Business Ethics Assignment on Innocent Drinks & Walmart

Business Ethics Innocent Drink Innocent Drink is a fastest emerging drinks company and a well-known juice manufactures in the UK, producing high quality smoothies. Their products are sold in many supermarkets, coffee shops and various other outlets. Innocents Drink’s mission is to supply consumers a health-conscious drink by only using 100% natural fruits with no added artificial, with a mission statement “make a natural delicious food and drink that helps people live well and die old” encouraging consumers to keep a healthy lifestyle so they are physically and mentally better off after have consumed their food. The principle the business has set is “create a business we can be proud of” which they have used to set their values around. Their five core values they want every employees to work by is to be natural, be entrepreneurial, be responsible, be commercial and be generous. The five core values support the business to become successful and build trust in their products by becoming more environmentally and ethically conscious. Business ethics plays a vital role on the business aims and objectives. Innocent drink’s takes business ethics very seriously as they accept responsibility for the impact of their business caused on the community and the environment, aiming to change theses impact from negative to positive as they trying to become a truly sustainable business which has positive effect on the society and the environment. Innocent has placed high standards to ensure that the quality of their food and drink by keeps things all natural and using only 100% pure fruits and vegetable on the product. Given the values it indicates about what their business ethics are. Above all the business is committed to provide their workers with a best working environments and ensuring that every worker is being treated fairly with dignity. In order to ensure that they are ethical, Innocent Drink carry out a few activates including:

1. The innocent’s main aim is to reduce the energy consumption and waste in their supply chain much as possible. This aim benefits both the company and the environment as the business will cut down cost if less energy is used, reduces greenhouse gas emission and reduce global warming. Additionally the business focuses on sustainability, using less environment footprints as much as they can. They also concentrate on producing products and packaging which are eco-friendly and does less harm to the environment, innocent has already managed to decrease its carbon emission by 21% using more eco-friendly packaging whilst keeping their products fresh as long as possible. Innocent seeks to make the world a better place by becoming more environmentally friendly and using recycled PET packaging as much as possible. Currently in one factory had 0 wastage to the landfill sites as they give their surplus stock to homeless people and people in need to ensure that nothing is wasted. These activities carries by the business allows them to stick to their core value and supply customers a truly innocent drink.
2. Furthermore, Innocent helps the people supply their fruits to make sure they earn a decent wage for the work they do and the business donates minimum of 10% of its profit to charity every year, even in the year 2008 when they were nearly bankrupt and did not have enough to themselves. This proves very well the challenges innocent has faced to give back to the community, showing their generosity going back to their core values. The business has also supported Age UK by donating 25p per a hatted bottle that was sold.

The ethical activities that the business carries has a positive outcome on its stakeholders. Global Community is stakeholders who have being positively affected by the business activities as the company is aware of its effects on the environment and it is always trying to improve and reduce the ramification. The global community has influence the business to uses sustainable packing which are 100% recyclable and reduce the energy and waste produced. Moreover, another important stakeholder for the business is its employees. The business purely depend on its employees to produce the products and provide excellent customer service to its customers. The business is influence to treat its employees ethically, Innocent Drinks hopes to retain employees. Walmart: Wal-Mart Store Inc., is a multinational retailer and the biggest retailer in America which offers everyday good at low prices for working families. Wal-Mart has approximately 8970 stores around the world. In this report I will discuss how stakeholders of Wal-Mart are deeply affected by business activities and the unethical issues. Also, suggesting ways the business could improve the ethics of their operation. The documentary ‘The High cost of Low prices’ demonstrates how Wal-Mart move into small towns and cities impacted the local community and the major effect it had on small business. Due to Wal-Mart’s expansion, the local businesses were been forced to close down as Wal-Mart will be providing the same products at a cheaper price like monopoly which has been a serious issue for the local businesses as they already struggling to survive in the current economy . For example a local business in Middlefield, Ohio state had a large hardware store, just as Wal-Mart announced it plans to build a store in the same town, the owner of the hardware store decided to sell their property that they had for many years expecting value of building to rise but property appraiser devalued the property as no buyers were interested due to the fact “Wal-Mart comes into town, they knock the values down”, “... Wal-Mart will soon run all local business out, emptying the building.” The arrival of Wal-Mart deserted the community as stores were left empty like a ghost town. This has impact on stakeholders such as local business A possible solution would be that Wal-Mart needs to address the impact their business has caused and reduce competition and their size of their stores to give chance to local business to still operate…. The film clearly illustrates how Wal-Mart exploits their workers by keeps its part-time employee’s as much as possible, purposefully short staff’s stores and asks employees to consistently work late aiming to reduce the company’s expenses. There is no overtime, but employees are constantly made to stay longer, the extra time they spend is not recorded and they are therefore not paid for it. Employees are forced to work off the clock, and managers are taught how to change pay figures so that they do not reflect actual time workers. The company employs illegal workers to clean its stores at below minimum wage and violates child labour law. Those workers are locked in store for their overnight shift………. Wal-Mart employees in the documentary express their dissatisfaction with the company as even full-time employees do not receive enough income to raise their families as the money the employees earn goes right back into Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart does not care about the situation the employees are facing nor if the employee is unable to work. Wal-Mart does pay employees well and they are often unable the insurance that is offered to Wal-Mart associates. The associates are instead forced to turn to the government funded programmes like Medicaid. The documentary claims that many of the employees in use Medicaid or other similar services. Most of Wal-Mart employees do not have health care benefits as it so expensive the employees are encouraged to go on welfare and to use taxpayers’ dollars by going to food stamp. Evelyn Dee a employee who worked for Walmart full-time did not have company health care, she couldn’t affort to pay for it so she turned to government assistance One employee says that “…your dignity is not there, your pride is not there, you go to work knowing that you’re not making enough money…” In the Impact on employee:

• Staffs aren’t wearing protective gear.
• Staffs are forces to do over time.
• Organisation does not consider about employees personal situation
• Low wages even though they make high profit
• Employees are not receiving living wages
• Some employees don’t have lunch as they can’t afford it
• Females and people outside the white community are discriminated and don’t have room for any …

Impact on employee:

• Local businesses are forced to close down, as Walmart will be providing the same product at a cheaper price, like a monopoly.
• Walmart knocks value of land and property down,
• Family businesses are ruined
• Local high streets became empty
• No parking spaces are available

Impact on Environment:

• Walmart aren’t disposing waste appropriately and have increased water and air pollution.
• Walmart have increase pollution from using greenhouse gases
• Enough room to build 29,666 classrooms and educate 593,326 kids.
• The government have to spend more for Walmart’s employees to provide public health care, medical insurance giving benefits to cover their living costs.
• Walmart recruit illegal workers, costing the government more to ensure all workers are legal.

Website: https://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/documents/suca/consumer_fact_sheet.pdf https://wedreambusiness.org/Innocent-Drinks.html

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