Date of Award

2012

Advisor(s)

Edward Van Buren

Abstract

Throughout the past two decades, the reality of environmental degradation has come to the forefront. The health of the environment is most definitely deteriorating. Scientists and scholars have provided and continue to provide growing evidence of environmental problems associated with issues such as climate change, water scarcity, natural resource depletion, energy use, altered landscapes and species loss. It is certain that the creation and escalation of these environmental problems has been heavily influenced by human activity.

Focusing on knowledge in the areas of natural science, public health, and sustainable
business, this paper will address environmentally harmful human activity associated with business. Business organizations exist to provide consumers with goods and services. All goods and services essentially come from nature (natural resources). Any given business could not exist without engaging in some kind of interaction with the environment. To this point, the relationship between a business and the environment has tended to be beneficial to the former and harmful to the latter. However, scientific findings are now exposing the true costs of environmental degradation, thereby conveying the importance of transforming the business landscape from traditional to sustainable.

In order to connect sustainable business theory to real world corporate operations, this paper will include a case study which describes and analyzes New York-Presbyterian’s NYPgreen program, a relatively new project that has been established with the intention of introducing and enforcing environmentally responsible practices to the hospital and community. NYPgreen provides an example of how a large corporation can be transformed into a more environmentally-friendly entity.

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