This week in class we learned about a pretty neat concept called natural capital. Natural Capital can be defined as the world’s stocks of natural assets which include geology, soil, air, water and all living things. Pretty much the concept explains how we as humans believe it or not, actually heavily rely on nature to provide most (if not all) the services that we enjoy here on this beautiful planet we call earth. So what's the problem? Well, take for example financial capital, when we spend too much money, we can get in debt and eventually go bankrupt. Well, similarly with natural capital, when we draw out too much stock from our natural environment we also run up a debt which needs to be paid back. And this is where businesses come in. A lot of the time, companies don't really pay attention to how they use natural capital, and what effect their business processes have on the environment. Poorly managed Natural Capital therefore becomes not only an ecological liability, but a social and economic liability too. After learning about natural capital, I thought it'd be cool to see if there were any companies that were involved with this concept, or if there were even any regulations regarding this subject.
To my surprise, I found a very recent article regarding some of the larger companies in the U.S., and what they were doing to help others be more aware of this concept. Some of the more known companies listed in the article were Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Dow Chemical, Hugo Boss, and (to much surprise) Shell. The article states that they "will begin testing the Natural Capital Protocol, which aims to help businesses improve their decision making by standardizing how their relationship with nature is measured and valued." One example of what a company will focus on is Hugo Boss, which aims to identify the drivers of environmental impacts along the supply chain to inform raw material procurement strategies. I thought that it was pretty interesting how companies are only just now (Oct. 2015) beginning to implement some of these very useful strategies. Sometimes its just crazy for me to think that companies have been operating for so long with having no respect towards how they treat the environment. Hopefully this will be a successful starting point for bigger corporation, and allow many other to follow in their footsteps.
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