Putting Sustainability into action: From Corporate Communications to Frontline staff
Sustainability agendas across many industries are still stuck in only Board room discussions, analyst meets and Corporate Communications' multifarious outputs in the form of Annual reports, company website, e-brochures and promo videos.
But what the planet at large, and increasingly consumers, business partners, employees, policy leaders and general public are looking out for is more meaningful action beyond the words.
On one hand are climate activists, who rain anger at world forums to get a shot at the Nobel prize, and on the other hand are spin masters who perpetuate public guilt that switching of our home appliances, on time, is the bane for all evils.
But the reality is that the Corporate world that operate from the oilfields, farmlands and factories to the supermarket shelves and homes, have a far bigger contribution to reducing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, eliminating plastics, preventing freshwater depletion and halting excessive consumption of rare materials, to name a few, than any individual entity/consumer.
So bulk of the onus of saving the planet should shift from common citizens to corporates, so credible, time bound and sustained corporate action plans are implemented.
Linear vs. Circular economy:
From the industrial age till now, mankind has exponentially consumed and discarded precious resources with scant little impact on our conscience.
This is leading to a disastrous end that needs to be urgently avoided.
And one of the key ways of breaking a linear chain of raw materials to manufacturing processes to finished goods to consumption and disposal, is to make it a circular process.
This concept was first introduced in 1977 by Walter Stahl, but took several years to convince governments and the UN to prepare a strategy and plan to make it actionable.
In 2019, the EU adopted the "Circular Economy Action Plan" which paved the way for a host of Corporate entities going back to the design board for several changes in the entire value chain.
Circular Economy is a brilliant opportunity for human innovation at work. This is because every industry needs to relook at its raw materials, production processes, consumer usage, reuse-repair-reclaim cycle before making all these components re-enter the value chain or virtuous loop.
This new approach necessitates identifying the right raw materials that are suitable for recycling, right production systems that incorporate recycled-upcycled-renewed material, and have options for reuse-repair-reclaim.
The textile industry is a classic example that is popularizing the word "Circular Fashion".
In this industry worth USD 1.3trillion, only 1% of all clothing is recycled.
This is a monumental waste but also a humongous opportunity to save costs, if the circular supply can be made efficient.
How you measure, is how we perform:
The success of Sustainability initiatives whether it be Circular Economy measures or other initiatives, the root trigger is human motivation to change.
In a corporate world there are a host of people who prefer to work with blinds, negating scientific data of impending climate change outcomes. Unfortunately such people are in the highest echelons of power, in many instances.
Therefore to make a meaningful change and have a groundswell support for change, a rationale top down Sustainability KPI system needs to be put in place.
As popularly highlighted in many companies that "Everyone is in Sales" or "Safety is everyone's responsibility", similarly we need slogans like "Everyone is accountable for Sustainability".
Just like we have sales targets right up to the front line or zero incidents target for every employee, Sustainability targets need to be made more democratic and customized.
For examples, Board members and Bussiness heads can have targets of carbon neutral growth or reduction on tons of CO2. But for line staff, these make no sense.
Therefore targets like Sales revenue from new sustainable products could be a better measurement for achieving a similar objective.
Employees across ranks behave as they are measured. If a sizable proportion of traditional roles are evaluated with Sustainability measures, the impact that a corporate can make will exponentially rise.
Proactively shaping consumer behaviour:
A common grouse of many companies is that Sustainability, as a concept, doesn't sell in the market.
This is the biggest lie because if faded jeans and vintage cars can sell in the world, so can sustainable products!
It's all about marketing and shaping consumer behaviour with the right emotional triggers.
In a world of marketers spawned by Philip Kotler's ideas and principles, finding opportunities to shift sales from harmful products to sustainable ones, is not something new.
One very common example is from the paints industry to prove this point.
For many years, consumers of home decorative paints tolerated viscous smell of fresh coats. Then came the marketing spin around VOC (Volatile Organic Products) and how it can cause cancer or other health issues. There were (or still are) very few consumers who even know the full form of VOC, leave alone what their chemical composition is or what their biological effects are. But there is a whole range of products that sell, around the globe, based on low VOC or VOC free paints!
This is the power of marketing experts to veer consumers from harmful products to more planet friendly, and in many cases, higher margin products.
Digitalization and Sustainability - The "chosen" twins of our modern world:
While marketing teams are one spoke of the virtuous cycle, the other key element of Sustainability, is Digitalization.
Digital tools can help measure, analyse, educate, reinvent and reconfigure businesses, products and processes that create and build upon a sustainable future.
Blockchain as a technology is an often used shining example. Just like in the financial world, paper money is a simple example of how an item/product can move in a circular pattern from the minting press to the central bank to the hands of multiple people and reused in several cycles before being repurposed as new notes. And in this financial industry. Blockchain moves with the digital flow of money to leave "fingerprints" ensuring traceability of the exchanges and authenticity of the players involved.
Similarly blockchain in Supply chain ensures traceability of entire journey of products from oilfields/farms/factories to consumers. And it can also be used to retrace the circulatory of its resources and attributes of saving the planet.
Unlike the ubiquitous "chosen" one of Hollywood movies, where Neo is the saviour in a Matrix world, the twining of Sustainability and Digitalization, is the panacea for several climate change pains points.
Conclusion:
Overall, the scope of human innovation to protect and preserve what we have inherited and what we owe to the next generation, is what makes Sustainability much more than a Corporate razzmatazz. It's also about the flourishing of our businesses and survival of our species!
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