Oikos nomos Vs. oikos logos? Towards the alliance between business management and environmental sustainability

Environmental sustainability is a topic that is increasingly becoming popular and companies are not excluded from this phenomenon. On the contrary, their responsibility towards environment is increasingly in the public eye, so that the same companies pay more and more attention to communicating their commitment to all stakeholders in order to improve their image and reputation. Furthermore, from a scientific point of view, a growing array of studies also investigates how to measure sustainability with the aim of defining more accurate indicators of the environmental impact generated by companies. This work has a threefold objective: 1) highlighting firstly the compatibility between the companies’ activities and green strategies through the analysis of those studies that demonstrate the benefits of implementing eco-sustainable practices; 2) describing the approach actually implemented by the companies; 3) description of the phenomenon of greenwashing that is a kind of communication through which some companies try to appear eco-sustainable, even though they are not.. In the final part of the work some cases of greenwashing are exposed, specifying the negative consequences they have sparked. The relationship between ecology and economics is, indeed, not contrasting but, on the contrary, strongly symbiotic, from the etymological origin of the two terms to the positive effects produced by green strategies, as demonstrated by many studies in literature.