www.kesko.fi

"In 1996 the Board of Directors decided that attention to environmental issues must become a more important part of Kesko company policy. In order to coordinate and homogenize individual environmental efforts throughout the organization, Kesko looked to the ICC Business Charter for Sustainable Development. The Charter served as our first step toward achieving a consist and standard environment program for guiding the company's activities.

"Our environmental policy was written side-by-side with the ICC Charter. We were careful to include as many of the 16 principles as possible. In the end our policies were consistent with the provisions of the Charter. We found principles for relating to suppliers, open information, and training of employees to be especially useful. The Charter also encouraged us to undertake life-cycle analysis, especially in building our new business sites. By distributing the Charter to all our managers (along with other relevent information) we were able to ensure a common understanding across our business sectors."

Jouko Kuisma
Manager, International Trade Organizations

"Because social responsibility is one of the basic values of our management culture, we want environmental operations to be a permanent part of our management strategy and to extend to all practical work. In order to proceed systematically and to better determine the results of our actions, we have decided to adopt an environmental management system based on the ISO standard. Although ISO certification is not an end in itself, it is still useful to aim at it, even if it is quite an effort for a diversified company like Kesko. The most important thing is getting results and continually improving, and in this the standard is of great help."

Matti Honkala
Chairman and CEO

Contact:

Jouko Kuisma
Manager, International Trade Organizations
Tel. +358 1053 23140
E-mail Click here to send a mail

Visit Kesko's environmental web pages at http://www.kesko.fi/eng/index.htm.

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