In the run up to the Cancun climate change conference, we ask if there are reasons to be cheerful about what companies are doing, despite the backdrop of bad news on the global environment.
It’s possible to get very depressed in this line of business. The bad news seems to outweigh the positive, many times over. Even hopeful initiatives like the Nagoya convention on biodiversity only have mixed outcomes. And just as we go to press, political trends in the US Congress seem likely to make action by the world’s largest economy and biggest consumer more illusive than ever.
So to lighten the mood and bring a little seasonal cheer as we come to the end of 2010, we’ve focused this edition on the positive things that companies are doing – the green shoots of innovation and good practice.
First off, some examples of actions by individual companies. Companies as diverse as Pepsico, Walmart and Sainsbury’s setting out their plans on sustainable farming. The UK property industry working together to devise an agreed approach to measuring the sustainability impacts of their buildings. British Gas and Thames Water (sewerage provider for London) capturing renewable gas from what they euphemistically call human waste and so helping decarbonise the gas grid
Of course these and the many other actions we report are driven in part by self-interest: these companies have identified where their resources and energy are coming from, and how much more they’ll cost in years to come. No harm in that.
However they build up to a wider economic picture too. Accenture has found that businesses taking sustainability seriously are outperforming their peers in stock market terms. Sales of products bearing the new carbon label are rapidly growing. Several studies identify the multi-trillion dollar economic value of protecting bio-diversity. This follows the report in our last edition by Trucost that the world’s 3000 largest listed companies are benefiting from $2.2 trillion of environmental damage – so-called environmental externalities – which they are causing and not paying for…..
And there was me, trying to be positive and optimistic.
Seasonal greetings and here’s to a (more) sustainable 2011.
COMMENTS