Bronwyn Williams

A recent Bloomberg article claimed that corporate ESG (environmental, social, and governance) is a “luxury” value that only the richest and largest firms can afford to show off, and even then, only in economic good times where easy money flows from central banks and artificially low interest rates prevail.

That’s quite a claim. To say that commitments to environmental and social sustainability are nothing but status symbols might be what many of us think privately, but to say so publicly bears further scrutiny. After all, we’ve been told (and told market researchers ourselves) that ESG is what we as the consumers really want from the businesses and brands we support.