various fast food restaurants (Subway, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell), snack foods (Frito-Lay chips) and soda dispensers (Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and 7up). The company is committed to a wide spectrum of environmental guidelines. PepsiCo, in its Worldwide Code of Conduct, lists several environmental principles that they adhere to. This includes conducting business in an environmentally responsible way, minimizing the impact of their businesses on the environment, using research to improve their environmental performance through source reduction, recycling and product packaging and develop programs that promote conservation of energy. In the beverage department, the company has been successful in making the containers light-weight as well as promoting recycling by placing recycling symbols on their products. Innovations in packaging and the increased use of thin materials has also helped the conglomerate to reduce its environmental impact in its snack food industry and in its restaurants. PepsiCo has also brought in environmental consciousness in its corporate headquarters through its recycling program for both water and waste products and conservation of electrical energy through the use of enhanced computer programs. PepsiCo has also provided financial support to various environmental organizations and matches employee contributions to organizations. Although PepsiCo's image is one of environmental consciousness, it too has damaged the environment. At the consumer level, waste disposal of PepsiCo product is increasing and PepsiCo too has increased its overall consumption of materials as it continues to increase production. PepsiCo has done a great job in greenwashing its image, but it has not done enough to eliminate waste within its production cycle.
Tulanians are no strangers to the numerous juice machines that are found all over campus. The vending company that supplies Tulane's juice machines is Ocean Spray. Jack Llewellyn, the CEO and president of Ocean Spray Cranberries, became concerned with the devastation of the environment and implemented an environmental risk management program to his company. He expanded environmental personnel, created new mechanisms for overseeing environmental policies and tried to institutionalize environmental management throughout the organization. As a cooperative, Ocean Spray began to educate the growers about environmentally safe practices and monitored their compliance to company environmental guidelines. Ocean Spray has also taken special initiatives such as natural pest control and integrated pest management.
Books and supplies are provided by the Tulane Bookstore which is ran by Barnes and Noble. Barnes and Noble has a six part mission statement which includes no mention of any environmental guidelines. However, the company nationally has recently sworn off any use of uncertified rainforest wood, including mahogany, for the furniture of its stores. The bookstore also has many green products. The Ampad Corporation provides nearly all the notebooks and filler paper, half of which comes from recycled paper. Ampad also offers a line called World Fibre, which is paper made from a ground wood process that requires one half the number of trees to produce the same amount of paper and is chlorine and dioxin free. All greeting cards were made by the Recycled Paper Greetings Company who makes all their cards from 100 percent recycled paper.
The picture we have painted makes Tulane's business ties look very environmentally friendly. What we have failed to expose are the environmental dangers and degradation that the companies have engaged in. This is due to the lack of information regarding these instances. Companies that we have researched are of course unwilling to muddy their reputations by highlighting the damages that it has caused the environment. As with every source of information, we must be cautious in assessing its validity and reliability. Some of the companies that we have focused on present the image of a very environmentally friendly company but in reality are engaged in activities that endanger our environment. The impact that the companies have on Tulane's greening, however, is lost if students within the university do not do their share to help the environmentand if the university doesn't insist on more environmental responsibility from its business partners.