Green Business Execs Reveal Their Greatest Ambitions for 2017

GreenBiz asks their Executive Network members what are their biggest ambition for their companies' sustainability efforts in 2017.

Emilio Tenuta, vice president, corporate sustainability, Ecolab:

Each year the United Nations designates a theme for World Water Day highlighting a specific aspect of freshwater.  The theme in 2017 will focus on wastewater.

This provides an important opportunity to highlight the connection between water and wastewater in the quest for circularity. Our ambition for 2017 is to advance the operationalization of circular principles for water use by industry. 

It is quite possible there is no resource with more circular potential than water. When we maximize the potential of water by recycling, reusing and repurposing it, the possibilities for its use are endless.

By providing accessible tools, relevant insights and innovative solutions, we aim to help companies across industries operationalize circularity to ensure business resilience in an increasingly water-constrained world.

Specific ways we will do this include:

• We will seek to advance understanding of water’s full value to business by helping business leaders assess and internalize the impact of available water supplies and water quality on current and future business growth. In 2017, we will introduce an updated version of the Water Risk Monetizer that incorporates but water availability and quality to provide a more comprehensive risk analysis. By providing a full view of water’s value, we aim to help companies make the business case implement water management practices that move beyond conservation to reuse and recycling.
• We will increasingly leverage data, analytics and connected technology to enable more efficient water reuse and recycling.

Ted Monk, vice president, sustainability and corporate responsibility at Sodexo:

My greatest hope is to be able to embed sustainability more deeply into our operating businesses and business development.

I want to help them understand the business case for sustainability and help them to be able to articulate it to their clients and customers. Mobilizing our leadership moves us from a corporate staff of nine people to over 10,000 across the U.S.

We have a perfect opportunity because we are deploying Better Tomorrow 2025, which is our evolved roadmap for sustainability and corporate responsibility.

Kim Marotta, global senior director corporate responsibility, MolsonCoors:

As we embark on the next phase of our goal-setting in 2017, we aim to reassess our materiality across our global operations and harmonize our focus areas with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

The recent spotlight on SDGs has provided us a tremendous opportunity to engage our internal stakeholders from various parts of the business in discussions about goal-setting, shaping our priorities and putting these priorities at the heart of our strategy.

This framework can open up opportunities for us to address our material issues in an integrated manner and develop transformative solutions that not only future-proofs our operations, but also can help our business remain commercially sustainable.

Charles Herget, AVP sustainability integration, AT&T:

AT&T will focus its efforts on two key areas: Our Smart Cities initiative and our efforts to achieve our 10x carbon reduction goal. Our Smart Cities initiative will pilot new technologies in selected "spotlight" cities and universities — including Atlanta; Chicago; Dallas; Miami-Dade County; Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Montgomery County, Maryland; and Georgia Institute of Technology.

These solutions will focus on infrastructure, citizen engagement, transportation and public safety, as we develop and implement new ways to help communities solve problems and seize opportunities to be more sustainable and innovative.

We also will continue working toward our 2025 goal to enable carbon savings 10 times the footprint of our company’s own operations by enhancing the efficiency of our network and delivering sustainable customer solutions — which include many of the Smart Cities technologies.

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