The Find: The environmental performance of companies participating in voluntary environmental programs is 7.7 percent worse than companies that don’t participate; if participating companies self-monitor their performance is 24 percent worse.- The Source: A new study of more than 30,000 firms from researchers at George Mason University.
The Take-away: There are more than 200 regional and national voluntary environmental programs in the U.S. The EPA alone spent $69 million funding them last year, and when the Department of Energy started its Climate Challenge Program, 124 companies signed up. That’s a significant amount of tax payer money, so one has to ask: is it just going to green wash American business? And does the desire to make a big public show of your green initiatives correlate negatively with your actual green credentials?
The study suggests that when it comes to being green, more smoke means less fire.
