Edenark Group has been around for 25 years and, with the world’s top environmental sustainability certification / carbon neutral / ESG program for SMEs (small to mid-sized enterprises), we feel we know a thing or two.
But we are always looking to learn.
We often repost from NYU’s Stern School of Business as that school is a leader in global sustainability.
We are also friends with Ellen Weinreb, of Weinreb Group.
So when they teamed up and Ellen interviewed Tensie Whelan of NYU Stern, we had to take a look. Here is their chat.
For those of you scratching your heads about sustainability versus ESG, Tensie offered this simple, but brilliant, contrast:
- “…ESG is sustainability without the profitability piece and with a beefed-up governance piece.”
She continued with:
- “The interesting thing is that investors don’t include profitability, whereas the corporate definition of sustainability incorporates it. I think one of the challenges with ESG investing is that it actually treats the non-financial and financial aspects separately; it doesn’t look at how they integrate.”
Wow! And, there it is.
At Edenark Group, we serve SMEs, so we never approached ESG like fund managers. We always start with sustainability certification (tied to profitability), then build carbon neutrality (leading ultimately to Net Zero) and ESG on that strong financial, and globally-recognized, foundation. We appreciate Tensie’s explanation of how the investment community misses the financial and non-financial integration.