In the conventional sense, it is relatively straightforward to evaluate the financial returns of any social enterprise – subtract investment from the revenue obtained by selling products and services. However, such business characteristically also improve social and environmental well-beings. As such, in order to capture the full impact of these businesses, one has to represent the non-tangible aspects with hard financial values.

But, how does one estimate the financial value of CO2 savings? Does contributing to keeping the environment clean have any tangible present or future financial value? This blog post draws on the scientific literature to propose a back-of-envelope framework for answering these questions with real numbers.

https://cycled.no/calculating-the-financial-returns-on-the-environmental-and-social-investment-and-impact-of-formal-recycling-businesses/