Environmental Leader is reporting that only 12 percent of America's largest companies have executive-level environmental committees and only 5 percent have a C-level sustainability executive.

 

125 companies in the Russell 1000 Index have committees working on environmental and sustainability efforts and just 54 have high-level executives whose job it is to oversee and lead on green issues.

 

Most of the companies in the Index, nearly 60 percent, have an enterprise level environmental policy, though only a dismal 2.6 percent include a commitment to third-party auditing. 8.8 percent of them are committed to public reporting and 5.5 percent include a commitment to quantifiable targets or goals.

 

I don't think business really knows how to do greener yet. I know one thing though -- they're not going to figure it out any faster by not hiring a VP of Sustainability. Without someone in high levels of power within a corporation, it can be really hard to get the right smart green ideas up to the people who give the big yeses.

 

Swing over to Environmental Leader to read the full report.

 

I'd like to see something showing how well the 5 percent who have VPs of Sustainability are doing compared to the 95 percent who don't. I would suspect they're doing better than their non-greener corporate peers.