Altameroy Blog

When Henry Kravis and George Roberts established Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co (KKR) in the mid-seventies with some assistance from the First Chicago Corporation, the firm’s specialty was in bootstrap buyouts. Lately in the pursuit of making the businesses in their portfolio have less of a negative environmental impact, they have set up a unique venture that has completely transformed the method by which businesses and environmental agencies function. Green business practices went mainstream in 2008 when KKR’s Henry Kravis and the the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) merged. Issues like water pollution and unconscionable water consumption are a top priority in their corporate mission statement. Eco-efficiency (a term initially used by the WBCSD) is the technique leveraged to achieve these aims, through applying policies such as reducing the waste of resources, improving fuel economy through vehicle fleet maintenance and recycling programs. Simple and effective, however the companies who were involved did not even realize the full project’s benefits until the man responsible for the Green Portfolio Project, Ken Mehlman, evaluated the program when it had been operating for a year.

Ken Mehlman who received a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1991, has served as director of the White House Office of Political Affairs from 2000 through 2005, was appointed to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council in 2007 and presently serves as a member of the Senior Advisory Committee of the Harvard University Institute of Politics, the executive leadership cabinet of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Foundation, and the board of directors at the National Endowment for Democracy, found out that using eco-efficiency wasn’t solely preserving the local environment, but additionally it was helping to save business concerns a substantial amount of money, making the program almost an immediate success. To date, Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co and Ken Mehlman have succeeded in getting virtually all of their firms involved in eco-efficiency principles. Seeing that this group of companies is worth almost one hundred billion USD, you can see what a feat this actually was. The two groups in association with Ken Mehlman are further expanding the original project. To illustrate, KKR joined the EDF’s Climate Corps Program a venture which teaches MBA students how to promote cost-efficient, ecologically friendly techniques. In addition, Ken Mehlman has been in close collaboration with KKR to produce a package of analytical tools which all sorts of business organizations can utilize to evaluate and administer resources. This type of data is significant as any business may easily measure all of their daily activities and discover exactly how they can resolve any issues while at the same time allowing them to see how ecologically friendly they are. Henry Kravis, the KKC, and the Environmental Defense Fund have encouraged all sorts of businesses to become more ecologically friendly. Their innovations have made decreasing their ecological impact less complicated for companies in every sector and established that running a profitable business need not entail the hefty price of negatively impacting our planet.