Quotes & Sayings About Sustainability In Business

During the last five years, those four advantages-costs, products, people, goodwill-have been the salvation of Interface during a recession that saw our primary marketplace shrink by 38% from peak to trough-38%! As a heavily leveraged company with over $400 million in debt, we might not have made it without the sustainability initiative and, especially, the support of our customers. This revised definition of success-this new paradigm-has a name: "Doing well by doing good". It is a better way to bigger profits. — Ray Anderson

As more and more people wake up to the fact that further growth does not necessarily bring improvements in quality of life (and often exactly the opposite), sustainability is going to become one of the key characteristics with which places want to be associated. — Jonathon Porritt

Sustainability at Nike means being laser-focused on evolving our business model to deliver profitable growth while leveraging the efficiencies of lean manufacturing, minimizing our environmental impact and using the tools available to us to bring about positive change across our entire supply chain. — Mark Parker

With increasing fervor since the 1980s, sustainability has been the watchword of scientists, environmental activists, and indeed all those concerned about the complex, fragile systems on the sphere we inhabit. It has shaped debates about business, design, and our lifestyles. — Jamais Cascio

Businesses must reconnect company success with social progress. Shared value is not social responsibility, philanthropy, or even sustainability, but a new way to achieve economic success. It is not on the margin of what companies do but at the center. We believe that it can give rise to the next major transformation of business thinking. — Michael Porter

Sustainability is about profit ... it is the opportunity of the century — Ben Clarke

If sustainability is going to take hold in the corporate sector in a big way - and we need it to - it will be when it produces big profits and faster growth. It won't happen because of an optional executive commitment to an abstract concept. It will happen because sustainability is a great business strategy. And it is — Paul Gilding

Zach is part of an exploding movement of social entrepreneurs who offer new approaches to supporting women in the developing world. Aid workers function in the context of an aid bureaucracy, while social entrepreneurs create their own context by starting a new organization, company, or movement to address a social problem in a creative way. Social entrepreneurs tend not to have the traditional liberal suspicion of capitalism, and many charge for services and use a business model to achieve sustainability. Social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish or teach how to fish. They will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry. — Nicholas D. Kristof

For organisations to become truly sustainable we believe it is essential to create a new organisation model: a more cooperative leader, a new way for people to cooperate inside the organisation and a new way for organisations to be measured by society. — Miguel Reynolds Brandao

I always make the business case for sustainability. It's so compelling. Our costs are down, not up. Our products are the best they have ever been. Our people are motivated by a shared higher purpose - esprit de corps to die for. And the goodwill in the marketplace - it's just been astonishing. — Ray Anderson

Sustainability includes how you run your business, and my bottom line includes how you treat your people. Sustainability starts with your staff. — Tom Douglas

In 'The General Strike,' we celebrate those who bring a new vision for the world to the table. People who stand for workers rights, human rights, a just representative political system, and a new mode of doing business where sustainability is the norm not the exception. — Justin Sane

From a business perspective, the question related to cities and sustainability is clear and compelling: can you have a healthy company in an unhealthy city? Arguably, no. Companies need healthy cities to provide reliable infrastructure, an educated and vital workforce, a vibrant economy, and a safe and secure environment to survive and thrive. Business executives have a lot to learn from cities, and a lot to contribute, and this book shows the way, chronicling the successes and the lessons learned about what it takes to make a city healthy, in every sense of the word. — Joel Makower

If we somehow put a value on species extinction and factor that into our costs that bottom line would look very different. IF we put any resource depletion into costs our bottom line would change. So what we have is a dishonest market that does not take into account all the costs when it establishes its prices. We need an honest marketplace before we can let the market work for sustainability rather than against it as it works today. — Ray Anderson

I used to think that my job didn't have anything to do with the environment. Then I realized that my job, as well as everyone else's job, impacts the environment in some way. And now advocating for sustainability has become my No. 1 responsibility. — Ray Anderson

I think that when you start your own business you have to be very clear on what you're passionate about and what your values are. I was very passionate about travel and I wanted to inspire other people. At the same time, I knew if I was going to start my own business, it was going to have to mirror my values, and I knew I was passionate about the environment and about sustainability. — Omar Samra

We live in a world where there are a hell of a lot of new inputs that need to be factored in to your business. It used to be just about your employees and your customers. Now there are all the issues about global warming, about sustainability, about ethics and now about gender and the distribution of wealth. — Stuart Rose

I want to be really proactive in working with the progressive business community in Australia and also reaching out to rural and regional Australia in order to assist in the sustainability crisis and the food security crisis. — Christine Milne

There's no such thing as sustainability. There are just levels of it. It's a process, not a real goal. All you can do is work toward it. There's no such thing as any sustainable economy. The only thing I know that's even close to sustainable economic activity would be organic farming on a very small scale or hunting and gathering on a very small scale. And manufacturing, you end up with way more waste than you end up with finished product. It's totally unsustainable. It's just the way it is. — Yvon Chouinard

If left unexecuted, even the greatest competitive strategies are not worth the paper on which they were written. — Eric Lowitt

When sustainability is viewed as being a matter of survival for your business, I believe you can create massive change. — Cameron Sinclair

Business is the most important institution on the planet for furthering human flourishing. — Paul Gibbons

The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has long been used as an effective lens through which to examine the actions business can take toward ensuring mutual long-term well-being and sustainability. — Klaus Schwab

Knowing that organisations are at the core of our society, it then becomes clear that humanity needs these organisations to prosper. There, the creation of a transparent, accessible, dynamic and meritocratic organisation model can generate sustainable organisations and as a result, a sustainable society — Miguel Reynolds Brandao

Philanthropy without scale and sustainability is like any other bad business that will simply wither and die on the vine. — Naveen Jain

Inaction is no longer acceptable. — Eric Lowitt

It's shocking to think about how little the travel industry cares about sustainability - and it's the basis of their business! — Jochen Zeitz

In the UK what we've found is that even businesses which prided themselves already on their efficient management find that a really beady-eyed scrutiny of their resource management, with an eye to environmental best-practice and long term sustainability, produce fresh efficiency and fresh savings that actually shock those in the company — Margaret Beckett

The only technology that helps to create a plethora of business and employment opportunity while promoting the green environment, is serving good for the society and, therefore, the sustainability. — Anuj

Premium will increasingly be defined in terms of sustainability and environmental compatibility — Norbert Reithofer

Many business leaders are seeing the relationship between long term success and sustainability, and that's very heartening. — Jacqueline Novogratz