PRINCIPLE OF SUSTAINABILITY Essays - Natural Environment

PRINCIPLE OF SUSTAINABILITY Essays - Natural Environment PRINCIPLE OF SUSTAINABILITY Hello everyone! I'm Yana and I'm Mary and today we are going to talk about principle of sustainability. I'd like to start with a short plan of our presentation. Plan: First of all, we'll talk about sustainability in general. After that we'll move on to definition of b usiness sustainability. And finally we'd like to give some examples. Please feel free to ask any questions at the end of our presentation. And let's get it started. Sustainability is concerned with the effect which action taken in the present has upon the options available in the future. If resources are utilised in the present then they are no longer available for use in the future, and this is of particular concern if the resources are finite in quantity. M aterials of an extractive nature, such as coal, iron or oil, are finite in quantity and once used are not available for future use. At some point in the future therefore alternatives will be needed to fulfil the functions currently provided by these resources. We will need alternatives to substitute these resources Viewing an organisation as part of a wider social and economic system implies that these effects must be taken into account, not just for the measurement of costs and value created in the present but also for the future of the business itself. Business sustainability we can define as four aspects which need to be recognised and analysed: societal inuence , which we dene as a measure of the impact that society makes upon the corporation in terms of the social contract and stakeholder inuence; environmental impact , which we dene as the effect of the actions of the corporation upon its geophysical environment; organisational culture , which we dene as the relationship between the corporation and its internal stakeholders, particularly employees, and all aspects of that relationship; nance , which we dene in terms of an adequate return for the level of risk undertaken. These four must be considered as the key dimensions of sustainability, all of which are equally important. Measures of sustainability would consider the rate at which resources are consumed by the organisation in relation to the rate at which resources can be regenerated. Unsustainable operations can be accommodated for either by developing sustainable operations or by planning for a future lacking in resources currently required. In practice organisations mostly tend to aim towards less unsustainability by increasing efficiency in the way i n which resources are utilised. Sustainability therefore implies that society must use no more of a resource than can be regenerated. And now let's move on to some examples. F or example, the paper industry has a policy of replanting trees to replace those harvested and this has the effect of retaining costs in the present rather than temporally externalising them. Similarly, motor vehicle manufacturers such as Volkswagen have a policy of making their cars almost totally recyclable. Faced with potential supply constraints, Nestle, for example, launched a plan in 2009 that coordinates activities to promote sustainable cocoa: producing 12 million stronger and more productive plants over the next ten years, teaching local farmers efficient and sustainable methods, purchasing beans from farms that use sustainable practices, and working with organizations to help tackle issues like child labor and poor access to health care and education. The mining giant BHP Billiton managed its exposure to emerging regulations by systematically reducing its emissions . And to sum up, we should say that s ustainable corporation needs to invest in all of its stakeholders in order to maintain and improve relationsh ips between the company and its stakeholders but that the investment in stakeholder relations is return ed to the company through being recycled. So a stakeholder who is well treated both receives benefit from the company and returns benefit to that company. For example, f irms that are sustainable have been shown to attract and retain employees more easily and experience less financial and reputation risk. These firms are also more innovative and adaptive to their environments. And also employees will work better when they recei ve better conditions; similarly , suppliers will reciprocate the receipt of good conditions while customers will pay