Sustainability: Building The Business Case

By Jennifer_Rice on October 13, 2009 1 Comment business case, business strategy, business units, CEO mandate, competitive advantage, compliance, corporate responsibility, cost savings, CSR initiatives, customer-facing sustainability initiatives, customerfacing initiatives, environmental issues, greenwashing, LOHAS, loyalty behavior, niche market, reputation, revenue, revenue generation, segmentation model, share, supply chain, sustainability, sustainability curve, sustainability market, sustainability professional, sustainability-related attributes, sustainable brand, TAM, TASM, total addressable market, Total Addressable Sustainability Market

Your company has been progressing nicely up the sustainability curve from compliance to cost savings. The next logical step is reputation and revenue generation, and itʼs here that many sustainability pros hit a roadblock. Without a CEO mandate, business units usually have little incentive to deviate from whatʼs been working in the past. Sustainability and CSR initiatives have safely been tucked away behind the scenes, dealing with internal and supply chain issues that reduce risk and cost to the business. Objections to customer-facing sustainability initiatives range from “Why put our neck out and riskgreenwashing charges?” to “Itʼs still a niche market” and “Why would we promote our values for commercial ends? Weʼre doing this because it’s right, not to make money from it.”