Disney Announces Long-Term Environmental Goals
by Lori Brown
Published on March 18th, 2009
1 Comment
The Walt Disney Company recently announced a significant set of strategic environmental goals in order to reduce its environmental impact. The goals are part of Disney’s 2008 Corporate Responsibility Report, which details their commitment to a wide range of issues from the environment to child safety.
The environmental goals include three- to five-year targets to reduce waste, emissions, electricity and fuel use and impact on water and ecosystems. The report includes the company’s first comprehensive greenhouse gas inventory, as well as goals to minimize product footprint’s and contribute to positive environmental action.
“Disney’s enhanced corporate responsibility efforts make our brands and products more attractive, strengthen our bonds with consumers, make the company a more desirable place to work and build goodwill in the communities we operate,” said Disney President and CEO Robert Iger.
The environmental goals outlined in the report include:
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One of Disney's main goals is to "dispose of waste conscientiously and creatively by making 'reduce/reuse/recycle' the standard operating procedure." Photo: Canadianworldtraveller.com
Zero waste initiatives
- Minimize product footprints
- Zero-net direct greenhouse gas emissions from fuels
- Reduce indirect greenhouse gas emissions from electricity consumption
- Net positive impact on ecosystems
- Minimize water use
- Inform, empower and activate positive action for the environment
To achieve a long-term goal of zero waste, Disney will require minimizing overall waste, increasing and improving recycling and other disposal mitigation programs and utilizing high-recycled content products. In 2006, the baseline year, Disney diverted 128,000 tons of waste from landfills. Based off these results, Disney aims to decrease solid waste to landfills by 50 percent by 2013.
In 2008, Earth911.com and Disney teamed up in honor of America Recycles Day and the DVD release of Wall-E, to recognize the recycling efforts of Colfax Elementary School. The Wall-E DVD is packaged in recycled paperboard, with the internal tray and paper inserts made from 30 and 100 percent post-consumer recycled content, respectively.
- The Walt Disney Company. 2008 Corporate Responsibility Report http://disney.go.com/crreport/home.html.
Trey Granger
posted on March 25th, 2009 at 10:15 am
I remember Disneyworld was the first place I saw those fountains where the water squirts up from a hole in the ground and lands in a different hole, like a flying fish. I hope minimizing water use doesn’t mean the disappearance of the running fountains.