Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
as sustainable business cannot stop at producing or marketing a few specialized
goods or services - 'it is impossible to be a little bit pregnant'. As Blowfield remarks,
there are different ways of interpreting sustainability strategy. Some companies see
it as about the company itself dealing with a vast array of potential threats to
reputation, brand and market share. Therefore, if a company is suffering from
sourcing its materials from degraded ecosystems, or from sweatshops employing
child workers, then it is best to deal with any possible blowback before it occurs.
Another interpretation sees sustainability become part of how a business actually
does business. PepsiCo's business sells soft drinks but, given the health and obesity
concerns affecting many societies, it also needs to sell soft drinks that are healthy,
too. A company can prosper if it can identify these types of sustainability sweet-
spots (Savitz, 2006). A third interpretation is to posit sustainability and the company
itself as a sustainable change agent - that is, through it product design, procurement,
production, financing, technology, logistics, marketing and training, aiming to and
actually working towards increasing the stock of the planet's stock of natural capital.
This is at least taking the ideas of cradle to cradle, if not degrowth to its corporate
heart. Blowfield writes:
Sustainability issues only begin to have meaning for a company in strategic terms
when they are integrated into high-level strategy. This will normally mean moving
beyond defensive or offensive tactics, and treating sustainability as a factor in
competitive strategy.
Thus sustainability should be synonymous with the three value disciplines of
business strategy theory and practice, namely: operational excellence, customer
intimacy and product leadership.
(2013: 123)
Fair trade
One aspect of creating an honest global market is the development of a fair-trade
system, which in recent years has seen considerable expansion, developing far beyond
coffee and tea, to fresh fruit and other products. The market is currently worth in
the region of US$1.5 billion and is growing, particularly in the UK and US. Many
large supermarket chains are now developing their own fair-trade brands to meet
and nurture this demand, as well as to communicate their own commitment to CSR.
However, when considered as a percentage of total sales, even 'big' sellers like fair-
trade tea still constitute only a small percentage (2 per cent) of the total, and fair-
trade sales as a whole in the UK make up just 0.2 per cent of all grocery sales. There
is an important difference between increasing the commercial profile of a brand and
the aims of the fair-trade movement to impact positively on broader development
goals. However, Mike Gidney, policy director at Traidcraft and chairman of the
Fairtrade Foundation, notes that the influence of fair trade is not easy to quantify.
Consumers are more aware of development issues and frequently factor these into
purchasing decisions. In 2007, Oxfam reported the results of a survey of more than
1,700 UK residents and discovered that although 92 per cent of British consumers
buy their food and drink at major supermarkets, just 11 per cent actually want to
do so. Instead, most preferred to buy directly from farmers (69 per cent), local
independent retailers (54 per cent) or even to grow their own food (47 per cent).
