Sustainability as a business
A little while ago, I started a project dedicated to the sustainability topic. I already mentioned it here, but it’s OK if you don’t remember: I wouldn’t. I have been extremely interested in the sustainability challenge for a minute, as we all have, and we at my startup have done quite a bit of sustainable-driven work, which we detailed over here for all the world to know. What good is it if no one knows, right?
What is interesting with this new project, however, is that I get to interact with people whose daily work happens to be sustainability. More to the point, sustainability-related offers and initiatives. Things like developing carbon footprint calculators. Or helping companies improve said carbon footprint. Aiming for net zero emissions in the not-too-distant future, even: a rather trendy topic, one that many companies have already espoused — and the rest are starting to rush towards. Good on them.
And this is the first of two major comments I have on this phenomenon: many people — if not all — are discussing this right now. At board level too, so you know it’s serious. And many have done so for a while. This is likely the topic of our times, and has clearly been so since the covid crisis somewhat subsided. Perhaps aided by that, actually: although the two are not directly related, it seems like the fact that we were all in crisis mode helped everyone register how dire the climate situation really is, despite what some demagogues will have us believe. It would have been great if all this happened in 2002, but here we are: it is happening now, let’s make the most of it to foster change. Quick.
My second overall comment is — sustainability can be profitable. For consultants, of course, whose job it is to advise businesses in driving more sustainable processes. But first and foremost for their clients, i.e. industries, i.e. the engine in all of this. For if businesses can make a profit from being (more) sustainable, you very well know things will change all the more swiftly. In a recent keynote to the alumni of my (French) business school, (American) business strategist Michael Porter mentioned the case of Walmart, which completely redesigned its entire activity towards a more sustainable approach a few years ago, saving 2 billion dollars a year in the process. That’s the spirit.
Porter cited the Walmart example as an answer to a (French) student asking what he thought about the impossibility of “decoupling”, i.e. the idea that economic growth is fundamentally linked with emission-producing energy consumption growth, i.e. the belief that there is no way to be more sustainable and keep growing. Interestingly, that notion seemed foreign to Porter: instead, he saw a clear path towards more profitability and sustainability.
Sounds like a plan…