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True Profits Case Study: Oscar Circulair
The True Profits Initiative is striving to make impact-driven business models the most profitable and most competitive in the market. Across sectors, businesses are proving that reducing negative externalities and creating societal value can co-exist with strong commercial performance, yet these remain isolated proof points rather than the market standard. To achieve this at scale, it is essential to close the existing Profitability Gap impact-driven businesses face. Currently, market conditions do not reward solutions that reduce negative externalities or create societal value through financial returns. In turn this limits these impactful business models’ ability to
scale. Closing the Profitability Gap requires a combination of business model innovation and market incentives that make impact profitable.
Rethinking Fiscal Policy to Reward Impact
When social and environmental costs are fully accounted for, the combined €209 billion in profits of Europe’s 20 largest companies would turn into a net loss of €19 billion, according to our recent True Profit Assessment Report. The conclusion is clear. Europe’s current market rules still reward companies for externalising harm, leaving businesses that cut emissions, invest in circular production, strengthen value chains, and improve social outcomes often compete at a disadvantage in a market that still rewards the lowest price, not the highest positive impact. For Europe to be truly resilient and competitive, it must make impact profitable. This is a problem fiscal policy can help solve. The True Profits Initiative provides a compass address this issue through specifically rethinking fiscal policy to reward impact.
Making Impact Profitable: the next phase of European competitiveness
The European Union is searching for a new model of competitiveness. That brings Europe to a strategic crossroads: it can attempt to lower environmental and social standards to compete on price alone, or it can build markets in which organisations compete towards the highest impact. The choice determines whether impact remains a cost to be managed or becomes a structural source of competitive advantage.