Hong Kong haze: companies are using issues such as climate change to cut energy costs or for marketing purposes
Environmentalism
When dozens of world leaders descended on Rio de Janeiro last June for one of the biggest global environmental conferences in 20 years, observers had a dilemma: should they stay in the conference hall to watch the parade of presidents and prime ministers? Or head out to see executives from Microsoft and dozens of other companies at various parallel green business events dotted around the city?
Back at the first Rio Earth Summit in 1992, relations between companies and environmental campaigners were more prickly. Today, the rise of the digitally empowered consumer and environmental activist has driven a profound change. Rarely does an executive voice publicly any private reservations about recycling or climate change.
Instead, companies now regularly compete with each other to prove their green credentials. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, for instance, have spent many years and dollars trying to beat each other in the race to make plastic bottles from plants. Two other great rivals – Ford and General Motors – now battle over whose vehicles produce fewer carbon emissions.
More than 80 per cent of the world’s 500 biggest companies by market value now report information about their impact on the environment to CDP, a London-based non-profit group that encourages such voluntary reporting. It says the overall number of companies making such disclosure has soared from 135 in 2003 to 4,112 in 2012.
But it would be a mistake to ascribe all of this green effort to a sudden urge to do planetary good. Much is driven by a desire to save on energy costs and other expenses, and quite a bit purely for marketing purposes. Still, a number are genuine, and now that companies such as Google are spending nearly $1bn on renewable energy projects, and Puma is eyeing synthetic leather for its famous footwear, the relationship between business and the environmental movement is clearly entering a very different phase.
Pilita Clark