For many decades, we have been working to reduce our environmental impact and maximize resource efficiency and productivity in our own operations and in the products and services we deliver to our customers. This commitment is rooted in both an authentic desire to help protect the planet and in a pragmatic belief that doing more with less is simply smart business.

In 2019, we were excited to bring all of that history and groundwork together by formally establishing a cross-functional sustainability leadership team. The Toro Company's Sustainability Committee was chartered with developing and implementing an enterprise-wide sustainability strategy and identifying programs to drive that strategy forward by being more deliberate, intentional and transparent with our sustainability-focused activities. This Committee is comprised of key company leaders, with direct and active oversight from our executive team. The Chair of our Sustainability Committee also provides periodic updates on the progress and goals of our sustainability initiative to our Board of Directors.

Since being established, the Sustainability Committee has worked to unify the current state of our sustainability-focused activities and drive further progress across our businesses and diverse operations. The Committee has also assessed key opportunities and risks, benchmarking with sustainability leaders at other organizations and deepening our understanding of the disclosure and rating systems governing how companies are evaluated for environmental, social and governance performance.

Increasing our focus on sustainability will also help drive our core business priorities of accelerating profitable growth, driving productivity and operational excellence and empowering people.

Expanding Our Efforts

Our efforts have reinforced our belief that increasing our focus on sustainability will also help drive our core business priorities of accelerating profitable growth, driving productivity and operational excellence and empowering people.

The Toro Company is not at the beginning of its sustainability journey, but we took important steps in fiscal 2019 to strengthen our strategic focus, expand and accelerate our key priorities to have a positive impact in our communities and world, and to disclose the good work we have done and will continue to do. The publication of our 2019 Sustainability Report, paired with the formal launch of our sustainability platform, signal our increased commitment to have an even bigger impact going forward. There is more we can do and we are actively engaged in further making a positive impact financially, socially and environmentally.

Our Strategic Pillars

Ultimately, three working teams with representatives from across our businesses, functions and locations were formed to gather an inventory of our existing sustainability-focused activities and to further develop and deepen our sustainability strategies in our key areas of focus, which we call Pillars. Our core pillars include: (1) People; (2) Product; and (3) Process.

Our People, Product and Process Pillar teams have worked to further understand our current state in areas within their relevant scope, identify data needs to increase visibility into our underlying sustainability performance, implement systems to capture that data, establish baseline sustainability measurements and goals as relevant to each Pillar, and develop strategies and programs to drive our future progress for the areas covered by each Pillar. We also have a Planning Pillar, which is tasked with tactically gathering information, helping us be more transparent with our sustainability journey, and helping each of our other Pillars to develop strategies and programs to further embed sustainability as part of our culture.