Corporate Responsibility

We want you to be proud to wear our products, and use our accessories and equipment anytime you step into the Greater Outdoors. Stakeholder input is invaluable to the continuous improvement of our corporate responsibility programs. I invite you to learn what we’ve been doing and participate in making our programs better by providing your feedback at cr@columbia.com.

—Tim Boyle, President, CEO, and Director

Featured Article

Meet Billy from our Hong Kong Office. Billy has a passion for mountain biking and loves to hit the trails in the mountains surrounding Hong Kong Island on the weekends. In addition, he is also passionate about the environment and believes his actions can make a difference in helping people enjoy the greater outdoors for many years to come. In May 2009, Billy, along with 33 employees from the Hong Kong office pledged to reduce their personal carbon footprint over the course of the year as part of the Hong Kong Carbon Reduction Campaign (HKCRC).

Organised by the Climate Group, the HKCRC is a cross-industry effort to catalyze the behavior of employees of responsible companies towards low carbon living. This one-year campaign aims at engaging 5,000 employees from various organizations and providing them with capacity-building activities and toolkits to help kick-start a climate-friendly lifestyle, starting from home.

The Columbia Hong Kong employees kick-started their efforts by participating in climate change education sessions. This was followed by conducting a personal baseline carbon footprint and outlining a carbon mitigation action plan to reduce carbon usage over the course of the year.

Billy started with a personal carbon footprint of 29.87 tonnes per year in May, 2009 and has since reduced his annual carbon footprint by 0.16 tonnes by pledging to:

• Switch conventional incandescent bulbs to CFL energy saving bulbs at home
• Reduce water used in daily showers by 75%
• Switch off computer and screen for an additional hour per day
• Replace 50% of current appliances with energy efficient appliances
• When replacing air conditioning units, replace them with units that have some sort of energy efficient label
• Reduce travel by taxi and increase travel by public transport

Not a bad start! If you would like to make a personal commitment to reduce your carbon footprint (and do not live in Hong Kong) you can do so by going to Together.com and joining a global movement of people making personal commitments to reducing their carbon footprints.

For more details on the HKCRC, go to www.hkcarbon-reduction.org.