SPEAKER 0

And now, finally, we are here for the last video for this week's lecture content
where I really want to spend a little bit more time expanding on a few of the ideas
I brought forth in the previous video, where we're trying to really unpack some of
the more, I suppose, complex issues with regards to sustainability. Now this is
where something I really want you to um have a think about the activity that I got
you to do before when you went outside, you know, just spent a little bit of time
in nature. Shocker, it was also a trick just because it's nice to spend time
outside in nature for a number of different reasons. But one thing I want you to
think about, if you look back at that experience, you know, it might be something
you haven't done yet, but I want you to think about, well, why is it that this,
Sort of thing that you're witnessing, this thing you're engaging with, you know,
water. Land, trees, birds, etc. Why is it that that is something that should be
kind of safeguarded as best we can. Should it be, or should it not be? What comes
first? Do we as humans and our, you know, need to sustain ourselves and, you know,
grow and expand and all of those sorts of things. Does that take priority over the
natural environment? Are these things, is it one or the other? Is it what we call a
zero-sum game where you increase one to the detriment of another? What is it about
this idea of sustainability that makes it be such a popular term? Why is it that
every business is talking about sustainability? You read everything, it's all about
the UN SDGs. Why, why is it that that's happening? What's occurring within this?
This is kind of within this video where I want to shape our understanding of it and
really begin to start critiquing these ideas. And now, I do again want to just
clarify with this idea of critiquing. We often view critiquing as the negative,
like if you're critiquing someone's appearance, you're making negative comments
based upon their appearance. That's not necessarily what critiquing involves.
Critiquing is just about encapsulating contrasting perspectives on something. So if
you critique the performance of a restaurant, for example, or a food critic, if you
read what a food critic talks about, they don't just say, this place sucked. It was
the worst thing I've ever had. Maybe some of them do. But they offer a critique.
They go, this worked really well. I thought this could have been done better, this
was really bad. That sort of thing, in shock horror, you'll notice that that's what
a reflection also does, offers an insight to look at something and go, OK, well
what are the main perspectives? What are some other perspectives on this? So that's
what we mean by a critical view of sustainability. So The why, so why should
businesses act? Or supply chains or society or governments act in ways that are
sustainable, and this is where we get like a lot of the big ticket items or the big
picture perspectives. So, the basic premise underlying this is that without, A
recognition of sustainability and the need to limit growth of production and human
society is that it will lead to things like the destruction of rainforests or
further destruction of rainforests, which leads to animals becoming. Extinct,
atmospheric damage, um, particle pollution through plastics, soil contamination,
and all of these impact the ability of humans to continuously grow. Like soil
contamination means that you can't use soil to plant plants and grow food,
essentially. Permanent climate change, so shifting the world into a state of
increased volatility, greater exploitation of labor, and a growing inequality with
regards to wealth distribution, so increased costs of living, increased rates of
poverty, reduction in the amount of housing, etc. All of these are, you know, by
themselves, probably somewhat convincing arguments to say that the way that we
operate in the world is inherently unsustainable, that we cannot continue to,
Expand the production requirements of society. Without this eventually causing all
of these issues are listed here, so you know, even though us as consumers, and you
know, we are relatively well off, I completely understand that that's something
coming from me. Who works full-time at a university, but even being able to access
a university in the first place has a degree of, in some respects a degree of, not
necessarily privilege, I don't like that word being overused all the time, but it's
more like, There is a wealth of experiences that we all have our own experiences
with the world. And for us as consumers, you know, you're listening to this via a
computer or via a phone, that in itself means that we have shifted education
towards being based on technology, and technology is ever growing, ever, Creating
new forms of technology, we're seeing AI emerge. We'll talk about tech in a few
weeks' time. All of these things are occurring, but at, but at what cost? And the
why is kind of the, well, at what cost? Because I think, yes, we can talk about
like climate change and the rainforest destruction and all of those things as well,
but they have impacts on us as individuals. So this kind of continuous growth and
continuous need for the best new things, and the continuous need for technology to
be constantly adapting, you know, think about it, businesses are all about
innovation, you need to innovate or perish. Why? Why do we need to continuously
grow? That's sort of a counterargument to some elements of, you know, business
growth, because it would lead to these potential issues. But importantly then, this
really comes down to, OK, sure, if we make the argument that yes, we need to act in
ways that don't negatively impact the environment, who's the, who's the we? So, to
start with. For businesses, there are some pretty well-known risks if they don't
act sustainably, and this, you know, might sound a little bit basic, but you know,
if you're not acting sustainable, you do the wrong thing as perceived by societies
that you operate in. This could lead to reputational damage, you know, loss of
market share, loss of investors, all of that stuff that's gonna impact financial
performance. Loss of potential advantages like energy usage efficiency, waste
reductions, um recycling, etc. um avoiding punishment or fines for clean up, etc.
But the question is, and we can make, you know, this argument, you know, we can
say, OK, yes, businesses need to operate in ways that don't cause these wires, but
also financially, you know, there's going to be punishment if they do so. But who?
And that is A really critical question. Because when it comes to sustain this idea
of sustainability. It is very rare that we really sit down and properly think about
the Who. Who is responsible for this? Because we can talk about things like fast
fashion, where, you know, you have iconic, all of these places you can get lots of
really good clothes from, really quick, very different to what it was like 1015
years ago. Um, we've got Sheehan, Temu, Amazon, all of these ones. To which they
would always say, but we are providing a market for customers. It is customers who
want these things. So should it be customers who are acting sustainable, but then
if you flip that on the head, it's like, well, customers are only buying products
because they're being told that they should buy these products. Should it be big
companies, should it be the Amazons of the world who should be doing things that
are going to be more sustainable, but also what it, what when they, What happens
when they don't? Like Amazon, you can read all about Amazon's sustainability, and
you can read all about it's the ways that it's protecting the environment, whilst
you can also read about all of the ways that the warehouse workers that it utilizes
and delivery drivers are being exploited. So, who is responsible? What happens if
no one acts in a sustainable way? Should it be on small companies? Should a small
cafe be held responsible if suddenly all of their single use coffee cups end up in
landfill? This is not designed for you to be there going, Johnny, um, what's the
answer? There is no answer for this, that's what a good critical analysis does. It
doesn't necessarily come up with an answer. It's about demonstrating that there
isn't, in fact, an answer. And I think that's a good sort of almost antidote to a
lot of the discourse and discussions around sustainability, which are like, this is
the number one thing, all businesses must act sustainable. What, what do you mean
by that? What does it actually mean? Because often businesses want everything, they
wanna have increased growth, increased market share, but that inherently would come
at a trade-off, you know, with, Potential ways of addressing environmental issues,
potential ways of addressing social issues. We act as though sustainability isn't a
trade-off, so, This then can lead to a few of the unintended consequences or
intended, because often we then translate this idea of sustainability, which is
inherently incredibly complex, into simple metrics. We go, OK, if we can measure
the amount of emissions being produced, we are contributing to, Deforestation not
having a negative impact on local communities, or something like that, that's a bit
of a weird example. But importantly, who determines what metrics are useful? We
always talk about, you know, every time you book a flight or something now, it's
like you wanna offset your carbon, who decided that that is actually a good way of
addressing environmental concerns? Who determines what is a good and what is a bad
metric? Again, I don't have the answer for you. There isn't an answer for you. But
this question in itself is something that's really useful as a critical analysis
tool. To go, well, actually, if we look at some of the metrics that we've talked
about, who, who designed these? And I don't
mean like, oh, which particular person sitting in a room came up with carbon
capture, blah blah blah. I don't mean anything like that. I mean simply, OK. Most
of these metrics are designed by businesses to ensure that they can still maintain
their growth and financial stability whilst addressing environmental concerns. So
even just by me saying a statement like that, which I don't think is necessarily
controversial, I've demonstrated that actually environmental sustainability comes
second to financial. So that can be one way. The other way is, you know, if you
suddenly start having, Complexity, ah sorry, if you start having universal
solutions, so you know, I've talked a lot about, you know, minimum wages and stuff
like that, that's a universal solution, right? It is saying that for all companies,
this is the minimum wage. But this can also get a little bit complex to further you
travel up supply chains. So, you know, a really good example of this is, I was
having a conversation, Would have been in mid 2024, um, with an academic over in
Indonesia, um, I was spending a bit of time there, and we were talking about this
idea of the complexities, um, within, um, applying social, ah sorry, applying
universal laws like, um, minimum wages, and the example that he talked about was a
like small to medium sized enterprise that employed all the people within a
village. However, It was it was able to employ all of the people, but then none of
them got paid the minimum wage, because the company couldn't afford to pay them all
minimum wage, so whilst, They were like they were all originally living in poverty,
so whilst they were getting some money that was alleviating their poverty, there
was pressure on the small to medium enterprise to go, no, you need to pay minimum
wage, but that would have meant that they can only hire half the people. So what's
better? Is it better to pay more at a rate that's lower than the legally required
minimum wage or pay less, or sorry, pay more to less people. And that's can get
really, really complicated. Another one, that I remember doing in a subject, the
first subject I ever taught actually now a couple of years ago, um, was around the
use of child labor and stitching footballs, so like soccer balls. um, and it's
quite, Um, common for companies to go, OK, well, we need to eliminate child labor.
But what actually happened, I believe it was in Pakistan, is that a lot of mothers,
so single mothers or working mothers with children would be stitching footballs in
their own home, and their children, or at least they'll be going to a warehouse or
factory or something, and they'll be bringing their young children with them
because, you know, they don't have childcare. So suddenly, they can't bring their
children, so it actually loses this source of income. Because maybe their children
were helping them or maybe their children were just there. So actually that ended
up increasing the rates of poverty, but from the perspective of a company in say
Australia, let's take rebel sport, and this was not to do with rebel sport, this is
just literally an example, that they can say, OK, well we've eliminated child
labor. But actually, it can generate harm at the location where it's occurring. So
they can be unintended complexities or unintended consequences that emerge, but
also you're going to then potentially get this idea of washing behaviors. So think
about washing. Literally, you wash clothes, you're getting something out. You're
washing your hands. The idea of washing really came from this idea of greenwashing,
where companies will say that they're acting in an environmental environmentally
sustainable way and either be purposely, Doing things to sort of lie about it,
which Volvo infamously did, where their cars they said were reducing less emissions
than they actually were. Two other ways like pinkwashing is one where firms will,
you know, promote themselves as being really supportive of LGBTIQ rights, but then
act in ways that are completely opposite to that. 2, This broader idea of like CSR
washing, there really isn't a, you know, good label for it, but where they can use
it as essentially a public relations tool. So greenwashing is essentially if they
use environmental things is going, look at us, we are sustainable, but then they're
doing other egregious things or other things that might not be in support of either
their environmental or sustainable positions. As an example for that, the image
I've got here is, um, Aristocrats. So you can see they've got the UN STGs on the
right-hand side, um, building momentum in sustainability. This is their
disclosures, um, around environmental sustainability, but, well, and I shouldn't
say but because I'm trying not to inject a personal opinion on this, and
Aristocrat, um, make poker machines. So slot machines, if that's not translating
well, which Australia has the 2nd highest in the world, I believe, outside of
Vegas, um, it's prolific everywhere within Australia, and the money lost from
people gambling in poker machines is astronomical each year. So you get this kind
of, Sort of paradox, right, where it's OK, yes, they're doing the, you know, right
thing for environmental sustainability, but, What about the people who are losing
their money through gambling? So this is where you really get this sort of
murkiness that starts to evolve within it, and I'm purposely trying to make this
seem almost somewhat, I suppose vague because it is designed to be murky. So is the
triple bottom line good or bad? And I'm leaving that kind of just sitting in the
air because I want you to be thinking, OK, well, If a firm prioritizes its
environmental performance over its social, is that a good thing? Maybe, maybe not.
Contextually it always is going to be important, but what's really important to
understand is actually the triple bottom line. Was not designed to be used how it
currently is used now. Now it's like a financial or accounting mechanism to go, OK,
how can we measure a social environmental. The whole purpose of this was, To
actually critique unrestricted growth in our current economic systems. So it was in
the mid-nineties, um I, you know, it's one of the, the, you can get it from the
library, the book's called Cannibals with forks, um. And essentially, it was a very
like, in-depth critique because the author did like a 20 year after the fact saying
no, you've got it all wrong. This wasn't just designed to introduce accounting
tools. It was meant to be a critique of this system that just encourages nonstop
growth. So when we then translate. Environmental or social phenomena into these
metrics, they can absolutely lose meaning, so it can then run the risk, and this is
why I mentioned at the start some of you might be going, oh, sustainability,
because it turns it into a buzzword, goes everyone's talking about sustainability,
but then why is everything in the world getting worse? If we've been talking about
sustainability for the past 2+ decades, why then are we seeing increases in the
amount of people being exploited? Why then are we seeing an increase in the
environmental degradation that's occurring? Because isn't sustainability meant to
fix all this? So it's because we've lost sight of that need to actually critique
the economic systems that we operate in. Great example I've got here on the right-
hand side is a really impressive solar farm. Like that's amazing, right? And that
solar farm helps power a lot of Amazon's operations, it's an Amazon run solar farm,
not somewhere in America, I presume, but, You Google everything to do with Amazon
and suddenly there's all of these social issues that occur, notwithstanding from
the fact of, Us as consumers can get anything immediately from Amazon. It is so
convenient for us to purchase through Amazon. But that convenience comes at a cost,
and we often don't consider those costs that it comes to. So sustainability and
acting sustainably does become this ethical conundrum. And again, ethics is not one
of those things that turns into a buzzword of like, yeah, we need to act ethical.
What, what does that mean? What does it actually mean to act in ways that are
ethical, but importantly, what are the trade-offs associated with it? I want to
give you that as like a bit of food for thought. I know that this is, you know,
particularly for those of you who might be within your first year, it can be, you
know, A little bit jarring to be like, oh, OK, well there's so many complexities
without an answer, but that's really where at this like halfway point of the
subject, I want you to begin to start thinking. Start critiquing all of the
questions that you have and get asked and asked, you look back at all of the
lecture content we've covered, you can absolutely go, OK, well why? Who's designing
this, who's making decisions about what supply chain execution should be? What
makes this way of viewing execution better than other ways. Soon you'll probably
develop a really healthy way of critiquing, particularly textbooks. You look at
textbooks, you look at academic articles, and you can go, oh, hang on a second,
this is just really one perspective on something, and that, my friends, is how you
develop your critical thinking skills. But for that, Another time, go do the quiz,
and I will see you, well, you will hear me next week.