Companies Have a Tough Time Getting Sustainable

A recent IBM global corporate social-responsibility (CSR) survey of senior business executives shows a lot of companies are having trouble attaining their own sustainability goals.

Sixty percent of the companies surveyed say they are not collecting data frequently enough to fix inefficiencies across eight major categories of sustainability — CO₂, water, waste, energy, sustainable procurement, labor standards, product composition, and product life cycle. Another 29% collect no data at all from their supply chains. Eight in 10 aren’t collecting supplier data for CO₂ and water, and despite a long history of brand-damaging scandals in the area of labor, six in 10 aren’t checking supplier data for labor standards.

Outperformers among the respondents rank consistently higher in collecting every type of CSR information frequently or in real time across all major green and sustainability categories. They also do better at collecting information from suppliers, And outperformers are twice as likely to say open sharing of information among business partners and stakeholders is important in hitting their CSR objectives.