The short answer – yes, they do.
The long answer – yes, they do, to an extent.
Setting up an eco-friendly work environment with plenty of
recycling facilities and waste disposal directives, for example, will certainly
make the offices and production areas better places to work in, but they won’t
pull a struggling company out of its problems, let’s put it that way.
The thing is, while sustainability can improve a business in
a variety of ways (including helping you make more money, if you’re an
entrepreneur), its impact will always remain limited, as you can only save so
much money with recycling and by employing smart production strategies.
Of course, if the entire shtick of your company is
sustainability itself and helping other companies with it, then you may do
quite well, but then again – this would also mean that you don’t need to employ
any sustainability strategies, because you already have them all
up-and-running, so to speak.
Now, when it comes to companies who are manufacturing
certain products or offering different services, adding sustainability as a
long-term directive and a sort of a side mission can be a great idea for
multiple reasons. That said, if you aim to fully focus on sustainability as
opposed to making money, you may end up worse off then when you took up this
new goal.
When used as an additional touch to your already
well-developed company mission and growth goals, on the other hand,
sustainability can provide a little extra push to speed up the progress toward
the goals you’re striving for.
Here’s how it works in more detail.
Setting a Clear Sustainability-Related Goal
First things first, if you want to make sustainability one
of the side goals of your company, you need to pinpoint what exactly do you
hope to achieve and lay out a plan of action. More often than not, this can be
easier said than done, so hiring the help of a specialized
sustainability-related company such as Sustainable Solutions Global,
for example, that can guide you through this process can be a good idea.
The thing about switching to an eco-friendly and sustainable
mode of operation, so to speak, is more of a marathon than something you can
pull of in a weekend, so you need to arm yourself with patience.
As we already mentioned above, sustainability is a multi-faceted
approach to running a business and it encompasses a new way of treating
your employees, running the production lines, and regarding your environment.
For example, if you produce mayonnaise and the company you
run has set up a bad practice of dumping all of the waste in the nearby canal,
making the life of the locals miserable and polluting the water, you can set up
a goal of installing special filters and make an effort to clean up the canal
little by little.
Now, while this mission is a noble and a sensible one, if
you were to attempt to pull this off within a couple of months, you will not
only fail to accomplish this goal, but will likely go bankrupt a month in.
The more complex and far-reaching your goal is, the more
patient you need to be, and the more preparatory work you need to do.
The tough thing nowadays is that everyone expects results
fast, so if we take the example from above, the locals may be outraged that it
would take you two years to resolve the problem. Still, you have your company’s
future as well as the workers’ wages to worry about, so being patient about
your project is the only way to make it happen.
On the other hand, if you don’t have such grand issues and
your sustainability goal amounts to replacing plastic coffee cups with
paper-based ones, you can easily do this over the course of one weekend. It’s
all about setting a sustainability-related goal, and making sure it is
realistic and achievable, no matter how long it takes to accomplish.
Give Recycling a Go
One of the biggest misconceptions about recycling is that
it’s a magical solution to all of our problems and that we, as a society, can
recycle anything if we concentrate hard enough.
Sounds fine in theory.
In practice, however, recycling is often so expensive that
it cannot be done at a scale we want at this point. Many studies suggest that
out of all the recyclable trash that folks place in those special recycle bins,
only a small percentage goes through the recycling process and gets to be used
again.
So, as depressing as it may sound, don’t get your hopes up
about changing the world with recycling just yet, but making an effort in this
direction certainly counts.
If nothing, it will leave your workplace a cleaner and more pleasant place to
work in.
Also, businesses that embrace recycling are viewed favorably
by virtually all governments on Earth, so no matter where you operate your
business from, you can rest assured that having this form of sustainable
practice as a part of your company’s policy will have a positive impact on how
the government, your potential business partners, and the community sees you.
All in all, embarking on a sustainability-focused path of
growth and saving the environment at the same time is for most companies an
undertaking that takes money, effort, and more than anything – time. The bottom
line, as long as you have a clear sustainability-related mission to follow, you
can rest assured that you will be able to, little by little, set your business
on the road to success in this regard.
