News

August 6, 2009

Yum Brands Wins Award for Green Efforts

A weeklong program that taught employees what they and the company could do to conserve the environment has earned Yum! Brands Inc. an award from the Employee Services Management Association, a non-profit group for staff-services administrators.

Yum, the parent of Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut, was honored for its 2008 Earth Week program, which used a variety of media to familiarize the chains' corporate staffs with what the company was doing to operate in a greener fashion. The effort included daily e-mails about Yum's various ecological initiatives, as well as a trivia contest and an introduction to a new corporate green site. All were invited to participate in a teleconference about restaurant-level initiatives, and "Lunch and Learn" sessions were held for staffers to attend while they ate.

Employees were also informed of what they could do to have less of an impact on the environment. For instance, they were encouraged to recycle on the job, and offered recycling bins that fit under their desks.

The program coincided with the intensification of Yum's focus on ecological practices and other elements of sustainability. Toward the end of 2008, it issued "Serving the World," the corporation's first corporate responsibility report. Many institutional investors now demand that public companies issue such annual reports as a matter of course. Yum is one of only a handful of restaurant companies that currently issue CR information to investors.

Yum was selected for the ESM Association's Innovative Program Award in part because of Earth Week's results and the feedback from employees. Judges also evaluated such factors as creativity.

Yum operates 36,000 company-run, franchised and licensed outlets in 110 countries.