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Key Aspects of Sustainable Business Practices

The document summarizes the three pillars of sustainability - environmental, social, and economic. For the environmental pillar, it discusses how companies are focusing on reducing their carbon footprint, waste, and environmental impact. It provides the example of Walmart's zero waste initiative to use less and recycled packaging. For the social pillar, it explains the importance of having community support and treating employees and stakeholders fairly. This includes ensuring ethical supply chains. For the economic pillar, it states that businesses need to be profitable to be sustainable and that sustainability strategies need a balance with shareholders' interests.

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Abdur Rahman
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6 views1 page

Key Aspects of Sustainable Business Practices

The document summarizes the three pillars of sustainability - environmental, social, and economic. For the environmental pillar, it discusses how companies are focusing on reducing their carbon footprint, waste, and environmental impact. It provides the example of Walmart's zero waste initiative to use less and recycled packaging. For the social pillar, it explains the importance of having community support and treating employees and stakeholders fairly. This includes ensuring ethical supply chains. For the economic pillar, it states that businesses need to be profitable to be sustainable and that sustainability strategies need a balance with shareholders' interests.

Uploaded by

Abdur Rahman
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Environment

The environmental pillar often gets the most attention. Companies are focusing
on reducing their Carbon Footprint, packaging waste, water usage and their
overall effect on the environment. Companies have found that have a beneficial
impact on the planet can also have a positive financial impact. Lessening the
amount of material used in packaging usually reduces the overall spending on
those materials, for example. Walmart keyed in on packaging through their Zero
waste Initiative, pushing for less packaging through their supply chain and for
more of that packaging to be sourced from recycled or reused materials.

Social
The social ties back into another poorly defined concept: social license. A
sustainable business should have the support and approval of its
employees, stakeholders and the community it operates in. The approaches to
securing and maintaining this support are various, but it comes down to treating
employees fairly and being a good neighbor and community member, both locally
and globally. On a global social scale, a business needs to be aware of how its
supply chain is being filled. Is child labor going into your end product? Are people
being paid fairly? Is the work environment safe?

Economic
To be sustainable, a business must be profitable. profit that makes it possible for
corporations to come on board with sustainability strategies. The economic pillar
provides a counterweight to extreme measures that corporations are sometimes
pushed to adopt, such as abandoning fossil fuels or chemical fertilizers instantly
rather than phasing in changes.  This means that boards of directors and
management align with shareholders' interests as well as that of the company's
community, value chains, and end-user customers. With regard to governance,
investors may want to know that a company uses accurate and transparent
accounting methods, and that stockholders are given an opportunity to vote on
important issues. 

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