Business Ethics-Annual Sustainability Reports Essay

Business Ethics-Annual Sustainability Reports - Essay Example I am taking as an example two of the companies included in the Fortune 500 ranking of America's largest corporations. The companies I have chosen compete in the industry of Forest and Paper Products, as these companies have much to do with regard to one kind of sustainability, the environmental one. According to "FAO's State of the World's Forests 2007 report" over the 15 years from 1990 to 2005, the world lost 3 percent of its total forest area, an average decrease of some 0.2 percent per year2. Companies that work in the Paper Industry must be aware of their role and responsibility in the depletion of planet's natural resources. The actions they take regarding to this issue are reflected in their Annual Sustainability Reports. As the Global Reporting Initiative defines it, sustainability reporting is a process for publicly disclosing an organization's economic, environmental, and social performance3. Although these reports are a voluntary choice, many companies are starting to include them in their annual reports as a complement of their financial information and as a way of communicating with their stakeholders in different terms than just numbers. The first company we are going to consider is International Paper, which is in the place 114 in the Fortune 500 ranking and it is known as the world's largest paper company. Its headquarters are located in Memphis and they have been producing paper products since 1898. They manufacture a large variety of goods, from paper to pulp and packaging for a wide range of industries. On their website (http://www.internationalpaper.com) we can see their "Sustainability Update for the years 2004 - 2006"4. In this report we can find detailed information about their commitment to sustainability, which includes initiatives like selling large parcels of land to forest management organizations for their conservation (so these forests provide them sustainable certified wood), growing planted forests, maximizing the use of wood, protecting wildlife and endangered species in their lands, making a sustainable use of water, increasing the use of renewable energies, reducing greenhouse gas emissions,

FATIGUE BEHAVIOUR OF SELF COMPACTING CONCRETE SUBJECT TO CYCLE LOADING Research Proposal

FATIGUE BEHAVIOUR OF SELF COMPACTING CONCRETE SUBJECT TO CYCLE LOADING - Research Proposal Example Increasing the number of cycles beneath this stage ensures that the failure occurs and consequently, the crack of the material ought to come in next (Liu, 2009, 65). Other metals like aluminium do not have any distinctive limits and even a small oscillation may have the material reach its fatigue limit. Such cases have made scientists set a number of cycles, usually 10, as the average fatigue life of the material (Kennedy, 2008, 44). When the cycles go beyond the set threshold of the material, cracks start forming on the material and an attempt to stop the cycles does not yield any benefits as a microscopic crack may have the entire product destroyed beyond any point of repair. Shape of a structure definitely has a large impact on the fatigue life of the given material. This is from the fact that a product with a triangular shape has weak lines of force and a minute change in the oscillation pattern or rather an increase in the number of cycles may have it reach its end point rather fast (Comit, 2011, 46). Understanding the composition of concrete in order to reach the crack of the material comes in very imperative. In this case, the material may not have the stated metal necessary for the fatigue life to reach a certain age. Most of the times, the material stated is a metal such as aluminium and has the shape of a triangle. This has it that only a number of cycles lead to the concrete composition level that eventually breaks down the material (Harman, 2010, 53). For alloys, it is difficult to establish the exact amount of concrete required to break the material. One consequently has to work with an average figure depending on the most common point. This however is not preferred by many people due to accumulative values that may place the commodity in a tight place when it comes to marketing of the end material (Jerina, 2010, 78). One