By Bill Osborne, Senior Vice President - Custom Products, Navistar, Inc.
: Corporate Citizenship Center
//Editor's Note: This is part 1 of 2. Read Part 2: Development in Rio.//
I've been enjoying GreenBiz's coverage of Rio+20 this week. In their piece about environmental public-private partnerships, writers Tensie Wheland (Rainforest Alliance) and John Williams (Domtar Corporation) write:
The 2012 theme for World Environment Day isGreen Economy: Does it include you? The program’s emphasis is not only on growing inherently green sectors, but also in greening traditional businesses one wouldn’t necessarily regard as environmentally oriented.
Today, June 5th, the United Nations leads the 40th anniversary of World Environment Day (WED). World Environment Day aims to stimulate awareness of environmental issues around the world and encourage individuals to take action.
While some companies have only recently rushed to become sustainable in an effort to appease potential critics or help their brand’s image, others have been sustainability leaders for years. They have built sustainability into their core DNA, making it a critical factor in all of the services they offer and how they run their operations. These companies are helping the U.S. grow its green economy and making the country more economically diverse and resilient in the hyper-competitive age of globalization.
This year IBM moved from No. 3 to No.
It is hard not to be optimistic about the future of sustainability in the U.S. business sector. Ten, fifteen years ago, sustainability was a side-concern, a box that often was checked with a glitzy ad campaign.
Researchers at Oregon State University have invented a new 