ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY FACTORS IMPACT ON FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE IN MATERIALS INDUSTRY

ABSTRACT The purpose of the research is to investigate the relationship between environmental sustainability factors and organizational financial operational efficiency. The relationship between sustainability practices and financial performance has received much attention in research through the years with mixed results. We examine 30 companies in the Materials industries and assess whether companies that are Greener reap economic benefits as reflected in their financial performance. Using Green rankings from Newsweek, our study uses four categories of Environmental Sustainability. Our initial results indicate that firms that were higher ranked in the Newsweek Environmental Sustainability survey in Water Productivity, Energy Productivity and Waste Productivity showed a lower growth rate in operational expenses indicating that improvement in operational efficiency may occur. Keywords Sustainability, Operational efficiency, financial performance, Productivity