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More than ever we need organizations to step up their environmental commitments and stewardship. This requires extensive goal setting, research, improvement and measurement, and verification. Though some believe environmental performance hurts business, many are finding it can actually boost the profitability, stock performance, and brand.
I remember when we founded the U.S. Green Building Council and our LEED Green Building Rating System back in the early 90s, some of our board members only wanted us to work with activist NGOs and avoid large corporations at our table. They were leery of the heavy hand of business and that they’d try to control our nascent non-profit and extinguish our lofty goals.
Well, thankfully we didn’t adhere to that call and remained open to both sides to join us. One of the world’s biggest corporations actually turned out to support us the most of almost any other. United Technologies [known as UTC] not only contributed Rick Fedrizzi, our founding Chairman, and long-term CEO but provided decades of voluntary assistance, financial contributions, and advancement of our professionalism and credibility into the marketplace.
Today’s Regen360 iTunes podcast show features an interview with UTC’s Chief Sustainability Officer, John Mandyck. John also chairs the Corporate Advisory Board for the World Green Building Council, which I founded in 2002. John and I spent interesting times together as we worked to help foster the formation and growth of the China, Russia and India Green Building Councils.
In our conversation, John informs us about UTC’s significant emphasis on the importance and benefit of adopting a deep sustainability program. UTC is not only a global leader in aerospace, food refrigeration, and commercial buildings but also environmental ingenuity and performance. We learn about UTC’s sponsorship of a fascinating indoor air quality research project with Harvard University and John’s book Food Foolish.
To corporations stepping it up to helping us sustain and prosper!
David Gottfried