• Amazon today announced that it has committed the equivalent of $4 million (US) " to The Nature Conservancy in an effort to reduce climate change risks and increase species biodiversity in three German cities.
"The initial project is in Berlin’s Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district. Learnings will be applied in two other German locations, and then shared across other European cities. With this, Amazon is recognizing the urgency of the climate crisis and its impacts on urban communities. The announcement follows The Climate Pledge, the company’s commitment to be net zero carbon by 2040."
• Bloomberg reports that "Bayer has reached verbal agreements to resolve a substantial portion of an estimated 125,000 U.S. cancer lawsuits over use of its Roundup weedkiller, according to people familiar with the negotiations.
"The deals, which have yet to be signed and cover an estimated 50,000 to 85,000 suits, are part of a $10-billion Bayer plan to end a costly legal battle the company inherited when it acquired Monsanto in 2018, the people said. Although some lawyers are still holding out, payouts for settled cases will range from a few thousand dollars each to a few million, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly."
Resolving all the various lawsuits against the company has been a high priority for CEO Werner Baumann, the story says.
Bloomberg writes that "the settlements are designed to resolve claims that Roundup, whose active ingredient is the chemical glyphosate, caused non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in some users. The company denies that Roundup or glyphosate cause cancer, a position backed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Still, after Bayer’s court losses spurred a surge in new suits, investors such as Elliott Management Corp. urged the company to seek a comprehensive settlement."
• From Variety:
"Amazon has turned one of the buildings in its Seattle headquarters into a permanent homeless shelter.
"Since 2017, the company had plans to create a homeless shelter for Mary’s Place Family Center on its Seattle campus. From 2016 to 2018, the shelter had operated out of a vacant Amazon building, but now the new location in the Regrade neighborhood of Seattle has opened.
"The brand new facility has eight floors and 63,000 square feet of usable space, which increases the organization’s overall capacity by 40% in King County, Wash. The shelter has an industrial kitchen for residents to use, an on-site health clinic, office space and recreational areas where kids can play. Mary’s Place can shelter up to 1,000 people per year and 200 family members each night."
• Bloomberg has a story about Sprouts Farmers Market, which CEO Jack Sinclair says "is well suited for the shift toward healthier lifestyles. Stores are loaded with organic produce. There’s a butcher and a fish market. They also have aisles of vitamins and health supplements."
"I think there's a fundamental trend which has been accelerated by customers—sensitivity to what you eat," he says. "There's a tailwind behind that. More people are going to be interested in that going forward. If you look around our shelves, we sell things which nobody else sells."
Sinclair says that he expects to add 20 stores to the company's 344-store fleet in the coming year.
