Study Reveals Sustainability Can Be Profitable; Mars HQ to Operate From 18-acre Solar Garden

Interesting bit of news for companies who continue to keep forming a CSR team/department/officer on the back burner due to cost issues: A study done by boutique management consulting firm Kanal Consulting, conducted to identify best practices in sustainability management across 25 companies including Cisco, Dell, EMC, HP, Intel, Adobe, Symantec, Clorox, Procter & Gamble, Walt Disney, Sony and Sun Microsystems, had the following to reveal: "There is a misconception that sustainable practices are inherently a cost and hurt the bottom line. In fact, ... savvy companies like Alcatel-Lucent and Symantec are profiting from operational improvements and product innovations, which also dramatically reduces their environmental footprint."

In other Sustainability news for the day, and to one-up the naysayers saying that Sustainability is too costly, Mars Chocolate North America announced the transformation of its Hackettstown, N.J. headquarters to include an 18-acre solar garden. The garden includes 28,000 ground mounted solar panels, which will be responsible for 20% of the office and factory's energy consumption.

See the video below for a view of the garden, Mars' President's rationale behind the garden and some life-size M&Ms.