More companies reporting profitability from environmentally friendly practices

Posted by sustainvu@vanderbilt.edu on Thursday, February 21, 2013 in News.

Originally published by CGMA Magazine.

For years, companies have wrestled with the question of whether environmentally friendly business practices created enough financial value to justify investing in them. Those questions remain for many organisations as a fragile world economy demands prudent stewardship of company currency.

But a new report indicates that companies increasingly are discovering value in environmental sustainability, and they are changing their business practices to take advantage of it. In a survey of executives and managers conducted by the Boston Consulting Group and MIT Sloan Management Review magazine, 37% of executives and managers said environmentally conscious actions have added to their company’s profit. That’s up significantly from the 23% who reported profits from environmental sustainability practices in last year’s survey.

Another 31% this year said the effort neither added to nor subtracted from profit, while 22% thought such initiatives drained profit.

In addition, 48% of companies have changed their business models as a result of environmental sustainability opportunities, an increase of 20 percentage points over the previous year.

Read more here.