IMPRESSIONS from a Cross-section

Being a global company we are witness to varying levels of sustainable focus and commitment, the level of sustainable awareness has a strong correlation to the governance of each country. On a business level, for some companies, sustainability is part of their foundation and their DNA, for other companies it is a market reaction strategy. 

Sustainability isn’t a special new vehicle to business success; it is mainstream, practical and as old as the hills. Efficient use of resources and ethical behavior used to be called just “good business practice”, we simply have a new vocabulary for age old management and care of our environment. With the global population swelling, governments and individuals are realizing that the earth’s resources are finite and precious; it is unwise to carelessly discard viable resources. 

Legislation and incentives certainly help in increasing the level of awareness among people.

The United Nations has global reporting by companies on sustainability among its proposed key outcomes for the Rio+ 20 summit in June. At present environmental reporting by companies is voluntary. The UN proposal calls for "a global policy framework requiring all listed and large private companies to consider sustainability issues and to integrate sustainability information within the reporting cycle."

Companies face growing sustainable risks such as changing consumer preferences, climate change, and water, food and natural resource insecurity which currently do not feature clearly in companies' financial reports. This oversight gives investors and companies an incomplete picture of the risks they face, and also the opportunities they could be missing. 

Two cases in point are the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico which not only had a devastating effect on the surrounding environment but also on BP Global's reputation and finances. Recent issues with factory conditions at a Chinese supplier for Apple highlighted Apple’s poor level of staff treatment in their supply chain and resulted in a very public backlash.

Today's financial accounting standards are outdated. They emerged in the Industrial era when natural resources were in abundance and manufactured and human capitals limited. Today the opposite is true. According to Richard Branson’s Carbon War Room “The climate challenge is the economic opportunity of our generation”

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Resource efficiency affects the bottom line. Reducing costs is always profitable and sustainability must encompass economic sustainability.

We work with multinational corporations and government organisations transforming large volume post industrial and agricultural waste into usable new product, reducing disposal costs while creating untapped revenue streams for our clients. 

We also support initiatives such as ‘The Sustainable Apparel Coalition’ where there is a collaborative approach to issues that are often larger than one individual company can solve on its own. 

There are numerous initiatives by individual companies lowering their production costs, which improve their profits, as well as reducing environmental impacts. There are also initiatives such as packaging reductions at Wal-Mart and thoughtful water management at Starbucks. The pace of these initiatives is accelerating both across industry and across the globe. 

We are on the cutting edge of sustainable innovation. Research projects can be expensive to fund with the resulting commercial returns taking some time to filter back. 

Another challenge can be that large multinational corporations’ decision making process can be glacial. Managing projects with these large organizations requires considerable human resources to keep projects on track and moving forward.

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