Abstract
A remarkable new breed of business is volunteering to be held publicly or even legally accountable to a triple bottom line: prioritizing people and the planet, while also promoting profits. This emerging movement is still a small phenomenon relative to the total global economy, but it continues to expand, led by mostly small and medium-sized companies in the United States, and to a lesser degree in Canada and Chile. Almost all are privately held, although a few major corporations have recently become connected through subsidiaries they have acquired.1
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Opportunities exist here to promote much higher ethical standards for business practices that may cause serious social and ecological harms but that are now generally tolerated, such as advertising, which is based increasingly on intrusive corporate surveillance and a relentless push for impulse buying.
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© 2014 Worldwatch Institute
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Cordes, C. (2014). The Rise of Triple-Bottom-Line Businesses. In: State of the World 2014. State of the World. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-542-7_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-542-7_19
Publisher Name: Island Press, Washington, DC
Print ISBN: 978-1-59726-465-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-61091-542-7
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