Corporate Environmentalism

I don’t even know how to put it into words, so bear with me I really am just rambling. I work for a business software company, so I get to dip my hands in the pot of business-to-business relationships.

I know we all like to shit on corporations for ruining the earth and destroying the environment and whatnot, but you guys would be legitimately shocked if you knew just how seriously most (not all) companies actually take environmental sustainability.

A large, if not the only, reason is because sustainability = profits in the long-run. If you cannot run a sustainable business model (pragmatically and environmentally) you are going to lose. Period. Businesses don’t want to do business with companies who cannot show they can be sustainable.

So one of the facets of these B2B relationships I get direct insight into are pre-requisites that large Buyer organizations require of their smaller business partners (Suppliers). 9 times out of 10, these large corporations have very thorough, very comprehensive sustainability models (one large telecom company with which we are all familiar) titles their’s “Sustainability: Environmental, Social, & Ethical”.

And they have a very large series of questions that they absolutely require specific answers to from Suppliers in order to do business; they ask things like “Has your company ever been in violation of national or international environmental legislation or regulations?” or “Can your company demonstrate a written and defined policy for environmental responsibility?” or “Can your company demonstrate a measurable environmental target in the following areas?”

Etc.

And sure maybe this is all just surface stuff to skate by under the radar – everyone wants to cover their asses and put on the veneer of “doing the Right Thing™”. There are no laws that require businesses to play 20 questions with each other - they are doing this to vet liabilities and in this context, being environmentally unconscious is a liability.

But this was not the case decades ago. Even the bare minimum of covering your ass is enough to raise the standard of what is environmentally-acceptable in terms of business practices.

My point here, I guess, is that whether we realize it or not, corporations can, in fact, be very receptive to changing social values. It’s up to consumers whether to discern when they are simply capitalizing on those values, or adopting them out of sincerity.