A Culture of Sustainability

Those of us who call ourselves professionals in this field often talk about creating a culture of Sustainability, about working ourselves out of a job. But is either result even possible?

Decades ago when the word environment was just a little more than a glimmer in society’s eyes, environmental, health and safety (EHS) professionals were hired “to keep our bosses out of trouble, ” or as those who were more boldly honest would say, “to keep us out of jail.” And we did that by focusing on regulatory compliance. Now please understand that we would often be required to look at what the limits of those regulations allowed and then guide our employers up to that limit. From my perspective, there was nothing wrong with that. After all we were the newborns created to save the marriage between businesses and society, and we were beholden to those who paid our salaries as well as to the nurturing care of the society that allowed us to be born. It was a tightrope we learned to walk from our earliest days.

But after a little while, when the cuteness of our newborn EHS movement was over and we began to cost real money to our paternal employers, the new focus thrust upon us became, “to reduce costs!” EHS professionals had entered the “Terrible Twos” where we needed to be disciplined with fiscal constraints so that we did not become a distraction to the real purpose of the family business, i.e. making money. If we were going to survive in this new family and be allowed to stick around, we needed to learn and quickly adopt the family’s culture. It was not up to us to change it. If we tried, we would be labeled as too naive and then looked over when it came time to be enrolled in the better “schools” (i.e. management training programs) for corporate climbers.

While we were experiencing these identity conflicts, society began to like the cleaner water and air and the safer workplaces our movement was creating, so they began to demand more. Companies responded to this market demand both by hiring a few more EHS professionals, and also by re-purposing into middle management some of the less naive EHS technocrats who would be asked to figure out how to balance the competing demands of society (via its regulations) and not let it cost so much. One of the answers these new managers provided was that the EHS function was different enough from the core business, that it could be split off as something you bring in as needed, like hiring laborers to “repaint” your house when it starts to look shoddy. And that we did. We took on the role of making things look better whenever needed. We developed certification schemes like ISO 14001 that could be displayed like a new coat of paint, and started businesses to maintain that coat of paint. But the paint did not always get put on top of stable or uncorroded structures. Still, we were now on our own, less dependent on one employer’s benevolence and more dependent on our ability to respond to market demands.

We saw a lot of those initial market demands through the eyes of our former patrons, the industries that used to employ us, and that still meant “keep us out of trouble,” “do it at low cost,” and “make sure we look good when you are finished.” But unbeknown to us, we had EHS cousins who did not cut their teeth while under the corporate umbrella; and these cousins had created something called the Non-governmental Organization (NGOs). These NGOs began to change the market place in ways we did not think was possible. Mainly they were able to show companies like Wal-Mart that those who buy the products of industry are interested not just in low cost, but also in buying products from those who want to do more than look good. In other words enough people would not buy Nike shoes if that meant hiring child labor in Vietnam, would not buy products encased in PVC, would not expose their bodies to parabens and plasticizers, that there would be a measurable reduction in demand unless companies became smarter. And as this new vision gained credibility, EHS professionals gained the power to guide strategic growth, and this time it meant a deep partnership with non-EHS professionals such as in Supply Chain management.

That is where we are at today, with many companies still trying to balance out all of these competing demands and figuring out how that should play out in terms of company structure and purpose. But when it comes down to it, no company has yet created a real sustainability culture (well, except maybe for Patagonia), and no company has yet grown beyond the need for EHS or sustainability professionals. And I put the blame clearly on the way we measure bottom lines.

All the talk about sustainability being a way to make business decisions after accounting for the triple bottom line, the reality is that most companies demonstrate by actions (not their words) that they are still making the majority of their decisions based only on the financial line. It is impossible for a company to have a triple bottom line culture when employees are likely to lose their job because their job can be accomplished cheaper and under less regulation in China. It is impossible for a company to have a triple bottom line culture when the values they claim to represent are actually maintained by an outsourced contract. It is impossible for any employee to adopt these values and keep their job when doing so means being the first on the chopping block during next year’s “re-engineering.” If a company had a “Sustainability Culture,” it would reveal itself by the refusal to be in a certain business unless it adequately provided for the prosperity of its customers, its social networks, its environment, and finally, its own financial health.

So what does that mean for today’s sustainability professional? It means we have to be in it for the long haul. It means accepting today’s reality and trying to promote the values you know are beneficial to business, society and environment even when employees know that others business leaders do not share those values. It means that we are and will remain the repository of the flame and we must always be ready to rekindle it in others when events beyond our control snuff it out. It means being courageous enough to fight and educate those more powerful than ourselves that our purpose is to assure the prosperous survival of our company by simulatenously strengthening its connections to a more densely populated and competitive world, and that cannot be accomplished by focusing just on this quarter’s financial bottom line.