Research

Symbola report identifies environment management systems to be a competitive accelerator

Environmental certifications can be a competitive accelerator. As reported in the “Certify to compete” report carried out in collaboration with the Symbola Foundation, an environmental certification brings benefits in budgets, better relationships with providers, consumers, the territory, society and the public administration. Analysing a panel of certified companies as respect to the same number of non-certified ones, it came out that, in the crises period between 2009 and 2013, environmental certified companies increased their revenues, by 3.5% (around 1.5 percentage points more than non-certified ones). In addition, certified companies employees grew by 4%, compared to 0.2% of non-certified. It is mainly the smaller companies that gain the most advantages: the SMEs (up to 50 employees) with environmental certification record a spread as respect to the non certified of +4 points in turnover and 1.2 points in the employed.

Moreover, the report highlights how the poor and inadequate knowledge of environmental certifications in terms of potential benefits limit a better spread among companies. This lack of knowledge is, in part, a responsibility of CAB’s that are not always able to make known the true extent of an environmental certification.