Calculated ESG

As Demands for Environmental Accountability Increase, Companies Turn to New Tools to Tell Their Sustainablility Story

By Maura Keller

These days, the topic of environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategies taking precedence throughout companies of all sizes within the filtration industry, as well as a myriad of other industries across the globe.

Whatever you call it – ESG, sustainability, or corporate responsibility – there is a growing recognition that companies need to focus not only on tending to their bottom lines, but also on their impact on communities, the environment, and society as a whole. Indeed, there has been a macro societal shift in expecting how businesses should behave – an expectation of a more defined environmental contract.

Historically speaking, it’s important to understand that ESG is nothing new – it grew out of the sustainability movement of the '90s and early 2000s, which started to put pressure on the corporate world to consider the environmental impacts of their actions. Today, having a solid ESG record is a sign of a well-run, forwardlooking business. And it’s what stakeholders – customers, suppliers, employees, and investors – expect from businesses within the filtration industry and beyond.

But ESG initiatives offer plenty of challenges. In a recently released e-book, Nefab, the developer of GreenCalc, a data-driven tool that tracks and quantifies all financial and environmental data in a company’s supply chain, pointed to several ESG challenges facing the traditional supply chain. Not only does transportation and packaging have a major impact on CO2 eq emissions and global warming in both local and global levels,