Laundry operators could think of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) as leveraging your company’s growth with the power of fair play. While embracing ESG needn’t mean sacrificing efficiency or profitability, it could require some companies to rethink their efforts to promote workforce equity, advance environmental conservation and comply with governmental regulatory mandates.

How did we get here? According to Forbes, and various online resources, promoting socially responsible investing dates back to opposition to the Vietnam war in the 1960s. Twenty years later, this focus had shifted to ending apartheid in South Africa. The term ESG dates to a 2004 report ...