Companies around the
world are struggling to make progress on climate change, resource
efficiency and natural capital dependency, according to the 2014 State of Green Business report published by GreenBiz Group in partnership with Trucost plc.
The seventh annual edition of the report, which measures the global
progress of large, publicly traded companies in addressing a myriad of
environmental challenges, reveals little meaningful progress across most
metrics, including greenhouse gas emissions, water use, waste disposal
and other pollutant impacts.
“While more and more companies are undertaking a growing number of
initiatives to reduce their environmental impacts, there’s very little
progress to show for it. Company initiatives are not having an impact at
the scale needed to address such challenges as climate change and the
availability of water and natural resources,” said Joel Makower,
GreenBiz Group executive editor and the report’s principal author.
...
The 2014 report includes the launch of the Natural Capital Leaders
Index, a new methodology for identifying companies that are growing
their revenue while reducing their environmental impacts. The 2014 Index
found 34 companies from 10 countries that met Trucost’s criteria, which
include increasing revenue between 2008 and 2012, disclosure of
greenhouse gas emissions and a decrease in environmental impacts during
that same period.
Among the 34 “decoupling leaders” are Carnival Corp., CSX, Intel,
Kimberly-Clark, National Australia Bank, Pearson, Tata Power and
Verizon.
The Index further identifies US and Global “efficiency leaders” that
use the least natural capital to generate revenue compared to sector
peers – the more traditional sustainability leaders – which include
Adobe Systems, AMEC, BMW, Ford, Manpower, McGraw Hill Financial, Pepco
Holdings and Sprint Corp.
The report also names the 10 sustainable business trends for 2014.
Among them are the growth of collaboration among big corporations to
solve mutual sustainability challenges, the growth of chemical
transparency for consumer products, the emergence of “shadow pricing” as
a means for companies to assess their environmental risks and
net-positive buildings.
The metrics from the report were drawn from Trucost’s assessment of
4,600 of the world’s largest companies representing 93% of global
markets by market capitalization.
The free report can be downloaded from GreenBiz.com.
GreenBiz www.GreenBiz.com via Corporate Social Responsibility Wire (CSWire) www.CSWire.com
Press Release dated January 21, 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment