Sustainability: business, life, environment

Businesses around the world are feeling the pressures of rising energy costs, the future price of carbon, and the growing scarcity of clean water.  While business risks and costs are driving many behavior changes, leading businesses are exploring sustainability concepts to identify opportunities.  Many companies are addressing these risks by exploring the value aspects of business sustainability.

According to a McKinsey report, ‘Charting our Water Future’ , the increasing demand for water resources is a growing business risk, a major economic threat, and a challenge for the sustainability of communities.  However, there are measures that can be implemented to close the gap between water supply and demand.  The report defined three strategies to address water shortages:

•    Increase Supply: only a viable when water is in abundance.

•    Increase Productivity of Water Use: a more attractive alternative is to produce more with the same consumption.

•    Reduce Demand through a Change in Water-Using Activities: the final and most sustainable path of action is to create innovative alternatives that consume less.

Our sustainability consulting practice finds many companies focusing on these opportunities to address consumption and are already coming up with innovative business sustainability strategies to address and manage water usage.   At a recent workshop, a business sustainability representative from Herman Miller described how their organization is recycling ‘grey’ water for some of their product manufacturing processes.

The implementation of innovative solution, such as those at Herman Miller, can improve processes efficiencies and create sustainability alignment within the organization.  In our sustainability consulting practice, we work with companies who are moving past economic value of water savings to sustainable water efficiency management.
 
Taiga Company offers professional consulting and small business resources to companies implementing business sustainability strategies designed to drive operational and business efficiencies.