Industry CEOs Commit to Environmentally Friendly Business
Publishing Industry Companies Among First to Commit to Environmentally Friendly Business Strategies
Washington, DC -- Seeking to leverage the power of business as a force for good, Business Roundtable (an association of CEOs of leading corporations with a combined workforce of more than 10 million employees and $4 trillion in annual revenues) this week launched a sustainable growth initiative encouraging leading U.S. companies to embrace business strategies and projects that measurably improve Society, the Environment and the Economy.
The initiative, called S.E.E. Change, encourages CEOs to commit to business strategies that combine traditional corporate goals of higher profit and lower cost with a strong commitment to environmental stewardship and social improvement.
"Businesses are in business to generate growth, but sustaining growth is more complicated," said Charles O. Holliday, Jr., Chairman of the Roundtable's Environment, Technology & the Economy Task Force and Chairman and CEO of DuPont. "The purpose of S.E.E. Change is to urge companies to adopt business strategies and projects that are good for the environment and society - and good for their bottom line."
Among the first Roundtable companies to commit to participate in S.E.E. Change are: 3M, Alcoa, American Electric Power, Citigroup, Coca Cola, Dow, DuPont, Eastman Kodak, FPL Group, General Electric, General Motors, HSBC, ITT Industries, Office Depot, Procter & Gamble, Sun Microsystems, Weyerhaeuser and Xerox, and the Global Environmental Management Initiative (GEMI) will also be a partner. As a mark of the significance placed on this initiative, the Roundtable is running full-page advertisements in major national newspapers including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post and USA Today.
"Experience tells us that sustainable business practices are not only socially responsible but financially smart," says Anne M. Mulcahy, Xerox chairman and CEO. "Though Xerox's corporate citizenship successes already are a source of pride, the challenges evolving across societal, environmental and economic spheres mean all of us must aim for even higher levels of performance."
