What does Sustainability mean to Businesses?
For long Economy has been synonym with Business which translated to Country’s growth through manufacturing, trade, transport of machines and commodities but often neglected the cost and well-being of input resources. Businesses themselves began to witness depletion of resources backed by scientific data claiming Industrial Revolution as a major contributor, that is when it alarmed the leaders to paddle the boat differently.
For any Organization to begin functioning Sustainably, they must begin thinking as an Individual. Imagine of a humble person who lived 3 generations earlier to ours and let’s begin correlating actions.
If he earned by selling bananas, after his annual harvest, he would share a fair portion of the good harvest with his wagers and close family, good value fruits would go into the market, low quality harvest would be a part of his family’s share, the rest would go back to be a part of his raw material through composting ie., mother earth and finally invest the profit in buying higher quality raw materials for next season.
By implementing all this the Businessman uplifted good stakeholder engagement, noble governance, social contribution, increased valued of harvest of all varying qualities, recycling the waste, conscious investment in quality raw materials. He is compliant to most of the written rules under Companies Act.
Applying similar concept on a Corporate Manufacturer, we should be questioning if we share fair portion of annual profits with employees and shareholders, most definitely we send out only the best of the products to the market, next, have we tried to retain low quality product within the manufacturing facility for repurposing or refurbishing to recover its end-use values, and have we ever found ways of dismantling the product 100% and putting it back to the supply chain, how often does our profit get into research of improving the supply materials & supply chain itself.
SUSTAINABILITY IS PRECISELY THIS, for all economic benefits achieved how an organization elevates the supporting ecosystem defines an organization’s Sustainability.
Earlier when monetary gain was a prime indicator, Industries considered Men & Material as passive contributors but now due to paradigm shift in thoughts they are renamed under Triple Bottom Line as ‘People Planet Profit’.
Sustainability, as on present definition, is built on the pillars of Triple Bottom Line however doesn’t limit itself within the Organization’s ecosystem but expands to various stakeholders like suppliers, customers, social community; decision making functions which were not very transparent in most organizations, biodiversity of employees, grievance addressal; reduction of carbon emissions through plantations, conservation of resources starting from supply chain to manufacturing to retails, reusing of materials into supply chain.
Sustainability is unique to each organization however the basis would remain the same across the sector. Being a newly emerging field, its full potential is yet to be tapped and thus opens up an array of opportunities for Industries to be Leaders in Sustainability.
EcoMorphosys through its experienced team of experts assists in customizing Sustainability Strategy by identifying & analyzing the right metrics, inventing ways to improve resource conservation and communicate the right data through reporting structures.