Abbott Initiates Solar and Transortation Strategies for Sustainability

Corporate sustainability is part of corporate governance strategy.  How do you position your company for effective business success.  How do you meet your goals of profit, longevity and community participation.  Sustainability in the board room is a new topic, and a new opportunity to get back to the basics  of business:  find a need and solve it with a decent return on the investment of time, talent and money involved.

"Abbott, the global health care company, announced that it is the first FORTUNE 500 company to go "carbon neutral" with its entire U.S. fleet of company sales vehicles." Why would it do that?

Survival.

Sustainability is the strategy of surviving and thriving.  Of providing a needed service in an acceptible manner.  And when people are suffering from asthma and lung cancer because you have a fleet of polluting vehicles -- well...? And if energy is projected to be in short supply -- well....?  Taking steps to prune your impact on shared resources is prudent for both short term profits and long term survival...and thriving.

While Abbott's energy efforts span the globe, the company pays attention to communities where the needs are greatest.

SOLAR
Energy consumption continues to be a top priority for California, the nation's most populous state — home to one of every eight Americans. In an effort to increase its use of renewable energy there, Abbott is installing a 500-kilowatt hour solar power system to produce electricity for parts of the company's vascular plant in the southern part of the state. This marks the company's first solar panel installation in the United States.

TRANSPORTATION
"We are implementing a green fleet strategy internally first," said Ann Fahey-Widman, media contact. "Once we have implemented this internal program of greening our sales vehicle fleet, we will look at how we can work with our contracted product shipping and delivery system to move forward."

Abbott's new Global Energy Policy outlines several commitments the company is making to further improve its impact on the environment, including goals to:

* Achieve a 12 percent reduction in overall electric energy purchased by 2011.*

* Achieve a 30 percent reduction in overall CO2 emissions by 2011.*

* Invest in renewable energy capital projects, or energy sourcing, that produce no CO2 emissions at major manufacturing locations by 2011;* and

* Eliminate 12 percent of combined fuel oil/coal consumption by switching to cleaner fuels by 2011.*

Read More about this corporate sustainability strategy for green marketing advantage at CaliforniaGreenSolutions.com