A linear regression on productivity: the importance of sustainable activities

Abstract

The world is changing, it’s a matter of fact, it’s a real condition, it cannot be hidden. Impressive extreme weather events and changes in the climate are already affecting thousands, millions of people around the world. Floods, typhoons, dramatical shifts in temperatures, wild fires, changes in the seasonal cycle and in rainy periods, storms are already affecting the world with every day more severity due to climate change. Natural resources are depleted irresponsibly, and will be soon drastically reduced, erasing completely the principal, essential and most important materials necessary for every human activity to survive. The population, the authorities, the governments and the markets should deeply review the way in which they are organized and in which they work to effectively have a future in tomorrow world; if not because it is ethically correct and right from a behavioural and sensible point of view, because it’s convenient, because it’s mandatory if they don’t want to fail and loose their advantageous position in the economy. The main aim of the thesis is to demonstrate that caring about sustainability, considering the protection of the environment on the process of production and evolution, countries, and in particular companies, have the possibility to increase their productivity. Actually, the logic behind this intuition consists on the fact that spending money and time for matters connected to the reduction of waste, the depletion of Green House Gases and/or for the safeguard of the environment, for example, makes it possible for you to enjoy a greater level of efficiency within your enterprise, therefore you will become more productive, you will waste less and save more resources, will be able to create more value, more benefits and positive output, and hopefully, you will become stronger and richer within the market. The focus of the abstract is to demonstrate, from a statistical perspective, through a linear regression on time series on the four major Italian industries, that investing in sustainability companies, industries and countries can improve their productivity and become richer. Consumers, clients are already asking for environmentally friendly products, they are disposed to pay more for something that is sustainable, they are looking for those goods that are in line with a sustainable process. Financial investors are searching for those opportunities that have shown a deep involvement and effort in trying to re-manage and mute their activities and product in order to respect the environment; so if companies want to perceive funds and money to run their businesses they have to worry about their impact on nature. And the fact is that if they effectively are able to change their actions and behaviours in order to become greener, they will have the possibility of exploiting an enormous, huge, unexplored market that haven’t already been touched. Sustainability can impact with very high percentages in the development of enterprises and sectors in general, in fact, it has emerged that sustainability, on the majority of the cases, has a relevance more or less equal to 10%. This means that if enterprises spend their energies and time in trying to find solutions that respect the ecosystem, guaranteeing a closure in the circle and equilibrium in natural processes, then they will be able to do more with less, it will be possible to produce more value, with less necessity of capital, time and energies. As soon as we will realise how much nature, the ecosystems, the environment, plants, animals and all the other resources that the planet is able to provide us are important, fundamental, essential for our survival, we will also be able to discover how much valuable nature is, and we have to do it now, we have to recognize how much it worth.