Market your environmental credentials

Large private businesses and public companies are required to report to investors on how environmental issues affect profitability.

Advantages of environmental reporting

While it is not a requirement for smaller businesses, reporting on environmental performance is good practice. It could benefit your business by:

• setting out and measuring its environmental impact
• impressing the firms' stakeholders
• making the business more attractive to suppliers who prefer to work with partners with good environmental credentials
• attracting new customers
• attracting new employees and retaining current staff

You could set key performance indicators (KPIs) to help you monitor your environmental impact and performance. KPIs provide business units, departments and individuals with clearly defined targets and benchmarks.

A manufacturing business, for example, might decide to make levels of solvent emissions one of its KPIs. It would then record, benchmark and report this KPI in its environmental report. By analysing its performance against this KPI, the business could potentially see ways to improve its environmental impact by changing to less environmentally-damaging substances or processes. This, in turn, could attract new buyers for its products.

Looking at the environmental reports of your suppliers can also help you assess the environmental impact of your supply chain.