Sustainable practices = waste reduction and an increase in budget efficiencies + satisfied customers (which means greater greater customer loyalty + attracting more market share).
Whilst some years ago, shifting businesses to greener models was seen as a huge expense, nowadays it’s a no-brainer from an economic and growth perspective.
It’s good tips. Shifting consciousness of business around sustainability has had some real leaders challenging how the structure of shareholdings and the length of shareholder ownership as these can have a big influence on how an organisation operates. If expectation is to get short term rewards the investment in more expensive technology which has longer term payback period and less environmentally impact, gets quashed. This has been one of the cornerstones of B Corps.
A chap who has been heavily involved in this is John Elkington. He wrote the breakthrough challenge with the idea of a triple bottom line, which allowed for accounting for environmental and social impact. The idea is the more you report and acknowledge what you do and have trajectories for lowering impact, the better you’ll function. Another important facet is having leaders such as Chief Sustainability Officer and broadly acknowledgement that in your culture that’s what business strives for.
This is a big part of the reason why I think staff in business can have such an influence. If they shift culture by promoting green days and creating staff sustainability groups this will infect decision making potentially more quickly than a full navel gazing group of executives who have to implement new policy and radical changes in the organisation, whilst still keeping the existing show on the road.
Very valid point surrounding the importance of company structure. Regarding culture and sustainability leads, there’s been a greater adoption of internal environmental committees too that do their own audits, promote the aforementioned green days and make recommendations to affect change. The benefits of this are two fold; 1) empowering individuals at the grass roots of a company, 2) having a formalised system in place that senior management teams (hopefully) are inclined to listen to and take action off the back of.