What Small Business Doesn't Know about Sustainability

The concepts of social responsibility, business sustainability and living a sustainable lifestyle have been around for a long time. However, these conversations have traditionally been between a smaller set of social and business practitioners. Today, we are all exploring sustainability as an engrained part of our lives.

At the 1972 United Nations Conference in Sweden, the modern day principles of sustainability were introduced. Over the last 35 years, these modern sustainability concepts have gradually made their way into daily living and the business world. Today, in many larger organizations, business sustainability has already moved from just a nice to have concept to a real topic of discussion in board rooms around the world. It continues to expand past traditional thinking of it being a costly add-on to now an integral part of business profitability.

However, despite the sudden surge in global eco awareness, we find the exploration of sustainability concepts, particularly in small business, is still largely in reaction to an undesirable outcome rather than a pursued business gain. Combined with recent economic challenges, sustainable business strategies have been ignored or put on the back burner awaiting direction from larger companies- specifically supply chains, pending legislation, or other drivers.

What these organizations don't know is that small businesses are specifically poised to benefit from sustainability strategies. Those subscribing to a sustainability plan are realizing that small businesses can save money, increase sales, and improve brand value by implementing social and environmental business sustainability practices. Why? Small businesses are characterized as having:

Greater flexibility to respond to market changes.
Reduced decision chains to accelerate approvals and business action.
Closer relations with business stakeholders to capture feedback and address concerns.
Greater speed to transform business sustainability resistance into corporate action.

Our business sustainability consulting experience has shown that each business has its own focus and value drivers, which give a company a unique view of sustainability. Our sustainability consulting practice works with clients to build a focused business sustainability plan and sustainability concepts into a company’s long-range business objectives. We work with business leaders, work groups, and stakeholders to recognize the importance of business sustainability as a critical value component of company growth and success.