In sustainability maturity model (above) that sits at the heart of The Green Executive, one of the five key requirements to create a truly green business is the alignment of all processes and procedures to sustainability. This must be the easiest said, hardest to do parts of the whole book.
That’s why all of part 3 and much of part 4 are dedicated to this topic – how to get “green” out of the environmental silo and embed it everywhere. And by “everywhere” I mean everywhere: operations, the supply chain, products/services, the entire business model and all the supporting processes like accounting and HR.
One of the trends picked up in the Green Executive is how the cutting edge businesses are going about this. Instead of just creating a green range of products, they are embedding sustainability into their entire product range, deleting those that don’t make the grade. Instead of simply adding some green criteria to purchasing decisions, they are building the supply chains they need, discarding suppliers who don’t make the grade. In some cases they are redefining the traditional producer/supplier distinction through industrial symbiosis (using other’s waste as a raw material) and product takeback (using your own post-use product as raw material), or even the traditional business model through product service systems.
This approach doesn’t ask “is X feasible?”, but asks “how can we make X feasible?”. That’s a huge mental shift on both the individual and the organisational level, but to deliver corporate sustainability it’s an essential one.