Innovation in Sustainability

Initially, Read Sustainable Business Magazine innovated around sustainable issues to improve their image and meet the growing number of environmental demands from customers, regulators, suppliers and other stakeholders. More recently, leading companies are embracing sustainability as a broad business strategy that enables them to enhance revenue and brand value, engage effectively with key stakeholders, manage risk and reduce costs.

To Eco-friendly Business Solutions  this, they’re taking a hard look at their operations and supply chains to identify opportunities and risks. This often involves a complete lifecycle analysis that spans the product’s use, raw materials and waste management. The goal is to reduce energy, carbon and water efficiencies to improve competitive advantage, while creating products and services that minimize environmental impacts.

Eco-Friendly Business Solutions for a More Sustainable World

The approach can also include changing how existing products are designed, made and used to lower their impact, for example using recycled materials, reducing consumption or eliminating waste. This can be incremental, focusing on improving existing products or services, or disruptive in nature and create new market offerings. Eco-checklists and other digital tools can help determine where these improvements can be made.

In addition, it can involve a social agenda that focuses on creating new products, services or business models that advance broadly defined societal ends. This type of innovation may not require the same level of technical invention that traditional innovations glorify, but it can be equally innovative in terms of bringing about real, positive change. Examples of this are the Fairphone smartphone that focuses on sustainability in production and sourcing, or Bio-bean’s coffee logs and pellets that don’t have any novel technical features but do reduce greenhouse gas emissions.