Can sustainability change the way we do business?
View Sissel Waage's presentation, Sustainability and changing the way we do business
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Sissel Waage |
Whether they are driven by consumer demand or eco-efficiency, an increasing number of Fortune 500 companies are exploring sustainability in relation to their core operations.
However, fully embedding the ideas of integrated environmental and social aspects of sustainability into core strategy and operations is difficult. The process can take years, and setting checkpoints to measure progress can be just as challenging.
“At a high level, there is agreement on the basic conditions for sustainability,” said Sissel Waage, representing The Natural Step, an international advisory and research organization. “They include the need for conservation, restoration, and care of our natural resources, biodiversity and the ability for people to meet their basic needs.”
The Natural Step uses an educational framework to help organizations understand and move toward sustainability. With ten offices worldwide, the group also offers advisory services for corporations that want to integrate sustainability into core strategies, most recently McDonald’s, Home Depot and Bank of America.
Waage presented a seminar November 12 at Iowa State University, co-sponsored by the Leopold Center’s Marketing and Food Systems Initiative and the ISU’s Office of Biorenewables Programs.
Although many people question whether an international corporation can truly become sustainable, Waage says such efforts can create “breathing room” for smaller companies that are seeking to operate in a more sustainable manner. She said she learned this lesson while working with on sustainable forestry concerns issues in the Northwest before joining The Natural Step. The only local lumber mill was not interested in doing business with people who were involved with sustainability issues in general and, in particular, not with the growers that had any association with the Forestry Stewardship Council.
“It became very clear to me that not engaging large companies in a discussion of sustainability ‘deprived the oxygen’ that smaller, place-based sustainable companies need to survive,” Waage said.
After Natural Step worked with McDonald’s in Sweden, restaurants began to offer organic milk and beef. “It enabled some farmers who were never able to sell to McDonald’s to do business with them,” Waage said.
The Natural Step also has worked with the Home Depot. The company is now the largest U.S. retailer of sustainably harvested lumber certified by the Forestry Stewardship Council. Although it represents less than 10 percent of the company’s total sales, it is a step in the right direction, she said.
”The United States lags behind other countries in seeing the global perspectives of sustainability,” Waage said, adding that a growing number of companies in other nations are looking at the entire life cycle of their products. ”As a co-worker from the United Kingdom has said, ”It’s like the World Series without the world.’”
The Natural Step was founded in 1989 by Swedish oncologist Karl-Henrik Robért, who had been working with 50 scientists to find a common scientific understanding of sustainability. The principles help businesses see themselves as part of a global ecosystem that is affected by social and economic issues as well as environmental issues.
More details are in Wagge’s new book, Ants, Galileo and Gandhi: Designing the Future of Business Through Nature, Genius and Compassion (Greenleaf Publications, 2003)
Back to Winter 2003 Leopold Letter
Published by the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture
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URL: www.leopold.iastate.edu