How one nonprofit is getting the world's biggest retail brands to improve human rights in countries producing raw materials

• The Responsible Sourcing Network is getting global brands to improve supply-chain sustainability.
• It convinces companies to use sustainable raw materials and boycott producers who use slave labor.
• They partner with major companies like Adidas, Amazon, Apple, and Costco.
• This article is part of a series called "Partners for a Sustainable Future," profiling innovative alliances that are driving real progress in sustainability.

Sustainable and ethical sourcing of materials continues to be a problem for retail brands reliant on global supply chains.

Patricia Jurewicz, founder and CEO of Responsible Sourcing Network (RSN), is helping to champion human rights in the mining and harvesting of raw materials used in our clothes and electronics.

"I think it is very difficult for companies because there's often a black hole that exists in the middle of value chains of not knowing where their suppliers' suppliers are buying materials," she told Insider.

The Network is creating responsible supply-chain coalitions of stakeholders including investors, companies, and human-rights advocates. It focuses on the "parallel situations" of mining minerals such as cobalt that are needed for smartphones from The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and harvesting cotton from Central Asia.

Members in the responsible sourcing of minerals network include Amazon and Apple, and the Uzbek Cotton Pledge counts Adidas and Gap among hundreds of brands boycotting cotton harvested under slave labor in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

"The most egregious labor and human rights violations are happening in value chains, but at the raw commodity level in what's called the pre-competitive space," Jurewicz said. "If you look overall at modern slavery statistics, the vast majority of them are happening in agriculture and mining."

Acting as a resource to bring brands to the table

The passing of conflict minerals legislation in Congress in 2010 helped the Network gain momentum as companies were forced to sign supply-chain disclosures for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

"As one of our first big partnership activities, we had monthly multistakeholder phone calls to talk about actions and what companies would put in their SEC disclosures," Jurewicz said.

Helping companies complete their due diligence obligations is how Jurewicz started building alliances between investors, corporations, local activists, journalists, and NGOs on the ground in countries such as the DRC and Uzbekistan.

"We decided to put out a report where we're ranking companies' actions and activities. We tried to do it in good faith, setting our expectations in advance," she said.

As brands got to know the Network through this work, Jurewicz would start reaching out to them to encourage simple sustainability steps, such as setting up recycling programs for their old electronic equipment.

Using stakeholders to pressure companies to lift their game

The Network's most successful campaign to date has been the Uzbek Cotton Pledge, a boycott of the nation's cotton due to its forced labor.

"We've found a lot of success in working with shareholders and investor groups to pressure companies to be more sustainable," she said. Sometimes, it's a matter of using those relationships to get brands to answer her calls. Other times, shareholders get involved directly.

"Costco had not signed the pledge, and there was a professor from Santa Clara interested in responsible investing. As a Costco shareholder, he filed a resolution encouraging them to sign it - and in the end, they did," she said.

Jurewicz pointed out that responsible sourcing measures need to be done in alliances - it's very difficult for lone actors to change supply chains.

"I think reputational harm is what brings companies to the table. We're finding now that before going into countries to source their cotton, companies want to know they have the NGOs working with them - they don't want to risk being attacked through a media or social media campaign," she said.

Making the organization approachable, not scary

Now, many of the brands the Network works with have corporate responsibility plans in place.

Retail giant Adidas notes it has "clearly defined near term priorities including targeted modern slavery capacity building" for its suppliers and uses "outside benchmarks, managed by KnowTheChain and the Responsible Sourcing Network to track our performance in relation to our industry sector and the cotton supply chain."

Jurewicz said that she attends a lot of conferences and speaks on panels to put a face to the activism and get companies on board.

"A few times when I've met people, they've said afterwards that they thought it was going to be a lot scarier," she said. "We're just trying to make sure people and the environment are treated properly. There's enough resources on the planet for everybody to benefit."

In a relatively short time, they're seeing results - the new Uzbek government has even invited the Network into the country to improve its cotton harvesting.

"They're asking us what they need to do to start bringing companies back in to buy cotton from them. I think a lot of progress has been made," she said.