Triple Bottom

​The idea behind the triple bottom line is that businesses should give social and environmental concerns the same amount of attention as they do to earnings.

Profit, people, and the environment are the three components that make up the TBL. The triple bottom line tries to track a company’s long-term progress in terms of its financial, social, and environmental performance.

TBL may lead to staff retention, an increase in outside investments, a rise in sales from clients with an interest in ESG, and long-term operational efficiency. Additionally, TBL may be expensive to implement, difficult to monitor and lead to conflicting tactics amongst components of the triple bottom line.

In the world of finance, we typically refer to a company’s bottom line as its earnings. Elkington’s TBL framework moves businesses toward the objective of sustainability in business practices by encouraging them to consider factors more than just financial returns when calculating their total cost of doing business. According to the triple-bottom-line theory, businesses should give social and environmental concerns the same amount of attention as they do financial ones.