Verso Receives Green Business Innovator of the Year Award

Print this article | Send to Colleague

Verso Paper Corp., Memphis, Tenn., USA, was honored as the 2009 Southeast Regional Green Business Innovator of the Year in a ceremony this past week at the Green Business Summit hosted by Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn. Verso was recognized for its continued efforts to work with customers and suppliers as partners, often sharing environmental performance data, to enable the evaluation of sustainability throughout the supply chain and promote forest certification and recycling programs.

"Verso has made tremendous strides in addressing sustainability throughout the supply chain," said William Paddock, co-founder of WAP Sustainability, a business sustainability consultant based in Nashville, and cairman of the Tennessee Sustainability Roundtable's Green Business Leadership Award Committee. "Verso went above and beyond, strategically evaluating their environmental impacts through effective collaboration with core customers such as National Geographic. As chairman of the awards committee, we felt this approach to sustainability exhibited the highest level of institutional practices and led to innovative learning that has helped the company address its most important environmental and social goals."

Lipscomb University President L. Randolph Lowry explains that the Green Business Awards were established to recognize businesses, individuals, and organizations that have demonstrated unusually exceptional leadership in green business practices and to encourage others to exceed their example. "Each honoree succeeded in establishing institutional practices, a policy framework, new products or services, or a vision resulting in precedent setting business practices in Tennessee in 2009," Lowry says. Other notable honorees include Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen and the Nashville Metropolitan Transit Authority.