Green Century Capital Management, a Boston-based environmentally responsible investment advisory firm, has encouraged more that 75 companies over the past year to clean up their environmental footprints and adopt sustainability measures, the company says.

"We believe that environmentally responsible investing is about more than just avoiding unfriendly companies. This year, we focused on some of the most timely and critical environmental issues including bisphenol A, the Alberta tar sands, and disclosure of trade association donations and lobbying expenditures," comments Larisa Ruoff, Green Century's director of shareholder advocacy.

Key victories from the firm's 2008-09 advocacy campaigns include:
Green Century won further restrictions on the use of the controversial chemical bisphenol A (BPA) by collaborating with Whole Foods to eliminate BPA from store products. Green Century also co-authored a report ranking packaged food and beverage companies on BPA entitled Seeking Safer Packaging and garnered public attention for Sunoco's groundbreaking policy limiting BPA sales for uses that will expose children under age 3 to the chemical.
A proposal co-filed by Green Century asking ConocoPhillips to assess the environmental impacts, including toxic waste, deforestation, and high greenhouse gas emissions, of its tar sands operations in Alberta received nearly one-third of the vote at the company's 2009 annual meeting. This result puts increased pressure on other companies involved in the tar sands such as Chevron.
Working with Green Century, Cummins Inc., Williams Co., and Whirlpool adopted policies increasing transparency and disclosure of their political contributions and payments to trade associations that may lobby against climate change solutions.

Visit Green Century's Web site for more information on it's advocacy activities.