Marketing 12th Edition by Charles Lamb,Charles Lamb,Joe Hair

Exercise 9

For years, labor and environmental groups have criticized and pressured companies whose suppliers pay low wages, run sweatshops, use child labor, or use other similarly illicit labor practices. However, only recently have U.S. companies begun to come under fire for sourcing materials from foreign companies that are contributing to massive pollution problems in their local environments. When it was discovered that the Fuan Textiles plant in southern China, a major fabric supplier for companies such as Nike, Liz Claiborne, and Target, had been dumping large quantities of untreated wastewater into Chinese lakes and rivers, many U.S. companies downstream in the Fuan supply chain were forced to take notice. As Daryl Brown, VP for ethics and compliance at Liz Claiborne, noted, "[T]he environment is the new frontier. We certainly don't want to be associated with a company that's polluting the waters."
Should companies such as Nike, Liz Claiborne, and Target avoid structuring their supply chains so that they include polluters, even if the pollution is occurring somewhere far from the United States?