February 2007 – It is clear that there are no simple answers. And with rapidly rising international concern about issues such as climate change, it is also clear that the hopes and expectations of the role business will play have never been higher. Which is one of the reasons why the Business & Sustainability Programme exists.
H. Lee Scott Jr, then Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors, Wal-Mart Stores Inc, delivered the London Lecture of The Prince of Wales’s Business & Sustainability Programme (BSP) on 1 February, 2007. Mr Scott Jr was invited to speak following earlier remarks in 2005 in which he described the ‘wake-up call’ of Hurricane Katrina and set out how Wal-Mart intended to address the whole subject of sustainability. Mr Scott Jr outlined the company’s Sustainability 360° approach and emphasised the commercial opportunities from engaging with environmental issues: "Being a good steward of the environment and being profitable are not mutually exclusive. They are one and the same."
