Interview with Walt Disney Company Senior Vice President Beth Stevens

My colleague Andrew Peterman and I recently spoke with Beth Stevens, Senior Vice President of Environmental Affairs at The Walt Disney Company, for a Q&A on Disney’s sustainability and stewardship projects. Disney has a rich history of promoting environmental protection and highlighting the importance of conservation dating back to the days of Walt Disney himself. Beth shed light on an innovative corporate responsibility model that stresses the importance of their business working to avoid the worst impacts of climate change through greenhouse gas reductions and engagement at all levels of the company.

Can you tell us a little about the evolution of Disney’s environmental programs? 

            The Walt Disney Company has always had a strong conservation focus that began with Walt Disney. The ‘True Life Adventures’ series, movies produced by Walt Disney himself beginning back in the 1950s, are early examples of Disney’s commitment to and vision for telling the stories of animals and nature. Walt’s vision for preserving wildlife and their habitat also included early efforts with Florida’s wetlands in the 1960s when he set aside nearly one-third of the Walt Disney World Resort as a dedicated conservation area. 
            In 1995, the company established the Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund (www.disney.com/conservation) to support the important work of organizations that are positively impacting wildlife, ecosystems and communities around the world.  In 2007, we established the Environmental Council, made up of senior executives from every division around the company, to set Disney’s high-level environmental strategy.  
            Today, as part of that strategy, we focus on two equally important tracks of work: how to reduce the company’s operating impact on the planet, and how to inspire others to do the same. A structure was established at each business unit that consisted of sub-councils and what we call Green Teams, groups of passionate employees at each worksite that come up with ideas and make sure policy is being executed.
            Within a couple of years, this structure yielded some promising results.  We are lucky enough to have a substantial engineering and technology staff to draw on, helping us to complete a baseline inventory of our greenhouse gas emissions and waste and to set targets for cutting back.  Drawing on their expertise, we set a long-term goal of zero-net direct greenhouse emissions, and committed to get to 50% of that target by 2012.   The reasons for selecting this target are straightforward – current scientific conclusions indicate that urgent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are required to avert accelerated climate change. Scarcity of natural resources and threats to ecosystems and biodiversity are serious environmental issues. A successful response to these challenges demands fundamental changes in the way society, including business, uses natural resources, and Disney is no exception. 
            To look at how best to incentivize change internally, we set up a Climate Solutions Working Group – drawn from Environmental Council members – to engage each business unit in actively reducing carbon emissions. The group develops strategies for avoiding emissions, reducing emissions through efficiency, replacing high-carbon fuels with low-carbon alternatives and acquiring high-quality offsets to get us the rest of the way to our target.
            Going back to the notion of “inspire” I mentioned earlier, it can seem like a throwaway term, but when you take into account the unparalleled reach of The Walt Disney Company, you begin to realize just how powerful that positive influence can be. Already through our environmental programs for youth like Disney’s Friends for Change and Disney’s Planet Challenge, we’re inspiring hundreds of thousands of kids across the nation to become better stewards of our environment.  Through our Disney Animal Kingdom theme park and our Disneynature documentary film label, we’re raising awareness of our planet’s wildlife and resources and the challenges they face. These are just a few of many company examples.

In the literature about your environmental programs and priorities, the word ‘sustainable’ is often used. What is the Walt Disney Company’s strategy around sustainability?

            Sustainability is being integrated deeper into our overall decision-making process. As an example, the capital authorization process requires that all new projects be evaluated not only in terms of financial returns, but also in terms of environmental footprint. Each project is then required to meet not only the financial goals of the company, but also the environmental goals of the company. 

Disney is doing some pretty innovative things when it comes to curbing internal carbon pollution. Can you tell us about these programs?

            Disney believes that climate change is manmade. Therefore we have a responsibility (as do all businesses) to reduce emissions as much as we can. Disney believes that there needs to be a federal and international framework to limit carbon pollution, but we are not necessarily waiting for that framework to reduce our own emissions. In 2008, we established the Climate Solutions Fund, which set a carbon “tax” against the projected emissions of each business segment under their five-year plan. This tax incentivizes the businesses to reduce their internal emissions and the money collected is pooled to buy high-quality offsets to meet the targets to which we’ve committed.
            This approach has spurred a move towards the purchase of clean fuel vehicles in our parks and resorts division, including the retrofitting of our Disneyland Resort steam trains to run on bio-diesel gleaned from our food operations. Separately, our business units have sought to reduce electricity usage, and hence indirect emissions, by changing thermostat set points, putting in lighting sensors and CFL bulbs and shutting down the lights on park icons like Cinderella’s Castle and Spaceship Earth after hours. At our data centers, we’ve managed to cut the number of physical servers we use even as we handle more information.
            While this approach has helped us cut our direct carbon pollution, we’ve used the proceeds from the carbon “tax” to make substantial investments in forestry preservation. Working with Conservation International and The Nature Conservancy, in 2009 we invested $7 million in avoided deforestation and reforestation projects in Congo, Peru and the United States. These multi-year projects provide us carbon credits as we work to reduce our own fuel and electricity use. We look for high-quality offsets with co-benefits for both ecosystems and societal impact. 

Instituting the kinds of changes you have talked about requires a company’s employees to be fully invested.  How have your employees reacted to these changes and what role do they have in shaping Disney’s environmental programming? 

            You are right that in order to achieve our environmental goals our employees need to embrace the vision of environmental stewardship and sustainability, and I am happy to say that our employees certainly have beyond our wildest expectations. A simultaneous top-down and bottom-up approach has helped us to attain buy-in at all levels of the company. As I briefly touched on earlier, in addition to our Council of executives, we created Green Teams made up of employees in all corners of the company that work to improve the footprint of  business operations with initiatives like recycling and energy savings. Employees are the source of many great ideas for our environmental programs and much of the measurable progress we are making against our environmental goals is due in large part to the passion and commitment of our Green Teams.
            We are very proud of the culture of stewardship and sustainability we have achieved at every level of Disney.

What are the Walt Disney Company’s plans for the future?

            Sustainability is an ever-evolving process.  We are constantly researching ways we can become more efficient through small tweaks and game-changing innovations alike.  You can definitely expect to hear a lot more from us. 

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Dr. Beth Stevens is the Senior Vice President, Environmental Affairs at The Walt Disney Company

As senior vice president of Environmental Affairs for The Walt Disney Company,  Beth is responsible for  developing and facilitating the company’s environmental strategy, policy, and targets. Under her leadership, Disney has set aggressive environmental goals and targets, engaged employees across the globe on sustainable practices and launched major campaigns to inspire environmental stewardship in kids.