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.
v
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
