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Making Sustainability Competitive and Profitable, Ryan and Adam
ATTENDANCE:
A.W.: What is Sustainability?
How do we capture the externalities?
- Ryan: Environmental Defense Fund
- Jaynna
- Meg
- Carrie
- Brooke; RecycleMatch
- Dennis Milligan: US Business Council for Sustainable Development
- Roberta: Stubb’s
- Adam: Texas Business Group
- A.W.:
- Education is no longer as important: consumers are at the point that they want to be green all else being equal (key point)
- So this means that consumers aren’t really interested in being green? That’s not true. Customers just can’t necessarily pay a premium for it. It’s our jobs as suppliers to give them products that aren’t at a premium.
- What do we mean by when we use the word sustainable/sustainability?
- We're jumping to the supply chain. But it has to start at home, within our organizations. So how do we define sustainability within our companies? Since there is no common definition we should define it for ourselves and then we have our objectives.
A.W.: What is Sustainability?
- The ability for life to continue on. That's what it boils down to. Each person has a contribution to that.
- Providing for your own growth. Look at your own personal J-curve, it's looking at that and being able to be at that same level. It's like retiring. Ex. Ensuring you have enough water for population growth in Austin.
- Affecting as little as possible.
- I disagree that it's affecting as little as possible. More clarification?
- Making decisions with the prosperity of future generations. "Providing needs now without compromising the needs of future generations"- classical definition. "If we are a 100 yr old chemical company today, 100 years from now we want to be a 200 year old chemical company"
- How to exist and to be prosperous.
- Well if you're losing money but having a positive impact on the environment/society then that won't work. Likewise making the money, helping the environment but harming society. The balance between economics, environment and society.
- J: Once we all become sustainability it's not longer a competitive edge.
- A.W. You're saying the sustainability is the end goal. My goal is continual improvement- their is never an end game.
- Meg: Sustainability is like the foundation.
- Roberta: Ex. Whole foods buying more wind energy credits than anyone else- marketing. Sustainability is a journey though eventually it will become a norm. Ex. Food safety in the meat packing industry. (The Jungle) My goal is that eventually it's regulated, the norm, you don't have to worry about competitive advantage. Until then you need an incentive.
- Brooke: Businesses and consumers are becoming more aware. It feels like we're at the point where it's not just about marketing green but becoming operational. And maybe Cap and Trade will perhaps accelerate the process.
- Meg: I came from a nano-tech background. Unless you can prove the ROI on the change they are not going to do it. They don't want to do it then. Leads to the questions: What is it going to take to make this change? Where is the incentive coming from? And what's they do make the shift, how do you help push the return? The cynical reality.
- J: Are we working forward on the basis that the only think that is preventing it from being competitive is the profit? For ex. Marketing. Do we have to still convince people? There are a lot of people in America that don't get the point of green/organic products if not hostile to it. I think educating consumers is still a big part. We are used to being around likeminded people. We can't assume that just because they can't afford it that they want it.
- B: You're right. There is a group in Houston that is reaching out to educate people on health eating etc.
In terms of Costs: - J: Cost of just raw products is the biggest hinderance?
- B: It's not an open market place. If the companies paying to landfill materials would pay to do something different can lower their cost. The companies looking for resources also could get paid to take those raw materials and use a little innovation to use it. This is the idea to open it up as a marketplace and to get people to connect.
- Roberta: On the natural resource side I think it's about being the loudest voice sometimes.
- Dennis: At Dell Chemical Company we had 3 goals: Eliminate threats. Improve our energy efficiency. Better utilization of raw materials. These are the three ways we tackled our sustainability goals. We had all these very aggresive goals that we thought would break even. We spent about a billion dollars achieving our goals. The gains we got on a per year basis were 5 billion dollars a year- and they are still making that. Eliminating products was the most important-- eliminating pollutants that could be an issues from safety or policy restriction.
- Roberta: You should audit what you do. Maybe we need some kind of sustainability audit for every business that manufactuerers/operates in the U.S. Would help establish a standards with metrics. It could just be a self-choice that companies chose to do for marketing/competitive edge.
- Ryan: If you develop this self-auditing report now and then when the government does come around to enforcing such a method at that point you have a huge competitive advantage. It's thinking ahead to where the political world is moving towards. If you look at a global market there is even more potential.
- Meg: You can see direct ROI on doing this. Yes it requires a little bit of effort and cost on the front end. But it saves you money on your costs in the long-term plus factor in the competitive advantage in a global big picture.
- Jaynna: Set the standard of "Why isn't my competitor doing this?"
- Roberta: You make more money being generous than negative/attacking. You would be at the forefront and the leader and your competitor looks bad because they're not being involved.
- Dennis: There are some auditing tools currently available: Dow Joins Sustainability Index & Global Reporting Initiatives
http://www.sustainability-index.com/
http://www.globalreporting.org/Home
How do we capture the externalities?
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, Sep 16 2009, 12:32 PM EDT
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