Sustainability And Social Sustainability

The world is turning a new page in some truly profound ways, and I believe that investors are starting to catch on (which is a good thing). These world financial giants are starting to notice the importance of environmental and social issues, and the reason they are catching on is due to the potential long-term investments and growth it provides these companies and long term investors. Let me remind you what we already know. There are currently 7 billion people on Earth today and because of our innovation in modern medicine that number will grow to about 10 billion people by the end of this century. We are consuming irreplaceable natural resources, and from those resources we use, namely oil, we are creating an unhealthy dose of landfill and

Sustainability in the United States and in international business is more than simply adopting sustainable practices, but actually has the potential to help companies gain competitive advantage. Other companies prefer to describe this kind of thing as “corporate responsibility” (dropping the “social” as too narrow), or “corporate citizenship”, or “building a sustainable business”. All this is convoluted code for something simple: companies meaning (or seeming) to be good all in the name for higher profit margins. The social sustainability that companies practice spans everything from volunteering in the local community to looking after employees properly, from helping the poor to saving the planet. With such a fuzzy, wide-ranging subject, many companies find it hard to know what to focus on. So what does a company honestly practicing an environmentally sustainable business model look like, and is it

Scandals at Enron, WorldCom and elsewhere undermined trust in big business and led to heavy-handed government regulation. And because of these examples of irresponsible behavior companies have to watch their every step. Investors too, are starting to show more interest. For example, $1 out of every $9 under professional management in America now involves an element of “socially responsible investment”, according to Geoffrey Heal of Columbia Business School. Some of the big banks, including Goldman Sachs and UBS, have started to integrate environmental, social and governance issues in some of their equity research. True, the finance industry sends mixed signals: it demands good financial results above all else, and in parts of the financial world—notably the private-equity part. But private equity itself has to respond to public pressure about being green, or they might see a large slide in support, which translates to loss of capital gains. We know that investors, when they look at a company and decide whether to invest, they look at financial data, metrics like sales growth, cash flow, market share, valuation, and just the same, nowadays they need to consider E.S.G. I am talking about the environment, social, and governance. The environment includes: energy consumption, water availability, and waste/pollution. Social