Walgreens Boots Alliance celebrates latest CSR achievements
Walgreens Boots Alliance is setting the pace on sustainability issues from health care and combatting climate change to promoting diversity and fostering inclusion as evidenced in its new 2017 Corporate Social Responsibility Report published Friday.
Leveraging its scale and business values as well as the strong CSR heritage of its legacy companies, Walgreens Boots Alliance made significant strides during fiscal 2017, hitting important milestones and setting out new commitments within its 12 CSR goals.
[quote-from-article] “Corporate Social Responsibility sits at the heart of Walgreens Boots Alliance. Throughout 2017, we continued to demonstrate how we as a company embed our CSR values in everything we do,” stated Ornella Barra, Walgreens Boots Alliance co-COO and chairman of the Corporate Social Responsibility Committee. “I am immensely proud of the positive impact our initiatives have on millions of lives around the world. By building on our successes and creating long-term collaborations with partner organizations, we aim for the biggest possible positive impact in our areas of focus. For us, this is quite simply the right thing to do.”
Through its CSR strategy and goals, Walgreens Boots Alliance continues to support the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals and is committed to aligning its activities to support all 17 of the SDGs, which include goals to end poverty, take action on climate change, improve access to health and education and build strong institutions.
“We are dedicated to CSR because we see it as driving a sustainable and profitable enterprise,” added Stefano Pessina, Walgreens Boots Alliance executive vice chairman and CEO. “As a health and wellbeing company, we operate in markets where ethical behavior is of utmost importance. We strive to be a responsible neighbor in the communities we serve, to protect the planet for the future, to do business with integrity and to treat our people and our customers with dignity and respect.”
Highlights from the 2017 CSR Report include:
In the U.S. Walgreens expanded programs to combat opioid abuse through medication disposal kiosks (more than 150 tons of unused medications have been collected and disposed of since 2016) and through work to make naloxone, a lifesaving opioid antidote, available without requiring a prescription at its pharmacies in 45 states;
Boots UK employees and customers have raised more than £15 million ($24 million) for Macmillan Cancer Support over eight years, and more than 2,200 Boots Macmillan Information Pharmacists have been trained to offer support to cancer patients and their loved ones;
Walgreens expanded its partnership with The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, including training for pharmacists to help patients who are taking blood cancer medication;
Walgreens continued its support of the Red Nose Day annual campaign, raising more than $20 million with 10.6 million noses sold, which helps to provide nutritious meals, essential medicine, clean water and other vital aid and services to children in need in the U.S. and in other countries;
During fiscal 2017 Walgreens Boots Alliance decreased its total carbon footprint by 6.5% from the previous year, through energy efficiency programs and projects; and
During fiscal 2017 Boots UK achieved its CO2 reduction target three years ahead of schedule, cutting emissions by 33% in Boots stores that were open in 2005.