Less than 8% of Quebec companies have clearly defined objectives in terms of sustainable development and the means to evaluate whether they achieve them, according to the Sustainable Development Survey of the Institut de la tourisme du Québec, published this Tuesday.
The Institute of Statistics of Quebec (ISQ) reveals that 7.5% of companies with more than five employees claim to be engaged in a formal sustainable development approach with clear objectives and means to monitor the initiatives deployed and of achieving the objectives.
This is a “statistically significant increase” compared to 2020 when this proportion was only 4.8%, indicates the ISQ. The commitment of companies to deploy initiatives related to sustainable development increases with the size of the company as well as its turnover.
Thus, the proportion of companies that have established a formal sustainable development approach reaches 26.5% for companies with more than 100 employees while it only represents 6.2% for those that hire fewer than 100 people.
The survey also shows that nearly seven out of ten companies (68%) say they use clean technologies, i.e. equipment or processes that limit negative impacts on the environment. This situation has, in fact, changed little since 2019.
The use of these technologies is more marked within agricultural, forestry and those linked to hunting and fishing (79%) as well as companies linked to mining and oil extraction (74%), according to statistics from the ISQ.
The results of the survey also show that the majority of companies (56.4%) would use clean technologies in their management of residual materials. Ignoring residual materials, “the proportion of companies having declared using clean technologies decreases to 40.0%, a proportion similar to that of 2019,” explains the ISQ.