Sustainabililty leaders "are starting to go one step further than the rest of the pack, such that their machinery for delivering sustainability is becoming part of the way they do business," according to Mark Line, executive chairman of Two Tomorrows Group.
His company's new report, the
Tomorrow’s Value Rating 2011, reveals that there is a danger that leading companies are
taking existing practices and passing them under the sustainability lens to give a compelling green picture of the company. That's called
greenwashing.
As the report states, companies such as General Electric, Nike, Unilever and Nestle have taken the other approach, making sustainability a core business strategy.
Profit-motivated sustainability efforts are laudable, and produce financial benefits. They fail to enhance the company's brand, however, if they are not perceived to be authentically part of the company's DNA. Today's consumers are highly perceptive. When a firm's environmental PR says one thing but their actions often say another, the program is destined to fall short.
Superior share price performance of
carbon leaders shows that investors value full disclosure over hidden problems and environmental responsibility over recklessness. That
Fortune magazine's
Best Places to Work list has
performed twice as well as the broader market, indicates a strong connection between employee satisfaction and customer loyalty.
Companies who embody
and communicate a core commitment to these business principles are companies that we are more able to trust -- not to be perfect, but to admit their failings and strive for constant improvement.
Read more at Two Tomorrows
money than any individual on the planet. So when he advocates raising taxes, folks tend to notice.
