To: the 5,300 companies that belong to the United Nations Global Compact
Ask Business to Help Save Nature
We the undersigned ask you, as a responsible member of the global business community, to immediately adopt an accounting system to measure your company's impact on two key components of the environment: Greenhouse gas emissions and water use.
Such an accounting program should take the form of an Environmental Profit and Loss Statement, to be published by you on an annual basis.
The statement should, at a minimum, include the amount in tonnes of greenhouse gases that your business operations generate, and it should take into account the GHG emissions generated by your suppliers.
The statement should also account for the cubic meters of water used by your business operations and by your suppliers.
The goal of the accounting statement should be to arrive at a true market value of the environmental impact of your business operations in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and water use.
One model for such a system could be the environmental profit and loss statements recently published by Puma apparel company.
Further, we encourage you to consider doing more to be a good environmental citizen and measuring your impact in terms of additional critera, such as solid waste generation, non-sustainable land use, and the effect of your operation on plant and animal life near your facilities, including the effects of the waste your company generates.
Why is this important?
Nature is in decline -- clean air, drinkable water, rich soil, and countless species of plants and animals are all disappearing before our eyes.
Both business and consumers are responsible.
Many consumers are trying to mend their ways, but now business must do more. Business is the primary user of natural resources, and the waste it creates has a profound impact on the environment.
We must ask the 5,300 companies that belong to the UN Global Compact to begin to measure their greenhouse has emissions and their water use and to publish the results annually in an environmental profit & loss statement.
A few companies have already begun this practice, including sporting goods manufacturer Puma. Now we must ask all the members of the UN Global Compact to begin to put an accurate value on the environmental resources that they exploit in order to turn a profit.