This postalso appears在greenbiz.com上。

This is Part Four of a five-part blog series,使利润和环境可持续性保持一致。Each installment explores solutions to help businesses克服障碍that prevent them from integrating environmental sustainability into their everyday operations. Look for这些帖子every Thursday.

大卫·罗伯茨（David Roberts）在格里斯特（Grist）在线环境新闻机构上周在Twitter上评论说，“人们谈论'外部性'，就像他们只是不良的共鸣之类的东西一样。但是那钱是真钱。这些成本是实际的成本。”那钱有多真实？Pavan Sukhdev博士，作者The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity和Corporation 2020, claims that these “externalities”—or costs to society from carbon emissions, water use, pollutants, and other byproducts of business activities—are more than2万亿美元。

Putting a financial value on these environmental costs can help businesses make better informed decisions about how they manage their environmental risk. Not all companies recognize this—andeven feweractually know how to value these externalities correctly. But a few corporations are starting to show us the way.

Learning from Puma’s Environmental Profit and Loss Statement

Puma is one company that thinks this is an important issue. While all companies have to develop profit and loss statements, Puma is the first to develop an environmental profit and loss statement. The company valued the environmental impact of its operations and supply chain in 2010 at about$190 million, factoring in impacts like water use, greenhouse gas emissions, land use conversion, air pollution, and waste。该公司现在使用此声明作为推动环境计划的一种方式，它认为这是其长期商业生存的关键。彪马的环境损益表is helping employees, shareholders, and suppliers understand the magnitude of the company’s environmental impacts, prioritize which ones to tackle first, and incorporate this information into decision-making.

Evaluating Externalities to Drive Sustainability

As the必威官网手机版在最近的工作文件中的报告使利润和环境可持续性保持一致: Stories from Industry, other companies are also finding ways to value the cost of environmental impacts to drive sustainability and growth. For example,

  • Natura巴西化妆品公司，通过在其供应商选择标准中包括各种供应商环境足迹的估计成本，从而减少了供应链的环境影响。Natura估计购买产品影响的财务成本，例如二氧化碳排放，废物产生，用水等。通过将这些影响反映为产品成本，该公司能够选择不仅提供最具成本效益的产品，而且具有最低环境影响的供应商。这有助于自然降低成本并满足其致力于可持续采购。

  • 格里夫是一家工业包装产品和服务公司，并没有直接对环境产生影响，而是对其产品在业务计划中的占用意义进行生命周期的视野。例如，格里夫（Greif）扩大了业务，包括重新制造和重新调整的运输容器，在发现它们具有较低的环境影响的同时，同时更好地满足客户需求。

对齐利润和环境可持续性博客系列

Read other installments of our five-part blog series, "Aligning Profit and Environmental Sustainability."

Using Policy to Account for Environmental Costs

While some companies are带头在将自己的环境影响考虑到财务决策中的方式时，对环境影响产生代价的公共政策将有助于所有公司解释环境外部性。这些政策包括那些对温室气体排放的价格的政策或用水, as well as policies that create demand for more efficient products like车辆燃油效率标准或建筑代码。

尽管这样的政策的影响会在各个企业之间有所不同，但一些公司已经受益。例如，环境法规，高能价格和欧洲碳的价格帮助西门子种植了其环境产品组合，包括风力涡轮机，高效的合并循环发电厂和高效火车。西门子不仅为客户提供了帮助减少3.32亿吨二氧化碳排放量（与德国年度排放量的40％相等），但产生了446亿美元in revenue from its environmental product portfolio in fiscal year 2012.

Alcoa is another example. The aluminum manufacturer found that the U.S. Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) standards are driving demand for lighter vehicle materials. The company is well-positioned to provide these materials as result of its R&D investments. It recently invested $300 million in an Iowa facility in order to provide lightweight aluminum for the 2014 vehicle model year.

将环境对业务决策产生影响对于帮助公司以商业上聪明的方式最大程度地减少其足迹至关重要。令人鼓舞的是，看到公司领导人开始考虑环境外部性，但是要真正减轻环境和财务风险，我们需要采取更多行动。我们期待跟踪创新，以帮助更多公司将环境成本纳入其财务和产品计划。