The developed world has been very successful in producing big houses and high-rise buildings, factories and farms, motor vehicles and power plants, all conceived to serve a purpose: to help make our lives easier, wealthier, more convenient, more enjoyable and more productive. Unfortunately, during the design phase, little thought went into the long-term impact on the Earth and its ability to continue providing for us into the future.

Sustainability challenges us to make decisions that simultaneously improve the economy, the community and the environment. However, this challenge may seem far outside the scope of many people’s responsibility in the work place – why should a business take time to examine its impacts on these complex ‘feel good’ issues? Answering this question is why governments and businesses of all description engage the services of specialist firms like Equilibrium.

One of the striking things about Singapore is how incredibly clean the city is. The city knows that it can not focus only on economic growth, but that it has to make the most of its scarce resources to maintain a good quality living environment in such a compact city state.

Economic growth will continue to put more pressure on their limited land, water and energy resources, while the city will have to be more densely built as the economy grows and the population expands. It will be more and more challenging to ensure that economic growth does not come at a high environmental price, depriving them of clean air, water and land.

The same can be said for beautiful Koh Samui, Thailand, which is just beginning its development journey. With increasing numbers of tourists visiting, the island faces a similar set of circumstances to Singapore. These visitors are the main income for thousands and thousands of the inhabitants and residents of the island. While the locals try to capture the tourist dollar, the danger is that rampant development will result in environmental degradation that will undermine the very reasons tourists visit. It is already obvious they have a problem with litter, traffic congestion and access to fresh water and reliable energy supplies.

When we think of sustainability, often the images conjured up are changing light bulbs, switching off taps and putting things into recycling bins. Certainly, these initiatives are essential, specially in the face of rising global populations and wealthier middle classes consuming more. But is real behaviour change occurring? And is it happening quickly, and broadly, enough? What else can be done to help bring sustainability into the mainstream?

While information programs and education will remain key platforms of engagement, as will “stick” approaches to change people’s behaviour (such as a price on carbon, congestion taxes, landfill levies), other areas are emerging, such as the use of art and games.

The speed and ease of information sharing by consumers, clients and activists across social networking platforms is helping raise the transparency of business operations, brands, products and services. No matter where producers, consumers, clients and concerned citizens are located, they now have access at their finger-tips information about the environmental and social impacts of various businesses through downloadable apps or the many sources of information via internet search engines.

The explosion in the use of the internet and social networks, supercharged by mobile computing devices, cloud computing and an unprecedented ability to mine an abundance of data and knowledge, poses a profound challenge to businesses, large and small.  It opens businesses up to increased scrutiny of business performance, its values and how those values are integrated into core business operations.

In “The Business Guide to Sustainability”, the authors make the case that sustainability is an extension of other organisational changes in response to a society that increasingly raises its expectations of business over time.

In the early 1900s, codes of ethics and government policies were imposed to limit monopolies, misleading product claims and dodgy business dealings. The organised labour movement followed, demanding greater occupational health and safety on the job and better quality of work life. Originating in Japan, the quality movement arrived in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Now there are increasing expectations that business integrates environmental stewardship and greater social responsibility into their models.

Trends that shape the business landscape matter. Innovative managers and bold business experimenters that react quickly to such forces, or even better, anticipate them, can use them to advantage. 

When it comes to strategy, sustainability, collaboration, social media and crowd-sourcing for better outcomes are increasingly finding their way into conversations. A more participatory mode of strategy development   can help improve final outcomes by pulling in diverse perspectives that can enrich plans and provide greater oversight and insight.

So it is that I find myself on the steering committee for the Sydney Coastal Council’s Group, “Becoming Social” project.

The Sydney Coastal Councils Group is a voluntary Regional Organisation of Councils (ROC), established in 1989 to promote coordination between Member Councils on environmental issues relating to the sustainable management of the urban coastal environment.

Take shorter showers. Turn the lights off and switch appliances off at the power point. Drive the car less often. Recycle and re-use.

We have thrived as a species because of our capacity to adapt and change, but are we going to be able to change our behaviours fast enough in the face of evidence that suggests we are living beyond our means? To bring a balance into economic, social and environmental considerations, we face clear challenges requiring changes in our everyday behaviour.

Professor Bas Verplanken provided some interesting insight this week during a public lecture he held in Melbourne on behalf of BehaviourWorks. He is a professor and head of the Department of Psychology at the University of Bath, England, where he specialises in theory-informed applied research, with a particular emphasis on habits in the health, consumer and environmental behaviour fields.

According to the ABS, in August 1966, 46% of all employed people in Australia worked in production industries. Fast forward to 45 years later, and that proportion had halved to 23%. During that period, almost all employment growth has been in the service sector, the workforce of which has more than tripled from 2.6 million to 8.7 million, a relative rise from 54% of all employed people in August 1966, to 77% in August 2011. Meanwhile the number of people working in production industries remained steady at between 2.2 and 2.7 million.

What this means is that a lot more of us are working in office buildings. While good pay will always be the key to attracting and maintaining staff, the aesthetics of our work surroundings is also becoming an important differentiator in the impending war for talent.

At Equilibrium, we work at the intersection of economy, society and environment. Quite often, this means we immerse ourselves in a “grey area” of uncertainty, that is, the choices we try to help our clients make are not always black and white. Sustainability, corporate responsibility, or however you wish to call it, means different things to different people.

Having a very clear definition of what the client, as a business, is trying to achieve is an absolutely critical first step. Are they purely interested in energy efficiency? Do they want to implement a sustainable supply chain policy? Are they interested in waste reduction, or water savings? Do they want to reduce their carbon footprint?  Do they want to implement a staff awareness campaign around sustainability? Do they want to create a new product or service with better environmental credentials? Or do they want to do all these, and more???

During the year, we’ve been showing how online engagement and social media channels are emerging as an ideal platform for large companies to share their corporate responsibility (CR) story with stakeholders – economic, environmental, social. Indeed, it’s a particularly powerful combination given that both CR and social media are rooted in the principles of authenticity, transparency, credibility, collaboration and learning from your community to build a better, stronger business.

Opportunities for companies to inform and engage key stakeholders around their CR initiatives continues to increase as understanding and usage of so­cial media becomes more sophisticated. At the large company level, resources and staff time can be funnelled into figuring out the best way proceed. But what about the small and medium sized enterprise (SME) sector?  Last week’s blog looked at the key differences between big businesses and SMEs, and the fact that CR looks a lot different to SMEs.