How to Improve Sustainability in Your Business

Creating and growing sustainability in business is good for several reasons, chief among them being that we live, work, and play on one planet, and we need to take care of it for the benefit of all. However, good conscience aside, a sustainable business model may also be a successful business model.

As Raymond Ackerman, founder of retail group Pick n Pay, is known for saying, “Doing good, is good business.”¹ Ackerman used a sustainable business model to combat the human injustice of apartheid-era South Africa, by investing in employees with a broad demographic profile – funding necessary additional studies and encouraging grassroots community entrepreneurship. Ackerman grew his four retail outlets into a highly successful, multi-national enterprise this way. Former South African president and Nobel prize winner Nelson Mandela said of the Ackermans, “Raymond and Wendy are in the forefront of that group of good men and women who feel they should plow whatever resources are in their command in order to develop a community which has been neglected for more than three centuries.”²

According to a recent World Economic Forum report, there is a $10 trillion market opportunity for businesses that highlight their sustainability endeavors.³ Similarly, the Global 100 is a report by Canadian sustainability-focused financial information company, Corporate Knights, that ranks large enterprises around the world based on their ability to reduce carbon and waste. The nearly 7,000 public companies that do this best also generate over $1 billion in annual revenue.⁴ It’s easy to understand why investing in sustainability is becoming a more mainstream idea for business executives.

GetSmarter surveyed 546 professionals from 65 countries to better understand how sustainability will impact our future. The report revealed that the most urgent Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for building a resilient future are:

• Goal 4: Quality education
• Goal 12: Responsible consumption and production
• Goal 13: Climate action

Sustainability is not limited to established enterprises: the number of first-time entrepreneurs who are developing their companies around environmental protection and services has grown. This has brought about an increase in the number of promising start-ups that focus on long-lasting, eco-friendly, and recycled goods. By 2030, investment in green-business startups is projected to swell to $3.4 trillion.⁵

What is a sustainable business?

In 2015, world leaders at the United Nations (UN) agreed on 17 goals that would create a better world by 2030. These goals focus on eradicating poverty, fighting inequality, and ending climate change.⁶

A sustainable business that wants its business sustainability model and associated goals to line up with the UN’s goals might start with responsible consumption and production. To do this, they would need to ensure that their supply chain supports environmental goals, such as climate action, life below water, and life on land.

Organizations would also look at their staff and management structures to ensure gender equality and reduced inequalities. They could assess their immediate communities and see how they can initiate or contribute towards the goals of good health and well-being, quality education, clean water and sanitation, and sustainable cities and communities. All of these goals work together to bring about a positive impact.

The most effective business sustainability model

According to Unilever’s “Better Leadership, Better World” report, there are key leadership endeavors that are pivotal to successfully growing a sustainable business in accordance with the UN’s Global Goals.⁷ Here are some tips on how to make your business more sustainable.

1. Connect with the need.⁸ To lobby for internal support for sustainability projects in large companies, the teams responsible for championing the cause need to create and track metrics that resonate with the priorities of internal stakeholders, i.e., how they will personally be empowered to improve sustainability in the business. Here are some of the actions that can be taken with specific business units:
   • Operations units: help them understand how efforts towards sustainability will increase efficiency or reduce costs
   • Procurement or sourcing teams: assure these teams that sustainability initiatives will increase productivity, reduce costs, or reduce risks of supply disruption
   • Human resources: show HR how sustainability initiatives will help attract or retain talent
   • Marketing and corporate affairs teams: help them understand how sustainability efforts will bring value to the brand or increase license to operate
2. Repair social trust.⁹ Ever since the 2008 collapse of the global economy, trust in business has been in short supply. Business leaders need to make a concerted effort to regain society’s trust, as well as that of their consumers, employees, and the communities in which they operate. They also need to repair their license to operate. Partnering with governments, customers, workers, and civil society, contributing positively to the community, and then openly communicating their sustainable interactions with society, will offer sustained success in rebuilding societal trust in the business.
3. Make sustainability a core principle.¹⁰ There are generally three approaches to adopting sustainability into an existing business – assimilation, mobilization, and transition – with the latter being the most successful for long-term integration. While businesses that adopt the transition approach will continue to conform to elements of the existing company mindset, they also focused on reshaping policies, processes, and attitudes towards sustainability principles. This was largely achieved through widespread training, communication, and recruitment, thus ensuring mainstream adoption.
4. Do research.¹¹ Businesses that only have a superficial interest in sustainability will go after whatever mainstream eco-friendly strategies are trending at the time. Typically, this will be used as part of their marketing strategy in the hope to gain more brand equity and consumers. However, these activities are typically more about paying lip service to the concept of sustainability, than as part of a deep-thinking sustainability approach. The important action is to address specific sustainability topics, rather than attempting to apply blanket sustainability concepts on a business. This requires a company to be decisive about which topics are a priority to their organization, and to design a strategy that aims to implement those specifically.¹²
5. Innovate.¹³ Applying a sustainability lens to every aspect of the business means there may be a need to change business strategies. Innovations will arise out of the need to adjust the business towards greater sustainability. These include:
   • Empowering board members and business leaders to focus on sustainability and drive execution
   • Strategically planning and developing products or services that produce sustainable outcomes
   • Marketing products and services that evoke sustainable choices from consumers
   • Using sustainable development goals to inform leadership development strategies
6. Incorporate diverse leadership. Sustainable businesses look to the SDGs as their road map to greater sustainability. These are not only focused on the environment, but include greater equality, fair wages, and investing in diversity. Diversity is critical to strategy and implementation, specifically in its capacity for leading people to consider myriad perspectives and the ability to develop more complex solutions to issues – something that could be enormously beneficial when attempting to introduce nascent business initiatives, such as sustainability projects.¹⁴
7. Set a long-term, holistic vision.¹⁵ Understand that sustainability is more than a token response to keep consumers happy. Sustainable businesses set targets that are well-researched and achievable. Goals may include contributing to feeding schemes, expanding education opportunities inside and outside the organization, or something far more ambitious, such as initiating sustainability efforts right through the supply chain.
8. Be accountable and constantly improve.¹⁶ Simply stated, with amplified transparency comes accountability. These drive change and improve results, which is key to successfully rolling out corporate sustainability programs.
9. Embrace competitors as collaborators.¹⁷ When one key player in a sector becomes openly sustainability-focused, it drives others within that sector to follow suit. This type of competition is encouraged by sustainable businesses, not only because of the positive impact on the environment but also because it forces them to continue their sustainability innovations. Leaders find like-minded competitors and non-profits to collaborate with to develop innovations that might be out of reach for a single organization. Leaders attuned to their competitors’ ways should embrace key components of their strategies as their own.

For businesses of all sizes, emulating international giants, such as Apple with its commitment to being 100 percent carbon neutral by 2030¹⁸ or Salesforce, which has already achieved net-zero greenhouse gas emissions globally and delivers a carbon neutral cloud.¹⁹ However, individuals and companies can start small: recycle waste, use tap water instead of plastic bottles, utilize natural light in the office. Most of these things are already happening in the workplace; how much more can be achieved with continuous focused thinking on sustainability? The power of business to provide a change that positively impacts the world is vast. With its unmatched powers of ideation, production, and distribution, the business world is well-positioned to bring the change needed at scale.

Until such time as interplanetary colonization is possible, growing sustainable businesses is a means to help repair and protect what we have, one recycling bin and supply chain at a time.

Gain the knowledge needed to build a sustainability plan unique to your business by registering for the Cambridge Business Sustainability Management online short course.