Our new group-wide plan for environmental sustainability, "Thrive", was launched at last November's Sustainable Development Forum, when Swire Pacific Chairman John Slosar emphasised the group's ongoing commitment to this area of business and called on staff to increase their sustainability efforts during difficult times.

Significant progress has already been made – whether, it's the 37% improvement in water efficiency achieved by the Beverages Division since 2004, or Cathay Pacific's 24.9% improvement in fuel efficiency since 2008 – but the message is clear that we need to adopt a coordinated strategy across all our divisions in order to answer the Chairman's call. Published in July, the new Swire Pacific online Sustainability Report charts the group's achievements to date, as well as providing more detailed information about how "Thrive" will work.

"Thrive" is positioned to address the complex and varied environmental challenges that exist within a conglomerate. It is designed to guide the group's sustainability efforts in the medium term and provide a roadmap to 2020 and beyond that matches the level of ambition set out at the SD Forum. "Thrive" thus provides an important reference point to enable our businesses to further embed sustainability into their operations, as well as acting as a blueprint for other conglomerates to follow.

Six environmental priorities have been identified, three of which are already well understood: the need to increase efforts to reduce the group's carbon footprint, to reduce waste and to use water more responsibly. "Thrive" also highlights the emergence of significant longer term environmental challenges: the need to increase use of sustainable materials, protect biodiversity and build climate resilience across our businesses. "Thrive" is designed to drive improvement by setting and reporting on specific group-wide targets in each of these areas. This will facilitate more accurate monitoring of progress and also generate greater transparency – particularly as stakeholders become more engaged in, and vocal on environmental issues. See www.swirepacific.com for further details.