We are in a full ecological and technological transition.
Following the gathering of the world's top leaders at COP26 to address the climate crisis, companies seeking to incorporate sustainability practices are not only doing the right thing for the health of our planet but also pursuing financial gain. It is estimated that by 2025, a third of the world's assets worldwide will be investments of an environmental and social nature. Investors will therefore see how a company is addressing sustainability and climate response, and that will affect the access that company will have to private capital and investments.
The investments of the future will be linked to the climate response
But responding to climate change and adopting sustainability with a real impact on the environment is a change that not all companies can implement instantly; first, there must be a small change in the business system. This requires a new way of thinking about the five key components of each company's operations (water, carbon, waste, product, packaging) and following through with actions that actually reduce each company's environmental footprint.
The question then is how a company sees and realizes the value of those five things. How new business models and financial benefits are realized while achieving environmental benefits; how to innovate in that space both from the technology and from the perspective of the business model; and how the progress of implementing and carrying out all of that is measured.
Companies must start by making sustainability a core element of their purpose as a business. They will need to choose an area that is critical to their business and where they can win and start making a real environmental impact. For this, they will need partners outside their business model who can take them further and seek new technology to develop innovations that truly change lives and make our planet healthy.
Sustainability as the core of the business model
Treating sustainability as an initiative is great, but to have a real impact, companies will need to integrate it into the core purpose of their organization. This ensures that all strategies and activities are measured against sustainability goals. This will drive the right actions across the company and make the value chain broader, helping to uncover opportunities and drive greater impact on the environment and bottom line.
The consumer goods industry has been one of the most receptive to all these changes and is beginning to tackle the environmental problem head-on and in a very tangible and pragmatic way. A textbook example is the Unilever company, where sustainability is fundamental to its business strategy since by 2039 it has committed to achieving zero emissions from the manufacturing of its products until they are at the point of sale.
