Origin

• The term "triple bottom line" is generally traced to John Elkington's 1997 book "Cannibals with Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business."
  
  

Economic Performance

• The first bottom line is the company's traditional financial evaluation of its own performance, including the company's balance sheet, profits and losses and general financial state.
  
  

Environmental Performance

• The second bottom line is the company's environmental performance. A company's environmental performance is determined by scrutinizing the its efforts to mitigate the impact of business operations on the environment as well as looking at the practical results of those impacts on the earth and its ecology.
  
  

Social Performance

• The last bottom line is corporate social responsibility. Evaluating a company's social responsibility looks at the firm's impact on the quality of life in the community. This evaluation would include the company's contribution to public welfare, health and safety, and whether the company's activities create jobs or take them away. Social responsibility factors may be difficult to quantify, however.