As we’ve talked about more than once on this blog, it’s no longer considered unusual to incorporate sustainable practices into your business plan.  At GM, we recognize it as a business necessity, and our business model is one that purposefully integrates sustainability into our operations and products around the world.

Sustainability feeds our bottom line, and we have the numbers to back it up.  It aligns our business growth with the needs of society – namely energy alternatives and advanced technologies that help reduce dependency on petroleum and pave the way for transportation alternatives that lie ahead.

With the release yesterday of our 2011 Corporate Sustainability Report – our first as a new company – we share our accomplishments, our challenges, and establish a new baseline for our environmental performance from which future performance will be measured against in a transparent manner.

Our focus this past year has been on four areas of sustainability where we feel we can make the biggest impact. They are: greener vehicles, energy efficiency, resource preservation and waste reduction.

In the pages of the corporate report, you will find a more in-depth exploration of how we are trending when it comes to sustainability, and we’ve also committed to a new set of environmental stewardship goals during the next decade.

Here are just a few:

•    Reduce energy intensity from facilities by 20 percent.

•    Promote use of 125MW of renewable energy by 2020.

•    Reduce carbon intensity from facilities by 20 percent.

•    Reduce total waste from facilities by 10 percent.

•    Protect water quality and reduce water intensity by 15 percent.

•    Promote existing landfill-free facilities while working to achieve 100 landfill-free manufacturing sites and 25 non-manufacturing sites.

To read about more of our new commitments, or the report in its entirety, please visit www.gmsustainability.com.