Forum Ekonomiczne

„Rzeczpospolita” na Forum Ekonomicznym w Karpaczu 2024

Companies see sustainability as an expense

Although more than 80% of companies declare taking ESG into account in their operations, as many as 21% say they do not see it as a good thing, and only a third have or are working on an ESG strategy, according to a survey by Kantar Polska for BASF Polska.

Publikacja: 05.09.2024 04:28

The premiere of Poland's first survey of sustainable development practices among manufacturing compa

The premiere of Poland's first survey of sustainable development practices among manufacturing companies took place in Karpacz. The event was accompanied by a debate with business representatives

Foto: mat. pras.

Kantar Polska, on behalf of BASF Polska, surveyed how sustainability ranks on the agendas of Polish business and how companies are doing in preparing to implement ESG principles.

'The guiding objective of our survey of 150 industrial, mainly manufacturing, companies was to make the issue more real. Because sustainability is being talked about by more and more people, we wanted to verify what business practice looks like,' said Katarzyna Zalewska, Head of Sustainability Expertise at Kantar.

The report shows that the optics of companies are very different; the size of the company influences the beliefs of its management about the business dimension of sustainability and ESG. ‘This topic arouses a lot of emotion, it is not always a positive sentiment towards this issue, but there is always a discernible position, an opinion,' said Zalewska.

What do companies think about ESG?

'Many sustainability-related activities and strategies, like many Green Deal provisions and assumptions, are currently under tremendous pressure due to the energy and geopolitical crises. And this is felt in many of the responses from participants in our joint report,' said Katarzyna Jedynak, Head of Sales Industrial Chemicals, BASF Poland. However, what is positive, in her opinion, is that there is no departure from the assumptions of a sustainable future in declarations and actions.

'What can you see from a bird's eye view of the market? Where are we in terms of adopting sustainability policies?' asked Dorota Cudna-Sławińska, board member of Kantar Polska. In the survey, as many as 83% of companies declare that they generally consider sustainability issues in their business operations. But, as the researchers noted, the devil is in the detail, which can be seen when confronting declarations with practice. According to the survey, despite the declared consideration of ESG by four-fifths of respondents, only 30% are in the process of developing (20%) or already have (10%) sustainability strategies.

'As many as 40% of our respondents, regardless of the size of their company, said that they do not have such a strategy and that they do not plan to have one,' said Dorota Cudna-Sławińska.

Part of the tension around sustainability stems from the fact that the Green Deal was invented for a world that has changed a lot since then. 'The Green Deal was introduced in 2019, the world looked very different then, no one expected a pandemic and a war in Ukraine. Today it is still the same as when it was introduced five years ago, nothing has changed. It is hard to blame people for their critical opinions. In my opinion, while trying to introduce the Green Deal, politicians have forgotten that there are people along the way who need to accept it, understand it and implement it,' commented Katarzyna Byczkowska, managing director of BASF Poland.

Companies also view ESG as an unnecessary burden and expense. The researchers presented statements from companies that best reflected the prevailing mood in Polish business: ‘We don't plan to measure our carbon footprint because we have nothing to do with coal,’ says the quoted environmental specialist at a metallurgical company.

'21% of representatives say they see nothing good in ESG, they do not see any benefit from implementing sustainability in their companies,' said Katarzyna Zalewska. This group is larger than the figures above suggest, because when you add in those who answered ‘don't know’, the proportion of respondents not seeing any benefit rises to 40%.

'Four in ten manufacturing companies see nothing good for themselves from implementing ESG standards. The results were all the more worrying because our interviewees were decision-makers in companies,' emphasised the Head of Sustainability Expertise at Kantar.

'The opinions are very mixed. On the one hand, there are perceived advantages in being able to compete for international tenders thanks to the implementation of ESG, while on the other hand there are strong statements that sustainability is, for the time being, a fiction and price works wonders,' noted Katarzyna Zalewska. 'Only 25% of companies pointed explicitly to cost as the main challenge. Only one in four companies put it bluntly, but when you look at the individual statements, financial outlay is behind all of them. Company representatives said they felt there was so much to be done, both on the logistics side, process setup, employee attitudes, changing production lines and supply chains, that there were huge costs behind it all, and no guarantee of a good return on investment behind the outlay,' she added.

Participants in the meeting pointed to the bad atmosphere growing around this topic.

'Our entrepreneurs need empathy – from those who see better, are more oriented and know what good can come from sustainable development. Marcin Napiórkowski, a researcher from the University of Warsaw, has written a book entitled ‘Repairing the Future’, in which he notes that our future will be like the narrative about it,’ Dorota Cudna-Sławińska concluded the debate.

materiały prasowe

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Kantar Polska, on behalf of BASF Polska, surveyed how sustainability ranks on the agendas of Polish business and how companies are doing in preparing to implement ESG principles.

'The guiding objective of our survey of 150 industrial, mainly manufacturing, companies was to make the issue more real. Because sustainability is being talked about by more and more people, we wanted to verify what business practice looks like,' said Katarzyna Zalewska, Head of Sustainability Expertise at Kantar.

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