Sustainability as an identity or a tool?

Sustainability. To me, it seems like a worthwhile goal in itself. I see non-sustainable business as the equivalent of permanently living off 27.4% APR credit card. Only we may only get the environmental-, health- and social- bill a few generations down the line.

Coming across cynicism towards sustainability draws attention to some difficulties. Forum of the Future set the aim as "business models that achieve commercial success by delivering social value within natural limits". It is being successful now without detriment to future success. But the difficulty is that sustainability by its nature has to be adapted to each sector and every company.

Coca-Cola, who scooped the Best Sustainability Report this week at Sustainability Leaders Awards, use the "Me, We, World" triad to draw together their CSR activities. Virgin and Sky set out their view of the Bigger Picture. CSR is now so entwined with brand identity, but there is a distinction between a company using sustainability to enhance their brand identity and a company for which the two terms are interchangeable. If we are to take Forum for the Future's definition seriously then a company's sustainability strategy is their corporate identity.

Dr Todd Cort, of Two Tomorrows noticed a frustrating trend in the 2012 Tomorrow's Value Research with the way sustainability efforts are currently heading (from CSR Wire):

“Large companies around the world are providing greater and greater transparency in the form of metrics, targets and descriptions of their management approaches. This is evident in the continual rise in GRI reporters and in the improved scores year on year in our research.  However, it is evident that companies are losing sight of the big picture: are we successfully addressing the global challenges that we all face?  Such challenges require collaborative solutions.  

“We have seen through the research that the vast majority of metrics, targets and management approaches look away from the impact or success of collaborative efforts to tackle sustainability challenges.  Instead, these indicators focus increasingly on the sustainability aspects within the company’s sphere of control.  

Companies are becoming too introspective in their reports. The result is corporate sustainability reports that paint legitimate pictures of success in sustainability but a global reality where we are far from achieving solutions.

“In 2000, sustainability came dangerously close to green-washing. Reporting standards since have persuaded reporting companies to disclose management approaches, but the pendulum has now swung too far.   In 2012, sustainability reporting has become an almost obligatory box-ticking exercise demanded by stakeholders.

“Sustainability reporting should instead be an opportunity to drive continuous improvement toward the big challenges that we face as a society.”  

The attention paid to sustainability is no doubt positive, and cynicism may be out of frustration or having to do something the harder-than-it-used-to-be way. But clearly transparent business is intended to reveal the true heart of the business. Sustainability will come into its own when it is the heart of the business, not a peripheral "tick-box" or marketing ploy (as some discount it as).

The journey we have embarked on since the 1950s towards responsible business has gone a long way for Dr Todd Cort to be able to pick at the sustainability reports as being detailed but "too introspective". This, it should be noted, shows the bar is being ever-raised.

And where are we heading if we are to meet this newer and higher bar? Every company has a idiosyncratic approach to sustainability and the challenge for the next 20-50 years will be forming a cohesive approach to sustainability in companies, in city, in the UK and world-wide. It may take a generation - developing sustainable kids with such long-term approaches to life ingrained that perhaps society just cannot embed fully in our generations - but once we all commit and all have the real bigger picture in view sustainability will be in our identity and companies will finally hold sustainability at their heart.