Sustainability and Business

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The Washington State University department of ecology has explained sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This goal could as easily apply to businesses as it does to the environment. Any activity that consumes resources so fast that it cannot sustain itself has created a trap that becomes difficult to escape. Today’s large corporate business models ignore this basic concept by planning constant growth into the future even though the world’s resources will not last forever. For businesses to be truly sustainable so that future generations can benefit from their products, business leaders must develop a long-term plan for the environment the same as they do for future profits.

In the mid-1800s in Butte, Montana, a generation of industrialists grew wealthy by dominating the silver, gold, and copper resources in the region. These copper barons, William Clarke, Marcus Daly, and F. Augustus Heinze, became the most powerful people for as far as one could see from Butte’s town limits. But the metals did not come out of the ground forever, and by the middle of the 1900s the copper barons’ fortunes and Butte’s future plummeted. How difficult is it to draw a parallel between Montana’s mining industry and today’s oil industry? Though the Energy Information Administration (EIA) has predicted that new technologies will find another 76 billion barrels of oil in the United States by 2025, no one knows for certain the volume of oil still available. That is because the science of locating and measuring the size of as-yet undiscovered oil reserves contains a wide margin of error. Scientists do know that regardless of the volume underground, the oil will someday run out. Global warming that results from burning fossil fuels such as oil may well choke the planet long before the oil disappears. It is therefore in everyone’s best interests to adapt to sustainable practices as soon as possible.

The most daunting challenge for businesses’ conversion to more environmentally sound decisions comes from the business community itself. Bjorn Stigson, president of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, remarked in 2008, “They [business leaders] know they cannot solve these problems alone, but have to work with others to develop solutions, even when this means learning to listen to their critics and those who oppose their actions.” Each business’s customers might hold the greatest power in getting industry leaders to listen.

Perhaps slow, steady improvements in business might give communities the best chance of success in converting to sustainability. Drastic changes often present big risks for business, but smaller steps toward sustainable practices balance environmental needs with business needs. For example, many companies have already reconfigured their activities to save on raw materials, reduce waste, conserve water, and conserve energy. These small steps have proven to be easy to implement and have a big impact over time. New business methods such as just-in-time production and more efficient distribution chains already help build profits while offering benefits to the environment. Meanwhile, companies have been expected to follow laws on emissions, waste discharges, and hazardous waste management and reporting. The next phase of decisions may incorporate some of these innovations:

1. conversion from coal-fired power plants to renewable energy sources such as solar
2. use of only alternative fuel for shipments
3. participation in waste recycling programs or transfer of waste to other industries
4. new technologies for handling water that cools production machinery and for returning the water safely to the environment
5. waste-to-energy processes
6. conversion from chemical synthesis methods to biological methods
7. redesign of packaging to reduce waste
8. redesign of products to biodegradable materials
9. conversion of offices to use of recycled products and alternative materials and energy

 In business, the decisions that will make these innovations possible are referred to as front-end decisions, because they must be planned before the production process is designed, built, and operated. End-of-the-line activities, by contrast, refer to activities that try to make things better after all the production has been completed: disposing of wastes, installing devices to clean gaseous emissions, filtering discharge water to remove most of the pollutants, and taking back unsold products so they do not end up in landfills. The success of sustainability in business revolves around eliminating end-of-the-line activities by putting more emphasis on front-end decisions. Today, almost all major U.S. cities have sustainable business networks that help businesses implement sustainable practices. At this point in history, industries large and small have no excuse for sidestepping sustainable practices.