As the European Union considers the new draft Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and associated sustainability standards, striking new evidence shows that the proposed legislation saves rather than costs money for business.
A new article written by Richard Howitt, Strategic advisor on corporate sustainability, Senior Advisor at Frank Bold, formerly MEP and CEO of the IIRC, shows that sustainability reporting standards can generate significant savings and that a common EU reporting framework will benefit all companies, including SMEs. The article, published in the Alliance for Corporate Transparency present new evidence, showing that not only the additional costs of the new legislation are “negligible” for companies but that it will actually lead to an average cost saving up to EUR 41,700 per company each year in streamlining requests for sustainability information to the business from other sources.
The authors analyse why existing standard costs models have overstated the cost of business sustainability and understated its benefits, and present broader evidence which is now seen as overwhelmingly proving the link between better corporate sustainability performance and higher financial return. Not only does this provide a forceful case for passing the new EU legislation, but it concludes that a ‘tipping point’ has been reached whereby the ‘business case’ has been won.
Read the full article here.
Image credits: Mufid Majnun/Unsplash
