Our History

In 2003, many top environmental and environmental health markets campaigners from the U.S., Europe, and Canada came together at the Markets Synergies Conference. They called for the creation of the Business Ethics Network (BEN), with the charge of improving the effectiveness of corporate campaigns worldwide. Later that year, Corporate Ethics International (CEI) was founded with BEN as a key project.

In 2004, CEI organized a unified cross-issue campaign to transform Wal-Mart. This effort led to high level discussions with Wal-Mart’s CEO and senior executives from which Wal-Mart’s environmental initiative was launched. Wal-Mart created 14 sustainability networks and initiated environmental and climate initiatives so impressive that the campaign ended after two years. Though very satisfied with these outcomes, CEI continues to monitor the efforts of Wal-Mart and other BigBox corporations so that improvement continues.

In 2006, CEI launched its Strategic Corporate Initiative (SCI) project to design a long term plan to transform the role of corporations in our society. Working with leading corporate reform activists and theorists, we produced the SCI Report identifying the most strategic short-term and long-term options for bringing corporations back under control. We are pursuing one of those strategic options, a system to rate and re-direct capital high sustainability companies. You can read more in our comprehensive SCI report: SCI: Toward a Global Citizens' Movement to Bring Corporations Back Under Control [PDF]

In 2008, CEI joined with number of other organizations in the US and Canada to launch the international Tar Sands Oil Campaign. We worked with these groups to help develop the campaign strategy and participated in the launch of the largest cross-border collaborative environmental campaign ever waged.

In 2009 we took on a leadership role in helping to coordinate the left flank NGOs engaged in federal climate policy work. Our goal is to produce policies that actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions to levels necessary to avoid a climate catastrophe.