Sustaining Sustainability: The Reality for Business

by Cali Doyle

Wicked problems require transformative solutions. The UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) capture 17 facets of this solution, seeking to overcome current and future socio-environmental risks.

These objectives lead businesses towards the end goal: being sustainable. Yet whilst aspirational, in isolation, this goal is unviable. It assumes a perpetually scalable alignment between business intention and action, regardless of external mediators.

Driving the SDGs, the Brundtland Report initially proposed that sustainability entails meeting present needs without compromising those of the future. This includes mitigating climate change, poverty and social inequality. Moreover, to have a long-standing effect, the sustainability itself must be sustainable.

Therein lies the problem.

According to UCLA, the key measure of sustainability is a balance between resources consumed and regenerated. Assuming a business’ commitment to all 17 goals (which PwC suggest is currently just 1%) to continuously match its replacement rate, a business must accurately trace, track, report and counterbalance contributions. Given its binarity, sustainable sustainability provides no latitude for the uncontrollable political and social barriers that constrain business functioning. 

That is not to say businesses cannot profitably improve their actions.

Source: loreal.com

In 2019, L’Oreal had an operating margin of 18.6%, whilst also reducing their impact in 16 of the objectives. Yet to be perpetually sustainable, L’Oreal would need to assume a normative state whereby they can objectively trace, measure and counteract their resources whilst meeting legislative regulations unique to each country they operate in.

Perhaps future technologies will facilitate this certainty, yet beyond logistics, greenwashing is a testimony to the economic weight sustainability holds. Assurance of business transparency, social-centricity, and objectivity present other barriers.

Thus, considering logistical and ethical challenges, being entirely sustainable may be unsustainable, yet without seeking progress, businesses cannot conserve themselves.

Ultimately, only those that try have the potential to see the future they’re trying to retain.