Businesses Are Approaching Sustainability But Will It Bring Any Change

To understand how businesses can become more sustainable, one must first understand the idea of sustainability. To be sustainable, one must consider current demands without depleting or damaging resources for future generations. The concept of sustainability is based on three pillars: economic, environmental, and social, with green profit, disposition, and people serving as the central pillar. As we all know, the planet's resources are limited, and no one can consume them all on their own. As a result, more and more businesses are adopting greener resolutions and making environmentally friendly decisions, such as reducing non-biodegradable waste and investing in renewable energy, to help them become "sustainable" in today's competitive world without compromising their business goals, profits, or bottom line.It is hence important for companies to come forward to join hand in hand with other companies that support causes for a greener planet. 

Approaching Sustainability

Although becoming sustainable might sound very encouraging, it is no less than a challenge in the era of consumerism. However, moving towards sustainability is far from easy for some companies. By setting a long-term goal of reduction in energy consumption, companies are trying to justify their ambition for greener resolution but in the long term, it is of hardly any use. Many companies are offshore production in order to obtain a cheaper supply of labor with lower wages, according to reports. This method may result in lower expenditure, but it puts those working in the field in more danger of security. A shocking incident of offshoring going wrong is the crash of Savor Factory in Bangladesh in 2013, where reportedly 1100 people died.  Another example of sustainability going wrong is supposed if a factory disposes of its chemical waste in a nearby water body to cut down the cost of waste disposal, they are in reality, causing long-term damages to the environment in one way or the other.

Reality Of Businesses

Many companies, especially clothing lines, cosmetic companies, and restaurants have promised to reduce their carbon footprint, stop animal testing, and animal trade, and plastic consumption, but at the end of the day, a lot of these promises and policies are tested on grounds of how transparent the companies are in actually keeping up to the standards of sustainable business or others just make these promises to avoid customer backlash. 

Going by the trend now, a survey shows that 88% of students in business schools now want to learn the social and environmental effects of the business industry in the real world, and 67% of students are ready to incorporate the concept of sustainability in their business models. As a result in order to meet the demand of such students, there has been a record-breaking addition of 79% courses dedicated to environmental studies in the year 2011 which stood at 34% in the year 2001. Not only this, there has been an addition of 49% courses dedicated to sustainability among the top 100 U.S. colleges and universities that teach MBA.

By knowing such positive outcomes of the sustainability concept at length, one might think that all shall be well, but given the declining forest areas, climate change, rising water levels, and species extinction, a lot is to be done that too at a faster rate.

In modern times, there are two things to be kept in mind, to reduce unsustainability, and the second is to propagate sustainable ideology. The first agenda shall attend to the symptoms while the second attends to the causes. The first category of outlook towards the business model shall help many people get a job and the second shall help companies to leave behind an economic and environmentally friendly planet. 

Changing the way businesses are done can help create a difference as it is one of the key ways to stop environmental degradation. The market as one sees it is one of the most powerful institutions on the planet that can bring about a change in the way of the world. Businesses are not limited to a few states or countries; they are spread worldwide and have a global appeal. Companies and other large scale industries are responsible for providing us with all things we need at hand, be it building houses, growing food and animal industry, pharmaceutical industry and whatnot, there is business industry almost everywhere and they must understand their responsibility to undertake such action which might damage the planet and work on steps to stop climate change from changing the weather pattern throughout the world, to stop the carbon emissions and plastic pollution.  To help achieve all of these goals, world leaders, governments, and business organisations are focusing on long-term growth.

Shifting to a sustainable business model entails entering a new market, which may include a change in investors, raw materials, suppliers, and customers. This involves changing the business language, which includes working in different operations, operational efficiency, waste management, capital investment, and market growth, to name a few.

While achieving goals in a sustainable manner may seem difficult, it is the need of the hour, and this demand should be respected by global leaders and businesses in order to leave a world that is "livable" for future generations.