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The most comprehensive assessment of corporate sustainability activity to date shows that while companies around the world engage in a wide range of sustainability initiatives, the costs to the environment continue to grow.
The sixth annual “State of Green Business” report (download free at greenbiz.com/stateofgreenbusiness), published by GreenBiz Group in association with Trucost, measures the environmental efforts and impacts of 500 U.S. companies and more than 1,600 of their global counterparts. It tracks more than 30 metrics – some never before reported on a global basis – from greenhouse gas emissions to environmental R&D, to assess whether businesses worldwide are making progress in addressing planetary concerns. The report also tracks 10 corporate megatrends related to environment and sustainability.
Trucost’s Environmental Register, which tracks and values corporate resource use and pollution, shows that the financial costs to natural capital of more than 2,000 companies analyzed surpassed their pre-recession levels in 2011, exceeding $1 trillion globally for the first time. The amounts are tallied by compiling companies’ individual and supply chain impacts, including carbon emissions, water consumption and waste, and assigning a cost to each impact.
“This is the first time that aggregated reporting data has been done for such a large collection of sustainability metrics,” says Joel Makower, chairman and executive editor of GreenBiz Group, and the report’s lead author. “It shows that despite the rapid rise of sustainability on companies’ agendas, progress is lacking, particularly in light of the resource and weather risks many sectors are facing.”
