Trends to watch in sustainability

Welcome to BSL's news and updates on sustainable business. 

Everyone affects the sustainability of the marketplace and the planet in some way. The reason we created a blog dedicated to the topic of building sustainable business, is that BSL wishes to support students, sponsors and relations as much as possible to make the future sustainable. A sustainable business can create value for customers, investors, and the environment. A sustainable business meets customer needs while, at the same time, treating the environment well.

According to wikipedia, a sustainable business is an enterprise that has no negative impact on the global or local environment, community, society, or economy—a business that strives to meet the "triple bottom line"  of benefiting people and the planet, not just going for profit. 

Often, sustainable businesses have progressive environmental and human rights policies. In general, a business is described as "green" (more than just sustainable) if it matches the following four criteria:
    1.    It incorporates principles of sustainability into each of its business decisions.
    2.    It supplies environmentally friendly products or services that replaces demand for nongreen products and/or services.
    3.    It is greener than traditional competition.
    4.    It has made an enduring commitment to environmental principles in its business operations.

Building a sustainable business involves a process of assessing how to design products that will take advantage of the current environmental situation and how well a company’s products perform with renewable resources. Sustainable businesses with a supply chain try to hit the triple-bottom line by using sustainable development and sustainable distribution to impact the environment, business growth, and the society.

Over the past years, a few pioneers have led the way in the design of sustainable business. 

One of the most important companies to know about in this arena is MBDC (McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry, LLC), a global consultancy helping clients create a positive footprint on the planet by implementing the so-called Cradle to Cradle® framework. This framework has been formalised as an internationally acclaimed Cradle to Cradle sustainability certification for business, which shows the global industry’s deepening commitment to re-think and re-design products and processes for human health, environmental health and recyclability. MBDC’s international client base includes companies in Spain, Germany, Italy and Japan, Chinese urban developers, and clients like Nestle Waters North America, Method Products, Kiehl’s Since 1851, Aveda Corporation and Van Houtum Papier BV.

Last year, MBDC certified more than 100 products, bringing the total number of products certified to more 300 since the program launched in late 2005. Lauded by governments and industry around the world, more and more companies are going for Gold-level certification, Cradle to Cradle’s second highest level of achievement, which implies that product manufacturers have eliminated chemicals assessed by MBDC to be a high hazard to human and environmental health, and final assembly processes are powered by 50 percent renewable energy. 

“Over the past year, we’ve noticed more companies coming to MBDC because they see an opportunity to be recognized as leaders in sustainability from governments and NGOs, but also by consumers,” said Jay Bolus, VP of Technical Operations at MBDC. “Even in challenging economic times, sustainability is becoming more central to their way of doing business, and they’re willing to put in the work.” 

An organization pursuing sustainability as a growth opportunity engenders a focus on enhancing benefits (not only reducing costs) through its decision-making and actions -- taking an approach of optimization rather than minimization. The organization can understand the perspective of “people, planet and profit," as expansionist and enabling leadership through the achievement of advanced success metrics. For example, the concept of ‘good design’ of products and services should move beyond typical measures of quality -- cost, performance and aesthetics -- to integrate and apply additional objectives addressing the environment and social responsibility.

Co-founder of MBCD, the reknowned architect William McDonough, was named by Vanity Fair magazine as one of the Top 100 Influential People in 2010, and named by Design Intelligence the No. 1 “role model” for sustainability in the world. McDonough has crusaded since the 1970s with an uncompromising environmental credo—he believes in re-using just about everything—and has inspired some of the highest-profile green projects of our time, including his big cool buddy Brad Pitt’s Make It Right houses in New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward.

He developed the Cradle to Cradle® framework to move beyond the traditional goal of reducing the negative impacts of commerce (‘eco-efficiency’), to a new paradigm of increasing its positive impacts (‘eco-effectiveness’). MBDC has developed a white paper that compares the approach of eco-efficiency (or minimization) and a more comprehensive, sustaining approach that integrates eco-efficiency within the larger eco-effective goal of optimization.