When casual clothing and homewares store Blue Illusion investigated how
to engage with sustainable business practices, it focused on a broad, long-term business strategy, not just the immediacy of reducing its carbon footprint. Following an environmental audit to establish its levels of carbon emissions, the company chose to stretch beyond consumer demands for carbon neutrality and become ‘carbon positive’.
“We measure the amount of carbon produced by our stores and offset that with carbon credits plus 10 per cent,” says Blue Illusion’s Managing Director, Danny Guest. “This means the company is becoming part of the solution rather than staying as part of the problem.”
The company uses energy-efficient lighting in its stores and reduces the need for store air conditioning by having an ‘open door’ policy, except in extreme weather. Its sales catalogues are printed on paper approved by the Forest Stewardship Council.
“We recognise that sustainability
is about having a holistic attitude,”
says Guest.
In the small-to-medium enterprise (SME) sector, Blue Illusion is a typical example of a company that has moved beyond viewing sustainable business practices as irrelevant red – or even green – tape.
According to a global survey of energy consumption of SMEs by computer company IBM, only 33 per cent of survey participants had made any changes to reduce their energy usage. This was despite 55 per cent of those surveyed saying they had an environmental policy in place (compared to the global average of 44 per cent).
Among the changes to energy consumption SMEs claim they’ll make in 2008 are switching off all non-essential equipment outside of working hours and purchasing and using more energy-efficient IT equipment and lighting.
“A lot of SMEs are still asking ‘Why?’; not even ‘How?’,” says Paul Hodgson of business sustainability advisers Sustainovation. “But with the change in the federal government, there will be a lot more legislative and regulatory action that will be taken concerning the contribution of business to carbon emissions and to climate change.
“SMEs need to decide whether they just want to bump along with compliance or to lead the pack by seeing it as a strategic issue.”
KEEPING PACE
Environmental legislation exists on five levels: international, federal, state and local government, as well as Land and Environment Court case law. This complexity has led to the creation of a new piece of business jargon known as ‘green tape’.
“SMEs will increasingly be affected by the trend towards greater complexity in environmental laws at all levels of government,” according to a recent NSW Business Chamber report, The Challenge of Green Tape.
“This will have the effect of making compliance a more costly and complex task, especially for those businesses that have not been keeping pace with the key environmental issues of energy efficiency, water minimisation and pollution control.”
The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting regulations, which kick in from July this year, require mandatory reporting from companies that emit more than 125,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases and/or 500 terajoules of energy in the financial year. While most SMEs are well under these levels, those in the supply chain of larger companies might feel a flow-on from the new laws. As the big players try to reduce their emissions, they’ll be looking for suppliers whose products comply with stricter standards. Those businesses that have already done environmental audits and become carbon neutral or, even better, carbon positive, will be in the box seat.
The impact of big business and its carbon consciousness on smaller suppliers is already being felt. With its commitment to be carbon neutral by 2010, NAB has already seen a flow-on effect through its relationship with Text Pacific Publishing, which has 67 staff. The company designed and produced NAB’s 2007 Annual Reports.
As part of the reports’ production process, Lisa Wheeler, Corporate Project Manager at Text Pacific, became inspired to follow NAB’s lead on environmental sustainability when asked to photograph a climate change presentation featuring NAB’s Michael Ullmer, Deputy Group CEO, and nabCapital’s Rachel O’Neill, Director, Carbon Solutions Group. As a result, Text Pacific Publishing is now undertaking a full audit of its activities and related greenhouse emissions to understand its carbon footprint.
Through this process, the publisher will be able to advise clients on the impact for various publications produced, something that is regularly coming up in discussions.
Says Paul Hodgson: “It sounds
like a cliché, but pursuing a sustainable approach to business is a journey.
The best way to start is to work out
the environmental consequences of
the business and then push further beyond that information to a more strategic approach.”
Page 1 2
