Puma, a German-based, multinational sports lifestyle company, has fully costed its 2010 environmental impact, claiming to be the first major coorporation to do so. Totalling 145 million euros ($196m), the cost includes greenhouse gas emissions, water and land use, air pollution and waste from the actions of Puma itself, and those of its suppliers.
Today, placing a value on a company’s environmental impact in order to incorporate into the company’s annual accounts is becoming progressively common. Driving this is the realization that services and resources provided by nature will not be infinite, and therefore, cannot be counted as free.
It’s encouraging to see that after Puma’s “Dirty Laundry” was exposed earlier this year, as explained in my previous blog post, and in Lisa Wong’s Blog Post, Puma identified the need to clean up their brand imaging and any association with a large environment impact. Many companies are beginning to adapt long term strategies that focus on improving the future, such as the PumaVision, a “responsibility to contribute to a better world for the generations to come.” Despite these movements, I still feel that companies are leaving consumers in the dark as often as possible, but some headway is certainly better than none at all.