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When Henry Kravis and his business partner George Roberts set up Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co (KKR) in the mid seventies with the assistance of the First Chicago Corporation, their main business was in leveraged buyouts. Moving beyond, in an extraordinary attempt to make their portfolio companies and acquisitions have less environmental impact, they have set in motion an extraordinary green enterprise which has totally changed the method by which businesses and environmental activists work. KKR’s Henry Kravis and the independent Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) got together last year, with the goal of making green business operation an acknowledged concept. Their company mission is to offer encouragement to their affiliated businesses to tackle environmental threats such as soil contamination not to forget any steep water consumption. To follow through with this, they employ a formula dubbed eco-efficiency which makes use of concepts like fuel economy, increasing the durability of products, and recycling programs. Even though the project was a tremendous success, no-one realized how fantastic the consequences were until Ken Mehlman, the executive responsible for the Green Portfolio Project, examined the numbers for the first 12 months.

Only at that point did Ken Mehlman realize that practicing eco-efficiency was not simply reducing their impact on the planet, but it was also helping to save businesses a large amount of money. Almost all of the business concerns affiliated to KKR and Ken Mehlman now are engaged in the project. Considering that this portfolio of companies is worth virtually one hundred billion USD, you can see what a challenge this actually is.

The original Green Portfolio project has grown far beyond its initial purpose and now includes new initiatives. For instance, KKR joined the Environmental Defense Fund’s Climate Corps Program a venture that instructs MBA students how to encourage cost effective, environmentally friendly techniques. In addition, Ken Mehlman has been in close collaboration with KKR to develop systems that business concerns can use to quantify resources. With this information available, businesses can examine their daily activities and find out where they can resolve any issues while at the same time seeing their progress. Henry Kravis, the KKC, and the Environmental Defense Fund have made decreasing their ecological impact more attractive for companies in every industry. Their innovations have made going green less problematic for business organizations in every industry and illustrated that making profits need not entail the hefty price of negatively impacting our planet.