roadmap

1. Sustainable products and services portfolio
2. Sustainable operations
3. Trends
4. Market growth – new niche, segments, target groups
5. Value Networks and Stakeholder Mutuality
   

The Economist’s Sustainability Week: Operationalizing Sustainability Strategies

Sustainable businesses create value over the medium term. Discover how:

1. Re-analyse your corporate policies
2. Integrate the SDGs into your daily work
3. Identify your key NEW groups of interest and work for them
4. Set up sustainable production processes
5. Back sustainability programmes

Four Steps to Sustainable Business Model Innovation

1 Expand the business canvas by mapping the wider ecosystem of stakeholders and societal issues in which the business operates.

Ask yourself: Who are the key stakeholders in the system? What are the material environmental and societal issues and trends? How do stakeholders and environmental and societal issues directly or indirectly impact all the different parts of the business model?

2 Stress-test the business model (current or potential) within this broader map.

How do stakeholder dynamics and environmental and societal issues constrain or hold back your business model? Where do limitations in the system create vulnerabilities for the business model?

3 Explore scaling up the business.

FOUR ATTITUDES TOWARDS ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

Companies can adopt four different attitudes towards environmental issues (Stoner et al. 1997):

1. a legalistic attitude.

Organizations comply with laws, rules and regulations relating to the environment with no objection. This attitude means that `the organization will try to apply the law to its advantage, such as by inventing technology that provides greater efficiencyand that meets the requirements for protecting environment, which can help that organization in gaining an advantage over other competing companies.

2 Market attitude.

Organizations assume that they will respond to the environmental preferences of their customers. This includes mass consumers, who often require manufacturers to comply with specific environmental standards for products and technologies products and technologies, as well as customers who may require that the products they buy be easily recyclable or manufactured from recycled materials.

3 Stakeholder attitude.

This attitude is a further stage of the of the previous one, as it takes into account the views of a wider circle of stakeholders on environmental issues.

Expressions of this attitude include.

– the use of recyclable materials for packaging for customers,

– training employees in environmental environment,

– participating in local community activities aimed at cleaning up the environment,

– attracting investors willing to invest in “green” companies.

4 The “dark green” attitude. This attitude is based on the concept of deep ecology, formulated by Scandinavian philosopher Arne Naess. In relation to the organization, this attitude is expressed among other things: in remaining in greater harmony with the Earth, not using its resources only for making its own profit, and especially not in a way that is not reproducible and not sustainable, not using animals for unimportant experiments, such as testing cosmetics, keeping the Earth in an unaltered state. With today’s state of environmental awareness, this attitude. This is difficult to apply consistently in practice.

LONG TERM CHOOSING THE RIGHT STRATEGY 

Read the text below to get to know different strategies so as to implement the right one for your company

Short description. 

When developing an environmental strategy companies can choose one of its four types:

1. an offensive strategy, which involves the use of all means, including bank loans bank loans, to improve production processes in terms of environmental protection, improving organizational structures organizational structures in such a way that they combine environmental protection with all the tasks of the enterprise, as well as on creating an environmental culture environmental culture that perpetuates the conviction that responsibility for the environment rests with each employee, according to his or her capabilities and competencies.

2. innovation strategy, which involves the search for new technologies, structures and products adapted to the requirements of environmental protection. That is, to manufacture environmentally “clean” products, construction of enclosed facilities and conversion of waste into natural resources, i.e. on activities that improve the radical relationship enterprise with the environment.

3. a defensive strategy, involving the withdrawal from the market of products and partial abandonment of technologies that do not meet environmental criteria, and focusing on raising the degree of their “environmental performance”, through improving and modifying the processes used production processes and their organization (partial recycling, partial elimination of environmental damage, transportation improvements, more economical consumption of inventories, etc.).

4. passive strategy, (passive, indifferent), which involves compliance only with the necessary regulations on environmental protection in order not to expose the enterprise to penalty fees (e.g., for harmful emissions) and losses associated with the loss of a good image in the environment.

In a modern managed enterprise the basis of an integrated strategy for its operations should naturally be an offensive and even innovative strategy, as only active prevention of risks and adaptation of research to the needs of the environment and integration of its protection into all functions of the enterprise can ensure its transition to economic development that can continue in the future.

An example could be the cleaner production system is based on one of the basic principles of development sustainable development, i.e. the principle of minimizing pollution at its source. This strategy involves managing production in such a way as to prevent and reduce waste, as well as limiting the waste of labor resources, input materials and energy. 

Clean Production is a way to provide goods and services in systems designed prudently to avoid the use of hazardous substances and the production of toxic waste. The raw materials and energy introduced are renewable, reused and conserved.

The health of workers and the public, as well as the local economic, geographic and cultural situation, are also taken into account when designing and implementing such systems. The goal of Clean Production is to meet our demand for products produced in balance with the environment.

The four elements of Clean Production:

The Precautionary Principle

This approach postulates the need for a potential polluter to prove that its activities, or products, will not harm the environment.

Precautionary Approach

Preventing environmental damage is cheaper and more effective than trying to cure that environment after it has been destroyed. Prevention requires removing the source, the cause of problems, rather than trying to control the results, i.e. the damage. Pollution prevention should replace pollution control.

Democratic control

Clean Production involves everyone affected by industrial activity, meaning workers, consumers and local communities. Access to information and involvement in decision-making supports democratic control. As a minimum, local communities must have access to information on industrial emissions and to pollution registers, to plans for red.

1. Develop a Sustainable Production Model
2. Employee Engagement
3. Sustainable material soursing

1. Implement Sustainable Practices
2. Ethical Sourcing and Fair Trade
3. Monitor and Measure Social Impact
4. Community Engagement
5. Scaling Social Impact