Defending the business case for sustainability

I had another report come across my desk that made the arguments for why it benefits the bottom line to invest in environmental and social responsibility. There are two main pieces to this. One you can reduce risk, or costs by investing in better business practices, better sourcing of products, inputs or suppliers, and/or reducing waste, energy, water. The second is that you attract and retain business by being authentic to values of social and environmental responsibility.

It is the latter that I think is really interesting and wanted to dive into a little bit. Living your values is incredibly powerful. It is that thing deep within all of us that guides our actions. When you feel frustrated or upset at something, often times it is because the situation conflicts with your values. Or when you feel inspired and excited, your values are being put to good action.

Values can be really difficult to define and know unless you spend the time thinking about them and we aren't conditioned to call them out very often.
Companies however do call out their values, either overtly or intrinsically. And this is what connects the consumer want to build a relationship with your brand.
So when there is an opportunity to "live" ones values through purchases or partnerships people trend towards this. Yes I understand that many people need to see the hard numbers around the business case, but let's not under estimate the strength of values. Are we formulating business cases so we can live our values or are our values driving us to find the business case.
This brings me back to my theme that we are so constrained in a market economy. We try and make things fit within these borders and well making money at any cost and values are often at conflict with each other. So what I love to see if how creative people are getting with executing their values of environmental and social welfare in a system that has not been open to them in the past. Go forth and continue which every way that we can to change the system to finally align the world we live in on the outside with the values we believe on the inside!