How sustainable companies large and small are challenging industry norms

Leather is unsus­tain­able. Choco­late con­tributes to defor­esta­tion. Cos­met­ics
sti­fle bio­di­ver­si­ty. Tech­nol­o­gy leads to waste. Sig­nage isn’t car­bon effi­cient. These are but a few of the indus­try stereo­types that the busi­ness­es who met at a recent round­table – Avon, Epson, JCDe­caux, Love Cocoa and Young Soles – are chang­ing.

Instead, they hope that list will read some­thing like: veg­an leather is sus­tain­able; choco­late can sup­port small farm­ers and the envi­ron­ment, cos­met­ics can nature thrive, tech­nol­o­gy can be inno­v­a­tive, sig­nage can be a pos­i­tive con­trib­u­tor to the urban land­scape. And they are all mak­ing the kind of change their respec­tive indus­tries need to become lead­ers in sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

“I think the first steps con­sist of inte­grat­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty into your busi­ness strat­e­gy,” says Lénaïc Pineau, CSO at JCDe­caux. “Sus­tain­abil­i­ty requires you to be con­sis­tent at every lev­el. Every busi­ness deci­sion should be con­sis­tent with your com­mit­ments. And your actions should be con­sis­tent with your CSR strat­e­gy. What you say should be con­sis­tent as well, with what you do.”

That com­mit­ment rang true with the rest of the pan­el, who agreed that sus­tain­abil­i­ty has to be inte­grat­ed into a brand’s pur­pose. A com­mit­ment to fight­ing cli­mate change touch­es every aspect of the com­pa­ny, from sourc­ing to staffing to cre­ativ­i­ty.

“Being a microbusi­ness brings a lot of oth­er chal­lenges around sus­tain­abil­i­ty. It’s about how you main­tain the com­pa­ny and how a com­pa­ny is going to be here in five- or 10-years’ time as well as the impact that you have on the envi­ron­ment, the com­mu­ni­ty, your con­sumers and your employ­ees,” Stu Ander­son, CEO of children’s footwear com­pa­ny Young Soles says. He adds though, that small busi­ness­es have the advan­tage of remain­ing nim­bler than their larg­er coun­ter­parts; capa­ble of mak­ing pos­i­tive change with greater ease.

And, it’s not just about mak­ing change with­in an organ­i­sa­tion, but influ­enc­ing change across an indus­try. That was the ethos with which Love Cocoa was estab­lished. Run by James Cad­bury, the choco­late brand was built with a sus­tain­able, eth­i­cal mind­set in place. Cad­bury says he hopes his company’s prac­tices – includ­ing work­ing with small farm­ers, sus­tain­able sourc­ing and plas­tic-free pack­ag­ing – will influ­ence big­ger com­pa­nies. “A lot of the change is dri­ven by the microbusi­ness­es and SMEs who show the big ones how it’s done. Even­tu­al­ly we will have that influ­ence. Small busi­ness­es can do some­thing to kick things off. The big­ger cor­po­ra­tions need to start to play a big­ger part in [sus­tain­abil­i­ty],” he adds.

Sourc­ing is a cru­cial ele­ment of sus­tain­able prac­tice for most of the pan­el­lists. Imag­ing tech­nol­o­gy brand Epson has focused on audit­ing its sup­ply chain to avoid sourc­ing con­flict min­er­als. It is also work­ing with inno­v­a­tive star­tups on closed-loop sus­tain­able mate­ri­als devel­op­ment, like plas­tic made from algae. Epson’s head of sus­tain­abil­i­ty and gov­ern­ment affairs, Boris Manev, says: “Com­pa­nies have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to help con­sumers make sus­tain­able choic­es. Obvi­ous­ly, there are not always stan­dards in a cer­tain indus­try that you’re able to mea­sure against. But this is where inno­va­tion should play a role.”

To source respon­si­bly, a busi­ness also needs to under­stand its indus­try and uncov­er the levers of change. In cocoa farm­ing, defor­esta­tion is a huge issue. But, by work­ing with farm­ers, and by refor­est­ing, choco­late com­pa­nies can make a dif­fer­ence. “It’s work­ing with peo­ple. A lot of the farm­ers are actu­al­ly small, fam­i­ly farm­ers and then they sell to big­ger cor­po­ra­tions, who will sell to anoth­er com­pa­ny,” Cad­bury says. He adds that edu­ca­tion about the impact of defor­esta­tion will help not only the farm­ers, but major com­pa­nies work­ing in choco­late to recon­sid­er their prac­tices.

Those deci­sions will also be affect­ed by chang­ing con­sumer choic­es. Avon – which has always been a social­ly dynam­ic busi­ness – is see­ing this across the beau­ty indus­try. “Women were sell­ing Avon through their social net­works 30 years before they had the right to vote in the US,” Avon’s direc­tor cor­po­rate affairs and sus­tain­abil­i­ty, Natal­ie Dea­con, says. “Sus­tain­abil­i­ty is about build­ing a resilient, future­proof busi­ness that tru­ly gives back to peo­ple and the plan­et. It’s about com­mu­ni­ties and human rights as much as it is about the envi­ron­ment.” Avon is work­ing toward its B‑Corp cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and is intro­duc­ing new recy­clable strate­gies and sus­tain­able prod­ucts. But its chal­lenge is that while cus­tomers are sup­port­ive of these changes, they often balk at pay­ing the high­er price tag that may come with them.

Ander­son agrees, say­ing his company’s veg­an shoe line was brought about because of cus­tomer demand, but the price point is still high­er than he’d like. He adds: “One of the biggest chal­lenges in the fash­ion indus­try is how we can influ­ence con­sumer behav­iour to shift away from cheap dis­pos­able fast-fash­ion to some­thing more sub­stan­tive and sus­tain­able.”

But the dri­ve toward sus­tain­abil­i­ty goes beyond cus­tomer demand. For the busi­ness­es that tru­ly want to make a dif­fer­ence, sus­tain­abil­i­ty is part of every aspect of its oper­a­tions. “Sus­tain­abil­i­ty is a nev­er-end­ing quest,” Pineau says. “We can always improve our­selves. You have to lis­ten to the stake­hold­ers in order to trans­form your com­pa­ny. And at the end, it’s also about col­lab­o­ra­tion.” She cham­pi­ons break­ing through com­pa­ny silos to work across teams and inspire cre­ativ­i­ty.

Col­lab­o­ra­tion is also some­thing that res­onates with Dea­con. Avon is spear­head­ing a part­ner­ship across the beau­ty indus­try to unite the likes of LVMH, Henkel and L’Oreal to cre­ate a rig­or­ous eco-scor­ing sys­tem to be used across cos­met­ics pack­ag­ing. Open to com­pa­nies of all sizes, the objec­tive is to make sus­tain­abil­i­ty an indus­try-wide val­ue and com­mu­ni­cate that clear­ly to con­sumers. “One of the amaz­ing things about work­ing in this indus­try is it’s so inno­v­a­tive and for­ward-think­ing. We have to do this. We have to work togeth­er to dri­ve change, and to be that change,” Dea­con says.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Cadbury’s approach to plas­tic-free pack­ag­ing and oat milk choco­late is gen­er­at­ing inter­est and cre­at­ing change in the wider indus­try. This, he hopes, will dri­ve the price down as big­ger com­pa­nies work with sup­pli­ers in more sus­tain­able mate­ri­als. The impact must extend beyond any sin­gle com­pa­ny to real­ly make a dif­fer­ence in the world.

At JCDe­caux, this is the name of the game. The com­pa­ny works hard to ensure its assets and street fur­ni­ture have a low impact on the envi­ron­ment. Its dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing screens are car­bon neu­tral. And it uses those cre­den­tials as part of its point of dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion with adver­tis­ers. “We want to help our clients bet­ter under­stand the foot­print of their cam­paigns,” Pineau says. “If you want to make the indus­try move, you have to help it to bet­ter under­stand the impact it has and where they can have a real role to play.”

Col­lab­o­ra­tion across indus­tries and across busi­ness siloes is essen­tial to mak­ing a dif­fer­ence. Epson’s focus on R&D means it is tack­ling both issues of sup­ply and issues of con­sumer hes­i­tan­cy by inte­grat­ing sus­tain­able mate­ri­als into its prod­ucts. This facil­i­tates a stronger rela­tion­ship between sus­tain­abil­i­ty man­agers and chan­nel part­ners, sales teams and busi­ness part­ners. “We explain that busi­ness part­ners first need to embed sus­tain­abil­i­ty into their man­age­ment phi­los­o­phy at the high­est lev­el, and then, start from there and under­stand what their stake­hold­ers, require­ments and mate­ri­als are. Then, put that into con­crete action,” Manev says.

Brand pur­pose lies at the heart of these strate­gies. Ander­son says: “Your brand strat­e­gy is how you think, and your sus­tain­abil­i­ty strat­e­gy is how you act. They are two sides of the same coin.” For busi­ness­es striv­ing to make indus­try-wide change, pos­i­tive, mean­ing­ful action is not only good busi­ness, but busi­ness that does good.

For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it epson.co.uk/greenreport