Evaluating a company's impact (the case of Adobe)

This week’s read time: 3 minutes

You are reading Green Digest Impact, a bi-weekly newsletter that provides in-depth analyses of companies’ environmental and social impact.

OUR APPROACH

Central to our narrative is the principle of double-materiality, which recognizes that a company's impact is twofold: it affects both the environment and society at large, and in turn, these external factors influence the company's financial and operational performance.

While traditional ESG assessments focus on the latter, we aim to examine companies' direct impacts on these factors. In pursuit of this, we introduce a unique scoring system that quantifies a company's impact.

The insights and analyses presented in Green Digest Impact are brought to you by a partnership between Green Digest and Impaakt, a Swiss-based impact data provider. Contact Impaakt here to explore how they can assist you.

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THIS WEEK’S COMPANY

Adobe

This week, we dive deep into Adobe’s environmental and social impact.

Adobe is a global leader in digital media and marketing solutions, offering a comprehensive suite of products across its Digital Media and Digital Experience segments, including industry-leading tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, and platforms such as Adobe Creative Cloud, Document Cloud, and Experience Cloud.

Some interesting facts:

• Adobe invented the Portable Document Format (PDF) in the early 1990s, revolutionizing the way documents are shared and preserved across platforms and devices.

• It is estimated that over 90% of the world’s creative professionals use Adobe Photoshop.

COMPANY’S IMPACT

Adobe’s overall impact score

Adobe has a general impact score of +1.87 (on a scale from -5 to +5). Its impact is spread across seven European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) topics, split between positive and negative analyses.

In the socio-economic sphere,

Adobe is a leading provider of digital media and digital marketing solutions, offering integrated software that combines creativity, document management, and customer experience tools. Its platforms empower individuals, professionals, and businesses to create, manage, and optimize content and experiences across channels, driving success in a digital-first world. Adobe has a global network of over 30,000 employees and a customer base that includes 650 million monthly active Acrobat users and 87% of Fortune 100 companies. Its cloud solutions serve millions of users, processing trillions of data transactions, and handling vast data volumes, including 400 billion PDF openings, 16 billion PDF edits, and 17 trillion daily segment evaluations via Adobe Experience Platform.

However, Adobe's widespread use of photo-editing tools has also raised concerns, such as the potential contribution of damaging behaviors like body image issues and low self-esteem through the editing of pictures, affecting 68% of adults who edit pictures before sharing.

Environmentally,

Adobe has an annual carbon footprint of around 640,000 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent, comparable to the annual electricity usage of around 134,000 homes. Additionally, Adobe’s operations require 318,800 m³ of water, with 30% from high and extremely high water-stressed areas. It recycles and reuses only 8% of the water withdrawn. Moreover, it generates around 1,600 tonnes of operational waste with an 82% diversion rate. However, Adobe’s e-signature solution reduces environmental impact, saving 105,000 m³ of water and 31,000 trees, while cutting emissions equivalent to removing 2,300 cars from the road—all for every 1 million transactions completed.

_{*The impact score is current as of March 2025 and may be subject to changes as it is continuously updated.
**You can find details about the scoring methodology here and the information sources here.}

ESG VS IMPACT SCORE

What is Adobe’s ESG rating?

For comparison, Adobe has an AAA rating in MSCI's ESG evaluation.

However, ESG Ratings from MSCI ESG Research are designed to measure a company’s resilience to financially material ESG risks and they provide a window into one facet of risk to financial performance. They measure how effectively companies manage ESG risks, not their impact on these factors.

SCORES BY ESRS

Adobe’s impact scores by ESRS topics

Positively (and by weight), the company scores the highest in S4 - Consumers and end-users (+1.63), followed by S1 - Own Workforce (+1.32) and S3 - Affected Communities (+4.41).

Negatively, the company scores the worst in E5 - Resource Use and Circular Economy (-1.04), followed by E1 - Climate Change (-2.55) and E3 - Water and Marine Resources (-2.57).

*the analysis takes into account the weight and impact materiality of each topic

CONCLUSION

Materiality Map & Final Words

So, Adobe’s key social and environmental impact lies in …

its role as a global leader in digital media and marketing solutions, empowering creators, businesses, and educators to operate more creatively and efficiently. By serving a diverse range of customers, Adobe solutions drive innovation, optimize digital content management, and strengthen global communication networks. With 87% of Fortune 100 companies, 650 million monthly active Acrobat users, and over 700 million Adobe Stock assets, Adobe facilitates digital transformation and supports economic growth.

However, the company has a considerable environmental impact, especially in terms of its carbon footprint and water consumption. Furthermore, its products, particularly Photoshop, have been criticized for contributing to unrealistic beauty standards and reinforcing body dissatisfaction and low self-esteem, affecting 68% of adults who edit pictures before sharing.

Adobe's overall impact score of +1.87 reflects its strong contributions to digital transformation and economic growth, balanced mainly against environmental challenges.

If you’d like to delve deeper into Adobe’s impact, you can explore it here.

If you'd like to learn more about the scoring methodology, you can do so here.

Do you have a specific company you'd like us to cover? Send your suggestions to [email protected]

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