Sustainability spending has survived the downturn, with almost 60% of companies saying that their investments increased in 2010.
Companies are committing to sustainability but investment levels vary, with companies dividing into embracers and cautious adopters.
Embracer companies are implementing sustainability-driven strategies widely in their organizations and have largely succeeded in making robust business cases for their investments.
All companies–both embracers and cautious adopters–see the benefits of strategies such as improved resource efficiency and waste management.
Al companies recognize the brand-building benefits of developing a reputation for being sustainability-driven. This benefit was rated greatest by all respondents (including both embracers and cautious adopters).
While even embracer companies still struggle to measure financially the more intangible business benefits of sustainability strategies (such as employee engagement, innovation and stakeholder appeal), these companies are nevertheless assigning value to intangible factors when forming strategies and making decisions.
Companies across all industries agree that acting on sustainability is essential to remaining competitive.
Embracers are more aggressive in their sustainability spending, but the cautious adopters are catching up and increasing their commitments at a faster rate than the embracers. They plan to increase their investments by 24% in 2011, while the commitments of embracers (already high) remain static.
The sustainability-driven management approaches of embracers companies–which claim to be gaining competative advantage via sustainability–exhibit seven shared traits that together suggest how sustainability may alter management practice for all successful companies in the future.
