What is a Sustainable Company?

From the very useful feedback from readers, I found out that I haven’t clearly defined what a sustainable company is. We talked about sustainable economies in which a steady growth would be followed instead of the cyclic ups and downs we currently go through, so, one can say that a sustainable company is the fundamental piece of a sustainable economy. Still, this is quite vague and it is not an intensive and useful definition.

We can start asking a simpler question. What is sustainability? In 1987, at the World Commission on Environment and Development, sustainability was defined as “the ability to meet today’s global economic, environmental and social needs without compromising the opportunity of future generations to meet theirs.” Following the same line that these people started more than 20 years ago, we can say that a sustainable company is one that integrates economic, environmental, ethical and social objectives into their long term business strategies. This is a pretty popular topic nowadays and if anyone is interested I may refer you to a book, that I haven’t read completely but the chapters I read are pretty clear and concise, called “The Sustainable Company” by Chris Laszlo.

Laszlo and other authors talk about a “Logic of Sustainability”. This means that to create an effective sustainable environment, five particular dimensions have to converge into a common point. These dimensions are: scientific (eg: making people aware of greenhouse effect’s consequences), regulatory (eg: green bonds), political (eg: international environmental treaties), moral (eg: consideration to future generations) and market (eg: focus on stakeholders and not only on shareholders).

Furthermore, the interest of shareholders in sustainability should go beyond religious or moral issues. They must realize (and some companies already did) that in a highly interdependent global economic system, their interests are increasingly related with the interests of society and the environment. Business’, society’s and nature’s health are closely linked.

“Global companies have no future if the Earth has no future”!