Sustainability Thinking

Sustainability thinking is about creating value for your business and for the planet, concurrently. It is possible and achievable for Fast Moving Consumer Goods and Retail companies to not only operate in sustainable ways, but leverage Sustainability for commercial advantage.

In applying Sustainability Thinking to your organisation’s specific situation, a number of questions need to be answered, such as:

Who are the stakeholders in our business (external and internal) and how can we best communicate with them? How do we reconcile competing demands and interests? What are our competitors doing and how do we achieve a differentiated Sustainability market position?

Concepts such as ecological footprinting have graphically informed us that we are living off the Earth’s capital – not the interest – and that our current way of doing business is obviously unsustainable. The good news is that we do not need to wait for a miracle cure or technology to be invented – we actually have everything we need right now to reframe our business processes for more sustainable outcomes.

Sustainability Thinking asks how we should account for those inputs and outputs of our processes that presently do not have market values? Such as fresh air, water, and the health and longevity of all species including human? The finance and accounting sectors, still reeling from the impact of Enron and WorldCom, are grappling with how to account for intangibles such as goodwill and brand value, let alone deal with valuing ecosystems and social and cultural capital.

At the FMCG Sustainability Institute, we understand these broader questions, along with the question of how to satisfy the financial markets in the short term, which demand satisfactory financial results on a quarterly basis, with the inter-generational issues of equity and access to natural resources for tomorrow’s children.

Whilst there are no ‘pat’ answers, and understanding the complexity of issues is key to moving forward, it can be done, and what’s more it can increase value for your organisation in every sense, including economic.

We would be delighted to talk with you further about how to incorporate Sustainability Thinking in your business. Contact us