Walking into a supermarket, you look to buy your snack of choice from a well-known, mass-produced brand. You excitedly approach the food aisle, searching for that familiar name and logo amidst a row of obscure ones. As you walk closer, another snack item catches your eye. In bold lettering, the words “recycled packaging” and “sustainably-produced” jump out. This catches your attention, and you begin to rethink where your brand loyalties lie.
In a sea of mass consumerism, a burgeoning tide of sustainably-produced goods is offered by forward-thinking entrepreneurs who seek not only to gain profit, but also to enact positive social and environmental change.
A guiding principle
For the average consumer, the rise in products which tout sustainability raises two important questions: What does it mean to be sustainable, and how do businesses enact this concept in a concrete manner?
According to Julio Miguel P. Azurin, an entrepreneur and lecturer at the Leadership and Strategy Department, sustainability is “maximizing your resources to be able to do more […] or being able to do more with less.”
Azurin argues that sustainability should be integrated in all aspects of the business. “It has to be an important part of discussions on a strategic level. Whether it’s the surface-level stuff, all the way to your whole value chain, you should see each aspect and ask how you can make it more sustainable.” He emphasizes the role of business leaders in this process, who ought to be the “drivers” of sustainability.
The Ateneo recognizes this need to innovate business technologies, processes, models, and products. In 2016, the elective “Creative Problem Solving for Sustainability Management” was introduced for students minoring in sustainability and was later opened to others as well.
Its goal is to “use mixed perspectives in finding solutions to challenges in environmental sustainability and highlight the importance of systems and the need to think beyond limits of disciplines.” Recent efforts to conduct business sustainably can be partly attributed to increased consumer consciousness.
Ma. Assunta C. Cuyegkeng, PhD, who teaches the elective, says that developed markets respond particularly well to “green” or “organic” marketing. She says that most businesses in developed countries talk in this language, but is less pronounced in the Philippines as many businesses follow more traditional models concerned with financial sustainability.
Nevertheless, Azurin argues that it is important to have local discussions about the social impact of sustainability with both business leaders and management students. “I want compassion to be the foundation of [my students’] leadership style—to look at impact, to see how your business affects other people in whatever scale and capacity.”
People and planet
Sustainability defined by businesses has changed over time. Cuyegkeng says that before, “corporate sustainability really focused simply on financial […] and operational reliability of a business,” or whether or not a business was still profitable.
Later on, corporate social responsibility (CSR), or the giving back to the society and environment of which a corporation’s resources originate, was brought about. However, CSR has been criticized for being too vague in definition, and thus companies would do social acts simply to maintain a good image with little action. It is associated more as an obligation rather than a goal for a company.
Cuyegkeng explains that nowadays, especially in the global arena, businesses talk about the people-profit-planet model of sustainability, which means that they do not only take profit into consideration, but also the environment and people affected by their processes and waste products. “So the idea now is, if we are serious about [sustainability], then businesses have to think about their sustainability in the context of ‘Will I still have resources in the future?’” she says.
Being financially oriented does not necessarily mean a company cannot be sustainable. “Every business should produce things more cheaply, but not at the cost of quality,” says Cuyegkeng. She explains that the main goal for a good sustainable business is efficiency. “Efficiency means you use as little resources as possible, thus you produce as little waste as possible. That is one aspect of sustainability,” she says.
Azurin, who is also chief executive officer of marketing agency Huskee Digital, rejects the idea that revenue should be the only concern. “A lot of people who are running businesses don’t see the bigger impact. They just think of cutting cost [and] maximizing revenue—which is wrong in a certain sense.”
Thus, sustainability should not be just a single, isolated act to make consumers or business leaders feel good about themselves. Azurin argues that all businesses—even digitally-based ones such as his agency—should strive to embody sustainability as a guiding principle. “It should be like common sense. It shouldn’t be anything special […], but business-as-usual,” he explains.
Moving forward
Of course, sustainability cannot be enacted overnight as an overarching policy, especially in larger corporations. To begin with, Azurin encourages businesses to take small steps, such as the digitization of business processes in order to save paper. “Sometimes I will have to print—if it’s for a client and we have to sign it—but for the most part, if I don’t need to print it, then I won’t.”
A business’ shift towards sustainability not only affects the company and customers, but also the communities and environment. One example is Nuvali, an Ayala residential and commerce area, which does not only aim for an eco-friendly society, but a healthy one as well. Here, biking, running, and other lifestyle habits are encouraged.
The evolving world forces businesses to think in terms of long term goals. Cuyegkeng talks of “circular economy,” where waste products, like batteries or gadgets, are recycled back into the manufacturing system to be sold again later. Technological company Intel practices this by recovering old metals and putting them back into their production system to reuse.
However, there are cases where parts of a company’s operations are more eco-friendly, yet their overall process cannot be counted as sustainable. Fashion brand H&M exercises this by recycling unwanted clothes to new ones, yet they have burned the unsellable, defective items. The company has also been scored for the deplorable state of their factory workers in developing countries such as Cambodia and India.
Even when a product is made of eco-friendly material, if the processes do not take the environment and society in mind, it is not sustainable. “When you talk about sustainable development […] it’s really all the aspects,” says Cuyegkeng.
Nevertheless, these movements suggest that sustainability, in terms of society and environment, is becoming the end goal for all businesses. With better long term effects on the participating and surrounding communities and environment, the sustainable development thinking can also make for better moral compass. “If your solution is really good, the money will follow,” says Azurin. “That shift in your mindset makes a difference. It takes away the greed and puts a lot of the compassion back.”
There may be hesitation to support sustainable businesses on the part of the consumer due to the connotation that products produced by them will be priced higher. Cuyegkeng debunks this, saying that “many of these sustainable businesses know how to price their stuff, because they still have to make profit.” Furthermore, the greater damage that unsustainable processes can leave in the future needs to be taken into perspective. “This is the future of everyone,” she says. “And if you can’t see that, well I guess, it’s society’s problem.”
As the larger scale enterprises call for change in their processes and operations, there is also a part to play by the smaller businesses, the aspiring entrepreneurs, and the consumers.
“If we want to enact change, it starts first with the people who think that it is possible. It starts with people who can say that this is wrong and that we have to change it, ” says Azurin.
There are businesses which develop programs for a green and healthy environment and society whilst earning profit. But a sustainable business must follow through on these concerns on all aspects in their operations, mission, and vision.
