:51:00
I cant believe it.
:51:01
The guys the head
of the company
:51:02
hes never walked through
his own factories.
:51:04
Oh youve got to go.
:51:05
I cant go right now and
the rest of this year.
:51:08
When we were done
filming he calls me up
:51:10
a couple of weeks
later and he goes
:51:13
I may have a chance to go
there with you to the factories.
:51:18
Im going to the Australian
Open to watch some tennis.
:51:24
and uh you know
maybe I can get up there
:51:29
or at least
you can go there.
:51:31
Would you like to go
to the Australian open?
:51:36
For 21years
:51:38
I never gave a thought
to what we were taking
:51:41
from the earth or
doing to the earth
:51:44
in the making
of our products.
:51:46
And then
in the summer of 1994
:51:49
we began to hear questions
from our customers
:51:51
we had never
heard before
:51:53
Whats your company doing
for the environment?
:51:56
And we didnt have answers.
:51:58
The real answer
was not very much.
:52:00
And it really disturbed
many of our people
:52:03
not me so
much as them
:52:05
and a group in our
research department
:52:07
decided to convene
a taskforce
:52:11
and bring people from our
businesses around the world
:52:14
to come together
to assess
:52:15
our companys world wide
environment position
:52:18
to begin to frame answers
for those customers.
:52:21
They asked me if I would come
and speak to that group
:52:24
and give them
a kick off speech
:52:26
and launch this new task force
with an environmental vision
:52:30
and I didnt have
an environmental vision
:52:33
and I did not want
to make that speech.
:52:37
And at sort of
the propitious moment
:52:40
this book
landed on my desk.
:52:41
It was Paul Hawkins book
The Ecology of Commerce
:52:45
and I began to read The
Ecology of Commerce,
:52:48
really desperate
for inspiration
:52:51
and very quickly
into that book
:52:53
I found the phrase
The death of birth.
:52:57
It was E. O. Wilsons expression
for species extinction