Why Should Any Company Strive for Sustainability?
And why should we care?
When I first started writing about this ever so important question: “Why should any business strive for sustainability”, I focused on all these logical things, like:
- More and more consumers are shifting towards choosing sustainable options when purchasing
- Creating a circular, sustainable product or service will over time lower costs of production
- It creates a more positive, action-driven image of their brand that leads to more sales
- It’ll help long-term to be in tune with any upcoming regulations
And after finishing my first 1000-word draft (hooray), I started checking if all my points are presented with solid arguments and are hitting their marks.
But the same question was still bugging me, why? All these benefits can be immense for a struggling business, sure, but they aren’t telling anyone the true, deep-down reason why should anyone start a sustainable business.
I mean, yes, every business desires more sales, lower costs of production, and a better, presentable image to their customers. Well, duh. But that ain’t it. It doesn’t truly answer the question at heart. Why should you? Why should any business take time, effort, and money to come up with a sustainable solution?
Unless it’s only about profit, right? But we’ll get to that.
Any marketing guru (or however they call themselves these days) along with your local peddler on the street will tell you the same thing — you need to reach people’s hearts, not minds.
Nobody cares anymore about what is it or how you use it. When was the last time you opened an instruction manual? It’s the why that gets you.
Why should I buy option A, instead of options B, C, D, or E? There are so many to choose from.
Why should I buy an electric car?
Why should I think about the materials in my clothes?
Why should I want to reduce the amount of garbage I produce? (what the heck is composting?)
Why should I care?
And this is it. This is my “why” that I’ve been searching for.
Why should I care for any sustainable business? Especially today, when the concept of greenwashing exists way before we took our stride towards taking sustainability seriously.
By trying to come up with all the valid reasons why a company with clear goals and profit margins should become sustainable, I forgot everyone else. I forgot us.
Climate change isn’t news. We’ve been talking about it for decades.
And this isn’t a call for another us vs them debate; we have plenty of those. This is for all the creatures inhabiting this planet that we call our home.
We, who want to create something better, something sustainable, for our children to use.
We, who want to provide a service that will help someone and can be replicated in a million other ways, without harming our ecosystem.
We, who desire to bring more food to the table and continue doing so for generations to come, with no fear of endangering other species by doing so.
We, who care for one another so much, that we try to come up with new, exciting solutions, more mindful solutions to our current consumer practices.
And for those people, that try to create a better future for others, the simple question of why seems fairly obvious. It’s not about generating a higher quarterly profit or shifting their brand image to go with the times. Just check the topics on shell’s website, hilarious.
It’s about us, all of us.
We need to change, and as we change, businesses will change too. Some will disappear, some will struggle, but those who have their “why” already set out, they will prosper.
A new consumer paradigm will happen, sooner or later (hopefully not too late), focused on the previously mentioned total life cycle cost of each product and shared sustainable goals that help us all.
We need to understand it’s not about keeping the shareholders happy, but our planet. And through our planet, we’ll make us happy.
“Home is where one starts from.” — T. S. Eliot
We all know where that is.
We finish our three-part journey into the what, how, and why of becoming a sustainable business. Thank you for sticking out until the end, as I’ll make sure to continue my journey into spreading more sustainable stories across Medium.
Much love to you all.
You can read the first part here — https://medium.com/the-shadow/what-does-it-mean-to-be-sustainable-in-business-1a1f193181d1
You can read the second part here — https://medium.com/the-shadow/what-does-it-mean-to-be-sustainable-in-business-1a1f193181d1
