Sustainability is hard – because making money comes first, and because a delay of a day or a month doesn’t seem
to matter.
And sustainability sounds hard, because if taken to its logical conclusion it must mean recycling everything without generating any waste and without creating any greenhouse gas pollution.
This sounds like the domain of a radical ‘back to nature’ fringe group and not the place for mainstream business.
What should sustainability mean for mainstream business?
Firstly, sustainability is not an objective to be achieved by a target date.
Rather, it is a commitment to always be doing better.
Thus the question becomes one of how quickly one should move on the transition to sustainability?
For each organisation the drivers will be different.
For some, priority will go to meeting a government mandated producer recycling scheme or a fleet fuel efficiency target, or managing to operate when a specific waste stream is banned from landfill.
For others it will be noting customer and competitor trends for the environmental attributes in their purchasing decisions.
How fast one should move will therefore be related to factors that include regulatory imperatives, marketplace trends and fashions and organisational resources.
Our practical and low cost advice for those starting out is simply:
- Note the trends that are evident (increasing sentiment for green products, increasing energy costs, increasing regulation of environmental impacts).
- Talk about it at Board level. Formulate a view and endorse a Sustainability Policy.
- At a minimum the Policy should require that all substantive decisions that are made by the organisation are firstevaluated for sustainability opportunities and implications.
Do not underestimate the benefits of these simple initiatives.
Boards and policies do influence the culture and direction of organisations.
Every day staff are evaluating options.
It might be for a new product, or a new market to enter. It might be looking at branding or positioning.
It might be for a raw material purchase or a supplier agreement, or for office accommodation or office equipment.
It can even be in HR areas such as staff retention and remuneration.
In all case thinking sustainably can be included incorporated into the process.
Ask questions such as:
- What is the environmental implication of each alternative?
- Which is more energy efficient?
- Does one have a lower carbon footprint?
- Which results in less waste being generated, or is most amenable to recycling?
- Which option has the best environmental message or most sustainable features?
- What efficiency improvement can be achieved at what additional cost (payback)?
One does not even have to mandate that the most sustainable option be selected.
Rather time and again the value of this process is seen to come from the awareness that it raises.
People see and are reminded that many of their decisions do have implications for sustainability.
And they also see that in many cases a more sustainable alternative has few downsides.
It often shows that the more sustainable choices also have other benefits that are non-monetary.
A sustainability initiative does not (and should not) involve relaxing payback hurdles.
Projects must still stand on their own financial merits.
This is a first step in sustainability for a company.
Like profitability it needs to be continually considered, planned for, refined and reviewed.
As involvement and understanding grows, so to can the sophistication of sustainability initiatives and integration within the organisation.
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