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Mr. Dyne Mark B. Morte

BA 587 Governance, Business Ethics, Social Responsibility and Citizenship
May 11, 2019

Mr. A. B. Asistido
Professor

Ben & Jerry case

The case about managing social responsibility and growth at Ben & Jerry’s showed
us several ethical dilemmas found in Ben & Jerry’s company throughout the years of
operation. Ben & Jerry’s is one of the business company that values social responsibility
highly in minority of current profit-oriented economic system. However, there are still
ethical dilemmas that occurred due to the high awareness of environment protection in
society nowadays.

Ben and Jerry’s had started to use “eco-pint” as cartons, which made out of
environmentally friendly unbleached paperboard, after years of development later they
discover the common packaging bleached paperboard used by companies are bleached
with chlorine. The wastewaters after the bleaching process contain several toxic
chemicals, including dioxin, an extremely potent carcinogen, which are all hazardous to
human health and destroy the marine ecosystem. Although the expenses on unbleached
paperboard are more expensive to bleached paperboard, Ben & Jerry’s still wanted to
transform their process by eliminating using chlorine bleach packaging.

Ben & Jerry’s had received critique and complaint from The Centre of Science in
the Public Interest (CPSI) about the label of “all natural” on their ice-cream product as
reported by CPSI demand to take off the label of “all natural” from its ice cream because
CPSI confront that the ingredients in Ben & Jerry’s ice creams were not totally natural.
They contain corn syrup, alkalized cocoa and partially hydrogenated soybean oil. Ben &
Jerry’s CEO, Jostein Solheim claims that the label of “all natural” is accepted by
reasonable customers due to using the most natural ingredients in their ice creams, yet
they remove it to avoid further conflict. The ethical problem of implied falsity can be found
in this case. Based on Implied falsity define as the message has a tendency to mislead,
confuse, or deceive the public with a false message. The message of “all natural” label
can be considered as leading to confusing the consumers.

With the ethical decision making in Ben & Jerry’s is all influenced by their three-
part mission that aims to create linked prosperity for everyone that’s connected to our
business: suppliers, employees, farmers, franchisees, customers, and neighbors and also
to the environment. Like the first mentioned the usage of the unbleached paper board this
is due to protect the environment from the hazardous chemicals in using chlorine and
protect also human health. And the second thing is labeling the product as “All Natural”
which made them received criticism from the Center for Science in Public Interest, and
this action was driven through their belief that most of the materials used in their product
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are all natural or organic. With all these dilemmas they faced in ethical decision making
were all driven to the founders’ core value which is implemented respect for individuals in
and outside the company and supports the communities of which they are a part, where
they believe through responding to their Social Responsibility, they will achieve their goals
which are preserving and expanding Ben & Jerry's social mission, brand integrity, and
product quality.

Dilemma mentioned previously, discover the damage caused to the environment

and society which brought by chlorine-bleached paperboard and the misleading label of
“all natural” on their ice creams, have been resolved successfully by Ben & Jerry’s
company smart action. Ben & Jerry’s company realize the damage brought by the
production of chlorine-bleached paperboard that they had been used in their packaging.
In order to take care of this issue, Ben & Jerry’s put effort on their research and
development of unbleached paperboard. Despite the new environmentally friendly
unbleached paperboard causes increasing of production cost, Ben & Jerry’s insist to
transform their production process by eliminating using chlorine bleach packaging.

In another case, Ben & Jerry’s had removed the possible mislead label of “all
natural” after a received complaint from CPSI to avoid conflict. According to the report of
Michael Jacobson, the executive director CPSI, said: “Ben & Jerry’s is doing the right thing
by taking the phrase ‘all natural’ off its label if the products have factory-made ingredients.”

In conclusion, the ethical problems of Ben & Jerry’s are solved with smart solutions
that lead to high satisfactory.