Welcome from our CEO

As we celebrate 25 years of deep impact in getting BIG corporations to make BIG changes, I want to express the sheer gratitude from all of our staff and Board for the unrelenting support we have received from all of you. At our core, we believe that corporations must participate in the solution to today’s environmental and social issues. And we are dedicated to making it happen — like getting McDonald’s to stop using 700 million foam coffee cups every year, Exxon to publish the industry’s first public report on carbon asset risk, and Wendy’s and KFC to stop sourcing chicken raised with medically important antibiotics.

UN SDG Goals PosterWe have embraced the shared global vision for the future expressed by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. These seventeen goals are a common language to bring about a sustainable and equitable world for all by 2030, and As You Sow is working on sixteen of these seventeen goals.

As a token of our gratitude, with any donation $25 or more between now and the end of the year, we will send you a UN SDG lapel pin, a representation of those 17 goals. We invite you to stand with us as ambassadors for this shared global vision—to adopt these goals as your own and to help make sure that everyone knows about this global vision that so many are working toward.

Andrew Behar NYTimesThank you for joining us as we strive for the better future we all deserve.

Thank you for standing with us in the fight we all are facing.

Andrew Behar Signature
Andrew Behar
CEO

Looking back…

On twenty-five years of impact

Looking back

Click the image above to see details of our impact over the past twenty-five years.

Looking forward…

Our committed program teams continue to take on issues like climate change, ocean plastics, toxins on our food system, inequitable pay, modern slavery, forced labor in supply chains, and gender inequality.

EnergyFossil fuel companies continue to invest billions in finding and developing more coal, oil, and gas — even though producing and selling what’s already been discovered will make our planet uninhabitable.

As You Sow’s energy team engages directly with the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies and coal-fired utilities, demanding a transition away from fossil fuels. There’s already billions of dollars of assets at risk of becoming stranded, devalued, or obsolete as world energy markets rapidly transition toward low carbon energy. Our shareholder advocacy is moving awareness of this carbon asset risk into board rooms and into mainstream financial markets, and we’re continuing to erode companies’ license to operate as high carbon energy suppliers. We refuse to give companies like Exxon and Chevron a free pass.

Sustainable and renewable energy is the right investment for the planet, the economy, and our retirement accounts. Together with our coalition partners, As You Sow’s energy team is fighting for a clean energy future.


Slave FreeForced labor, a form of modern slavery, is embedded in products we use every day – 65% of the world’s cotton production is linked to child and adult forced labor. No one wants to support forced labor, and no global brand wants slavery in its products, but until now, it’s been too complicated for brands to trace and eliminate slavery in their cotton.

Responsible Sourcing Network (RSN), a project of As You Sow, is creating an industry-wide system to track, verify, and remediate tainted cotton. The first companies to use this new platform will be some of the 274 global brands that have signed RSN’s Cotton Pledge and committed to not knowingly source cotton from Uzbekistan, where cotton production is 100% harvested with forced labor.

We’re pulling the world’s major corporations into the battle and with these coalition partners our team at As You Sow is fighting for slave free cotton.


Safe FoodFood should be safe to eat. In today’s world, it too often isn’t.

Much of our food is tainted with chemicals like glyphosate, a carcinogen that is the active ingredient in Monsanto’s bestselling weed killer Roundup. Farmers across the country routinely coat their wheat and cereal crops with Roundup right before harvest, and glyphosate is showing up in all sorts of unlikely places, like Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and Quaker Oats. If these trusted brands are tainted, how many other foods carry a similar toxic burden?

We’re not allowing Monsanto a free pass on making food unsafe to eat. We’re exposing the dangers in food every day, and working toward a future where we don’t have to wonder whether the food we eat is safe to consume. Together with our coalition partners, our team at As You Sow is fighting for safe food.


Wage JusticeWe’ve seen the runaway train of CEO pay go dangerously off the tracks for far too long.

Wage inequality has hit a level that we haven’t seen since the Great Depression. Executive pay has reached heights that would make Scrooge McDuck cringe, increasing by over 900% in the last 38 years. Outrageously, these pay packages are too often disconnected from company performance. Our research reveals that the ten firms with the most overpaid CEOs — identified in our first “The 100 Most Overpaid CEOs” report — underperformed the S&P 500 index by a shocking 10.5% in the last two years — and the companies of the top five most overpaid CEOs had a negative return, reducing company share value by 5.7%.

We’re pushing to end egregious executive pay packages, and we’re making headway. Together with our coalition partners, our team at As You Sow is working to bring equality back to the workplace and fighting for wage justice.


Plastic FreeThe equivalent of an entire garbage truck of plastic is being dumped into our oceans every minute, and by 2050 our oceans may contain more plastic than fish by weight. We’re fighting to keep our oceans alive – and to make them safer and cleaner for the next generation.

We challenged McDonald’s, the second biggest fast food franchise in the world, and drove it to replace foam coffee cups with recycled paper cups in its 14,000 U.S. restaurants, eliminating 770 million foam cups every year. Polystyrene foam, just like Styrofoam, doesn’t degrade, it just breaks down into smaller and smaller bits that look like food — the toxins in these plastics concentrate in the fish that feed the world. Now we’re pressing McDonald’s to stop using Styrofoam in all its outlets, across the globe.

As You Sow’s Waste team works every day to stem the flow of plastic into ocean ecosystems. Together with our coalition partners, As You Sow is successfully fighting for plastic free oceans.


FFF Logo

Your savings are invested in fossil fuels. Don’t believe it? Find out at FossilFreeFunds.org.

Celebrating a smashing 25 years, October 2017

Thanks to all who joined us for a SMASHING evening celebrating our 25th anniversary! It was an exuberant celebration of shareholder impact, and an acknowledgement that the shareholder voice is one of the few remaining forces holding corporations accountable.

As You Smash As You Smash
As You Smash As You Smash

See more photos at: https://tinyurl.com/asyousmash-photos

RBC      Our Children's Earth Foundation
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Alternative Investment Group
Anchor Capital Advisors LLC
BMO Global Asset Management
Brandes Investment Partners
Breckinridge Capital Advisors
Fossil Free Indexes
Granite Investment Partners
Hanley Foundation
JAG Capital Management
Mother Jones
Stableford Capital
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EcoAmerica
Harrington Investments, Inc.
Russell Long
Parnassus Investments
Pax World Management
Cari and David Rudd
Shugar Magic Foundation
Threshold Group
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Aspiration Partners
Beneficial State Bank
DBL Partners
Marion Hunt
Impax Asset Management
Jonas Family Foundation
Nia Community Foundation
McDonnell Investment Management
Sloan & Nick Morgan
Riverbridge Partners
Safirstein Metcalf LLP
Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger LLP
Trillium Asset Management
Walden Asset Management
Wetherby Asset Management