At The McGraw-Hill Companies, environmental responsibility is an integral part of overall corporate citizenship.  As such, we strive to minimize our environmental footprint by closely monitoring, and developing strategies to reduce, the environmental impact of our operations and our office facilities.

Our environmental policies, programs and practices govern our operations and are available for review by stakeholders. Our internal Green Teams, a firm-wide initiative launched in 2007, have helped keep environmental concerns at the forefront by driving personal action on the part of employees.

To help manage the environmental impacts of our facilities worldwide, we’ve developed a strong partnership with our vendors, including CB Richard Ellis (CBRE), the property management company.  Together, we have assessed our entire real estate portfolio of owned and leased properties, which totals approximately 10.5 million square feet at more than 280 locations worldwide, looking for ways to reduce energy, water and waste, increase recycling, and ensure our facilities are healthy and clean places to work.

As a result, we have made capital improvements for energy and resource efficiency, including:

• improving performance by investing in more efficient technologies, engineering, and space planning.
• increasing partnerships with environmentally responsible service providers and commercial real estate companies.

The Corporation is also conducting waste audits at all facilities to reduce waste and increase recycling, and to develop and expand “green” janitorial programs so that cleaning teams use non-toxic and environmentally-neutral cleaning solutions and methods.

• Our proudest accomplishment to date?  Our new “green” building in Dubuque, IA, which was developed with the environment in mind.  We’ve received Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council for this office building, and examining other opportunities within our portfolio to meet this stringent standard.  LEED is the third-party certification and nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high performance buildings. We are pursuing certification for more of our facilities around the world.

Our environmental impacts include greenhouse gas emissions (from energy used in buildings and for transport), water use, and waste (mainly from offices). In 2009, we established baseline data from 2008 for these impacts.

Our Environmental Action Committee, part of our Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability Committee, will use the baseline data to formulate our Environmental Sustainability Framework. This will include a strategy to reduce our impacts on climate change, by setting emissions reduction targets and identify process improvements.

With these efforts, we have taken solid steps to quantify and improve our environmental performance.   We will continue to find ways to reduce our impact to ensure the sustainability of our natural resources and to the wellbeing of our communities.

Employee Engagement

Employees are a key ingredient in the success of our sustainability strategy. We have taken several steps to make employees partners in reducing the corporation’s footprint and stimulating a culture of innovation.  Our Green Teams are one component. We also regularly communicate with employees and provide learning forums, campaigns and annual events for employee participation. Among these is our annual Earth Day celebration, which in 2008 enabled employees to make personal sustainability pledges to reduce their personal carbon footprint; at home and in the office. We launched a Webinar series in 2009, continuing through 2010, which is focusing on using corporate responsibility and sustainability as a tool for leadership development, innovation and business growth and we are partnering with the Women's Network for a Sustainable Future to pilot a Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability training curriculum for employees.