The Business Roundtable has launched a sustainable growth initiative encouraging leading U.S. companies to embrace business strategies and projects that measurably improve Society, the Environment and the Economy (S.E.E.).

The initiative, called S.E.E. Change, encourages CEOs of the nation's leading companies to commit to business strategies that combine traditional corporate goals of higher profit and lower cost with a strong commitment to environmental stewardship and social improvement. Roundtable companies will be asked to set challenging goals that contribute to both the bottom line and improvements to the quality of life - now and for future generations.

"Businesses are in business to generate growth, but sustaining growth is more complicated," said Charles O. Holliday, Jr., chairman of the Roundtable's Environment, Technology and the Economy Task Force and chairman and CEO of DuPont. "The purpose of S.E.E. Change is to urge companies to adopt business strategies and projects that are good for the environment and society - and good for their bottom line."

Among the first Roundtable companies to commit to participate in S.E.E. Change are: 3M, Alcoa, American Electric Power, Citigroup, Coca Cola, Dow, DuPont, Eastman Kodak, FPL Group, General Electric, General Motors, HSBC, ITT Industries, Office Depot, Procter & Gamble, Sun Microsystems, Weyerhaeuser, Xerox, and the Global Environmental Management Initiative (GEMI) will also be a partner.

S.E.E. Change companies will adopt sustainable growth strategies, which seek to achieve specific improvements in environmental, social and economic performance. For example, companies might utilize the technologies resulting from research and development to reduce energy consumption, provide clean water, improve hygiene or prevent disease. And by investing in health care, education and training, companies can help create stable and skilled workforces and strong markets for their products and services. Because of the diversity of the Roundtable's 160 member companies, spanning every sector of the economy, S.E.E. Change is designed to give companies flexibility in determining goals in line with their sector and business priorities.

To help companies measure and report performance, the Roundtable is encouraging the use of a thorough set of metrics. These metrics could cover traditional "reduced footprint" or "eco-efficiency" measures that track natural resources or energy consumed per unit of economic output, but also include "value-added" metrics to assess the business impacts of sustainable investments. These metrics could measure, for example, the environmental improvement or enhanced quality of life resulting from innovations that lead to valuable new products, technologies or marketing strategies.

The initiative will include a focused effort to encourage better management of the quality, quantity and availability of water resources.

"Without water, nothing is sustainable," Holliday said. "Through S.E.E. Change, the Roundtable is raising awareness of this precious resource and encouraging company efforts to improve water quality, quantity and availability. It's not a requirement, but we're urging every company to consider a sustainable growth project that addresses water."

The Roundtable will also seek partnerships with government and other stakeholders that share a common interest in applying sustainability principles.