Do The Sustainable Choices Your Business Makes Today Remain Sustainable in the Long-Term?

Please welcome back Jori Hamilton who has become a regular contributor to 21st Century Tech Blog. In this posting, she looks at a topic that has become a bellwether path for business today. If you are into reading the business pages of websites or your local paper you probably have encountered the acronym ESG which stands for environment, society, and governance. Investors are becoming keen on companies that practice ESG in all aspects of their organizations. ESG is about best practices focused on long-term sustainability, that is businesses that act environmentally responsible, socially responsible, and govern themselves with transparency to ensure that processes, products, and supply chains are aligned with the E and the S while maintaining profitability.

There is a widespread move across industries today to implement sustainable practices. Whether this means incorporating alternative energy sources or developing more efficient means of doing business, sustainable choices have proven more often than not to be good ones. In one example, Clarion hotels simply asked their guests if they wanted to opt-out of daily sheet cleanings and now the company saves $17,250 per year in water usage. 

But not all sustainable choices stay sustainable. Sometimes measures we take to make a difference end up having a minimal or even negative impact. A good example comes from Starbucks when the company put out a strawless lid that contained more plastic than the old straw and lid combination. 

Ensuring that sustainable choices stay sustainable requires businesses to adopt a process of reflection and analysis. By analyzing impacts and addressing concerns, businesses can better measure the outcomes of the sustainable investments they make into the future. 

Analyzing the Impact of Operations

So how do you ensure the sustainability of a business? 

The answer comes down to the plan you develop around sustainability. Without a means in place for evaluating sustainability impacts, you’ll have a hard time understanding the effectiveness of innovations you make. In turn, you stand the risk of losing any benefits you derive from implementing changes. 

Consumers these days care about ethical measures that protect the environment, economy, and people from usurious practices. This is exactly what sustainability means. In fact, in a recent survey, 66% of respondents said they consider sustainability in making purchasing decisions.

But to prove to customers that you truly value sustainability and aren’t just greenwashing, (a term that is applied to businesses that misrepresent their ESG credentials) you need a long-term assessment plan. This means investing in equipment and collecting and analyzing lots of data.

You may, for instance, in your facility install eco-friendly pipes. Without leak detection technology, however, to measure the outcome you run the risk of wasting more than 400 litres (90 gallons) of water daily through undetected leaks. Today, 10% of households and businesses waste water through leaks daily. And this is just one example among many where implementing monitoring technologies and software can help a business to measure whether its investments into long-term sustainability best practices are succeeding. 

Considering the above example, therefore, it makes sense to compile a list of the things you need to measure as part of your ESG plan. Examples include measuring CO2 emissions, energy consumption, and the amount of waste produced. With the Internet of Things (IoT) today, finding the technologies in terms of sensors, devices, and software to achieve meaningful data collection and analysis is far easier and cheaper than ever before. 

Addressing Safety and Sustainability

Sustainability best practices need to include impacts on the workforce. Ignoring the environmental choices made that have negative consequences for workers can have long-term consequences. In an infamous example, the asbestos industry covered up knowing that their products presented a health risk to workers and consumers. The companies chose to demonstrate a lack of regard for the health and safety of the S part of ESG in the pursuit of profits. The consequences have been devastating in terms of reputation lawsuits, and health for the victims who continue to pay the price for this shortsightedness.

Ensuring that sustainable choices remain sustainable requires businesses to address problems that can only be revealed by doing the analysis. When the data tells you that the investments made are not reducing emissions or waste the way you intended, it is time to stop and reassess. Evaluate where improvements can be made and take action. This way, you can better determine the success of the measures you implement in the future and potentially reap added benefits from government inducements in the form of tax credits, deductions and grants.

Gauging Sustainability into the Future

Sustainability needs a future focus. Something can only be sustainable if it is repeatable into the future without causing harm to E the environment, and S, society. That said, businesses need to be forward-thinking in evaluating decision-making around every aspect of operations.

Analysis entails becoming better informed about advances in green materials and strategies. The growth in this field is making it possible to access tools and technologies capable of measuring a business’s environmental footprint. 

As sustainable energy and green materials get cheaper, businesses can make better ESG decisions. Applying other technological innovations including artificial intelligence and better software algorithms will yield positive bottom-line results through cost savings. Google’s DeepMind has done exactly that by teaching itself how to more efficiently cool data centers while cutting energy requirements by 35%. 

As businesses seek a competitive advantage in the modern economy, integrating sustainable technology best practices will contribute to long-term success. The tools are there today to help businesses analyze situations, measure impacts, and take actions. And the sustainability practices you put in place today and tomorrow are in your best interest. This way you build a better business and a better world. The generations to follow will thank you.