Henry Kravis of Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co. And the Rise of Environmentally Aware Business
In the beginning, when Henry Kravis and George Roberts launched Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co (KKR) in 1976 with some help from the First Chicago Corporation, the company’s specialty was in highly leveraged transactions. Recently they have established a novel enterprise which concentrates not solely on profitability, but also on how ecologically friendly each of their companies are.
KKR’s Henry Kravis and the non-profit environmental advocacy group Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) merged last year, with the goal of making green business operation a mainstream idea. Their goals include encouraging firms in avoiding environmental menaces e.g. global warming not to forget any disproportionate consumption of water resources. Eco-efficiency (the phrase was first coined by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development WBCSD) informs the framework for their mission, employing green techniques such as recycling programs, reducing the waste of resources and increasing the durability of products. Successful though it was the management didn’t even understand the full advantages of the project until Ken Mehlman, the executive responsible for the project, evaluated the program following its first year in operation. Much to everybody’s surprise, Ken saw that the program not only reduced ecological impact, but also increased the the profit from all their business organizations too. Virtually all of the commercial organizations owned by KKR and Ken Mehlman today actively take part in the Green Portfolio Project. Still, when you consider that the group has a 2009 portfolio with an estimated worth of $86,000,000,000, you may be certain this wasn’t an easy feat.
The Green Portfolio project now includes new and groundbreaking initiatives. To illustrate, KKR linked up with the Environmental Defense Fund’s Climate Corps Program an organization which teaches students studying for a Master’s in Business Administration how to encourage cost-effective, green practices. Of Late, Ken Mehlman has been working closely with Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co to produce a variety of analytic tools that business concerns can employ to measure and manage resources. This type of information is invaluable as businesses may easily study their day-to-day operations and ascertain precisely how they can solve any problems while simultaneously letting staff to determine their ecological impact.
Henry Kravis, the KKC, and the Environmental Defense Fund have encouraged all sorts of businesses to cut down their environmental impact. Their developments have made going green easier for companies in every sector and shown the world that running a profitable business need not entail the hefty price of damaging the environment.
