Some key takeaways from the State of Sustainability 2015 report

This year is an important year for sustainability. With the upcoming post-2015 global development agenda and COP21, this year could see business take responsibility for some critical sustainable initiatives and goals.

Our inaugural State of Sustainability report helps shed some light on whether business is ready to rise to the challenge. Below are a few key takeaways from the report:

• Sustainability of increasing importance to business strategy – 89% of our corporate respondents agreed that sustainability is becoming increasingly important for strategy. Sustainability as a key strategic issue is becoming almost impossible to ignore.

• Corporate leaders are increasingly persuaded by the case for sustainability – Our report, a survey of nearly 1,500 global responsible business professionals, found that 71% believed their CEO or organisational leader is convinced of the value of sustainability.

• Sustainability is already driving business revenues – 49% of our respondents told us this – and is providing savings, which 67% of our corporate respondents agreed with.

• Sustainability infiltrating all areas of business – Nearly 25% of our respondents felt that embedding sustainability is the single most exciting opportunity for 2015. This perhaps reflects the increasingly important and positive impact that sustainability has on business operations.

However, our report also found that there’s some work to be done:

• Not leveraging the full potential of sustainability – Only 21% of corporate respondents said their company is leveraging the potential of sustainability as fully as possible. This is indicates that there is considerable opportunity for sustainable gains to be made in the majority of companies.

• No clarity on ROI measurement – Only a third of our respondents were able to say that they are measuring the return on investment of sustainability. For sustainability to become a key component of business there needs to be a clear idea on the value and ROI that sustainability brings.

Our State of Sustainability 2015 report gives some strong indications that business is ready to rise to the challenges ahead. And more importantly that it’s going to have an increasingly important part to play in how businesses operate.

Do you feel business is ready to rise to the challenge? Are you enthused or disheartened by any of the above or full report’s findings? Please do join the conversation on Twitter using #ECSOS

The full report can be accessed here

 

business strategy  ECSOS  state of sustainability. sustainability 2015