Yes. Since sustainability entered the corporate lexicon in the 1980s, it has been often intertwined with spin, or public relations buzz marketing.
And yes, sustainability is increasingly embedded in corporate strategy. It can involve substantive management, customer and financial initiatives.
So it’s not black and white, this question of the legitimacy of sustainability.
“It depends, how is that for a firm answer?” says James Leemann, an EHS consultant and professor at Tulane University’s Center for Applied Environmental Public Health.
General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt uses sustainability as a “branding theme” to promote GE’s “progressive” enviro agenda, says Leemann. “So from GE’s perspective, sustainability is pure propaganda.”
Other companies are “into sustainability” because their industry sector is pushing it, says Leemann. Think of the American Chemical Society’s “Responsible Care” project, in part launched to win back public trust after the Bhopal catastrophe. “Whether these companies agree with the sustainability push or not, they have no choice but to play the game. Call it survival,” says Leemann.
That’s the bottom line for a growing number of EHS professionals, particularly in large multinational energy and resource companies, chemical and petrochemical corporations and consumer products manufacturers and retailers. “To me, sustainability means the sustainability of our company,” says one. Indeed, the most basic definition of sustainability is to endure.
Regarding survival, “Scientists and policymakers have begun to recognize that it would eventually be suicidal to allow a further undermining of the sustainability of ecological life support systems, locally and globally,” reports the International Society of Sustainability Professionals (ISSP).
No wonder, then, 93 percent of global CEOs surveyed believe sustainability issues are critical to their company’s future success, according to a recent presentation by Tom Cecich, vice president of the American Society of Safety Engineers’ Council on Professional Affairs.
Sustainability must be fully integrated into a company’s strategy and operations, assert 96 percent of global CEOs, up from 72 percent in 2007, according to Cecich.
And in a survey of ISHN readers conducted last September, 39 percent said their personal involvement in sustainability activities for their company will increase in 2011. The larger the company, a larger percentage of EHS pros face expanding sustainability responsibilities.
These can include so-called “hard skills”: green chemistry, planning and auditing, product stewardship, energy and waste management, sustainable food systems, watershed adaptive management, community economic development, sustainability science, business improvement, green building, international community development, and facilities management, according to the ISSP.