[EDITOR'S NOTE: PART 2 OF 2. THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN SPLIT INTO MULTIPLE PARTS ON LEXIS TO ACCOMMODATE ITS LARGE SIZE. EACH PART CONTAINS THE SAME CITE.]
Genencor International
Corporate Responsibility demands that we take a global, long-range view of environment, social-equity and economic issues. Industry can no longer focus primarily on waste management and disposal of toxic by-products. To achieve business operations which are sustainable over the long-term, companies must shift focus from cleanup at the back end of the process stream to anticipating and preventing pollution at its source, to evaluating the impacts of the enterprise on the communities in which it operates. We believe that over the long term, sustainability is critically linked to our own business success and acting on these ideas will contribute to our company's future growth.289
While some companies are reticent to disclose their sustainability efforts for fear of attracting unwanted scrutiny,290 Genencor International is not among them. For chairman and CEO W. Thomas Mitchell, the philosophy and motives underlying his company's decision to embark on "a long-term path toward sustainability"291 are straight-forward: "We believe the key to the world's future growth and economic stability is sustainable development."292 Genencor's policy on sustainability reads as follows:
[Editors' Note: In June 1992, at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, the nations of the world formally endorsed the concept of sustainable development and agreed to a plan of action for achieving it. One of those nations was the United States. In August 2002, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, these nations will gather in Johannesburg to review progress in the 10-year period since UNCED and to identify steps that need to be taken next. In anticipation of the Rio + 10 summit conference, Prof. John C. Dernbach is editing a book that assesses progress that the United States has made on sustainable development in the past 10 years and recommends next steps. The book, which is scheduled to be published by the Environmental Law Institute in July 2002, is comprised of chapters on various subjects by experts from around the country. This Article will appear as a chapter in that book. Further information on the book will be available at www.eli.org or by calling 1-800-433-5120 or 202-939-3844. Due to the length of the footnote material, endnotes will be used for this Article.]
William L. Thomas practices environmental law with Pillsbury Winthrop L.L.P. in Washington, D.C. He chairs the American Bar Association (ABA) Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources (SEER) Committee on International Environmental Law and is a member of SEER's Climate Change and Sustainable Development Committee, as well as the Special Committee on Second Generation Issues. He is also a regular contributor to the Environmental Law Institute's Environmental Law Reporter International News & Analysis and serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of Corporate Environmental Strategy: The International Journal of Corporate Sustainability. Portions of this Article are based on his contributions to ENVIRONMENTAL LAW AND ENFORCEMENT IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC RIM (Terri Mottershead ed., 2002). The author thanks Charles Bennett, Hilary Bradbury, Harris Gleckman, Burton Hamner, Andrew Hoffman, Riva Krut, Stephen Poltorzycki, Sanjay Sharma, Aseem Prakash, Vesela Veleva, and Meredith Whiting for their insights on various issues explored within. Others, but especially Mark Cohen, John Dernbach, Joseph Fiksel, Kurt Fischer, Frank Friedman, Norine Kennedy, Lester Lave, Richard MacLean, George Nagle, Richard Pastor, Edward Quevedo, Dennis Rondinelli, and Jack Stein provided helpful comments during the drafting process. Still others, but especially John Ehrenfeld, John Elkington, Marc Epstein, Daniel Esty, Stuart Hart, Nicholas Robinson, Nigel Roome, Edith Brown Weiss, and Allen White laid the foundation with their writing and research. A special debt is owed Ira Feldman, who graciously assisted the author in formulating the profiles in corporate sustainability in the Article. This Article is for them and all that are charting a sustainable course for America, with gratitude.
