I hear my own daughters talking about big companies polluting the environment, and then I realise they are talking about companies of which one I am running. But when I tell them to read the things we are doing, then they realise we are doing good things. But millennials are really a great lot.
Apple has made this commitment that it's a green company. So how do you fulfill your commitment if you don't consider you have responsibility in your suppliers' pollution?
It's unfortunate that all business gets painted as wanting to oppose the environment and slow change.
I think I was the first executive to ever speak at a Greenpeace business conference, in London in 2001. That didn't play well here at Ford, but I thought it was an important signal to send internally, that these were the kind of issues we needed to be grappling with.
Discovery Channel's 'Planet Healers' will provide a look into how businesses can exist for more than just making profits, how they can help create a better and sustainable future.
I have always been an advocate and was, in my last job at M&S, a supporter of the Al Gore dictum that a sustainable business can be a profitable business. We were the first sizeable company in the U.K. to prove that was the case.
Twenty years ago, you might have been pessimistic and said there's no hope. But these days, some of our very biggest companies are acting remarkably cleanly. And in some cases, although not all cases, the CEOs are the driving forces behind that.
