The business case for sustainability – can we make money?
Many people are driven by purpose, the ethical dimension of sustainable business. But all businesses need to make money, we explore where value can be found in sustainable business.
Many people are driven by purpose, the ethical dimension of sustainable business. But all businesses need to make money, we explore where value can be found in sustainable business.
The business case for sustainability is (shockingly) still either not recognised strategically (i.e. it is understood as an additive factor for operational efficiency or marketing/PR but not as a strategic value creation/destruction factor), or in many cases it is little understood at all.
Sustainability is a transformative agenda. It requires companies to not only develop new priorities, but also to become corporate activists – to act to affect the wider system within which they operate.
While sustainability management has in many ways entered the mainstream, practitioners are often hampered by resistance, apathy and misunderstanding.
There are many examples of excellence in specific areas, but few companies are pursuing a transformative agenda at significant scale.
As the general acceptance and uptake of corporate sustainability has grown, we have seen a broad progression in adoption and maturity. However, most practice appears stuck in the middle, somewhere between compliance and greater adoption. There are still very few examples of companies taking a leading position in sustainability.
All UK companies with more than 250 staff must report their gender pay gap by 4th April 2018. The relatively small proportion who have reported are revealing a hugely asymmetric gender pay gap.
In September 2017, we ran a Towards 9 Billion workshop on sustainable finance, to explore how the finance sector could build a sustainable future. To get the workshop report contact us.
What sustainability trends will be important in 2018? What questions does your company need to ask in 2018?
What did the 2017 budget mean for sustainability? A concise overview of what it means.
A sustainable financial system requires both rethinking the very nature of value, as well as creativity in how we would project that value over time.
Alongside the challenges to sustainability we already face, there is growing concern about how these might accelerate in the future. One key issue is population growth and its impacts, but should the scale of humanity be seen as a threat or as an opportunity?
VIDEO - Building strategic resilience through sustainable business practice starts with understanding the risks and dependencies of the business within the context of a changing world.
Diesel air pollution contributes to 40,000 annual deaths in the UK. Weak regulation and 'cheating' have contributed towards a health crisis that affects us all.