Considerable savings are made on advertising and PR alone when companies need not spend megabucks polishing an image tarnished by oil spills, unethical employee practices or worse. In a reputation economy, trust is priceless.
Many companies are starting to see clear monetary returns on their investments in sustainability, in addition to benefits that are more difficult to measure. The bottom line is looking better, especially for those companies who apply business sense to their sustainability effort: MIT Sloan Management Review and The Boston Consulting Group’s report, The Innovation Bottom Line, shows that companies with a clear business case for sustainability are three times as likely to report profit from their sustainability efforts.
Another telltale indication of how overall business benefits are catching up with added brand value comes from The Innovation Bottom Line survey where companies ranked the benefits they saw from practicing sustainability:
Improved brand reputation 40 %
Better innovation of product / service offering 29 %
Improved perception of how well company is managed 26 %
Increased competitive advantage 22 %
Reduced costs due to energy efficiency 22 %
Reduced costs due to materials or waste efficiencies 20 %
Better innovation of business models and processes 19 %
PROFILE MAGAZINE 2/2013, page 11