Sustainability and Western Business: Can they coexist?
As an environmentalist and striving PR practitioner, I get to see both sides of the controversy when it comes to sustainability and business. My parents, school, and environmentalist friends helped shaped my environmentalist approach. My idea of business was biased.
Environmentalists often see business as a predator. Traditional business tactics are hurting the environment, cause immense degradation, and exploiting natural resources for profit advancement. We have seen this trending with large corporations, entities, and even individual efforts. We believe that enlightened self-interest rules the ways of the business world, because business rules the world, right?
Business obviously makes up a good portion of what we do and it is important to understand their impact.
In order to develop these ideas more clearly, we must ask ourselves, what is the purpose of business? I believe that the purpose of business is to provide benefit to humankind through service, creative innovation, and action that does not exploit natural resources. Seems realistic? Perhaps not, and here’s why.
Free market capitalism is the Western culture’s Bible. It is our godsend, it is our economy, and it might as well be what makes businessmen sleep at night. What drives the market, what hurts it, who are the shareholders, how can I make more profit: This is how we understand business. I may have a million but the guy next to me is making three; how do I get where he needs to be, if not more? We are stuck in a complex cycle of short, strategic business moves that although they might immediately develop and show extraordinary temporary results, they are hurting our long term efforts in building a sustainable society. We see this in examples of packaging, our food habits, and energy making tactics.
The truth of it all is that there is so much business opportunity within the realms of sustainability. The purpose of business is evolving into what the people want, and people demand for a cleaner tomorrow. Business is transforming to unite ecology and commerce into one act that is able to mimic our own natural processes and eliminate our artificial ones. We are seeing new technologies in sustainability that have the opportunity to drive the market and create not only new opportunities, but jobs as well. If not new technologies, there are simple sustainable tactics that can develop from implementing new strategies and behaviors.
Economist Paul Hawkins in “Ecology of Commerce,” made the point that winning in business is “winning a battle to discover the war was unjust.” This resonated with me specifically because as an environmentalist this is what I believed business was: A long card game full of cheaters, playing a game that wasn’t even just. Then Hawkins made another point, “how do we save our environment?” to, “how do we save our businesses?”
Business indeed can coincide with sustainability, as we see various efforts from big companies that lead the movement. Forbes’ most sustainable companies 2017 puts out a long list of companies that made various strategic efforts to make their company more sustainable; however, the majority of them are companies based everywhere…but the U.S. Being a global economic influencer and contributor, this is something that we should be concerned about.
You can see my point here, traditional business is not good for the environment. So what do we do about it? A solution might be that western business needs effective cooperation facilitated by better designed institutions. At this point, knowledge alone is not good enough. Most understand what the coal industry is doing to our air, the effects of drilling for oil, and the social injustice with working conditions. We need interaction between institutions to build agreements. Examples such as the Paris Accords and the Montreal Protocol demonstrate agreements that establish a process for change. These agreements have been signed so that countries are better participating than not. Simple tactics that have large opportunity.
Interesting enough, the United States happened to be one that pulled out of the Paris Accords. Can the business here in the US coincide with sustainability? Our people depend on our large corporations for their everyday life, which allows these corporations to get away with what they have and allows them to continue to do so in the future.
Great capitalism can mean great environmentalism. There is so much opportunity for business in the sustainable realm. Companies such as Patagonia with its involvement with Bear Ears as well as initiatives of 1% of sales going to grassroots environmental groups. Johnson & Johnson also making sustainable ladders such as creating more a environment-friendly packaging and ads to promote recycling. Google headquarters is run off of sustainable energy and offers classes on sustainable cooking, an aware corporate culture.
Let’s talk New Belgium. New Belgium is a local brewery located in the heart of Old Town Fort Collins that sticks to its true environmental values. Its efforts include local water usage and partnerships with initiatives such as The Wetlands Initiative, which is both a business tactic, relationship builder, and environmental push between farmers and wetlands. With envisioning sustainable cradle-to-cradle packaging products and high recycling rates across the U.S, New Belgium is a terrific example of business and sustainability coinciding within one another while making profit. In participating with Future500, New Belgium has been a part of the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), which “uses financial incentives to encourage manufacturers to design environmentally friendly products by holding producers responsible of the costs for managing their products at the end of life.” Tactics that hold businesses accountable while doing good for the great community, or should I say environment.
There is much opportunity in this field as our society demands it. People care more than we have ever before about the environment and our relationship with it. It is essential for our businesses to understand this and that market failures are economic causes of environmental degradation.
Maybe this is a call to entrepreneurs that we need eco-institutional convergence, meaning that economic institutions are evolving in response to fundamental ecological challenges. We need entrepreneurs to evaluate these challenges in order for business and sustainability to coexist.