Harrah's Entertainment, Inc., the company behind the World Series of Poker, recently proved its continued commitment to environmental issues by joining with Starbucks, Dell, SC Johnson and Wrigley as a founding member of "Team Earth."

Team Earth, coordinated by Conservation International, seeks to unite citizens, scholars, businesses and non-profit organizations in an effort to focus attention on pressing environmental sustainability issues around the globe.

"A key focus of Team Earth is uniting simple, straightforward individual actions to address our planet's most critical environmental issues," said Gary Loveman, Chairman, CEO and President of Harrah's Entertainment, at a press conference Monday in midtown Manhattan. "Harrah's Entertainment is proud to join Team Earth not as a single corporate sponsor, but as 80,000 employees working together to make a difference. By uniting our efforts, we have significantly reduced our company's carbon footprint, dramatically improved our energy efficiency, decreased our waste stream and increased our recycling. Joining together, we have made Harrah's a sustainability leader and now we are ready to do more by joining an even bigger team: Team Earth."

This is not Harrah's first foray into large-scale environmental activism; Harrah's was already the only major casino entertainment company to join the Environmental Protection Agency's Climate Leaders and Waste Wise programs, as well as being the only company in the industry to win- among other similar accolades- an EPA Environmental Quality Award.

Together with the other members of Team Earth, Harrah's will now attempt to "play their rush" as it were, by taking on even larger environmental goals, starting with an important new campaign aimed at garnering support for forest protection at the Copenhagen climate negotiations this December.

For more information visit www.TeamEarth.com.


Story by Mark Anderson