Seven reasons to take sustainability serious in 2020.

About two years ago I decided to transform my company Edmire into a purposeful company. More specific, I believe that we as a creative team have the skills and expertise, but foremost the passion and ambition, to help businesses transform into sustainable organisations. Most of the larger corporations have tackled the quick wins such as LED lighting, solar panels, optimised routing, hybrid or electric cars for management, hire a CSR manager ...

Edmire's goal is to help companies change at their core by redesigning their product/service offering!

Today, we see the big trend pushing towards sustainable business and even circular economy coming from many different angles. Business as usual is over and change is happening fast. Companies today are struggling to really turn their business into a value adding and essential component of our society, which is logic since there has never been any real pressure to do so. Only a couple of years ago we started to feel the push was coming from consumers.

Many organisations have been working and studying this topic and have created many insights and solutions, which I share here:

Why act now?

1. Politics: the EU member states decided to go forward on the green deal, making Europe a state-of-the-art circular economy.
2. Marketing: according to a Nielsen study, 73% of millennials are willing to pay more for sustainable products
3. Human Resources: your company's future is in the hands of the young people you hire tomorrow, and they are looking for purposeful businesses.
4. Natural resource scarcity. if you don't change what your products are made of, it might get you in trouble finding these materials. Take a look at this visual to see the status of different materials.
5. Business round table: You are not alone, the Business Roundtable defined a Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation signed by 181 CEOs who commit to lead their companies for the benefit of all stakeholders – customers, employees, suppliers, communities and shareholders.
6. Finance: the ECB will rate companies on their sustainable investments to give them access to financial resources, naming it 'Green finance'. It generally refers to the process of taking due account of environmental and social considerations when making investment decisions, leading to increased investment in longer-term and sustainable activities.
7. Cash flow: according to a McKinsey study, a strong ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) proposition can be linked to cash flow in five important ways: (1) facilitating top-line growth, (2) reducing costs, (3) minimizing regulatory and legal interventions, (4) increasing employee productivity, and (5) optimizing investment and capital expenditures

Some actions to consider?

• Join the Bcorp movement: B-corp stands for Benefit Corporation. Using business as a force for good, this community is a group of certified organisations that see business as a means to change. Edmire was certified as a B-Corp earlier this year
• Organise your actions: To be honest, sustainability is one big chaos and I don't believe anyone has a straight forward answer on the whole thing. That's why we favour to organise your actions. The Sustainable Development Goals are a fantastic tool to do so.
• Measure your impact: To make sure you are having positive impact, you need to measure your actions. This is the only way you can grow towards a zero-emission company. B-Lab & the UN have created the SDG Action Manager to track progress on SDG's
• Take responsibility: Everything you make will probably have an end-of-life. Think about how you can take that product back and use it again. This change towards product-service systems is something the Ellen MacArthur Foundation has been working on for a long time, the Circular Economy.

I hope the new year will bring clarity on what actions you will take inside your organisation.

To a challenging 2020.