ABSTRACT
John and Jane Emrick, owners of Norm Thompson Outfitters, an Oregon-based catalogue and retail outlet company, spent 1993 living in Europe and Africa. When John returned to daily activities, the company's president asked him to take on a special project: managing the construction of a new corporate headquarters. When the company's environmental mission statement was being revised, John's persistence paid off. Once momentum for sustainability started to build within the company, the senior management team decided to hire a full-time individual to co-ordinate the effort. In July 1999, the company hired Derek Smith as the corporate sustainability manager. One of the first things Derek did was to organise a ten-person team. The E-team developed lists of potential drivers of the company's sustainability initiative and the potential barriers to its success. The plan identified four top environmental issues for the company: global warming, toxic substances and materials, habitat destruction, and waste.
