What shade of green is being achieved in financial corporations?
As you’re well aware more and more companies are quick to tell you just just how green they are and will use the ‘G’ word at a moments notice to signify responsible behavior that potential customer will feel comfortable with. There is underlying proof that more companies are greening their behavior by incorporating new practices or processes that are considered to be environmentally friendly. What is questionable is what lengths companies are prepared to go to to acquire a persona of being green or indeed the associated benefits of upholding such a reputation. A brand-new survey which is said to be the first of its kind has been published by JP Morgan treasury services and illustrates that while corporate greening is taking place there is still much room to take on more initiatives that require extra effort and investment.
If you would have joined me in guessing that recycling is the most popular green initiative employed by big business you would have been correct. Cynics might point out that it is also the least expensive step that a company can make to try and bolster its resume of being more green. Some other popular initiatives include paper conservation and carpooling with correspondingly also require little capital investment from a corporation. The survey polled more than 100 of the biggest financial institutions in the US to ascertain just how active each corporation is with their green agenda. The findings are encouraging but also emphasize the fact that many businesses can do a great deal more in improving their largest energy uses such as healing and cooling or water conservation.
When asked ‘whether your company encourages environmental awareness in each area’ the results were very interesting. Recycling led the way with 88% followed by paper reduction at 82%, further down the list lighting conservation at 76% and carpooling with 46%. Notably low in terms of awareness stood water conservation at 30% and sustainable landscaping near 23%.
Perhaps wrongly I have the impression that many individuals have spent the needed time at some point in the last few years assessing their own personal carbon footprint, however when asked if your company has assessed its carbon footprint only 31% said yes, 41% said no and 28% were not sure. I would have thought that a first stage assessment of a company’s green ambitions would be to include such a study to better assess what improvements can be made.
The survey goes on to conduct nearly 20 more environmental questions which generally are more specifically linked to the financial and investment world but still paint a fairly comprehensive and fascinating picture of where many companies currently stand in terms of awareness, expectation and future planning around environmental standards. It would be interesting to see a similar series of polls that evaluate different sectors of industry to form a corporate benchmark of sorts but in the meantime this poll is a great starting point.
You can review the entire poll results via this site
Good article Tracy. Honestly believe that a lot of people don’t care about green issues. And many companies just do a few things to appeal to people who do care.
Sustainability is very popular in Europe and parts of the States. In developing countries however CSR is often confused with sponsorship which obviously stop companies from implementing CSR.
Would like to see more companies adopt sustainability both externally and internally. And they will when even more consumers start demanding it. We are actually seeing some companies adding a Chief Sustainability Officer to their C suite. So the development is going in the right direction.
Thanks for your comment Catrina. We’re on the same page. Every organization needs clearly defined sustainability initiatives under their corporate social responsibility mandate. I agree and think the trend is shifting and forcing companies to assign resources to developing comprehensive CSR practices.