Image Credit: Flickr user josephpetepickle

If the environment were a bank, we would have saved it already.

This amusing yet sobering socialist protest mantra illustrates the misguided view our markets take of the invisible economy—the environmental goods and services like clean air and water that quietly sustain us every day, for “free.”

Slowly, the world is starting to wake up to the reality that if we don’t protect our ecosystem services, we’ll lose them forever and have a huge bill on our hands. As a result, companies are starting to take environmental and social information into account, linking their executive pay to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria. Global financial news powerhouse Thomson Reuters has acquired ESG information provider ASSET4—who provided data for this ranking—to integrate its data into mainstream financial analysis. Similarly, Bloomberg’s 250,000-plus data terminals provide access to all the publicly available ESG data of over 3,000 companies, including Carbon Disclosure Project data and renewable energy use.

Retail behemoth Wal-Mart, despite—or perhaps because of—its less-than-stellar labour relations and reputation for “big-boxifying” small communities, is constantly surprising environmentalists with its green announcements, such as its move into organic and local produce, and its purchases of renewable energy. It’s currently working to develop a sustainability index for its products that will include life-cycle analysis.

And, SC Johnson, maker of eponymous products like Saran Wrap and Windex, launched its “What’s Inside” website in March 2009, which has a comprehensive ingredient list. By January 2012, it will list all ingredients on product labels and will reveal fragrance and preservative ingredient information. This required the company to demand comprehensive ingredient lists from its suppliers.

What do these things have to do with the death of philanthropy and corporate social responsibility (CSR)? Everything.

“I define CSR as the discretionary things that companies do to try to engage their communities. Philanthropy, volunteering, falls under CSR—what we used to call t-shirts and balloons,” says Sandra Waddock, the Galligan Chair of Strategy at Boston College and author of Total Responsibility Management. “But corporate responsibility or corporate citizenship is much more about the business model. If a company is just looking at CSR then it’s a second-stage company, and that’s simply not going to be enough in the future.”