"Once top brass decide to integrate environmental goals into their company's business plan, someone has to be in charge of turning press releases into results," writes Keep Your Eye on the Globe: The New World of Corporate Environmental Officers, (Sierra magazine January/February 2008). "Enter the new kids in the executive suite: corporate sustainability officers." Sierra interviewed six sustainability officers in six different industries—Nike, Dupont, Dell, Herman Miller, Kraft Foods, and Goldman Sachs. Nike, for example, has switched to digital mock-ups of new designs, reducing waste, since most samples often wind up in landfills; Dell "has committed to recycling or reusing 99 percent of the waste from its manufacturing facilities by 2012 (it has already cut out 93 percent)."
What these companies, and many more, are discovering is that finding environmental solutions adds up to piles of that other kind of green. High-end furniture company Herman Miller, for example, found that reducing their waste saves them "about $50,000 per year, while income from recycling last year topped $1.8 million."
Read the full, solutions-oriented report at Sierra.
