Are the socially responsible investment funds helping to garner the attention of large companies?
ELKINGTON: I have worked in this field for eight or nine years, serving on the advisory boards of a fair number of green, social and ethical investment funds. The average size of these firms is growing all the time, and tools developed by the smaller funds are spreading into the financial mainstream. The launch of the Dow Jones Sustainability Group Indexes marked a watershed, though, really catching the attention of big companies. The Dow Jones name helped grab the attention of CFOs who normally don t pay much attention to this area. Do you think a company can ever become totally sustainable? ELKINGTON: Our very name declares that ambition and that commitment. That s the way we want our whole ecosystem of partners to be headed. But it would be crazy for us to think that any of these very large companies can become totally sustainable within a short time scale. The system conditions too often get in the way. Indeed, the more I work with these very large companies, the more I recognise t
