Illuminations 13 March - The long road to sustainability

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When 3M delivers PPE to a hospital it does so in trucks assembled in Germany made from steel mined in Brazil and forged in India, using diesel refined from Saudi Arabian oil, driving on a national network of roads constructed from resource-hungry concrete and tar.

This complex and fragile supply chain has a vast impact on global resources – an impact that becomes local when products reach the end of their useful lives and become landfill.

As the COVID-19 is slowly brought under control, attention must switch back to the global crisis that the pandemic has temporarily sidelined: climate change.

Procurement decisions across all sectors are still typically made with a heavy emphasis on cost – because of the focus on the bottom line in the private sector and perennial funding pressures in the public and third sectors. But boards have a duty to consider the wider environmental and social impact of their activities. And the first step is to ensure that
sustainability is a core value of their organisation.

The government could be doing more to support this by changing the default model of company purpose set out in section 172 of the 2006 Companies Act to require all companies to ensure that their business activities have a sustainable – or better still a positive – impact on society and the environment alongside benefits to shareholders. The NHS could also play its part by adopting sustainability as its eighth core value.

But until this happens leaders of all organisations should take the initiative. Many are: so far 307 councils have declared a climate emergency and committed to sustainability. So have many individual NHS trusts and universities. And many third and private sector organisations
have adopted sustainability as a core value.

Actions speak louder than words

Last week GGI became the 200th signatory of Terra Carta – a charter by HRH The Prince of Wales’ Sustainable Markets Initiative about...

Read the full bulletin here: https://www.good-governance.org.uk/illuminations/


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