In Cincinnati, Procter and Gamble (P&G), a Worldwide Consumer Products Corporation is an outstanding example of improving lives through Sustainability

As a resident of Cincinnati and as a citizen of the world concerned about the effects of Global Warming, I felt a great comfort when I read in Newsweek that P&G ranked 26th in America’s 500 biggest Corporations Going Green (4th in its category of Consumer Products/Cars). I have always thought that large consumer goods companies, like P&G, could drastically reduce the CO2 emissions in the world by making small changes to their products. The fact that large companies service millions of customers worldwide would multiply these little changes.
In the last few years P&G has received many important awards. A few of these include: the 2007 EPA Children's Environmental Health Excellence Award, the 2008 Presidential Award For Corporate Leadership for providing safe drinking water for children in developing countries, and, the most recent, 2009 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award for designing greener chemicals awarded by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on behalf of the White House.

The Procter & Gamble Company in March 2009 announced significantly increased targets for its 2012 Sustainability goals:
v Develop and market at least $50 billion in cumulative sales of “sustainable innovative products” (SIP), which are products with a significantly reduced (>10%) environmental footprint versus previous or alternative products (compared against P&G’s original target of $20 billion in cumulative SIP sales).
v Deliver a 20% reduction (per unit of production) in carbon dioxide emissions, energy consumption, water usage and disposed waste from P&G plants, leading to a total reduction over the decade of at least 50% (P&G originally targeted a 10% reduction in each of its operational categories and now sees new opportunities in all aspects of its operations).
v Enable 300 million children to Live, Learn and Thrive TM (LLT) and deliver three billion liters of clean water through P&G’s Children’s Safe Drinking Water (CSDW) program. P&G had set an original target of reaching 250 million children through Live, Learn and Thrive (LLT) and delivering two billion liters of clean water through its Children’s Safe Drinking Water (CSDW) program.
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In September at the Fifth Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) P&G announced plans for their Future Friendly program, which educates consumers on how to make sustainable choices and the commitment to place P&G Sustainable Innovative Products in 30 million homes by the end of 2010. The company also increased its commitment to provide 4 billion liters of clean drinking water by 2012 with the Children’s Safe Drinking Water program (CSDW).

It will be difficult to reach the goal of reducing greenhouse gasses footprint of at least 25% by 2020 (target suggested by the 4th Assessment Report of 2007 released by the Nobel Peace Prize 2007 winner IPCC) in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis. It gives us hope to know that P&G is committed to make Sustainability the core of the company (more details at 2009 P&G Sustainability Overview). Hopefully, this will have some impact on the Climate Conference in Copenhagen in December, 7-18 2009

People’s Republic of China here in USA to explore sustainable development models

This summer myself and my family had the pleasure and the honor to host the participants to the "ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, A Project for the People’s Republic of China" under the auspice of Department of State's INTERNATIONAL VISITOR LEADERSHIP PROGRAM. Many thanks to the Greater Cincinnati World Affairs Council to give us the opportunity to have this wonderful Chinese delegation for dinner. We were very happy to meet Mr. Yun LAI (Anti-toxics Campaigner-Greenpeace China), Mr. Qichang LIN (Director of Hazardous Waste Administration Center-Heilongjiang Environmental Protection Bureau), Mr. Jianfeng WANG (Deputy Director-Qiqihaer Environmental Protection Bureau) and Ms. Lingzhen WANG (Assistant Secretary General-Chengdu Urban Rivers Association). It was their first time visiting USA. I hope they had a chance to experiment an ordinary American family weekend day in Cincinnati and relax from their intensive program. Together we took a walk on the new Anderson Township Five Mile Trail and we explored our suburb. They were very impressed of seeing wildlife, like deers, goose and rabbits, so close to a residential area . They loved to visit the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden in the morning. Then we had a very good time eating a simple Italian dinner and talking about the Olympics and our cultures. They taught my daughters to use chopsticks and my daughters loved their company so much that they wished them to come for their birthday next year. I think that the best amusement of the evening, was my 5 yr old daughter trying to eat ice cream with chopsticks. We loved all their gifts among which a little mascot of the Olympics made with the skin of a fish, lucky chains with a dragon and a monkey, silk foulard, chopsticks and a reusable tote bag from Green Peace. I hope those programs will help the exchange of technology and expertise between China and USA to solve Climate Change and save our Earth together.