Assessing the damage

Andrew lack meets a company president with a green mission

Eekart Wintzen is a rare combination of the 1960s and the 1990s: his long hair, beard and idealism are offset by his presidency of BSO Origin, a successful high-tech Dutch-based computer services company.

Nowhere are the two sides of his character better matched than in the annual report of his business, which adopts a highly innovative approach to environmental reporting and shareholder communication.

Each year he hires a different company of designers to help produce the annual report. Two years ago it was printed using a comic book format; last year it included a teabag and a sticking plaster; this year, a series of philosophical musings on interrelationships.

But one thing has remained constant in the annual report over the last four years: details of an assessment in monetary terms of the environmental impact of the company.

BSO has pioneered the use of quantifiable information attempting to show the "extracted value", or the effect of the company's operations, on the environment.

"We calculate the theoretical costs to repair the damage done," says Wintzen.

1t is impossible to achieve any serious structural improvement unless you know the cost of the alternatives."

He says his initial interest in environmental matters dates from reading the influential Club of Rome report in the early 1970s which warned that, as he puts it, "you can't have unlimited growth on a limited planeV.

He worked with a series of scientists to develop a methodology that could express a price for the ecological impact of his company. It makes a series of assumptions in order to estimate the costs at a point at which the marginal cost of clean-up is equal to its marginal benefits to society.

The results provoked some surprise. In the current year, the environmental impact of BSO was F13.7m (£1.3m), offset by environmental spending of F1452,000. Of the total, F12.8m came from road traffic alone the costs of staff commuting to work.

"We found out where the damage was and it is nonsense to talk about using plastic cups - the cost of accounting for them is more expensive than their impact," he says.

Using the data, BSO has instituted campaigns in its operations around the world: from cutting back on the use of cars to using double-sided photocopies, turning off the heating and air conditioning outside office hours, and dispensing sugar in jars rather than disposable sachets.

There are questions about the techniques BSO uses. It includes in its calculations the environmental costs incurred by clients on whose premises many of its staff work; and it does not count the waste of old computers because these are normally donated to schools rather than thrown away.

The company's effect is minimal compared with polluting industries. But, as Wintzen says: "We say 'look at the damage even a service company does'. We are not going to change things on our own but we are doing our little bit."

He points to the growth of the term "extracted value" by politicians and senior business people over the last few years, and continues to spend time discussing the issues.

Next year he plans to place greater emphasis on assessing the results of unemployment, arguing that it is part of the same problem as ecological damage. It is caused by a tax system that generates most revenues from employment and a tiny fraction on raw materials. He would like to see the situation reversed.

But Wintzen has no plans to abandon business and proselytise full time. If I gave up business and just went around in sandals no one would listen to me," he says. "Because I also make money, they have to pay attention."