Jan Johansson speaks at Green Summit in New York City

"Sustainability is a prerequisite for a company’s long-term survival,” CEO Jan Johansson declared at New York Green Summit, organised by the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce, SACC.

The SACC has announced 2008 as “The Year of Going Green”. One the highlights during the year was the New York Green Summit on 24-25 September when a large number of representatives from the business community and researchers gathered to discuss how sustainability should be part of a company’s strategy and how a sustainable approach may contribute to business.

In addition to Jan Johansson, speakers included executives from companies such as Ericsson, Skanska, Volvo Personvagnar, Saab and Vattenfall.

Jan Johansson’s speech had the theme “Green is still the colour of money, right?” in which he explained how SCA’s performance in environmental and social issues contributes to its business.

“In the US we have built a very strong positioning around the superiority and sincerity of our sustainability programs,” he said.

“Customers are looking to us as leaders and also coming to us for advice on how they can do better themselves on issues on sustainability and some customers are affiliating themselves with SCA to further their own sustainability positions.”

The strong environmental profile is one of the reasons companies like Bunzl, YUM (Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC) and Sodexo work with SCA, and in Europe SCA won the contract to deliver bathroom tissue to the new Wembley Stadium due to environmental performance.

During the Green Summit, Jan Johansson took the chance to emphasise the positive environmental impacts of productive forestry.

“We emphasized the fact that if half the world’s forests had the same growth as Swedish forests, most of the carbon dioxide problem could be solved since growing trees absorb large amounts of CO2.”