Saturday, March 23, 2013

The five key actions of the sustainability-promoting firm

(From the archive - not sure of source but worth putting out there for discussion?)
If society is to achieve sustainability (ecological, social and economic) then there will need to be a proliferation of sustainability promoting firms. To date, most firms, when they become active on the environment, aim to reduce their own negative impacts. But even if every firm adopted this approach, society would not be able to achieve sustainability - because the firms' actions would be focused solely on existing production processes and existing products thereby loving in an inadequate (even though improved) status quo.
Sustainability-promoting firms, on the other aim to help society to become sustainable. This change of focus moves sustainability-promoting firms into a new management paradigm.
At a minimum, sustainability-promoting firms will need to taker the following give key actions. They will need to:
The 5 key actions.
1. Publicly declare their commitment to bring a sustainability-promoting firm.
2. Strive to ensure that their entire product range helps society to achieve sustainability.
3. Take action to help the economy (locally and globally) to reach a condition of 'sustainability take-off'
4. Press governments to taker action to favour the achievement of sustainability.
5. Make sure their actions match the scale and peace of change needed if society is to achieve sustainability.
There are six additional actions that sustainability-promoting firms should take if they want to magnify their effectiveness. The firms should:
* Customer service. ensure that when products (including services) and production processes are developed or modified to meet the needs of the active users that they are also designed to serve the needs of the local community, people globally, future generations and nature.
* Management. implement an environmental management system that enables the organisation to help society achieve sustainability in a timely fashion, for example, through the use of leap -frog pioneering strategies
* Market. take action to maximise the market for products that contribute to sustainability and as far as possible favour the servicing of other firms and final users that are making a positive contribution to the achievement of sustainability.
* Operations. change the way activities are carried out or the way production is undertaken- to foster sustainability
* Proliferation. promote the spread of the sustainability-promoting approach generally: through the private, public and community sectors and up and down the supply chain.* Cooperation. cooperate with other sustainability-promoting organisations. 
If sustainability-promoting firms proliferate, then the chance of achieving sustainability will switch from"vanishingly small" to"virtually certain".

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