Climate change has caused and will continue causing, significant social and economic losses, through damaged infrastructure, supply chain disruptions, and goods price instability, among other harmful effects. This disrupts all industries. New sustainable innovations are required as well as finance to low-carbon initiatives.
There will be new business opportunities and investors willing to invest in a sustainable business. Small companies will stand out to investors. Green bonds are issued to finance projects that have positive environmental and/or climate benefits. These allow investors to fund a wide range of low carbon and climate resilient assets and projects. Climate Change Presents Business Opportunities, 2017.
Businesses can adapt to this new paradigm by proactively seeking out climate-related opportunities and by supporting lower-carbon future. Businesses should define and evaluate their current business model:
- what is being done?
- how it is done?
- what are those effects on the system?
One way that businesses can become more sustainable is by considering work environment and employee habits. What resources employees consume at the workplace, what is nice and what is necessary, and how sustainable those resources are? Here are few practical considerations for a more sustainable workplace.
Office canteens
Try to prioritize local and seasonal products, or choose a catering provider according to these matters.
Heating and cooling
Maintain moderate heating and cooling when necessary. Especially in offices, people tend to sit at their desks for hours without moving around. A five-minute walk or working when moving or standing up is a good way to get your blood circulating without turning up office heating.
Office materials
How are those produced and what is those durability?
Recycling
Getting employees to recycle what they consume is important, especially when looking at an individual’s long-term impact on the environment. Recycling is a matter of changing habits. Businesses can have greater short-term impact when recycling excess that produces from business operations. Sometimes this excess becomes an opportunity others or even a new product within the existing business.
Mobility
It can be hard to change from private mobility to public transportation or to commute by walking or biking, but worth the "effort" from a sustainable perspective. Not to mention health benefits when combining personal exercise with your work trip. Companies can encourage employees for the use of public transportation by offering company sponsoring to work trips or by providing bike repair and maintenance.
Energy
Growth requires energy. Offices and factories need energy for operating. Switching to green energy -sun and wind power- are good ways to become more sustainable. However, it is not forthright to choose the most sustainable energy resource.
Traveling requires energy, kerosene to be more precise. Sustainability effects business traveling habits, which can be partially substituted by sophisticated online conferencing tools, which improve all the time thanks to the fast pace of technological development.
New environmental policies by governments should encourage businesses to start adapting sustainable business models. To many existing and new businesses, this is an opportunity to innovate for lower-carbon solutions, and not only to consider those as a drawback. To begin with, I hope that the lower cost of solar energy will attract more individuals and organization to use renewable energy sources instead of fossil energy sources.
Now I would like to ask, whose business is it in organizations, to make the decision to become more sustainable? The more people from different business functions are involved, the more sustainable opportunities can be found, and the greater the impact.
A change is needed from people and organizations.
This writing was part of my SmartUp Entrepreneurship studies in 2018.
References:
Source, Climate Change Presents Business Opportunities, http://www.cfo.com/business-expansion/2017/11/climate-change-presents-opportunities/.
Comments