Brands and business leaders across the world are waking up to the need to be positive influences in society – reducing their environmental footprint, and doing more for social causes. But with smart consumers able to tell the difference between real action and PR stunts, sustainability speaker and author Georgina Wilson-Powell explains how to do it properly
The past few months have changed just about everything – and left many of us rethinking our priorities. The experience of a global health crisis has underlined the need for sustainability to be a central business pillar, reminding us how interconnected we are as a planet in our actions and consequences.
Businesses are increasingly looking to ‘do the right thing’ rather than just be seen to, driven by a new generation of consumers. A recent McKinsey survey on Consumer Sentiment in Fashion showed that 67% of consumers consider the use of sustainable materials to be an important purchasing factor, and 63% consider a business’s promotion of sustainability in the same way.
As a result, companies are looking to evolve best practice in areas that include materials, supply chain, packaging and ethical provenance. However it’s not just retail that needs to up its sustainability game – a sustainability strategy is now essential for all sizes and stages of business in all sectors: investors are increasingly looking at the green credentials of companies they invest in, refusing to invest in ‘green risks.’
Consumers want to buy well, increasingly eschewing fast fashion made in sweat shops for example. And sustainability can help a business attract the best talent: millennials and Generation Z have a strong wish to be engaged with, and work for organisations whose values align with their own.
The insurance and pensions company, Aviva, for example, are currently adapting their strategy to attract the best young professionals and retain them by demonstrating they live and breathe these values throughout the organisation. Meanwhile, major publisher Bonnier has pledged to plant 10 trees for every one of their books published.
But where to start? What does a sensible strategy to become a more sustainable business look like? Here are 10 things to consider . . .
Be clear about your purpose and how sustainability fits in with your heritage
There can be a lot of chat about purpose, mission and values but the best ones align with a company’s heritage. Look at Blueprint for Better Business, the B-Corp movement and Julian Richer’s Good Business Charter for ‘road maps’ to follow to make purpose real.
Think top to bottom
Businesses must remember that sustainability is about more than trees and carbon – it’s about humans too. It’s vital that organisations commit to fairer working practices up and down their supply chain (look at how badly Boohoo have been hit by revelations about their Leicester factories) as well as reducing the amount of packaging waste and carbon emissions at every step in the process. Don’t wait for governments to legislate, instead give managers at every level incentives to bake in sustainability to what they do.
What gets measured gets done
Look at your executive bonus structures. How are you measuring people and what objectives are you setting them? If they’re still being rewarded for sales, profit, meeting targets or budgets then that communicates that money is your priority. Think about changing how you measure success – Starbucks, for example, is now tying diversity goals to executive compensation.
Engage all employees
Be clear about targets and how you reward, develop and recognise their efforts. Make it easy for employees to get involved and listen to their ideas, they will often be superior to yours! Train them in ‘better’ business for example through the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL).
Make it easy for your customers
Consumers are thinking about their own footprint, and expect their favourite brands to be living their values – be that treating people properly, or working to reduce plastic and carbon waste. One Poll suggests some four in five younger consumers expect companies they use to be socially conscious. Think how you can build sustainability into your product or service and make sure that offering is and attractive to customers. Mobile banking app Ando empowers people everywhere to proactively combat the climate crisis through everyday banking and gives customers full transparency into how they’re helping to support green initiatives. And Reebok’s newest running trainer, the Forever Floatride Grow has uppers made from eucalyptus, castor bean midsoles and an algae-based EVA foam sockliner. It’s a good-looking, high-performance piece of engineering, competitively priced at $120 (£90), so within the budget of a significant amount of the market.
Get a stamp of approval
An increasing number of firms are looking to codify their sustainability aims by becoming a B-Corp. These are firms that put the planet and people on the same par as profit – not giving up the latter for the former, but making sure they work in harmony. This works for large and small, and consumers are keeping an eye out for those firms who have signed up to the rigorous, monitored rules and regulations that allow you to call yourself a B-Corp. According to the Office for National Statistics, B-Corps in the UK grew more than 28 times faster than the average growth rate of 0.5% in 2018.
Keep it flexible
So much of what’s been done to this point has been about ‘greening’ the office – but with people working from home, their energy consumption has gone up. How can you support employees switching to greener energy consumption at home? Think about the carbon emissions your remote working entails, and whether you can move your infrastructure to green server hosting sites such as GreenGeeks or InMotion.
Volunteer army
As flexible working has become more of a given, some employees are looking for their companies to allow them to give up time to support causes closest to their heart. As business leaders, giving your staff time to take part in sustainability initiatives – be it a beach clean-up tree plant – can be a win-win for morale, a sense of belonging, a reduced carbon footprint and showing your community and customers that you ‘walk the talk.’
Mental stimulation
Bring colleagues ‘virtually’ together for talks, webinars or even movie screenings about sustainability. Getting people engaged isn’t just about building a better company culture, of course – it can be a boon to staff retention, too.
Collaborate for change
The climate crisis is
too serious to change alone. Find platforms to drive change together whether on
a national scale (Business in the Community) globally (BSR); WBCSD); by
sector (Imagine Fashion Pact;
Consumer Goods Forum); British Retail Consortium; National Farmers Union)
or by issue (WRAP Plastic Pact).
Putting sustainability
at the heart of your company’s agenda is difficult but essential. Companies that aren’t
sustainable simply won’t survive in a new post pandemic
world. Go green right, and do sustainability well, and you’ve
got licence to shout about it. Good for you, good for consumers, good for the
bottom line and, most importantly, good for the planet.
Georgina Wilson-Powell is one of the UK’s leading sustainability experts. Founder and editor of online sustainable living magazine pebble, Georgina is on a mission to reduce overconsumption by using positive storytelling to shift social attitudes.
With more than 17 years experience in publishing, Georgina now helps businesses and charities embed and communicate their sustainability strategies. Her first book, Is It Really Green? Everyday Eco-Dilemmas Answered is out now.
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