Sustainable business
A business is sustainable if it has adapted its practices for the use of
renewable resources and holds itself accountable for the environmental and
human rights impacts of its activities. This includes businesses that may want to operate
in a socially responsible manner, as well as to protect the environment. Many profit-oriented corporations will forge an image of social responsibility
through various marketing and public relations
techniques, although this apparent image does not necessarily mean that they are sustainable.
History
Enormous economic and population growth worldwide in the second half of the twentieth century drove the impacts that threaten the health and the world — ozone depletion, climate change, depletion and fouling of natural resources, and extensive loss of biodiversity and habitat.
The standard approaches in the past to the environmental problems generated by business and industry have been regulatory driven "end-of-the-pipe" remediation efforts. In the 1990s, efforts by governments, NGOs, corporations and investors began to grow substantially to develop awareness and plans for investment into business sustainability.
One critical milestone was the establishment of the ISO 14000 standards whose development came as a result of the Rio Summit on the Environment held in 1992. ISO 14001 is the corner stone standard of the ISO 14000 series. It specifies a framework of control for an Environmental Management System against which an organization can be certified by a third party. Other ISO 14000 Series Standards are actually guidelines, many to help you achieve registration to ISO 14001. They include the following:
- ISO 14004 provides guidance on the development and implementation of environmental management systems
- ISO 14010 provides general principles of environmental auditing (now superseded by ISO 19011)
- ISO 14011 provides specific guidance on audit an environmental management system (now superseded by ISO 19011)
- ISO 14012 provides guidance on qualification criteria for environmental auditors and lead auditors (now superseded by ISO 19011)
- ISO 14013/5 provides audit program review and assessment material.
- ISO 14020+ labeling issues
- ISO 14030+ provides guidance on performance targets and monitoring within an Environmental Management System
- ISO 14040+ covers life cycle issues
To the casual observer, the greening of mainstream business may appear to be a recent phenomenon, but it is no ephemeral fad, according to writer and green business strategist Joel Makower. Rather, he says, it represents a shift in how business is being done, born of a confluence of global challenges: energy and natural resource constraints, global security concerns, growing public health problems, and the specter of disruptive climate change. And opportunities: a wealth of new enabling technologies that allow business efficiency to increase dramatically, dematerializing and detoxifying products and services along the way. The merging of economic and environmental interests may engender one of the biggest business transformations in decades, spurred on by a societal imperative to harness the unparalleled power of the private sector to address the world’s most pressing environmental problems.
Companies of all sizes and sectors have come to recognize that being a greener business can create new forms of business value, whether increased sales and reduced costs, or forms of value that are indirect (increased quality, reduced risk, increased ability to attract and retain talent) or intangible (enhanced reputation or becoming a preferred trading partner). Not every company derives such benefits, but many have found ways to turn the emerging environmental ethic into a business opportunity.
Sustainable Business Topics
Human Rights
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The Business Leaders Initiative on Human Rights (BLIHR) is a three-year programme to help lead and develop the corporate response to human rights. BLIHR believes in an evidence-based approach based on the application and testing of human rights across a number of business sectors and geographic locations. They acknowledge that there are some real and perceptual roadblocks that business perceives when trying to operationalise human rights in their work and the Initiative aims to help businesses overcome these through developing tools and signposting the work of others.
The Initiative was founded in May 2003 by seven companies: ABB Ltd, Barclays plc, MTV Networks Europe, National Grid Transco plc, Novartis Foundation for Sustainable Development, Novo Nordisk and The Body Shop International plc. During 2004, Hewlett-Packard Company, Statoil and Gap Inc. joined the initiative.
Environmental Issues
Renewable Resources
Investing
Triple Net investing (also known as Triple Bottom Line) refers to investing that includes financial bottom line, socially- and environmentally-responsible investing. There is some controversy over the sustainability of triple net investing and whether it produces sufficient returns to be a sound principle for investing. Some topics considered for triple bottom line investing are...
- Environmental
- Financial
- Revenue growth
- Productivity
- Profit margin
- Return on investment
- Cost of capital
- Risk Management
- Valuation of enterprise
- Appeal to investors
- Social
- Community and Social impact
- Corruption
- Health and safety
- Fair compensation
- Equal Opportunity
- Education
- Recognition
Lobbying
Sustainable businesses differ from traditional businesses in the way they lobby government. Often they will refrain from lobbying completely, or lobby for regulations that will force their competitors to refrain from saving money at the expense of the community and the environment. Better World Club is an example of a business that was founded largely in response to non-sustainable lobbying practices of a competitor (namely the American Automobile Association).
Other Topics
External links
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