Puma is the first major company worldwide to publish their environmental impact
Puma has published a paper detailing its impact on the environment, becoming the first major corporation in the world to do so.
The combined cost of the company’s carbon emissions and water used in 2010 was €94.4 million / £82.9 million. The figure included both Puma itself and its suppliers.
The sports and leisure group said that they expected the report to help it build “a more resilient and sustainable business model" and to prepare for environmental taxes that could potentially occur in the future.
Puma’s chief executive Jochen Zitz said at the launch of the environmental profit and loss accounts: "Sustainability is essential to the health and future of our business. The business implication of failing to address nature in decision making is clear – since ecosystem services are vital to the performance of most companies, integrating the true cost for these services in the future could have significant impacts on corporate bottom lines."
Puma took advice from both accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and Trucost, an environmental research group, in calculating the figures. They found that over €87 million of the total cost came from their suppliers. The impact of carbon emissions came to €47 million, and water use was €47.4 million.
Puma said that it would take steps to ensure that outsourced processes, including embroidering and printing, would meet the same social and environmental standards as its own in-house processes. The company has set a target of reducing its environmental impact by 25 percent by 2015.