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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 operate in a socially responsible manner and protect the environment.
A sustainable business is any organization that participates in environmentally-friendly or green activities to ensure that all processes, products, and manufacturing activities adequately address current environmental concerns while maintaining a profit. In other words, it is a business that “meets the needs of the present world without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs” 1. It is the process of assessing how to design products that will take advantage of the current environmental situation and how well a company’s products perform with renewable resources 2.
The Brundtland Report 3 emphasized that sustainability is a three-legged stool of people, planet, and profit. Sustainable businesses with the supply chain try to balance all three 4 through the triple-bottom-line concept—using sustainable development and sustainable distribution to impact the environment, business growth, and the society 5.
Everyone affects the sustainability of the marketplace and the planet in some way. Sustainable development within a business can create value for customers, investors, and the environment. A sustainable business must meet customer needs while, at the same time, treating the environment well 6.
A major initiative of sustainable businesses is to eliminate or decrease the impact made on the environment by harmful chemicals, materials, and waste generated by processes to manufacture products and services 7. The measurement of the impact of such human activities in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced is measured in units of carbon dioxide and referred to as the carbon footprint 8. The carbon footprint concept branched off from the ecological footprint 9, which examines the ecological capacity required to support the consumption of products 10.
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One of the most common examples of sustainable business initiatives is the act of going paperless 11. On a higher level, sustainable business practices can include reviewing processes in order to eliminate or recycle waste; making all products recyclable; and eliminating the use of nonrenewable resources via alternatives energies.
Sustainable businesses also look at inputs to determine what products are harmful to the environment and try to find green alternatives that can function at the same or a better level and, preferably, at a lower cost. Company leaders also take into account the life cycle costs for inputs of items purchased. Inputs costs must be considered in regards to regulations, energy use, storage, and disposal 12.
A business’s green initiatives can include conserving materials through remanufacturing, converting harmful gases into clean energy, generating greener power, and improving fuel economy (Rennie 2008). Designing for the environment (DFE) is also an element of sustainable business. This process enables users to consider the potential environmental impacts of a product and the process used to make that product 13.
Henry Ford was a pioneer in the sustainable business realm, experimenting with soy-based materials and ethanol during the days of the Model T. 14. Ford Motor Company also shipped the Model A truck in crates that later became the vehicle’s floorboard upon reaching its destination. This was a form of upcycling, a key element to DFE (Penfield 2008). Upcycling is the process of retaining high quality in a closed-loop industrial cycle 15.
Ford currently uses green fabrics and materials in the next generation of their vehicles—seat fabric made from 100 percent post-industrial materials, renewable soy foam seat bases, and the like. Ford executives recently appointed the company’s first senior vice president of sustainability, environment, and safety engineering. This position is responsible for establishing a long-range sustainability strategy and environmental policy. The person in this position will also help develop the products and processes necessary to satisfy both customers and society as a whole, while working toward energy independence 16.
In Korea, rice husks are used as a nontoxic packaging for stereo components and other electronics. The concept of waste is diminished because of inclusive shipping in freight costs the goods would already incur. The same material is later used to make bricks 17.
The European community’s Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) restricts the use of certain hazardous materials in the production of various electronic and electrical products. Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directives provide collection, recycling, and recovery practices for electrical goods 18.
The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (www.wbcsd.org) and the World Resources Institute (www.wri.org) are two organizations working together to set a standard for reporting on corporate carbon footprints 19.
Lester Brown’s Plan B 2.0 (www.earth-policy.org) and Hunter Lovins’s Natural Capitalism (www.natpcap.org) provide information on sustainability initiatives 20.
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:
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