Sustainability is here to stay.\nBusinesses at large are openly embracing it. Keeping track of businesses that\npractice sustainability as opposed to those that speak of sustainability\ntheoretically, is a difficult task, making consumers fall prey to greenwashing.\nKeeping track of a company\u2019s sustainability indicators depends on the goal one\nhas and the company they are looking at. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first thing to do is keep an\neye on how often a company shares information about its sustainability\nperformance. In some cases, they will share this information in their annual\nreports. Some provide information on their websites. An example<\/a> being Unilever. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But then there is the symbolic\nfield of sustainability. Here an organization, business or place aspires to\npresent an image of sustainability. To these folks, sustainability happens to\nbe a green branding exercise. This\nvariant of sustainability makes no one\u2019s planet less polluted and no one\u2019s\nworld more socially inclusive, but works towards convincing consumers to favor\na product over another simply because of its green image. This practice is not\nnew, it is only becoming more prevalent with the fact that the youth base their\nconsumer decisions on the image that an organization presents as they sell\ngoods and services. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Coming up with tracking\nindicators to measure corporate sustainability can be a hard task. Even harder\nis the task of actually measuring, this is because reporting on an\norganization\u2019s greening takes place in cycles. It is possible to track them\nmanually but it all depends on the requirements not mentioning the time taken\nto compile the data of a single company. For instance, MTN and several other\ncompanies are investing in solar panels and taking other steps to reduce their\nenvironmental impact. But is it substantive or simply symbolic? It is easy to\nbe mistrustful of these efforts as one cannot know what is going on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A helpful way one can track\ncorporate sustainability measures is through publications and reports<\/a>\nfrom various companies that often review sustainability results<\/a> as they\ncome out. While not a comprehensive review of companies, they give a good range\nof reporting against commitments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n