Adding Sustainability to the C-Suite
from January/February 2008
by Lianne R. Gourji
Several major corporations have formalized their commitment to the environment by naming a chief sustainability officer or similarly titled executive and putting him or her in charge of various “green” programs, ideally ones that contribute to the bottom line. Examples:Alcoa The aluminum company appointed Anita Roper sustainability director in 2004. Roper, 47, who previously worked for the International Council on Mining and Metals, an industry group, says her task is to get Alcoa’s business units to embed sustainability— making natural resources last as long as possible, if not forever—in their work. “It has to be a part of the DNA of the company,” she says.
Dupont The chemicals giant signed up Linda J. Fisher as vice president and chief sustainability officer, also in 2004, hiring her away from the Environmental Protection Agency, where she had been deputy administrator. Fisher, 55, describes what she does as solving two pieces of a puzzle: “You have the safety, health, and environmental compliance piece, which focuses on how we run our company and how we run our plants. This also means focusing on setting and attaining our [carbon] footprint-reduction goals and keeping energy use down. Second is the growth piece, working with the business units to market new products that are more sustainable or that help make our customers more sustainable.”
Ford Motor Last year the automaker added sustainability to the responsibilities of Susan M. Cischke, vice president of environment and safety engineering, and simultaneously made her a senior VP. Part of her enlarged role at Ford is to help the company’s new sustainable technologies, notably ways to improve fuel consumption, influence future products. “We’ll see most of the work I’m doing down the road, years from now,” says Cischke, 53. “It could take decades to show.”
Procter & Gamble The household-products outfit named Peter White, a former biologist and lecturer at Oxford University, its first director of global sustainability in 2006. Previously White, 51, was associate director for corporate sustainable development. In that role, among other things, he headed P&G’s water-purification projects in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. He was also involved in the company’s disaster-relief work. One of the highlights of his new job, says White, is P&G’s Live, Learn and Thrive program, which helps educate poor children. “We also lead our children’s safe-drinking-water program, which is delivering clean, safe drinking water in developing countries using our Pur water-purifier technology,” he says.
3M Known for inventive new products, the company is enjoying the strong sales of its energy-efficient window film, which reduces solar heat and ultraviolet rays entering a home or office. The film is one of many projects watched over by Keith J. Miller, 56, a 30-year company veteran who became manager of environmental initiatives and sustainability in 2003.
How board members keep up with these people’s activities varies by company.
At DuPont, the board’s environmental-policy committee stays on top of the goals and progress of Linda Fisher’s group and sometimes involves the full board in discussions. “The directors were very supportive of our efforts to reduce greenhouse gases and our work with the U.S. Climate Action Partnership [a coalition of big companies and environmental organizations that lobbies for the reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions],” she says. At P&G, Peter White and his team make presentations to the board’s public-policy committee, which reports back to the full board.
Alcoa director Kathryn Fuller, 60, a former president and CEO of the World Wildlife Fund and a member of the board’s public-issues committee, says she signed on at Alcoa largely because of its commitment to sustainability. Anita Roper, the company’s director of sustainability, says, “We are very fortunate that our public-issues committee is very engaged. Our sustainability report goes to them first, and they visit different sites for sustainability events. Kathryn has just been a great supporter of the work we’re doing.” Alcoa has already achieved some of its long-term goals. The corporation decreased its output of greenhouse gases by 25% between 1990 and 2003, for example, seven years ahead of schedule.
Of course, companies want environmental policies that translate into profits. “Over the long haul, if the actions that companies take aren’t economically viable, they either become categorized as philanthropic or they don’t last,” says DuPont’s Linda Fisher. “A product has to be good for
the environment, and it has to sell. We won’t continue to sell products, even if they are sustainable, if people aren’t buying them. Right now people are not yet willing to buy products that don’t have all the functionalities of a nonsustainable product. They want it all.”
How much of the current push for sustainability will reach the bottom line remains unknown. Says Charles Elson, 48, director of the Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware and a member of the AutoZone and HealthSouth boards: “I’m not going to say these efforts don’t add value, but it’s a little early to say that they do.”
The companies themselves, even if they’ve won awards for what they’re doing for the environment, know that sustainability is a journey. “It’s nice to have recognition for what we’ve achieved,” says P&G’s Peter White, whose company is widely noted for its sustainability programs. “But we’ll be the first to say we haven’t gotten there yet. We can always be better.”
