The Vision for America Award was presented at an awards event at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago on October, 28, 2003. August A. Busch III, the Chairman of the Board of Anheuser-Busch, accepted the award.
The environmental record of Anheuser-Busch has earned the respect of its corporate peers. "Anheuser-Busch has demonstrated a very clear commitment to finding innovative ways to abide by Keep America Beautiful's tenets of 'reduce, reuse and recycle,'" said Steve Reinemund, the chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, Inc. and the chairman of the Vision for America Award Dinner Committee.
"Aluminum cans, used by the beverage industry, have undergone dramatic improvements in design over the years, in a large part due to Anheuser-Busch's support," Reinemund added. "In fact, Anheuser-Busch's corporate leadership has been instrumental in minimizing the beverage industry's contribution to solid waste in our country over the past thirty years. Anheuser-Busch's ongoing commitment to the environmental stewardship and environmental education and to the direct involvement in community improvement efforts is a model for other corporations to emulate."
Serving with Reinemund on the Vision for America Award Dinner Committee were: R. David Hoover, Chairman of the Board, President & CEO, Ball Corporation; Charles F. Knight, Chairman, Emerson Electric Co.; Joseph H. Lemieux, Chairman, President & CEO, Owens-Illinois, Inc.; Robert Scarpelli, Chairman, DDB Chicago Inc./DDB U.S. Chief Creative Officer, DDB Worldwide; Andrew Taylor, Chairman & CEO, Enterprise Rent-a-Car; Edward E. Whitacre, Chairman & CEO, SBC Communications, Inc.
Since 1986, the prestigious Vision for America Award has been presented annually to corporations that have significantly enhanced civic, environmental and social stewardship throughout the United States. Anheuser-Busch is the eighteenth recipient of this award.
"We are pleased to focus the spotlight on the accomplishments of Anheuser-Busch by conferring Keep America Beautiful's highest honour upon it," stated G. Raymond Empson, the president of Keep America Beautiful, Inc. "It is our hope that Anheuser-Busch's proud example of more than one hundred years of the corporate and environmental responsibility will inspire other corporations to follow a similar path."
Focusing its operations and resources mainly on the beer, adventure park entertainment and packaging, Anheuser-Busch also has interests in the aluminum beverage container recycling, malt production, rice milling, real estate development, turf farming, metalized paper label printing and transportation services. Protecting the environment has been a core corporate value for more than one hundred and fifty years. Today, Anheuser-Busch is the world's largest recycler of aluminum beverage cans, recycling more than one hundred percent of the cans it sells domestically.
Keep America Beautiful, Inc. is a national non-profit public education and community improvement organization. Its network of more than five hundred and thirty city/county, state-wide and international affiliates engages individuals in programs that prevent litter and reduce, reuse, recycle and properly manage waste materials.