"Do good and you will do well!" pundits and companies often assert. While the tagline sounds great, the reality is that many companies struggle to
connect sustainability with core business goals such as increasing sales, reducing
costs, or reducing risks. As a result, sustainability departments are often seen as
tangential to the core business, and annual CSR reports are mostly filled with
anecdotal feel good stories. More often than not, environmental impacts, costs, and risks are mostly hidden and do not show up in companies' main accounting systems. As long as a CFO or Procurement Officer does not have visibility on such costs and risks in financial terms, the environment will at best remain a Chief Sustainability Officer issue.
