You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio Bloomberg Intelligence Reporter earlier this year about e s G, saying it may surpass forty one trillion assets this year fifty trillion by five, making it one third of the projected total assets under management globally. Tim, It's a lot. It's what investors want, and we often talk with heads and leaders within companies about their growing E s G initiatives. One
of those companies is CVS Health. Joe and Wier is Vice president of Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability at CVS Health. She joins us on Zoom from Rhode Island. Joeanne, good to have you with us. How are you? I'm doing well? Thank you? Tim? Hi, Carrol Hi well. Earlier this month, CVS Health published its first h s G report. Why was this the year to do this? Why now? So?
This is actually our fifteenth annual report. Um. We used to call it our Corporate Social Responsibility Report, but as you just mentioned, uh, environmental and the social commitments that companies make in the way that companies govern them has really taken center stage in terms of the business community, and so when it comes to reporting into transparency, we felt it was important to change the nomenclature and really position it as an E s G report, highlighting those
commitments that our company makes, what's top of line, and where do you see that you guys have made the most progress. We talked about E s G joan so much, and there's certain parts of E s G that are much easier for the world for investors to measure, but not all of it because it's not apples to apples from company to company. So talk to us about your initiatives and where you feel like you're making the most
progress because you can measure it the best. Yeah, I mean, I think a really a few critical points to think about is, as you just said, you can't be all things to all people, and so it's important to do what's either called a materiality assessment or a topic prioritization, and we did that this year. So as a healthcare company, it won't surprise you that when you think about the issues we care about, their really centered on the health of people, the health of our communities, and the health
of our planet. And so we set a ten year roadmap. I think the second really important thing to think about is you have to have near term goals, but you also have to have to be thinking about this in the long term to be able to have meaningful impact in the long range. And so we focus our strategy and four key areas. We have four pillars. It's our healthy strategy looking a decade out, and we're focused on
healthy people, healthy business, healthy community, and healthy planet. I want to start with just talking about reducing waste, and can you give us some figures on how much you've reduced waste. So our commitment, I will say, to the environment really starts with our commitment to climate. So hopefully we'll get to that um. But our company is working on reducing our waste, starting with our paper and plastic, and so we've diverted about fifty of all of our
waste to recycling or reuse. You are listening to Bloomberg Business. We Carl the US along with Tim Stanivik. We are talking about CVS Health annual e s G report, the latest one just out about e s G initiatives. More broadly, with Joe and Dwyer. She's VP of Corporate Social Responsibility and sustainability at CVS Health still with us via zoom from Rhode Island. Hey, you know, Joean, I do want to get back to what are the things that you can really measure so well so that you can say, hey,
we are really making a constructive impact. So I think in our case, when you think about being a healthcare innovation company, we within our healthy People People pillar, we're really thinking about by now, from now to impacting sixty five billion healthcare interactions. And so that's you know, through our CDs pharmacy locations, are minute clinic locations, through our Ethna plans, through our care mark plans, and really making sure that healthcare is accessible and changing the way we
think about healthcare. So it's on your corner, but it's also in the palm of your hand. And if you think about our commitments to community, we really want to fill the gaps of our commercial business. So ensuring that underserved and at risk populations have that same access to healthcare, advancing health equity and reducing disparities is really top of mind for us. So we're committing one point five billion dollars over the next ten years to ensure that we
can reduce those disparities that we're seeing. How do you you know, because I always find right that we've had so many conversations Tim and I and our whole Bloomberg News team over the last couple of years because of COVID. I'm sure you have had it as well as uh, George Floyd in terms of inclusivity. Um, but how what are the specific moves that really move the needle in terms of making sure that healthcare and your services get out to parts of our population that have been really
left behind. I think two things are critical. I think it's important to recognize that even though there are people who may be under uninsured, there's also going to be people who have hesitancy in terms of the health care system. So we work really closely with community partners at the really local level, and so you know, we're not going to assume that everybody can get to a CBS to get vaccinated. We've put up pop up clinics and free clinics and community health centers and y m c a
s around the country specifically referring to COVID. We also launched earlier this year an initiative called health Zones, and health Zones is really focused on addressing the key social determinants of health. So in addition to ensuring that people have actual access to healthcare, we want to make sure that they have transportation that gets them to those doctors appointments. We want to make sure that they have education that advances their health literacy and helps them to, you know,
better understand how to achieve their best health. Affordable housing because as you can imagine, if you don't have housing, it's extremely difficult to care about your your and your family's health. And so we're really looking at housing, education, access to food UM, transportation UM, and so our health zones are really focused at the zip code level, so that we're not trying to boil the ocean. We're really
trying to be really local and helping people find these services. Joan, I don't mean to be cynical here, but this is a publicly traded company. You're responsible to shareholders. You think about top line in the bottom line, and the company
c suite certainly does too. And I'm wondering how you can draw some sort of line from the initiatives that you take on an E. S G basis to the health of the business and helping the business grow I mean, I think if you think about it from a healthcare standpoint, reducing overall healthcare costs in the in the communities that we serve, reducing emergency room visits, that helps everybody, That helps our business, and that helps UM, you know obviously
the communities that we serve. And if you think about it, from our commitments to the environment and specifically our goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and eliminate our reliance on greenhouse gas emissions by the year, there is real risk related to climate um and weather related events that impact our business, you know, hurricanes, flood fires, those impact our
business and cost us money. So the investments that we're making in those places are helping us UM, and I think our shareholders are asking us to be mindful of
these things more and more. Well, and it's interesting too, and I think about you know, one of the things that we've been kind of obsessing over, and maybe rightfully so, is you know, the SEC putting out rules that would require publicly traded companies, you know, to talk about climate related risks and metrics, you know, And so we are increasingly seeing regulators you know, step up to the plate and want to know more on this, how how does
that impact what you are doing? And basically and basically it speaks to write transparency and investors increasingly, you are committing so much money, they really want to know if I'm making any s G investment, Am I really getting what I'm investing in? Yeah? And we're fortunate because we've been, you know, reporting our data, especially around climate for such a long time. But when you think about it, this doesn't just impact our company, It in impacts our broad
supply chain also. And if you and if you think about what I was just talking about in terms of climate related events, there is substantive risk or can be substantive risk to your business. And so the SEC is saying, we really want you to think about that risk, and we want you to audit that risk the way you would either you know, the way you would audit other
financial risks to your business. And so you know, just as you know at home, we want to wash our clothes in cold water, and we want to turn our lights off when we leave a room. At our size and scale, we're thinking about the things that impact us and that can help us save money but also can
help us protect the planet in the long term. So when it comes to you say ten years, is it possibly you will do it all quicker because you know, when it comes to so many E. S. G metrics, I think about what you talk about in terms of housing. The sooner we can do all of this, the better it is for so many members of our society. Is it likely that it's going to take ten years or can you do it quicker? So I think that we have Like I said earlier, it's really important to have
near term goals and then also longer term goals. So if I think about our commitments in the energy space, yes, we want to you know, be we want to be complete. We have zero greenhouse gas emissions or net zero greenhouse gas emissions by the year twenty fifty. But that means we need to stop relying on carbon emissions by the year twenty and we need to dramatically invest in renewable energies between now and and So I think that there's
going to be some quick wins. And if you think about it from the social side of things, the s side of things, we've invested somewhere, um, you know, in the range of two and forty million dollars in philanthropic investments in the year one to do just what you've referenced.
So if you think about food security, that our investments in the area of food security provided a hundred and fifty nine million meals for people who are food and secure, and of the meals are supporting those people who are racially diversed in food and secure, so that we're making sure that help is getting to people today. Well, we appreciate your time and just checking in with us and and getting an update on all the efforts you guys are doing. Joe and Dwyer, she's VP of Corporate Social
Responsibility and Sustainability at CVS Health. Via zoom from Rhode Island,