Text version – What is sustainability?

Slide 1: Home screen

Links to four slides:

  1. What is sustainability?
  2. What are sustainable work practices?
  3. Why is sustainability good for business?
  4. What’s my role?

Slide 2: What is sustainability?

So what is ‘sustainability’? It’s the long-term survival and well-being of humans and the rest of nature. Or to put it another way, it’s about looking after today whilst looking after tomorrow. This means living within our means and not beyond it. Living and working sustainably will ensure our natural resources, upon which life depends, are still around for future generations.

Slide 3: What are sustainable work practices?

Sustainable work practices are those things that we do at work that have little impact on the environment. They are the environmentally friendly choices that we make in our everyday workplace; things like saving energy, saving our precious water, avoiding waste, and purchasing recycled products where available are some examples of sustainable work practices.

Slide 4: Why is sustainability good for business?

I am no scientist but I do know how to assess a risk and this one is clear. Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats; we may not agree on the extent but we can’t afford the risk of inaction. Rupert Murdoch

A sustainable business is one that mitigates risk, particularly in the face of climate change.A sustainable business realises opportunities and savings through efficient resource use, for example: raw materials, energy and water, and reduced waste. Being a sustainable business will improve your reputation. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development states that reputation accounts for 70-80 percent of a company’s value. What company wouldn’t want a piece of that? Studies have also shown that sustainable companies result in improved employee satisfaction, retention and productivity. So you can see from these examples that sustainability is definitely a ‘plus’ for all businesses and should become a part of core business.

Slide 6: What’s my role?

It’s important to remember that environmental sustainability is everyone’s responsibility no matter where you sit in an organisation. The first step is to think about how you use resources and understand, and how you can improve or change what you do to reduce the risks to the environment. This will involve measuring, in some way, the impact your work has on efficiency, consuming resources, generating waste etc, and finding out what changes you can make to everyday tasks. You might have a plan in your organisation that can guide you, so you’ll need to be aware of what others and your organisation are already doing for sustainability. And you’ll need to help out by suggesting improvements to use resources more efficiently, and report environmental hazards that need to be dealt with.

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