Sustainability | Four Steps To Improving Profits Through Sustainability
In practice, however, this perspective is shortsighted and wrong. The world faces shortages of resources of all kinds. When the cost of oil or water or electric power rises, the company that uses resources most effectively will have an advantage. When a company monitors how its partners do business it can avoid costly damage to its brand from exposure of embarrassing or unlawful business practices.
It is true that government regulation is punishing inefficiency and rewarding higher performance in specific use of resources through cap and trade measures for carbon and other regulations. It is also true that it costs real money to comply with regulations. But now imagine all regulations were rescinded. Which companies are going to be the winners? The ones with the least efficient operations that emit the most carbon, use the most water, and consume the most electric power? The ones who value short term monetary gains over brand reputation?
Making operations sustainable is just another lens for creating a better company. The motivation should not only come from regulators but should also from the desire to make your company as efficient, productive, profitable, ethical, and admirable as it can be.
Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric , is famous for pointing out that making your business sustainable is a requirement for a modern company. "If I'm running a business, I want to be sure I'm green as can be," Welch said in an interview with Fresh Dialogues . "Design products with a smaller carbon footprint; engage your employees in green activities...make everybody feel you're in. There's no percentage in being against it."
At the recent Data Center Dynamics Conference two weeks ago, Mark Monroe, who is the executive director of TheGreenGrid.org, an IT industry and end-user consortium focused on resource efficient data centers and business computing environments, said "Companies who are more efficient on a carbon basis are also more efficient on an economic basis as well."