Bridgestone Corporation has unveiled a refined global corporate social responsibility (CSR) commitment, dubbing it “Our Way to Serve” which focuses on three priority areas including: mobility, people and environment.

Bridgestone Americas is a TAEBC member, and its North American headquarters is located in Nashville, Tennessee. Jim DeMouy, Bridgestone’s Vice President of Environmental, Health, Safety and Sustainability for the North American headquarters also serves as a TAEBC board member.

The company’s new commitment builds upon a decade of progress and learning. “Our Way to Serve” reflects Bridgestone’s philosophy of serving society with superior quality and a recognition that the best companies not only perform for their stakeholders but also contribute to improve the way people move, live, work, and play.

Mobility is working to improve access to smart, safe transportation. People focuses on building healthy, resilient communities. Environment is working on balancing business operations with environmental stewardship.

Bridgestone further explains how it plans to execute the refined CSR.

• Mobility: The company is committed to easier, safer, smoother and seamless mobility for society and its customers. Bridgestone aims to help reduce accidents, optimize global transportation, provide reliable transportation options to more people, and ensure the movement of goods in global commerce.
• People: Bridgestone is committed to using its resources and capabilities to address health, safety and education issues in our communities. The company is focused on helping to make society safer, making education more accessible and inclusive, and promoting healthier communities.
• Environment: Bridgestone is working toward a sustainable society together with its customers, partners, communities and the world around us. The company will do that by balancing operations with nature and society to improve the quality of life for all.

For example, Bridgestone is improving fuel efficiency with new tire technology. Regarding a tire’s lifecycle, Bridgestone estimates that about 90% of C02 emissions related to a tire are generated by its use on a vehicle. To help drivers reduce CO2 emissions, the company has enhanced development of tires with improved rolling efficiency to reduce fuel use.

This has led to Bridgestone developing the Ecopia tire. The tire is changing the game in low rolling resistance tire performance and is designed to make your car more fuel efficient. The Ecopia tire is mentioned by Jim DeMouy in TAEBC’s “Inside Advanced Energy” video. You can learn more about the company’s efforts to improve vehicle fuel efficiency in this video.

Also Bridgestone recently launched a Bandag campaign, which works with fleets by retreading tires with a focus on sustainability. Bandag is aspiring to one day build a tire that uses clean energy, recycled rubber, and produces the smallest environmental footprint in the industry.

Every year retreading helps keep about 15 million tires on the road in the US and Canada, which saves 200 million gallons of oil and 1.5 billion pounds of material that would otherwise be used to produce new tires. You can learn more about this campaign on YouTube.

Not long after the refined CSR announcement, TAEBC board member Jim DeMouy was honored in the 2017 Environmental Leader 50.

“It always feels good to be recognized by such an organization like Environmental Leader; however, I feel this honor is more of a reflection of the dedicated work of the Bridgestone Environment, Health, Safety and Sustainability teams and the entire organization over the past decades. At Bridgestone, Serving Society with Superior Quality is our heritage and our mission, and we embrace our responsibility to future generations as a global leader in our industries,” said DeMouy.

Environmental Leader is a publication covering commercial and industrial environmental issues, typically focusing on what a company is doing concerning environmental, EHS and sustainability management.

The 2017 Environmental Leader 50 recognizes the vice presidents, directors, managers and engineers driving their companies – and the EHS, environmental and sustainability management industry itself – forward.

He will be recognized at a celebratory networking reception on June 6 as part of the Environmental Leader Conference at the Hyatt Denver Tech Center.

Congrats, Jim!