Bloomberg Recognized for Sustainability
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Sustainability Roundtable, Inc, (SR Inc) based in Cambridge, has recognized New York City-based Bloomberg as the Sustainable Business & Enterprise Roundtable’s (SBER) Outstanding Corporate Leader of 2014.
SR Inc is a private research firm that encourages best practices for incorporating sustainability in businesses. SR Inc assists dozens of global companies in developing and managing strategies to move their operations to greater sustainability.
Bloomberg warranted the Outstanding Corporate Leader Award, according to SR Inc, because of the top score they achieved on this year’s assessment of corporate sustainability strategy and implementation in real estate and operations. On a qualitative basis, the comprehensive, aggressive, and effective nature of Bloomberg’s sustainability efforts support the award. SR Inc cited many factors for awarding Bloomberg, including explicit and visible commitment driven from the chairman’s office and integration of sustainability information sharing into the company’s core business products, helping advance more sustainable industry practices. SR Inc also noted Bloomberg’s breadth and depth of employee engagement in virtually all aspects of corporate sustainability.
What’s more, Bloomberg last year was able to reduce its waste-to-landfill amount by 67 percent. SR Inc recognized Bloomberg’s commitment to operational efficiency through externally published pursuit of 2020 goals to reduce emissions 20 percent.
“Bloomberg ‘walks the walk’ in both optimizing towards more sustainable high-performance in their real estate and corporate operations and in seeking new revenue opportunities in helping other companies do the same,” said SR Inc CEO & chairman Jim Boyle in a statement. “In 2014, it was clear that Bloomberg had moved to top leadership in driving greater sustainability throughout their global operations. Bloomberg offers a brilliant case study in how to bring the broader lens of sustainability — and with it the energy of greater social and environmental relevance — to relentless business optimization and to the drive for innovations of growing importance in a changing world.”
Bloomberg employs more than 15,500 people in 192 locations around the world and in 5 million square feet of office space. The company is moving toward having 50 percent of these employees working in a LEED-certified space by 2017. To date, 20 LEED-certified projects (12 platinum and 8 gold) have been completed, and the company has committed to any new office space with more than 100 employees seeking LEED Gold certification or higher.
“This is about creating value — value for the business and value for society,” said Curtis Ravenel of Bloomberg’s sustainable business and finance group in a statement. “We have been able to demonstrate that integrating sustainability considerations into our operations is good for business. By successfully decoupling business growth from environmental impact, we have improved our operating efficiency — saving nearly $70 million and reducing our emissions intensity 35 percent since 2007. We are not alone in seeing this kind of dual benefit. And we hope that by sharing our successes we can encourage other companies to adopt sustainable practices into their business-as-usual practices.”