SustainabilityHQ.com Weekly Highlights August 12, 2014

Wall Street & Corporate Sustainability Leaders
-- Do We Have Failure to Communicate?

Remember that memorable line so many people have often quoted from the 1960s movie, "Cool Hand Luke," when the jail warden tells actor Paul Newman ("Luke") what we have here is failure to communicate! The quote of the line is apt for describing the views of Wall Street toward companies that have embraced sustainability, thinks Joel Makower, executive editor of Greener World Media, publishers of the on-line platform, Greenbiz. Joel is regarded as having his finger on the pulse of corporate sustainability trends and he comments on communication between Corporate America and Wall Street players.

Specifically, Joel addresses the McKinsey & Company research paper (coming soon) that focused on the question, if sustainable business practices create profits and shareholder value, why aren't mainstream investors paying attention? Findings: Boils down to (1) investors don't have the data they need, (2) or understand how sustainability connects to creating value, (3) and perhaps most important, companies don't yet know how to tell a [sustainability] story that's relevant to Wall Street.

Joel Makower, paraphrasing the warden's words: What we have here is a multi-trillion-dollar failure to communicate. The good news is that more investors are trying to figure out how to use data (such as the reams of data / information provided by Bloomberg, MSCI, Thomson Reuters), trying to pick winners with outperformance, and we may be at the tipping point as we move toward a time when investors will ask companies, what are you doing on sustainability? Read the Greenbiz report here as our Top Story of the week.

Top Story of the Week

Why sustainability leaders don’t impress Wall Street  
(Tuesday - August 05, 2014)
Source: GreenBiz - It’s a question for the ages — or, at least, the age of sustainability: If sustainable business practices create profits and shareholder value, why aren’t mainstream investors paying attention? Some new research by McKinsey &...

Sustainability in Focus

Third Party Quality Assurance for Sustainability Reports on the Rise  
(Friday - August 08, 2014)
Source: Triple Pundit - Sustainability reporting should be comprehensive, transparent, non-biased and standardized, and the best way to improve the quality of reporting, according to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), is to get those sustainability...

How to engage your employees on sustainability   
(Friday - August 08, 2014)
Source: Eco Business - Organizations may have sustainability initiatives at the corporate level, but it is also important to engage employees to connect with these initiatives and participate in them. Bhavani Prakash shares how to engage employees on...

This is just a sample of some of the articles from this weeks SustainabilityHQ Highlights.  You can view the full Highlights by using the following links. Sustainability | ESG, Highlights for the Week of August 12, 2014