The article in the url below is excellent – one of the best things I have seen written about CSR/sustainability in a long time. I won't summarize it, as I would like to encourage you all to read it, but here are a few choice quotes:
"Reporting standards like ESG and others raise important and fundamental questions about the nature of sustainability. Do reporting standards help achieve improved sustainability and increased innovation, or do they thwart sustainability and stifle innovation by creating uniformity and ease for those reporting and reviewing? How do we know what 'good' sustainability performance is? Is it possible for a company or a nation to effectively measure progress toward sustainability? Are the best intentions of companies moving us toward a more sustainable world, or could they be a catalyst moving us further away from such a world? How will we know?"
"Let us explore those questions in light of a common example, the disposable paper cup. Single-use products are much maligned by sustainability advocates as wasteful and unsustainable. Yet single-use products, including the disposable paper cup, made a comeback in 2020 due to the global pandemic. The disposable cup has always required valuable inputs (trees, energy, water, and chemicals) and created waste, including manufacturing residuals and used cup waste. Those are often viewed as 'bad' by sustainability standards. But those inputs and the resulting wastes generated go toward creating something society highly values. Historically, the disposable cup came into being as a social 'good'—a way to improve quality of life by slowing the transmission of disease at community drinking buckets found in public schools, public buildings, and railway stations."
"The ongoing value of the disposable cup illustrates many of the challenges associated with sustainability initiatives. For most products and projects, it is nearly impossible to anticipate, properly evaluate, and effectively weigh the value of the various factors leading to sustainability with simplistic measures. Value is always subjective. How can a 'standard' for sustainability capture the subjective nature of value? As is the case with the disposable paper cup, some may value hygiene over cost, while others may not. Who should decide? In the case of the disposable cup, the market got to decide and valued the cup's social, environmental, and economic benefits more than the perceived downsides."
"Sustainability is the object of ESG reporting. ESG reporting isn't the goal; sustainable performance is the goal."
"The disposable cup example illustrates how thirsty humans chose preferred social outcomes (avoiding disease and enhancing convenience by use of a disposable cup) despite worse economics (a penny per cup) and some perceived adverse environmental outcomes (resource use and waste). Yet voluntary decisions by those paying the costs and optimizing the tradeoffs created a significant market for disposable cups. And the longevity of this product proves its sustainability."
"Early smartphone users likely weren't concerned about whether their model of phone needed more rare-earth metals, generated more emissions in manufacturing, consumed more energy over its life, or used more packaging than prior model phones. In fact, products that consumers choose every day create some form of waste. Consumers showed that they valued the many benefits and enhanced quality accompanying smartphone technology rather than lament the use of expensive and non-renewable rare earth metals. Think of the time saved and convenience increased due to smartphones. Also consider the material savings resulting from the desktop and laptop computers that were never made or sold as smartphones filled that demand. (On the other side of the equation, we should also consider the addictions, lost productivity, and other adverse consequences of smartphones.) But in 2007, regulators did not try to stifle innovation or influence market choices by defining a reporting standard for a 'sustainable phone.' And we should be thankful for that."
I have not heard of either author, but here is the bio published along with the article:
"Bill Frerking is Chief Administrative Officer and Vice President of Environment, Health & Safety at the USD Group in Houston, and was formerly Chief Sustainability Officer of Georgia-Pacific. Blaine McCormick is a management professor at Baylor University's Hankamer School of Business in Waco."
Hope you have a good weekend.
David
David Chandler
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Sustainability: Who Gets to Decide?
By Bill Frerking and Blaine McCormick
January 28, 2021
Texas CEO Magazine
