3 Ways to Incorporate Sustainability into

Everyday Work
A look at global trends such as energy demand should remind leaders of businesses
small and large that what we do every day matters. The key to solving the worlds
pressing energy and environmental challenges is for organizations with the right
expertise like the one I lead, Ingersoll Rand to implement measurable climatechange initiatives and take a vocal role within their industries.

Last year during Climate Week, my company took the opportunity to publicly
announce a commitment to increase the energy efficiency and reduce the
environmental impact of our operations and product portfolio. Our Climate
Commitment is a pledge to achieve: a 50% reduction in the greenhouse gas
emissions related to the refrigerant in our products by 2020, a $500 million
investment in product-related research and development over the next five years to
fund the long-term reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions, and 35% reduction in
the greenhouse-gas footprint of our own operations by 2020.

In Year One, we have avoided 1.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent
gases (CO2e) globally, which is the equivalent of nearly 540,000 tons of waste sent
to the landfill. By 2030, we expect to reduce our carbon-footprint equivalent to the
energy used by 4.6 million homes.

We were able to reduce the GHG footprint of our products and create more
sustainable product choices with the launch of our EcoWise portfolio of products
designed to lower environmental impact without performance tradeoffs.

With the end of Climate Week 2015 and to encourage other companies to make
similar bold commitments, allow me to share what weve learned.

It starts with leadership support. Embedding the values of your commitment into
every aspect of your organization requires strong leadership to uphold these values.
Asking our best thinkers to determine how we declare an environmental
commitment for our company and customers was invigorating but still required a

culture change. Our board of directors, enterprise leadership team, and internal and
external advisory councils all have responsibility for sustainability governance and
participated in setting the direction of our Climate Commitment.

From there, the commitment was elevated to one of our companys annual strategic
priorities and cascaded throughout the organization, using our goal-deployment
process. This ensured all employees had a direct line of sight as to how their work
supported the overall commitment of the company. One result: Our team of global
operations leaders seized the opportunity to retrofit facilities with new equipment
and processes that are energy and operationally efficient. They also placed a focus
on emissions such as the reduction of the use of high-global-warming-potential
(GWP) foam-blowing agents.

Embrace your ecosystem. Being one of the first to pioneer a commitment can be
overwhelming. Taking that leap, though, has opened doors for us to create a path
for customer conversations around solving business issues and accelerating the
pace of product innovation. Were working closely with refrigerant manufacturers,
academic institutions and customers to develop, test, apply, and educate users
about adoption of next-generation refrigerant options. To ensure our efforts are
working in parallel with industry initiatives, our teams are engaging with
policymakers, non-government organizations, media, and other influencers in Brazil,
Canada, China, India, Europe, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, and the United
States to discuss the adoption of next-generation technology.

Engage your employees. Paramount to achieving success is inspiring employees

and providing a variety of avenues to help them incorporate sustainable thinking
into their everyday work lives. We found this to be true through the successes of our
Green Teams, a global employee network that works internally and partners with
community groups. From Charlotte, North Carolina, to Wujiang, China, employees
come together on activities, including riding bicycles to work instead of driving, or
recycling and reusing materials versus creating unnecessary waste. Everyone is
encouraged to make a difference. Last year, our employee-sustainability initiatives
saved an estimated 4.7 billion BTUs of energy.

We also made sustainability training meaningful to employees. One example is our

Design for Sustainability program for product managers and design engineers,
which we developed with Underwriters Laboratories Environment. It helps
employees incorporate sustainability-related attributes into product design and use
assessment tools to identify sustainable product strategies in response to market
needs.

Our experience is that when you encourage employees to form a personal

connection to sustainable thinking, they are more eager to get involved in
sustainable actions within your company and offering opportunities for sustainable
education helps broaden the impact of those actions.

Whats next? Significant global changes will take place over the next 20 years that
impact our daily lives. The growing population is projected to increase world energy
demand by 37% in 2035 from current levels. These issues require immediate
attention.

At Ingersoll Rand, we are looking ahead to the achievement of our 2020

sustainability targets, which keep us focused on continuous improvement in the
areas of environmental impact and social responsibility, and have the added benefit
of improving customer relationships and productivity. In 2016, we will introduce new
products and services with improved energy performance and lower use of GWP
agents that are cost effective and exceed customer expectations. We will convene
third parties and industry players. And we will diligently continue to measure and
reduce the carbon footprint of our own facilities and fleet.

The route to transformation is pursuing an all-inclusive approach, involving action

from government, business, research institutions and academia, and the public at
large to do their parts. The key is to act now to create the culture change needed to
impact climate change. By taking a public stance and working with others,
companies can create a path to a better world.

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