Do Investors Care About Corporate Sustainability?

I ran across a PriceWaterhouseCoopers report on whether investors care about a company's efforts to be more sustainable--and not just in the environmental sense of the word. The conclusion: Boy do they.

The report, Do investors care about sustainability? Seven trends provide clues, provides evidence of an interesting loop: Investor interest in sustainable practices has become so popular that financial reporting companies are now starting to provide easy access to information on these practices. As companies realize how easy it is for investors (and potential investors) to get a hold of this information, they upgrade their own sustainability reporting practices.

Investors are becoming interested in sustainability because recent studies indicate a direct correlation between sustainable practices and profits.

Sustainable practices include such things as:

1. Better management of natural resources that go into a companies products. (A beverage company must protect long-term sources of potable water.)
2. More attention to waste products that flow out of factories.
3. More concern for worker health and safety.
4. More attention to how the company's operations affect the community in which it's located.
5. More attention to making sure energy grids are maintained and that energy generation is sustainable.
6. More attention to climate change and its implications on supply and risk.

Here's the map. I'll post it on Biggerplate too: