Why Our Communities Need Business to Drive Our National Sustainability Agenda

Sustainability in 2024 - do better, business

I don’t think there’s a topic I can be more outspoken about, than sustainability in it’s truest form. Firstly, you’re probably using the word wrong, so lets get specific about what we should be talking about:

Sustainable:  Designating forms of human activity (esp. of an economic nature) in which environmental degradation is minimized, esp. by avoiding the long-term depletion of natural resources; of or relating to activity of this type. [OED]

For activities to be sustainable, they really need to be self regenerating.

This is not the same as recyclable, or even compostable.

It is not enough for packaging or waste to be ‘recyclable’ if we continue to use virgin product in our production process - this isn’t circular.

If the product is recyclable, we’re investing in ensuring post-consumer waste comes back to us, and we have a plan on how to repurpose those materials in a truly useful way… well now we’re talking sustainability.

Secondly, I feel aggrieved by the state of our sustainability discourse, because it is filled with so much nonsense. Take apparel - ‘made from recycled water bottles’.

Right.

So we’ve taken a circular plastic product that can be recycled into itself, woven it into a polyester fibre which at the end of its life… goes to landfill, as we don’t have a way of reusing it. (Source).

It’s greenwashing of the highest order, but I also believe that the teams who started this truly thought they were doing their best.

The nature of the sustainability race, is that it is incumbent upon us to be cynics who ask hard questions of our partners.

Business owners need to do better, and sustainability starts at home. It starts by completely ignoring anything about ‘Net’ Zero. Planting trees does not reverse the destruction of finite resources. It’s greenwashing, and if you really stop and think about it, you didn’t need me to tell you that. 

So, here is what we can do instead, to have an immediate impact on our environment:

• Check you’re using green energy suppliers, and move if you’re not.

• Schedule meetings with your suppliers to talk about their sourcing of recycled materials and how existing product can be brought back into your eco-system for repurposing. 

• Remove all plastic packaging from your supply chain, but also ensure no one is delivering materials into you in plastic you need to then dispose of safely. 

• Source locally: minimise the impact of international freight, and avoid anything air freighted - use sea if you need to bring in raw materials. 

• Leverage marketplaces - because, the distribution impact is so much lower for consumers than ordering from multiple brands.

• Finally, if you’re sourcing a recycled product, really, really make sure its ‘post-consumer’ waste - something thats already been used and reached the end of its first life. 

And finally, and this one is the most important - ensure anyone who says ‘its the consumer’s choice’ is banished to Mars.

It is not, and will never be, the job of the end consumer to be experts in the supply chain of the businesses they buy from. It is not their job to source product that doesn’t cause mass environmental destruction - it’s our job not to source it in the first place.