It’s not easy being green

It’s not easy being green! is the name of the course you teach as part of the Global MiM GETT programme. Is that a reference to the song by Kermit the Frog?

Yes, it is a reference to Kermit’s famous song, but I am not the first one to use it in this context. Many politicians, businesspeople, and researchers have used it in this way. It was also used by a friend of mine, a Dutch professor of sustainable marketing, Paul Driessen, in his PhD and I should thank him for bringing the sustainability connection to my attention.

What do you discuss with the students on your course? 

Well, first, I tell them that it‘s not easy being green! It would be a mistake to say it is. Being green is difficult, but it's worthwhile. Companies that are taking action now will inevitably be ahead of the competition in the future, in five or 10 years’ time. And that’s not that far away. Some companies have been acting for decades. Unilever, for instance, has been systematically developing a sustainable strategy in its operations for decades. But even it says that this is not enough.
Sustainability is a huge challenge for the food industry. There is scientific research investigating how much our planet can bear and the ways in which we can shape our ecosystems so that we all have enough to eat when we reach 10 billion people on Earth in 2057. It will require us to have a different diet, with less meat, more plants, more lentils, fewer dairy products, and more nuts.     
I start the course by writing out a diet on the whiteboard. It contains 200 grams of fish, 150 grams of poultry, 2 eggs, 100 grams of beef … Most students will react by saying that’s fine, that is more or less my daily intake. But this menu is meant to be eaten by an individual over the course of a week for it to be a sustainable diet. That’s a big stretch for many of us. This is the kind of transformation we will need to make if we want to reach a more symbiotic relationship with planet Earth. Companies are heavily involved in these dietary shifts and are trying to follow trends such as moving to non-dairy milk products by replacing them with plant-based alternatives. They have advertised their benefits, pointing out the health and environmental advantages. It is a good effort, but not everybody is buying it. It is a huge challenge.
We can say the same thing about travel and energy consumption — how we heat our homes, run our laptops, visit our far-flung relatives... In many areas of our lives and many industries, sustainability is a challenge. And it is a gamble to rely on technological innovation alone. Sustainability requires not just new business models and more regulation, but a rethink of business and what a business model is. It requires new forms of regulation and governance.  
As I mentioned, it’s not easy being green, but it’s worthwhile. This is the crux of the course. Being green is a huge challenge, but it pays off. Companies that engage in sustainability move into new competitive settings and have a greater competitive edge. Unilever is considered one of the most advanced companies in the food industry in this regard, indeed, even outside the food industry. However, there is a lack of clarity on the issue. It’s hard to compare companies because they all use their own numbers. There is no standardised method of assessment as in accounting. It’s all based on self-reporting. But although their performance may be imperfect, the best performers continue to stand out in a way that appeals to investors ‒ in a visionary way, some might say. 

Why is it difficult for companies to go green? What are the challenges and obstacles they face when they want to become more sustainable?     

The most difficult issue is a company’s vested interests. If you own a company that has just invested in production lines for diesel engines, you are not going to lobby for electric cars! At the same time, if you launch healthy products and tell consumers about them, it’s not easy to win them over and change their lifestyles. Consumers have vested interests too. 
The second obstacle is the people working in these businesses. They may be good at running the business as it is, but find it hard to adopt new ways of doing business. It’s the dinosaur dilemma in a way: you know you are threatened by a major issue but know no other way of existing. It’s not just vested interests, but that we often have unsustainability built into our systems, such as when we structure cities in such a way that you need a car to get around. 
It's also a matter of technological innovation, of course, but it would be unwise to count on that too much. Sometimes it’s not available and sometimes it is, but we must find ways to meet economic needs in a sustainable manner. Of course, there is the issue of knowledge. Not everybody is aware of new technological opportunities in their field. But again, we shouldn’t wait for technology. There’s a lot already and the big challenge is changing ourselves: our lifestyles and values, our businesses, and how we live together. So maybe it’s even more important to know how consumers really feel about what they need, or about how employees feel about working for companies that don't perform well on sustainability issues.

What are the key elements for a greener tomorrow in business?    

The opposite of what we have right now!
I would say that one of the key elements is to listen: listen to young people, listen to experts, listen to consumers to identify what it is that they really need, how it can be supplied, how it can be created in better symbiosis with our planet. The trees and the sea can’t speak, so we need to come up with words that take their interests into account. It also means that we must change our needs. We must rethink our values.
For example, some people are proud of the luxury fashion collection they have in their walk-in wardrobes, but there is a successful company in the United States called Rent the Runway, which allows you to rent all sorts of haute couture ‒ fancy suits, fancy bags, fancy shoes ‒ so that you can wear something new every week. This enables you to dematerialise your wardrobe. The items are then cleaned and used by someone else. It’s not perfect, as the company relies on polluting dry-cleaning processes, but it is an example of how our values can change. Maybe we don’t need to feel good about owning the fashion we wear; maybe we can just feel good about wearing it. 
Tesla is another good example of the way people now see luxury cars. Values can change to adopt more sustainable products. 
Our lifestyles must adapt to be in symbiosis with our planet. We need to find better ways to live with the Earth, not live on it.    
Companies and people must act simultaneously. 
There have always been companies leading the charge and others that follow and invest at the last moment: early adopters and late adopters. This is also true for consumers. Yet, I think it would be unwise to be insensitive to this discussion. It’s not only companies, but also consumers, non-governmental organisations, civil society. Companies need to try to grow, be profitable, pay their employees, their investors ... Some people say we could do away with this whole model, but what could we replace it with? As citizens, we need to understand how the economy interacts with our environment, to be aware of sustainability issues. Everybody is related to sustainability in a different way due to his or her interests, perspectives, lifestyle, and values.

 
Is there an ‘easy’ way for a business to transition to make its mission align with the environmental values necessary to reduce carbon emissions and tackle climate change?

Sometimes, yes, but most often, no! For some industries, it is much easier than for others. If you make very high-added-value products, such as expensive cosmetics or very expensive luxury cars, or very expensive fashion, for example, it’s easier to find the means to do something that is greener. But if you make a low-added-value product, even at high volume, it’s harder to find a sustainable solution. Nothing is impossible, but again, it’s not easy to reinvent oneself. 
We can try, though. On a personal level, for example, I love to cook. More and more often, I’ll cook a vegetarian meal. I feel prouder about serving that to friends than another piece of meat.

  
Is it easier for a privately held company to go green than for publicly traded companies?

This is a difficult question to which there is no straightforward answer.
It depends on the owners and their stance on sustainability. Decathlon, for example, is known for making sports apparel more circular and is a privately owned company. So, if the private owners want it to happen, it can work, but if not … Publicly traded companies can see rapid changes in their investor base as a result of change. In 2006, Unilever lost many investors when it decided to go green. The share price dropped, but then, it gained new investors aligned with its values.

Are being green and eco-friendly the same thing?

By diving more and more into sustainability, I realise that these words separate us from nature. These labels do not translate the symbiosis we need to reach to tackle climate change and other environmental issues. And they do not help us to see that environmental issues are simultaneously social issues. We should not be parasites, and this means that we cannot see the Earth as something external to us. We need to be as green as our Earth. We are the most important factor in this ecosystem, so seeing as something separate is wrong. Maybe we should start to ignore that kind of language altogether. 

You are also programme director of the MSc in Global & Sustainable Business. How can companies align the two aspects of being global and sustainable? 

I’m afraid we don't have many sustainable global companies at the moment. But there are some that are starting to discover more symbiotic ways of doing business. And sometimes unsustainable companies find great new avenues that can be developed.
Take Shell, for example. If we look at the way in which its fuels are used ‒ burning them and emitting CO2 ‒ we cannot say this is a sustainable company. It is aware of this and highly criticized for it, but at the same time, it has being doing a wonderful thing for about 15 years now. It has large refineries in Rotterdam that emit lots of CO₂. It figured out that the farmers next door – just 5-10 kilometres from its large chemical installations –  need CO₂. They add it to the atmosphere of their greenhouses to make their tomatoes and cucumbers grow quicker. So, now, they take the CO₂ they would otherwise emit and sell it to the greenhouse farmers. There’s no super-complicated new technology involved ‒ just looking beyond the company and its industry and finding new ways of living together. 
And as regards being global and sustainable and matching those two aspects… Globalisation has been great in the way that it has benefited everyone around the world. We have a much higher life expectancy, far lower child mortality, and generally improved circumstances, fewer wars. Yet, globalisation is becoming increasingly unevenly distributed. 
Rich people caused climate change, but it is the poor who are suffering as a result. The question is: how do we compensate them for that? There is an equity issue in sustainability. The name of the MSc expresses an ambition: to make globalization work for all and for the planet.