Companies can’t operate as though their actions have no impact on the environment and today a variety of data supports that those who focus may well benefit from their actions.
I recently reread an old survey conducted in 2008 by the Disney Family of eight thousand (8,000) adults. When asked who should enforce environmentally sound practices? Forty percent of respondents indicated that it should be the government; thirty nine percent indicated that it should be individuals; thirteen percent indicated that it should be businesses and nine percent indicated that it should be the schools. That forty percent of individuals surveyed defaulted to this being a government responsibility is an issue or a cop out dependant on your own beliefs.
This author doesn’t believe that government can do it alone without guidance from the people. I don’t believe that businesses can do it alone without guidance from the government in the form of standards. I don’t believe that people can do it alone without taking it to the work place. And, unless we focus on it in the home and the workplace there is not much schools can do to enforce their environmental educational content. If parents don’t support it, children will not participate. In fact without all of us working together towards a common goal success is questionable.
At SafeSourcing there are many things that we are passionate about. However, three drive our daily thinking and actions.
1. Reducing the costs of goods and services for our customers.
2. Supporting the global community through the sourcing of safe goods and services.
3. Supporting the environment through eco friendly sourcing practices that we hold suppliers accountable to that provide those goods and services.
Through these beliefs, we try to pay it forward every day where the environment is concerned. Can you or your company boil your environmentally focused CSR initiatives down to three distinct points that can be measured? If you can, your customers will notice. Ours do.
It would be interesting to see the statistics today (5 years later). Would they be better or worse. If you’d like to learn more about how to incorporate environmental best practices into your sourcing, please contact a SafeSourcing customer servvices account manager.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
