Companies feel heat of global warming awareness | Reuters

Companies feel heat of global warming awareness


You can't have a new coffee plantation without clearing tropical rainforest. Green coffee will never catch on since you have to roast the beans first. How much greenhouse gas is emitted when you roast those beans?


"McDonald's Corp. is blogging on the environment, Starbucks Corp. has designed a green-themed online game, and Hilton Hotels Corp. aims to link manager pay to making its hotels greener.

While all of them say they have been working for years or even decades on pro-environment strategies, these corporate behemoths acknowledge that growing awareness of global warming among U.S. consumers is changing the way they work.

But they operate with caution because no one wants to be accused of 'greenwashing' -- or what Mark Spellun, founder of eco-lifestyle magazine Plenty, calls 'putting a green halo over themselves when it is completely undeserved.'
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Weather disasters like Hurricane Katrina, Oscar-winning documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth' and U.S. President George W. Bush's push for fuel alternatives to oil have all heightened concern over climate change in the last year.

Experts warn that failure to address that shift in opinion could hurt the bottom lines of companies selling to consumers.

More than 60 percent of U.S. consumers hold government and big business directly accountable for global warming, according to a recent study by market research firm MindClick Group.

'Business"