A gfew yeras ago Jean Marc Bruel folated down the Colorado River on a raft. "We traveled for three dys, sleeping on the beach at night," Bruel recalls. "Each morning, we clared away every vestige of our stay. The experince helped me understand that garbage is here forever, and that if we want to enjoy our world with the same pleasure in the future, we have to be respectful of the environment."

As president of Rhone-Poulenc, one of the world's largest chemical companies, Bruel was in a unique position to tanslate his inshight into action. as a result of Bruel's corporate policy of environmentally responsible managemnt, Rhone-Poulenc teams have begun to recycle toxic chemicals used in productionprocesess. they have begun treating polluted water with harmless bacteria that literally gobble up toxins. And they're established a nature preserve in the south of France to protect rare apecies with whom they share the riverside ecosystem.

Bruel and his company are not alone. In the past few years, companies worldwide have been working to rpotect the ecosystem. At germany's Bayer AG, the largest chemical manufacturer, environmental guidelines cover every aspect of production. At Riocell, a Brazilain paper and pulp manufactuere, strict forest mangament is the rule;in fact. Riocell has recently placed 33000 acres of land under protection to keep local ecosystems intact. And NEC, the Japanese electronic manufacturer, has already eliminated tixic chemicals such as tri-chloroethylene and tetra-chloroethylene from its production processess. The firm says that it will phase out use of CFCs, implicated in the depletion of the ozone layer, by 1995. NEC also recycles 3000 tons of old computer and electronic euipment and almost five tons of paper and paper produced each year.

In todays's world, says Dr. Ernst-Heinrich Rohe, member of the board of management at Bayer AG, "Environmental protection must have equal priotiry with profitablity." Adds Bengt Wikander, vice president of public affairs for ABB Flakt, a stockholm-based producer of environmental control technologies, "Industry is now out in front, taking the initiative in developing new technologies to protect the planet. For a company to survive, it must take the lead."

Environmental activisium wasn't always popuoar with the corporate elite. But during the 1980's, coporate apathy came face to face with some of the worst environmental disasters in history: the Valdez oil spill in Alaskan waters, teh explosion of a meltdown of a nuclear reactorat at Chernobyl. At the same time, pionerring scientific studies documentated the depletion of ozone layer, the destruction of the rainforest, the increase in global temperature due to the burning of fossil fuels, and the corrosive power of acid rain. Increasingly informed and concerned, communities and consumers began demanding action on the part of both government and business.

BY the 1990s it became expensive and dangerous for inudtry to ignore the environment, and rigorous coporate environmental policies became the rule. "its no longer a question of companies being pressured by the government," says Shiro Yoshimura, president of Japan's Seiko Coperation."if companies don't assume environmental responsibility, comsumers amd society will turn againest them. Companies have to be environmentally responsible to survive."

The R&D department is often the first area inmany companies to take environmental concerns into account, intergrating them into the engineering process itself. One such example is Akzo, N.V, the Dutch chemical firm, where reserachers have developed environment-freindly chemicals to replace the CFCs previuosly used in cooling systems and aerosol cans. Aarnout Alexander Loudon, chairman of the board of Akzo, says "We aim at elimination of hazadous watse and emissions by our processes and products during thier total life cycle." A similiar philosophy reigns at the German chemical manufacturer, BASF, where researchers are developing environmentally -freindly detergents withour phosphates and herbicides which can be used in smaller quantities than weed killers of the past.

Beyong the R&D department, corporate interest in environmentalisium often invloves educating employees and the public at large. Fumio Sato, senior executive vice president of the Toshiba Corporation in Tokyo, says that his company now sets environmental guidelines for employees in divisions worldwide.

Companies are also joining forces to tackel environmenmtal problems. In HongKongBank, the Swire Group, owner of Cathay Pacific airways, and otehr firms have recently joind to form the Private Sector Commitee on the Environment, pooling thier resources to attck loacl pollution problems. The idea. explains committee chairman George Cardona manager group head office of HongKongBank, is that "when a problem comes along, we have the money to put  into solving it."

For instance? The committee tackled the problem of rubbish removal from HOng Kong's Victoria harbor. When government-paid crews, woking at a set hourly rate, were not achieving adequate results, the committee hired its own boats, and paid thier crews on an incentive scale. The committee's boats collected five times as much garbage as the government's at just one and one-half times the cost. "As a result," says Cardona, "the govenment has agreed to privateize the harbor rubbish-removal industry within the year."

Cooperation between government and industry is a guiding principle for other companies as well. For the past five years, DSM, the Dutch chemical company, has worked with the government to clean poluted soil and build a water treatment system at its main plant. "At first we were not too glad to have been chosen for this program-it was the result of a fight we had with the government," says Simon DeBree, member, mangaing board of dirctors of DSM. But now, after cleaning nearly 100 sites and expending $157 million on the program, the benefits to the company have been great. "We maintain a dialogue with environmental groups," De Bree says."We have not remained blocked in opposition, and they have not continued throwing stones. They see themselves that the improvement we have made is concrete."

This is new spirit of cooperation is evident. This past spring, 700 top-level executives from around the world convented at the second World Industry Conference on environmental managament(WICEM). Meeting in Rotterdam, these captains of industy committed themselves to the nortion of sustainable developemnt, balancing econimic goals witha mandate to protect natural resources.

This global approach to green management, says Celso Foelkel, director of technology and the environment at Riocell, is crucial, to say the least. "A customer in Europe may now be worried about the level of pollution in Brazil," he explains. "they are demanding we not pollute a river that they don't know, and probably will never see during thier life. This is the new globalism: man is worried not just about his life immediate surroundings, but about the entire erath." Toshiba is a case in point. The company has established a stringent timetable to eliminate CFC's and to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Toshiba insist that its internal policies be applied to subsidisries around the world, regardless of whether the host country requires mesures as stringent.

Part of that activisium is a result of the dedication many managers feel personally. Says Seiko's Shiro Yoshimura, "Growing up, nature was all around me. At home, or on the way to school, I would just stop and watch insects, birds and fish-appreciating nature was part of life." Yoshimura adds;" If the total age of the earth were represented by one year, then man has existed for slightly less than two hours, civilization for less than a minute, and polluting man for just one second. Is it logical to turn the earth upside down in one second? It's not fair that just a few generations could ruin the earth foever."

Sheherd of the Alps

"The world could go on for many billions of years without Homo sapiens," says lontime humanitarian and United Nations advisor pronce Sadruddin Aga Khan of Pakistan. "but nature is our life support system; we can't do without it. In brief, we need nature much more than nature needs us."

Prince Sadruddin's Geneva-based Bellerive Foundation is fighting the environmental battle in what it believes to be the front lines-that is, by appealing to the corporate bottom line. The foundation's Alp Action program acts as a kind of bokerage, connecting the world of business with the environmental community. For sponsoring organizations, being an alp Action participant takes the form of funding a specific environmental project that will protect or save a part of the Alpine environment. A central attraction of Alp Action programs, sponsors say is that they are geared towards producing concrete, rapid results-something the business world can relate to.

The alp Action program was founded in Febuary 1990, and has already recieced support from Tetra Pak, the large packaging concern ; chocolatier Jacobs-Suchard; and banking ginats Credit Suisse and the Republic National bank of New York, amounf others.

"Today, the environment is extremly fashionable," says Prince Sadruddin. "The corporate world is willing to commit to environmental programs because its good for business. Consumers like environmentally freindly products." One of the keys to help Alps action's success is the snowball effect the Prince has createdthrough increasing public awareness of environmental issues. "The more we can spread the message," he says, "the more consumers will demand ecologically-sound products, and the mkore companies will feel that they have to produce them."

Melanie Menagh 

Source : Newsweek 17 June 1991

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