Launched in 1991, the ICC Business Charter for Sustainable Development's principles for environmental management have helped thousands of companies worldwide establish an excellent foundation on which to build their own integrated environmental management systems.

The Charter was created as a tool to help companies tackle the challenges and opportunities of the environmental issues that emerged in the 1980s and early 1990s. A decade later thousands of companies have used it as a guide as they have undertaken their own journeys towards sound environmental management. The Charter is:

• A voluntary business initiative
• A call for continuous improvement
• A foundation for companies and associations to develop their own policies and programmes
• A "Ripple Effect" through business partners
• A Global alignment of business to common objectives
• A public commitment
• A driving force for implementation, measuring and reporting

The Charter - which captures 16 key principles for environmental management - was developed by a group of business executives over a two-year period from 1989 to 1991. Launched prior to the watershed 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the Charter is regarded by many as a visionary document that set the environmental agenda for business and industry during the 1990s.

The Company Showcase featured on this website highlights how some of the world's leading companies - many of them Charter supporters - have taken sound environmental management to the heart of their operations. Thousands of small and medium sized enterprises around the world - which make up the engin e room of the global economy - have found the Charter an invaluable guide in their efforts to understand how to create a framework to achieve enhanced environmental performance.

If you would like to have your company featured in our Company Showcase, please contact Tina Launois, Energy and Environment, at the International Chamber of Commerce (Click here to send a mail).

Answers to questions frequently asked about the Charter can be found here.

The Charter is a winner
Jan Stromblad, Senior Vice-President for Environmental Affairs at the engineering giant ABB explained: "We believe that ABB is one of those companies that has really shown how the ICC Business Charter for Sustainable Development can be an integral part of an organization's environmental programme."

"Over the last several years, ABB has steadfastly built its EMS around the 16 Charter principles. Additionally, ABB uses the Charter Principles as a way to evaluate the effectiveness and coverage of their programs. There is no better set of guidelines than the Charter - we think the Charter is a winner."

On several occasions, ABB has called in independent auditors to assess its performance against the 16 Charter Principles. Creating such a benchmark will allow the company to fine tune and improve its performance against the 16 principles year in, year out.

Identify the important issues
Chris Dutilh, Environment Manager at Unilever, explained why his company found such value in the Charter: "Our involvement with the ICC Business Charter stimulated us to produce our first corporate environmental report. The Charter Principles helped us to identify the important issues we needed to address in formulating our own environmental policies. It helped us determine what was necessary for a successful EMS. If you look at our programmes today, you will see many of the principles of the Business Charter."