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:

• retrofitting lights to decrease energy consumption,
• installing motion detectors to turn off lights when rooms are not in use, and
• upgrading heating and cooling systems to be more energy efficient. 

In 2007, for example, we upgraded nearly 5,000 lighting fixtures in four of our U.S. distribution centers to energy-efficient, longer life florescent lamps.  This investment will save nearly 7 million kilowatt hours of energy per year, which is the equivalent greenhouse gas emission reduction of taking 1,000 cars off the road.

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.

In 2007, we started collecting comprehensive metrics on our natural gas, electricity and water consumption in the United States.  These metrics will form the baseline for tracking usage reductions and reporting our environmental performance over time.

We also have started collecting comprehensive metrics on our energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and waste output, which also will form a baseline for reporting our environmental performance over time.

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.