Healthy Indoors Magazine
Issue link: https://hi.healthyindoors.com/i/1148971
26 | July 2019 Byline It's Up to Us to Get It Done By Tom Murray in the Gulf of Mexico. The world was watching as environmen- tal professionals worldwide were coming together to address the almost insurmountable human health and environmental effects of that spill and how to keep it from spreading. The Sup- pliers' Partnership for the Environment members were among them. They were focusing their attention specifically on the miles and miles of oil booms being deployed to contain the oil spill. Around the table, manufacturers and suppliers, each from his or her own professional perch, suggested how best to bring their talents and expertise to bear in dealing with this particular waste management nightmare. At that meeting, John Bradburn had an idea. John al- ways had an idea. You see, from his professional perch, John always looked at waste as a resource out of place and he saw the Suppliers Partnership organization as a laboratory to test out that viewpoint. So, with this in mind, John quickly laid out a plan and then gathered together a supplier tag team to address the issue. A long story short, O ne of my most memorable experiences from years past, is working with Navista, the Public Affairs Group and the automo- tive industry in establishing a public-pri- vate partnership called the Suppliers' Partnership for the Environment. This organization provides a forum for global automotive manufacturers and their large and small suppli- ers and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other governmental entities from around the world to work together to improve sustainability and the business value of the global automotive supply chain. It has been going strong now for 16 years and I am proud to be among its founding members. In 2010, I remember sitting down at one of the Suppliers' Partnership for the Environment meetings with John Bradburn, a colleague and friend, who at the time was the Global Waste Reduction Manager for General Motors. The year was 2010 and, if you remember, that was the year of the oil spill disaster