Sustainable Outreach

Sustainability Awareness Grows

You can’t go a few hours any day of the week without reading or hearing another sustainability story that is based on one or all of the 17 Sustainability Development Goals. Businesses – small and large – can benefit from sustainability. You can help humanity and grow your business.

Wall Street Going Green

The corporate world is adopting green. Visit Goldman Sachs’ website and you’ll immediately spot this new direction.

You’ll be met with a background of lush greenery, along with a banner headline: “Our Commitment to Sustainable Finance.”

Goldman Sachs Group recently announced a $750 billion, 10-year initiative in nine areas such as clean energy, affordable education and accessible healthcare, and overhauled lending policies to exclude ventures like new Arctic drilling.

The multi-billion dollar commitment is earmarked for investing in, financing and advising companies that are pursuing sustainable goals like taking steps to reduce carbon emissions. Behind Goldman Sachs’ efforts is essentially one guy, John Goldstein - regarded as the “Forrest Gump” of the field, since he keeps popping up at key moments - who sold his firm, Impact Capital Advisors, to Goldman in 2015.

“Large companies are pushing sustainability up and down their supply chains. Governments are getting more active and engaged. You’re seeing it everywhere,” said Goldstein, now head of the firm’s Sustainable Finance Group, which was formed last July. “You can see and feel the acceleration going on.”

Goldman Sachs is hardly alone when it comes to big financial institutions buying into sustainability in a serious way.

Globally, sustainable and impact investing has skyrocketed to $12 trillion as of 2018, a 38% increase in two years, according to the US SIF Foundation.

Wegmans

Wegmans Food Markets plans to eliminate single-use plastic bags from all of its 47 New York stores on January 27.

Rochester, NY-based supermarket said that the decision follows a pilot launched in July in which the plastic bags were removed at two stores in Corning and Ithaca, NY. The retailer noted that it’s phasing out the bags ahead of a New York state ban that goes into effect on March 1.

“We learned a lot from the pilot that will help ensure a smooth transition out of plastic bags in the rest of our New York stores for our customers and employees,” Jason Wadsworth, packaging and sustainability manager at Wegmans, said in a statement.

Wegmans said since introducing reusable bags in 2007, the company has focused on educating customers about their benefits, notably extra convenience. A recent companywide survey found that 95% of Wegmans shoppers already own at least one reusable bag, and 87% have three or more. Among regular reusable bag customers, the top three reasons for choosing them over single-use bags — beyond the environmental benefits — were sturdiness, handles and ease of packing, the retailer said.

Perdue Farms

What to do with plastic packaging? Perdue Farms will start packaging some of its meat products in a more earth-friendly way with compostable foam made of cornstarch that disintegrates under running water, reported Parija Kavilanz of CNN Business.

The company said the new packaging is part of its commitment to a 30% reduction by 2022 in greenhouse gas emissions per pound of its product. The Salisbury, MD, family-owned business, which turns 100 years old in 2020, is one of the largest chicken, turkey, beef and pork processing firms in the United States.

“We’ve had significant conversations at the company in the past year about our sustainability efforts and what more we can do to reduce the impact on the environment,” said David Zucker, senior vice president of e-commerce and new ventures.

The new compostable foam is regarded as a sustainable solution: Even if people have concerns with pouring cornstarch down their drains, the foam will dissolve in a landfill. It will at first be available only to customers who buy online, but Perdue said it is exploring ways to continue to make its packaging across the whole business more sustainable.

All of the shipping packaging for the online orders will be recyclable or compostable, said Steve Levitsky, Perdue Farms' vice president of sustainability. The meat to be shipped is encased in a recyclable box and a foam cooler made from water-soluble cornstarch, which can be composted or disintegrated when mixed with water. Levitsky said some of the plastic wrap on the meat is also recyclable but first needs to be thoroughly washed and sanitized.

Going forward, Perdue Farms indicated that it aims to make all of its packaging recyclable.

Tourism

Society regulates safety, smoking, drinking and other activities. So how about tourism and sustainability. A couple of years ago, the United Nations coined the phrase ecological tourism.

Justin Francis, co-founder and CEO of Responsible Travel, probably raised a lot of eyebrows with such a suggestion in an In The Big Chair interview on PhocusWire. Francis called for regulation in the tourism sector.

PhocusWire wrote: “It is perhaps a far too Utopian point of view to suggest that regulation in travel, tourism and hospitality needs to expand massively to meet the biggest challenge the industry will ever face.

“We are now at the point where leaders in every corner of the sector need to collectively think about the future of their businesses - and their ability to serve their customers and maintain the fabric of the industry - from the perspective of sustainability.

“It wouldn't be unfair to say that if the industry put as much effort into regulating for sustainability as it did for security and safety, then it would at least be going some way to tackling many of the areas where it currently falls short.”

Strong Sustainability Culture

In order to integrate sustainability into the core of a business, it has to be a part of the company’s culture. For this to happen, a top leader must be willing and ready to go first and evolve, according to leadership advisor Sandja Brügmann. In other words, he or she must become a thought leader in this category, as I have written.

Indeed, if sustainability is part of a business, part of its bottom line mentality, then it is easier to foster and expand.

Brügmann has worked with sustainability, values-driven business and purpose for 18 years; and is the founder of The Passion Institute, which focuses on leadership development and sustainable business strategy. In January 2019, she launched the Sustainable Leadership Network.

According to Brügmann, leaders cannot successfully pursue sustainability if they don’t also work with a deeper consciousness regarding their underlying motivations.

“Think about the company as a tree, where the tree top is all that is visible in the form of KPIs, products and business strategy. At the trunk and below is the non-physical — our values, our feelings and our subconscious beliefs and actions — which are at risk of tripping us up; and at the root is where we find purpose and a deeper meaning that lies beyond the financial aspect,” Brügmann said.

“To solve the climate emergency, we must collaborate internally within organizations and on a global scale. As the business world functions currently, most leaders exhibit linear thinking in short-term KPIs and returns, but this thinking will never solve the climate emergency,” he observed.

“As a person or as a company, we usually only develop when something hurts and is so difficult that we need to change. Currently, a climate emergency related to sustainability is the most urgent change agenda in the world, because it is threatening the resources we all are dependent on. All of our money and our KPIs are worthless and pointless if the earth is destroyed,” he continued.

Brügmann views the 17 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations as the North Star, guiding humanity toward a desirable way to think and act. “In my eyes, the business world has the deciding role to play if we are to succeed to live, consume and act within the planetary boundaries,” he added.

Brügmann’s 5 Ways to a Strong Sustainability & Purpose Culture

1. Move from being change-ready to change-driven

2. Become conscious of your own values and purpose

3. Empower and uplift each other

4. Sustainability is contingent on psychological development processes

5. A strong sustainability culture requires transparency and honesty

Footwear

Fabrizio Gamberini, who took over as global chief brand officer and president of footwear manufacturer Vibram, in October 2018, is reshaping the company’s future, which includes entries into new product categories and bolstered sustainability efforts, according to Footwear News.

How would you assess the outdoor industry’s attention to sustainable design?

Gamberini: “Sustainability, for everybody, is one of the top three strategic elements for the next three to five years. Within that time, we’re going to find [the industry aligned] on the most important pieces [in sustainability]. Those are waste, the consumption of water and sustainable energy. It’s also product that will break down in 20 years, it will step-by-step dissolve.”

What is the biggest issue concerning sustainability?

Gamberini: “There are chemicals still being used that are not in a sustainable format usable for the future. Overall, the approach is in the early stages. There are some making more noise but all of us, including ourselves, have quite a bit of path in front of us to become sustainable. We all have different ideas and are approaching it from different angles.”

Sustainability is the backbone of the outdoor industry. How effective is the market at promoting eco-friendly efforts?

Gamberini: “Most companies are still not talking about sustainability as they could or as they should. Learning how and what to communicate, and standardizing the format of communication is important. There are lots of different certifications, there are many different ways to talk about sustainability, but there’s not a standard format that looks after things like water or petroleum or energy. The quicker we can get to a standardized language the better it will be for everybody.”

Plastic Packaging

In a dramatic move, the European Union recently voted to declare a climate emergency, reported CSO (Chief Sustainability Officer) magazine. This is considered a significant turning point, reflecting the rapid escalation of the climate crisis despite efforts to reduce damage to the environment. Indeed, while there are many factors influencing climate change, plastic pollution has become the ubiquitous symbol of the degradation of our natural environment and has brought the need for sustainable packaging to the front of public consciousness. 

Packaging serves many purposes: protecting content during transport and storage, promoting content to the customer, preserving content to lengthen lifespan and reduce waste.  So, how do you decide what is more important in the climate crisis? The need to minimize food waste, make fragile products such as medicines more accessible to people in remote places, or the need to reduce packaging to eliminate waste and CO2 emissions used when manufacturing packaging itself? 

Answer and ideas abound.

One company observed that it believes paper should be used wherever possible, and plastic only when useful. It continued: There is no doubt that plastic has an important role to play, for example, for medical applications and preventing food waste and associated resource loss (which is a significant contributor to climate change); where possible, using paper is preferable as it’s a renewable raw material that can be responsibly sourced and widely recycled.

As for fiber-based packing, the magazine said there is a widespread misconception about its usage that is driving deforestation and contributing to wider environmental problems. However, responsibly managed forests protect trees by giving them a value so that the land is not deforested to make way for other uses. Working forests actually play a critical role in ensuring the long-term health of our planet. Managed responsibly, forests producing fiber-based products can be part of the solution to the global climate crisis.

Chief Sustainability Officer noted in conclusion that the company in question, Mondi, at a time when the world is scrambling to reduce global waste, both paper and plastic packaging are necessary: one can’t wholly replace the other as they each have distinct advantages and uses. Mondi’s focus is on being sustainable by design, moving away from only thinking about materials to a broad approach of sustainable systems and circular economies.